Tangle's Game

by Stewart Hotston

  ‘Shut up. Shut up, shut up, shut up. You don’t have a plan. Never mind your fucking generals, you got no further than, “Dump Amanda in the shit, hide and hope for the best.”’

  He looked away, his eyes glancing outside as if thinking of running.

  ‘So now what?’ he asked without turning back to her.

  She slumped. ‘I don’t know. You were my plan.’

  He looked up, not quite meeting her gaze.

  ‘I know, you’d think I’d have learnt by now that relying on you isn’t going to help.’

  ‘Was it always so bad?’ he asked quietly.

  ‘Depends if you’re going to talk over me,’ she said.

  He waited a few moments. ‘I had to face some truths when I got clean. There wasn’t really a process for me, just no money, no one willing to give me credit and a dealer who wouldn’t give me enough to kill myself.’ Now he met her eyes. ‘So. Honestly. Was it so bad?’

  ‘At first it was shock. That you’d leave me without saying goodbye. I looked for you, Tangle. I walked for miles, at night. Alone. I was petrified I’d find your body overdosed under a bridge or floating face down in the Regent’s canal, yet I had to find you. No one else would come with me, none of your friends would tell me anything.’

  ‘My friends?’ He grimaced. ‘They weren’t being any more difficult than usual; they just didn’t know where I was. Fucking hell, I didn’t know where I was.’

  ‘Even when I realised you’d stolen all my money, it still took weeks for me to accept you weren’t coming back. I’d ignored you emptying my public wallets, my one-click purchase accounts. Did you ever notice that I stopped leaving myself logged in to shops?’

  ‘It drove me up the wall. I kept hoping you’d forget, that I’d be able to order something expensive for the refund.’ He showed no trace of shame.

  ‘Being an addict’s harder when no-one uses cash,’ said Amanda. ‘But you signed me up for credit, left me with debts bigger than my mortgage, bigger than any bonus I might earn.’ He finally had the grace to look uncomfortable, but she kept going. ‘I defaulted on obligations I didn’t even know I had. I lost the house I bought for us, all my father’s inheritance.’ Her throat tightened at the memory of leaving for the last time, opening the door to the tiny flat she’d been forced to rent which had stunk of mould. She’d had to pay three months deposit in advance because her credit rating had fallen to zero.

  ‘I’d apologise, but it won’t change what you had to go through,’ said Tangle.

  ‘It would be a start,’ said Amanda. ‘But you’re right, it’s past now. But I don’t understand why you went.’ She wanted to grab him and suck understanding from his head.

  ‘I wish I had a reason, Dandy.’ He put his hands flat on the table, examined the back of his fingers. ‘It seemed the right thing to do at the time. I’ve thought about it so much. I thought so many times about just coming back, but I couldn’t face you, knowing what I’d done. Other times I thought I could see what else you had to take.’ He smiled, a thin rumpled line across his face.

  She could feel tears threatening and tried not to blink them back. ‘I spent so long just hoping you were alive. I didn’t even know that, Tangle. It was easy to be angry; you ruined my life.’

  ‘You did okay. Eventually I knew you’d be fine. Better off without me.’

  ‘You don’t get to decide that,’ she said.

  ‘But I’m right, unless the last ten years were a dream.’ Seeing her eyes bulging he held up his hands. ‘Hey, sorry, but what’s the point? You can’t change it by demanding the world behave a different way.’

  It was an effort to speak after that. ‘I am fine. I have put Humpty Dumpty back together again.’ Then she frowned, reminded of where she was. ‘Except here I am, in front of a man who’s made enemies of everyone he’s met.’

  ‘And some I haven’t.’

  ‘Which is great,’ said Amanda. ‘They all think I’m the next best thing if they can’t have you. And what was it with those two gangsters? What on earth did you do to owe them money?’

  ‘Haber and Stornetta? The ungrateful sods. If it wasn’t for me they’d never have got together!’ He sounded genuinely outraged. ‘I can’t believe they’d want paying for their car.’

  ‘That would be it,’ said Amanda. ‘Let me guess; you borrowed their car without their permission and somehow it never got returned.’

