“Shall we see?” Marchenkho squared his shoulders and stepped through the doorway into the foyer. Chain was already picking his way through the objects that had been unsuccessfully used to try and batter a way out—chairs, tables, fire extinguishers, metal supports, earthenware pots with spilled soil and broken trunks.

“They panicked.” He kicked a broken tabletop aside. “Wouldn’t have happened with Oshicora still alive.”

“It probably wouldn’t have happened with Hijo still in the building, either.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. I bet he’s taken all the men with guns out onto the street to look for Sonja, who’s escaped all on her own. I’m sorry, gentlemen. I seem to have wasted your time.”

Marchenkho holstered his gun and put his hands on his hips. “No, tovarisch. I would have paid good money to see this. My only regret is that I did not bring a bomb big enough to demolish the whole building.”

“I might have drawn the line at that,” said Chain. “So are we sure this place is empty? On a normal day, there would have been a thousand nikkeijin here.”

Petrovitch shrugged. “They might still be struggling to work from wherever they live. Imagine their surprise when they finally get here.” He cocked his head, and listened.

“I hear it too,” said Marchenkho.

“It’s the lifts.” Petrovitch held his gun out in front of him and moved stealthily around the reception area. The row of blank lift doors behind it hummed with movement.

“Why are there no lights, but these have power?” Chain drew his own pistol and watched the floor indicators above each door flicker and change.

Marchenkho squashed the talk button on his walkie-talkie. “Grigori. Squad to the foyer. Now.”

“The thing is, are those numbers going up or down?” Petrovitch’s question was answered by chimes, one after another, as every lift reached the ground floor. “And why are we standing here, waiting to find out?”

The doors opened simultaneously and, at first, none of them could comprehend what they were looking at: in each lift, there was an uneven mass of cloth and pale flesh, like a jumbled pile of shop mannequins. Then the pooled blood started to seep out across the threshold and onto the pale stone floor. The dark red stain flowed outward, merging, growing.

“I think it’s time for us to go,” said Petrovitch in a whisper.

Grigori skidded to a halt behind them, the barrel of his Kalashnikov searching for a target.

“A tactical change of plan,” said Marchenkho. “Retreat.”

Petrovitch waited for a few seconds before joining them, spending that time imagining the final moments of those trapped as they fell the full height of the lift shaft, the instant that tangled freefall became killing impact.

“Petrovitch! Move!” shouted Chain.

But he didn’t. He was busy realizing that every lift would have had to collect people from every floor, then taken them back to the top to drop them to their deaths. It was a deliberate act. Someone had murdered them all.

“Oi!”

“Yeah. Coming.” The lake of blood had reached his toes, and as he backed away, he left sticky footprints behind him in a trail, all the way outside.

23

Marchenkho had brought vodka as well as guns. A tray was laden with glasses and the bottle was upended over it. The sharp alcohol fumes burned the sweet, heavy smell of blood from their noses.

Petrovitch threw his glass into the gutter like a good Russian, and Marchenkho’s crew followed suit to prove they were better Ukrainians.

“If anyone has an explanation for this, I would very much like to hear it.” Marchenkho went back for a second glass and shuddered as he drank.

“The building attacked them,” said Petrovitch, and suddenly all eyes were on him. Self-conscious under all the attention, he adjusted his glasses. “It lured them into the lifts and then killed them.”

“Buildings do not…”

“Yeah,” interrupted Petrovitch, “and cars don’t do that either, except they did yesterday. If you have a better idea, then let’s hear it.”

Marchenkho rumbled to himself. “Someone must be controlling the lifts, to make them do that.” He was shaken, the man who had committed his own calculated atrocities.

“The same person who was controlling the cars, blocking the internet, the phones, paralyzing the tube? They’d have to be very busy. Superhumanly busy.” He shook his head. “Virus. Some sort of virus.”

“Viruses do not hunt people down and send them to their deaths.” Marchenkho launched his glass at the curbstone where it shattered into glittering shards. “I know this much: only we can be that vicious.”

“Your only problem is that the internet is swamped. There’s no traffic. It’s impossible to control anything at the moment.”

“I hate to interrupt,” said Chain. Of all of them, only he hadn’t drunk. “But can anyone else hear that?”

Marchenkho waved for quiet. There were two distinct sets of sounds, neither of them good. Distant gunfire, intense bursts of automatic weapons and single cracks of pistols. Closer in, not just near but all around them, a repetitive click, one short beat every second.

Puzzled heads turned, searching for the source.

“The cameras. It’s coming from the cameras.” Chain pointed across the road at the CCTV pylon attached to the side of the brownstone building. “There are speakers underneath.”

“So why are they ticking at us?” Petrovitch scanned the plaza as the clicking echoed around them, bouncing off the high walls and repeating from street corners.

“It’s the radiation warning system,” Chain said with wonder. “I never knew it still worked.”

“Radiation?” said Marchenkho. “What is this that says there is radiation? Can it be trusted?”

“If it’s an automatic system, I wouldn’t trust it to tell the time at the moment. Ignoring it is the sensible choice. I’m more worried about the war that seems to be starting uncomfortably close.” Grigori was standing close by, and Petrovitch asked him: “Which way?”

Grigori listened. “North?” he ventured. “Regent’s Park?”

“Yeah, maybe. The natives were always restless. Or it could be Hijo.”

“I forgot about your girlfriend.”

“Pashol na khui.”

“You’re risking your life for her.”

“I’m only doing it because Hijo pissed me off.” Petrovitch took one last look around. “Thanks for letting me keep the coat, but I’m done here. North it is.”

He got as far as the white line when the speakers chimed, three rising notes.

“Warning. Warning. Warning. New machine jihad. Warning. Warning. Warning. New machine jihad.” The voice was a woman’s, very proper, very English.

A dull concussion drifted across the city, and Chain’s attention was diverted. But not Petrovitch’s.

“What does this mean?” he called. When Chain threw up his hands, he came back. “You’re supposed to know these things!”

“It’s a radiation warning system. Someone in the control center presses the button when there’s a warning of radiation, not a…”

“Warning. Warning. Warning. New machine jihad.”

“One of those. I don’t know what a new machine jihad is. I’ve never heard of one, and I don’t know why I should be worried about it when someone—other than us—is using explosives in the central Metrozone.”

The alert was played twice more, then stopped. The clicking returned.

Marchenkho twitched his mustache. “No matter. The tower has fallen, but if we are to destroy Oshicora’s organization utterly, we must strike now. We will crush our enemies while they are still reeling from their losses. Our success depends on our speed.”

Chain coughed politely. “Can we talk about this for a minute?”

“Talk? I thought you wanted this, Harry Chain.” Marchenkho clapped his hands and called for order. Drivers started their engines and their passengers climbed in. “There is no time, no point to talk anymore. Petrovitch, are you going to go and search for the girl?”