The long car nosed arrogantly into the traffic flow. The driver, a stockily built Kazakh who looked as though he moonlighted as a bodyguard, caught her glance in the rear-view.
“The embassy, Citizen Davidova?”
Myra leaned back in the upholstery. Outside, through the armoured one-way glass, she could see people sitting around fires. “No, the UN, thank you.”
“Very well, Citizen.”
The car lurched as its front, then rear, suspension coped with a shallow shell-crater. Or maybe a pothole, NYC’s municipal finance being what it was.
“But I’d appreciate it if you could track my luggage from the ship to the embassy, thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” He began talking rapidly in Russian into a phone.
They pulled in at the UN building about ten minutes later, the heavy gates of the compound rolling back for them, closing quickly behind. Myra checked her make-up in a hand mirror, stepped out of the car and checked her jacket and skirt in the bodywork sheen. Everything looked fine; in fact, she felt rather over-dressed for the grotty old place. Puddles on the plaza, repairs on the windows, rust on the structural steel, and the Two Mile Tower overshadowing the glass-fronted obelisk. On a coppice of flagpoles the two thousand, three hundred and ninety-seven flags of the nations of the Earth and its colonies flapped in the breeze like a flock of birds preparing to migrate from some long winter to come.
She took the driver’s mobile number, and told him he’d have at least a couple of hours before she called him on it. He thanked her, grinned and walked off briskly. Myra walked slowly past the old late-Soviet sculpture—St George slaying the Dragon of War, in ploughshared missile metal—careful in her Prada heels, around the puddles and across the crumbling tarmac, to the doorway. An expert system recognised her; a guard saluted her.
In the foyer she stood lost for a moment until she remembered that the whole place had been gutted and refurbished, probably several times, since she’d last been here. This time around, it had been done out in the modish retro futurist style, rather like her own office. The colour-theme was leaves, from shades of green through brown to copper. Soothing, though the people in this calming environment scurried about looking haggard. A huge UN flag, blue ground with stylised globe and olive wreath, hung above the reception desk. Myra registered a momentary shock; it was like seeing a swastika.
Two men approached, their steps light on the heavy carpet. She recognised them both: Mustafa Khamadi, the Kazakhstan UN ambassador, short and dark; and Ivan Ibrayev, the ISTWR’s representative, tall and cropped-blond, some recessive Volga-German gene manifesting in his bearing and complexion.
Khamadi shook her hand, his smile showing the gold Soviet teeth he’d kept through two rejuvenations; Ibrayev bowed over her hand, almost kissing it.
“Well hi, comrades,” Myra said, eager to break with formality. “Good to see you.”
“Well, likewise,” said Khamadi. “Shall we go to my office?”
Ivan Ibrayev shot her a look.
“Ah, thank you,” Myra said. “But perhaps for, ah, diplomatic reasons, Citizen Ibrayev’s might be…?”
“Very good,” said Khamadi.
As they waited for the lift his tongue flicked his lips. “Ah, Citizen Davidova—”
“Oh, Myra, please—”
“Myra,” he went on in a rush, “please accept my belated condolences on your former husband’s death.”
Thank you,” she said.
“I only knew him slightly, of course, but he was widely respected.”
“Indeed he was.”
The doors opened. The two men made way for her as they all stepped in. The doors closed.
“I still think those spacist bastards killed him,” Ibrayev said abruptly. He glared up at the minicam in the corner. “And I don’t care who knows it!”
The whoosh and the rush, the slight increase, then diminution of the g-force. Myra felt her knees wobble as she stepped out of the lift into a long corridor.
“Investigations are continuing.” She shrugged stiffly. “Personally, I don’t think Reid had a hand in it, that’s all I can say.” She flashed a smile across at Ivan, down at Mustafa. T knew the man… intimately.”
Ivan’s fair face flushed visibly. Mustafa displayed a gold canine.
“It leads to complications, the long life,” he said. “It makes us all close, in the end. What is the theory, the six degrees of separation?” He laughed harshly. “When I was very young, I shook hands with a woman who had been one of Lenin’s secretaries. Think of that!”
Myra thought of that. “Come to think of it,” she chuckled darkly, “so did I.”
But it still hit her, the pang like a blade in the belly: all my ships are gone and all my men are dead.
No, no. Not yet. She still had ships, and she might still have Jason.
Ivan Ibrayev’s office was small. They sat with their knees up against his desk. The trefoil flag hung on one wall, rocketry ads on the others. The window overlooked the East River. The door was open. A flunkie appeared with coffee and cups, then vanished discreetly. Ivan closed the door and turned on the audio countermeasures. Myra swallowed, trying to make the strange pressure in her ear-drums go away. It didn’t.
She swallowed again, sipped her coffee. The two men leaned forward, glanced at each other. Ibrayev gestured to her to go ahead.
“OK.” she said. “You know why I’m here, right?”
“To negotiate US military aid,” said Ibrayev.
“Yeah, well. East American, anyway.” They laughed. “I’ve already been given to understand that not much will be forthcoming. What the person who told me that didn’t know, what you probably don’t know, is what we have to offer them.” She paused. Their faces showed nothing. “The ISTWR still has some functioning nukes.”
“Nuclear weapons?” Khamadi asked. Ibrayev smirked, as though he’d always suspected that the little state he served still sheathed this hidden sting.
“Weapons,” Myra nodded. “City busters, mostly, but a reasonably comprehensive suite—all the way down to battlefield tactical nukes, which—” she shrugged “—aren’t that hard to come by. But still.”
“We knew nothing of this,” said Khamadi. Ibrayev nodded emphatic concurrence.
“Chingiz Suleimanyov didn’t tell you?”
“Nyet.”
“Good,” Myra said briskly. “Well, that’s what I’m here to tell you. Kazakhstan is now a de facto superpower, for what that’s worth.”
Ivan Ibrayev steepled his fingers. “How do we use them, that’s the question. They’re not much direct use against the Sheenisov—no point in nuking steppe, eh?”
Khamadi’s eyes brightened, his mouth shaped a shining snarl. “We could point out that they need not be aimed Eastward…”
“Huh!” Myra snorted. “Citizens, comrades.… I am an American, and I can tell you one thing the Americans—East, West or Middle—won’t stand for is nuclear blackmail. This is a people whose nuclear strategy involved megadeath write-offs on their side. They may have come down in the world a bit, but they’re not too demoralised to take us out before we know what hit us if we even try that. No. What the President wants me to do is almost the opposite: offer them—under our control of course, but a public, unbreakable deal—to the US, or the UN, in exchange for a military alliance that can stop the Sheenisov in their tracks.”
The two men pondered this proposal with poker-faced calm. Ivan opened a pack of Marlboros and offered one to Myra. She lit up gratefully.
“It’s worth trying,” said Khamadi. “I must say, between ourselves, I think we may regret giving up the new power which the nukes would place in our hands.”