The Curve of The Earth by Simon Morden

and sorted through them until he found one in the right currency. “Unless you want paying in yuan.”
    He grabbed the reader and peered at it for a moment, deciphering its idiosyncrasies, then slotted in the card and debited the amount on the glowing fare meter, adding a tip large enough that at least one of Artak’s kids could make it through college unburdened by debt.
    The driver would find out later. Petrovitch felt no need to make a song and dance about it.
    “
Merci
,” he said, springing the door. “
Shat hatcheli e’
.”
    Newcomen scrambled out, and Artak dumped his case on the kerb.
    “Thank you,” the agent remembered to say. Petrovitch was already diving through the flood of pedestrians on his way to the seven stone steps leading to the consulate’s wooden doors.
    A little brass plate on the stonework stated the building’s purpose. Petrovitch looked up and down the street and at the blank-faced building opposite. The library was an island from the nineteenth century stranded in the twenty-first.
    “You know how many cameras are trained on us at the moment?” he said to Newcomen. “The NSA, the FBI, INS, CIA, ATF, Homeland Security, Treasury. Pretty much every single one. It’s not like we don’t tell them what we’re up to.”
    “You do?”
    “Most of the time.” He smiled slyly.
    The door opened, despite Petrovitch not having even knocked.
    “Hey, Sam.”
    “Hey, Marcus. Don’t touch the hired muscle: he’s broadcasting.”
    A thin black man with puffball grey hair stood to one side and waited for Petrovitch and Newcomen, followed by his case, to come inside. He pushed the door shut behind them, and paused while some definitely un-Victorian-era locks whirred into place.
    “So,” said Marcus, “you made it this far.”
    “Relatively unscathed. If they left us alone, we’d get this done so much quicker.” Petrovitch held open the door to a metal cabinet in the corner of the foyer, revealing a space just large enough for a man to stand. “Get in. Stand perfectly still.”
    “Uh, what is this?” Newcomen asked, even as he was drawn irresistibly towards it.
    “It’s a bigger version of what Tabletop used at the airport. Rather than spend an hour picking each individual bug off you, we’ll just nuke the lot of them.” He jerked his head at the container. “You might see some bright flashes, smell something funny or convince yourself you’ve seen God. Just side effects – they don’t last.”
    Newcomen squeezed in, still uncertain. There were no windows, or even a light. He hesitated, causing Petrovitch to sigh. “What now?”
    “I might be claustrophobic.”
    “Well, perhaps you should have worn your big girl pants when you got up this morning.” He slammed the door and pressed the button. As the capacitors charged up, he retreated across the foyer to stand with Marcus.
    “How’s he shaping up?”
    “I don’t think they could have sent anyone worse.” Petrovitch pursed his lips. “All I have to do is figure out whether that’s bad for us, or bad for them. He grew up on an automatic farm, so he’s only not quite a pampered city kid. He played collegefootball, but gave it up after one bad accident. He was an English major, not a proper subject. He’s served his two years in the army, but no one ever shot at him. He got through the FBI selection in the middle of his class. He’s been a special agent for two and a half years, yet he’s never made an actual arrest. He seems to be a perfectly blank slate. If he has any identifiable skills, I’ve yet to see them: if he holds any opinions, apart from on my vocabulary, I’ve yet to hear them.”
    Marcus stared at his shoes. “He is a Reconstructionist, though. To the core.”
    “Yeah. That’s why I’m holding out some hope. If they’re passing over the candidates who’re actually qualified for this job in order to give it to party apparatchiks, the whole Bureau – hell, the whole system – might be staffed by