by Sam Bourne
‘Come on,’ said Uri. ‘Keep flying. If it’s here, we’ll find it.’
Maggie kept it up, looping and dipping over the blue of Second Life’s version of Lake Geneva. For nearly a minute she did that, silently, so that it was as if the pair of them were in a glider, floating through the cloudless, midday skies above a real city, instead of here in this dark, soulless room in the dead of a Jerusalem night.
She was concentrating hard. It wasn’t easy to stay at the right altitude: too high and the islands were just dots, too low and they had no sense of perspective. If Uri was right, they needed to recreate the childhood experience he had had in that plane, spotting the islands below.
‘Hey, what’s that?’ said Uri, pointing at a small patch of land below. Maggie had to double back, steering Lola round. When she saw it, she hovered, then steadily lowered herself.
‘I don’t believe it,’ Uri said, shaking his head. ‘Even here.’
‘What is it, Uri? What?’
‘Look at that. Can you see the shape of that island? Look at the shape.’ He was pointing at the yellow pixels on the screen.
Maggie could see that it was unusual. Not the rough-edged, vaguely circular blob favoured by the owners of most of Second Life’s private islands, but a series of wobbling lines, with a large square protruding from the right. It was a deliberate design of some kind. But it meant nothing to Maggie.
‘Uri, what is it?’
‘See that on the left? That’s Israel. And that big bulge? That’s Jordan. This is the map of Eretz Yisrael, the complete Land of Israel, according to the right-wing fanatics who worship Jabotinsky. People like my father. They have this shape on their T-shirts. The women wear it as a pendant. Shtei gadot, they call it. It means two banks. They even have a song: “The River Jordan has two banks, both of them ours”.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘I knew this shape before I knew my alphabet, Maggie. I grew up with it. Believe me, my father did this.’
Maggie clicked to stop flying, landing splashily on the water lapping against the island’s shore. She walked forward, but was pushed back. A red line, like a laser beam girdling the island, materialized each time the avatar got too near, effectively bouncing her away. When you looked closely, you could see it was made up of words: NO ENTRY NO ENTRY NO ENTRY. It was an electronic border fence. A small message appeared on screen: ‘Cannot enter parcel-not member of the group.’
‘Damn. It’s locked somehow.’ Her avatar was static. Maggie looked at the bottom of the screen, trying to find a box for keying in a password.
‘Hey, Maggie. Who’s this?’
She looked up and felt a chill run through her. Two avatars were hovering close by. They had the same, eerie bunny heads she had seen just before, but now both were clad in black. She remembered the men in the alley, the black ski-masks, the hot breath.
Maggie looked up at Uri. ‘They’re following us. They’re trying to get whatever information your father stored here before we do. What should I do?’
‘Can you talk to them?’
Maggie stared hard at the screen. They were still lingering at her side. She hit Chat and typed into the window, trying hard to stay in character. hey guys, what’s up?
She waited for a reply. Three seconds, four, five. She waited till the Second Life clock in the corner of the screen turned a minute. Nothing.
‘They’re waiting for us to make a move. They know only what they pick up from us.’ With that, Maggie had one more attempt at breaking through the laser cordon that appeared around the island every time she got close. Cannot enter parcel-not member of the group.
The rabbit-heads remained close by, unmoving. They were shut outside the cordon too, but something about their stillness unsettled Maggie. She imagined their operators, whoever they were, hammering their way through complex algorithms, running serious de-encryption programmes, working out how they could smash through Guttman’s little barrier. If these people were clever enough to have followed Maggie, or Lola Hepburn, to this spot within Second Life, they would hardly let one piffling cordon stand in their way.
Maggie hit Chat. you again! are you rabbit boys hitting on me?
‘Maggie, what are you doing?’
‘Letting them know we know.’
She carried on typing, now using the Second Life search function. The search word: Guttman. Maybe there was an obvious way into the island, something they were both overlooking.
‘I’m going to get something,’ Uri said, heading for the door. ‘I’ll be back in a second.’
