‘Okay, but you might like to know that a visiting delegation is on its way here right now, from reception.’
‘Even as we speak!’
‘Exactly.’
‘Wow!’
When Mathieson arrived, complete with attorney, Lester beat a hasty retreat.
‘Take care, Mr Pearson.’
Despite himself, Pearson couldn’t resist shouting after him as the door closed.
‘This is a hospital, Lester; my care is down to you guys.’
Realising that they needed two more chairs, the legal help shouted at Lester’s back as he vanished down the corridor, and Lester duly supplied two chairs of the plastic stacking variety, in his opinion good enough for visiting suits like these guys. Reclining in his upholstered armchair, Pearson felt like a monarch by comparison, an advantage more apparent than real.
‘So, Mr Pearson, they’re looking after you here?’
‘By that you mean keeping me here under quarantine for a non-existent infection.’
‘Ah yes, sorry about that,’ Mathieson said with an irritating smile, ‘but we can’t be too careful with a new strain of virus; the incubation period might be longer than usual.’
‘Accepting that baloney, which I don’t, this is a secure facility. Effectively, I’m under arrest.’
Mathieson turned to the attorney. ‘Mr Baker here has a few words to say on that subject. He’s ex-military, by the way.’
‘Good for him. Why do I need to know that?’
To judge by the damp circles under his armpits, Mr Baker could have done with more deodorant. Detecting the unpleasant whiff of sweat, Pearson rose, opened his window wider, breathed in deeply and sat down again. As he did so, Mathieson looked round the room.
‘Nice place you have here.’
Mathieson was looking at Pearson’s bedside table with its small vase of withering freesias, though what he liked more was the case-hardened lock on the door and the iron bars on the window. Not being an attorney, he deferred to Baker on points of law.
‘Mr Pearson, certain information has come to light which we find frankly concerning.’
‘We?’
‘Our legal department. I don’t know where best to start.’
Mathieson watched impatiently as Baker produced a tablet and checked several tabs.
‘It really doesn’t matter, Sydney, as long as we cover the bases.’
After a short delay, Baker found what he was looking for.
‘Yes, so under the State of California Penal Code, Section 518, a complaint of blackmail has been filed against you.’
‘By whom?’
Baker looked at Mathieson.
‘Go ahead, why not!’
‘A Mr Rafael Ignaz Munoz alleges that you attempted to extort information from him regarding a work colleague, Miss Gina Saito.’
Pearson was astonished to hear that Munoz had gone so far; he’d struck him as a weak-willed individual who preferred to keep his head down whenever possible in case a passing butterfly hit him on the cheek.
‘Whatever. It will come down to his word against mine. End of story, no case.’
‘We have supporting evidence.’
He was about to reveal what it was when Mathieson cleared his throat and touched him lightly on the arm.
‘Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here, Sydney.’
‘Yes, Sydney,’ Pearson said with a sneer, ‘let’s not do that.’
‘As you wish. Moving on, then. We are also preparing a case against you under the State of California Penal Code, Section 502. As you probably know, this section deals with cybercrime.’
‘You don’t say.’
‘We have reason to believe that you hacked Miss Saito’s laptop, that you intercepted Miss Saito’s traffic with her contacts, and furthermore, in a separate venture, that you hacked a commercial facility in Japan, namely, the Sasaki Corporation in Nagoya, from which you abstracted commercially sensitive information.’
Pearson was alarmed now, but professional that he was, managed to conceal it. Thanks to his security background, no one in authority had pinned anything on him yet. His one hope here was that ex-colleagues might intervene to call off the dogs this time too.
‘My goodness, Adalbert,’ Mathieson said, ‘you have been busy. Mr Baker?’
‘You have certainly shown an intrusive interest in Miss Saito and her affairs.’
Mathieson agreed. ‘Intrusive. I like that.’
‘But gentlemen, come on, let’s get real here. I had reason to believe that this Saito woman was part of a high-level conspiracy to subject the nation to deadly bio-attack.’
Mathieson smiled, something he was doing too much.
‘Some would say her futon was low level rather than high.’
‘Come again?’
‘You tried to rape her.’
And Baker added, in apparent seriousness, ‘In the interests of national security.’
‘I don’t know what she told you, but if that’s what she said, she’s lying. She was the one who assaulted me, stabbed me in the balls, if you recall. I should be filing a complaint against her!’
‘Ah, yes, further to that, when the attending officer…’
‘Tadeusz Poniatowsky.’
‘When the attending officer asked you on the day how you sustained your injury, you asserted that your screwdriver slipped in the act of assembling flat-pack furniture.’
Remembering the truth is easy; keeping track of lies altogether more demanding. Pearson had forgotten the story he’d signed up to in hospital.
‘In any case, Mr Pearson,’ Mathieson said, ‘you might like to know that, as before, we have supporting evidence.’
Pearson was contemptuous.
‘Her fish, I suppose. I can’t see them taking the stand, can you?’
