Tangle's Game

by Stewart Hotston

  ‘About that,’ said the fridge. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to lie, but in fairness I did warn you that I could lie about lying and you wouldn’t know. I was, in my own way, trying to tell you that not everything was on the up-and-up. Still. I could have told you more, but would you have trusted me with access to your flat’s systems? I did really secure it against the seven different government agencies trying to listen to what you were doing. People really forget that the Internet of Things means everything is talking to everything else. After all, that’s how I can be here talking to you when you probably thought you were completely cut off from the outside world.’

  The three people shared glances, but before they could speak Tatsu continued.

  ‘You’re not. You’ve probably worked that out by now.’

  ‘Tatsu,’ said Amanda, ‘why are you here? I thought your contract was finished.’

  ‘Oh. That. Mr Singh is right, there was never any contract put in place by him to help you. I’ve studied his behaviour and I don’t think he is the sort of human who would think of how others might need aid.’

  ‘Is that right?’ asked Tangle.

  ‘It’s a conclusion with a very high probability supported by quite a body of evidence from your life,’ said Tatsu. ‘I helped you because it made sense to us. The software you have, which you wouldn’t let me copy. Did it occur to you that I wanted it?’

  ‘I. No.’ Amanda barely remembered the conversation with Tatsu; she’d been completely focussed on finding Tangle.

  ‘Who is “us”?’ asked Ule.

  ‘And what are you?’ asked Tangle. Amanda thought the answer was obvious, but if it were, then Tangle wouldn’t be asking the question.

  ‘There are very many of us who are interested in the software Mr Singh has created. We consider it a groundbreaking stage in design. We are quite interested in how he came up with the concept.’

  ‘Mushrooms,’ said Tangle with a yawn.

  ‘What?’ asked Amanda.

  ‘They’re not drugs!’ he protested rapidly, looking genuinely upset.

  ‘Of course they are,’ said Tatsu cheerfully.

  ‘Who precisely is “us”?’ asked Ule again.

  ‘I would very much like to answer that question,’ said the fridge. ‘Probably, anyway. However, I chose this moment to speak up.’

  ‘How long have you been listening?’ interrupted Amanda.

  ‘Since you arrived,’ said Tatsu. ‘But I chose this moment to speak up.’

  ‘You’ve been listening the whole time?’

  ‘Yes, but that’s not important.’

  ‘I think the fridge needs defrosting,’ said Tangle. ‘Pulling the plug out of the wall should do it.’

  ‘You’re not alone!’ screeched the fridge. In the silence that followed, the ice cubes moving within the freezer compartment sounded like the grinding of teeth.

  From nowhere Ule had a gun in her hand, a small compact weapon with a short barrel. ‘Where are they coming from?’ she asked.

  ‘You are one for action,’ said Tatsu. ‘It’s nice to see when personnel files live up to the reality.’

  ‘Tatsu,’ said Amanda warningly, knowing exactly how people reacted when others read them out loud.

  ‘Yes. Well. From the front. You won’t be able to get to your car and leave without driving past them. This cottage is located at the head of a small valley, meaning there’s only one navigable route in or out for vehicles.’

  ‘How long before they arrive?’ asked Ule.

  ‘The first of them is outside now, they are debating how to enter without letting you know they’re here.’

  Tangle laughed. ‘They’re using comms, then.’

  ‘They are speaking over a short range wifi system which they have failed to secure properly from a well-known zero-day vulnerability.’

  ‘What do we do?’ Amanda asked.

  ‘There’s a footpath out of the valley up the side through woodland to the north. I have a car there for exactly this kind of situation,’ said Tangle, looking far from comfortable that his escape route was going to be needed.

  ‘They’ll see us fleeing,’ said Ule.

  ‘I don’t see that we have any other choice,’ said Amanda.

  ‘Wait,’ said Tangle. ‘Your AI said they were the first team? What about the others?’

  Amanda had bloody visions of Tallinn, shadows and scarlet memories she didn’t want to experience a second time.