  He shifted in his chair as if it had suddenly grown spikes under his backside. ‘I did nothing wrong. I was hit by some idiot who ran straight onto a roundabout without looking, sideswiped me as I was minding my own business.’

  ‘Nice car, was it?’ asked Amanda, thinking of how much she’d paid them.

  ‘Well,’ he said.

  ‘I’ve settled your debts, you moron. They basically saved my life.’

  ‘Which is kind of what I’d hoped.’

  She shook her head in disbelief.

  ‘Not that specifically, but I knew you’d find a use for them.’

  ‘What on earth made you want to help them partner up?’

  He laughed. ‘Oh, I thought you’d have noticed. They were working together just fine when I met them, but they weren’t “together.”’ He made air-quotes.

  Oh, thought Amanda. I see.

  He smirked at her. ‘Didn’t you realise?’

  Amanda feigned a cool she didn’t feel. ‘It’s not really a thing I think about.’ She frowned at him. ‘I didn’t realise it was for you. When did you start noticing what sort of relationships people are in? Have you been hiding in the twentieth century?’

  ‘Why do you do that?’ he asked.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Find a way to make it about me? I haven’t done anything wrong except help those two see the person they were looking for was right under their noses. Somehow you still manage to make it about me doing it wrong.’

  Amanda wanted to be somewhere else, in a different conversation. How’s he managed to turn it away from what he’s been doing? she wondered.

  There was a bang at the door. Soft and insistent rapping, from someone who knew people were at home.

  ‘You were followed,’ said Tangle, jumping up from the table.

  ‘Do you think they’d knock?’

  He calmed down, but only a fraction. ‘You answer it, then,’ he said.

  ‘So chivalrous.’ Before he could object she was in the hallway and at the front door. With a bravado she didn’t feel, she opened up.

  ‘Hallo,’ said Ule.

  Amanda fell back, and lost her grip on the door, allowing Ule to step into the cottage.

  ‘Amanda. I’m not here to hurt you,’ said Ule, her voice angular and mathematical.

  ‘That’s how we started last time,’ said Amanda, on edge and ready to run. Tangle was just behind her, but made no attempt to pass her or lay claim to his own home.

  ‘Crap,’ he said. ‘Close the door behind you.’ Amanda turned from Ule to Tangle, who walked back into the kitchen.

  ‘You know each other?’

  Ule closed the door and walked into the kitchen past Amanda, who scrunched up against the wall so they didn’t touch. Left alone in the hallway, Amanda bit back a desire to find a length of wood and beat Ule around the head or just run out the front door and flee back to London.

  ‘I don’t have any Rooibos,’ Tangle was saying.

  Ule accepted a glass of water.

  ‘Ule here is a clean-living woman. No alcohol, caffeine or any other drugs I’ve yet discovered. I tried her with processed sugar, but she won’t even touch chocolate.’

  ‘That is not true,’ said Ule matter-of-factly. ‘I eat dark chocolate.’

  Tangle pulled a face, grimacing like he’d eaten rancid butter. ‘85% cocoa is not chocolate, it sucks all the moisture from your mouth. Gah.’ He stuck his tongue out.

  Amanda slammed her hand on the doorframe. ‘Stop it. Both of you.’ She stalked into the kitchen. ‘Who are you? Why are you here?’

  How do
you know Tangle? she thought.

  Ule stared into the distance, slowly lowering her head until she was gazing at the table. ‘I have known Tangle for three years and three months.’ She smiled at him in a way that Amanda assumed meant they’d slept together. Of course they have.

  ‘He has written code for us, helped Europe defend its borders, helped me argue our case.’

  ‘Which is?’ asked Amanda.

  ‘The Union has been through a long period of peace. Nearly a hundred years since the last great war. Many would see that end, would see the destruction of all our forefathers worked so hard to achieve.’

  ‘We differ here,’ said Tangle. ‘Europe’s about as stable as a two-legged chair in a hurricane.’

  Ule nodded acknowledgement. ‘There are voices that delight in recounting the many times Europe has faced challenges and see past solutions as failures.’ She eyed Tangle. ‘The heart of Europe is committed to its survival because the alternative that history shows is one we will not countenance.’

