“Yeah, you’re just being silly now.” Petrovitch pulled out a stack of cash cards and sorted through them until he found one in the right currency. “Unless you want paying in yuan.”

He grabbed the reader and peered at it for a moment, deciphering its idiosyncrasies, then slotted in the card and debited the amount on the glowing fare meter, adding a tip large enough that at least one of Artak’s kids could make it through college unburdened by debt.

The driver would find out later. Petrovitch felt no need to make a song and dance about it.

“Merci,” he said, springing the door. “Shat hatcheli e’.”

Newcomen scrambled out, and Artak dumped his case on the kerb.

“Thank you,” the agent remembered to say. Petrovitch was already diving through the flood of pedestrians on his way to the seven stone steps leading to the consulate’s wooden doors.

A little brass plate on the stonework stated the building’s purpose. Petrovitch looked up and down the street and at the blank-faced building opposite. The library was an island from the nineteenth century stranded in the twenty-first.

“You know how many cameras are trained on us at the moment?” he said to Newcomen. “The NSA, the FBI, INS, CIA, ATF, Homeland Security, Treasury. Pretty much every single one. It’s not like we don’t tell them what we’re up to.”

“You do?”

“Most of the time.” He smiled slyly.

The door opened, despite Petrovitch not having even knocked.

“Hey, Sam.”

“Hey, Marcus. Don’t touch the hired muscle: he’s broadcasting.”

A thin black man with puffball grey hair stood to one side and waited for Petrovitch and Newcomen, followed by his case, to come inside. He pushed the door shut behind them, and paused while some definitely un-Victorian-era locks whirred into place.

“So,” said Marcus, “you made it this far.”

“Relatively unscathed. If they left us alone, we’d get this done so much quicker.” Petrovitch held open the door to a metal cabinet in the corner of the foyer, revealing a space just large enough for a man to stand. “Get in. Stand perfectly still.”

“Uh, what is this?” Newcomen asked, even as he was drawn irresistibly towards it.

“It’s a bigger version of what Tabletop used at the airport. Rather than spend an hour picking each individual bug off you, we’ll just nuke the lot of them.” He jerked his head at the container. “You might see some bright flashes, smell something funny or convince yourself you’ve seen God. Just side effects – they don’t last.”

Newcomen squeezed in, still uncertain. There were no windows, or even a light. He hesitated, causing Petrovitch to sigh. “What now?”

“I might be claustrophobic.”

“Well, perhaps you should have worn your big girl pants when you got up this morning.” He slammed the door and pressed the button. As the capacitors charged up, he retreated across the foyer to stand with Marcus.

“How’s he shaping up?”

“I don’t think they could have sent anyone worse.” Petrovitch pursed his lips. “All I have to do is figure out whether that’s bad for us, or bad for them. He grew up on an automatic farm, so he’s only not quite a pampered city kid. He played college football, but gave it up after one bad accident. He was an English major, not a proper subject. He’s served his two years in the army, but no one ever shot at him. He got through the FBI selection in the middle of his class. He’s been a special agent for two and a half years, yet he’s never made an actual arrest. He seems to be a perfectly blank slate. If he has any identifiable skills, I’ve yet to see them: if he holds any opinions, apart from on my vocabulary, I’ve yet to hear them.”

Marcus stared at his shoes. “He is a Reconstructionist, though. To the core.”

“Yeah. That’s why I’m holding out some hope. If they’re passing over the candidates who’re actually qualified for this job in order to give it to party apparatchiks, the whole Bureau – hell, the whole system – might be staffed by incompetent ideologues we can have fun running rings around.” Petrovitch snorted. “How very Soviet of them.”

The capacitors were full. The energy they stored was dumped into a series of coils made of wire fat enough not to melt, and a high-intensity magnetic field briefly enveloped Newcomen.

Even outside the shielded box, Petrovitch felt the surge.

“If that wasn’t enough, they’ve been hardening their spyware.” He walked over and hauled on the door. “Okay. Out. Assume the position.”

Petrovitch produced a wand, which he ran slowly and care-fully over Newcomen, who stood, spreadeagled, with his palms on the now-warm cabinet.

“Clear,” he said eventually. “Marcus’ll dump your luggage in too, but right now? A decent cup of coffee, and I can show you why I think Lucy’s still alive.”

9

Inside the main reading room, it was warm and bright. Little light penetrated through the stained-glass windows except at midday, so most of the illumination came from elaborate chandeliers decorated with thousands of crystal prisms. Electroluminescent wall hangings supplemented the downward light with their blue-white glow.

The space was high, and a circular balcony had been built to take advantage of it, self-supporting so as not to damage the stonework.

People were working up there, if lying on couches with infoshades on counted as working.

“What are they doing?” asked Newcomen. He spoke in a whisper. Perhaps he thought they were sleeping.

“Data mining. Digging into raw statistics and turning them into something people can use. It’s our biggest export. Coffee?”

Petrovitch stopped by a wooden table and touched the back of his hand to a jug on a warming plate. He nodded with satisfaction and took two mugs from the tray, filling them with a thick oil-black brew.

While Newcomen stirred and added milk, Petrovitch took his mug down to the centre of the reading room, where there was a round table surrounded by chairs. Marcus was already there, dark glasses lying on the polished wood in front of him.

When the city authorities had sold them the building, they’d left all the books inside. Maybe they thought they’d all be thrown out: not so. The Freezone had kept them exactly where they’d been shelved. The bookcases were arranged around them, the spines of the books facing outwards. Those and the coffee: it smelled right.

When Newcomen joined them, Marcus slid the infoshades across to him.

“Where do I sit?”

“Wherever you want, son,” said Marcus.

He dithered, and chose a seat two away from Petrovitch. He seemed thrown by the fact there was no subordinate position to take on a circular table.

“Put them on,” said Petrovitch. “I’ll try and explain as I go. So that you understand, I’ll do my best to make it simple enough, even for you.”

“Should I be grateful?” Newcomen unfolded the arms on the shades and slipped them over his ears.

“I’d prefer to get technical. If you’d had any science in your background, I might have been able to spare you the baby version.” Petrovitch picked up his mug and blew steam off the top of it. “As it is, you’re going to have to rely on my ability to explain complex concepts to complete ignoramuses.”

“I have a bachelor’s degree.”

“In American literature. You may as well have done media studies for all the use it is. Now past’ zebej and concentrate. I’m not going to do this twice.”

Petrovitch ran a solar system simulator and patched Newcomen into it.

“Tell me you recognise this. Please.”

“Uh, it’s the Sun.” Newcomen paused. “Isn’t it?”

“Yeah, it is. Gold star for you.”

The Sun burned bright and steady, but around its edges, the light flickered as if it were dancing to silent music. Petrovitch zoomed in on it until they could only see the corona.