“So Hollywood is the place where the modern gods’ stories are now being produced and enacted in the form of movies?” I asked.
“Think of it all as part of the continuum,” Mark said, taking another puff. “More magickal rituals, grist for the mill. Punters will make use of stories and gods as they will and as they need. I envy you, mate, Roger sending you out there so you can witness it firsthand. I’m sure your gods will have a very pleasant holiday.”
From what I could gather, Darrell served as a fixer, confessor, confidant, and unofficial therapist to his A-list clients. Marcie probably played a similar role to her clients back in London, but here there was a sense of much higher stakes, if that was even possible.
“Would you mind if you gave Sharon a lift home?”
“Sure. Why not?” Darrell said.
As we walked out of the trailer, the wardrobe department went in to make sure the superhero armor was properly cleaned and spruced up for the set. It was the stuff of millions of dollars’ worth of toy sales, a metallic monolith of black and gold and thorns, and the costume itself had been insured by Lloyd’s of London for over a million dollars. Once this sequel was finished, it would be auctioned off as a Special Edition. The next sequel would feature an upgraded design for The Client to wear.
“I’m not a pimp,” Darrell said to me quickly as we left the studio. Sharon sat in the back with Julia, who engaged her in small talk.
“I’m getting certified as a personal trainer,” Sharon said. “That way I get to earn my rent. I know I can’t keep blowing him forever.”
This was LA, where even the celebrity stalkers had long-term life goals.
“It’s good that you have plans, Sharon,” Darrell said.
“Have you thought about going back to school?” Julia asked. “Earn a degree?”
“Wow!” Sharon cried. “Are you, like, British? Your accent is so cool. Can you, like, teach me how to talk good like that?”
FOUR
How’s it going, Ravi, old son?”
Roger’s smiling visage beamed on the computer. It was early morning here but it was already afternoon in London. They were eight hours ahead of us. This was our morning ritual in our apartment before we set off for the office, to report in and tell Roger and Cheryl all we had observed of the goings-on at the LA office.
“I think they’re trying to dazzle us with Hollywood glamour bullshit,” Julia said.
“No different than what we get up to in Blighty,” Roger said.
“So what’s the point of having us shadowing them?” I asked. “There’s no way they don’t resent us sniffing around like that.”
“I’ll tell you why, Ravi,” Roger said. “I’ve been thinking about changing things up a bit in the US offices, maybe put more Londoners in.”
“Like me?”
“What do you think, Ravi?” Roger said. “London was getting a bit claustrophobic, don’t you think?”
“It’s not the claustrophobia that was getting to me, boss. It was the chaos I was raining down on people. How’s sending me abroad all the time going to help me?”
“Just think about it, old son. You and Julia seem to be looking refreshed out there.”
“No, that’s just the excessive sunlight,” Julia said.
“Do you think they might be skimming off earnings for the firm out here?” I asked.
“Everyone earns on the side,” Roger said. “I don’t hold that against them. I just want you to see if anyone’s abusing the company name.”
“Ah. Now I get it.”
“Golden Sentinels is a brand,” Roger said. “And you’re there to make sure the Los Angeles chaps are keeping it polished spick-and-span.”
“Well, ‘polished’ is certainly the veneer here,” I said.
“We’ve taken up time. I’ll give your love to everyone here at the office,” Roger said, and walked off-camera, leaving Cheryl.
“Ravi,” Cheryl said. “Stay there. Olivia’s going to call you after we get off.”
“Will do.”
And she rang off.
Curious. What did Olivia want? She never usually asked for anything from me.
The teleconference app rang again. I noticed the symbol on-screen that indicated this line was going to have extra encryption on it. Typical Olivia.
I answered and Olivia’s face came on the screen, immaculate as ever.
“Ravi. I hope Los Angeles is treating you well.”
“As well as can be expected.”
“Good.”
There was a window in the background and I saw that it was pitch dark outside.
