With a sound like a sigh, the man raised the butt of his shotgun to his shoulder.

“I can keep this up all night if I have to.”

Petrovitch gripped the axe, tore it free. “It’s the only thing you can keep up all night, dickless.”

This time, the taser hit his side. He was just too slow, too disorientated, too full of interference and conflicting signals to parry it. The electrodes had to punch their way through his dense jacket, though, and only just grazed his skin. He was thrown to the floor again, but as he fell, the device shifted and lost contact.

It gave him a moment to recover. The man, with a hiss of annoyance, worked the pump for another shell.

“That’s enough.”

Petrovitch thought at first it might be his own voice. He blinked away the stars to see Newcomen, armed with his own FBI-issue pistol, aiming at his tormentor’s back.

“Agent Newcomen,” said the man. “What in God’s merciful name are you doing?”

“I’m stopping you. This, this isn’t right.” Newcomen’s voice was wavering, but his gun was steady.

“I think you’re forgetting which side you’re on.”

“No,” said Newcomen. “I know which side I’m on. I’m on the side of the law.”

“Sometimes, Agent—” said the man, but Newcomen interrupted, his voice a roar.

“No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. That’s the fourteenth amendment to the constitution of the United States of America, you bastard, and you will obey it.” He was gasping for breath by the time he’d finished. He also looked ready to pull the trigger.

Petrovitch hauled himself up again. He was sore, deep inside. He used the axe as a crutch and walked forward until the barrel of the shotgun taser was against his chest. “If it was me, I’d have killed you by now. I’d have put a bullet in your head, because, hey, it’s what I do. And you’d deserve it. Newcomen here? You should be on your knees thanking him that he still plays by the rules. He’s an idiot, because he thinks the rules haven’t changed, but I’ll take an honest idiot any day over a niegadzai sooksin like you.”

Beneath the mask, muscles twitched and a decision was made. “Okay. Let’s move out.”

The soldiers snapped their guns upright and jogged to the door. The man in charge was in their midst, surrounded, safe. Then they were gone. Engine sounds faded away, and they were left with the creak of the hangar and the sympathetic swing of the lights.

Newcomen was locked rigid in his shooter’s stance. Petrovitch hobbled over and rested a hand on the agent’s wrist.

“We’re done here.”

Newcomen’s expression turned from concentrated determination to startled bewilderment. “What just happened?”

“You rediscovered your spine.” Petrovitch pushed the gun down until it was pointing at the floor. “And I’m grateful.”

30

Dinner had been unsatisfying. Not because the food hadn’t been good, or plentiful, but it had been like eating in an experiment, closely observed by the researchers. Newcomen had been in turn sullen and nervy, and Petrovitch’s own emotional state had even now barely dropped below incandescent.

That they’d been served by Reception Guy, a known secret service plant, just added insult to injury. Petrovitch had gone to sleep with his gun in his hand.

[Do not move, Sasha, or show any sign you are awake.]

He lay perfectly still. Even the finger curled around the trigger guard didn’t twitch.

“Problem?”

[Several men have entered Joseph Newcomen’s room.]

“Are they going to kill him? I sort of promised him I’d try and stop them from doing that.”

[If they were intent on an extra-judicial assassination, they would have done so already. His door was opened with a master key card: Newcomen had placed a chair against the door jamb, as per your instructions.]

“So he’s awake. What’s he doing?”

[I have built up a soundscape of his movements. Without visual confirmation, I am only ninety-eight per cent certain he is pointing a gun at the intruders.]

“Tell me he’s wearing pyjamas this time.”

[I am eighty-five per cent certain of that.]

Acutely aware that he should be hearing raised voices, and possibly a bit of gunplay, from the next room, Petrovitch flexed his ear.

“So. Spooks in Newcomen’s room. What do they want?”

[There have been no spoken words as yet. It could be that they wish to take revenge for his act of defiance this evening.]

“Or?”

[They want to parley.]

“Maybe I should intervene.”

[Perhaps I should make him aware that we know of his situation. If he was a member of the Freezone collective, it would be my duty to ask whether he needed assistance.]

But Petrovitch didn’t stir, and Michael didn’t speak.

“What’s he doing now?”

[There is no change in the situation. His breathing and heart rate, initially elevated, are now slowing again. His arm will begin to tremble in another minute or so, and eventually he will lower his weapon. The men facing him are most likely unarmed.]

“He won’t shoot.”

[No. Despite all you have told him. Perhaps even because of it. He still possesses huge psychological barriers to killing.]

“Unlike me.”

[Now is not the time to discuss this.]

“I want to get up and find out what’s happening.”

[We have a better chance of finding out if you do not.]

“They wouldn’t be so stupid to try and cut Newcomen a deal while we’re listening. They do know we’re listening, right?]

[It seems likely that they do, since they have not uttered a word. The link earpiece is still visible when inserted, and there would have been ample opportunity to discover that Newcomen was linked while he was being observed in the restaurant.

“You want to find out whether Newcomen is going to betray me or not.”

[We have told him we can punch a hole in his heart at a moment’s notice. You held a gun to his head this morning. You nearly flew him into a mountain range earlier. He owes us no loyalty.]

“And yet he pulled his gun on the spooks in the teletrooper hangar.”

[A perfectly sound psychological response to seeing a vulnerable person repeatedly hurt by larger, more aggressive people. Even you have that reaction, Sasha. When you are caught off guard.]

The shade of Sonja Oshicora drifted through the hotel room. It felt colder, and Petrovitch risked turning over and wrapping himself more tightly in the duvet.

“Yeah, okay. He doesn’t owe them any loyalty either, though. They’ve pretty much taken everything he thought important away from him.”

[And still he persists in entertaining the fantasy that there might be a way back.]

“It is just that, though. A fantasy. They’re not interested in him at all.”

[Yet it is his room they have entered. We must assume therefore that your analysis is flawed in some way.]

Petrovitch, face down in his pillow, worried at his lip. There was no sound at all.

“Give me the live feed.”

He could hear Newcomen, his laboured breathing, the faint rustle of his clothes, the odd pop as he swallowed and forced air up his Eustachian tubes. Behind that, the hum of the hot-air ventilation system, and after a quick analysis of the waveforms, three other people.

There was a rustle and a sigh. Newcomen lowered his arm. The light switch clicked on, then came another noise that Petrovitch couldn’t quite make out.

[Notebook.]

A pen rasped across the rough cellulose surface of a fresh white sheet of paper.

“I don’t suppose you can…”