‘Your warrant lets you steal my phone? I don’t think so somehow.’
The officer stood up, wrestled Eric’s arm behind his back and took the phone from him.
‘Your trouble, son? You don’t think at all.’
His arm released into his own custody again, Wanless leapt up in rage.
‘Give me my fucking phone!’
‘Check this guy, Amrit, anger management problems or what, a latter-day Eric the Red!’ Turning to their suspect, ‘My advice? Try your luck if you like, but assaulting a police officer wouldn’t be a good move. You’re in enough trouble as it is.’
So saying, he left the room and took the phone upstairs to a technical colleague, whose dark arts were best suited to a windowless room in the basement but who had climbed instead to an office on the top floor where the signal was better.
Wanless turned to Bhatt. ‘Did you see that? Theft, pure and simple, not to mention aggravated assault. What’s that guy’s name?’
‘John.’
‘Don’t give me that,’ Eric said, and added, thinking of toilets, ‘there are johns all over the place.’
‘John O’Brien.’
‘Right, well, John O’Brien will be hearing from my brief.’
Officer Bhatt looked at Wanless and sighed. Who should have to deal with an idiot like this?
‘You wished to make a call. You may, of course, though not with that particular device.’
‘Why not, what the hell’s going on here?’
For once, their technical experts wouldn’t have to crack the code; Wanless had done it for them. Thanks to him, everything on his phone could be copied: numbers, addresses, emails and even the holy grail, WhatsApp messages. Provided they kept it active long enough; a simple thing to do.
‘We can learn a great deal from smartphones these days, Mr Wanless. Tell me, who is it you wish to phone?’
‘That would be my girlfriend, Cindy.’
‘Your girlfriend is a lawyer.’
‘Of course not. Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘Mr Wanless, I’m not sure you realise the gravity of your situation.’
‘But you’re going to tell me anyway.’
Bhatt was happy to oblige.
20
When she returned from her trip to Prague, wary of its contents, Cooper delayed opening Grönefeld’s little blue cool box for several days. She finally got round to it only after bolstering herself with an omelette of free range eggs and organic mushrooms. And making up to Schnucki, who was always a bit standoffish when his food was slow to appear.
Taking care not to touch them, she studied the bottles. They looked harmless enough, but there was no point taking unnecessary risks. Their screw tops were red for a reason, as was the writing on their labels. The box also contained three sheets of densely argued A4 typescript in which Grönefeld explained, for Cooper’s benefit, the background biology.
She settled down on her sofa, one leg folded under the other, a position she favoured even though it inhibited circulation. After all, she thought, everything inhibited something. There was no joy to be had. Anywhere.
‘Well, Schnucki, let’s see what this is all about.’
According to Grönefeld, some viruses, smallpox, for example, were based on DNA. The genomes of these viruses could be sequenced and it was possible to edit them in the lab. But millions of viruses were based on RNA. While the genomes of these viruses could be sequenced, editing them in the lab was proving difficult. H7N9 was such a virus and her team was adopting two approaches. The first was to let nature do the work for them, providing different hosts for the virus in a variety of environments and hoping for the best. By which she really meant the worst, a variant of the virus considerably more lethal than H7N9.
‘My God, this stuff’s heavy going. Just be glad you’re a cat!’
Curled up beside her, quietly purring, Schnucki seemed to confirm he was glad. He was certainly happier than the animals exposed to the virus in the lab, who were subject to symptoms ranging from nasal discharge to death.
The second approach was to develop an active editing technique. If they could bring it off, it would put Breakout in the money big time – provided they were the first to come up with it and filed the necessary patents before anyone else. But they were making heavy weather of it right now. Of particular concern to Dr Heidegger was the reluctance of the virus to spread from birds to humans. If this could be improved upon, the need for a human vaccine would be greatly increased, as would be the potential rewards. Reading this, Cooper wondered whether the estimable doctor was the paragon of virtue Grönefeld liked to think.
Absentmindedly stroking her cat, she turned to the second page of Grönefeld’s notes and instantly wished she hadn’t. You’ve probably heard of C2c2, the page began, a programmable RNA-targeting CRISPR effector. Staring with CRISPR, then… What came after that, and even with the best of intentions, was several steps too far for a normal person hoping to stay awake.
‘Oh my God, who can handle stuff like this!’ Cooper slapped her forehead with the palm of her hand, a rhetorical gesture totally lost on her cat, then, for his benefit, attempted her own simple summary.
‘Well, Schnucki, if a passing eider duck lands on the balcony looking a bit off-colour with this H7N9 thing, you’ll have to exercise some self-control for once. Whatever you do, don’t eat it!’
This innocent reference to H7N9, addressed to a cat who was always the soul of discretion, was the first evidence Adalbert Pearson had to indicate why Grönefeld and Cooper had met. Because the ears of a cat, sensitive as they were, were not the only ones picking up her comment. He heard it live, in his office.