“Is that Chinese I hear in the background?” I said. “Where are you calling from?”
“I’m in Hong Kong, darling. The old hometown.”
“What are you doing there?”
“My own case. I told Roger I had to deal with this one. He was a bit iffy since I might risk pissing off the Chinese government, but this is a personal matter, though it might also net Roger a major contact.”
“So what can I do for you, Olivia?”
“You’re working from the laptop we gave you, yes?”
“I’m talking to you on it right now.”
“You’ve followed my instructions for how to use it, kept the firewall and VPN on all the time?”
“Of course. You read me the riot act about not getting hacked from the moment I was hired.”
“Good. I want you to go into Documents and go to the folder marked ‘OWW.’ ”
“I see it. The one you told me to keep around just in case.”
“Now, there’s one labeled ‘HKS.’ There should be over a dozen documents in it.”
“I see them.”
“I’m going to text you an FTP address to upload those files. I want you to switch the VPN to a Finnish server before you do the transfer, all right?”
“Will do. Olivia, what’s this about?”
“You know those reports about book publishers who have been disappearing, snatched by the Mainland and forced to confess to crimes because they’ve been publishing books that air dirty laundry about the Chinese president and officials?”
“Don’t tell me you’re mixed up in that.”
“Not me personally, but the latest bloke who’s disappeared is a friend of my family’s. His wife is going spare. My mother asked me for help.”
“So is this an official case for Roger and the firm?” I asked.
“Yes and no. It will be when Roger sees some benefit.”
“Typical Roger, hedging his bets,” Julia said.
“Hi, Julia!” Olivia cried.
“So why are you asking me to send you these files when you can ask any of the others in the firm?” I asked.
“Because you’re the only one I trust on this, Ravi.”
“What did I do to warrant that?”
“Oh, please! You think I would trust Marcie, who would love to play CIA spook games on this? Or Mark, who could use it for mischief?”
“What about Benjamin?”
“He’s not available. He’s got his own caseload, and he’s out of town.”
“Where did he go?”
“Just flew into Los Angeles last night.”
“Ah. He’s here?”
“He’s got a few things going on, all techy and industrial espionage-y,” Olivia said. “Don’t be offended if he hasn’t called you. The client whisked him off to his hotel and had him working immediately.”
“Who hired him? Google?”
“He signed a nondisclosure. Let’s say Roger was awfully excited. He’s likely to be there for a while, so if you get lonely, call him up.”
“So you’re in Hong Kong, Benjamin is here, Julia and I are here. Is Roger undermanned?” I asked.
“Roger and Cheryl are holding down the fort; David is still there dealing with the legal stuff. Mark is there with his caseload. Ken and Clive are there. Marcie is there with her celebrity clients, plotting away and lording it over Roger,” Olivia said.<
br />
“That’s all well and good, Olivia, but are you all right? Are you at risk?”
“You’re very sweet to be concerned, but don’t worry about me, darling. I’m playing on home ground here, and you know me. I’ve always covered my tracks.”
“All right. I won’t even ask what these files are.”
“You can ask. ‘HKS’ stands for ‘Hong Kong Stuff.’ ‘OWW’ are my initials, of course, but it really means ‘pain.’ I didn’t want to be caught with them when I arrived, and I didn’t want anyone else to have them. They’re all encrypted so you couldn’t open them anyway.”
“I might have guessed.”
“There are programs embedded in those documents that will be time-released to certain parties. That’s all I’ll say for now.”
“Got it. If you need anything, just email me or call.”
“I prefer not to put anything in writing, darling.”
“Fair enough.”
“Oh, one more thing. One of the links I left you in your personal folder is access to some audio I’m recording while I’m here.”
“Audio? Of what?”
“My case. It’s my record of what happens. If . . . anything should happen to me, you and everyone back in London will have access to it.”
“So it’s a kind of insurance?”
