For a moment we locked gazes and the knife in my hand seemed to tremble of its own accord.

Then he reached up and tugged at his beard, and it came away with a short static crackle.

“Of course I’m looking for you, Micky,” said Jadwiga tiredly. “Been chasing you for nearly a month.”

FORTY-ONE

You’re supposed to be dead.”

“Yeah, twice at least.” Jad picked morosely at the beard prosthesis in her hands. We sat together at the cheap plastic table, not looking at each other. “Only reason I’m here, I guess. They weren’t looking for me when they came for the others.”

I saw Drava again as she told it, a mind’s-eye view of swirling snow on night-time black, the frosted constellations of camp lights and infrequent figures moving between buildings, hunched up against the weather.

They’d come the following evening, unannounced. It wasn’t clear if Kurumaya had been bought off, threatened with higher authority or simply murdered. Behind the funnelled force of Anton’s command software on max override, Kovacs and his team located Sylvie’s team by net signature. They kicked in doors, demanded submission.

Apparently didn’t get it.

“I saw Orr take someone down,” Jad went on, talking mechanically as she stared into her own memories. “Just the flash. He was yelling for everyone to get out. I was bringing carry-out back from the bar. I didn’t even …”

She stopped.

“It’s okay,” I told her.

“No, it’s not fucking okay, Micky. I ran away.”

“You’d be dead if you hadn’t. Really dead.”

“I heard Kiyoka screaming.” She swallowed. “I knew it was too late, but I …”

I hurried her past it. “Did anyone see you?”

A jerky nod. “Traded shots with a couple of them on the way across to the vehicle sheds. Fuckers were everywhere, seemed like. But they didn’t come after me. I think they thought I was just a stroppy bystander.” She gestured at the Eishundo sleeve she wore. “No trace on the net search, see. Far as that fucker Anton’s concerned, I was invisible.”

She’d lifted one of the Dracul bugs, powered it up and driven right off the side of the dock.

“Had a squabble with the autosub systems getting up the estuary,” she said, and laughed mirthlessly. “You’re not supposed to do that, put vehicles in the water without authorisation. But the clear tags worked in the end.”

And out onto the Andrassy Sea.

I nodded mechanically, exact inverse of my near disbelief. She’d ridden the bug without resting, nearly a thousand kilometres back to Tekitomura and a quiet night-time landing in a cove out of town to the east.

She shrugged it off.