It was small, situated in an industrial area of the city once part of East Berlin, but offered adequate broadband speed, reasonable transport links and no amenities whatsoever, though it did house two computers, two monitors and a filing cabinet which contained, sorted by drawer, digital cameras, PAYG mobile phones, tracking devices and surveillance equipment. For the fictitious individual who rented it, he had created an extensive digital footprint, including a minor traffic offence for added credibility and a bank account from which he paid the bills.
Like everyone else, Pearson had weaknesses, his being a wayward sense of humour. He’d resisted the temptation to rent the premises in the name of Dieter Klein, a man so dry the dust got right up his nose; given where Klein worked, he knew how stupid that would be. But one temptation he had given way to was calling his business Klandestein, a word which bore no relation to its German equivalent but gave him pleasure nonetheless.
‘So, Catherine,’ he said to himself, confident his own little office wasn’t bugged, ‘talking to your cat may not be such a smart idea after all.’ He was visited by another whimsical thought; if only he’d bugged the bell the admirable Schnucki wore round his neck. He’d considered it at the time, but the presence of the cat-sitter had deterred him.
He swivelled his chair towards one of his screens, intending to look more closely at Breakout, Gudrun Grönefeld’s place of work, but before he did so checked out of habit messages from incoming newsfeeds. Nothing significant there, until he found mention of the arrest of a thirty-two-year-old male in London in connection with the murder in Geneva of the well-known businessman and social campaigner Xavier Grosjean, a murder which, according to the writer, had shocked the nation. The arrested man was not named but a contact in Europol provided it. Eric Wanless. And that was a name which rang a bell, because Pearson’s metadata indicated that Wanless was on the contact list not only of Catherine Cooper but also on those of both the recent visitors to her apartment, Cindy Horváth and Magnus Hjemdahl.
He opened the workbook where he aggregated metadata for his current contracts, one sheet for each, and updated his sheet for Klein with notes to himself. Further investigation of these people was called for, even if the man himself was no
longer interested. The more information he collected, the more likely it was that connections, hitherto not evident, would stare him in the face as he logged it. He was on the verge of something here; he felt it in his bones. And if he failed to feel it there, he felt it in his water.
Excited enough to rise from his chair and walk to the fridge, he opened a can of beer and poured it into a glass. This could be a breakthrough; this could be major. He looked out of the window into the concrete wasteland of the car park, where grass, searching out weak points and cracks, was growing in profusion. A man with a protective visor was walking from one clump to the next, spraying everything that grew with weed killer. Ah yes. Cindy Horváth. The Death of Grass. Never more so than now, everything was connected to everything else.
21
Saito’s trip to Japan did not turn out as expected; her parents were celebrating their anniversary with no enthusiasm whatever. They had coexisted reasonably well in the past, even showing occasional signs of affection, but things had cooled since her last visit and it wasn’t down to the snow. Not that either of them advertised the fact to her directly; that wouldn’t have done, and she was at a loss to understand it till she overheard her mother, on the telephone to her friend Maiko, make a passing reference to wet leaves.
Saito knew that this was not a quotation from Kobayashi Issa. Her mother wasn’t into haiku, and in any case, the reference was only too clear. Since her husband had retired from his managerial role in the postal service, her mother felt put upon by his constant presence in the family home. Her suggestion that he take up fishing had fallen on deaf ears, and she had failed to come up with an alternative which would keep him out of the house for several hours a day, seven days a week. Was this too much to ask? Yes, wet leaves were a nuisance all right; they stuck to the soles of your shoes as you walked along.
Her attempts to engage her parents on the topic, together or separately, were not welcomed. This was a subject which had nothing to do with her, so she spent her brief week in the family home meeting friends in Sapporo and working on a money-raising scheme which had come to her like a ray of sunshine through a brief break in an otherwise cloudy sky. They didn’t have enough money, so what should they do? Simple. Ask for some.
Her first move was to build a Japanese version of Future World and publish it through Nifty. And after that, the creation of a Future World charity. Why not? Since reducing its population would be doing the world a favour, their activity was clearly charitable. She appointed herself the lead contact and gave her parents’ address for correspondence. Knowing that the process would take time, she would complete it on her return to Los Angeles.
She was in the kitchen one evening preparing fish with her mother when she was struck by a thought: her parents might split up and go their separate ways. Where would her registered address be then? She looked at her mother, her black hair greying, her pale face drawn with the stress of married life. Would she end up like that? No way, not if she could help it.
‘You will continue living here, won’t you?’
Mrs Takashima turned from the stove in amazement.
‘Where else would I live? This is my home.’
Satisfied on that point, Saito smiled at her mother.
‘I’ll have mail in the next few weeks. Will you forward it to me when it arrives?’
Her mother looked grim. ‘We can safely leave postal matters to your father.’
The tone in which she said it suggested to Saito that forwarding mail was all her father was fit for.
‘Who will send this mail? Satoru?’
