Fall Revolution 4: The Sky Road

chauffeur, who had the door slammed before anyone could so much
as gawk.
    The long car nosed arrogantly into the traffic flow. The
driver, a stockily built Kazakh who lookedas 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
thecrumbling 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