  ‘How’d you find me?’ asked Tangle. Ule glanced across at Amanda.

  ‘I knew it,’ he exclaimed. ‘I told you you’d be followed.’

  ‘You still haven’t answered my questions,’ said Amanda, exasperated, ready to jump at the first move Ule made in her direction.

  Ule stood, holding her glass of water, and moved to stand in the sunshine streaming in through the open doors. With her back to the garden she said, ‘You could have sent the drive to me, Tangle. I’ve come now because it’s too late for me to do anything with it and I’m hoping you have a plan, a scheme that means I wasn’t wrong to trust you with the future of my home and my people.’ She took a long drink, emptying most of the glass. ‘Amanda. I hope you can understand why I did what I did.’ She didn’t wait for Amanda to answer. ‘I work for Europol. Tangle approached us two years ago with evidence that an agency within the Russian government was trying to destabilise the Union. We’ve been trying since then to understand how they were doing it, and to what end.’

  ‘They’ve been interfering in elections for decades,’ said Amanda, determined not show weakness to either of them. ‘What changed?’

  ‘Sanctions are supposed to put pressure on states, a way of making them face consequences for their actions.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Tangle. ‘Let’s not discuss how the people who suffer are always the poorest and the most vulnerable, the ones we’re nominally trying to help.’

  Ule pursed her lips. ‘Not all sanctions are equal, Tangle.’

  He opened his mouth to speak but she flashed an angry stare at him, all open eyes and visible teeth and he shut up.

  ‘After nearly three decades of sanctions against Russia’s executive and their cronies, both sides have come to accept that we’ve entered into a slow oblique war from which neither side expects to benefit, but both aim to make the other suffer. Before Tangle disappeared three months ago, he assured me we were facing a new wave of Russian actions, aimed at bringing populism to the fore in ways that no amount of elections, welfare or positive political speech could ameliorate.’

  ‘The world was about to go to shit,’ said Amanda. ‘I get it. Everyone keeps telling me this, but I don’t see what I can do about it.’

  ‘I’m not expecting you to “do anything” about it,’ said Ule blandly. ‘You’re a child blaming herself for her parents’ divorce. Tragic, but completely irrelevant. I’m here because we’re out of time. I need the drive, I need Tangle and you can go home back to your ordinary life.’

  Furious at being dismissed, Amanda said, ‘He doesn’t have a plan, you know. He sent the drive to me so he could hide.’

  ‘Amanda,’ said Tangle.

  She ignored him. ‘He used me to see who was coming for the drive.’ She laughed, the sound sliding from the side of her mouth. ‘He doesn’t trust you and has no intention of giving you the drive.’

  Ule deflated, her shoulders sagging.

  ‘What did you do,’ asked Amanda, ‘that he wouldn’t come to you? That he’d send the drive to me instead?’

  ‘It’s not important,’ Tangle said briskly. ‘If you’re here’—he nodded at Ule—‘then others will know where I am too.’ He stared at Amanda, scowling.

  Amanda was still thinking, reading the invisible lines between Tangle and Ule. Their ease with one another masked something she was struggling to identify. ‘He didn’t believe you’d do what he wanted.’ Neither of them looked up, so she chose a different direction. ‘You couldn’t do what he wanted.’ They locked eyes briefly and she knew she’d got it.

  ‘No one believes you,’ said Amanda. ‘You’re a grunt, a field agent; without his evidence, you couldn’t persuade anyone to take the threat seriously.’ She laughed at how stupid it was. Tangle and Ule gave her disgusted looks. ‘Even with the drive, you’d have to verify it, so much information, so much data from a source you’—she pointed at Ule—‘wouldn’t be rushing to identify. After all, who’d believe a spun-out drug addict?’

  ‘Turns out most people aren’t as forgiving as you,’ said Tangle.

  Amanda stared at him for a moment, his words not making it all the way to her brain. ‘And they were right, yes?’ she said eventually. ‘You never had a plan. You hoped Ule would fix it for you and when she failed’—she turned to Ule, couldn’t help the gloating—‘when you failed, he realised someone you’d have told would ensure the rumours would find their way out, to the Americans, to us Brits and probably to the Russians as well. God, Tangle. I see why you wanted to hide.’

