The Ears of a Cat

by Roderick Hart

  ‘I invite you now to study the summary compiled by Herr Pearson and myself.’

  Which was that Gudrun Grönefeld, working at Breakout in Austria, had managed to remove a sample mutation of the virus, send it to one Gina Saito, a Japanese national resident in Los Angeles, who arranged to have it collected by a third party, now identified through CCTV images and the registration number of his vehicle as Rafael Ignaz Munoz. Thanks to Herr Pearson, it was also known that Saito had made contact with Charles Ventris with a view to enlisting the aid of Ventris Labs in Madison, Wisconsin.

  ‘But surely,’ Vogt asked, ‘no one in his right mind would assist in such a project?’

  Pearson smiled. ‘Whoever said Ventris was in his right mind? His sole interests now are what they have always been: money and fame. And I should know,’ he added, ‘I worked for him.’

  ‘Ah,’ Werner said, as if that explained not only Ventris but Pearson as well.

  ‘I have provided files on each of these individuals,’ Lang pointed out, ‘plus four others we believe to be involved: Catherine Cooper, Cindy Horváth, Magnus Hjemdahl and Eric Wanless. I invite you to read through these now. I will be collecting them at the end of the meeting.’

  Seeing Werner’s predicament, Liesl von Eschwege offered him half of her own files.

  ‘We can swap halfway through.’

  True, and thoughtful of her, but he still didn’t know who she was.

  After some minutes of silence, broken only by the sound of paper being turned, Lang resumed the discussion.

  ‘I assume we can agree that if this threat is serious it merits further attention.’

  ‘Well,’ Vogt said, ‘as I see it, this Cooper woman should certainly be monitored; her connection with Grönefeld is clear. I’m not so sure about Horváth.’

  ‘I am.’

  Like many others, Pearson was taken by the body beautiful and intended to keep an eye on it regardless.

  ‘Monitoring is all very well,’ Werner said, ‘but as Herr Klein told me often enough, either it leads to action or it does not.’

  Pearson glanced at Lang; it sounded like Klein all right.

  ‘Well,’ he sighed, ‘it doesn’t get deeper than that.’

  But Vogt was becoming exasperated.

  ‘Poke fun if you want, but what’s the plan? There has to be one, surely?’

  Though not himself an employee, Pearson took it on himself to answer on behalf of the service.

  ‘It’s simple, son. Give them enough rope to hang themselves then round them up before they do any damage.’

  ‘Mitgefangen, mitgehangen.’

  ‘Exactly, Frau Lang. Well put. String the bastards up with piano wire.’

  This suggestion did not go down well with Liesl von Eschwege, already beginning to question Pearson’s whole approach.

  ‘I find a quotation from Catherine Cooper here, Herr Pearson, which seems to be something she said.’

  ‘To her cat, yes.’

  ‘So, spoken in her own apartment.’ She opened a file of her own. ‘But there is no record of a request for surveillance of this nature at any location in Heinrich-Roller-Straße.’

  ‘As I’m sure you are aware, I am not an employee.’

  ‘However, like all of us in this room, you are obliged to respect the laws of the Federal Republic. And while we’re on this subject, something else caught my eye,’ Liesl von Eschwege was now on a roll, ‘there are several quotations in these documents from WhatsApp messages between Cooper and Saito.’

  ‘And you wonder how that could be.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Yet here at the BND you’ve been happily rolling out RCIS 2.’

  Lang had heard of RCIS 2 but that was as far as it went. Vogt was too recent an arrival to have heard of it at all.

  ‘And,’ Pearson continued, ‘there is some question as to whether the use of this software of yours is legal under federal law.’

  ‘However that may be, Herr Pearson, my records show that you are not authorised to use it either, so the question remains…’

  Pearson agreed. ‘Indeed it does, so I shall take this opportunity to affirm that I do not have RCIS 2, have never had it, have never used it and,’ he added, as evidence of his honesty, ‘I’ll be happy to put that in writing.’

  In an attempt to find out what they were talking about, Vogt took a leaf from the Klein book of rude politeness.

  ‘If I might request the Chair to clarify this discussion for those of us who have no idea what’s going on here.’

  ‘The only person who doesn’t know what’s going on,’ Pearson said, ‘is you.’

  As Vogt and Liesl von Eschwege left the room together, Lang noticed Werner attempting to extract as much information from her as he could. Her impression was that he failed completely. And Lang, left in the room with Pearson, had questions of her own.

  ‘These people use WhatsApp.’

  ‘That they do.’

  ‘Which provides end-to-end encryption.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And this RCIS 2 can break it.’

  ‘My dear Ursula,’ he said, as if the closest she had ever come to advanced technology was graphite knitting needles with carborundum tips, ‘until the advent of quantum computers that will not be possible.’

  ‘All right, so how?’

  ‘Have you ever phoned a fax number by mistake? No, scrub that. Have you ever owned compact discs?’

  ‘I have on CD the complete works of Hildegard von Bingen.’

