The Sudden Appearance of Hope

by Claire North

  No, he replied. Nothing.

  I ask: does she have her mother’s bracelet? Silver, plain – a Möbius strip?

  No, she hasn’t got it here.

  Do you know where it is?

  No. When she… after the treatments, she didn’t seem interested in it any more.

  Filipa sleeping.

  I think about waking her.

  What will she say?

  Nothing, I think, which matters any more.

  Help me, I said.

  I can’t…

  Help me.

  I won’t…

  Help me. Goddamn you, you stupid fucking man, you waste of space, where’s the guy who tracked a thief across the Middle East, where’s mugurski71, where’s Gauguin, where’s the spy, the security man, the manipulator, the killer instinct, where’s your hunger for revenge?

  Byron beat me, he said. Byron won.

  She stabbed me and left me bleeding on a Venetian floor, I replied. She stuck electrodes in my brain and tried to make me her machine. She used me and made me her doll but she did not fucking beat me, now pull yourself fucking together!

  He stared at me through the laced fingers of his hand, and said, How many times have we had this conversation?

  A hundred fucking times, I snapped, and you forgot them all, but every time I was right, and every time you joined me in the end. So before Prometheus is torn apart, before Filipa goes to jail, before the last cent and the last contact you have vanishes for ever, help me.

  And I was shouting, but not at him.

  And he said: what do you need?

  Chapter 99

  Gauguin has many shiny tools at his command.

  A CCTV expert caught a glimpse of Byron as she boarded a train at St Lucia, three hours after the Hotel Madellena, then lost her somewhere in northern Italy, after she failed to disembark at any of the regular stops.

  We think she jumped while the train was stalled at a red light, he explained. Gauguin mustered his troops, expanded the search: transport hubs, airports, railway stations, ferry ports. A woman thought she caught a glimpse of Byron passing through Lugano, but it was the back of her head, seen from a steep angle, and who could say, really, in the grand scheme of things? Who could say?

  “Probably is her,” mused Gauguin. “If only because we never see her again.”

  I stayed next to Gauguin, and he kept the recording running, swapping out mobile phones for USB recorders whenever batteries died, watching me, always watching, from the corner of his eye.

  I said, “It’s okay. Byron got paranoid after a while too.”

  “I’m not—” he began, then stopped.

  “You fear who I am, when you forget me. You fear that I may say something, do something, and walk away, and when I come back, you won’t remember. The recorders are your weapon, but what if they stop? What if they stop and I rob you blind, and you never know. I’d be afraid. That’s okay.”

  He turned away, half closing his eyes, and said not a word.

  A time must come when Gauguin forgets.

  I stand over him while he writes in a large, capitalised hand, all his impressions of me. He uses a heavy silver fountain pen, black ink. It reminds me of something – the pen that Byron used to write with, recording her notes in America. Not merely an association – he is using its twin. I think about asking, then let it go.

  He takes a photo of the two of us, standing together in the kitchen, the clock behind and no smiles on our faces. I resist the urge to stick two thumbs up for the camera, or do bunny ears behind his head, and as stars turn and the moon sets I return to my hotel in the town, two big boxes of paper slung one under either arm.

  I do not sleep.

  The life and times of Byron on the floor.

  Everything Gauguin had, starting with a name.

  Siobhan Maddox. How strange to think of her as something human. Siobhan Maddox, born in Edinburgh to a primary school teacher and an installer of window frames. Studied French and Russian at UCL, lived in Germany for three years, working by day as a nanny for the British Embassy, and by night raising both her German and Russian to native-level fluency. Had a brief and entirely amicable affair with an attaché, found a certain curiosity about the world of diplomacy, applied for SIS.

  Said the recruiting officer, in the faded notes of her faded file: on paper there is no reason to accept this candidate. It is in person where you realise that she would be invaluable.

