Cries of the Lost (10 page)

She included the address and her phone number.

After setting up the appointment, I started browsing sites in the UK where I could source gear. An easy enough task—in less than an hour, I’d located a dozen distributors within Greater London that could provide what I needed.

I went over it with Natsumi.

“I’ve identified the cameras here in the mews. Not very well hidden. All we need to do is find where they converge and tap the feed. There should be a switch box, and with luck, a router that sends the images to home base via the Internet.”

“Okay. And what do I do?”

“Meet the neighbors.”

After a relatively brief cab ride, I had enough supplies to cover initial operations.

Later that day, I visited the offices of the building that sat between the mews and the street and asked if I could take a few snapshots of our new dwelling from above. The request was bizarre and homely enough that they readily agreed. I’d lived among Londoners. I knew their weakness for eccentricity.

“Hoping to inspire jealousy on the home front?” said the fellow who led me to the perfect window above the mews.

“Exactly,” I said. “Especially my brother-in-law, who told my wife’s parents I was an intellectual weenie who’d never amount to anything.”

“Good for you, then.”

I brought a telescoping pole to keep the camera still, and shot at the highest resolution the professional Canon could achieve. It was all done in a few minutes, which left ample time for shaking hands and trading quips with the cubicle denizens clearly in need of diversion from their official duties.

Back at the computer, I downloaded the images, and after some enlargement, identified the coaxial cables from each camera, tracking where they joined together and dove down a conduit behind the southeast corner of the mews.

Getting there involved several sorties down alleys and behind commercial buildings, and one risky clamber over a chain-link fence, but I eventually reached the spot. The conduit, strapped to the wall, ran into a grey metal box bolted to the side of the building. The box was secured by a type of simple keyed latch a child could pick. Pleased as I was by this, I felt a bit of resentment that the security company guarding my newly established home would be this sloppy.

“Wankers,” I said under my breath, as I fiddled open the lock.

Inside I found the switch box, and to my delight, a wireless router. In a few minutes, using the gear brought along in a light backpack, I’d hooked into the feed, sending the signal through the secondary router I’d brought along, which beamed it via the Internet directly to my computer.

Back at my desk, I tested the connections and saw the five security cameras pop up on my screen. Using a network video recorder and surveillance software that allowed you to skip over long periods of inaction, I could efficiently track the comings and goings of the neighborhood.

“O
UR NEXT
door neighbors are George and Mirabella McPherson,” said Natsumi. “He’s a financial guy and she’s an astronomer. How cool is that?”

“How did you meet them?”

“I knocked on the door and introduced myself. I didn’t actually meet George, but Mirabella was very friendly and welcoming, and we ended up chatting for quite some time. She’s French. I think I used up every bit of our backstory. You better study it again. How was your day?”

“We’re now monitoring the complex. We’ll give it a few days and see what the software can tell us.”

“We don’t have to wait that long for the McPhersons. They’ll be here in about an hour for tea. They’ve never been inside this house. Said the couple who owns it kept to themselves. Mirabella is beside herself with curiosity.”

“Just don’t let them in the spare bedroom.”

“Right. The surveillance array might take some explaining.”

G
EORGE MCPHERSON
, about sixty-five, was much older than his wife. He had a large head lightly covered in very thin, white hair, and a thick neck—so at first he seemed overweight, but on closer inspection was reasonably trim. Mirabella was at the age, mid to late thirties, when the bloom of youth is still confidently in place. With high cheekbones, thick black hair contained by a headband and a flimsy knit dress over minimum underwear, sexual sparks flowed in with her and filled up the dowdy sitting room like a scattered handful of scintillations.

“At last, we are here,” she proclaimed, with a big smile, as they entered the sitting room. “Ten years, but we finally made it.”

George was less celebratory. “About what you’d expect, right?” he said, looking around. “Nothing all that amazing.”

“Phooey to you,” she said.

She began telling him about our situation, for which I was grateful, since—to support Natsumi’s point—manufactured memories are a lot harder to keep track of than genuine. The gist of the story had me writing a book on cyber security and Natsumi taking a year off from her psychotherapy practice. Fortunately, the McPhersons were polite enough not to press us for too much detail, being satisfied to dominate the conversation talking about themselves.

“The chap who owns this place also works in the city,” said George. “I’d see him on the tube. Never said hello.”

“What about the other neighbors,” said Natsumi. “Surely some are friendly?”

They competed with each other to assure us many were, and not to believe that all Brits were a stuffy, dismissive lot.

“We even have an Indian family,” said George.

“The Malhotras,” said Mirabella. “Very sweet people.”

“Don’t fancy the food. Smell it halfway down the block.”

“But you never let it show,” she said, part compliment, part entreaty.

