by Claire North
I dug my heels into the floor, found I had no words, and so gestured at the sleeping patients in the five white beds, an explanation more fluent than any I could find.
“My brother won’t take Perfection off the market,” she breathed. “It’s too valuable. But if Byron hacks it…”
“People have died,” I replied. “Perhaps Perfection is monstrous, perhaps the treatments are… but I’m a thief, we can find another way.”
“When you are gone I won’t remember you.”
I took the bracelet off, pressed it into her hand. “You trust me. I can help you.”
Her fingers closed over it, then with her other hand she grabbed my now bare wrist, and pulling me close murmured, “There’s another club, more than the 106. For the ones who went all the way, finished all the treatments, the most perfect people on the planet. Two million points – 2x106. ‘The Perfect Million’. I told him to stop but he… Go to Venice. Matisse can help you, he’s already afraid, he thinks Byron might… and I think she might too, I think… also Luca Evard, speak to Luca, tell them what you know, I know you are forgotten, but you can send pictures, messages, things which remain. I know they’re… but they’re good men too. Will you?”
“I will.”
“You promise.”
“Promise.”
She smiled now, her body loose with sudden release, squeezed my arm tight, then let go, stepped back, pulled the bracelet over her wrist. “I wish I could remember this,” she said. “I wish I could remember everything we said together.”
“Treatments make me memorable,” I replied. “Maybe when this is done, when it’s—”
“Maybe,” she answered, a little too fast, hard, cutting off the idea. “Maybe.”
She seemed to have nothing more to say. I looked round the room, at the sleeping patients, perfect even in sleep, blood still under Louise Dundas’ fingernails, still in the roots of her hair, Filipa standing in the middle, small and cold. I felt the place on my wrist where her bracelet had been, a sudden bareness, and I smiled at her, and she smiled back, a weak and imperfect gesture, and I turned, and walked away.
Chapter 82
Train, Nîmes – Venice. At Marseilles I bought an armful of local newspapers and a new mobile phone, and spent the rest of the journey to Nice scanning headlines and poring over the internet. I had supper in a restaurant over a little river that ran down to the sea, where once I’d eaten with a beautiful timber merchant from Turin to the sound of little green frogs hiccupping beneath our feet, whose car I stole after he refused to pay the bill.
The train from Ventimiglia to Genoa hugged the sea to the right, the Alps to the left. Hard to work, surrounded by such sights, hard to stay focused when cliffs plunged into cobalt-blue water and towns crawled up towards snowy peaks. By the time the train turned towards the dull industrial flatlands of Milan, I was exhausted from gaping, and at Milan station, a monument to Fascist architecture and imperial ambition, all huge ceilings and marble floors, I broke my journey to have a triangle of pizza in a greasy piece of paper.
“Fold it!” exclaimed the man who served me my dish. “Don’t peck at it like a little bird, you wrap it over and eat it properly, like a woman!”
I stared at this indignant chef, tomato sauce down his apron, and for a moment tottered between a tourist’s enthusiasm for local ways, and a traveller’s resentment of intrusion. He had a silly watch which he wore beneath his blue latex gloves, and had left his mobile phone balanced unwisely by the till. I didn’t need either, but the temptation to inconvenience him, the satisfaction of knowing he was robbed and I was gone, bristled against my brain but no
No.
Not today.
The lagoon was dark and disturbed, when I crossed it. The lights of Mestre behind, chimneys and cranes, empty warehouses and slumbering ships. Ahead, Venezia, a tourist paradise, spires and towers, canals and over-priced dinners. Wonder of the world, step from the station and immediately behold the Grand Canal. Walk through a city where cars never go, stones worn smooth by hundreds of years of passing pedestrians, smell the sometimes less than fragrant aroma of the lagoon, swat the mosquitoes, stand in San Marco’s square and feel the ghosts of the traders and the whores, soldiers and assassins, the shadows of doges dressed all in gold, and lesser men who whispered in corners. Pigeons fly away from a child who delights in chasing them; a group of tourists photograph themselves with a camera held on a telescopic stick, the doge’s palace behind, hawkers selling Manchester United and Barcelona T-shirts crossing in and out of the frame. The gondoliers don’t bother to market their services; anyone foolish enough to pay so much for a slow ride through the canals of Venice (opera singer optional extra) will come to them of their own accord. Gondoliers have survived plague and fire, conquest and decay; they’ll survive tourism too.
