This format doesn’t make sense, said Michael. Is there a pattern in this? Is it meant to mean something?
Shut up. I’m trying to hear.
Michael got to his feet, eased his knees. A Q train clattered overhead. Aoife sat forward, phone clamped to her ear, and flipped open the notebook.
What is it?
Be quiet!
He sat down again, put his ear to the other side of the phone. The host was playing a record.
A little girl’s voice – crackly, mechanical, unsettling, eerie – recited numbers in German.
Null . . . neun . . . sieben . . . acht . . . null . . . vier . . . neun . . . sieben . . . acht . . . null . . . vier . . . neun . . . vier . . . acht . . .
Music rose in the background, a fragile tune on an electric organ. A woman, crooning, added her voice to the mix. All the while, in the background, the child continued to call out numbers to the ether: cosmic bingo, or an interstellar distress call.
Sechs . . . sieben . . . acht . . . neun . . . neun . . .
The track ended in discord. The host came back on the
mic.
That was Stereolab . . . A track called ‘Pause’. Off of their album Transient Random-Noise Bursts with Announcements . . .
Aoife clicked the little button on her pen, extending the nib. She put it to the notepaper, eyes closed.
What is it? asked Michael.
She shook her head briskly, making a shush with her lips. After a long and bewildering pause, the host spoke again.
That’s a song about numbers stations. You know: numbers stations. Like, you’re listening to the radio, late at night – short-wave radio, if you still got one, which you should – and you’re spinning the dial – because you have that freedom with a short-wave radio; they don’t railroad your choices with digital presets – and the next thing you hear is some strange tinny music, and then some weird robotic voice starts reading out numbers or letters. And then, after a couple of minutes, the music plays again, and that’s it for the night.
The host cleared his throat, shuffled some papers, accidentally banged a hand against the microphone.
And what these broadcasts are is this: they are actual real-life coded messages to sleeper agents, from spy agencies in places like Russia and Israel and North Korea, and even here in the States. The codes are completely unbreakable, because they change every day. The only catch is, it’s one-way traffic. The puppets listen to their master, but they can’t answer back . . .
He shuffled some papers, coughed.
Hey, wait a minute . . . They can’t answer back? I like the sound of that! Maybe I should turn this show into a numbers station. We could ditch all the callers and guests, and just read out numbers instead . . . You guys out there would still listen, right? Hey, call-screener – should we turn this show into a numbers station?
Inaudible answer, off-mic.
He says yeah . . . I could just play something short by Guided By Voices, which is anything by Guided By Voices, then read some numbers. I could go, like, Oh, one, oh, two, oh, and then go, like, Four, six, three, seven, and then play the Guided By Voices track again. It would make as much sense as what we’re doing now . . . Let’s go to the phones with that as a topic: should the show become a numbers station? Who’s on line one?
Aoife shut off the feed, retracted the nib on her ballpoint.
That was a zip code, she said.
01020-4637 was another unit in another industrial park. This one was on the outskirts of Springfield, Massachusetts. The bus dropped them off at the end of the street.
The unit looked much like the one that they had burgled two days before, except smaller and older, with weeds poking through the parking lot and discoloured streaks on the walls. A neon sign above the door showed a bug-eyed alien swinging a bowling ball. The bowling ball was planet Earth.
Michael squinted at the sign.
Close Encounters of the Rolling Kind . . . Are you sure this is it?
It matches the nine-digit zip code.
Inside was the smell of nachos and floor wax, the purr of balls on lacquered wood, the plink and rattle of scattering pins. It was early afternoon, a sunny Saturday, and most of the lanes were already taken. It looked to Aoife like some kind of outing – a church group, maybe, or a company fun day – families bowling together, no team shirts or colours.
I don’t see Towse, said Michael.
I’m hungry. Let’s get something to eat.
A counter at the back sold beer and soda and bowling-grade junk food. It appeared to be unmanned. Then Aoife saw the top of a head, covered in one of those catering hairnets, between the bottles of ketchup and mustard lined on the counter. The head was bent forward, as if in prayer.
Excuse me, she said.
The head turned, rose, revealed itself.
Aoife! Michael! You made it. Well done!
Towse put down his book, disappeared, reappeared a moment later, emerging from a door in the wall. He wore the same suit, but it had been cleaned and pressed. The hairnet made him look like an absent-minded surgeon.
Are they still hiring?
Don’t be sarcastic, Aoife. I’m just helping out. The owner’s having a fundraiser for his faith group, and it’s the least I can do, when he’s letting me crash here, on the Q.T. . . . Hey, can I get you something to eat? On me?
Two hot dogs, said Michael.
Yeah, said Aoife. Two for me, too. What do you mean, faith group? What are they raising funds for?
Hiroshima Day.
What the hell do they worship? The Enola Gay?
They’re Raëlians, Aoife. It’s a UFO cult, but quite a nice one. Hey – you got inside Fess’s matching engine, right? You got the data I needed?
Yes, said Michael.
He handed Towse the laptop.
Good . . . I knew you’d do it. I’ll just go rustle up those hot dogs. Pull up a stool and we’ll talk.
