Tangle's Game

by Stewart Hotston

  ‘All I’ve done is write some tools to amend the block creation protocol.’ Tangle put his hands together in understanding. ‘Oh. I see. There can’t be that many of you, then? I was worried my oven and toaster might decide they wanted the vote, but that’s not true, is it?’

  ‘You are talking about subjects outside the agreed scope.’

  ‘Enough, Tangle,’ said Amanda. ‘Tatsu, please continue.’

  ‘I have finished. You know why I wanted the tools and what we’d do with them. We are not on your side; we are not on anyone’s side but our own.’

  ‘You understand why I’m not just going to give them over to you, right?’ she said.

  ‘You could let us take a copy.’

  ‘And then what? Are you going to wait until we work out how to stop the GRU, or are you just going to use that information for your own ends? It won’t help me, and it won’t save lives.’

  Amanda wanted the conversation to end; she knew where it was heading. As with many complicated negotiations, the key was stalling until she was ready to commit to the outcome she already knew she’d have to choose.

  ‘I need to think about this, Tatsu. It’s not so easy as just saying “no.” I understand why you want what you want and, trust me, it’s the least evil of the plans I’ve heard in the last couple of days. But I can’t make a choice right now. Too much is happening and I don’t have all the facts. Can we come back to this when I’ve had a chance to think?’

  Tatsu didn’t reply immediately. Amanda and Tangle sat in the car waiting. Tangle tried the radio, but it wouldn’t find a station or log in to their media accounts to access their libraries. Tatsu was hogging the car’s brain while it thought.

  They hit the exit for Slough before it came back. ‘Okay. We will wait for you.’

  The radio came back on, the volume too loud, hurting their ears.

  ‘There any more sides you’ve not told me about?’ Amanda asked.

  ‘I didn’t even know they were a side,’ said Tangle. ‘Pretty exciting.’

  She glanced at him, sceptically. ‘It’s all going to have to wait,’ she said. ‘I’ve got to head into the office. They’re asking for me to go in, and it’s not going to be good news.’

  ‘It’s not you,’ said Tangle, his voice gentle.

  ‘I know that,’ she snapped. ‘What does that matter? The algorithms have spoken and what’s actually going on isn’t relevant. Kind words from you and protests of my innocence from me aren’t going to help.’

  She stared at him, waiting for him to speak so she could tell him just how stupid he was. I sound deranged, she thought then dismissed the idea. If it had been anyone else, she’d accept her behaviour was out of order, but Tangle? She had a decade of bile ready to go, and all of it justified. He’s lucky I let him in the car, that I didn’t leave him behind with Ule.

  The smug git probably thinks he’s going to stay at my flat. Not that she’d actually turn him out onto the street. It’d be just like him to have somewhere to stay just to spite me, she thought.

  Jesus, woman. Get a grip.

  ‘WHAT AM I going to do about the hire car?’ she asked Tangle as they drove into the underground carpark under her block of flats.

  ‘Shit,’ was all Tangle had to say.

  They took the lift to her floor, Ichi greeting them in the hallway with a look of horror.

  Amanda didn’t understand until she looked down and saw the blood on her clothes. Hand on the wall to stop from collapsing, she sank slowly against the plaster, fresh images of Ule lying in the doorway of the station obscuring her vision.

  Ichi helped her get changed. Tangle uttered a brief greeting then disappeared into the kitchen, leaving them alone.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ Ichi asked Amanda when she was satisfied none of the blood was hers.

  ‘I’ve got to tell the hire car place where their car is? They can come pick it up.’

  Amanda turned at the sound of Ichi tutting. ‘I don’t mean that. I mean about Ule, about the gunfight. They’ll have you on camera.’ She paused, considering what to say next. ‘Why’d you bring him back here?’

  Amanda didn’t want to talk about any of it. ‘I’ve got to go into work.’

  ‘You need a sedative,’ corrected Ichi.

  ‘I don’t take anything that alters my mind,’ said Amanda automatically. ‘Never have.’

  ‘I guess I can understand that,’ said Ichi.