The Guttman search was still chugging through, taking much longer than before. No entries were coming up. ‘Come on, come on,’ Maggie murmured. Then, as if hearing her command, there was a whooshing sound and everything went blank.
Suddenly the screen was loading with a landscape Maggie did not recognize. She had been teleported somewhere else within Second Life, even though she had clicked no button. Had she fumbled the keyboard without realizing it?
But then she saw them. Not two rabbit-heads but four now, surrounding her. She pressed the forward arrow and moved a few paces, then froze. Then, jerkily, she regained movement again, turning rapidly into a side alley. The four rabbit-men were behind her, gaining ground. She froze again.
Maggie could feel her own, real-life, breath coming short and fast. Whoever was behind the rabbit-heads was paralysing her avatar. Now she wouldn’t be able to return to the island in Lake Geneva. Whatever message Shimon Guttman had locked there would be out of reach.
Maggie heard the sound of the lift ping open. She turned around to see the room empty behind her. Where was Uri? She could hear footsteps coming closer and now, through the glass, she could see a man approaching. In the dark it was impossible to make out his face.
The door opened and Maggie saw the figure in full: it was Uri, clutching a neat pile of brown clothes. Without explanation he began unbuckling his trousers and removing his shirt, before stashing them under one of the desks, out of view. That done, he started putting on the items he’d brought in, an outfit that seemed to be made entirely of a noisy polyester material in a sickly shade of beige. The trousers were too short, which required some strenuous downward tugging to make contact with his shoes, but soon the transformation was complete. He was wearing the uniform of a hotel bellboy.
‘How on earth-’
‘Anyone who’s ever worked night shifts in a hotel, as I have, knows one thing: they all have a laundry room somewhere. You just have to find it and break in.’
‘But why?’
‘Don’t you see? These people have been bugging us and following us, so that we would lead them to the tablet. And now they have what they want. They know the answer is on that island and they’ll get it. They don’t need us any more, Maggie. We’re in the way.’
Her heart hammering, she turned back to the screen, where Lola was now surrounded by six rabbit-headed men. She hit the Fly button, to escape. It didn’t work. She began stabbing, dumbly, at all the buttons, but nothing would happen. The avatars in black were closing in.
And now something else was happening. The face on Lola Hepburn, the fresh-faced Valley girl with the ponytail, was starting to change. The eyes began to droop, as if they were about to dissolve into tears. Now the nose began to descend too, the face of this electronic creature no longer perky but increasingly hideous.
Maggie could only watch as the deterioration spread down Lola’s body, the breasts melting into a swirl of red, white and blue like a sundae on a summer’s day. Now the torso slid down into the legs, until the entire body was a pool of sludge on this side street, the rabbit-headed avatars still circling, like gulls about to feast on dead flesh. Maggie’s only chance to find out what Shimon Guttman knew had gone.
‘Maggie.’ It was Uri, at the door, about to leave. ‘In three minutes’ time, go down the fire escape. The entrance is there.’ He pointed. ‘Don’t take the elevator. Walk down the stairs as far as you can. Don’t stop at the lobby, b
ut one level lower. You’ll come out in the kitchens. As quickly as you can, turn left out of the elevator, and head for the refrigeration area.’
‘How the hell-’
‘Just follow the cold. At the back will be a loading bay. Get out there and I’ll be in a car.’
‘How are you going to get-’
‘Just do it.’
And then he vanished, for all the world a member of the night team of the David’s Citadel Hotel.
Maggie collected the few things she had. Uri was right: their every move was being watched and their pursuers were serious. She had seen that for herself this morning and seen it again now, as they had locked on to and destroyed the avatar lent to her by Liz. Maggie shut down the program and moved towards the fire escape.
As she stepped into the blackness of the staircase, she realized that she had not a clue where she was going or what she was going to do next. Their best hope had been taken from them, reduced to a few computer pixels that had simply melted away.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
P SAGOT , THE W EST B ANK , F RIDAY , 4.07 AM
His wife heard it before he did. He had always been a heavy sleeper, but now that he was carrying perhaps twenty or thirty pounds in excess weight, his descent into slumber was positively leaden. His wife was shaking him vigorously when he finally awoke.
