Pattern Recognition (28 page)

She has been told to meet Ngemi beneath this clock, but is early, so she buys a tabloid, a bacon sandwich locked in rigid plastic, and a Fanta. Coffee contraindicated now, as she hopes to nap on the train.

Stands chewing her sandwich, beneath the clock, while the Sunday morning station moves around her. Vast incomprehensible voices chant and gargle above the crowd, as if trying to push crucial information through the dusty tin of hundred-year-old gramophone speakers.

The Fanta has a nasty, synthetic edge. She wonders why she bought it. The tabloid doesn’t go down any better, seemingly composed in equal measure of shame and rage, as though some inflamed national subtext were being ritually, painfully massaged, for whatever temporary and paradoxical relief this might afford.

She bins both, as she sees Ngemi approaching, large and black, zipped into his tight black jacket and carrying a sort of carpetbag in some African-looking hand-weave.

“Good morning,” he says, looking mildly puzzled. “Voytek tells me that you wish to visit Baranov.”

“I do. May I go with you?”

“It is a peculiar request. He is not a man whose personality can be
said to improve. All of his moods are unpleasant. Have you purchased a ticket?”

“Not yet.”

“Come with me, then.”

TWO
hours to Bournemouth, according to Ngemi, though previously, he explains, it had been a quicker journey, the “high-speed” train running now on aging, unreplaced rails.

She finds him a surprisingly comforting presence, with his creaking leather and professorial gravitas.

“Last night you said that Baranov had been bidding on an auction, and had lost, and wouldn’t be happy,” she opens, as a man in a polyester blazer pushes a cart of very mirror-world morning snacks past them down the aisle: crustless white egg-salad sandwiches in rigid triangular packaging, cans of lager, miniatures of whiskey and vodka.

“Indeed,” says Ngemi. “He would be angry enough to have lost that calculator to anyone, but he has lost it to Lucian Greenaway, of Bond Street.”

“Who is…?”

“The dealer. Most recently, exclusively of clocks, and much resented by collectors in that field. Last year he began to go after Curtas. The market is not yet entirely rationalized, you see.”

“Rationalized?”

“Not yet established as a global specialist environment. As has long been the case, for instance, with rare stamps, or coins. Or, to almost that degree, with the clocks Greenaway deals in. Values are only just being established, for Curta calculators. One still finds the odd example gathering dust on a shelf, perhaps for relatively little. All such markets are being rationalized by the Internet, of course.”

“Are they?”

“Absolutely. Hobbs himself,” and Cayce has to struggle for a second before remembering that this is Baranov’s given name, “is responsible for that, to some degree.”

“How?”

“eBay,” says Ngemi. “He’s very adroit there, and has sold many Curtas to Americans, always for more than they would fetch here. Global values are being established.”

“Do you… like them? The way he does?”

Ngemi sighs, his jacket creaking sharply. “I appreciate them. I enjoy them. But not to the depth of Hobbs’s passion. I love the history of computing, you see, and the Curta is simply a step, for me. A fascinating one, but I have Hewlett-Packards that I enjoy as much, or more.” He glances out at featureless fields, the dark spire of a distant church. “Hobbs,” he says, turning back to her, “suffers and enjoys as only the specialist can. I imagine it is not so much about the artifact, in his case, as about the ultimate provenance.”

“How’s that?”

“The camps. Herzstark in Buchenwald, surrounded by death, by methodical erasure, by an almost certain fate. He continued to work. In the end, the camp was liberated. He walked free, never having abandoned his vision of the calculator. Hobbs honors that triumph, that escape.”

“He has something he needs to escape, himself?”

“Himself exactly.” He nods. Then changes the subject. “What is it that you do? I didn’t understand it, in the restaurant.”

“I’m in marketing.”

“You sell things?”

“No. I find things, or styles, for other people, companies, to market. And I evaluate logos—trademark emblems.”

“You are American?”

“Yes.”

“I think it must be a difficult time to be American,” Ngemi says, settling his large head firmly back against the headrest of his non-reclining second-class seat. “If you don’t mind, I will sleep now.”

“I don’t mind.”

He closes his eyes.

She looks out at the patchwork fields, sunlight flashing from the occasional puddle. When had she last ridden on a train, not a subway, through open country? She can’t remember.

