The Cryptographer

by Tobias Hill

  ‘I’m fine,’ she says. And then, because this is not what he has asked her, ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I’ll find him,’ says Terence, watching her. ‘You wait here, will you?’

  ‘Thank you,’ she says again, but the receptionist is already apologising his way through the press of bodies, out over the smooth floor of money.

  The fear drains from her as she waits. In its wake comes a fainter sensation of anxiety and a quickening of other feelings, harder, more manageable and familiar. Suspicion. An inspector’s mistrust. Anna holds on to them as if they might save her from drowning. She wonders who these people are, with their soft, tanned features, the unformed faces of those to whom life has come too easily. She remembers the last time she was here, the first time she saw how Soft Gold worked. The flash of light beneath her outstretched hand. Miraculous, like a fish turning in deep water.

  Somewhere a glass breaks against the vitreous floor. Terence is out of sight. Anna keeps watch for him. Listens for his voice, over the babble of the crowd.

  ‘Of course we’re still cashflow-negative, but all things come –’

  ‘Anyone that rich is a hypocrite – because only the hypocrites get rich –’

  ‘That’s your problem, my friend. You don’t see that a billionaire in an aeroplane is the closest thing to God …’

  ‘ – must be ten years since the Diamond Jubilee. I hear the next will be her Silicon –’

  ‘There he is! Do you see? There’s the Cryptographer.’

  Anna looks. The Cryptographer, someone hisses again, a woman with hair bright as wine. Whispers or hisses. There is a sharpness to it which means money or scandal. Anna follows the woman’s eyes, and finds him. There he is. In the flesh.

  Money lends him weight. Anna can’t think of any other words for it, although it is the kind of construction her colleagues might use, might actually have used once, talking about clients and superiors. But then Anna is thinking of the word differently from Carl or Sullivan, who would mean by it social standing or a kind of mature power. Weight as compensation for lost looks.

  This is physical. Not charisma and not fat or muscle, but something more essential. A density. Her own life feels suddenly light with lack of possessions. She realises she has been expecting John Law to let her down, to be missable-in-a-crowd, an ordinary disappointment. And he is not these things at all. There is something extraordinary about him. It is as if the wealth he has created is present, all of it, under the pores of his skin.

  The hall is underlit, guards and guests moving through pockets of spotlight. Where Law stands the illumination is dim, casting shadows under his cheeks and eyes. His features are not clear. He is smiling at something said. If there is an expression it is one of hunger. Anna feels a hankering to see him up close, under stronger light.

  She moves nearer. Now she can hear his voice. She recognises the quietness. The quality that might once have been an accent. He is talking to a shorter man. To three men. And their voices are listened to, are carried into and over other conversations.

  She finds herself trying to imagine his wealth. In real terms, magnums of champagne or cartons of late-night takeaway, a fortune measured in seafood and lemongrass. But the figures are incomprehensible, ghostly, like Soft Gold itself. They slip away from her. For a moment she feels – imagines she feels – the motion of so much money. It must be accumulating as Law stands here. He only looks so still, she thinks, because his money is not.

  ‘There you are,’ says Terence. ‘I couldn’t find you. But I see you’ve found him.’ He has a glass in one hand. Clear liquid. ‘I brought you a drink. It’s just water. Sparkling, I hope that’s alright.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ she says, and she is, now she has seen what she has come for. The receptionist withdraws the glass.

  ‘I’ll introduce you, then, and leave you to it.’ Anna notices that for the first time he has stopped smiling. ‘I should wish you luck, I suppose. Should I wish you luck, Inspector?’

  ‘It’s Anna.’

  Terence nods, watching her. ‘I trust him,’ he says, abruptly, roughly, as if he would like to say more. Instead he gestures towards the Cryptographer, and Anna follows him.

  He is near the centre of the hall, where the sound and sense of people is most intense. A woman older than Anna and with more apparent seniority waits beside him, apart from the encompassing crowd, humourless as a bodyguard. Two men are speaking to the Cryptographer together, excited, bullish with it, their voices falling over one another in the effort to communicate something already lost. A third is busy in the extraction of a business card. All the same he is the first of the group to notice Anna. His eyes appraise her, openly, as if she could present a threat to be respected.