“You should think about leaving some kind of record yourself, Ravi.”
“Why? Am I in trouble?”
“Not at the moment, but you never know with the kinds of silly buggers Roger has us all get up to, and the kinds of people he has us breaking bread with.”
For some reason, I had a vision of the goddess Quan Yin accompanying Olivia as she walked down the neon-lit streets of central Hong Kong. I suppose it made sense that the goddess of the moon, the goddess of mercy, was her patron deity.
“I’m not making you paranoid, am I?”
“I’m already paranoid. It’s not making me any less,” I said.
“Good man,” Olivia said. “Now, it may be morning to you, but it’s well past midnight here, and I need to catch up on my beauty sleep.”
She said good night and signed off. I hoped Quan Yin was looking after her.
FIVE
The next few days were spent settling into a kind of routine at the office. We sat in on client interviews and briefings. We shadowed the investigators as they worked for a woman trying to get her underage granddaughter away from the parents who were pimping the girl out to producers for sex to land her a role in movies and television. We observed the investigators as they traced the contents of a bank’s safe deposit box to a real estate mogul’s wife and mistress in a love triangle that became a battle over property deeds, which brought back unpleasant memories of the Harkingdales and London. The LA office did a lot of discovery work for law firms over inheritances and wills. Again, bad recent memories. There were the usual celebrity clients and stalking cases, but they were more restrained than we were at the London office. No beating up or intimidation, more turning over evidence to clients and lawyers so they could get restraining orders. From time to time I’d see some of them cleaning their guns at their desks. They had open carry licenses, yet they were so much more constrained than we were in London.
Benjamin seemed busy. He was knocking from one assignment to the next, all with NDAs signed. It struck me that he was loath to sign the Official Secrets Act, but had no problem with signing NDAs with tech companies. Go figure. I would get sporadic texts from him, something about testing a virtual reality prototype and introducing haptic shocks to anyone who molested female users in VR. He seemed awfully gleeful about that. There was another cryptic text about “Cool drones, bro!”
We finally met Benjamin for dinner at a venue we came to regret picking. It was a former hardware store whose new owners had converted it into one of those appalling hipster bar-restaurants they were so fond of in West Hollywood. It was the type of place whose acoustics were bloody awful and you had to shout to be heard. Darrell had explained to us that this was so people got parched from the constant shouting and would be forced to order more drinks, since the real money to be made was from selling booze more than food.
Benjamin had shown up in a prototype driverless car. When we arrived, he was showing it off to the valets and they were all oohing and aahing over it.
“You don’t need to drive it, just tell it to park where you want,” Benjamin said. “The AI’s in learning mode.”
It was more than twenty minutes before we were shown to a dimly lit table.
“I’m testing the car,” Benjamin said. “Actually, I’m supposed to fuck with the AI as much as possible to see if I can break it.”
“And is that when you take over and drive it manually?” Julia asked.
“That’s the job.”
“So let me get this straight,” I said. “Instead of making sure it gets things right and doesn’t get into an accident, you’re mucking about with it to see if you can drive it round the bend? That seems to sum up your whole lot in life.”
“You can hire anyone to sit in the car to make sure it’s kosher,” Benjamin said. “You spend the money on me to find a way to throw a spanner in the works. I’ll always find a way.”
That was Benjamin’s genius, after all, to be the prankster, the coyote, the mischief-maker.
“When it’s tech, I’m there,” Benjamin said. “Like a rat up a drainpipe, me.”
“Long as you’re having fun, mate.”
“I’ll drink to that.” Benjamin clinked his glass to mine.
“Have you noticed your accents are even more pronounced since you got here?” Julia asked. “Mine, too.”
“Maybe,” I said.
“Too right,” Benjamin said. “We’re British and we’re in a strange land. We double down on what we are.”
“It’s as if we’re feeling insecure and need to reassert our cultural identity,” Julia said over the din.