Instead she remembers her first view of Ground Zero, in late February. The viewing platforms. The unnaturalness of so much sunlight, in that place. They had been pulling out a PATH train, buried there.

She closes her eyes.

IN
Bournemouth, Ngemi leads her several blocks from the station, through the oddness, for her, of any England not London, to a greengrocer’s shop.

Here he is greeted by an older, very earnest-looking man, lighter-skinned, with neat gray hair and a fine-bladed Ethiopian nose. The greengrocer, evidently, from his spotless blue apron, who looks to Cayce like a Tory Rastafarian. Ngemi and this man exchange extended greetings, or perhaps news, in what might, for all she knows, be Amharic, or some utterly impenetrable dialect of English. Ngemi does not introduce her. The man gives Ngemi a set of car keys and a plastic bag containing plums and two ripe bananas.

Ngemi nods gravely, she assumes in thanks, and she follows him along the street, to where he stops and unlocks the passenger door of a dark red mirror-world car. This one, she notes, is a Vauxhall, but nothing like the car she’d seen Hobbs drive in Portobello. It’s scented, inside, with some alien air freshener, more African than mirror-world.

Ngemi sits behind the wheel for a moment, then inserts the key.

Very shortly, they’re negotiating complex roundabouts at speeds that have Cayce closing her eyes. Finally she opts to keep them shut.

When she opens them, she sees rolling green hills. Ngemi drives on, silently, giving great concentration to the task.

She sees a ruined castle, on a hill.

“Norman,” Ngemi says, glancing over at her, but doesn’t choose to elaborate.

Without waiting for the fruit to be offered, she removes a banana from the greengrocer’s bag and peels and eats it. Cloudy now, and a light drizzle settles in. Ngemi turns on the wipers.

“I’d offer you lunch before we see Hobbs,” Ngemi says, “but timing, when visiting him, can be crucial.”

“We can phone him, to make sure he’ll be in.”

“He has no phone. I was able to reach him at his local, last night. He was drunk, of course. He should be awake, by the time we arrive, and I hope that he won’t have started again.”

Twenty minutes later he exits from the main road, following what Cayce thinks of as two-lane blacktop. They are in countryside of a vaguely agricultural sort. Sheep on a hillside. Soon they are climbing single-lane gravel around the side of a hill. As they round it, Cayce sees, below them, a curiously desolate-looking complex of buildings of various sizes, all of brick. No visible activity.

Descending, the Vauxhall’s tires crunching gravel, she sees chain-link and barbed wire.

“It is a former training facility,” he says. “MI5 or MI6. I think 5. Now they breed and train police dogs here, according to Hobbs.”

“ ‘They’ who?”

“No idea. A most ill-favored place.”

Cayce has no idea where they are. Bournemouth? Poole?

He turns off the gravel, onto actual dirt, no more than a rutted path. Splashing through brown puddles.

She sees small trailers parked between woods and the fenced compound. Perhaps seven of them. As deserted-looking as the brick structures. Next to that, but clearly not a part of it.

“This is where he lives?”

“Yes.”

“What is it?”

“Gypsy families. These are their caravans. Hobbs rents one.”

“Have you seen them? Gypsies?”

“No,” he says, bringing the car to a halt, “never.”

She looks out at a large rectangular sign, peeling plywood up on two lengths of galvanized pipe, lettered black on white:

MINISTRY OF DEFENCE
THIS IS A PROHIBITED PLACE
WITHIN THE MEANING OF
THE OFFICIAL SECRETS ACT.
UNAUTHORIZED PERSONS
ENTERING THE AREA MAY BE
ARRESTED AND PROSECUTED.

29.
PROTOCOL

Ngemi gets out stiffly, stretching his legs, jacket creaking. Reaches into the backseat for his colorful carpetbag. Cayce gets out too.

There is a silence here. No birds sing.

“If there are dogs, shouldn’t we hear them?” Looking toward the low brick structures beyond the fence. The wire, she sees, is strung between tall square columns of discolored concrete. It all feels old, and somehow dead. World War II?

“I’ve never heard them,” Ngemi says, darkly, and starts along a footpath, skirting small puddles. His shoes are black four-eyelet DMs, the ur-Martens of the first decade of punk, long since de-recontextualized into the inexpensive everyman’s footwear they’d been designed to be.

