Zero History

by William Gibson

  “Remind me to be a bigger asshole.”

  “As it was,” Bigend said, “because he’s essentially a parasite, with an emotional need to constantly irritate the host, and because I wanted the project to remain separate from Blue Ant, I had Voytek put him up. At home. Compensating Voytek, of course.”

  “Voytek?”

  “My alternative IT person. My hole card against Sleight. I can’t be certain that Sleight didn’t discover that, but he evidently did, at some point, discover where I was keeping Chombo while he worked on the project.”

  “What’s the project?”

  “A secret,” said Bigend, with a slight lift of his eyebrows.

  “But who took Bobby?”

  “Three men. American. They told Voytek that they’d come back for him, and his wife and child, if he tried to alert anyone prior to seven this morning.”

  “They threatened his wife and child?”

  “Voytek understands that sort of thing. Eastern European. Took them instantly at their word. Phoned me at seven twenty. I immediately phoned you. I may need you to help me with Milgrim.”

  “Who were they?”

  “Foley, by the description. Unable to stop muttering about Milgrim. The other two, I’d assume, were Gracie, Milgrim’s arms dealer, and someone else. Gracie clearly in charge, calm, businesslike. The third man had a mullet, Voytek said. I had to Google it. Foley apparently has seen the inside of an emergency ward twice this week, and holds Milgrim personally responsible. Gracie, however, assumes that Milgrim may have been following orders. Mine.”

  “He told Voytek that?”

  “He told me.”

  “When?”

  “On the way over here. Sleight having given him, obviously, my private mobile number.”

  “He sounded angry?”

  “He sounded,” Bigend said, “like voice-distortion software. Impossible to read affect. He told me what he requires in exchange for Bobby’s safe return, and why.”

  “How much?”

  “Milgrim.”

  “How much does he want?”

  “He wants Milgrim. Nothing else.”

  “There you are,” said Garreth, from the opening between the two frames. “Might have left a note.”

  Bigend looked up at Garreth with a peculiar childlike openness. Hollis had only seen this expression a few times before, and dreaded it. “This is Garreth,” she said.

  “Wilson,” said Garreth, which wasn’t true.

  “I take it, Mr. Wilson, that you are Hollis’s friend? The one recently injured in an automobile accident?”

  “Not so recent,” said Garreth.

  “I see you’re joining us,” Bigend said. Then, to the Italian boy, who’d anxiously appeared: “Move the screen for Mr. Wilson. Arrange a chair for him.”

  “Very kind,” said Garreth.

  “Not at all.”

  “Should you even be walking?” asked Hollis, starting to rise.

  As the boy slid the screen aside, Garreth stepped past it, heavily, supporting himself on the quadrupedal cane. “I took the invalid chair, then the service elevator.” He put his free hand on her shoulder, squeezed. “No need to get up.”

  When the boy had helped him into the high-backed armchair brought from an adjacent table, he smiled at Bigend.

  “This is Hubertus Bigend,” said Hollis.

  “A pleasure, Mr. Big End.” They shook hands across the table.

  “Call me Hubertus. A cup for Mr. Wilson,” he said to the Italian boy.

  “Garreth.”

  “Were you injured here in London, Garreth?”

  “Dubai.”

  “I see.”

  “You’ll pardon me,” said Garreth, “but I couldn’t help overhearing your conversation.”

  Bigend’s eyebrows rose a fraction. “How much of it?”

  “The bulk,” said Garreth. “Are you considering giving them this Milgrim, then?”

  Bigend looked from Garreth to Hollis, then back. “I’ve no way of knowing how much else you may know of my affairs, but I’ve invested a great deal in Milgrim’s health and welfare. This comes at a very difficult time for me, as I’m unable to trust my own security staff. There’s an internal struggle in the firm, and I’m loath to go to any of the many corporate security firms here. The equivalent of hiring the lousy to rid you of lice, in my experience. Milgrim, through his unfortunate actions, has endangered a project of mine, one of the utmost importance to me.”

  “You are,” said Hollis, “you are! You’re going to give them Milgrim!”

