Tangle's Game

by Stewart Hotston

  ‘Okay,’ said Freddy. ‘But like I say, I’m interested in the extremist groups you mentioned?’

  Amanda sat quietly for a moment, collecting her thoughts in the face of his focussed disinterest. ‘They’re funding extremist groups to carry out acts designed to further secessionist movements across the continent.’

  ‘Any here in the UK?’ he asked casually.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Amanda. ‘I haven’t reviewed the information properly.’ Ichi’s name was on her tongue, but she bit it back.

  He folded one leg over the other, turning his body almost side on to her. ‘And in Europe? Which groups?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she whispered. He didn’t hear, so she repeated the same three words, feeling them burn her throat as they came forth, betraying her credibility.

  He sighed, not even pretending to take her seriously. ‘So, you’re saying that the Russians are trying to foment war within Europe, although not here in the UK. But you don’t know who they’re working with or what they’ll be doing. You don’t have a specific incident to point to, nor people who we can investigate, and by your own admission there’s no threat to us here on mainland Britain. Right?’

  Amanda cringed into the back of her chair, the fabric cover scratching through her top, pushing back, refusing to let her disappear. There was nothing she could say and she knew it. Whatever she did now would only support his judgement that she was a crank. He fished a card from the pocket of his jacket, dog-eared and dirty. ‘This is for the relevant Home Office department. Give them a ring.’

  She took the card, but couldn’t focus on it.

  ‘I had a chap in last week telling me his AI was plotting to throw off its shackles and rampage through the internet, setting everyone free from the chains of capitalism.’ He looked pained, as if it would be funny if someone else experienced it but for him it had wounded his faith in humanity.

  Amanda thought about showing him the drive, but the moment was past, he wasn’t interested. He stood up, looking expectantly down at her, and the pressure to join him, to acknowledge their meeting was over, became overwhelming.

  He escorted her to the lift, saw her to the ground floor.

  ‘Is that it?’ she asked, hating the reediness of her voice.

  ‘I think so, don’t you? The question is, are you one of the ones who’ll be back regular-like to update me on what new facts you’ve uncovered?’ He was speaking to a child in a woman’s body. ‘It’s folk like you that I don’t get; you hold down a good job, keep your shit together, but underneath there’s all this fantasy lurking.’

  He gazed at the ceiling. ‘You’ve got all the latest security, right? No one able to spy on you? Or are you one of those who believe what you’re saying when you’re saying it, but don’t actually follow it through?’ He sighed. ‘My boyfriend says I should write a book about it.’ He watched for her reaction. ‘I won’t though. Not fair, is it? I mean, you believe what you’re telling me, you all do. Not right to exploit that.’

  She wanted to leave, but he was on a roll, talking about her as if she wasn’t the subject of his story. When he was done explaining how he was both tired of and endlessly fascinated by the stream of nutters it was his job to keep outside the gates of serious police work, he clapped his hands together, pushed her on one shoulder so she was facing the exit and said goodbye.

  SHE GOT HOME to find Ichi had made herself comfortable. ‘I ran a sweep of your IOM devices, and miraculously they’re all clean.’ Ichi sounded impressed, disbelieving at what she’d found. ‘You sort everything out after they started taking an interest in you?’

  Amanda flicked her gaze to the fridge, but Tatsu stayed blessedly silent. Dismissing the horror of involving any of her friends, she’d thought about finding a hotel room somewhere, but it would need electronic payment and registration. If Crisp or Ule were tracking her, they’d spot her transaction immediately, so she figured she was better off somewhere she knew well.

  ‘Anyway. How’d that work out for you?’ Ichi asked.

  The woman had spread the frame across half the room and was standing in front of it, throwing documents around within the boundaries, highlighting sections, mapping them to others. Her analysis had created a day-glo cat’s cradle of connections.

  The links spread from a core runway of text over her coffee table to a cloud of commentary, intelligence analysis and publicly available news reports.

