17
36 Hours
Fifteen minutes later, Helix turned towards the door as Sofi came in. ‘You took your bloody time.’
‘I have eight nano-cams covering the approaches,’ she said. ‘Yours can cover points throughout the village.’
Helix stepped behind her and closed the door. ‘And you can monitor 16 cameras simultaneously, can you?’
‘I have an upper threshold of 1024,’ she replied, dropping her bergen to the ground.
‘Well if you’d thought of using the nano-cams earlier, Einstein, we might have some idea of knowing who nicked my jacket and weapons.’
‘Mine were deployed. Yours weren’t.’ She pulled a Glock 19 from her shoulder holster and handed it to him.
‘So I have to think of—’
‘I hate to interrupt,’ Gabrielle said. ‘Shouldn’t we be watching the broadcast?’
Helix glowered at Sofi as he checked the magazine of the weapon. ‘Well?’ he said, stalking across the room and pulling a chair from under the table.
Sofi turned her palms out and upwards. A blue-edge holographic screen materialised, Anastasia Sachman’s monologue could be heard with the opening credits of the broadcast rolling across the screen.
Silence filled the room as the broadcast ended. Closing his eyes, Helix ran his fingers over his chin, listening to the rasp of stubble beneath the carbon fibre tips. ‘It’s no more than I would have expected,’ he concluded. ‘It’s an opening shot. The Home Secretary taking command or at least trying to look like she is.’
‘I’d forgotten how smug that bloody woman is. “I’m sure Doctor Stepper can explain,”‘ Gabrielle mimicked. She folded her arms. ‘Well, Julia, it’s like this, I did kill Valerian Lytkin. That’s the only explanation. There’s no talking my way out of it,’ she said, sliding from his lap. ‘And a bounty on our heads for anyone providing information?’
Helix pushed a squirrel bone around his empty plate. ‘Nobody outside the cities is going to be interested, even in the unlikely event that they saw that broadcast. And even if they did, what use is a 100 grand in cash to them? Besides, the bounty is on my head, not yours.’ He hefted the antique spirit bottle in his palm. ‘We might get a bit of interest from an ambitious city bounty hunter, but they don’t normally get excited until the figure goes north of 200.’ He scratched his head. Gabrielle was right, there was no explaining the video footage of her exchange with Lytkin in his apartment. He turned to Sofi. ‘I thought Ethan said there was no surveillance in Lytkin’s apartment.’
‘Correct. We found nothing.’
‘Ulyana Lytkin found it. And gave it to Ormandy.’
‘That would seem to be the case.’
Helix scratched the back of his neck. ‘What a fucking shambles.’
‘What are we going to do?’ Gabrielle said, picking up a blanket from the floor and folding it. ‘I can’t see any other option other than to hand myself in. They’re going to come for me anyway.’
Helix sprung from the chair. ‘Whoa, hang on, your ladyship. Aren’t your forgetting something? A, they don’t know where you are and B, the only thing that will achieve is us in the clink and Ethan in pieces or dead if he’s lucky.’
Gabrielle hugged her poncho around herself. ‘Unless Lytkin gets to us before Ormandy.’
‘If there was a way to get them working against each other, it might give us some options. The problem is, Lytkin told me that if I breathe a word about who’s holding Ethan, she’ll…’ He trailed off. ‘I need some air. Maybe not. No jacket.’ He turned back to Sofi. ‘You said there were a couple of villagers wandering around earlier.’
Sofi brought up the holo-monitor and replayed the recordings.
‘That’s Bo taking the kitchen scraps to the pigs,’ Gabrielle said, leaning in.
‘And the other one?’ Helix said, joining her. ‘They all look the bloody same to me.’
Gabrielle laughed. ‘That’s Walt.’
‘Is he usually that clumsy?’
‘He is a little special. I expect he’s going down to his boat.’
‘In the dark? During a blizzard?’
‘He’s out on the river all hours. Quite the fisherman. He might be going to check his nets.’
‘So, Bo returned after feeding the pigs, we can see that, but your man Walt didn’t or hasn’t so far.’
Sofi confirmed with a nod. ‘I’ll go down to the river to see if there’s any sign of him.’
‘His cabin’s down there,’ Gabrielle said. ‘He keeps himself to himself. He has a tendency to rub people up the wrong way. If he’s not on the river, that’ll be where you’ll find him.’
Helix flapped his poncho. ‘These things are bloody roasting.’
‘Take it off if you’re hot,’ Gabrielle said, pulling it over his head.
‘I’ll give you some privacy,’ Sofi said, turning to the door.
‘No. It’s OK. Don’t be embarrassed,’ Gabrielle said, catching her by the wrist. ‘My God, the strength.’
‘I can’t imagine embarrassment was on Ethan’s mind when he…’ Helix said, following Sofi’s eyes below his waist. ‘Tell her how much you weigh.’
She snapped her eyes away. ‘130 kilos.’
‘130? That must be more than Helix,’ Gabrielle laughed.
‘By approximately 20 kilos,’ the AI replied. ‘What is this obsession with my weight?’
‘It’s about the only thing that marks you out as a machine,’ Helix said.
Sofi arched an eyebrow. ‘I’ll take that as a compliment.’
‘Listen, getting to know each other is great and everything, but I need to recover my weapons.’
‘I love your accent,’ Gabrielle said. ‘Spanish, but not European.’ She sauntered behind Sofi and discarded her own poncho.
Helix shot her a puzzled look as it fell to floor. What was she up to? He cleared his throat. ‘Mexican.’
Gabrielle completed her circle around Sofi without a hint of embarrassment, watching the AI’s eyes as they wandered across her own nakedness.
Helix studied her face as she reached up to him and kissed him on the lips. ‘What are you up?’
‘Wondering how realistic she is under all that GI Jane gear.’
‘Knowing Ethan, I would say—’
‘Ethan based my appearance on a Mexican actress.’ She opened a holo-monitor. ‘Carmen Pacheco-Ramirez.’
Helix watched Gabrielle’s eyes as she took in the images of the actress in various states of dress and undress displayed