  “I certainly am,” said Bigend, “unless someone has a better suggestion. And will have done, by this time tomorrow.”

  “Stall,” said Garreth.

  “Stall?”

  “I can probably put something together, but I’ll need closer to forty-eight hours.”

  “There may be risk for me, in doing that,” said Bigend.

  “Not as much risk as there is in my calling the police,” said Hollis. “And the Times and the Guardian. There’s that man at the Guardian who particularly has it in for you, isn’t there?”

  Bigend stared at her.

  “Tell them you’ve lost him,” said Garreth, “but that you’ll get him back. I’ll help you with messaging.”

  “What are you, Mr. Wilson?”

  “A hungry man. With a gammy leg.”

  “I recommend the full English.”

  56. ALWAYS IS GENIUS

  Milgrim, on his side in the sleeping bag, on the medicinal-looking white foam, was caught in some frustrating loop of semi-sleep, slow and circular, in which exhaustion swung him slowly out, toward where sleep should surely have been, then overshot the mark somehow, bumping him over into a state of random anxiety that couldn’t quite qualify as wakefulness, then back out again, convinced of sleep’s promise …

  This was, his therapist had told him, on hearing it described, an aftereffect of stress—excessive fear, excessive excitement—and he was there. That it was the sort of thing that a normal person could escape with the application of a single tablet of Ativan added a certain irony. But Milgrim’s recovery, he’d been taught, was dependent on strict abstinence from the substance of choice. Which was not the substance of choice, his therapist maintained, but the substance of need. And Milgrim knew that he’d never been content with a single tablet of anything. It was the very first single tablet, he told himself, rehearsing these teachings like a rosary, as he swung back out toward the false promise of sleep, that he was required not to ingest. The others were no problem, because, if he successfully avoided the first, there were no others. Except for that first one, which, in potential at least, was always there. Bump. He hit the random anxiety, saw those few sparks thrown off Foley’s car’s fenders as Aldous drove it back, through that narrow space.

  He tried to recall what he knew about cars, to explain those sparks. They were mostly plastic now, cars, with bits of metal inside. The surface of the body had been ground down, he supposed, to a little metal, producing sparks, and then perhaps the metal had been abraded away … I know that, stupid, his mind told him.

  He thought he heard something. Then knew he did. His eyes sprang open in the small cave of the MontBell, the office faintly illuminated by the dance of abstract shapes on the screen of the Air.

  “Shombo, always,” he heard Voytek say loudly, the accent unmistakable, growing closer, resentful, “is genius. Shombo is genius coder. Shombo, I will tell you: Shombo codes like old people fuck.”

  “Milgrim,” Fiona called, “hullo, where are you?”

  57. SOMETHING OFF THE SHELF

  The current crisis, whatever underlay it, didn’t seem to have affected Bigend’s appetite. They were all having the full English. Bigend was working steadily through his, Garreth doing most of the talking.

  “This is a prisoner exchange,” Garreth said. “One hostage for another. Your man assumes, correctly, that you’re unlikely to call the police.” Bigend looked pointedly at Hollis. “We can assum
e that he hasn’t much of a network here,” Garreth continued, “else he wouldn’t have sent an idiot after Milgrim. Neither, at this point, do you, given the situation in your firm, and we can assume that he knows that, via your mole.”

  “Can one have been a mole on one’s own behalf?” asked Bigend. “I would assume that everyone is that, to whatever extent.”

  Garreth ignored this. “Your mole will know that you aren’t much inclined to hire outside security, for the reasons you stated. Likewise your man will know this. Since your man would never have signed off on such a patently ridiculous abduction plan, we can assume that Foley was the planner. Therefore, your man was either not present during the attempt or somehow out of the loop. My guess is that he was already on his way here, likely out of a sense that Foley was cocking up. Foley possibly acted when he did in order to get at Milgrim before the boss arrived.”

  Hollis had never heard Garreth unpack a specific situation this way, though something in his tone now reminded her of his explanations of asymmetric warfare, a topic in which he had a keen and abiding interest. She remembered him telling her how terrorism was almost exclusively about branding, but only slightly less so about the psychology of lotteries, and how this had made her think of Bigend.