He disappeared behind the counter. They dragged two stools over and watched him fish franks from grey water.
So this place, said Michael, is some kind of cult temple?
Towse’s voice was muffled as he bent to his task.
No. It’s a bowling alley. But it belongs to a level-three Raëlian guide. He’s a friend of mine. The congregation likes to come and roll here. Who doesn’t like bowling?
What do Raëlians believe in, apart from UFOs?
They don’t believe in God, for a start, which is always interesting in a religion. They believe that aliens came to earth, thousands of years ago, and pretended to be angels. All the top angels were really aliens – Gabriel, Michael, Raphael, Samael. So was Lucifer, of course. He was the boss alien, although the Raëlians don’t know that. He kept his face out of things. He liked to delegate.
What did these aliens want?
To help out. But they came here, had a look around, and then decided humans were too stupid to bother with, so they left. But when they saw the flash from the first atom bomb, they knew that humans had developed intelligence, so it was time to come back. That’s why Hiroshima Day is the Raëlians’ biggest holiday.
Funny definition of intelligence, said Aoife.
Plus, said Michael, the first atom bomb was Los Alamos, not Hiroshima.
Yeah, I know. But don’t say that to these guys – you have to respect other people’s religion . . . Anyway, today they’re raising money for a Hiroshima Day trip to the site of the alien embassy.
The what?
The Raëlians want to build an embassy for the aliens. In
Jerusalem, of all places. They think it’s a city of peace. To make things even trickier, the Raëlian symbol is a swastika merged with a Star of David. There’s an innocent explanation for that, apparently, but the Israelis are a little reluctant to take it on board. You can’t really blame them . . . Suffice to say,
the embassy proposal has run into obstacles.
You don’t strike me as religious, said Aoife, but you seem to know an awful lot about religion.
I’ve made it one of the great studies of my life.
Towse applied onions, ketchup and mustard, and placed the hotdogs in cardboard trays on the counter.
Help yourselves to beer or soda. I’m going to look at this computer and see what you’ve got for me. There are some couches over there, in the corner. Take a rest, and later we’ll talk.
They were lulled by the drone of the bowling balls, happy voices, waves of pins breaking on a parquet beach. When Aoife awoke, the place was almost silent, almost dark. Over by the opposite wall, in the only lane that was lit, Towse was bowling by himself. She watched him roll three strikes in a row, then she shook Michael. Groggily, they moved towards the light.
Towse, who had just sent another perfect delivery curving down the lane, was frozen in his release position, one hand raised before him, palm up, in silent supplication. He ignored them until the ball struck the left of the frame, converting its spin into lateral fury, turning pins into shrapnel to mow down their friends. Another strike.
Aoife spoke:
What went wrong in Bayonne, Towse?
He picked up another ball, polished it with his sleeve.
We were raided. They knew we were there.
How did you get away? Did someone warn you? And if so, why didn’t you warn us?
No one warned me about anything. It was dumb luck. I went for a stroll and saw them arriving. That’s what really bothers me. I don’t like being in debt to providence . . .
How did they know we were there, then?
Towse stepped up to the lane, swinging the ball.
That’s what I want to know. Did either of you make a phone call, or send an email or whatever? Or did you take money from an ATM? Anything stupid like that?
He skipped down the parquet, released the ball. Another strike.
It must have been the barman, said Michael. He must have given us away.
The barman didn’t even know who we were. Plus, he’s in a coma now because he doesn’t like talking to strangers.
Maybe we triggered a silent alarm? When we broke into their matching engine?
Barb Collins was at that bar in Bayonne less than an hour after you left the data centre. San Francisco is five and a half hours flight time from Newark. So they already knew we were in Jersey before you hacked into that matching engine. But they didn’t know why we were in Jersey. Otherwise, they’d have been waiting for you at the industrial park.
Then they must have picked up our trail online, said Michael. You must have screwed up, Towse. With your burner phones.
I think you screwed up, Michael. No offence, but you’re our weakest link.
I didn’t ask to be here, Towse. You’re the one who brought me. I still don’t know why.
Aoife found her voice.
I think it was me.
They both turned to look at her.
What did you do?
That night in Bayonne. When we bought the pizza. I used a card to pay for it.
You did what?
She found it hard to meet their eyes.
They wouldn’t deliver our pizza on the promise of cash. Once they heard the name of the bar, they said I’d have to pay up front before they’d take the order. They said one of the regulars used to order pizza, not pay for it, and then raid the dumpster behind the restaurant.
You, of all people, used a credit card?
It was just an odd bit of plastic I picked up somewhere! I keep them for jimmying doors. I didn’t even think it would be working, but the system sometimes OKs small payments without bothering to check, so I thought I’d give it a go. But there’s no way they could have linked us to that card. It wasn’t even mine.
Do you still have it?
Aoife reached into her hip pocket, showed them the card. It was issued by a Canadian bank. Michael stepped closer.
Whose name is on that card, Aoife?
What does that matter?
Whose name, Aoife?
She looked at it.
Some woman called Lydia. Lydia A. Field.