‘Akiva, come on. Akiva!’
Akiva Shapira groaned before squinting at the clock on the nightstand. One of his proudest possessions, that clock. A mechanical, digital relic of the early 1970s, lodged inside its workings was a bullet, fired by a Palestinian sniper directly into his office. Typical of the Palestinians: it missed him-and couldn’t even take out the clock. A joke he had cracked to more than one visiting US delegation.
It was gone four in the morning, yet his wife was not mistaken. The same light tapping on the door was repeated. Who on earth could be calling here so late?
He grabbed a robe, tying the cord across his girth as he shuffled to the front door of the modest red-roofed house that had been his home since this settlement was founded, decades ago now. He only had to open it a crack to see the face of Ra’anan, the aide to the Defence Minister who had been at the meeting the previous afternoon.
‘What the hell-’
‘I am sorry to call so late. Can I come in?’
Shapira widened the door to let in this man who seemed like some kind of alien, fully dressed in this house of sleep. ‘Can I get you something to drink. Water, maybe?’
‘No. I can’t stay very long. We have very little time.’
Shapira turned back from the sink, where he had been filling a glass, to face his guest. ‘OK. What is it?’
Ra’anan’s eyes darted towards the bedroom. ‘Can we speak freely here?’
‘Of course! This is my home.’
Ra’anan nodded towards the bedroom again. ‘Your wife?’ he whispered.
Shapira moved towards the door which separated the kitchen from the hallway and bedrooms and closed it. ‘You happy now?’
‘Akiva, in the last hour I have spoken to the other members of our group, seeking permission for a specific action which has just become possible. If we all agree, we have to act at once.’
‘I’m listening.’
‘The subject we discussed. She is now in our sights. We can strike.’
‘Risks?’
‘Arrest and capture, minimal. We have the best possible personnel, as you saw today.’
Shapira remembered the demonstration in the field, the watermelons exploded with pinpoint accuracy by snipers he barely glimpsed. Ra’anan was right. The risks for such skilled professionals were no obstacle.
‘OK,’ said Shapira, finally. ‘Do it.’
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
J ERUSALEM , F RIDAY , 4.21 AM
She got out of the hotel more easily than she expected. Uri’s instructions were accurate and the kitchen was empty. She found the large refrigeration area, led not by the chill but the electric hum. There, at the back, as promised, was a wide door, which was bolted and required a mammoth shove to push open.
She felt the blast of cold night air immediately. Her jacket was still in the room upstairs. She stood there, on a raised concrete platform, looking down into the square gulch built for reversing delivery trucks. As she stamped up and down, hugging her sides to keep warm, she took a blast of the smell. It was rank. She realized she was standing by three enormous steel cylinders, each of them spilling over with sackfuls of hotel trash.
Two minutes later, she saw the beam of headlights coming into the area, then swerving around and reversing towards the loading bay. A sleek silver Mercedes was nudging backwards, in her direction. She waited as it filled up the loading bay, the fumes of its exhaust rising and wreathing the whole platform. Its rear lights meant she could now see a set of steps off to the side. She thought about heading down them, then hesitated. What if it wasn’t Uri?
She stayed in the shadows, waiting until eventually she heard the slow glide of an electric window, followed by a whispered ‘psst’. Uri. She leapt down the stairs and bundled herself into the passenger seat.
‘Nice wheels. How did you pull this off?’
‘By strolling over to the concierge desk, finding the valet parking box and taking the first key I saw.’
‘Hence the uniform.’
‘Hence the uniform.’
Maggie nodded, detecting something new in this man whom she had never met a week ago and with whom she now seemed fated to spend every waking hour-and even some sleeping ones. For the first time she saw something like pride: he was pleased with himself.
‘So now you’ve got the limousine, where do you want to go, Miss Costello?’
