He gargled and spat. Repeatedly. He blew his nose and had it irrigated with dilute peroxide. His ears were reamed. The sponges went into another yellow bag, but the water just drained away.

They screened him again, passed him as being good enough, and moved him up the line. The next anonymous medic took his blood—more than Petrovitch thought strictly necessary—and neatly labeled the filled phials by hand.

He was issued with a white coverall, hospital slippers, and a red blanket. The last in line held up the tent flap for him, and he shuffled into the daylight.

A man in green scrubs was sitting in the back of one of the vans. He had an electric boiler running. He lifted a mug up and waggled it.

“Cup of tea, sir?”

If Petrovitch had had any tears left, he would have cried.

“Coffee? Tell me you have coffee.”

“Certainly, sir.”

It came freeze-dried out of a packet, and he had two in the same mug. It was hot, and strong, and tasted like angels dancing in his mouth. He sat on the back step of the van and was joined by Tabletop, who was soon nursing her own drink.

“They did it,” she said.

“I know. I did what I could. It was almost enough.” He sipped more of the scalding brew. “It could have been a lot worse.”

“How?” She squeezed water from her hair and let it dribble on the ground.

“We didn’t lose anyone. Sure, we have a yebani great crater and kilometer of crap radiating from it. We can just shovel the dirt back in and pat it down, but we can’t replace people. And look, they missed. They missed Michael, and they missed me. Everything they wanted to achieve, they didn’t.”

“They used a nuke, Sam.”

“Yeah. Finally, they’ve made a mistake. Your lot.” And he shrugged. “Okay, not your lot anymore. They’re good. A couple of times, we’ve had luck on our side, but this is the first time they’ve really screwed up. We had cameras at ground zero. We’ve got video of two reporters being shot, and if there’s one thing even the most partisan journo hates, it’s someone deliberately killing another journo. We’ve got global sympathy.”

“I don’t want sympathy,” she said baldly. “I want revenge.”

“Oh, we’ll get it all right. But it might not look how you want it to.” He glanced across at her with his one eye. “You prepared for that?”

Unperturbed by his empty socket, she looked back. “What are you going to do?”

He scratched at his nose and smiled slyly. “Something… wonderful.”

34

A phone rang. It was an ancient phone still attached to a copper wire, and no matter the degree of sophistication that was plugged into the back of it, the phone itself hadn’t been changed for thirty years.

It had been originally installed to prevent wars. That was its sole purpose and, so far as the potential combatants were concerned, it had worked. Until now.

A man—a junior functionary whose job description was to make sure important people had everything they needed—was alone in the room when the phone rang. He had a brief moment of panic, and he shouted for help, before recovering enough to pick the receiver up and hold it to his ear.

“Hello?”

“Yeah, you’re not President Mackensie.”

“No sir. My name’s Armstrong. Joe Armstrong.”

“Well, Armstrongjoearmstrong, I’m Samuil Petrovitch, and your boss has just nuked my city. To say I’m just a little cross about that would be an understatement, but I’m kind of assuming that your president couldn’t give a fuck about that. Unfortunately for him, I’ve made it my job to make him care. So, Joe—you’re a pretty straight-up sort of guy, yeah? I can trust you to pass on a message. Can you do that for me, Joe?”

“Yes.” Armstrong was having trouble breathing. “I can do that.”

“The message is this: I want to talk to Mackensie, and I won’t go away until I do.”

Petrovitch heard the handset being placed on the table. He had no doubt that it was a solid slab of antique wood, highly polished and clutter-free.

It was quiet for a few moments, then he could hear voices approaching. Armstrong was one, and there were others. They seemed anxious.

The phone was picked up again, and an older voice spoke. It was one that was used to both issuing and obeying orders.

“This is Admiral Malcolm Arendt of the United States Navy. Who is this, and how did you access this system?”

“Didn’t Joe say? I had such high hopes for him, too. Or is the problem with you, Admiral? Maybe Joe did say, and you didn’t believe him because you thought my atoms were floating around in the atmosphere somewhere over France.”

A hand muffled the mouthpiece, and the admiral called out to the rest of his audience. “It’s Petrovitch.”

“That’s what I’ve been telling you. Now, you’re not Mackensie either. They’re all in the Situation Room, right? You can patch this call through—I’d do it myself, but why should I do all the work?”

“President Mackensie does not talk to terrorists.”

“Can I remind you who just toppled Nelson’s Column? It’s lying there across Trafalgar Square, and Nelson’s head has come off. That picture is currently running on every news network on the planet. Even your own. If I can stomach talking to Mackensie, he can have the grace to sit his scrawny arse down and talk to me.”

“President Mackensie does not talk to terrorists. I do not talk to terrorists. No one in this administration talks to terrorists.”

“Fine. You don’t want to know how your country dies. I can understand that.”

“I… what?”

“Not only did you not get me, you didn’t get Michael,” said Petrovitch.

“Michael?”

“The AI. It has a name: Michael. That’s who you’ve been trying to kill; the same Michael that the Vatican are about to declare to be alive. Not that you care about that any more than you did when you thought it was just a machine. Sorry, I’ve distracted myself. Me and Michael: between us, we’ve decided that you’re just too dangerous to have around anymore, and the world would be a better place without a bunch of nuclear-armed fundamentalist xenophobic psychopaths. Sorry it had to turn out this way, but hey.”

“You’re threatening to destroy the United States of America. You and whose army?”

“Yeah. The last time someone said that to me, I surprised them by turning up with, you know, a whole army. Prepare for the New Machine Jihad, Admiral.”

“We can deal with the AI, Petrovitch,” said Arendt. “We can deal with you, too. Now get off this line.”

“Just one more thing, Admiral. If you isolate your network now, the virus routines we’ve installed across your country’s infrastructure will no longer be able to talk to Michael. If that happens, they’ll turn off every computer they’re hiding in, and I’m sure you know just how difficult it is to get these things restarted once they go down. You’ll lose everything, for a very long time. You’ll be reduced to the nickels and dimes in your pocket.”

“Anarchy. You’re talking about Anarchy.”

“Modified. So hold off on your kill switch. Of course, you’ll want to check if I’m bluffing: but I did the same thing to the Freezone earlier on today, and if you can find anyone who’ll still talk to you after what you’ve done, they’ll confirm the sudden and total shutdown. I had an AI to help me clear up my mess, though, so I imagine your pain will last an awful lot longer than ours did. Years, probably. How are the NSA doing at clearing up the last outbreak, by the way?”

There seemed to be a lot of people running in the background, running and talking hurriedly over phones. Of course, they were trying to trace him: that exercise was doomed to failure, but he’d have been disappointed if they hadn’t tried. Some of the conversations were about activating assets within the Metrozone: again, the likelihood he’d accounted for every CIA agent didn’t come with a cast-iron guarantee.