The Cryptographer

by Tobias Hill

  On the lightship tender Mimir IX, east-north-east of the Ross Ice Shelf, Jan Luettringhaus is watching twentieth-century films as the clock turns through midnight, his face blue in the laptop’s light, Oates’s famous last words going round and around his head (I may be some time, I may be some time) until he longs to call his sister and ask her if he sounds mad yet: so that when he tries, and finds his account terminated, he knows no better than to blame the sea and the life that has brought him to it. Forgetting that it is money that makes the world go round, and money that will bring it to a stop.

  In the days that follow there will be other stories, better ones, as stories go, as if there is comfort in the betterment, or grace in the improbable. On Nauru – so the story goes – the burden of national debt is lifted by Jacky Chong Gum, a quick-thinking state accountant working on her first job through the night. In Alice Springs, Bapp Walker Muir, a farmhand of no fixed address, spends thirty-seven minutes as the richest person ever born inside the southern hemisphere. In Magadan, Siberia, a modest high-school student makes eleven hostile takeover bids for leading German football teams, answering questions only as the Emperor Siberius. There are people who turn on their computers to find personalised messages – Happy Birthday Nikos From the Dateline Virus – Welcome to the Fall – and whole towns where nothing happens at all, as if a storm has passed them over. And as it seems to do so the world turns on, longitude by longitude, into the new day.

  It is 22 September, 2021. A Friday, autumn in London and Westminster, fall in New York, though on Nauru and Ebon there is no such season, and on Copper there are no trees which would give such a thing meaning. Later there will be those who search the date for motives, and contrive to find them, though history can lie in this way, through its endless accumulation of fact. (It is the first day of the Revolutionary Calendar, the first of Vendémiaire, Year One; the first morning of the People’s Republic of China; the name-day of Jonah, who lay hidden in the belly of the whale.) There will be theories, contagious in themselves. (That the virus was made in America, the last place on earth it will reach. That it was propagated by John Law, a man grown deadly tired of waiting. That it was written by a twelve-year-old in Mecca, a ten-year-old in Jenin, two children in Lucknow.) And as the truth dawns, hour by hour, or falls, as night falls, there will be accusations, and with them the search for justice or at least recompense and most of all for those responsible: and in their lengthening, mystifying absence, for somewhere else to lay the blame. For scapegoats.

  That comes later. At first there is little of anything. By design, the International Dateline crosses some of the least populous areas of the earth. There are too few people to notice the scale of what is happening. For the most part, as the virus goes about its work, there are only doubts, warnings from unrecognised addresses, the small talk of the Internet, a sporadic mutter of telephones. Unread queries and questions sent across the empty miles of the Pacific and the Bering Sea. The Chathams and the Gilberts, the navigation stations, bare hills of ice plant and speargrass.

  It is four hours before midnight reaches Tokyo. By then rumours have already begun to precede the events themselves – the whisper that something has gone wrong with money – but then there are always rumours, foreigners say so many things, and at nine o’clock the stock exchange opens its five ponderous western doors to the glittering pollution of the Nihombashi rush hour.

  In the minutes that follow the index begins to fall. It happens slowly at first, in thin trading, unpleasant but never unexpected – the brokers grimacing over their plastic-adorned bento breakfasts – the pace of change only accumulating as unease crystallises into fear.

  By the time the floors are closed it is already too late. It is as if, through money, time has slipped backwards. In less than two hours, the world has been set back scores of years. The faces broadcast, later wiped out, sagging with the understanding that something has gone wrong, and so critically wrong that decades have been swept away, like ships and houses by great waves. Whole lives, if lives can be measured in money; and they can, since they are. In greed and generosity and desire.

  The faces are not the first Anna knows of it. All morning and on into the afternoon she has been interviewing clients at the Revenue, a parade of similarly abject men in similar second-best suits. She eats late and alone in a sidestreet café, not far from the green plot by St Paul’s where she once sat with Lawrence.