‘Anywhere with a computer. We didn’t get through to the island. They melted me before I could break through. They’re going to get there before we do.’
‘Who’s they?’
‘The rabbit-heads, whoever they were.’
‘You don’t think they’ll be bounced back from the island just like you were?’
‘Uri, these are people who can listen to our conversations, hack into our computers, kill Kishon and Aweida the second we mention their names. Somehow I don’t think they’re going to struggle with a bit of encryption your father put on that island.’
After all, thought Maggie, the men behind the rabbit-heads clearly had the power to turn her avatar into pixellated goo. Uri had been right: they didn’t need her any more. She had led them to the island; they could do the rest.
‘Look, that’s probably true,’ said Uri finally. ‘But even if they hack into it, they might not understand what they see. Remember, the message on the DVD from my father? That required knowledge that only I have.’ He paused. ‘Christ, though, why did he have to make everything so fucking complicated?’
‘Actually, I kind of admire it. There are a lot of serious people who want the discovery he made and none of them have got their hands on it.’
‘Not yet.’
‘All right. But it’s pretty impressive if you ask me.’
Uri drove on in silence, the wipers on the car sleekly sweeping across the windscreen at intervals. They barely made a sound.
‘So where are you taking me, Mr Chauffeur?’
‘One of the few places in Jerusalem that stays open all night. And certainly the only one with a computer.’
He parked the car at the bottom of a pedestrianized area, full of closed cafes and shuttered kiosks. ‘This is Ben-Yehuda Street,’ Uri said. ‘Normally it’s teeming. But Jerusalem’s not like Tel Aviv. It likes to get its beauty sleep.’
He led them off the main thoroughfare, past a human bundle of rags sleeping in a doorway, down a side alley, still made of the same, ragged stone as the rest of the city. Here, too, there were signs of earlier life: restaurants and cafés, closed for the night. She heard the throbbing of a bar. ‘Mike’s Place,’ he said, hearing it too. ‘The one they didn’t bomb.’
He kept winding through these
narrow, catacomb streets, where each arch or vaulted entrance led to a shop or office; modern life carved out of ancient stone.
‘Here we are. Someone To Run With.’
‘That’s its name?’
‘Yeah. It’s become a Jerusalem institution. All the runaways and dropouts come here. Named it after a novel.’
‘Someone to run with, eh? Like you and me.’
Uri smiled and ushered Maggie inside. She looked around and immediately had a flashback to when she had just turned sixteen. Not that she had ever come to a place like this, but her sixteen-year-old self would have loved it. There were no chairs, only enormous cushions arranged on stone benches and window seats. The air was heavy with the steam of fruit teas and the smoke of tobacco and assorted varieties of weed. In one corner she could see a boy, earnestly hunched over a guitar, a curtain of lank, dark hair hiding his face. Opposite him, with a guitar of her own, was a girl whose head was entirely shaved, wearing a shapeless white T-shirt and knee-length shorts who, despite these heroic efforts, could not conceal her beauty. Maggie surveyed the room, seeing the torn jeans and the braided hair, and felt not the consciousness of her own age, as she had in the nightclub in Tel Aviv, but a twinge of real envy. These kids still had everything ahead of them.
She was glad she had changed clothes at Orli’s. If these kids had seen her in her usual get-up, they would have had her down as drugs squad, or some kind of authority figure, right away. Instead they barely glanced up at her or Uri: too stoned to notice probably.
Uri nodded towards the corner of the room where there was a sole, unused computer. Maggie guessed that it was terminally uncool to use it, especially at this time of night. While Uri stood at the counter, asking the girl with a stud in her nose for coffee, Maggie switched on the machine and called up Second Life.
At the name prompt she typed Lola Hepburn, only for an instant error message to appear: Invalid username and/or password, please try again. The avatar created by Liz had been eradicated from the system. She would have to enter as someone else. But who? She didn’t know anyone who had an avatar on Second Life. Maybe she should just wake up Liz in London.