Uncut grass. Wild shrubbery with small yellow flowers. She follows Ngemi toward the nearest mirror-world trailer. It is two-tone, the upper body beige, the lower burgundy, dented and dull. It has a shallow, centrally peaked roof that reminds her of drawings of Noah’s ark in books for children, and on its back a square, faded mirror-world license plate, “LOB” and four numerals. It doesn’t look as though it’s been anywhere in a long while, grass grown up around it, hiding any wheels it may still possess. Its windows, she sees, have been sealed over with galvanized sheet metal.

“Hobbs,” Ngemi calls, though not very loudly, “Hobbs, it is Ngemi.” He pauses, advances. The caravan’s door, beige and burgundy as well, doesn’t look as though it could ever fully close. “Hobbs?” He raps twice, softly.

“Piss off,” says someone, she assumes Hobbs, from within. It is a voice of utmost weariness, made peevish with pain.

“I’ve come for the calculators,” Ngemi says. “To complete the Japanese transaction. I have your share of the money.”

“Cunt.” Baranov kicks open the door, it seems, without having to rise from where he must be seated, the opening presenting as a depth-less rectangle of darkness. “Who the fuck is she?”

“You met near Portobello, briefly,” Ngemi says. “A friend of Voytek’s.” Which, Cayce supposes, is true, though after the fact.

“And why,” Baranov says, leaning slightly forward, so that sunlight glints flatly on his glasses, “would you bring her here?” All weariness gone, now, the voice taut and careful, menacing in its precision.

“I’ll let her explain that,” Ngemi says, glancing at Cayce, “after you and I have sorted present business.” He hefts the carpetbag in Baranov’s direction, as if indicating the nature of that business. To Cayce: “Hobbs has room for only one visitor at a time. Excuse us, please.” He climbs into the caravan, which sways on its springs, alarmingly, with a sound like the rattling of empty bottles. “I doubt we’ll be long.”

“Tedious cunt,” Baranov says, though whether about her, Ngemi, or life, she can’t tell.

Ngemi, hunched almost double beneath the low roof, settles himself on something unseen, casts Cayce an apologetic look, and closes the door.

Alone now, though aware of their muffled voices, she looks toward the other caravans. Some are more dilapidated than Baranov’s, others newer and slightly larger. She doesn’t like them. To escape their lines of sight, she walks around Baranov’s. Finds herself facing the wire fence and the dead-looking brick buildings. Likes this no better.

Beneath her breath, recites the duck-in-the-face mantra.

There is a black cable between the toes of her suede boots from Parco. She looks back and sees where it snakes from a vent in the side of
Baranov’s caravan. She walks forward, following it, and finds the point where it’s been inserted through the fence, close to the ground. It leads off through tussocks of yellowing grass, toward the brick compound. Electricity? From MI5, or whatever other keepers?

“Hello!” Ngemi calls her, from the side of the caravan. “Come and have your talk with Hobbs. He won’t bite you. He might actually be in a better mood, now.”

She walks back, pretending not to notice the cable.

“Go on,” says Ngemi. He glances at the old-fashioned calculator-watch on his wrist, its chrome case flashing in the wan sunlight. In his other hand, the carpetbag, looking heavier. “I don’t know how long he might give you. I’d like to catch the next train, if we can.”

The caravan sways as she climbs in, blinking in the dark. A gloom that reeks of stale cigarette ash and unwashed clothing, horribly close.

“Sit down,” Baranov orders. “Close the door.”

She does, discovering that what she sits on consists of chair-high stacks of books, very old ones, large jacketless volumes with dull cloth covers.

He leans forward. “Journalist?”

“No.”

“Name.”

“Cayce Pollard.”

“American.”

“Yes.”

As her eyes adjust to the gloom, she sees that he is partially reclining on a narrow berth that must be his bed, though it seems so steeply piled with what she takes to be wadded clothing that she doesn’t see how he could sleep on it. A narrow folding table has been let down from the wall in front of him, one-legged.

He jacks a pale cigarette into the corner of his mouth and leans forward. In the flare of his plastic lighter she sees that the grimy, littered
surface of the little table is Formica, printed in that boomerang pattern from the fifties. There is a mound of butts there that may conceal, in its base, an actual ashtray. And three thick sheaves of banknotes, bound with wide pink rubber bands.