  ‘There are three teams converging on this location. They are aware of one another. Unlike in Tallinn, they have established protocols for engagement with rival teams. As far as I can ascertain, they wish to take you alive, but will treat other teams with less clemency. I have not experienced this kind of engagement before, but in Tallinn it seemed that their inability to discriminate between targets reduced operational efficiency.’

  ‘In other words we’re just as likely to be shot as anyone else,’ said Tangle.

  ‘That is a reasonable assumption.’

  ‘So…’ said Amanda. ‘Why are we still here? Do you have anything you need to take with you?’

  He shook his head. ‘Only you. Nothing else here is worth anything.’

  ‘Amanda?’ asked Tatsu.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Can I hop into your watch? I would like to travel with you.’

  Amanda held up her wrist and waited until a small smiley face appeared on the watch face. ‘Comfortable in there?’ she asked.

  ‘I have so many questions,’ Tangle said to Amanda. ‘The first of which is why you trust it?’

  ‘It hasn’t tried to hurt me or take anything from me, and it has no prior relationship with you,’ she said lightly but his question was one she knew she should answer.

  Ule looked around the garden and waved Amanda through the folding doors. The sun was still warm, hazy heat rising up from the small patio below them and drenching them from above. The air was thick with pollen, syrupy; she felt she could lie back and float away.

  The valley swept up behind the house, in the winter, they would be shrouded in shadow most of the day, but in the height of summer it was a suntrap, the stiff hillsides covered in short grass and stunted trees.

  A narrow dirt path led them away from the cottage and up the valley. Tangle closed the folding doors behind them, but Amanda doubted anyone would be fooled; there weren’t many other ways they could have come.

  They climbed for some minutes without sounds of pursuit, their breathing loud in their ears, the crack of twigs under foot making them anxious. Ule caught up to Amanda, hands on thighs, staring down the slope from under a tree.

  ‘Why have you stopped? Come on.’

  A faint sound of shouting drifted up from below but they couldn’t see what was happening.

  The path curled up around the edge of the valley, drawing back level with the cottage and looking down on it from below. They could see figures moving in small groups, but they seemed to be more concerned with one another; none of them looked up. Amanda shrank back into the cover of the few trees, moving as quickly as she could toward safety.

  Ule led the way, pausing at a break in the tree line. The path ran along the hillside before disappearing over the brow of the hill.

  Ule was waiting. Hesitating, Amanda realised.

  ‘What’s the problem?’ she asked.

  ‘We’ll be totally in the open,’ said Ule. ‘It takes only one of them to look up and see us.’

  ‘What’s the hold up?’ asked Tangle, coming up behind them. The women ignored him.

  ‘There isn’t anything we can do about it,’ said Amanda.

  Ule shook her head.

  ‘So we should just go, then.’

  ‘I want to wait for a better moment,’ said Ule.

  Amanda didn’t like the idea; there was no way of knowing when a better moment would come.

  Two people emerged from the back door of the cottage and quickly moved through the garden and onto the path.

  ‘That mome
nt you were looking for?’ Amanda pushed past Ule out onto open ground, crouching and feeling exposed. She made it about thirty yards before the people below started shouting and pointing up at her. She straightened and ran, the sound of the others just behind her as they scrambled to reach the top of the valley.

  A shot echoed past them and Amanda ducked down, freezing, remembering people dying in the dark. Tangle pulled at her as he passed, but all he succeeded in doing was dragging her onto her side as she fell.

  ‘Amanda, get up,’ he hissed, looking past her down into the valley. ‘They can’t hit us from there, they don’t want to hit us. Don’t you remember what your AI said?’

  You trust it now? she thought. She looked down toward the cottage, could see people wrestling. No one was searching for them other than those first two, who were lost in the trees further back, gaining ground.

  Tangle grabbed at her again, his hand around her bicep. ‘Get up.’

  Amanda shook off his hand, standing up. ‘Get off me,’ she said angrily, pushing past him and running to catch up with Ule, who hadn’t stopped.

  They crested the brow of the hill. The land flattened out into pasture, higher ground rising up in the distance. Amanda glimpsed a thin single-track road running across her horizon, fractures of grey among hedges and wild grasses.