Despite increasing failure in this area of life, Mrs Takashima still hoped that her daughter would make the same mistake that she had – marry and have children. Not because she wanted her to be miserable, but if there was a purpose in life other than marriage with a view to procreation, she had no idea what it was. Replacing a husband with a grandchild or two was a pleasing prospect but if, for some reason, it didn’t come to pass, her daughter was a respectful girl who would care for her in her old age. As for Satoru, he was a medical student who ticked several boxes, but Saito had finished with him when she moved to California. Let’s not pretend we can keep this going at a distance, she’d said at the time. He didn’t pretend. He’d seen it coming and lined up a replacement well before she left. Satoru was a mover; Satoru could dance.
‘No, Mother, nothing to do with him. Official correspondence. JACO and the like.’
‘Ah, this is good. You are involved with charitable work.’
And in a way, she was, working hard on setting up the charity and seeking affiliation with the esteemed Japan Association of Charitable Organisations. At first, she’d partitioned off an area of the ima to work in, but she had become accustomed to solid western walls rather than paper-thin screens and found Hokkaido University Library more conducive to progress. Sitting at her workstation, with its excellent internet connection, she alternated between studying the regulations governing charities in Japan and, when that became too much, calming herself with live footage of her beautiful neon tetras via webcam.
She sent an encouraging progress report to Catherine Cooper. Donations to the charity would not be subject to regulation since donors received nothing in return. Apart, of course, from the knowledge that their contributions would make the world a better place, and that was truer than they knew. Cooper was delighted. With the prospect of money coming in, she had something major in mind for her friend – a trip to Madison, Wisconsin with a small blue box. Interested? She would explain in a follow-up message. Without an accounting bone in her body, Cooper was booking future profits as though they’d already been made and working out how to spend them.
When she was packing to leave, Saito made one last attempt to engage with her father. Was he really as sad as he looked? He answered indirectly.
‘I am looking for a place to live, a place where I will be welcomed if only by myself.’
She told him, as she had before, that he would always be welcome to visit her, but he replied that the journey was too long for a man in the twilight of his years. He was only sixty years old but already he had given up.
22
Cindy Horváth woke up wondering who was on the other side of the bed. Of the three hopefuls who’d approached her in Peaches and Cream the night before, she’d ended up in the VIP area with József. And here he was, completely out of it, having done his duty by her and what had lately been the Republic of Hungary. She prodded him awake, asked him to put his clothes on and leave, which he did, after taking aftershave from his coat pocket and leaving the air in her modest apartment reeking of an odour so powerful it caught in the throat.
When he hit the street, without a single backward glance, she opened several windows to let the smell out and the traffic noise in, spruced herself up and went out to Budavar Ruszwurm Cukraszda for breakfast. Sitting outside, even in February, was the only way for a confirmed smoker like her, but the cool winter air aided thought and she had plenty to think about. She took the art of translation seriously. In her short career, she’d grappled with a range of problems, from indicating the speech of different social classes, tricky in itself, to her greatest bugbear, rendering play on words. But she seldom had trouble with what the author was saying, exactly her problem now. If only she knew an expert in the subject she would take advice on this one, but she didn’t.
Sitting in her coat and scarf, absentmindedly pushing a glass ashtray round the table top, Horváth decided to message Cooper, whose contact, Gudrun Grönefeld, would surely know the answer to her question. And here something happened which she could not have predicted. Saito had advised that a complete cessation of contact through normal channels would be suspicious in itself, so any activity unrelated to what they now referred to as The Project would best be conducted in the usual way. And so Horváth, making fluent use of her opposable thumbs, composed an email to Cooper, fired it off and thou
ght no more about it. Nor did Cooper when she read it. But Pearson did, and contacted Klein at once.
Though he’d played the piano in his youth, Klein’s skills had always been limited. Ambitious plans of playing preludes and fugues had given way to grappling with two-part inventions, and even there he was stretched. His alarm was compounded when he played his efforts into Apollo from his new digital piano and saw what appeared on the screen – notes before the beat, notes after the beat, and in every bar, a rash of rests where his note values fell long or short. Neat by nature, he was appalled by the mess looking back at him. This won’t do at all, it seemed to say, you’re nowhere near it. Klein was dismayed. Composing by this method required a precision he would be hard put to achieve.
He had just come to this conclusion when Pearson phoned; some nonsense about a woman translating a book from English into Hungarian. For heaven’s sake, this wasn’t something anyone with half a brain would take seriously. What was the man thinking about? In the peremptory manner which broke through his surface civility whenever his progress was impeded, he declined Pearson’s request for a further meeting. There was no need for a meeting at this time; furthermore, the expense could not be justified! Knowing Klein as he did, Pearson had expected this response, though not expressed so brusquely. Now he too had a choice to make.
*
Ursula Lang was watering potted plants when her phone rang.
‘Lang.’
‘Pearson. Remember me?’
Who could forget this dubious little man? ‘Of course.’
‘We should talk.’
She rested her watering can on a window ledge and parked most of her spreading posterior beside it. Like some of her conversations, the rest was left hanging.
‘Go ahead.’
‘In person.’
The Ears of a Cat Page 9