Free Engineering Infinity by Jonathan Strahan

companion?”
    “You mean that American? No idea.
We shared a hotel room because it was cheaper, but then we parted ways this
morning.”
    Egorov took his hand back, and
pressed his bruised knuckles against his hip. “You’ve no idea where he is?”
    “None.”
    “What’re you doing here?” asked one of the cops.
    “Inspecting SNOPB,” he said.
Gennady didn’t have to fake his confidence here; he felt well armoured by his
affiliation to Frankl’s people. “My credentials are online, if there’s some
sort of issue here?”
    “No issue,” muttered Egorov. He
turned away, and as he did a discrete icon lit up in the corner of Gennady’s
heads-up display. Egorov had sent him a text message.
    He hadn’t been massaging his hand
on his flank; he’d been texting through his pants. Gennady had left the server
in his glasses open, so it would have been easy for Egorov to ping it and find
his address.
    In among all the other odd
occurrences of the past couple of days, this one didn’t stand out. But as
Gennady watched Egorov and his policemen retreat, he realized that his
assumption that Egorov had been in charge might be wrong. Who were those other
two suits?
    He waited for Egorov’s party to
drive away, then got in the Tata and opened the email.
    It said, Mt
tnght Pavin Inn, 7, rstrnt wshrm. Cm aln.
    Gennady puzzled over those last
two words for a while. Then he got it. “Come alone!” Ah. He should have known.
    Shaking his head, he pulled out
of the lot and headed back to the hotel to check out. After loading his bag,
and Ambrose’s, into the Tata, he hit the road back to SNOPB. Nobody followed
him, but that meant nothing since they could track him through the car’s
transponder if they wanted. It hardly mattered; he was supposed to be
inspecting the old anthrax factory, so where else would he be going?
    Ambrose’d had enough time to get
to SNOPB by now, but Gennady kept one eye on the fields next to the road just
in case. He saw nobody, and fully expected to find the American waiting outside
Building 242 as he pulled up.
    As he stepped out of the Tata he
nearly twisted his ankle in a deep rut. There were fresh tire tracks and
shattered bits of old asphalt all over the place. He was sure he hadn’t seen
them this morning.
    “Hello?” He walked down the ramp
into the sudden dark of the bunker. Did he have the right building? It was
completely dark here.
    Wires drooled from overhead
conduits; hydroponic trays lay jumbled in the corner, and strange-smelling
liquids were pooled on the floor. Minus Three had pulled out, and in a hurry.
    He cursed, but suppressed an urge
to run back to the car. He had no idea where they’d gone, and they had a
head-start on him. The main question was, had they left before or after Ambrose
showed up?
    The answer lay in the yellow
grass near where Minus Three’s vehicles had been parked that morning. Gennady
knelt and picked up a familiar pair of augmented reality glasses. Ambrose would
not have left these behind willingly.
    Gennady swore, and now he did run
to the Tata.
     
    The restaurant at the Pavin Inn
was made up to look like the interiors of a row of yurts. This gave diners some
privacy, as most of them had private little chambers under wood-ribbed
ceilings; it also broke up the eye-lines to the place’s front door, making it
easy for Gennady to slip past the two men in suits who’d been with Egorov in
the parking lot. He entered the men’s washroom to find Egorov pacing in front
of the urinal trough.
    “What’s this all about?” demanded
Gennady - but Egorov made a shushing motion and grabbed a trash can. As he
upended it under the bathroom’s narrow window, he said, “First you must get me
out of here.”
    “What? Why?”
    Egorov tried to climb onto the
upended can, but his knees failed him, and finally Gennady relented and went to
help him. As he boosted the old comrade, Egorov said, “I am a prisoner of these
people! They work for the Americans.” He