  ‘Mister Law?’ Terence leans beside his employer, speaking in a quick undertone. And then they are all turning to observe her, the men necessarily quiet, Law himself smiling, holding out his hand.

  ‘You must be Anna,’ he says. ‘I’m John.’

  ‘Hello. I think we have an appointment to keep,’ she says, although in fact it is not what she thinks at all. No you’re not, is what she thinks. You’re the Cryptographer, or the Codemaker, or John Law: John-Law, the words running together, double-barrelled, trademarked, impersonal as a surname. You’re not John, she thinks. But it is not what she says.

  His hand feels soft, surprising; vulnerable, like that of a child. Breakable. He is still holding her own fingers and the heel of her palm. She remembers the impression of density, of something subcutaneous, and pulls away.

  ‘Of course,’ he says. ‘We have work to do. Do you enjoy your work, Anna?’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘So do I,’ he says, and nothing else. He is still smiling, although it seems to Anna he is also frowning.

  ‘Excuse me?’ It is one of the other men, the observant one, leaning towards her. Another hand being offered. ‘Tunde Finch, MRE. Anna Moore, is it? A pleasure. I missed who you were with –’

  ‘Gentlemen,’ says Terence, and he moves between them. ‘I’m afraid Mister Law has business. Anna, this is Margaret Mutevelian –’ The woman nods tersely. ‘Mister Law will join you both as soon as he is done. Gentlemen?’

  He ushers the men away from Law. Tunde Finch, MRE the last of them, the card still in his fallen hand, an empty expression on his face which seems as clear to Anna the inspector as spoken words – this was my chance, my one moment, and I have lost it – and then the Cryptographer is behind her, Terence murmuring at his side, and Margaret Mutevelian is walking with her to the elevators, leading her out of the company of strangers and up and away through the dim and luxurious corridors of the SoftMark Corporation.

  The quiet envelops her. After the babble and hubbub of the hall it is almost tangibly calming, as if relief could be breathed in on air. The corridors are soft and stainless underfoot.

  Along the walls are alcoves, lit plinths, vases of celadon and illustrated porcelain. It comes to Anna that there must be people working here somewhere. If so she doesn’t hear them. Perhaps everything is mechanised, she thinks. She tries to remember what floor they have come out on. She feels a long way from daylight.

  ‘Anna,’ says the figure beside her. Margaret Mutevelian’s voice is gentle, the English faintly Americanised. ‘May I call you Anna?’

  ‘Of course.’ She smiles at the older woman. The accountant’s face is handsome, her precise age indeterminate, the skin perfect with muscular or hormonal alteration.

  ‘Well then. Such a nice name. And please call me Margaret.’

  ‘Margaret.’

  ‘Mister Law will be joining us soon, but I was hoping to ask you some questions first. Before we begin.’

  It is an old relationship, that of inspector and accountant. A matter of diplomacy, since each is employed to consider the other with what amounts to a delicately veiled suspicion. There is a need for decorum, when the success of one may come to depend on the failure of the other. The tradition is as familiar to Anna as th
e language of the Revenue, and she feels herself relax into it.

  The corridor forks. Mutevelian leads them to the right. Sure of her way, as if she has been here many times before. ‘Would you mind?’

  ‘Not at all, if you think it will help,’ Anna says, but automatically; her mind is not in it. She is thinking of the Cryptographer in his hall of glass. His stillness, and the crowd around him.

  ‘It will certainly help me. Thank you. So, how long do you think your investigation will last?’

  ‘Six months. Perhaps less.’

  ‘Six months?’ The light of alcoves across her face. When Mutevelian looks away it is like observing the profile on a coin. ‘I see. Then you believe you have found something? A discrepancy?’

  ‘Six months isn’t long. I wouldn’t draw any conclusions from it.’ And in her mind she goes over, not the dry minutiae of the investigation, but an entirely different order of facts. The Cryptographer’s hands. His voice with the smile and the frown behind it. Do you enjoy your work, Anna? It is a strange question, she thinks. Strange for her. It is not something a client has ever asked her before.