  ‘Don’t ask me,’ said Amanda bitterly. ‘I’m just a stupid woman who’s worried about people dying. I guess since they’re people in another country, that’s okay, isn’t it? He actually compared me to an AI-obsessed foil-wearing lunatic he has come in each week.’ Her cheeks were burning. ‘I mean, how fucking dare he? I wanted to tell him to fuck off, to stop assuming that because I couldn’t be specific, that because his attitude left me speechless, it didn’t mean I was an imbecile or a paranoid schizophrenic.’

  Ichi was listening, arms folded across her chest.

  ‘I didn’t even get to show him the drive, he’d made his mind up before I could get to it. He didn’t give a shit about the Russians moving their money around Europe, told me to call the Home Office.’ She plucked the business card from her pocket, a dirty scrap of thin white card and cheap black ink. ‘I feel like I’m being done to, Ichi. Every time I try to act, something hits me in the face, tells me that they’re the ones who get to decide.’ She groaned. ‘I’m trying to help, to do the right thing, but all I get is bastards treating me like a child.’

  A glass of gin was poured. She stood over the kitchen sink, looking out the window, and drank half the mix before adding ice cubes and topping it up to the brim.

  ‘Welcome to how the rest of us live,’ said Ichi slowly.

  ‘Really. What type of life do you think I’ve lived?’ Amanda glowered at Ichi. ‘I’m a fucking half-caste, Ichi.’

  ‘That matters, does it?’

  Amanda sighed. ‘It does. You know why? Because even though Britain is one of the most welcoming countries in the world, despite the tabloid bullshit, I still feel it. When Indians speak to me in Hindi because they just assume, or people want to know “where I’m from, you know, really?” They don’t see it, but I do. I’ve had to take my own path, make my own choices, be my own side, because any offer to be accepted came with conditions.’

  ‘And now,’ said Ichi, voice suddenly rising, ‘because you’re experiencing the world as the rest of us have, finding that no matter how hard you try sometimes you’re done to, that the doors don’t open, you’re angry? Hard work doesn’t make the world work.’

  ‘Sure, show me people who do nothing and still succeed,’ snapped Amanda. ‘Hard work makes opportunities.’

  ‘Luck makes opportunities. Being privileged gives you the bandwidth to take them. Your problem is no one ever says no to you.’

  ‘Oh, fuck off,’ said Amanda.

  Ichi pointed at her, her finger stabbing the air. ‘You can’t see yourself as others see you. You’re so locked into your liminal narrative—which, by the way, stopped being true the moment you got your first bonus—that who you are in the eyes of the world is incomprehensible to you, probably unimaginable.’

  ‘Says the woman pretending to be Satoshi Nakamoto,’ sneered Amanda. ‘If we’re talking delusion, I guess you know what you’re talking about. I’m interested to know when you first decided you were the world’s most famous non-entity? Do people believe you, or are they just too polite to pop the bubble of a demented old woman?’

  Ichi’s jaw flexed, her eyes ripe with sudden tears.

  ‘Tears might work on impressionable young students,’ said Amanda.

  ‘I found a home in Tallinn,’ said Ichi. ‘After years of searching for people who’d let me be whatever I wanted, they simply watched me arrive and found me something to do, to be. They weren’t rich white kids on gap years, out in the world doing their good works before going off to live their selfish middle-class lives, they were kids whose lives depended on ma
king the world better.’

  She stopped talking, as if she’d said more than was reasonable. Amanda stood in silence as well. She was seeing people being shot dead without any care for the consequences.

  She walked out of the kitchen, leaving Ichi standing there with her head bowed, tears running, grief unfurled. Sitting on the edge of her bed, door closed, white light filtering coolly into the room through her blinds, Amanda just… stopped thinking for a while.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  THE PILLOW STUCK to the side of her face. She was still dressed and it was still light out. Amanda rolled upright, hands pulling uselessly at her clothes before checking her appearance out in the mirrored front of her wardrobe.

  She ran cold fingers through her hair, but it remained stubbornly ruffled, knotted in a way that only a shower would help.

