Newcomen fidgeted incessantly, playing with his fingers, pulling faces, scratching. Petrovitch just sat and closed his eyes, feeling for the electronic equipment secreted around the room, for the operator of the drone, who was two floors down in a cupboard marked on the floor plan as janitorial supplies.

The delay meant that when the secretary and her tray arrived, he had a good idea of how to disable them all.

“Do you take milk, Doctor?” asked Buchannan.

Petrovitch shook his head. “Just sugar.”

“How much?”

“About four of those little sachets will be fine. Defenestrating spooks before breakfast always takes it out of me.”

“And Joseph?”

“Milk, please.”

“Can we stop being polite to each other? None of us really mean it.” Petrovitch watched while the Assistant Director ripped open the paper sachets and emptied their contents into a cup of black brew. “We’re all grown-ups.”

“Quite so, Doctor.” Buchannan stirred the coffee with a metal spoon and slid the saucer towards Petrovitch. “Why don’t you start?”

“Yeah, you don’t want me to start. But I’ll ask the first question: why are you going along with this charade? It must offend every instinct you have as a law-enforcement officer.”

“I would deny that there is a charade I’m going along with.”

“Meaning either there isn’t a charade, or you’re not going along with it? You look pretty well neck-deep in things from where I’m sitting.”

“That’s a matter of interpretation. Things look different depending where you stand.” Buchannan slipped on his glasses and blinked in the bright light.

“I was never much one for moral relativism.” Petrovitch got a raised eyebrow from across the desk. “Well, if I’m being a shit, even for a good reason, I’ll always put my hand up to it: I don’t hide behind the national interest or the greater good. Call it what it is.”

“And what do you think it is, Dr Petrovitch?”

“Difficult to tell. Something has happened, but we can’t tell what. Pretty certain that Lucy saw it. Equally certain that she shouldn’t have done. After that? We might have a lead: one I don’t think I’ll share with you.”

“But you’ve already shared it with Joseph.” The Assistant Director steepled his fingers and stared across the desk at Newcomen.

“Yes, sir.”

“Are you going to tell me what this new lead is?”

Newcomen chewed at his lip, and eventually looked down at the floor. “No, sir.”

“Interesting.”

Newcomen’s head came up again. “Why me, sir? You told me that I was the right man for this assignment. In a good way. I… is it true that Edward Logan pushed for me to get it so that he could split me and Christine up?”

“The whole idea is ridiculous, Joseph. Mr Logan is entirely separate from the Bureau, and has no influence over which cases get given to my agents.”

“Except,” said Petrovitch, “he’s very high up in Reconstruction.”

“All the same, Doctor, there is no possible link…”

“That photograph there.” Petrovitch pointed at the bookshelf, then went to retrieve the photo frame. He inspected the buttons, and scrolled through the images until he found the one he was looking for. “Fund-raiser for the Party. Charity dinner, seats going for a thousand dollars a pop. I didn’t realise you could afford that sort of thing, even on an AD’s salary. Unless you’re really enthusiastic about Reconstruction, of course.”

“I was given the tickets, so I could be there in my professional capacity.”

“You and your wife. Remind me who the keynote speaker was?”

Buchannan’s lips went tight, so Petrovitch reminded him.

“Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. That’s a big deal, right? And as honorary treasurer of the Washington State Reconstruction Party, Logan would have been on the top table. But they know each other anyway, don’t they? Same Greek-letter fraternity at Yale? Logan grouses about his beautiful daughter being in danger of losing her virginity to some hick from Iowa. Two weeks later, this lands on his desk, and they need a fall guy in a hurry. Someone expendable.” Petrovitch shrugged. “The dots join up. Can’t prove it, but you were clearly told by someone to make Newcomen the patsy. I mean, why not someone from Anchorage? It’s their patch. Except none of them is going out with the daughter of a mean sooksin like Logan.”

He put the frame back on the shelf, and set it cycling through its stored scenes again.

Newcomen straightened up. “I think I deserve an answer, sir. I think we both do.”

Buchannan touched his teeth with the tip of his tongue. “I have no answer to give you, Joseph.”

“What about Dr Petrovitch?”

“I have no answer for him either. However regrettable that might be.”

Petrovitch narrowed his eyes. Every word had taken on a significance beyond itself: it was all code, all meaningful, if only he could decipher it.

“I think we’re done here,” he said, and grabbed his bag.

The power went off: lights, computers, everything died at once. Then the emergency lighting flickered.

“You have thirty seconds to say whatever it is you have to say to each other without anyone overhearing. I’ll be outside, and at the end of that thirty seconds, you’d better be standing outside too, Newcomen. Got that? Twenty-five seconds left.”

He stepped into the corridor and pulled at the lapels of his jacket, as if adjusting himself for the outside. Heads had appeared from other offices, wondering what was happening, and what the cause was.

If they saw Petrovitch standing alone, it wasn’t for long. Newcomen was there behind him, and then the power came back. The overhead fluorescents clicked and hummed, bathing everything in their cold blue light.

“Okay?” asked Petrovitch.

Newcomen was strapping on his wrist holster, the gun it usually held dangling from its tensioning cable below his arm.

“Yes,” he said, keeping his voice entirely neutral.

“Good,” said Petrovitch. “Why don’t we go somewhere quiet and talk about what we’re going to do next?”

16

Petrovitch leaned over the ferry’s railings while Newcomen huddled down inside his jacket, pitifully thin against the subarctic air.

“I have a thermal jacket at home,” said Newcomen. “It goes down to my ankles and has its own fuel cell.”

“I have the ability to ignore the cold. Though I do have to watch out for frostbite.” Petrovitch inspected his fingers, which were pleasantly pink, then looked out over the sea to the Seattle skyline.

The two men who’d followed them on foot down the quayside were just a fraction of a second too late to board the water taxi. Men like that didn’t carry ID with them, because they never wanted to be identified. But it also meant that Newcomen could flash his badge and jump the turnstile, and leave them behind.

“You realise this trip isn’t going to last very long.”

“Ten minutes across the bay is fine. Even if someone makes a call and gets us turned around, we’ve still got time to play with.”

“Why do we have to sit out on deck anyway? Won’t they be watching us?”

“Of course they will. They may even get some lip-readers in to try and see what we’re saying. All we have to do is turn our back on them. Besides, I’ve been cooped up for too long. Planes, hotels, offices. I spend a lot of my time outside now, just walking and talking, thinking and planning.”

“What do you mean, too long? It’s been, what? Two days?”

“I was never very patient. You should see me play chess.” Petrovitch faced Newcomen, the wind whipping at his spiky hair, Mount Ranier pale and uncertain behind him. “What else did Buchannan give you? Apart from your gun?”

“How did you know?”

“Because I’m a genius. And you’ve been touching your suit just here,” and he tapped where the internal pocket would be, “every couple of minutes since we left the Bureau, just to check you’ve still got it.”