  “So,” Garreth said, “it’s likely we’re dealing with an improvisational plan on their part. Your man has opted for a prisoner exchange. Those of course are eminently gameable. Though your man knows that, certainly, and is familiar with all applicable tactics, including the one I imagine I’d be most likely to employ.”

  “Which is?”

  “Your man Milgrim. Is he obese? Extremely tall? Memorable-looking?”

  “Forgettable,” said Bigend. “About ten stone.”

  “Good.” Garreth was buttering a slice of toast. “There’s a surprising amount of mutual trust necessary in any prisoner exchange. Why it’s gameable.”

  “You’re not giving them Milgrim,” Hollis said.

  “I need to see more to hang success on, Mr. Wilson, if you’ll pardon my saying so,” said Bigend, forking beans onto a quarter-slice of toast.

  “God’s in the details, the architects said. But you have rather a bigger problem, here. Contextually.”

  “You refer,” Bigend said, “to Hollis’s unseemly readiness to shop me to the Guardian?”

  “Gracie,” Garreth said. “I imagine he’s doing this because he feels you’ve been fucking with him, successfully. He didn’t ask you for money?”

  “No.”

  “Doesn’t your mole want money?”

  “I’m sure he does,” Bigend said, “but I would imagine he might be in over his head with these people. I imagine he was looking for a context in which to profitably betray me, but then they found him. He’s likely afraid of them, and likely with good reason.”

  “If you were to turn Milgrim over to them,” said Garreth, “and get your Bobby back intact, they’d be back. You’re that wealthy. This bent officer may not yet be thinking in those terms, but your mole already is.”

  Bigend looked uncharacteristically pensive.

  “But if you do it the way I’d do it,” said Garreth, “you really will have fucked with them, in a very formal and personal way. They’ll come after you.”

  “Then why would you suggest it?”

  “Because,” said Hollis, “giving them Milgrim is not an option.”

  “The thing is,” said Garreth, “you need to simultaneously fuck with them and neutralize them, in some seriously ongoing way.”

  Bigend leaned slightly forward. “And how would you do that?”

  “I’m not prepared to tell you,” Garreth said, “at the moment.”

  “You aren’t proposing violence?”

  “Not in the way I imagine you mean, no.”

  “I don’t see how you could possibly mount anything very sophisticated in such a short period of time.”

  “It would have to be something off the shelf.”

  “Off the shelf?”

  But Garreth had gone back to his breakfast.

  “And how long have you known Mr. Wilson, Hollis?” his tone like some Jane Austen chaperone’s.

  “We met in Vancouver.”

  “Really? You had time to socialize?”

  “We met one another toward the end of my stay.”

  “And you know him to be someone capable, in the ways he’s proposing to be capable?’

  “I do,” said Hollis, “although I’m under an agreement with him to say no more than that.”

  “People who claim capabilities of that sort are most often compulsive liars. Though the most peculiar thing about that, in my experience, is that while most bars in America have alcoholics who claim to have been Navy SEALs, there are sometimes former Navy SEALs, in those same bars, who are alcoholics.”

  “Garreth’s not a Navy SEAL, Hubertus. I don’t know what I’d say he is. He’s like you, that way. A one-off. If he tells you he thinks he can get Bobby back, and neutralize this threat for you, then …”

  “Yes?”

  “Then he thinks he can.”

  “And what would you propose I do, then,” Bigend said to Garreth, “if I were to accept your help?”

  “I’d need an idea of whatever tactical resources you may have, in London, if any, that remain uncompromised. I’d need an open operational budget. I’ll have to hire some specialists. Expenses.”

  “And how much do you want yourself, Mr. Wilson?”

  “I don’t,” said Garreth. “Not money. If I can do this to my own satisfaction, and I imagine that that would be to yours as well, you’ll let Hollis go. Release her from whatever it is she’s doing for you, pay her what she feels she’s owed, and agree to leave her be. And if you can’t agree to that, I advise you to start looking for help elsewhere.”