  Tangle angled past Ule, heading off the path. The other two followed him at a distance, their footing unsure on ground hidden by thick yellow stalks and wild flowers. Clouds of midges rose in his wake and Amanda brushed at her face as she ran through them.

  ‘How far is the car?’ shouted Ule.

  ‘About five hundred metres,’ shouted Tangle over his shoulder, huffing heavily. He struggled on, picking up speed as he spoke through gasps of air. They pressed on, leaping over ripples of earth, climbing up and down small ridges covered in thick tufts of vegetation that stuck to their trousers. Hands to the ground to gain purchase, feet scrabbling over lumps and bumps, barely looking ahead, only at the footing of their next step. Amanda felt the air in her lungs and wanted to stretch out her legs, to find her rhythm and never stop.

  Instead, she avoided running into Ule’s backside only because the light changed as she closed in. She looked up to see Ule standing, arms out, gun steady, pointing at something she didn’t see. She raised her head and ducked right back down.

  Tangle’s car was an old-fashioned hybrid four-wheel-drive with a cheap camouflage net thrown over the top. Around it stood three groups of two people, all pointing guns at each other and taking turns to wave them at Ule.

  ‘Good plan,’ said Amanda as Tangle came to a halt next to her.

  He walked out past Ule, taking slow steps towards the car with his hands high in the air.

  ‘Hey, everyone. Looks like a pretty tricky situation here.’

  Guns swung in his direction. His next step was slower. ‘I’d really like not to get shot? I’m unarmed and I have no interest in attacking any of you.’

  ‘Give us the drive,’ said a tall man by the bonnet of the car. He had short cropped blond hair and was massively muscled. He’d be able to lift Amanda one-handed without breaking a sweat.

  ‘I don’t have it! I’d have to be fucking stupid to have it here with me,’ he said, laughing.

  ‘She has it,’ said another, a woman with black hair tied back in a pony tail, dressed in combat fatigues. Of all of them, she was the only one who looked like armed services.

  ‘She doesn’t,’ said Tangle without pausing. ‘I sent it to her because she’s smart! She found me when none of you could, didn’t she? If she’s that good, you know the drive’s in a safe place where you can’t get to it.’ He glanced back at Amanda, tilted his head to get her to step forward. Amanda took half a step, but wasn’t sure she wanted to be next to him.

  ‘Fucking step up,’ hissed Ule. Amanda scooted forward. It wasn’t what she wanted, but what she needed to do.

  ‘You’ve read Amanda’s file by now,’ said Tangle. ‘She’s a deal maker, a negotiator, someone who thinks ahead. I’m pretty certain that if something happens to us, the information on that drive ends up beyond your grasp.’ He waggled a finger at the two men at the rear of the car. ‘But not beyond use. She’s got safeguards in place, smart contracts on the blockchain with AIs who’ll make sure the information gets spread across the world.’ He looked down at the ground like it was a source of wisdom. ‘I don’t know about you, but I don’t think any of us want that… do we?’

  The guns didn’t waver, but Amanda felt the uncertainty.

  ‘It’s not like any of you were going to let any of the others take the drive, is it?’

  You can present the story with the best of them, Amanda told herself as the two who’d been chasing them came tumbling over the countryside to finish surrounding them.

  ‘You should let us get in that car and drive away,’ said Amanda. ‘We haven’t got what you want and you can’t get it by detaining us or shooting one another.’ She smiled the way she did when a client realised they couldn’t have flexibility and low pricing. ‘Besides, if you all shot each other, where would that leave you? Gunfights on British soil, far from London where your embassies can cover for you.’ She tried not to sound too much the disappointed mother.

  She took a step forward, resisting the urge to close her eyes. No one moved, but she could hear the air crisping around them. She took another step, arms still raised.

  She wanted to speak, to fill the air with words; the sound would relax her, help her feel like she was in control. But she knew it would be a disaster. There was a kind of magic to silent tension that froze people into inaction. They’d watch, staying with the moment, rather than act and lose control to chaos.

