Pattern Recognition (29 page)

The coal of his cigarette flares mightily, like a meteorite entering Earth s atmosphere, fully half the cigarette apparently consumed on that first draw. She braces herself for the exhalation, but it does not come. Instead, he stacks the sheaves of banknotes and pockets them, tucking them away into the tattered Barbour she remembers from Portobello.

At last he lets his breath out, and the caravan fills with smoke, though less of it than she would have expected. Sunlight, through a few small holes in the metal skin, shafts dramatically in, giving the space the look of a Ridley Scott set scaled for dolls. “You know that bloody Pole.”

“Yes.”

“Reason enough to avoid you. You’re wasting my time, darling.” The meteorite enters the atmosphere again, putting paid to the second half of the cigarette. He stubs it out, or partially out, atop the mound.

It occurs to her that she hasn’t seen his left hand. Everything so far, the cigarette, the lighter, the banknotes, has been done with his right. “I can’t see your left hand.”

In answer, the gun appears, perfectly captured in one of the subminiature Ridley Scott floodlights. “I can’t see either of yours.” She has never looked down the barrel of a gun before, and this one seems to have very little left to look down. A huge old top-opening revolver, its barrel and the front of the trigger guard sawed roughly away, the rusted metal showing the tooth marks of hasty filing. Baranov’s hand, slender and filthy, is too small for the massive wooden grip. A lanyard ring swings from the pistol’s butt, suggesting tall white helmets and the Raj.

She lifts her hands; a gesture familiar, long ago, from a children’s game.

“Who sent you?”

“I sent myself.”

“What do you want?”

“Ngemi and Voytek say you can get information.”

“Do they?”

“I want to trade something for one specific piece of information.”

“You’re lying.”

“No. I know exactly what I need. And I can give you something you want, in exchange for it.”

“Too late, darling. I’ve no need for whores.” And then the rough metal of the muzzle, impossibly cold and distinct, is pressed against the center of her forehead.

“Lucian Greenaway.” She feels the ring of cold move, a fraction, in reaction. “The dealer. Bond Street. The calculator. I can buy it for you.”

The cold ring, pressing.

“I can’t give you money,” she says then, knowing that this is the one lie she needs to tell now, and tell well, “but I can use someone else’s credit card to buy the calculator for you.”

“Ngemi’s gob needs stopping.”

And then it comes to her, why she mustn’t offer money, though surely Bigend would provide: Once paid, Baranov would then feel that he was giving his own money to the dealer he hates.

“If I could offer you money, I would, but all I can offer is to buy the calculator. To give it to you. In exchange for what I need.” Done, she closes her eyes. The circle of cold steel becomes the very horizon.

“Greenaway.” Horizon withdrawn. “Do you know what he’s asking?”

“No.” Eyes tight shut.

“Four thousand five. Pounds.”

She opens her eyes. Sees the pistol pointed not so directly at her. “If we’re going to talk, would you mind not pointing that at me?”

Baranov seems to remember the gun in his hand. “Here,” he says, letting it drop, everything on the Formica rattling under the impact, “you point it at me.”

She looks from it to him.

“Bought it at a boot sale. Boy dug it up in the woods here. Two quid. The inside s rust and earth. Cylinder won’t turn.” He smiles at her.

She looks back at the gun on the table, imagining picking it up, smiling back at him, raising it, and bringing it down, as hard as she can, on his forehead. She lowers her hands. Then she looks up at him again. “My offer.”

“You’ve someone’s credit line, good for four five?”

“Visa.”

“Tell me what you’re after. That isn’t to say I’ll do it.”

“I’m going to get something out of this bag. A printout.”

“Go ahead.”

He pushes the revolver and a chipped white cup aside, so that she can place the glossy of the T-city on the table. He moves to touch something, to his right, and a halogen beam falls on the table. She thinks of the cable, snaking through the wire fence. He looks at the image, saying nothing.

“Each of these numbers is a code,” Cayce says, “identifying a particular sequence in a piece of information. Each sequence has one of these numbers encrypted, for purposes of identification, and to enable it to be tracked.”

“Stego,” says Baranov, putting a slender, brown-stained forefinger down on the printout. “This one. Why’s it circled?”

