Buchannan looked around him before continuing. “I have been asked to obstruct a federal investigation for the good of national security. A foreigner called Lucy Petrovitch is missing in northern Alaska. For reasons that are on a need-to-know basis – and I’m told I don’t need to know – Miss Petrovitch must not be found, and no search for her should be made. I have to keep up the appearance of looking for her without actually doing so.

“To this end, I have been told to assign an agent to the case who is totally unsuited for the task. Agent Joseph Newcomen will escort the girl’s father wherever he goes, but since this is not his area of expertise, any help he might render will be incidental rather than directed. I am also to withdraw any other agents from the investigation.

“I am very angry about the position I have been put in, and angrier about placing Agent Newcomen at risk from Samuil Petrovitch, who is known to display psychopathic tendencies and is a violent American-hating recidivist. However, my hands appear to be tied, and my orders come with the very highest clearance.

“This is the most distasteful episode in my professional life to date. I am making this recording and keeping it with my personal papers in case of internal investigation or audit.”

The media stream finished.

Petrovitch cleared his vision. Newcomen seemed to have forgotten how to breathe.

“Why don’t we go back to the plane,” he said, “and see if it comes with a drinks cabinet?”

18

It did.

There were full bottles of bourbon and vodka and rum, with mixers, all crammed into a little cupboard in the bulkhead. Petrovitch unwound the cap on the vodka, grabbed two glasses and splashed generous portions in each.

He banged the bottle down on the table between the seats and gripped his glass.

“Na pobedy!”

“Uh, that.” They both drank deep, but only Newcomen tried to spit his out again. Most of it had evaporated before it left his mouth. He tried to speak, but his vocal cords refused to work.

Petrovitch eyed the bottle and considered another finger or two. Or three.

“Maybe not.” He resisted the urge to hurl the glass, and tossed it into the seat next to him. “No one likes to hear themselves called useless. Least of all by their boss. But do you get it now? Me sticking my fingers in your chest isn’t what sealed your fate. You were shafted before you were even offered the job.”

“What do I do now?” croaked Newcomen.

“Nothing’s changed. Lucy’s still missing, and we’re going to find her.”

“You heard what Buchannan said. They think she’s dead.”

“He didn’t say that. He said that she mustn’t be found.”

“But…”

“I remember a time not so long ago when I told you that if you said that again, I’d kill you.” Petrovitch bared his teeth. “She is alive. Do you understand? You’ve been pretty much wrong about everything so far, so I’m not going to listen to you. You don’t know. You can’t know.”

“These Ben and Jerry characters: they told Buchannan he had to stop looking for her.”

“Yeah. What’s a better way of doing that than leaning on the head of the Seattle field office? Let me think.” Petrovitch pondered for a moment, then delivered his verdict. “How about by turning up with the body? That they haven’t is how I know she’s still alive, and she’s waiting for me to come and get her.”

“What if there’s no body left? What if they’ve disintegrated her or irradiated her or burnt her to a crisp?” Newcomen gagged. Petrovitch had him by the throat again. “Someone has to tell you these things.”

“Just one more word.”

“I’ve nothing left to lose, Petrovitch. You’re absolutely right on that. They’ve taken my career, my girl, my country, and they’ve left me with nothing. Those were my life, everything I lived for. The reason for getting up in the morning. All that was important to me has gone. This is it now. Just me. Do whatever the hell you want.”

Petrovitch let go, and forced himself back. They stared at each other.

“I just want Lucy to come home.”

“I know you do. I know you want it more than anything else in the world, and that if I was a father, I’d feel the exact same way. And,” Newcomen paused to scrub at his chin and look out of the cabin window at the freezing cold forest, “I’m sorry that my government has decided that it’s okay to bury a twentyfour-year-old woman without a trace. I think I need to make that up to you.”

“You’ll come north with me?”

“I’ll come north. I need to know what happened to her almost as much as you do.”

“Okay.” Petrovitch smiled ruefully. “I was going to offer you the option to bail. I could take you to Vancouver. You could claim asylum there – you wouldn’t be the first American to make that journey by a long stretch. We have an understanding with the Canadians, so I’m pretty certain it would be fine.”

“That’s not going to be necessary.” Newcomen pulled a face. “If there’s a later? Perhaps.”

“I thought, when we started all this, that it wouldn’t be this bad. That they were just being obstructive because of her surname. Seriously, what the huy is going on? What have they done that requires all this sneaking around?” He gave in, and snagged the vodka bottle once more. He poured himself a small measure and, after offering it to Newcomen, screwed the lid back on and put it away. “It’s like they’ve put a massive neon sign over the North Slope and told us, ‘Look away. Nothing to see here.’ It doesn’t make any sense.”

Petrovitch tilted his wrist and drank.

“That doesn’t sound like a stupid idea,” said Newcomen. “Not any more.”

“No. No, it doesn’t. Which theory of history do you subscribe to?”

“Sorry?”

“Cock-up or conspiracy?”

“Most events aren’t planned.” Newcomen laced his fingers together and leaned forward on to his knees. “Some junior guy at the front, no specific orders to do one thing or another, uses his initiative. War breaks out and people write books about all the careful preparation that went on months, years beforehand. It’s rarely as neat as that.”

“So. If all they’re doing is reacting to events as fast as they can, we need to work out the order in which they happened. For that, we need evidence.”

“We can get evidence. I’m still an FBI agent.” He looked up at Petrovitch. “For the moment.”

“You’re still listed as active. Buchannan might suspect you’ve gone feral, but I don’t think, given his confession, he’s going to be telling anyone soon. And what they’ll be counting on is your loyalty: in a crunch, they know which way you’ll turn.”

“Do they?”

“They think they do. I wouldn’t count on them being wrong, either.”

“What do you mean?”

“That your sudden change of heart is conditional, depending on the stakes. If it’s just a few security officers going off the reservation, you’ll stick with it. If it means destroying everything you’ve ever known? No way. Somewhere in the middle is where you draw the line, but you have no idea where that line is. What’s more, it’ll keep shifting.” Petrovitch shrugged. “I can live with the uncertainty, not because I have insurance that if you turn against me, it’ll be the last thing you ever do, but because I’m more comfortable with moral ambiguity than I am with laser-like certainty.”

He stood up and stretched, pressing his hands against the low roof of the cabin.

“It’s a long way, and it’s not getting any shorter by us waiting,” he announced, and shuffled back to the cockpit.

Newcomen followed, and slumped into the co-pilot’s seat. The display lit up, and lights started winking into life. The engines started to turn, breaking the naturalistic calm with their crude modernity.

“Last chance to get off the Futility Express,” said Petrovitch.