  He nodded. ‘I’m not a complete dick,’ he said.

  ‘Jury’s still out,’ said Amanda.

  Tangle opened his mouth, then shut it again.

  Ule stood up, walking around the room, examining the surface of the table. She stopped by the doors leading into the garden. The joy of being right drained out of Amanda’s belly, replaced by a dry, burning ache. Are we really too late? she asked herself. Feeling the drive in her pocket she wondered just how close Tangle had come to stopping the break-up of Europe, of creating something the CIA could use to help their country. What her own people needed it for she couldn’t imagine; Britain was its own sinking ship, there wasn’t anyone else to blame but its people, a generation now mostly dead who decided isolation was the future their children should enjoy.

  She felt the edges of an idea she’d been playing with on the journey to Wales. She didn’t have the full sense of it, couldn’t outline the details, but with Ichi, Tangle and Ule she reckoned she had the skills to possibly make it work.

  ‘Ichi’s taken me through what you’ve done, what the Russians are doing,’ she said. Neither of them paid her any attention. ‘I think I know a way of doing it.’

  ‘Doing what?’ asked Tangle dejectedly.

  ‘Using your information to stop the Russians. It needs all of you, though: you, Ule, Ichi, me.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ asked Ule.

  ‘Honestly? I’m not quite sure yet, but we need to get back to London, find Ichi and talk it over with her.’

  For the first time, Ule looked at Amanda. It felt like being seen by a shark, being watched by a tiger in the jungle; it was the kind of look Amanda realised she dreaded at work, and right then.

  ‘What is your plan?’

  ‘Between us we have everything we need.’ She shrugged. ‘I’m not quite sure how it would all fit together, but from what I’ve seen, I think we can put their plans out into the open and cut off their funding source at the same time.’

  Ule turned her back on the garden, walked back into the room. ‘You can do this?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Amanda. ‘I’ve got the sense of it now, can feel its shape.’ At Ule’s uncertain look she said, ‘It’s how I work. I can feel the outlines of problems, and from that I can work out how to solve them. It’s what I get paid to do, and I’m really bloody good at it. I let the quants solve the numbers; the structuring team put the legal bells on it and bring them all together; but it
always starts from my sense of what the solution looks like.’

  ‘How can I help you?’ Now Ule’s face showed a sincerity, a growing trust, Amanda could work with.

  ‘We need to get back to London. Your connections, your knowledge of what the sensitivities are, will be invaluable.’ She stopped talking. ‘Right now? I don’t know. Will your people listen to you this time?’

  ‘How important is that?’ asked Ule.

  ‘Not that important,’ conceded Amanda. ‘All you really need to do is ensure we can access what your organisation knows.’ She paused. ‘Everything else we’ll come to when we come to it.’

  ‘What about him?’ Ule nodded at Tangle.

  ‘It’s his information, his baby. He’s going to be as important as Ichi.’

  For the first time Ule smiled, a tenuous thing Amanda hoped would live long enough to grow to maturity.

  ‘I will help you,’ Ule said, the words as measured, as definite, as any promise Amanda remembered making.

  ‘I’m sorry to interrupt,’ said the fridge. ‘It’s far too warm in here for this appliance. You should really have replaced it a couple of years ago; the thermostat’s barely hanging on. And by the way, your steak’s going to have a really gamey flavour if you don’t eat it soon.’

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  ‘TATSU?’ SAID AMANDA.

  ‘What?’ asked Tangle and Ule together, looking first at the fridge and then at Amanda.

  ‘Why are you looking at me?’ asked Amanda. ‘It’s your AI.’

  Tangle squinted at her. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’

  Amanda explained how Tangle had contracted Tatsu to help her, about how important it had been in Tallinn and since.

  ‘That wasn’t me,’ said Tangle slowly. ‘I never sent any AI to help you. As much as I’d like to appear like some mastermind working the strings from my secret Welsh hideaway I didn’t do anything like this.’

  Amanda frowned at him.

  ‘Amanda, I didn’t know about Tallinn. I didn’t know you were coming here. Do you think that if I’d had the resources to send this AI’—he thumbed at the fridge—‘I’d be ignorant of everything else?’