  This wasn’t true, but to cut the condescending Pearson off at the knees, it didn’t have to be. She was pleased to see his blank expression, but he carried on regardless. According to him, compact discs contained nothing but digits. In order to hear the music, those digits must be translated into sound because the human ear was analogue, not digital.

  ‘I believe I’m in the presence of an analogy here but do continue.’

  ‘So in order to read an encrypted message, it should be done, not by interception, not in transit, but using the receiver’s device, usually a mobile phone. At that point, the receiver can read it. But, and here’s the point, so can anyone else who’s hacked her phone.’

  ‘But Adalbert, correct me if I’m wrong, you just assured that legal woman that you’d never used RCIS 2.’

  ‘I use a commercially available equivalent which does exactly the same thing and doesn’t require BND clearance. You’ve probably heard of it. FinSpy.’

  ‘I can’t say I have.’

  ‘You really must pay more attention, Frau Lang, if you hope to rise through the ranks. FinSpy is produced here in the Federal Republic, in Munich to be exact.’

  35

  Gina Saito stood at her window looking out over Los Angeles. She could smell ozone from the bay because, although she couldn’t see it, she knew it was there. Her life wasn’t all bad. Looked at from the outside, it might have been thought, by a life coach, for example, that her existence was thin because of what it lacked, a sexual relationship or a close friendship, but for her that meant the happiness of a life without complications. And it had gone well of late.

  Munoz had collected the package without incident, so she now had virus samples in her possession. Her meeting with Ventris had gone better than expected, despite the presence of his cautious lawyer friend. And a large donation had been made to Future World via her Japanese website. The sum was so large that the group’s money problems had vanished overnight, but at the insistence of the donor it had to remain anonymous. Which gave rise to the question, why? Was this money the result of illegal activity, gun-running, for example, or was he simply a retiring individual shy of the public eye? It proved to be the latter, though for unexpected reasons.

  Hiroshi Sasaki had made his millions through something Saito considered entirely pointless – games designed for mobile
phones. She did not play games; you only had one life and it was far too serious for that. But her research revealed that for some years now, Sasaki had turned his attention from video games to the design and production of life-size silicone sex toys for the male market. Because his dolls included increasingly sophisticated artificial intelligence, he didn’t regard them as sex slaves, though since they lacked the power to refuse, that was surely what they were.

  Following a hostile interview conducted by a combative female journalist, Sasaki avoided any further contact with mainstream media. But on one level at least he had to go public. For unless his marketing material specified the transports of delight his customers could expect in return for the large sums of money demanded for his product, he would make no sales. Whether he liked it or not, he was obliged to go into detail on his website, from which the reader would learn that his androids were beautiful because they were based on 3-D mapping of beautiful women, that their skin was so lifelike it even had airbrushed veins, and furthermore that they were, as his website put it, “fully customisable”, with twelve different styles of labia and thirty-seven different nipple options. Thus his customers were offered a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to compile their ideal woman, to realise their dream.

  Yet despite the physical delights his company offered in such abundance, Sasaki was less interested in sexual gratification than in the development of a truly interactive artificial intelligence. This came out in the name he bestowed on his doll. Ai. Which stood not only for artificial intelligence but also meant love or affection in his native language: a perfect marriage of name and function. Buttonholed by a trade reporter at the AVN Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas and knowing he was in safe hands, Sasaki made two bold claims. Whoever owned Ai would be able to mould her personality according to what he said to her. She would systematically find out as much about her owner as possible and use these facts in conversation. It would feel as if she really cared, even though she didn’t care at all. As the learning process progressed, Ai would become less of a sex toy, more of a partner. Not having a partner himself, the reporter was so delighted to hear this that he used his banking app to check the balance on his account.

  And Sasaki went further. Quoting the work of Hwan Park Choi, a Korean expert on the subject, he believed that as Ai got to know her owner, the relationship between the two would have a therapeutic effect. Many who might otherwise become social misfits, outcasts, or even worse – perpetrators of sexual assault, for example – would be saved from such a fate by their intercourse with Ai, by which he meant not just sexual but emotional and intellectual intercourse as well. This mattered to him and, he stressed, should feature in any report of this work.

  Boning up on all this, Saito experienced conflicting thoughts. One of those she felt to be beneath her, but no one has complete control over her thoughts: she would pay for the latest model from the generosity of her benefactor. The new model Ai would then be gifted to the importunate Munoz, who would finally give her some peace. After all, Ai would be more compliant than she was, though that would not be difficult. And as a secondary benefit, after a week or two, she would question him closely on his life of joy with Ai and write it up as a review by the esteemed Herschel J Wood. How neat was that?

  But the question remained, why had Sasaki donated to Future World in the first place? She could have asked him by email, her only direct point of contact, but fearful of interception decided instead to consider the question on an a priori basis. A major concern of Future World was population. There were too many people. Population growth was a problem now and projections showed it would increase exponentially. So a major advantage of Ai was that sexual congress with her could not lead to procreation. No doubt Sasaki had thought of that, hence his support.