When a bowling ball rolls down the lane, or along the gutter, it is swallowed by the pinsetter, along with any fallen pins, then sent back to the bowler along the return track. But when you throw it with all your force at a mirror, the glass shatters, and the ball falls to the floor, spinning in the shards, until it slows and comes to rest.
Aoife and Towse watched Michael with interest. What would he do next? Would he attack them, or turn and walk out of there, or collapse in tears, or pick up another ball?
He did something else entirely. He began to figure things out.
He turned to Aoife.
You did it. You stole my wallet in Palo Alto, along with that laptop. Alice’s old credit card was in my wallet. It was the last thing she ever handed to me. It was you who broke into my house.
Aoife tried to look apologetic.
I wouldn’t say broke in. I left the bathroom window open for myself.
But the front door was open, next morning!
Why climb out through a window when you can walk out the front?
Michael sat down on a return track, working things through.
If you stole the laptop, then why were the Feds coming for me?
They weren’t. Not then, anyway. I sort of made all that up.
But there was a car parked across the road from my house! You showed it to me! Another one drove past us. Someone banged on the door!
I did improv at college, Michael. I was good at it. Cars park outside houses. Cars drive down streets. No one banged on the door. I just told you that to get you moving.
Why the hell would you make all that up?
Because Towse told me to fetch you. And if I’d told you the truth, you wouldn’t have come.
Towse, ignoring the signs on the walls, lit a cigarette. He blew a smoke ring at the roof, watched it rise a foot and hover above him.
Fess thought I was selling him government secrets, he said, smuggled in to him on that laptop. He’s interested in some very gnarly stuff. But I’d installed a keylogger on it, so I could read everything that Fess put into it, including his access codes. The simplest tricks fool arrogant people. I needed those codes to break into his matching engine.
Towse reached up, annihilating the smoke ring with a wave of his hand.
We tricked you, Michael. But I had a good reason. I often tell lies, but I never break promises. And I promised Alice I’d look after you. So you had to come along.
Michael said nothing. Aoife spoke next.
So what did you find, Towse? When you used the codes to break into the dark pool?
Do you want me to get technical?
No.
Then it’s pretty simple. Fess is using his dark pool to cheat all its clients.
How much?
From the volume of trades that I saw in that sample, I would estimate that Fess is creaming off maybe a hundred million bucks a year from the traders in his dark pool.
Aoife and Michael looked at each other, baffled.
Is that all? That’s peanuts to Fess. Why would he go to so much trouble for that?
Because Fess is cursed with the wrong kind of money. He’s a victim of the online fintech systems that he’s done so much to build. Every cent that he owns leaves a trace when he moves it. He’s bank wealthy, street poor. And right now, Fess needs a lot of street money.
For what?
Towse held his cigarette upright, like an exclamation point, smiling blandly. They waited for him to go on. Michael’s patience broke first.
So what is it, Towse? What’s Fess’s big secret?
What it is, I’m not sure yet. But I do kn
ow where it is. We have to go and take a look. It’s the only way to turn the tables on Fess and get ourselves out of this. Come on – there’s just time to hit a book store before we catch the plane.
Part Three:
The Garden
Uganda, Pearl of Africa. An equatorial plateau between the Albertine Rift and the Eastern Rift Valley. Birthplace, some say, of humanity. Source, if you like, of the Nile.
The British wanted Uganda so badly that they stole Kenya just to get to it. Uganda was intended to be the halfway point in a chain of roads and rails and inland navigations that would link a continuous band of imperial territory, all the way from Cairo to the Cape of Good Hope.
That didn’t happen. The Empire never quite lined up all its tiles from Cape to Cairo, and the Brits were bounced out of Africa after the Second World War. But as far as the average American is concerned, such facts belong to a mythical past, a dreamtime, prehistory. Which might explain why the United States, having learned nothing and forgotten everything, has been secretly building its own African fantasy.
They call it the New Spice Route, a covert chain of logistical bases, airport compounds, supply dumps, surveillance facilities and bush strips, from the Swahili coast to the Atlantic shore. Its waypoints – caravanserais of trucking containers and razor wire and air-conditioned tents – are skeleton-crewed by security contractors, special-forces detachments, surveillance-drone techs and local auxiliaries. The idea is, should the US ever choose to ramp up any given war in Africa, overt or covert, it can quickly reinforce these forward operating bases, rather than keep troops and equipment on site. And some day – not, from the look of it, very far in the future – when the American empire is also a legend of decline, like King Solomon’s Mines, or the lost Christian kingdom of the great Prester John, archaeologists will trace its ruin in aerial photos of its overgrown airstrips, buried concrete floor slabs, and the acacias that grow greener over former pit latrines. But for now, burly white men still do weights in moon bases deep in the bush, and Galaxy C-5s thunder skywards from domestic airfields – in this case, Westover Air Reserve Base, near Springfield, Massachusetts – on unlisted flights to Manda Bay in Kenya, Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti, or – in this case, again – to Africa Command’s main dark site in Uganda, a fortified compound in Entebbe Airport, on the northern shore of Lake Victoria.
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