  A series of photos. Byron staring sombrely at the camera. Byron, aged seventeen, with her mum and dad in Newington, arranged in a triangle on the doorstep to their house, proud owners the day her mum paid the mortgage off. Byron was skinny as a rake, hair nearly down to her waist, knee-high leather boots, leather mini-skirt, incongruous woolly jumper and knitted beret set back loosely on her head, a look in her eye of pride, and defiance. Her home; her family; come take it if you dare.

  Documents, redacted. Swathes of black ink across operational details.

  Beirut, Tehran, Moscow, St Petersburg, Dallas, Washington, Paris, Berlin.

  An agent runner. At first, in accordance with the time, she was used to run mainly female assets. A woman’s touch, wrote her director. So much more comforting for the ladies.

  In time, male agents were added to her rota, and sometimes they were caught, and sometimes they died – a pilot hanged in Iraq, a weapons engineer who vanished into the Israeli Defence Forces and never re-emerged – but mostly they lived, and retired happy, their treason never known. One man’s treason is another man’s loyalty, after all.

  Dates, more notes.

  Considered for section head – passed over.

  Considered for section head – passed over.

  Considered for…

  Will our male colleagues be able to accept a female head? wrote a director, considering her application for head of counter-intelligence. I personally do not think so.

  These were those times, and so

  … section head – passed over.

  Later, when the photos changed to show a Byron with shorter hair, going grey at the roots, a face that was perfectly smooth across the forehead but beginning to crinkle tightly around the eyes and lips, a different concern was raised.

  Ideological, it said. Ideologically determined.

  Two words which, in another context, might have been grounds for instant elevation, but spies knew the dangers of having a view.

  How quickly those words grew from merely a footnote to a problem.

  Operational decisions compromised based on political views, wrote a disciplinary report. Orders refused.

  And then, in Gauguin’s hand on the side: she let them die.

  There was no explanation for these words, the text to which it referred gone, and perhaps Gauguin had never intended for anyone else to read these musings, but there it was, simple and true, at such a time in such a place, Byron had let someone die for a cause unknown, and in that word let was the problem – had she wished, she could have saved them all.

  A quiet departure from government duties, an offer of a backroom job on an NGO, but no, thank you, she’ll take her modest severance package and be on her merry way, farewell and goodbye, Official Secrets Act signed, ID badge burned, adios high office and hello the road less travelled.

  Sioban Maddox left the world of espionage aged forty-six, and three years later Matheus Pereyra-Conroy was dead, and Byron was born.

  Glimpses of Byron.

  A shot of a woman buying coffee at the Gare du Nord, Paris.

  A flash of a passport as it entered US customs via New Orleans.

  A blip on a credit card in Lagos, the card cancelled the very next day.

  A ping off a mobile phone in Shanghai.

  And Gauguin? He left the world of shady men one week after Matheus Pereyra-Conroy died, to track down the woman he thought had killed him. There was a time, he said, when I imagined she would marry me. But I never mustered the courage to ask, and I think she grew bored with waiting.

&n
bsp; Eight days after I met Gauguin at the house beneath the cliffs, we were no closer to finding Byron.

  I phoned ahead, and when no car came to pick me up, I called a taxi and rode up to the house to meet him.

  Not in the kitchen this time; a study, complete with portrait of Matheus Pereyra above a fireplace, painted by a man paid to like his subject, but who couldn’t quite do it. A halfway image, where regal was tyrant, and smile was smirk, depending how you looked at it.

  Gauguin, wearing thick rabbit-lined slippers and a green woollen cardigan, looked up as I walked in, took in my features for the very first time, said, “You must be Why. I didn’t realise you’d be coming by.”

  “We spoke on the phone.”

  “I didn’t write it down. My apologies.”

  I shrugged, sat on a padded sofa against a wall of unread, unloved, expensively bound leather books. “I’ve been thinking about Byron.”

  He put his pen aside, raised one hand to request patience, reached into a drawer, pulled out a notebook and a USB recorder, opened one, set the other running. I let him flick through his notes, gathering his thoughts, before he finally looked up and said, “You’ve read all the background material I have?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have we discussed it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ah – good.”