I tried a couple of hotels, and despite the tourists, found a room easily enough. The woman behind the counter looked askance at the cash I offered, but money is money, winter coming on, so all right, a small room up a tight stair, a floor that moans, a roof that slants, duck onto a little metal balcony that creaks alarmingly beneath your feet. I asked her directions to the nearest supermarket, and she looked sideways at me, despairing of this lone woman who paid cash and didn’t indulge in the over-priced, under-interesting Venetian dining experience.
“Try Cannaregio,” she tutted, and managed to stop herself before adding, no eating in your room.
In Cannaregio I found a supermarket, automatic door and bright green logos grudgingly wedged into a sixteenth-century guildsman’s house. I picked up fruit, a couple of pairs of socks, a bar of chocolate, a loaf of bread, and as I went to pay, discovered that my wallet was empty, only a few coins left, and looked at the woman behind the till and said apologetically, “Sorry,” and grabbed my goods and ran.
“Police, police!” she screamed, but no one followed and after a few streets I slowed to a walking pace, and wandered on quietly to the foot of a church – saint someone, raised up by someone in honour of something, in Venice these things began to blur – to eat my purloined goods.
I needed money, but the only casino in town was a poor venue for card counting. Ten euros to enter, low stakes, an atmosphere that suggested you should be grateful to be here, the oldest casino in Europe – perhaps.
I tried picking a couple of pockets in the crowded, twisting streets around San Marco, but had only pulled two wallets before a rival team, a boy and a girl, barely teenagers, made a bad pass in a nearby alley and someone called out thief, thief, thief, and the police came running, damn amateurs getting in my way.
I crossed the waters to the Lido instead, newer, cars and yachts, resort hotels, beaches in summer, a place for the wealthy who have surfeited on too much Renaissance art, too many Titians, bodies bursting with muscles, sheets of white and blue slung across breasts and penises, strategically blown there by a modest breeze.
I robbed the first hotel I came to, a grand monolith of white walls and rectangular windows. Stole a master key from a boy in the foyer, stole cash and a few clothes from the luxury suites on the top floor.
Worthy: to do the most righteous thing available to you, under a difficult set of circumstances.
I considered whether these words rang true, as I returned across the waters to Venice.
Chapter 83
Preparation.
A new computer, new clothes, new internet connection, new download of Tor through the Wi-Fi of San Servolo, a good place to work, a little university campus for people looking for three months of art history, or two months of intensive Italian in the city of wonders, easy to blend in, buy yourself a coffee, sit in the café and surf the web.
Tor: The Onion Router. It has its flaws.
Arguments for increased government surveillance of the internet:
1. To curtail bomb-making manuals, terrorism, pornography, drug dealing and crime.
2. Trolls, bullies and hackers. To a feminist blogger: “I’m going to rape you till you
bleed your home address is ”. Hate crime: “Fucking black bitches only good for being slaves”. It’s just the 1 per cent, say the apologists. Toughen up. (Fuck you, comes the answer. Fuck you for being too fucking cowardly to take responsibility for the society you live in. Fuck you for not giving a damn.)
3. If you have nothing to hide, why does it matter?
Arguments against:
The online privacy laws in the USA state that any email left for more than six months on a server owned by a third party, becomes obsolete, allowing that company (Hotmail, Gmail, etc.) to do whatever the hell it pleases with that data. Personal emails you have written to friends, lovers, colleagues now enter the public domain.