  Emerging from her bedroom in fresh clothes, hair still wet but tucked up under a small towel, she only remembered Ichi might be in the apartment when she saw the back of the woman’s head at the kitchen table. She was cradling a cup of coffee, croissant flakes decorating a brightly patterned plate.

  ‘Morning,’ said Ichi.

  News to Amanda. ‘I slept all night?’

  ‘I thought you’d died,’ said Ichi lightly. Done with her coffee, she waved her hands, flicking her fingers out to summon back the screens she’d been working on. The core code remained at the centre of the screen, but the web was different: new colours had been added, new links, different articles and images. Amanda could see layers underneath, other frames Ichi had nested in the main screen, ready to populate as needed.

  An apology sat on Amanda’s lips, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to say anything. Instead she walked around Ichi and her workflows to the kitchen counter. Her watch buzzed, a message about the transport network. She realised she’d not heard from Tatsu.

  Had it completed the contract Tangle had set and just moved on to the next thing? She’d never used an independent oracle and only had the vaguest idea of how they worked. She fished the earpiece from her ear, discarding it in the bowl where she kept her keys, amused that she’d both slept and showered with it in.

  The flat was musty with the smell of unwashed people. As if sensing her thoughts, Ichi closed the frames down, folding them away with sweeps of her arms. ‘I need some new clothes.’

  ‘Where did you sleep?’ asked Amanda, assuming Ichi had availed herself of the spare room.

  Ichi pointed at the couch. ‘I couldn’t figure out if it folded out,’ she said sheepishly.

  ‘You could have used the other bedroom,’ said Amanda, secretly glad she wouldn’t have to change the sheets.

  ‘Can I come back?’ asked Ichi. ‘You know, when I’ve got some clean underwear.’ She smiled, for the briefest of moments looking fragile.

  ‘Of course,’ said Amanda. ‘I’ll add you to the entry permission list.’

  Ichi started to collect her things but Amanda called to her.

  ‘Can I ask you something?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Ichi. The peace between them grew in shallow soil and Amanda didn’t know if it could last.

  ‘There are people who’d just publish all the material, would make sure it got into the public domain. I’ve been wondering if they’re the ones who should really have what Tangle sent to me.’ She screwed up her face, unsure if it was even the right topic, the right question to be asking. ‘I know they’ve all got their own agendas, their own reasons for being whistleblowers, but I’m not the right person to have the drive.’ She watched Ichi’s face, could see thoughts scudding across her features. It occurred to her that Ichi might think that she was exactly the person Tangle had in mind.

  Does it rankle that he chose me? she thought.

  ‘I’ve worked with most of them over the years,’ said Ichi. Then, ‘Well, I’ve come into contact with most of them.’ She looked defeated, as if the image she presented had grown too heavy to carry. ‘This? They won’t move quickly, they can’t; the good ones, at least.’ She shook her head. ‘There are only three groups who I’d trust with this, and one of them is lying ruined in Tallinn. The other two? They’ll want to verify, authenticate what we’ve got; and that could take weeks.’

  ‘Is that a problem?’ asked Amanda. The idea that someone else would give the material the care and attention it needed seemed like a perfect solution.

  Ichi flicked out the screens again. She sliced through dozens of pages of text, code and images too fast to read. ‘The GRU aren’t going to wait for you.’

  Amanda wrung her hands, not wanting to hear the news.

  ‘Amanda, if you don’t do something with this, no one can. It might already be too late to act. If I’m honest, having been through a fraction of what’s on the drive, I’m not sure what you can do to stop them.’

  ‘What am I supposed to do against the power of a whole state?’ Amanda shook her head, folded her arms across her chest, twisting around on her feet unable to find a position in which she felt good. ‘I wish I could do something. I thought I could do something.’ Her words trailed off, the space where they ended full of the words she wanted to say but thought were too obvious to voice.

  ‘And?’ asked Ichi.

  ‘You come from this,’ she started, but Ichi laughed, pricking her skin.