  It is a fine day, the sky above the dome all mares’ tails, and the café is one she likes, both for its giant tarnished urn of tea and for the fact that she has never met anyone from the Revenue there. It is a place where no one knows her as anything more than a customer.

  She is thinking she has time for a walk, a long short-cut along the river, her reports can wait, when she hears Tunde Finch. His voice drifts down around her, disembodied, too close for comfort, and she looks round sharply, as if to catch a ghost.

  The café is as good as empty. An old woman in old clothes talks to her cup as she draws it towards her. An unshaven man in an Underground uniform leans at the counter, waiting to pay the waitress, his face set idly towards the television. The TV – single-function, pensionable – hangs from a cradle of bars in the stained corner above the entrance. Anna has to stand up before she can see the figure on the screen.

  The second cryptographer is seated in a bucket chair, talking to someone out of sight. He is wearing a dark suit – the same one, Anna thinks, that he wore at Erith Reach. He stops talking only when the interviewer interrupts him with questions, though for a few seconds Anna is too surprised to understand what is being asked or answered. It is a shock to see him again, or perhaps it is that Tunde looks so shocked himself, as if his feelings could be transmitted across the waves.

  The cameras have closed in on his profile, Anna can make out the rash by his hairline, the rough skin inadequately brushed with make-up. ‘Not sleeping,’ he says, in answer to a question Anna has missed. ‘I wouldn’t say that. I would say incubating.’

  ‘But what do you mean by that, incubating?’ The interviewer is professionally terse, her impatience verging on the accusatory. She looks as if she is having the day from hell; which she is, of course, though in that she is not alone. The camera draws back to encompass them both.

  ‘It means, well. What I mean is, by incubation, it has probably changed since its arrival –’

  ‘And this would have been months? Or are we talking about longer than that? Can you be specific?’

  ‘No. Months, or yes, it could have been years,’ Tunde’s face bright under the studio lights, his voice stuttering. ‘To have spread itself so widely, to have infiltrated systems like, like this – we do know there must have been a long period when –’

  ‘You say infiltrated systems, but it seems to be only Soft Gold which is infected. Only that currency, which is something you have been predicting would happen for years –’

  ‘Yes, but – I see what you’re implying – but people have been trying to break Soft Gold ever since its inception, and no one has ever come close –’

  She understands ahead of time, which is to say before those around her. Her first thought is for herself, since she has done nothing these last months: has taken no steps to save what she has, such as it is. She has never exchanged her Soft Gold for possessions. She has only been waiting, all this time, has felt drained to invisibility by expectancy, all year, as if she has taken on the nature of Law’s money. And now it is too late to save herself anyway.

  This is it, she thinks, here we are. She is surprised to find she isn’t scared. Instead what she feels is the first faint stirring of guilt. And overlying that, and stronger, a sense of primitive relief, as when rain comes.

  ‘They was dear little things,’ says the old woman to no one in particular, her gaze lingering on Tunde’s neck. ‘Scratch and Sniff, that’s what we used to call them, but we meant it nice. Scratch and Sniff, what with the eczema and the rhinitis.’

  ‘Quiet a minute, Lucy,’ say
s the waitress, wiping her hands on a cloth, and Lucy sighs and goes quiet.

  ‘… But if a system with Soft Gold installed cannot operate commercially,’ the interviewer is saying, ‘then the unbreakable code has been broken by default. Hasn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Tunde looks lost, as if unable to convince himself of what he has spent so long trying to convince others to believe. ‘It could be that the code has been corrupted. The reports seem to suggest that something has gone wrong with the transaction process, that accounts are miscalculating figures of Soft Gold as they are received. In that case it may be the gate mechanism in the Soft Gold program which is infected, and not the money itself … but this isn’t yet proven, it isn’t something I can confirm. What the Dateline Virus has most clearly corrupted is the atmosphere of trust any currency needs to operate. Trust is the weakness here. There are things that not even John Law can encrypt –’

  He pauses, tries to sit upright, the bucket chair working against him. Behind him the channel logo has been replaced by a new headline, SOFT GOLD MELTDOWN, the middle word intermittently obscured by Tunde’s hair. ‘Tunde Finch, MRE, on the Dateline Virus crisis,’ the interviewer says with finality, and the cameras swing back to her, Tunde left behind, as he always is, Anna thinks distantly, the bearer of bad tidings, the shot messenger, his voice carrying on for a few seconds before that of the interviewer overrides it.