I love you. I want your skin against mine, your tongue in my mouth, your hands on my
I’m sending the money today, here are the details
My fucking sister is fucking getting on my tits again, fat bitch
Do I care that Google knows my religion, if I’m divorced or pregnant, that Facebook uses my face in an ad campaign? When I challenge my government; when I attack a media mogul, when I question a belief that others take for granted, do I care that my family history, finances and home address can be found immediately by my foes? Of course I don’t: I have nothing to hide.
Do I care that the only way to be free from the fear of surveillance is to be absolutely harmless? To conform to a sociological norm, and never say anything that is personal, or real, or half thought through, or challenging?
I ordered another espresso, and waited for Tor to load.
A new address from which to contact an old friend.
I chose Zenobia1862, and sent my message to the most plausible corner of Prometheus’ infrastructure.
I am _why. I am the woman that the man called Gauguin, also Matisse, forgets. I wish to discuss Byron14.
Yours sincerely,
_why
It took them nearly three days to reply, but I kept myself busy. I ran through the city, learning the streets, the bridges, the dead ends and the waterways. Learning where to hide and where to steal. Finding my way into police-radio frequencies, counting the rich and the beautiful, the vulnerable and the criminal as they mingled beneath the palazzos and inside the hot, wine-soaked bars.
I looked for the 206, the elite of all elites, and it was easy to find, the glamour sheets and the gossip rags already buzzing, the Perfect Party, Perfect Millions they called it, and look, wasn’t it exciting, he was going and she was going, and didn’t his fiancée look beautiful, she’d clearly beaten the cellulose. And she’d be there and so would she even though she’d once slept with his brother and she’d called her a slut but that was another time, they loved each other really, you see, and she’d lost so much weight since getting Perfection did you see her exclusive hot beach holiday pics?
“You don’t want to be photographed, don’t make an exhibition of yourself,” said one paparazzi I gave a bottle of whisky to as he sat outside a grand hotel on the Grand Canal, cameras slung around his neck.
“What about people who want to make an exhibition of themselves in private?” I asked, and he shrugged.
“They’re rich, they’re famous, they gotta deal with the stuff that comes with it.”
The next day I went back, and there he was again, a little bit tipsy by 11 a.m., and I gave him another bottle of whisky and he said, “Hotel Madellena, that’s where it’s at, they’ve got royalty coming, all the rich princes and their pretty girls, you know how it is, pussy, hot pussy, all of them.”
I smiled politely, and thought about stealing his camera, throwing it into the canal, but no, that would be unworthy, must remember, even though it would be kinda righteous.
I counted my steps away from him, and by thirty paces the urge to steal had passed, and I laughed as I began to run again, heading back into the city.
When I returned to my hotel, Gauguin had replied to my message, with Luca Evard cced in for good measure.
Chapter 84
Meeting spies.
I paid a prostitute whose working name was Portia (“Like… Porthos?” I hazarded, and she glared and said, “Like Shakespeare, idiot”) four hundred euros to sit with a mobile phone outside a café on the Riva degli Schiavoni, drinking thick black coffee and huddling in a fur-lined coat. The weather was turning cold; a bare spit of snow fell upon the rooftop and melted again, but for four hundred euros Portia wasn’t going anywhere, and for a further two hundred neither was my water taxi, the driver sat with his feet up on the dashboard, a cigarette drooping from the corner of his mouth, a book about giving up everything to become an alpaca farmer open on his lap.
I sat at the back of the cab as the wake from the passing buses tossed us from side to side, and watched the café through a pair of binoculars. First to arrive were three security goons, two men and a woman. When they were settled, Gauguin approached on foot from the direction of the Arsenal, sensibly dressed in rubber boots and a waxy brown anorak. Luca Evard walked half a step behind him, thick black jacket and dull green jeans, an offence to fashion even at five hundred yards, head down, eyes up, a hint of bald spot becoming a definite declaration on his shining skull, panda rings around his sleepless eyes.
