Devil in the Wires

by Tim Lees

  He knew, as well, the power of making ­people wait.

  He took his time, putting his papers in order. Then he turned, studying the audience a moment, as if he’d just recalled that they were there.

  “Oh yes,” he said. “There is an alternative.”

  It was a wonderful, Columbo-­like moment, though infinitely better dressed.

  “Those sites I mentioned earlier. Places of power. The ancients knew about them. Native Americans, druids, prehistoric ­peoples, and up, into medieval times. They’re like nodes on a global net of energy, an ecosystem in which every single one of us has a part to play. Nothing’s lost in nature. What goes around, comes around. And for centuries, mankind has been storing up the seeds of its own salvation.

  “That’s right. That’s not hyperbole, it’s not superstition, it’s not even faith. It’s science, cold and hard and simple.

  “You can call them gods if you want. Not God, with a capital G, but gods. Spirits, perhaps. Genii loci. I want to be very clear on this issue: there is no conflict between the practices of this city’s many religious faiths and what we do. Often, we’re asked to intervene by religious bodies themselves, to prevent a build-­up of power that can have—­in some cases—­rather disturbing consequences. When that happens, we go in, assess the situation, drain the surplus power, and convert it into usable electric energy; enjoyed, at some time, by each and every one of you. Whether you know it or you don’t, you’re already familiar with our ser­vices.

  “But this power, too, is a finite resource. One day, it, too, will run out, just like coal, and gas, and all the other finite fuels on which this great city—­this great country—­indeed, all civilization—­has been built. Wind and solar power will never be enough to fill the breach.

  “Fortunately, we have a better plan.

  “We have a source of energy that will make any of our ordinary power stations look like a double A battery in comparison. We’ve set up a facility for something both stronger and far more enduring. Safe, cheap, reusable fuel. That’s what I’m offering. Is anybody going to turn me down?”

  In the following week, I sat through Shailer’s speech a dozen times. There were permits to be granted, investors to be wooed, favors to be won, and good press to be curried everywhere we went. The speech changed with the audience. Variations on a theme. I reckoned about half of it was actually true. Or, anyway, that it was half the story.

  What I was doing in it, I still hadn’t worked out.

  I wore a suit bought on Shailer’s personal expense account. The cost of it scared me; the first time I wore it, I was terrified of spilling drink or food on it. I sat and smiled and held vague conversations with ­people whom I didn’t know, and, because I’m a company man, too, and because I’ve got a job I’d like to keep, I said some nice things about Shailer and the Registry and everything that we were doing here. If I’d any doubts, I kept them to myself.

  Besides, I found out, I was a hero. Of a kind.

  I was the man who’d brought the god back from Assur.

  Everybody seemed to think that meant something.

  I had single-­handedly defeated rebels, fought off insurgents, and dealt the deathblow to a dark conspiracy of former Communists attempting to lay claim to Registry possessions.

  And that was just the tamer version.

  Everyone knew more about the whole damn escapade than I did, it seemed.

  It wore me out. I have done many grueling and occasionally dangerous things, but nothing left me quite so wretched, mentally and physically, as the round of glad-­handing I went through on that first week in Chicago.

  One morning I phoned Seddon, told him I’d had enough. I wasn’t good at this. We both knew that. I pleaded illness and exhaustion, and Seddon, in his quaint, avuncular way, listened and made small, sympathetic sounds, then told me, “Oh, Chris. I am so sorry. But I can hardly pull you out now, can I? Everybody here’s so jealous of you. I’ll confess to a little bit of envy myself. So my advice to you—­enjoy it, hm? Enjoy it. It’ll soon be over, anyway . . .”

  “Not soon enough.”

  There was silence for a moment. Then he said, “Was there anything else?”

  “Goodbye,” I said, and walked into the nearest Starbucks to get ready for the day.