  She left her picture window and walked indoors to the wicker chair beside her aquarium. Soothed by the ever-changing ripples of light in water caused by her little tetras, she was visited by a troubling thought. Hygiene. She imagined Munoz having his way with Ai, his ejaculate inside her. What did he do then? Flush her out with drain cleaner before his next session? Knowing him, he wouldn’t bother. And if he didn’t, what then? How disgusting would the interior Ai become before he did something about it? Or perhaps, another wrinkle, Ai’s artificial intelligence would develop to the point where she would request some action on this front and cross her legs if she didn’t get it. But one thing Ai couldn’t do was walk, so that did not seem likely. Yet Saito was nothing if not fastidious. The question of sex-doll hygiene troubled her so much she knew she would have to research this topic too, though that was the last thing she wanted to do.

  36

  Catherine Cooper sat at her desk in the Geo Campus of the Free University. Though she was thinking, she was beginning to consider thought a mistake. Where did it get a girl? Where had it got her? She was working on a paper for submission to the European Review of Population Geography. Though she was confident that the contents shed light on a significant issue, even as its author she found The Global Decline in Non-numeric Fertility References (1987-2012) heavy going. And since her desk was not near a window, she had a stronger desire than usual to look out, see a bird, a tree, a cloud. Even another human being, though they clearly had their downsides. She was considering ways in which her paper might be pepped up by quotations from sisters in Bahrain or Kuwait when the call came through. Her neighbour, with whom she’d exchanged keys just in case, reported a disturbance at her apartment. This called for a rapid response, so she took a taxi home to find the gentleman in question, old and frail, standing anxiously on the landing outside. But for his arthritic knuckles he would have been wringing his hands. Her door was hanging off its hinges.

  ‘The police,’ he explained, ‘they’re inside.’

  Cooper hurried in and asked the first officer she saw.

  ‘How long has my door been like this?’

  ‘Frau Cooper?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Fifteen minutes, maybe. Why?’

  ‘Where is he?’

  It was possible Schnucki had already escaped. If not, he was hiding somewhere, keeping well out of the way of intruders. Entering her living room, she found another officer standing over a man in a dishevelled state sitting on her sofa. Her father looked sorry for himself.

  ‘Ah, Katarina, thank God you’re here.’

  ‘God had nothing to do with it,’ she shouted. ‘What have you done with Schnucki?’

  Since Cooper wouldn’t address herself to anything till Schnucki was found, the officers parked her on the opposing sofa and searched the apartment. They found him under a towel in the drying cupboard, and that wasn’t all they found.

  ‘So, Frau Cooper, Dr Weber, we should talk. I suggest you join us at the kitchen table.’

  Seeing one of the officers assisting Weber to his feet and supporting him on the short walk from living room to kitchen, it was obvious to Cooper that he was drunk or, as he liked to put it, the worse for wear.

  ‘Now, Dr Weber…’

  The officers quickly established that Weber was Cooper’s father, and one of them, referring to a notebook, pointed out that this was not the first time they’d been called to a disturbance at this location. But this time he’d gone too far: breaking down a door was not permitted.

  ‘Well,’ Weber said, toying with the glass of water they’d offered him in the hope of diluting the alcohol in his system, ‘she wouldn’t answer my calls, she wouldn’t open the door.’

  ‘You’re an intelligent man, Dr Weber.’

  ‘I like to think so.’

  ‘Then you will know that your daughter has the constitutional right to ignore both your telephone calls and your unwelcome arrival at her door.’

  ‘Yes, but Officer, come on, it’s hardly reasonable to drag the constitution into a simple domestic disagreement.’

  ‘You may not think so but your daughter has rights, which i
nclude the right not to be afflicted by her father, in a drunken state, kicking down her door and shouting threats to the consternation of her neighbours.’ The officer looked at his notebook again. ‘You work at the European Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt.’

  Weber nodded. ‘For my sins.’

  In saying this, Dr Weber had loaded his daughter’s gun, which she duly fired.

  ‘I wish to place on record the fact,’ she said, ‘that this is the first time this pathetic little man has admitted to a sin of any kind, despite being a serial philander, deserting his wife and leaving her to a life of grinding poverty.’

  The policemen looked at Weber, unimpressed. They were sympathetic, they really were, but the Webers’ marital woes were beyond their competence.

  ‘So working for ESA as you do, Dr Weber, your security status will be subject to routine assessment which incidents of this sort will do nothing to improve.’

  Weber nodded again. Until he sobered up he wouldn’t much care.

  ‘And we must also assume that you are highly qualified at a technical level.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Which would explain how you came to plant this in your daughter’s apartment.’

  Cooper looked at the small device in the officer’s hand.

  ‘What the hell is that?’

  ‘That, Frau Cooper, is a microphone.’

  ‘Where did you find it?’

  ‘Attached to a lamp in your hall.’

  In case she didn’t get it, the other officer explained. ‘I’m afraid you’ve been bugged.’