  They ascend a flight of stairs. There are narrow windows here, bars of bezelled glass. Glimpses of courtyards, stone lanterns, a segment of bright November sky.

  ‘Six months. But six months of Revenue time is not six months. It can be a lifetime,’ says Mutevelian, and smiles. ‘At least for the victims.’

  ‘We prefer the term clients,’ Anna says, and a part of her, the hard part, flexes like muscle. Be careful, she thinks. Take care. This is the accountant of a man with false accounts. This is not the time or place to let your mind wander.

  ‘Of course.’ Mutevelian is still smiling. Her teeth are crooked, an odd inconsistency in an otherwise perfected face. ‘I don’t recognise you, Anna. I know the British Revenue well, I’ve worked with them many times. The kind of people people have nightmares about – I mean that as a compliment, you understand. But I don’t know you. I take it you are a Full Inspector? Ordinary or Senior?’

  ‘We don’t use those terms any more.’ In the natural light Anna sees Mutevelian’s mouth twitch. A moue of irritation.

  ‘And what terms do you use?’

  ‘I’m an Inspector, A2 grade.’

  Along one wall is a sculpture of articulated steel, abstract, serpentine, draconian. At the corridor’s end is a single door. Mutevelian stops in front of it. ‘Well. They should have sent A1,’ she says, mildly, as if she has said nothing at all, and Anna feels a rare slick of anger run through her, fluid as plasma. ‘Here we are,’ the accountant adds, and opens the door.

  The room is not large, and sparely furnished, but in its own way it is as much an expression of power as the hall of glass. There is a table fifteen feet long, a slab of some extinct dark wood, at which two men sit. There are two paintings, sparely lit, each of which Anna has seen countless times before, in countless reproductions, so that she knows them now as if they were her own possessions.

  A window spans the entirety of the east wall. Outside there are trees, cedars and silver birch, yews and acer, the light falling through their branches and foliage; and nothing else. The trees are so old and dense, or the courtyard so vast, that there is no sense of the walls beyond them, or London beyond that. It is like looking at a motion picture, or through some impossible lens. Out of one place, into another.

  ‘Mark Fugger, Marcus Cree,’ says Mutevelian. ‘This is Anna Moore.’

  She looks away from the spectacle of trees to find the men rising from their places. They are inconspicuous in a way that Anna associates with all accountancy, and at this moment, inattentive with unexpected anger, she can distinguish them only by age. ‘Inspector Moore,’ says the older of the two, Midwestern American, and is transparently disconcerted when she does not take his outstretched hand.

  She walks past him to the table. She can feel adrenalin still circulating through her, bright as mercury. It is not the strength it feels itself to be, she knows. She has never been insulted by an accountant – not professionally, as Mutevelian has done – but it is something she recalls Janet Sullivan describing. If the outcome of an interview seems inevitable, and undesirable enough, an accountant may try to obstruct it with careful offence. There is no law to say they must be subservient, and their first debt is always to their clients. But the Revenue has a long memory, and inspectors do not take kindly to obstruction. It is a risk few accountants are willing to take.

  Or perhaps she is only telling the truth. Perhaps Anna is a surprise to her. There are other inspectors who could have been sent, after all, older and more experienced workers. They could have sent A1, couldn’t they? Why, Anna thinks, did they send me?

  She takes off her coat, lays her briefcase on the table, clicks it open. Willing herself to be calm. I am good, she thinks, as if saying it into a mirror. She lifts the tablet computer from its leather cavity. Aware of the time and the place and of the men behind her, unsure of themselves, waiting for their cues.

  ‘Mark and Marcus will be assisting me in this case,’ says Mutevelian, somewhere out of sight.

  ‘Really,’ Anna says, as evenly as she can. ‘Well, you’ll need all the assistance you can get.’ And as she turns to them a door opens in the wall of glass, and John Law comes in.

  ‘Margaret,’ he says. ‘I’m late again, aren’t I?’