  Bigend, eyebrows raised, looked from Garreth to Hollis. “And you’re agreeable to that?”

  “It’s an entirely new proposition to me.” She poured herself some coffee, buying time to think. “Actually,” she said, “I would require an additional condition.”

  They both stared at her.

  “The Hounds designer,” she said to Bigend. “You won’t have her. You’ll leave her absolutely alone. Quit looking. Call everyone off, permanently.”

  Bigend pursed his lips.

  “And,” said Hollis, “you’ll find Meredith’s shoes. And give them to her.”

  A silence followed, Bigend looking at his plate, the corners of his mouth turned down. “Well,” he said at last, looking up at them, “none of this would have been the least attractive before seven twenty this morning, but here we are, aren’t we?”

  58. DOUCHE BAGGAGE

  Voytek was very angry about something, probably whatever had been the cause of him receiving his mottled, yellowish, not-quite-black eye. He seemed most angry with Shombo, the sullen young man Milgrim had seen at Biroshak & Son, though Milgrim found it hard to imagine Shombo striking anyone. He’d looked to Milgrim as though just getting out of bed would have posed an unwelcome challenge.

  Milgrim would have liked to be up-front with Fiona, in the passenger seat, but she’d insisted that he sit back here with Voytek, on the floor of this tiny Subaru van, an area slightly less than the footprint of a washer and dryer, and cluttered now with large, black, cartoonishly sturdy-looking plastic cases he assumed were Voytek’s. Each of these had PELICAN molded on the lid, clearly a logo rather than any indicator of contents. Voytek was wearing gray sweatpants with B.U.M. EQUIPMENT screened in very large capitals across his ass, evidence of what Milgrim took to be kitchen mishaps down the front, thick gray socks, those same gray felt clogs, and a pale blue, very old, very grimy insulated jacket with that Amstrad logo on the back, its letters cracked and peeling.

  The Subaru had actual drapes, gray ones, everywhere except the windshield and the front side windows. All drawn now. Which was just as well, Milgrim supposed, as it really had a great deal of glass, as well as a moonroof that was in effect the whole top of
the vehicle, through which Milgrim, looking up, saw the upper windows of buildings passing. He had no idea where they were now, no idea which direction they’d taken from Tanky & Tojo, and none where they were going. To meet Bigend again, he assumed. Like urine samples but more frequent, meeting Bigend punctuated his existence.

  “I did not come to this country for the terror from paramilitary,” declared Voytek, hoarsely. “I did not come to this country for motherfucker. But motherfucker is waiting. Always. Is carceral state, surveillance state. Orwell. You have read Orwell?”

  Milgrim, trying for his best neutral expression, nodded, the knees of his new whipcord trousers in front of his face. He hoped this wasn’t stretching them.

  “Orwell’s boot in face forever,” said Voytek, with great formal bitterness.

  “Why does he want you to sweep it?” asked Fiona, as if inquiring about some routine office chore, her left hand busily working the shift lever.

  “Devil’s workshop,” said Voytek, disgusted. “He wants mine occupied. While he fattens on the blood of the proletariat.” This last phrase having for Milgrim a deep nostalgic charm, so that he was moved, unthinking, to repeat it in Russian, seeing for an instant the classroom in Columbia where he’d first heard it.

  “Russian,” said Voytek, narrowing his eyes, the way someone might say “syphilis.”

  “Sorry,” said Milgrim, reflexively.

  Voytek fell silent, visibly seething. They were on a straight stretch now, and when Milgrim looked up, there were no buildings. A bridge, he guessed. Slowing, turning. Into buildings, lower, more ragged. The Subaru bumped over something, up, then stopped. Fiona shut off the engine and got out. Milgrim, flicking the drapes aside, glimpsed Benny’s cycle yard. Benny himself approaching. Fiona opened the rear door and grabbed one of Voytek’s Pelican cases.

  “Caution,” said Voytek, “extreme care.”

  “I know,” Fiona said, passing the case to Benny.

  Benny leaned in, looked at Voytek. “Disagreement at the local, was it?”

  Voytek glared at Milgrim. “The blood,” he said. “Sucking it.”