“The encryption is done by a firm in America called Sigil. I want to learn who they do it for, but the specific piece of information I’m asking you for is the e-mail address to which they sent this particular piece, when it had been encrypted.”

“Sigil?”

“In Ohio.”

He sucks his teeth, making an odd, small, birdlike sound.

“Can you do that?”

“Protocol,” he says. “Assuming I could, what then?”

“If you tell me you can, I’ll go to your dealer and buy the calculator.”

“And then?”

“You’ll give me the e-mail address.”

“And then?”

“I’ll give Ngemi the calculator. But if you don’t give me the address…”

“Yes?”

“It goes into the canal, at Camden Lock.”

He leans forward, eyes narrowing behind round lenses, lost in an intricacy of wrinkles. “You’d do that, would you?”

“Yes. And I’ll do it if I think you’re cheating me.”

He peers at her. “I believe you would,” he says, at last, with something close to approval.

“Good. Then call Ngemi, when you have something. He knows how to reach me.”

He says nothing.

“Thank you for considering my offer.” She rises, crouching beneath the low ceiling, elbowing open the door, and climbs out, into bright pallor and rich, extraordinarily fresh air. “Goodbye.” She closes the door behind her.

Ngemi creaks, beside her. “Was he in a better mood, then?” he asks.

“He showed me his gun.”

“This is England, girl,” Ngemi says. “People don’t have guns.”

30.
.RU

On the train to Waterloo, Ngemi buys beer and a packet of chicken-flavored crisps from the refreshment cart.

Cayce buys a bottle of still mineral water.

“How did Baranov wind up that way?” she asks.

“In that specific place?”

“In his general situation. Did he drink himself there?”

“I had a cousin, back home,” says Ngemi, “who drank an entire electrical appliance business. He was otherwise an ordinary fellow, well liked. His problem seemed simply the drink. With Hobbs, I imagine the drink might be a symptom of something else, though so established now that it hardly matters. Hobbs is his mother’s maiden name. Hobbs-Baranov, hyphenated at birth. His father, a Soviet diplomat, defected in the fifties to America, marrying an Englishwoman of considerable wealth. Hobbs managed to lose the hyphen, but when drunk he still rails against it. He once told me that he’d lived his whole life within that hyphen, in spite of having buried it.”

“He worked for American intelligence, as a mathematician?”

“Recruited from Harvard, I believe. But again, it’s difficult to know. He only mentions those things when drunk.” He pops the top on his can of beer, and sips. “I suppose I have no business asking, but was your visit a success?”

“It may have been. But I’ll have to ask for more of your help, if it was.”

“Can you tell me more?”

“I need something, and Baranov may be able to find it for me. In exchange,
I’ve offered to buy that calculator for him, from the dealer in Bond Street.”

“Greenaway? His asking price is obscene.”

“It doesn’t matter. If Baranov gets me what I want, it’s a bargain.”

“And you need my help?”

“I need you to go with me, to this dealer, and help me buy it. Make sure it’s the right one, the one Baranov wants. And if Baranov gives me what I want, I’ll need you to deliver it to him.”

“I can do that, certainly.”

“How do we start?”

“Greenaway has a website. He doesn’t open, Sundays.”

She opens the Luggage Label and removes her iBook and phone. “I hope it’s still there, the calculator.”

“It will be,” Ngemi assures her, “at Greenaway’s price.”

THE
evening version of a Waterloo Sunday moves differently, and the pigeons Cayce had seen flying, that morning, now race fearlessly amid the feet of hurrying passengers, pecking up the day’s bounty.

Under Ngemi’s tutelage, she’s e-mailed Greenaway, asking for the Curta prototype, which is indeed still on offer, to be placed on hold, prior to her viewing it tomorrow, with intent to buy. “The hold is no protection,” Ngemi explains, as she walks with him toward the escalators, “should another tragic victim turn up in the meantime, but it will serve to get his attention, and establishes a certain tone. It will help that he knows you are American.” He had insisted she mention that she was from New York, and only in London briefly. “Do you know when Hobbs might have your information for you?”

“No idea.”

“But you wish to go ahead with Greenaway?”

“Yes.”

“You are not a wealthy woman?”

“Not at all. I’m using someone else’s money.”