  I met many ­people. I met more ­people. The list went on and on. I met the mayor, his secretary, and his secretary’s secretary. I met his treasurer, his clerk, his ­people from the fire department and the department of law. I met the chief of police and, at several, frequently informal gatherings, I met various detectives, officers, and technicians who would one way or other be involved in safeguarding the project. (The worry then was terrorism; Indiana was too close in both time and distance to forget about; and it wasn’t in my script to tell them what had really happened there.) I met reps from Comcast, Con Ed and the CTA, BMO Harris, the Small Business Initiative and JPMorgan Chase. I met directors of museums and theaters and producers of a half a dozen television shows. I met religious leaders. I met preachers, priests, imams, and rabbis. I met full professors and associate professors and provisional professors and some ­people who did not profess at all. I met so many different ­people that by Thursday I could no longer have told you who was president and who was floor sweeper. The faces blurred. The speeches blurred. I ate Mexican food, Chinese food, Polish food, and Middle Eastern food. I ate German food, Italian food, Korean food. And I fell asleep in a great bulging heap each night to wake again at 4 a.m., restless, overwrought and wondering what was still on the agenda for the next day.

  I met more ­people than I met in months, doing my normal job.

  One of them was Angel Farthing.

  Chapter 28

  Reunion

  “They gave me baritone sax,” she said. “No one else was tall enough.”

  A small gray man in a tuxedo—­chief among her audience—­gazed up at her, clasping his hands as if in prayer.

  “But you were good?”

  “Hon,” she told him, “I was ten years old.” She touched his arm, confidingly. “I sounded like a duck.”

  “Oh, my.” His head began to nod. His shirtfront trembled, and he shook with laughter. “Oh, but that’s hilarious—”

  I doubted I’d have raised even a smile with that line, but I daresay I lacked Angel’s charm.

  Someone was playing Mozart, somewhere. Glasses clinked, and drink flowed. I’d come up on her blindside, savoring the chance to check her out that way before we spoke, to see how much she’d changed. It had been jeans and hoodies when I’d first known her, but tonight she wore a floor-­length dress of peacock-­blue, and the light just seemed to dance across it, up the curve of her back, the muscle of her shoulder, winding through the fabric as if woven in. And I was watching that, just utterly wrapped up in it, when she turned, without missing a beat, and said, “Hi, Chris. You’re late.”

  She had a lovely, lovely smile.

  The smile looked pleased to see me, anyway.

  I wasn’t sure about the rest of her.

  So I gave her my excuses—­the meet and greet, the endless introductions, the stack of business cards filling my pockets . . .

  But she cut me off.

  “No,” she said. “You’re two years, three months, and, oh—­some handful of days late. That kind of late. Know what I mean?”

  The smile came back, only it wasn’t quite so reassuring now.

  “Ah,” I said.

  “Ah. Right.”

  Somewhere, I knew, there was a perfect answer to all this, a magical riposte to instantly absolve me of any blame, to set us laughing, joking, reminiscing like the old, dear friends we almost were.

  But for the life of me, I couldn’t work out what it was.

  There was a time, more recently than I’ll usually admit, when I believed that you could learn things from a person’s name. Nothing
major, perhaps, but little things, the way that ­people say, “You look like a Chris,” or whatever your name is. With Angel, though, I’d pictured her, almost the moment that I’d heard her name, as pale and waif-­thin, with huge eyes and a wardrobe full of hand-­me-­downs. The heroine of some Victorian romance novel . . . which goes to show how good my theory was, and why I don’t much talk about it anymore.

  Angel Farthing was a smidgen under six foot two, and built like a tennis player. Her skin was dark. Her hair, once short and spiky, had now been fluffed up in a kind of ragged Afro, tinted so it caught the light in red and gold. Angel was Registry, though part-­time—­office and PR—­and when she wasn’t there, she was, as Shailer had so feebly grasped, studying. That she had got herself into the doctoral program at the University of Chicago was a measure of her intellect, and that she’d stayed there, a measure of tenacity. In a school filled with rich kids, she was the one working her way through college. She took on teaching jobs for extra money, and I’d known her to work into the night when necessary, grading papers or else painstakingly editing her dissertation. She sang opera. She also, as I’d found out, forgot to eat, grew light-­headed and dissociative, and had once fainted during class as a result. After that, I’d tried to make sure she was eating regularly. I’d assisted in her training for the Registry, showed her something of how Field Ops worked. And since we were both at something of a loose end, romantically speaking, I suppose one thing had led to another. Though not, if I’m honest, for very long.