  He made another note, then pushed the book carefully to one side and turned all the way round on his chair, back to the desk, recorder in his lap. “You were saying?”

  Calm – so calm. A calmness made of the thin white sheet over a frozen lake, perfectly smooth until pressure is applied. This is the first time Gauguin has ever met me, but he sees a note saying it is not and so here is he, talking like an old friend, and calm – very, very calm.

  “I think we’re pursuing the wrong tack.”

  “Are we?”

  “I think we should go after Agustin Carrazza.”

  “The MIT man?”

  “Yep.”

  “All right; why?”

  “I think he’ll be easier to find. He’s not Byron – he’ll make mistakes.”

  “There’s no reason to think he’s still connected to her.”

  “And no reason to think therefore that we’d pursue him.”

  “Have we had this conversation before?” asked Gauguin. “Is this an old suggestion?”

  “No. We discounted him because his work is done, and he went underground months ago. I think we should put him back into the equation. He’s an academic, he’ll contact family, friends, use the same mobile phone, be caught by cameras, at customs—”

  “But will he contact Byron?”

  “I think he will if pushed to it.”

  “A trap?”

  “If you want to call it—”

  The door opened. I stopped. Filipa stood in the gap, wearing a burgundy dressing gown and nothing on her feet. She blinked round the room, saw Gauguin, saw me, said, “Could you direct me towards the most convenient breakfast?”

  Gauguin’s eyes flickered to me, then back to her as he said, “Downstairs there is muesli.”

  Her upper lip curled. “Harsh on the digestion, I find. High in sugars too.” Then her eyes settled on me again, and for a moment she contemplated my existence, trying to place me in this room, and finding no answer treated me to a dazzling smile and said instead, “I’m so sorry, I don’t believe we’ve been introduced? I’m Filipa, and you…?”

  “My name is Hope.”

  “A beautiful name for a beautiful woman! You’re not from round here; I can tell.”

  “No, I’m from England.”

  “England? Where in England?”

  “Derby.”

  “Ah – wonderful; never been there myself, but always meant to.”

  I smiled, but could not out-smile her brightness. “Well,” she said, a second before the silence grew awkward, “Hope, it’s such a pleasure to meet you, I hope to see lots of you soon and we can talk all about England. But now I really must get some breakfast; I trust you don’t mind my disgraceful hours and appearance, last night was a bit of a trial.”

  “I don’t mind.”

  “You’re a darling – we’re going to be such good friends.”

  So saying, she beamed at me, beamed at Gauguin, turned, and walked away, closing the door behind her.

  I looked at Gauguin, who looked away.

  “Does she remember killing Rafe?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “But she’s—”

  “She says she’s going to sue whoever ruined the party, and that she’ll need counselling. She used Perfection to find herself a suitable therapist – it can supply that sort of thing. She chose one in Paris, and received four thousand points when she booked a ten-week course. I had to cancel the booking – the police won’t let her go, with matters as they are – but though she lost the points, she didn’t say she was upset. Perfect people don’t cry. Crying is ugly.”

  “You sympathise with Byron?” I mused. “With what Filipa did?”

  “I… no. Byron is a murderer. Her cause – can we call it a cause? Cause is a righteous word, a word that implies…”

  “Sufficient reason?”

  “Sufficiency is lacking.”

  “Agustin Carrazza,” I repeated firmly. “He likes to run.”

  Three days was all it took to find our missing professor.

  His mistake was stunning in its stupidity; he’d logged into his music collection from a computer in Guatemala, having concluded, perhaps, that it was worth risking his location in order to reclaim several thousand dollars’ worth of cloud-stored songs.

  Gauguin flew to Guatemala the next day. I went on the same plane, but booked my own tickets. A hands-off approach, gentle and light.

  He arrived at Agustin Carrazza’s door at ten p.m. in the middle of a rainstorm, knocked three times, waited, knocked three times again.

