Tabletop took Petrovitch down in a flying tackle that came from nowhere, and she lay on top of him, spreading herself out like a starfish over his flattened form. “Stay still.”

Madeleine’s gun was in her hand, and Valentina’s AK panned the crowd, then the windows and rooftops overlooking the road. Lucy planted her red flag in the road and held it out to cover him. A single shot echoed across the open space, and a hole pocked the flag, passing under Lucy’s outstretched arm. The tarmac sparked in front of Petrovitch’s head, and Tabletop immediately picked him up and laid him down again so she could curl around his back. A man in overalls dropped with a cry, clutching at a stain on his leg.

The ripple of awareness flowed outward. Madeleine shouted. “Shooter. Everyone down.” Some in earshot started to duck, while others were left standing, briefly.

“Michael?”

[One moment.]

Lucy looked down at the hole. She shut her eyes tight, but didn’t move.

[Park Crescent. Fourteen. Second floor, third window from the right. Encrypted digital transmissions of the same type as used in Tabletop’s stealth suit.]

Petrovitch couldn’t move. “Let me up, I know where they are.”

“No, you tell us. We’ll deal with it.” She tightened her hold, and he knew he wasn’t going anywhere without her permission.

“You’ve got it on your wrist.”

She let go, glanced down at her forearm and pointed. “Three up, three right. Building on the left. Suppressing fire.”

Not all the guns had been handed back, and from the noise, it sounded like none of them had. The entire frontage of the terrace smoked with pulverized stone and every window pane shattered.

[Target is moving. Staircase down. Going to the back of the building.]

“Send it to Tabletop.” Already she and Valentina were running, waving their troops on. It looked wild and uncoordinated, but he couldn’t see it for himself. Madeleine’s hand had closed around his backbrace and she carried him like a piece of luggage, his legs bouncing and skidding on the road, to find cover behind one of the trucks parked at the entrance.

She dumped him down, and glanced back out. The door to number fourteen was being kicked in, with scores more people branching off down side streets to cut off the agent’s escape.

Lucy wandered past in a daze, still carrying her flag, and Madeleine eased her down next to Petrovitch.

“Thanks,” he said to her. “I wish you’d decide whether you’re a hero or not. I’m getting gray hair.”

Lucy laughed, then sobbed. “I don’t know. I just do stupid stuff sometimes.”

“It worked this time. If you didn’t save my life, you saved Tabletop’s.”

“Why are they doing this?”

“Because they’re scared of us.”

More gunfire sounded across the rooftops, sustained bursts that cackled and rattled in waves as the wind blew the sound.

[They have the target surrounded.]

“Now I’m thinking clearly: tell them to try and get him to surrender. Rights under the Geneva Convention, repatriation, all that. Assuming it’s a him, don’t know why.”

[And if he will not comply?]

“I want it on record that we offered. If he won’t go for it, see if you can hack his suit: it carries enough injectable painkillers to render him insensible.”

[He is using a burst transmitter. It is non-trivial to hold the signal long enough to negotiate with the suit’s hosting protocol.]

“A miracle would be really useful.”

The shooting stuttered to a halt.

“Safe to move?” asked Madeleine.

“I don’t know.” His arm was aching, bleeding pain through the blocks he’d put into place. When he inspected it, he found that his superstructure was bent. The fragments of bone had shifted. “Chyort voz’mi.”

“What’s the matter?”

“Forget it. We need to get these journos inside the park.” He clawed his way upright. “Give them a couple of minutes to set up, dial their satellites if they need them, then just push me in front of them. Come on, Lucy.”

[We have an unconscious CIA agent in custody.]

“Yobany stos, we’ve done something right at last.” He put his good arm around Lucy’s shoulders and together they rode the tide of people toward Container Zero. Madeleine stayed very close behind them, gun drawn, trying to make certain no one else was going to pop up and have a go.

Petrovitch called Tabletop. “Strip the suit off him: I want him and it separated by the largest distance possible.”

“Then what do we do?”

“Make sure he stays alive. That would be brilliant.” He had a feral grin on his face that was obvious to everyone around him.

“You never look that happy,” said Lucy.

“The guy who nearly shot us is our prisoner. If he doesn’t want his perfect teeth and genetically enhanced face on every screen on the planet, then he’s going to have to hope Mackensie’ll call his dogs off.”

They were at Container Zero, and there were still ugly black bloodstains on the ground around its open doors. Those news teams who’d brought lights quickly extended them on their poles and clicked them on, and there was some jostling at the back as those coming late tried to push for a clear sightline.

“Look at them. It’s like a classroom.” Lucy slipped out from under Petrovitch’s arm and failed to notice that he nearly fell. His hand grasped for something solid, and Madeleine caught him.

“You can’t go on like this,” she said in his ear.

“I don’t have a choice. Not anymore. I put myself here, and now I have to see it through.”

“You can barely stand, Sam.”

“Then hold me up.” He scanned the people lining up in front of him, watching them more or less comply to Lucy’s rearranging of them: those closest were going to have to sit down in the dirt, those behind to kneel, then the third and fourth rows come to some arrangement whereby they looked over each other’s shoulders.

He couldn’t see Surur or her technician anywhere. He thought it odd, then realized that they’d still be stuck at Park Lane, Michael’s cable tethering them down, scared to move in case they broke his connection with the outside world.

It wasn’t needed now, hadn’t been needed since the AI had uploaded itself onto another computer, but he’d forgotten to tell Surur that. He hadn’t mentioned the details of Michael’s escape at all, content to let the question hang unanswered in the air.

He looked for the reporter’s phone, and found it. She didn’t pick up so he tried the one a bare meter away. The cameraman didn’t reply. So he went for the satellite link, riding down the microwave signal which he shared with the increasingly frantic attempts of her studio manager to speak to her, to him, to anyone.

The camera was still recording, still transferring its footage to the van. It showed a sideways world, lying on the road. The lens was focused on a drift of purple that could, at a squint, be resolved into the body of a woman with glossy hair and flawless skin.

31

Michael could multi-task. Petrovitch found it very difficult. He wanted to capture the last half-hour’s output from the Al Jazeera camera, then review it, all the while trying to speak to the assembled press.

He started off incoherent, then lost track of what he was saying and stopped mid-sentence when something of awful significance happened onscreen.

Madeleine held up her hand to the crowd, and dragged Petrovitch around to face her. “You’re doing it wrong.”

“Something terrible is happening,” he said. “There. That’s when it was. Five of them. Same time as the shooter. Coordinated attack. Distracted us. They’re going after Michael.”

“Sam. You called this press conference. You’re the public face of the Freezone. Either you can do this properly, or I’ll pull the plug.”

She didn’t know what he knew. She thought he was flaking out.