“What?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Okay then.” Petrovitch spun his fork between his fingers. “Get shovelling. Fuel, remember?”

He started to eat in his usual cram-it-in style. Reception Guy came back out of the kitchen to watch, until Petrovitch reached across his plate for his gun and without looking up, aimed it unerringly at the bridge of the man’s nose.

He held it steady until he and Newcomen were again the only people in the dining room.

“I hate that,” he mumbled between mouthfuls. “I’m not a freak show.”

“They’re still watching you. Us.” Newcomen threw his cutlery down. “You. How come it’s all about you?”

“Because I’m the one that’s going to lead them to my daughter.” Petrovitch slurped coffee. “Maybe they figure you’ll have nothing to do with that.”

Newcomen looked around again. “I can be useful,” he said. “I was yesterday.”

“We’ll see,” said Petrovitch.

His plate was empty, and he let out a mighty belch of appreciation. Newcomen started to recoil, then just shook his head.

“You’ve got the manners of a pig.”

“Yeah. Some find it endearing.” He threw his serviette into the centre of his plate and pushed his chair back. “Or at least, they’ve learned to live with it. Anything in your room you need?”

“My outdoor things.” Newcomen looked at the bundle on the floor next to Petrovitch. “I left them there.”

“Okay. I’ll fire up the jet. Don’t be long.”

Petrovitch dressed there in the dining room, quickly and efficiently, his hand never far from the butt of his gun. He put his boots in turn on the chair, tied them tight, then made his way through reception. The man was at his desk.

“You done?”

Petrovitch stopped. “If I was done, I’d have my daughter back.”

“We’re all just doing our jobs, Dr Petrovitch.” The man leaned back and folded his arms.

“Yeah. But at least my job doesn’t suck sweaty donkey balls.” He thought about leaving his axe buried in the man’s sternum, but on reflection, it wouldn’t actually help. He shrugged and kicked the main doors open.

Cold. White ground. Dark sky.

“Yobany stos, you’d think I’d be used to this.”

[The Moon is a significant area to search, and we have limited access to hi-res dark-side images. Where should we concentrate our efforts?]

“Putting two and two together to make several billion, I’d go for frosty craters around the poles. Somewhere where helium-three is known to be rich. And water. Remember they may have buried any permanent structures under the regolith.”

[It is unlikely that we would be able to spot anything even at half-metre resolution.]

“But we have to try. I’m going to try something equally unlikely.” He puffed out a snowstorm of air. “I’m looking for debris.”

[Sasha, anything that was not consumed in the fireball will have been collected already. We have ascertained the Americans are not stupid. Nor blind.]

“And yet, if I don’t look, I might not find what they missed.” He tripped down the stairs, and nearly slid on the small padded envelope lying on the ground.

There had been snowfall while he’d been inside. There was more forecast for later. He put his bag on the ground so that it covered the white paper, and knelt down to adjust his boots. All perfectly natural.

Two options: either it was insignificant, and there was nothing of importance inside – just discarded rubbish, blowing on the Arctic wind – or it had been deliberately dropped, right outside the hotel where he and Newcomen were the only guests.

The envelope was small enough to tuck in the top of one of his mukluks. He swapped the foot he was supposedly checking and knocked the axe off his bag, so that it fell in the snow. When he picked it up, he had both envelope and haft in his hand.

The axe went back on the bag, and the envelope was in his boot.

He stood up and straightened his clothing, then stooped again to pick up his bag.

There was a man a couple of hundred metres distant, by the corner of a building. He appeared not to be doing anything in particular, just dawdling on his way somewhere else. He was muffled up, and Petrovitch couldn’t tell who it was. The man was short enough not to be genengineered, but he was wearing ARCO gear all the same.

Petrovitch gave him no more than a glance, but on his way to the airfield, he replayed that glance over and over again. The sharp corner of the envelope dug into his ankle with every step.

32

Obviously, he was being watched. That was a given. But he knew he’d been spotted picking up the package as he approached the hangar: maybe it had taken them that long to review the images from outside the hotel, compile a sequence of events from multiple angles, and come to the conclusion that there’d been a drop.

They’d missed it as it happened, but they weren’t going to compound their error. Over at Ben and Jerry’s not-so-secret base of operations, the whole anthill of operatives spilled out and into their vehicles.

Petrovitch had no wish to be tasered again. He had his gun and his axe: he’d make a fight of it this time, but depending on what was in the envelope, they might actually not need him any more. They could just shoot him and take what they wanted without having to go through the rigmarole of asking.

“Newcomen?”

“I’m coming, okay? Just the other side of the runway to you.”

“Yeah. There’ve been some developments, not necessarily for the better.” He opened the hangar door and slipped inside. He had a minute. If that. “Even if you run, you’re not going to make it in time. Turn around, go back towards the hotel. Walk quickly.”

“I’m coming anyway. You need me with you.”

“No. Not now I don’t.”

Petrovitch looked around and assessed his assets. Even as his heart spun faster, he realised that he didn’t just have one plane. He might have an airforce.

“Yobany stos. Michael?”

[Sasha.]

“We need to get as many of these up in the air as possible.”

[The ARCO planes do not respond to my initial commands. They are not in a standby mode. They are completely shut down and require manual activation.]

“Chyort. Plan B.”

[Is it a good plan, Sasha?]

“No. No, it’s not,” he said, even as he fired up his own plane and ran towards it. “But frankly, it’s all I’ve got. Permission to go off the reservation?”

The plane’s door opened and the ladder extended, but he ignored them for the moment. There was the fuel bowser he’d left parked the night before. He opened his bag, and started to rummage.

[I have an ad-hoc on standby. You have thirty seconds until contact.]

“Enough of the stopwatch already.” His hand came up, clutching the appropriate munitions and a roll of tape.

Mittens, in bag. Bomb, on the tank. Tape, ripped between his clenched teeth. One piece and stick. Two pieces, because it absolutely mustn’t come off. A third piece of tape nipped off. He thumbed the cold, cold switch and pulled the handle to start the bowser moving, then quickly wrapped the tape around the handle so that it stayed on.

It lurched out into the hangar, and Petrovitch pointed it roughly in the direction of the doors.

[You have no guarantee that it will steer straight.]

“No shit, Sherlock. In the absence of a low-orbit ion cannon I can use, it’s what I’m left with.”

[No one has a low-orbit ion cannon.]

“Only because I don’t have time to do everything.” Even with the bowser rumbling towards the far end of the hangar, he made no attempt to board the plane. “How’s the ad-hoc doing?”

[It would help them if they knew what you were up to. Sasha? The plan?]

His beautiful executive jet rose into the air, and the turbines started to turn.