  I had known her as a newcomer, a student looking for a part-­time job while I was on a brief assignment in Chicago. Shy, a little awkward, her confidence at least a small part bluff. Here, though, I could see how much she’d changed. In the Palm Court of the Drake, the epicenter of Old Chicago, she had poise: an athlete’s grace, a diplomat’s charm.

  The rich may not be noted for their looks, but Angel would have stood out anywhere, in any company you cared to name.

  I told her, “Looking good.”

  “You too, Chris.”

  She reached out, touched the hair above my ear. “Little bit of gray there. Suits you. Distinguished.”

  “Your hair’s nice, too. I mean . . . like that. That style . . .”

  “Uh-­huh?”

  She held a purse in one hand, a glass in the other, and she seemed to lean back, trying to get perspective on me. Then she said, “I hear you work for Mr. Shailer now.”

  “No.”

  The band, a string quartet, struck up a jaunty version of “Eleanor Rigby,” abandoning the classics as things began to shift to a less formal gear.

  “It’s what I’m told.” That teasing little lift there in her voice, not quite doubt, but . . . not quite believing, either.

  “It’s a secondment,” I explained. “I’m here—­” I looked around, at the fountains, the potted palms, “I’m here as long as I want to be. I can walk out when I want.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  I nodded.

  She said, “You were requested. You were summoned, Chris. Mr. Shailer’s flavor of the month these days, and Mr. Shailer gets what Mr. Shailer wants. Mr. Shailer,” she added, “has been making a royal pain of himself around the office for the last six months.”

  “Yeah. That sounds like him.” I shrugged. “Still. London wants me here, and what London wants . . .”

  She put her head on one side.

  “Really?”

  “That’s about it.”

  “Huh. Kinda disappointing,” she said. “Not what a girl likes to hear, you know. Even if it’s true.”

  “Uh—­”

  “I came back to see you, darling. I’ve missed you so much . . . Though if you did,” she said, “you took your own sweet time about it.”

  “Christ, Angel, I’m sorry, I just—­”

  “Don’t make excuses. You sound like an idiot when you do that.”

  “Do I?”

  “Uh-­huh. Too late now, anyway.”

  You can dress up in the smartest suit there is and it won’t make these things any easier. I scraped one shoe over the carpet. I scratched my ear.

  “I wanted to, I just—­” and I said some more, and she was right; I sounded stupid. And I went on sounding stupid, too.

  She said, “You want something, you do it. You don’t, you find excuses. You went back to Europe. Fine. It’s done. And now,” she said, “since that’s out of the way, let’s get on with the evening, shall we? We’ll be spending time together, I expect. Better be friendly, huh?”

  “Friendly. Right, right.” I went to take a drink and found my glass was empty. “I suppose, you know, you’re seeing someone . . . ?”

  I tried to make it teasing when I said it—­a twinkle in the eye, that kind of thing. I tried. I don’t think it came off.

  “Cutting to the chase a bit, aren’t you?”

  “No! Just curious. Hope things are going well, and all . . .”

  “That’s what your last e-­mail said, too. You want to know? Really? Well. Maybe I am, maybe I’m not. Do you care?”

  “I . . .”

  “Jesus, Chris!” She shook her head. She mimicked me. “ ‘Seeing someone.’ ” She clicked her tongue, half turned away, the light suddenly sliding down the blue dress like a film of oil. She turned back, surveying me full on. “ ‘Seeing someone.’ When d’you think I have the fucking time?”