They arrived at the café, consulting their phones, images of my face saved within, and as they looked I dialled Portia, and said, “Those two.”
Portia harrumphed, a busy woman having her time wasted, stood up, marched to Gauguin, and thrust the phone towards him screen first, arm locked and straight, and said, “It’s for you.”
Gauguin thanked her cordially, took the phone. She marched away, all buttock and thigh, haughty chin and Shakespearean pride.
“Who am I speaking to?” Gauguin enquired, English, polite, clipped.
“My name is Why,” I replied, watching him turn, turn, through my binoculars. “I want to talk about Byron14.”
A shuffle on the spot, Luca Evard behind, Luca wants the phone, glances at his own, at my face on it, stares at the crowd, sees no one he knows, looks down. A thing which might be anger; a thing he does not want the world to see in his eye.
I look away too, and it’s obviously shame, pure and true.
“I thought we would—”
“Meet personally? You have a habit of knives and guns, Mr Gauguin.”
“Do I?”
“You’ve watched the CCTV? Tokyo, Oman? Might not have footage of Istanbul, but seriously – knives. I assume you’re recording this?”
“I am now.”
“Good: that will save me having to repeat myself. I think that Byron has hacked Perfection, altering the treatments given to the 106. Louise Dundas was one of several people to have violent reactions to trigger words, probably poetry, probably by Byron or Wordsworth. You know this. What you don’t know is that the process began in Berkeley eleven months ago. Look for a student called Meredith Earwood, look for Agustin Carrazza, ex-MIT professor. On the phone in your hand you’ll find the addresses of facilities used in the San Francisco area by Byron to conduct her research. I haven’t been able to find her from this information, but you have more resources. There are also photographs of her journal, and the codeword to read it. I have a complete inventory of the goods she travelled with, including three separate passports which you may be able to do something with.”
“This is all—” he began, but I ploughed through the banality.
“I need you to stop the 206 event you currently have planned for the Hotel Madellena the week after next. Shut it down. Keep the app going if you like, but cancel all treatments and identify everyone in the last eleven months who may have received them.”
“Why?”
“Because the treatments will make them fucking insane murderers whenever they hear a bit of fucking poetry, are you stupid or just annoying? Because Byron wants to destroy Perfection, and what’s a spy with a grudge gonna do?”
“What do you think she is going to do?” he asked, easy and calm, a tourist enjoying a pleasant chat in a pleasing city.
<
br /> “You’re launching the 206. The world’s press is going to be watching. If I were Byron, and I had a room full of people who’d received treatments – my treatments – I’d make them tear each other to pieces.”
A little pause, a slow intake of breath.
“She’ll do it,” I added, when his silence stretched. “Louise Dundas was a test and it worked beautifully. Filipa can see it – so can I. You put members of the 206 in front of the cameras, and Byron will turn it into a bloodbath.”
“Do you have any proof?”
“Nope.”
“But you seem very confident.”
“Met her. Lived with her. She’s got a cause. Fuck it, you’d think that having members of the 106 going insane and trying to kill people with their teeth would do it, but no, Rafe’s got his principles, like the fucking idiot that he is. So here we are, Gauguin, you and me, blowing smoke in the fog.”
A long quiet, interrupted by a police boat swooshing by, a little too close, the cops grinning at the cabbie as my boat swayed from side to side.
“Why are you helping us?” Gauguin asked at last.
“Byron is killing people. I gave her the means. That makes it, in its way, my fault. I’m not entirely without… honour.”
“I find that difficult to believe.”
Honour: honesty, fairness, high respect, worth, merit, rank, high esteem, fame, glory. Integrity in one’s beliefs and actions.
Idiom: there is no honour amongst thieves.
I said, “In Istanbul you found you had the diamonds I stole in Dubai. You also had my passports, which you used to destroy most of the life that I had built. I don’t know what fantasy you used to justify having these things, but you took them with you when you left. Can you remember what you did next?”