“So, what,” I said, “we’re playing up our accents as a kind of crutch or mental security blanket?”
“And we think we’re superior to the Yanks,” Benjamin said.
“Even as we have less and less justification to believe that,” I said. “Given how bad things are getting back home.”
“Have you noticed the way they perk up when they hear our accents?” Julia asked.
“Well, it certainly got us decent tables at the posh restaurants,” I said.
“We’d sound awful trying to put on American accents anyway,” Julia said.
“Here’s another thing that gets to me about these clubs in Los Angeles,” Benjamin said. “Why are they so bloody dark? We need flashlights to read the sodding menus.”
“This is a trendy gaff,” Julia said. “Celebrities come here. They keep it dark so people don’t see them so easily and paparazzi can’t take their photos.”
“Celebs,” I said. “Another thing this city is beholden to.”
“Americans envy us having a Royal Family,” Julia said. “Celebrities are the aristocrats of America.”
“Never mind the actual billionaires and monied families,” Benjamin said.
“They’re not as pretty or glamorous,” Julia said. “All they have is money, which they hide, and power, which many people don’t have.”
This wasn’t the only job Benjamin had here in LA, and the undisclosed tech company with the self-driving car was not his only client. Apparently, he was working for at least six tech companies, each with a different assignment for him, and some of them even entailed some investigative work. He wanted to get a look at some new drone technology, some new surveillance gear, virtual reality development, that we might end up using for investigative work in the future, as well as a couple of cases of industrial espionage, sabotage, and employee harassment—a full dance card all said, and of course, NDAs signed with each of these clients.
“Since we’re all here,” Benjamin said. “Why don’t we back each other up when the need arises, eh?”
“Julia a
nd I aren’t working any cases here, but sure, why not? Couldn’t hurt.”
“You never know, right?” Julia said.
“You never know.”
We drank to our pact.
In the days to come, we would be extremely glad we’d agreed to it.
SIX
Olivia’s Hong Kong recordings:
“So here I am, back in Hong Kong. Called Mum and Dad and told them I was in town. Dad was his usual distant self. I think he was a bit suspicious about why I came. I said I was here to support Marie since her husband was grabbed by the Chinese authorities. Mum asked if I was going to stay in the house, but I said I would be staying at a hotel in Causeway Bay. I didn’t want them to get nosy and start poking around my computer. I had to promise to have lunch and dinner with them when I wasn’t out at ‘meetings.’
“Hong Kong is changing. A lot of the local businesses and cheap restaurants have disappeared, priced out by nouveau riche Mainlanders who just bought up the properties and jacked up the rent. Chatted with my friends, who were all depressed about Chinese rule. Well, not all of them were depressed. The ones working in banks were still earning their bonuses and quite chuffed about the Chinese stock market despite the slowdown. The ones investing in property were a bit nervous about the bubble on the Mainland, what with all those empty skyscrapers standing there without a buyer. Then there’s the pro-democracy demonstrators and everyone worried they might kick off something. Of course, the gangs that have deals with the Mainland government are doing their bit to intimidate the protesters. All par for the course.
“Marie was beside herself since Derek disappeared. He was the fifth book publisher to be snatched this year. He was probably somewhere across the border in China being sweated and interrogated, being forced to confess. All he did was publish a vaguely gossipy book about the expensive lifestyles of the senior politburo and their wives in Hong Kong. Derek just left for the office one morning and never came home. It’s been more than a week, and when Marie tried to file a report with the police, a friend who was a senior detective whispered in her ear that Derek had probably been snatched by agents from the Mainland and taken back for interrogation, leading up to a televised confession before they let him go. Who knows how long that could take. It might be a few weeks or a few months, depending on how much they want to break him and how strong they want the message they’re sending to other publishers to be. Publishers are already running scared. Three major bookshops have already closed, including the big one in Kowloon that was part of my life for as long as I can remember. Never thought it would ever go away.
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