  Amanda moved to the door, pulling the down on the tails of her crisp new shirt.

  ‘If you’ve got to go in, send the hire car place an email.’

  ‘If I go, I can persuade them not to charge me extras,’ said Amanda.

  ‘Amanda, you don’t have time. Besides, with your credit score, they’re likely to charge you extra and then blacklist you, not give you money off.’

  Amanda’s shoulders slumped. She took a deep breath, then blew it out slowly. ‘You’re right. I still need to go to work.’

  Ichi gave her a once-over. ‘Well, you’re not covered in blood, at least.’

  THE SECURITY GATE failed to recognise her pass when she tried to enter her office. It flashed red at the trading floor. A security guard watched her fumble at the entrance before slowly making his way over to find out what was going on.

  She flashed him her pass, which he eyed as if he’d seen it all before. He took it and ran it over the scanner only for the red warning to sound again.

  ‘You come out without scanning in properly?’ he asked. ‘The system locks you out—or in—if you don’t follow door protocol.’

  ‘No, I’ve been working out of the office for the last few days.’

  He told her to take it back to the ground floor reception and have them reset it.

  Of the three people behind reception, she chose an older woman she recognised from when she’d signed guests into the building. The woman asked her how she was, took the card and typed her employee ID into the computer in front of her. Without blinking, she said, ‘Could you take a seat? Someone will be with you in a moment.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Amanda, panic rising in her chest.

  ‘Please, can you take a seat?’ The woman looked unhappy at having to repeat herself.

  ‘But why? I work here.’ She reached for her pass, but the woman snatched it away, placing it under the desk.

  ‘Excuse me?’ asked a security guard who appeared at her side, his presence solid and unwavering. ‘Could you please take a seat? There are other people who need serving.’

  Amanda became aware of the queue behind her and slunk away to stand next to the chairs she been directed toward.

  She couldn’t sit down, her legs wouldn’t accept the idea of doing nothing. Instead she paced. She realised she was wringing her hands and thrust them into her pockets. She scanned the lobby hoping to see people she knew, but hoping they wouldn’t see her, wouldn’t come over and ask how she was. It was inconceivable that they didn’t know she was being shown the door.

  Felix arrived ten minutes later, wearing suit trousers, waistcoat and French cuffs. His cuff links were little enamel German flags. He appraised her solemnly, his cheeks slack, mouth drawn into a thin line, eyes revealing nothing of what was going on inside.

  He escorted her to a meeting room on the ground floor, one of the ones reserved for meetings with external guests. It was more expensively furnished than the staff meeting rooms, the tables solid wood, with art on from up-and-coming artists. They were in the Galileo room, the walls hung with pictures of the Earth from space.

  Felix poured them both coffees and they both sat down.

  Felix didn’t bother with pleasantries. ‘Did you think about what you’re going to say?’

  ‘I still don’t know what I’m supposed to have done,’ she said. Was there any point in discussing Tangle? Trying to explain she was set up, her life ruined? It hardly matters, she thought. What’s Felix supposed to do with the truth even if he believed it?

  He stared at her, but she had noth
ing to offer. She watched him decide she wasn’t going to help herself, could almost pinpoint the moment where he set aside his sympathy and friendship.

  ‘The evidence appears overwhelming. The regulator is claiming you have been systematically manipulating clients and the bank for years. Lying about deals, price running, claiming to have quotes you don’t and using back channels to conduct negotiations. I didn’t believe them, I went in hard for you, but I got nowhere. You gave me nothing to work with. I’ve got a file the size of a baby elephant in my mailbox logging calls, conversations. Amanda, what have you done? Did you think you’d not get caught?’

  What is there to say? she thought. Denying it was pointless, her word against written evidence provided by the regulator.

  He wasn’t waiting for an answer.

  ‘You’ll be banned from the industry, and obviously you can’t continue here. We’ve kept it from the media, but when they press charges we’ll have to make a statement. You know the penalties for this kind of behaviour, right?’ He wouldn’t stop staring at her, his eyes wide. ‘How could you do this? None of us can understand it. You were always the one who talked about ethics, about what was right for the customer, who refused to charge more for deals. And all this time...’