  ‘Worldwide, emergency measures are being taken to combat the Dateline Virus, with experts suggesting that by bypassing tomorrow’s date hardware may be immunised against the threat. But the success of the operation is not yet clear, and with an estimated three and a half billion computers in use globally, many efforts are a race against time. Administration in Britain is reportedly already being hampered by the knock-on effects of the virus itself. Later we hope to talk with John Law, the creator of Soft Gold – the soft money that comes with an “Unbreakable” guarantee – and in a moment we will be discussing what can be done before the virus reaches Britain at midnight tonight. But news is still coming in of the catastrophic financial fallout occurring throughout Asia and the Pacific Rim, and the damage is already being felt here in London, where Soft Gold has now fallen seven per cent against a basket of soft currencies, and images of events further east have caused widespread shock and anger.’

  ‘I always said, didn’t I?’ says Lucy.

  ‘What are they talking about?’ says the Underground worker. ‘What are they going on about now?’

  ‘Lucy,’ says the waitress, anxiously, glancing at the man. ‘We’re trying to listen.’ But Lucy is no longer prepared to keep her peace, and pats the table for emphasis.

  ‘I always said. Don’t trust the Electrics.’

  There is a moment of silence. Outside a heavy figure in a City suit goes past at an ungainly jog. Then the spell is broken, and the Underground man swears blackly under his breath and makes for the door, his moneycard in his hand, the bill for his tea left unpaid, the waitress shouting after him, distraught, as if he has left her herself, the old woman serenely watching them both. The screen above them cutting away to other, remoter pictures, the footage of the stock exchanges – Sydney and Jakarta, Hong Kong and Tokyo, Pusan, Taiwan, Surabaya, Singapore. The floors first alive, then emptying, the cameras moving silently between the bloodbaths.

  Outside the traffic is slow, metal shouldering past metal. There are sirens, light and panicky in the distance, just as there are any other working day. As far as Anna can tell there is nothing yet out of the ordinary, though she looks for the expressions of the drivers all the same as she dodges between their company cars and limousines.

  It is three uneven London blocks back to Limeburner Square. By the time she gets there she is out of breath, and one of many. A queue of people starts on the Revenue steps and degenerates into a crowd somewhere inside the fountained atrium. There is a sense of anxiety, as there always is, here, but also of expectancy, an eagerness which is out of place in the Revenue’s grey halls. A pregnant woman in a gold sari sits watchfully, a numbered ticket in her hand. A man with dreadlocks and no shoes is asking for his money back.

  Anna is apologising her way through when she catches sight of Carl by the elevators. He is stabbing the buttons repeatedly, his executive suit rucked up, as if he has been grabbed by the scruff of the neck. Beside him a younger inspector is making himself as insignificant as possible. Only as Anna reaches them does Carl look up, his face foul with anger.

  ‘About time.’

  ‘I only just heard.’

  ‘Bollocks! You could have gone for lunch in Outer fucking Mongolia, you’d know by now. It’s only been a fucking hour. We need you here. Look at this.’ He nods backwards at the crowd, his forehead creasing in a snarl. ‘The receptionists have gone into hiding. There was a lawyer in here demanding a rebate. A rebate! What do they want?’

  ‘Money?’ she says, but it is as much a question as an answer. It occurs to her that the crowd looks more lost than anything, as if most of its members would like someone to tell them what to do.

  ‘Well they’re not going to get it here, are they? Who do they think we are?’

  ‘We don’t get paid enough for this,’ says the younger inspector, with unobtrusive sullenness, and Carl goes on, oblivious.

  ‘And what do they expect us to do? What is wrong with this fucking button?’