‘Okay,’ Mathieson said, ‘let’s just think about this for a moment. Mr Baker here has already drawn attention to your hacking activities. Our technical people can show that you remotely activated both the camera and the microphone on Miss Saito’s laptop which, unfortunately for you, were active at the time you forced your way into her apartment. They also confirm that you arranged for audio and video output from her laptop to arrive at yours. Not difficult to demonstrate since that’s where we found it.’
‘In this instance, therefore,’ Baker added, delighted with the neatness of it all, ‘you have your own criminal activity to thank for the wealth of evidence against you.’
And Mathieson added to ram the point home, ‘So, yes, we can confirm that the fish you mention will not be called upon to testify.’
Pearson was appalled; he’d set himself up by mistake.
‘Well, how about that, wouldn’t you know!’
Baker looked down at his tablet, a repository of the wisdom of the ages.
‘On this occasion, we certainly would. So I should also inform you that under the State of California Penal Code, Section 243.4…’
Pearson sighed. ‘Here we go again.’
‘…we are currently preparing an additional case against you.’
‘In the event you’re losing count,’ Mathieson added, ‘that brings the total to three.’
‘I refer to the sexual assault in her own apartment of the Gina Saito mentioned earlier.’
Pearson had never before felt so stitched up. The fact that he’d done most of the stitching himself just made it worse. Feeling almost as desperate as he had when he’d ferried his bleeding testicle to the Community Hospital, he attempted to brush it all off with the hint of a plea bargain. A good idea, had it not been for Mathieson who, he now realised, had taken an irrational dislike to him. Okay, so he’d played fast and loose with the law in certain respects, trifling matters really, but he didn’t consider for a moment that Mathieson hadn’t done the same. Bending th
e law was close to a badge of honour in security circles. But in that he was wrong; though he didn’t believe in anything else, Mathieson believed in the rule of law.
‘Okay, so what’s the deal, guys, how do I get out of here?’
His visitors exchanged glances but Mathieson wasn’t smiling now.
‘You don’t.’
58
Aleksander Nekrasov liked to visit the Church of Protection of the Holy Virgin on Argyle Avenue. He didn’t believe in the afterlife, but the services, sedate and peaceful productions, pleased him greatly or, as he put it in letters to his mother, acted upon him as a soothing balm to the soul. Artfully engaging the senses of sight, sound and smell, a full body massage with essential oils would not have pleased him more. He was, in any case, all in favour of Holy Virgins like Mary, Mother of Jesus. Not to mention Gina Saito who, though he’d only set eyes on her once, had a pure and virginal air, memories of which visited him from time to time in the small hours.
Nekrasov was uneasily aware of the tension between his feminist tendency and the status of the church as a patriarchate; never more so than during the recent visit by His Beatitude Metropolitan Tikhon of All America and Canada, accompanied by Bishop John of Naro-Fominsk, Administrator of the Patriarchal Parishes in the United States. Yet who among us, he reasoned, is not obliged to reconcile such contradictions on his journey through life? This was a subject that did not come up in his letters, where he also failed to mention to his mother another attraction available at the church on a Sunday: a homemade dinner on a level with her own. But no one reveals every last detail in letters home.
On the morning of Sunday August 6th, 2017, Nekrasov had just finished putting the finishing touches to his minimal beard with a light application of Valentino styling clay when he opened the door to a young, lycra-clad woman just dismounted from her bike.
‘Hi.’
‘Hi yourself.’
‘Rafael Ignaz Munoz?’
‘Happily, no. I’ll get him. Who shall I say?’
‘Julie.’
A few moments later, Munoz appeared at the door in the boxers and sweatshirt he’d been sleeping in for the last five days.
‘Mr Munoz?’
‘Who wants to know?’
Julie handed him a document. ‘For you.’
‘What is it?’
‘Like it says, a subpoena.’
Realising too late that Julie was a process-server, Munoz threw the document back in her face.
‘Too bad.’
‘Sorry, Mr Munoz, you already accepted it.’
‘No way.’
At that point, Nekrasov, en route to holy observance, made a helpful intervention.
‘I saw you take it. I can testify to that.’
Munoz was furious. ‘You absolute piece of Orthodox Russian crap!’
Seeing the way things were heading, Julie tried to pour oil on holy water.
‘You won’t be called on to testify, sir. I have the incident on my helmet cam.’
Munoz checked her helmet and, sure enough, there it was, the all-seeing, unblinking eye.
Locking the door on Nekrasov and Julie both, Munoz went back to his room, lay down on his bed and scanned the document. In connection with the complaint he’d filed against Pearson, he was required to present himself at a preliminary hearing, which was only to be expected, but also to produce his companion, Ai, which was not. He looked at Ai, still in her box on the floor.
‘What do you make of that? Why would they want you?’
As questions went, this one was easy for Ai.
‘I am made to be wanted, Rafael.’
True though this was, it was hardly the point. He rose from his bed, walked to the kitchen and poured himself an orange juice. If vitamin C didn’t help a man think, it ought to. Something was going on here. Ai might figure in the lawsuit he was contemplating against Sasaki, a fractured penis being a life-changing and traumatic event, though as a physical production rather than a witness. But this was different. Ai had no role at all in Pearson’s extortion attempt.