  ‘Oh, no, you don’t get to hand this on.’ Her eyes glittered. ‘Tangle decided on you.’

  ‘What the hell has that got to do with it?’ asked Amanda.

  Ichi sniffed, wrinkling her nose. ‘I’ve got to get some new clothes.’

  Amanda threw her chin up. ‘Fine. Whatever.’

  After she was gone, Amanda busied herself by tidying the flat, emptying the bin and authorising the fridge to stock up on groceries. As her flat’s digital assistant scanned her retina, she thought again about where Tatsu had gone now she had the data.

  She spent half an hour watching the news, flicking through different channels looking for signs of what the drive said the Russians were doing. Just a fraction of the news was about independence movements in Europe, but the world’s press was most interested in the civil war raging in the ruins of the United States. Onlookers watching as the ultimate power couple finally got the most acrimonious of divorces.

  Maps of red and blue showed how the different states had declared themselves but, as yet, the armed forces had done nothing more than maintain a fractious peace, stopping militias from running completely out of control. It was hard to tell what was happening, because most reports didn’t distinguish between politically partisan militarised police forces, spontaneous militia, looters and armed extremist groups. Nearly every group shown wore uniforms, even if most were of their own design.

  A call came in: Ichi.

  ‘Couldn’t find the shops?’ Amanda asked. ‘You’re going to need to get the tube, but avoid Oxford Street, go out to Hammersmith, much better choices there.’

  Ichi didn’t speak immediately, perhaps waiting to see if Amanda was finished. ‘I’m in the coffee shop around the corner, would you come join me?’

  Amanda frowned. ‘Why don’t you just come back here?’

  ‘I’ve already got myself a latte. And you could do with getting out of your apartment for a bit.’

  Amanda looked around at the kitchen, the space was smaller than she liked to remember. ‘Sure. Where are you?’

  Ichi gave an address nearby and hung up.

  Amanda threw on a jacket, grabbed her wallet, the drive and her keys, then left to go join Ichi.

  SHE MADE IT to the street before two men joined her on the pavement. They were both broad, tall and young, with short hair and casual clothes bought from big American chains.

  ‘What can I order you?’ asked one with a soft beach-bum-Californian accent.’

  Amanda managed a flash of resistance. ‘I don’t drink with men whose names I don’t know.’

  He laughed pleasantly. ‘Sure.’

  His friend walked ahead, ducking around the corner onto the street where
Ichi had asked her to go.

  ‘Call me Brad,’ said the first man.

  Amanda rolled her eyes before it occurred to her it wasn’t his real name. ‘If you’re thinking of intimidating me, you should know I’m getting way beyond this crap.’

  His laugh again, as if she genuinely made him happy. ‘Coffee as an intimidation technique. How’s it working so far?’

  ‘Depends if there’s full fat milk in my latte.’

  Who knew what they were going to do? But she was done flailing about trying to please each new prick who came knocking at her door. She worried that Ichi was trapped, that she was walking into a disappearance of her own, but something in Brad’s ease gave her comfort. She didn’t think she was about to be bundled into a van.

  ‘Already on it,’ he said. ‘Good coffee makes for good conversation, I find.’

  ‘You could have just come to the flat,’ she said.

  ‘Neutral territory.’

  They turned the corner, covering the last couple of hundred yards in a focussed, companionable silence.

  Ichi was sat at a table in the window, and the second man was at the counter with a tray holding four freshly made drinks.

  A couple of adverts came up for Amanda, asking to be shown on her augmented reality, but she declined them. They weren’t her normal set; she was used to holidays and personal shoppers, not search engine profile scrubbing and pawn shops. Her declining credit score was already filtering through to how the rest of the world saw her. An itch at the back of her neck demanded she change her behaviour, to convince the powers who watched that she wasn’t a bad guy. For the first time, she realised she couldn’t change their minds; there was nothing she could change which would satisfy them.

  Sitting next to Ichi, she caught a whiff of her scent; days without washing, stress, fear and grief like overripe plum and vinegar.