  ‘No, sir, not at all,’ Mutevelian replies, all decorous warmth. There is something on the shoulder of Law’s suit, a minute fragment of leaf or seed from the trees outside, and around him the cold, bright air.

  ‘Good. Well, it’s a bad habit. I’m sorry to have kept you waiting.’

  His gaze moves from Anna to the accountants. She is sure he is about to say more. Instead he glances back at her, and his expression changes. He is already turning away, closing the glass door, before Anna recognises amusement in his expression, and she feels another kind of anger, less certain of itself, touched with shame, at the fact that he has understood what he has missed.

  ‘So then, sit down,’ he says to them. ‘Please.’ The men find places beside him. Anna puts the table’s length between herself and the triumvirate of accountants. When there is quiet she looks up. His eyes are there, waiting for hers.

  ‘Would you like a drink?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘An antioxidant?’ He takes a pastille case from his pocket. In the natural light of the room she can see he is not quite cleanshaven, perhaps a day’s growth. It softens the pallor of his skin.

  ‘No, thank you.’

  ‘No.’ He puts one green pill in his mouth, tucks the silver case away, and sucks, gravely. ‘Here we are, then. How can I help you?’

  ‘This is only a preliminary meeting, you understand.’ She switches on the tablet computer, its soft radiance on her fingers.

  ‘I think I do.’

  ‘The investigation is likely to comprise several interviews, given the nature of your finances.’

  ‘I see. Then we’ll have time to get to know each other.’

  She ignores the irony which might not be irony, which might be what he means. He says it as if he means it. ‘Today we’ll talk about what you do in general terms. For example, how would you describe your work? Your business?’

  A standard first question, unthreatening and unobtrusive, designed to put a client at ease as much as to elicit information. Remember, Lawrence once told her, the first question should never be the one that matters. ‘My work is different from my business,’ Law says, sucking like a child with a sweetie, and he is still watching her. His eyes haven’t moved from her face.

  ‘Your business then. How would you describe it?’

  ‘My business is money.’

  ‘You are the owner of the SoftMark Corporation?’

  ‘I am.’

  She looks down at the tablet screen. ‘I understand that you own over eighty per cent of the corporation, and that the primary business of the corporation is computerware.’

  ‘It is.’ />
  ‘Mister Law,’ she says, at ease with practice, ‘I need you to be as transparent as possible in your dealings with me.’

  He cracks the last of the pill between his teeth. ‘Then I’ll try not to disappoint you. The business of SoftMark is computers. The profile of SoftMark is raised by Soft Gold. When I created Soft Gold, the code required a place it could be housed. It needed dedicated power, and a financial institution behind it that people could trust. SoftMark was in a position to provide these things. Three years after the new money was set up, I was paid a previously agreed quantity of SoftMark shares. The quantity was dependent on the success of the new money. The new money was somewhat more successful than SoftMark had anticipated. Eventually I came to hold a controlling stake in the corporation. But I did so because Soft Gold is here. My code is here. My fortune is largely theoretical. I think of myself as a scientist, not a businessman.’

  She types, Nature of Business: Money. The words look ludicrous even as she completes them, and she is angry again. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘You’re welcome,’ he says, and without looking she knows he is smiling.

  ‘And what did they get?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘I can see what you got from this. I can’t see what they gained from you.’

  ‘I see, yes. Alright.’ For the first time since they have sat down he looks away from her. She is aware of it at the upper edge of her vision, and of the relief of it. ‘When I came to them, SoftMark was already one of the most successful companies in the world. Now there is no need to qualify the term. I take full responsibility for that. I offered the corporation the most forceful advertising tool money could buy – their own money. I told them it would take their name into the pockets and minds of billions of people. I advised them to think of electric money as the ultimate product placement. As the junk mail no one would ever throw away.’

  It is easier to watch him, now he is no longer watching her. He has begun to rock gently in his seat, as if with some suppressed excitement or anxiety. ‘I also explained that, by offering preferential deals to Soft Gold users, they could gain unprecedented control of their own market sales. SoftMark now has a degree of pricing flexibility that other companies can only dream of.’