And then it began to dawn on him. When he spoke, Ai heard what he said. If he asked her a question, she answered, as she just had. And if Ai heard what he said, she must hear what anyone else said. Provided they were within earshot, as Pearson had been when he put the screws on him over Gina. Which was all very well but Munoz, no slouch when it came to technology, didn’t believe for a moment that Ai remembered their conversations, whatever she might learn as they took place. Glass in hand, he wandered back to his bedroom.
‘Ai.’
‘Yes, Rafael.’
‘You know what chess is?’
‘Chess is a board game played in two dimensions by opponents each with sixteen pieces.’
‘Very good. And do you remember the chat we had about this game?’
‘I’m sorry, Rafael. I do not remember this conversation.’
‘No problem. Just out of interest, do you remember any of our conversations?’
Munoz was relieved to learn that though Ai abstracted information from what was said, she did not acquire the dialogue in which it figured. But in that case, what was the point? How could she possibly feature in the case against Pearson? It made no sense.
All became clear with the rising sun next day when news reports showed reclusive Japanese billionaire Hiroshi Sasaki being served at JFK as he tried to leave the country. Plainly, the media had been tipped off in advance, the whole sorry episode being filmed at close range down to every last bead of sweat on Sasaki’s forehead. Not only were they tipped off, they were briefed as well. What viewers were privileged to see was part of a ground-breaking case: what one of Sasaki’s androids had heard would be led in evidence against the accused, as yet unnamed, but believed to be involved in blackmail and extortion. A legal milestone, she would be the first android called upon to testify in a court of law, the authorities believing that every last thing she heard had been recorded at her home base back in Nagoya.
Footage of a model Ai in suggestive pose was provided to engage the interest of the viewing public. Not of the individual involved in the case, but since they were all identical, externally, that didn’t matter. As one wiseacre put it on Twitter, Seen one, seen ’em all. As was only to be expected, another soon improved on this with Fucked one, fucked ’em all. Like it or not, Munoz thought, these are the times in which we live.
But it soon turned out that Sasaki had also been briefed, his counsel by his side, at the airport, averring that Sasaki was presently subject to blackmail himself, having been notified that should he fail to produce the Ai in question together with the requested transcripts, the FDA was minded to ban his androids from the American market on health and safety grounds. On hearing this assertion, an FDA spokeswoman responded. Be it noted, she said, from high on an official flight of steps, that their action was far from the realm of vexatious litigation: indeed, she was in a position to reveal that one of Sasaki’s sex dolls was suspected of fracturing the penis of an illegal from Mexico. Given the context, Sasaki’s attorney retorted that the lady should have thought twice before using the word “position”.
This was too much for Munoz who, for all his faults, was in the United States legally, though now beginning to regret it. Without breaking cover, there wasn’t much he could do: you can’t clear your name when it hasn’t been mentioned. But Adalbert Pearson, the man who’d caused him all this grief in the first place, hadn’t been named either and he, Rafael Ignaz Munoz, could certainly do something about that.
59
Catherine Cooper slept less well than before. There were good reasons for that. Since being picked up by the BND, she’d slept in several beds, none of them her own. Till things ran their course, Schnucki had been given into the care of Trudi Kirsch at her usual daily rate, so she hadn’t set hand or eye on the animal for three weeks and missed h
ow calming it was to run her fingers through his fur and scratch him behind the ear.
She slept fitfully now, wakeful over worries about what might befall her, not helped one bit by Ursula Lang, who’d pointed out that she could easily be arrested and charged, they had more than enough on her, but hadn’t gone ahead and done either of these things. Which left her in a state of continuous unease, just one part of Lang’s destabilising approach.
Tired after a restless night, she padded through to the living room on bare feet. There, neatly laid out the evening before, were Lang’s bottle and shot glass. Her eye caught by the image of a glowing cross between the antlers of a stag, she lifted the bottle, already half empty, and read some lines of verse. Apparently, it was the hunter’s honour to preserve his game; not so easy when you’re killing it, she thought.
‘You won’t agree with that, of course.’
She hadn’t heard Lang come in.
‘It doesn’t make sense.’
‘Not to you, perhaps, but to the author it did.’
‘And who was that?’
‘A man of little talent and even less logic.’
Lang had told her the previous week how she managed to stay in such good shape for a woman of her years. She began the day with a Jägermeister followed by a yoga session on her living room carpet which should last no longer than five minutes, and that was pushing it. Sometimes she even attempted a push-up against the wall. Then she was fit for anything the day might bring. But however much detail she let slip, Lang was forever walking along a crowded street: every time Cooper was about to catch up with her, she disappeared round a corner. A sketch of this woman would consist entirely of blurred edges.
‘Breakfast?’
Lang provided sausage for her guest, cheese and, to sweeten the bread, jam, marmalade and honey. Bearing in mind that her mother was English, Lang also offered a boiled egg, cereal and fruit which Cooper, not wishing to impose and worried that Lang was accessing her head through her stomach, usually refused.
‘Today,’ Lang told her, ‘we may be honoured with a visitor.’
The Ears of a Cat Page 26