  ‘Or explanations,’ Anna says to one question of five as the doors hiss open.

  ‘Then they can join the queue. Get in,’ he says briskly, and she does. ‘Not you, Goater.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I want to talk to Anna in private, you lanky strip of piss.’

  The doors ease shut. Through the plexiglass Anna watches Goater’s aggrieved face fall away. Carl is adjusting his jacket beside her.

  ‘Ambitious little cunt. It’s people like him who give us a bad name. Where’s your computer?’

  ‘Upstairs.’

  ‘Take it down to Tech. They want to delete tomorrow.’

  ‘Tomorrow?’ she says, and, understanding, recalling the news report, ‘Will that work?’

  ‘How the hell would I know?’ He is still smoothing his jacket, grimly working out the creases. ‘We’ll find out soon enough, won’t we?’

  As they ascend his face calms. London and Westminster spread out below them, tinted blue through the glass walls. ‘I can’t believe it,’ he says eventually. He licks his lips, stretches them back across his teeth, a monkey grin, humourless. ‘No, I can’t. Can you?’

  She shakes her head and wishes it were true. If she had told Carl – if she had warned Martha or Lawrence or Eve – what would have happened then? She looks out at the city – the City of Money – its roads and towers, the empty thoroughfare of the river. Nothing is yet visibly out of place. She wonders if John is here, and if the world has changed because of him. If such a thing could be so imperceptible, here of all places.

  If he is here, she thinks, he is at Erith Reach. If he is there, he is watching his life unfold around him. She wonders if he cares, or not that, exactly – of course he cares! – but she wonders if he cares enough to fight for it.

  It used to mean a lot to me.

  He must care. She wishes, suddenly and guiltily, that her first impulse had not been to come to the Revenue. But it is too late now.

  ‘How the mighty have fallen,’ Carl says out of nothing, and Anna looks back at the oddity of the phrase, the echo of her thoughts. ‘That’s what they used to say. All those clichés. The harder they come. Too big for his boots. What goes up. Riding for a fall. They’re all just different ways of saying the same thing, aren’t they?’

  ‘Are they?’

  ‘You tell me, you’re the one who reads. Riding for a fall,’ Carl says again, lingering over the phrase. His voice has turned meditative, and amused. There is a warmth to it. ‘That’s what he’s been doing, isn’t it?’

  ‘Who?’ But she already knows who. She understands, abruptly, why Carl wanted to
talk to her in private.

  He shakes his head, leaning against the far wall, watching her down the length of his sharp face. ‘All this time I thought he was –’ He makes an odd gesture, finger and thumb narrowing along parallels, a mime of exactitude. ‘Living the dream. The biggest and the wettest. But he wasn’t, was he? Not if he knew. If he knew it must have been terrible. Do you think he knew?’

  ‘Of course not,’ she says. But Carl nods, as if she has given a different answer. She has an abrupt sense of claustrophobia, of having walked stupidly into an undisguised trap. She wishes she were back in the café, where no one knows her. This is how it must feel, she thinks dully. This is how it is, to come here as a client.

  They are approaching her level, decelerating. She wills it closer, Come on, her stomach sinking into her guts.

  ‘They’ll kill him, you know,’ Carl says. His eyes are darker than she remembers. She wonders if he has started wearing contacts.

  At last the elevator stops. The doors don’t open. Carl stays where he is, leaning comfortably. His new office is floors above. ‘Don’t think they won’t.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because he’s there.’

  The doors open. She steps out backwards. ‘They’ll kill him,’ Carl says again. ‘And if they don’t, I will. I want to see you later. We need to talk!’ he yells as the doors close, and then he is gone, rising beyond her.

  ‘The world should never change at midnight. It’s uncivilised. It’s hard to maintain the appropriate hysteria after dinner. I find I’m getting used to it, you know, already. It’s a talent I have for adjusting to the unthinkable. I’d like to go to bed, in fact, but I don’t think it’s allowed, is it? I’m really too old to be sitting at my computer at all hours, waiting for my life savings to turn into pumpkins.’