We shared what the estate agent Hunley had to say about the mews, stretching his views a bit.

“He said it was fully occupied,” said Natsumi.

George turned in his chair and pointed toward the courtyard.

“Number eight, on the corner across the way,” he said. “Haven’t seen a soul in five years.”

Tea time flowed into dinner, for which Natsumi was prepared, and the desultory conversation made its way skyward, with Mirabella as our eager guide. Though my knowledge was very limited, I always enjoyed hearing about the cosmos; and with Mirabella’s French accent and extravagant use of superlatives and metaphors, we were thoroughly spellbound. I noticed she’d put away a full bottle of red wine, which likely added something to the presentation.

I kept to tonic and lime, since my tolerance of alcohol rarely extended beyond a couple of beers. So when Natsumi rose to clear the table, with George’s help, I was able to provide Mirabella with a sturdy arm when she insisted I escort her to the courtyard for a quick look at the stars.

“Of course, there is so much light pollution from London, but even so, the brighter stars and planets you can see.”

She pointed out at least two little pinpricks that had played a role in her previous narrative, and emphasized how stars in a constellation had actually nothing in common.

“They are so far away from one another, am I right?” she said.

“I guess you are.”

“So, quickly, I just want to tell you something,” she said, squeezing my arm. “You ask about friendly neighbors. George and I can be more than friendly with the right people. Never here in Spottsworthy, but you can be the first. It will be fun.”

To say I lacked sophistication in these matters was a gross understatement. A full-out geek from birth, my friends were all geeks, with social skills at best non-irritating. Until Florencia, I’d hardly had a date and knew nothing about women, much less the type of libertinism suggested here. So it took nearly a minute for what she was getting at to sink in. Then I started to babble something, but she saved me by giving my arm another squeeze.

“Don’t say anything now. Just think about it.”

“Okay. Hey, let’s see how they’re doing with the cleanup.”

It was another hour before the McPhersons journeyed back to their house next door, awash in wine, beer and cognac, though hardly showing it.

“Well, that was a lot more than I expected, but pleasant,” said Natsumi. “He’s a nice enough guy, but she couldn’t be more interesting.”

“Oh yes, she could,” I said.

“I mean all that wonderful astronomy.”

“They’re swingers.”

“Of course, they are. This is swinging London after all.”

“No, I mean they’re actually swingers, you know, like, in the somewhat indiscriminate carnal sense.”

She stared at me. I quickly described my conversation with Mirabella out in the courtyard under the stars. When I explained how long it took me to catch on, mirth lit up her face.

“And you were worried about Edwina Firth, the cryptanalyst,” I said, squeezing a laugh out of her.

“You know I’m willing to do anything for the cause, but honestly, George McPherson?” said Natsumi.

The comparison with beautiful Mirabella being immediately obvious, I launched a string of reassurances, which she made me stop.

“I don’t doubt you at all, Arthur, not one tiny little bit, about anything. I never have, and never will, and I’m sorry I teased you about Edwina Firth. It was unbecoming.”

I was the last person to attribute the sort of good fortune that tossed Natsumi into my life—literally at a moment of life or death, in the middle of the night—to anything more than the mindless confluence of haphazard circumstances; but at moments like that, I wondered.

W
E RODE
the tube to Tottenham Court Road station and walked from there to Edwina’s office on the campus of the University of London. It was in one of the mid-twentieth-century buildings the school surely regretted for their blocky, Soviet motif blandness, now made worse by an unflattering aging process. When I lived in London, I spent a lot of time hanging around the university, its libraries, little study cubbies and giant bookstore. It felt a bit like a homecoming.

“I used to sit on that bench and eat peanuts and Cadbury Bournville Dark for lunch. I walked down here every day from Camden Town, which used to be a dump, but all I could afford. I was the thinnest I’d ever been. Until now,” I remarked to Natsumi as we neared the cryptanalyst’s office.

Edwina was also on the thin side. Her very thick, dirty blond hair was pulled up away from her face and her eyes were round and bird-like, as if in a constant state of surprise. She was cordial, but wasted little time getting down to business.

“Let’s see what you have,” she said, in her nasally Kiwi accent.

I gave her the string of numbers absent the navigational bearings. And the letters I’d already been able to decipher.

“I’m reasonably sure the text is in Spanish,” I said.

She looked up at that and smiled.

“¿Está tratando de hacer esto más difícil?”
she asked.

“Sí, Señora. Me han dicho que usted adora un desafío.
”

Natsumi looked at me inquiringly.

“She thinks the Spanish was an attempt to amp up the challenge,” I said.

Edwina was back studying the numbers, her long fingernails tapping out an arrhythmic beat on her desk.

She drew in a deep breath and brought the paper up closer to her face.