  “Uh—­”

  “I’m busy, right? B-­U-­S-­Y. And that’s how you’ll be, too, I bet.”

  And that’s the way I was, as well.

  Chapter 29

  Newark

  I flew to Newark. It was easy. Everything was easy now. I was ushered through the terminal and straight into a waiting car. This was Shailer’s life that I was living, business class and chauffeur driven, and while I loved the comforts—­who wouldn’t, after all?—­some deep resentment made me mistrust their pleasures and conveniences, as if, like fairy gold, they’d turn to dust by morning.

  We drove for twenty minutes to the holding center. It was utterly anonymous, a former warehouse in a ghost town of old warehouses and factories. All the windows had been bricked up. There were no names, no signs, not so much as a Keep out. Only the shine on the wire fence gave it away; that, and the security behind the gate, a tubby man who screened my ID, made a call, then swung the gate open. Once inside, all sense of privilege dissolved. I waited fifteen minutes to be let into the building. I am not always a patient man. I got out of the car, went over to the little wooden door expectantly. I strolled about and stretched my legs. I talked to security, who answered me in grunts. Went back to the car. Sat down. Talked to the driver. Another age and then, at last, the door cracked open and a thin, pale-­looking face peered out, glanced quickly right and left. A hand came up and beckoned me.

  I told him, “Lucky you caught me. I was just about to go for lunch.”

  “You’re Shailer’s guy?”

  “I’m a Registry operative.”

  “But Shailer sent you?”

  I couldn’t easily deny this, so I said, “I’m with the Chicago project. I’m here for Assur.”

  His gaze went past me. “Anyone else?”

  “Driver . . . ?”

  “Anyone else around? See anyone?”

  “Don’t think so . . .”

  He stepped back, nodding me through. “Come in, come in.”

  He might have been twenty-­five or thirty, a pudgy man with a rounded belly and a soft, round face, masked by a short beard. One arm—­the left—­was in a sling and strapped against his body. I could see the hand protruding at his waist, swollen with fluid, skin stretched smooth. It looked like a mannequin’s hand.

  “Been in the wars?” I said.

  “No—­it’s nothing. Just an accident.” He shut the door, slid the bolt. “We get kids. That’s the trouble. Kids and then, t
he other ones. The creepy guys.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah, yeah. I know. They can’t know what we do here. There’s no record, not anywhere. But they come around, and—­”

  “You call the cops?”

  “That’s the thing, see? They’ve got to break a law first. They know it, too.”

  His name was Nickols, and his badge said he was a Registry Officer Grade 4, which I was maybe meant to be impressed by.

  “Someone,” he said, “someone left a human skull on the gate. A human skull.”

  “Really?”

  “A, a,” he corrected himself, “a picture of a human skull. Taped to the wire. What do you make of that? That somebody would do that kind of thing?”

  I didn’t make anything of it. I let him take me to an office, where I was fingerprinted, photographed and, rather less high tech, signed in. In reward for this I got a sticky label with my name on it, and a picture of such crude resolution it could have been anyone. This went on my jacket front. Nobody spoke. Nickols dug into a filing cabinet and took out three forms. Each had carbons in white, pink, and green.

  “Fill these out.”

  He dropped them on the tabletop in front of me.

  “I signed forms for you ­people to take the thing. Now I’m signing forms to get it back.”

  I looked them over, scribbled names and dates in all the necessary spaces.

  “Can’t be too careful,” Nickols said.

  “Oh, I think you’ll find I’m careful, all right.”

  “They stand by the wire,” he said. “Just stand and stare. It isn’t right. We’ve had them try and sneak in with deliveries. There are armed guards here. We’ll use them if we have to. There’s a certain kind of person drawn here, Mr. Copeland. That’s why we have security.”

  “Yeah, well. I can see the interest. Fun place, and all . . .”

  He led me down a flight of concrete stairs.

  “Crazies, Mr. Copeland. Fuckheads.”

  “Technical term, no doubt.”