  “Coming, coming!” snarled the professor, and opening the door, there he was, in a white vest and beige shorts, a pair of purple flip flops on his feet, hair and beard grown long.

  Gauguin smiled. “May I come in?” he said.

  He was in the house for twenty minutes, and two days later, he returned with company.

  Luca Evard smiled as he looked through the kitchen window while Agustin made him coffee, and said, no, Interpol, the investigation has grown now, a possible link between Meredith Earwood and the attacks in Venice, you must have seen the news, you must have heard…

  No, heard nothing, Agustin replied, nothing at all.

  I listened through the microphone I’d planted in Agustin’s kitchen light. I would have put more in his telephone, radiators, computers, back of the TV – but Gauguin had got there first, the whole house wired, so I made do.

  Luca was persuasive and kind, gently laying out reports of associations between Agustin and Meredith Earwood, connections that were tentatively being proven, the advantages of co-operation, the opportunities of helping to crack this case. The professor was an expert, of course, an expert, it would be so useful to get his input… and why had he moved to Guatemala?

  The people, snapped Agustin, harder than he’d meant, and in the silence that followed I imagined the patient expressions on both Gauguin’s and Luca’s face, the smiles of two men who know that their mark has made a mistake, that he’s going to crack, but won’t say anything, won’t make a move, just waiting for him to unfold like an evening primrose, open up the petals of his truth and die in the light of day.

  “Wonderful coffee, thank you,” said Luca, as they walked away. “I do see why you love it here.”

  I watched at a distance as Luca and Gauguin walked back to their car, and followed on a stolen moped into the city. At a café hung with purple flowers, I sat two tables away and listened, as Gauguin said, “I believe I’ve been working with Why.”

  Luca didn’t answer.

  “Is that a problem?” asked Gauguin in the silence. “I wanted to tell you, but if it’s a problem�
�”

  “Not a problem,” he replied, quickly. “Not a problem.”

  Gauguin stirred sugar into his coffee, and nodding at nothing much, looked up, and saw me. A slight start, a jerk in his body as he stared. Was I the woman under discussion? He reached for his pocket, instinctively, then stopped himself, put his hand back on the table.

  Luca Evard flew back to Switzerland the next morning, and I let him go.

  Things I am:

  I am my legs as I run through the rain.

  I am darkness, broken.

  I am a shadow of a figure beneath the light.

  I am disturbance to the dreaming mind of a man who lost his job today, and who tosses and turns in his broken sleep and wonders, what now, what now, what now, and thinks he hears a woman run by, and turns over, and forgets.

  I am a figment of a woman’s contemplation as she looks out of her kitchen window across the city, through the maze of telephone lines and jacked-up electrical cables that have been spun and threaded across the street like a spider’s web on LSD

  she looks and sees the lights of the city and for a moment thinks she can conceive of a world of infinite possibility, of infinite lives, of hearts as real as hers, thoughts as clear, beating, living, moving against that light

  and she looks down

  and sees me

  and I wave

  and she waves back, a moment of connection, two strangers who are, for a moment, the same

  but I run on

  and she forgets

  but I do not.

  I am memory; I am the sum of my memories.

  I am the sum of my deeds.

  I am thoughts for the future.

  Compilations from the past.

  I am this moment.

  I am now.

  At last I think I know what that means.

  Three hours after Luca left Guatemala, Gauguin called me on a disposable mobile phone.

  “Is this Why?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Agustin Carrazza just dialled a number in London. He’s trying to reach Byron. The note says you’d want to know.”

  Gauguin explains.

  Carrazza dials a phone in London, the phone is answered by an unknown male.

  The phone is in a Wapping solicitor’s office a few streets from the river. From there a young man in a white shirt with dog-head cufflinks writes down Carrazza’s message, folds it into a perfect little square, takes the DLR to the Isle of Dogs, foot tunnel under the river, ambles to Greenwich Market, buys deep-fried gyoza at a stall, which he eats with his bare fingers, walks round the edge of the hill, the observatory at the top, and finally slips into a public telephone, one of very few still left in London.