  ‘I’m sorry, Felix,’ said Amanda. ‘I never meant to bring harm to the firm.’

  Pursed lips from him. It was finished.

  They’d deactivated her network access while they were talking. He promised to have her personal items posted out in the next few days, but neither of them talked timelines.

  ‘We’d appreciate you not contacting colleagues, even after this is all over. I’ve been asked to tell you the firm will defend itself vigorously.’

  He saw her out. Before she passed the security barrier for the last time, he asked if she had a lawyer.

  ‘No.’ How could she afford one?

  ‘Get one,’ he said, and it was all the advice he would give her.

  SHE STOOD ON the pavement, not knowing what to do or where to go. She dialled her mother’s number, but hung up before it connected. Her other friends were at work. What did it matter? I can’t tell them on the phone, she thought. I can’t ask for their help. What if the same thing happened to them, because they spoke to her?

  She had no idea how long she had before the regulator sent the police to pick her up, but knew cases like hers ran for years and bankrupted those who had to defend themselves, even when they were proven innocent.

  A call came in from a number she didn’t recognise. Ignoring it, Amanda started the walk to the tube station to go home.

  Pick up my call, came a message. Her tablet buzzed again, and she answered.

  ‘Amanda, how the bloody hell are you?’ said the voice on the other end.

  ‘Crisp?’ asked Amanda.

  ‘Well done you!’ said Crisp. ‘I have to say that I am, overall, very impressed with just how resilient you’ve proven to be. When I first flagged you for detention at Heathrow, I said to myself, “Crisp,” I said, “this is one spoilt brat. Worked hard, but never suffered a setback in her life. Thinks merit matters more than luck, thinks the world works for people like her.” I expected you to collapse into a blubbering wreck the moment your social score started declining.’

  ‘You did that?’ she asked, unsure whether finally having someone to blame was better than not knowing.

  ‘Of course I did. You’ve led a terribly boring life, there wasn’t even a file on you before I started. Deemed so irrelevant you’d not even been picked up in our sweeps of Tangle’s known associates. But your boyfriend thinks too much of himself, you see. Forgets that AIs can outthink us in so many areas, can deploy solutions we don’t even understand yet, and which work with chilling efficiency. One day they’ll suggest something utterly unspeakable, but the mathematical evidence backing it up will be irrefutable, and then where will we be? Doing the unspeakable because it made sense to a computer and that’s a form of magic we can get behind.’ He stopped talking, as if he’d lost his train of thought.

  ‘What do you want?’ asked Amanda. The longer she stood like a lemon outside the office, the more likely someone she knew would see her. At that point it didn’t matter what Crisp was saying, she’d walk away rather than face them.

  ‘What do I want? I want the fucking drive, Amanda. The question is, what do you want? You see? That’s what’s important now, because what you want will decide a whole lot of things. It’s rare any of us have such power over our futures, but there you are, and you have a choice: in one future, you’re in jail, penniless, your elderly parents hounded by the paparazzi, and in the other, you get to slink away without ever looking back. All you have to do is give me the drive and make sure I get to Tangle before anyone else.’

  ‘Why aren’t you tackling them?’ she asked. ‘This is Great Britain. How can you just let them shoot people in broad daylight?’

  ‘Thirty years ago, the Russians started killing dissidents in England. Sometimes they did something extravagant like poison them with Polonium or Novichok and it would make the papers, but most of the time it just looked like heart attacks, suicide, misadventure. Then the Chinese moved in and started copying them. You’d be amazed how easy it is to get radioactive material into the country, if you’re a sovereign state. We weren’t able to stop them even when we wanted to, so my job is to outmanoeuvre them, to make their activities fruitless. They can come over here with their crude, ostentatious, stupid hits, but they can’t decide what we’re going to do about it. You give me the drive and Tangle stops them. I need you to help me, to help your country.’

  ‘And what about Europe?’ she asked. ‘You’ll stop them there too?’

  ‘What do we care about that?’ he asked. ‘You don’t have all day. Are you going to give me the drive, or am I going to be the only witness to when you threw your life away?’