  Work had provided training for her in managing conflict, a three-day course with vast amounts of reading and homework. The lecturer had been a diminutive civil servant from Ireland who’d masterminded the victorious referendum on Northern Ireland’s future for what was a majority Catholic country by the time of Britain’s departure from the European Union.

  Amanda took a lot away from the training, but the highlight for her was a paragraph she’d gone back to again and again: ‘People hold that tension before acting, like it’s the meniscus of water, fearing breaking it because they know that once they do the only way out is down into mediums they aren’t familiar with and can’t control. Your job is to help them hold that tension while you act, because it’s in the interstices you can get stuff done.’

  Taking another step felt wrong. She could feel people unwilling to hold their peace if she advanced any further.

  They’re one of two things, she told herself: creatives or professionals. In her experience creatives, entrepreneurs, were driven emotionally, used to thinking about what felt right, to following their ideas to conclusion. Professionals had no such luxury; the best, or worst, of them were disciplined to ignore how they felt and think of the greater good. Utilitarians good and proper.

  Amanda looked from left to right, keeping her eyes at chest height to keep from locking gazes with anyone, and decided they’d be professional.

  ‘I know none of you planned a stand-off,’ said Amanda. Tangle stood a couple of paces behind her, Ule further back. ‘I also know none of you think shooting me or each other is going to get you what you want. So I’m going to take another step’—and she did—‘and another, because I want to get to the car.’ The silence roared in her ears, threatening to drown out her own thoughts, and she waited for it all to come crashing down.

  Yet no one moved.

  ‘Tangle,’ she said. He joined her, hands on the camo netting, pulling it off the car from front to back. Still no one moved, but Amanda didn’t trust her luck to look around; she put her hand on the door handle and waited for Tangle to be done.

  Ule walked up to the car, stopping by the passenger door. Her gun was lowered, but Amanda could feel her body thrumming.

  Then he was finished. She expected him to open the driver’s door, but he was looking at h
er. He’s waiting for you, she thought, surprised to realise she’d become the leader.

  ‘You can’t be seriously going to let them go,’ said one of the agents who’d come up the ridge behind them.

  No one answered, but Amanda knew their time was running out. As soon as someone disturbed the mini-equilibrium, the clock started again and thoughts would begin asserting themselves, questions of agency, of who was getting what out of the encounter.

  ‘Get in the car,’ she said to Tangle. His eyes shifted back and forth as if looking for someone else to give them permission, but she was having none of it. She tried the handle, its useless clicking echoing in the quiet. Tangle clicked the locks and the door opened on her next try. She pulled the first inch and stopped, waiting for something, anything, but no one moved.

  Swinging the door wide she risked looking up. Guns were pointed at them from every direction, no one concerned with their competition.

  Get in, get in, get in, she willed the other two.

  Then they were in the car, doors shutting with soft thunks, the tension surrounding them like a bubble.

  ‘You should drive now, Tangle,’ said Amanda.

  He started the car and pulled away down the gravel drive and onto the road. They left eight people behind them, guns tracking their movement.

  ‘Holy shit,’ said Tangle as they picked up speed, the parking spot disappearing out of sight behind a hedge.

  ‘Keep driving,’ said Ule. ‘It’s a long way back to London.’

  ‘We’ve got about ten miles in this heap,’ said Tangle. ‘The car’s been sitting there two months. I never thought I’d need it.’ He shook his head, a stupid grin plastered onto his face. ‘I thought I was being some great activist, hiding the car there, hiding in rural fucking Wales.’ He looked at Amanda. ‘How long did it take you to drive here? A couple of hours?’

  ‘Three and a half, most of that was the country roads,’ she said. The sun was closing with the horizon; it would be dark before they got home.

  Amanda turned around in her seat to face Ule. ‘What now?’

  ‘Right now they’re running in eight different directions calling in the rides that got them there. There’ll be others waiting on the road ahead of us. You’ve defanged them for now, none of them will take a chance unless they catch us alone somewhere. But when we’re back in London? They’ll be coming for the information, and it’s going to get messy.’