“Chyort!”

“Her infatuation will be short-lived, but I would appreciate your cooperation in not prolonging it. Do we have an understanding, Petrovitch-san?”

“Yeah. Absolutely. I’d cut off my little finger if I thought it would make you believe me more.” The thought terrified him, but he’d do it.

Oshicora shook his head slightly. “That will not be necessary. Thank you for your discretion in this, and earlier matters. I have a policy of only employing nikkeijin within my organization. Sorenson was an exception, and I had other reasons for that which you know about. You, Petrovitch-san, would have proved very useful, above your already great service to me. Sadly, it is not to be. Still, come the revolution, you will be spared.”

Petrovitch blinked slowly, then caught the slight upturn on Oshicora’s mouth. “Very funny. In Russia, the revolution has you.”

“Have we concluded our talk, Petrovitch-san? Are we parting on good terms?”

“I believe so.”

Oshicora stood up and bowed. “Again, I am in your debt.”

“No, no you’re not.” Petrovitch got to his feet, and realized just how weak he was; physically and emotionally drained.

“You would have made a good son-in-law, I think.”

“And a lousy husband.”

On his way to the door, Oshicora said off-handedly: “I would have offered you money to stay away from my daughter. A great deal of money.”

“And I would have turned it down,” said Petrovitch. “It’s more honorable this way.”

“A good word for a virtue that is in short supply. Sayonara, Petrovitch-san.”

When he’d gone, when Petrovitch had waited for five minutes and Hijo hadn’t leaped into the room to behead him with a katana, he fell across his desk, limp and useless.

He’d gotten away with it. Again. He’d ridden his luck so hard, so far, that surely it had to be spent by now.

Coffee. He boiled up some more water, and shoveled granules into the dregs of the previous brew. Then he sat back down and couldn’t quite believe he was still alive.

There was work to do, though: he had to have something to show Pif when she came back in, even though he knew from experience that when she chose to sleep, she could be out for the best part of a day. In the current circumstances, with everything that was at stake, he guessed she’d catnap. A couple of hours and she’d return, running on adrenaline, caffeine and sugar. Much like himself.

He looked at what he’d done that morning, and wondered if he’d made a mistake copying out the original equations of state. Pif would beat him with the stupid stick if he had, so he wheeled himself around to her desk, nudging the other chair aside.

He checked every symbol with exaggerated care, finally coming to the conclusion that his errors were entirely of his own devising.

Then he spotted it, stuck to the desktop under Pif’s papers, in plain sight to anyone who looked. A bug, the same size and shape as the one he’d found in his shoe. Just like the one Marchenkho’s hired killers had used to find him.

“Sooksin,” he breathed.

It wasn’t Marchenkho. The one Sorenson had picked up had been Chain’s. And this one, slipped under Pif’s working-out when he’d fiddled with it, was Chain’s. Which probably meant that the first one had been his, too. He’d been tricked.

Then the awful realization struck him. Not that Harry Chain had let him believe that Marchenkho had bugged him, but that he was still bugged.

No, not that either. Why would Chain make an attempt to plant another device on Pif’s desk? Because the first one had gone wrong. He took off his jacket and pulled it inside out, searching every seam, folding back the collar, examining every pocket. Then his T-shirt.

Then his trousers, again turned street-side in, and his socks, damn it. Even the waistband of his pants, though he was sure he’d have noticed Chain rummaging around in there while he was still wearing them.

His boots. He took each one off and felt around inside them, then by chance and out of desperation, turned them over. It was there, on the right boot, tucked in the angle between heel and arch. The glue hadn’t adhered properly to the dirty underside, and half the tab was flapping around, folded back on itself. The plastic cover had worn through, and some of the circuitry had been severed.

Where had he gone? Walked the short distance up past the palace to Green Park. Straight from Chain’s office to Oshicora’s. It had to have malfunctioned before then, otherwise he’d have been overheard organizing a half-million-euro counter-hit with Oshicora. That Chain had missed that was down to pure, unadulterated luck.

Petrovitch was at the end of the line. It was time to get off and change trains, right now.

14

On Monday morning, everything had been fine. By Tuesday lunchtime, he was teetering on the brink of disaster, and might even be over the edge of the abyss.

The thought he struggled with was that he’d walked right into Oshicora’s private park and met with the man himself without getting the once-over for weapons or wires. Or maybe he had, and the security was so discreet that he hadn’t noticed. Perhaps the inside of each and every lift was a screen.

Sorenson hadn’t been pushed against a wall and shot—not yet. It was a good but confusing omen, adding another element of doubt to a critical choice: whether to ditch his current identity and sleeve up with a new one. He’d done it once before, to get out of St. Petersburg in one piece. He’d prepared for this moment for years. He always told himself that he’d do it if it looked like someone was close to discovering who he really was. It should have been as automatic as a reflex.

Petrovitch was twelve months away from becoming Dr. Petrovitch. Petrovitch had just written down a way to combine two fundamental forces of nature. Petrovitch was about to get a free ride to glory on the coattails of a future Nobel Prize winner. None of that would matter one iota if Petrovitch got locked up for twenty years.

The drumming of his fingers on the desk was the only outward sign that he was in an agony of indecision. He’d always assumed that it’d be his past catching up with him. Instead, he’d collided catastrophically with the future. Every time he returned to the question of whether any of this was worth imprisonment or worse, he looked down at his morning’s calculations.

There was no point in prevaricating. He knew if he stayed, Chain would get him, and if not Chain, Oshicora, and if not Oshicora, someone else. It was time to say goodbye to Samuil Petrovitch.

He grabbed his bag and headed for the door. Then he reversed himself and grabbed the piece of paper from his desk. He dropped it on Pif’s, and scrawled a big question mark at the bottom of the page. She’d know what he meant, even if she never saw him again.

Now he was ready.

He took the wheezing lift down to the ground floor and out onto Exhibition Road, from where he took the travelator to the Underground. He wouldn’t normally go by tube at this time of day; if it was crowded in the early morning, by lunchtime it was unspeakable.

Since this was going to be one of the last times he’d have to endure it, he suffered the crush gladly. Where next? Somewhere cold, somewhere clean—Canada, Scandinavia, New Zealand’s southern island.

If he’d had his rat, he’d be booking plane tickets under a different name, storing data before wiping it clean away, using the unparalleled power of his machine to hack the Metrozone Authority’s database and activate a sleeper personality he’d stored on there years ago.

If he’d had his rat, he could have done it now, all in the space of a single journey to the airport: Petrovitch would vanish, and another man would arrive luggageless at the airport to fly away to a new life. Even his failing heart could be spirited away. He didn’t need a Metrozone hospital for that. Any big city would do.