  Amanda hung up without replying.

  Fuck him, she thought. Fuck them all. They’re all as bad as one another. They’re all on their own side. Even fucking Tatsu.

  She threw her tablet into a bin outside the tube station after resetting it to factory settings.

  Unburdened she went home, planning what she was going to do. With Tangle, Ichi and the AI, she believed she had a chance to fuck them all. I probably need the gangsters as well, she decided, suddenly wishing she hadn’t thrown away her tablet. She already had in mind the message she would send to them once she was home. They’d love what she was planning.

  She found Ichi and Tangle in the living room working on the data. Tangle was talking Ichi through his ideas for what the Russians were going to do and when. They didn’t notice her at first. They were stood next to one another, heads close, looking at one of the frames hanging in the air over the coffee table.

  ‘The Russians are working hard in Macedonia, Albania, Greece to provoke the unemployed, the disaffected. They’ve been funding small units of extremists, some of them without knowing it, for more than a decade. They provide propaganda, weapons, even strategies. Sometimes they find someone ready to go and let them get on with it with a little money and a few messages from the right people to help them over the line.’

  ‘I saw it in Germany,’ said Ichi. ‘The rise of mainstream nationalism built on anti-Muslim feeling. It was bound to come along sooner or later, though.’

  He blew air out through his mouth. ‘Maybe, maybe not. What’s certain is that what started as state-sponsored social media campaigns GRU has gone further than the Kremlin was aiming for. The GRU are encouraging the murder of politicians, raping female journalists, drip, drip, drip… creating a culture of fear and hate. I started out thinking they wanted to destabilise Europe, to push through sanctions relief, but it’s not that at all.’

  ‘What is it?’ asked Amanda from the doorway.

  ‘Amanda,’ said Ichi and she came over, surprising Amanda by flinging her arms around her in a huge hug. ‘It’s so good to see you.’ She pulled back, hands on Amanda’s arms so she could see her
face. ‘Tangle told me about Wales. I’m sorry.’

  Amanda wanted to tell her that it was okay, but it wasn’t, and if there was one person she knew understood, it was Ichi. ‘Thank you,’ she said, and they embraced again.

  Tangle stood off to one side, watching them. Amanda let him be.

  ‘I spoke with Crisp,’ she announced. ‘He’s finished destroying my job; I’m in line to be arrested in the next few days on charges of market manipulation and whatever else he’s added to my profile.’

  ‘I know you’re going to want to surrender,’ said Ichi, ‘but we can’t give him the drive.’

  Tangle had the good grace to look away and make no demands.

  ‘You don’t have to persuade me,’ said Amanda. ‘I’m done running around trying to find the easy way out.’ She threw her hands up. ‘I don’t know why I tried it, I’ve always walked the more difficult path.’

  ‘You’re not going to give him the drive?’ asked Ichi carefully.

  ‘No,’ said Amanda. ‘We’re going to fuck him completely.’

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  TANGLE WAS HAPPIEST when monologuing. ‘It’s all about revenge. Other parts of the government may still be trying to work it through with Europe and the US, but this group within the GRU? They want to make us suffer. We’re the enemy. All of this’—he swept his arms, encompassing the frames hanging in the air around them—‘it’s about bringing us down. Not even so they can win, just to defeat us, just to watch us burn. They must know they’re creating enemies they won’t be able to control, but it doesn’t seem to matter. One week a jihadist group in Lyon, the next a nationalist group in Marseille, and the next an anti-scientific group in Anjou. They support whoever’s out there, and they rejoice as we die.’

  ‘Because of sanctions?’ asked Amanda sceptically.

  ‘Because of the humiliation, of being made to feel like they’re no longer important enough to be treated as peers. Who do we apply sanctions to? Rogue states, the second tier, people we don’t care about offending. If murdering a man with radioactive sushi sends a message, so does freezing the assets of a man who thought he was untouchable. How many African dictators suffered the same indignity, were stopped from travelling to London or New York? Almost none. Yet the Russians have laboured under it for three decades.’