“If you had offered Hobbs the amount of Greenaway’s price, in cash, he might well have refused you. He could no more pay Greenaway’s price, with his own money, than I could. I’ve known him to refuse offers, for that sort of service, that I took to be much larger.”

“But doesn’t he need money anyway, or want it?”

“Yes, but perhaps he has only a finite number of favors left, to call in.”

“Favors?”

“I don’t imagine that he himself has any particular resources. It isn’t his talent that might find you what you want, or any knowledge on his part. I believe he calls in a favor, asks someone, and sometimes is told the answer.”

“Do you know who he asks?” Not really expecting an answer herself.

“Have you heard of ‘Echelon’?”

“No.” Although she thinks she has, but can’t quite place it.

“American intelligence have a system that allows for the scanning of all Net traffic. If such a thing exists, then Hobbs might be its grandfather. He may well have been instrumental in its creation.” He raises an eyebrow, as if to signal that is all he knows, or is willing to say, about so outré a subject.

“I see,” she says, wondering if she does.

“Well,” Ngemi pauses near the descending escalator, “you must know what you’re doing.”

“No, I don’t. I don’t at all. But thank you, for all your help.”

“Good evening, then. I will phone you, in the morning.”

She watches the shaven dome of his large dark head descend, on an angle, into the London underground.

She goes to find a cab.

*  *  *

FUCK
me. Do you know that expression? 70s. Not that I want you to fuck me, but that I’m expressing a profound and baffled amazement.

She’s ready for an early night, on CPST, and is checking her mail prior to brushing her teeth. Parkaboy first up.

Judy hasn’t left Darryl’s since my last message. More hot and heavy with Taki, who wants to get on a plane for California but he’s got a day job designing games for a Japanese phone system. What I want to know is, is any of this worth it? Are you getting anywhere? Any closer at all?

Maybe, she decides. That’s all she can tell him.

Maybe. I’ve got something in play here, but it may take a while to see whether it works. When I know more, you will.

Send.

Boone next.

Greetings from the Holiday Inn down the road from the technology park. An original, lots of beige. Have made contact on supposed business but have no idea when anything useful might turn up. Next stop, the lounge downstairs, where some of the weaker sheep of the firm in question may congregate. You okay?

That really is the slow route, she thinks, though she doesn’t know what else he should be trying, other than buddying up with Sigil employees.

I’m fine.

She pauses.

Nothing to report.

Which may well be the case.
Send.
Next is… spam? An all-numerical hotmail address.

Yes It ends in .ru Observe the protocol H-B

Baranov, e-mailing from the hyphen.
.ru
Russia.

31.
THE PROTOTYPE

Monday morning, in Neal’s Yard, she keeps the Blue Ant phone on, and nearby, while she works through her program.

It rings while she’s on the PediPole, a device that makes her think of Leonardo’s drawing of the human body’s proportions as they relate to the universe. Her palms, fingers spread, are pressing down into black foam stirrups.

The woman using the nearest reformer frowns.

“Sorry.” Cayce lets up the springs, releases the stirrups, retrieves the phone from the pocket of the Rickson’s. “Hello?”

“Good morning. It is Ngemi. Are you well?”

“Yes, thanks. And you?”

“Indeed well. Stephen King’s Wang ships today. I am very excited.”

“From Maine?”

“From Memphis.” She hears him smack his lips. “Hobbs phoned. He says he has what you need, and now it is up to you. Shall we visit Mr. Greenaway and pay his ugly price?”

“Yes. Please. Can we do it now?”

“He will not open until eleven. Shall I meet you there?”

“Please.”

He gives her the number in Bond Street. “See you there.”

“Thank you.”

She places the phone at the blond wooden base of the PediPole and gets back into position.

IF
there’s any one thing about England that Cayce finds fundamentally disturbing, it is how “class” works—a word with a very different mirror-world meaning, somehow. She’s long since given up trying to explain this to English friends.

The closest she can come is that it’s somewhat akin, for her, if only in its enormity, to how the British seem to feel about certain American attitudes to firearms ownership—which they generally find unthinkable, and bafflingly, self-evidently wrong, and so often leading to a terrible and profligate waste of human life. And she knows what they mean, but also knows how deeply it runs, the gun thing, and how unlikely it is to change. Except, perhaps, gradually, and over a very long time. Class in England is like that, for her.