Leah’s lip curled. “Bleep? I hate that freak. Can’t you find someone else?”
“He’s the best in London. I’m sure you can be civil for half an hour,” Hooker replied doubtfully. He fired up his fob. “Bleep?”
“You owe me two grand,” spat a reedy Northern voice. “’Cuz right now you’re in my Folio of Utter Shit. It’s a lengthy tome I’ll grant you, but still…”
“I’ve got coin. I’m on my way to pay you.”
“They’ve let you back in the Green Zone?”
“Yeah, I’m nearby. I’m pushed for time. Can we come over?”
“If ‘we’ means you’re bringing that Bloc chica with the long legs, then you may.”
“Funny you should mention it, I’m with Leah now. She’s looking forward to seein’ you too, Bleep.” Hooker winked. Leah pulled a face, opened the window and spat out of it.
“I imagine you’ve dark work in mind,” said Bleep. “So, payment up front, an exciting new policy from Bleepmeister Industries.”
Hooker’s boot nudged the bag of guineas in the foot-well. “Ain’t a problem, not on this gig.”
“Then it might be an agreeable afternoon after all,” Bleep replied. “Anything I can be getting on with?”
“I’m Darkwiring you data.”
“It’s coming through now. Do you need anything in particular?”
“Everything. Soon as you can.”
“Well, as long as your money’s good, so am I,” said Bleep.
Hooker ended the call. “Wandsworth it is,” he said, tapping the navigation screen.
Leah hit the accelerator, the treacly brown Thames flashing by. “Why is Hyatt insisting on no cops?”
“Does it matter? I thought you’d agree with that idea.”
“I do, but I’m not a member of the Wessex Übermensch, am I?”
“Damon Rhys is leading ceasefire negotiations with the Bloc,” Hooker replied. “NatSec won’t want a ceasefire, not when they think they’re winning. The Crimson Brigade don’t want a ceasefire either. They took Rhys’s daughter ‘cuz for some reason it’ll wreck the peace talks.”
“The Bloc are nutters, but the Crimson Brigade?” said Leah, undertaking a convoy of aid lorries. “There were a few in Brighton, shit-stirring and trying to turn the place into another Free Medway.”
“What happened?”
Leah laughed. “They realised Nu-Brightonians were beyond Party discipline, so they fucked off back to Russia or Italy, or wherever it is they come from. Then NatSec moved in and torched the place.” The razing of the briefly-lived Nu-Brightonian Republic was a political litmus test – National Alliance types toasted the event, the Coalition mourned it.
“That’s when you ended up in the No-Zone?”
Leah shrugged. “Via Croydonia. One night was enough.”
They crossed the PROTEX at Battersea Marshes. The chimneys of the famous power station, now submerged, pointed out of the murk like mighty gun barrels. Then Wandsworth, where Bleep lived in a maze of peeling prefabs. The infomancer answered the door, powered wheelchair squeaking. “Ah, my favourite War Criminal, and the cutest mercenary babe in the No-Zone.”
“Babe?” said Leah, pulling a face.
“It’s an old-fashioned term, pre-War level-three microaggression. It generally means nubile and sexually appealing.”
“Fuck off, Bleep.”
Bleep cocked his head. “I find your contempt… exciting.”
“Shut up Bleep, there’s work to do,” said Hooker, stepping inside the hovel. Portraits of Bleep’s Holy Trinity lined the wall – Turing, Hawking and Musk.
Leah shook her head. “You’re still bolting on false body-parts like a wannabe archangel?”
“Archangel? Please. My augmentations are all biomechanical. None of that gene-splicing shite for me.” One of Bleep’s arms and both legs had been replaced with pinky-grey resin prosthetics. A data socket protruded from behind an ear, his face a patchwork of scar tissue. His left eye was a multi-faceted piece of machinery, resembling a bug.
Leah tapped his arm. “Who pays for all this shit?”
“I’m a veteran, am I not? Our glorious government looks after its injured warriors.” A photo taped to a monitor showed a younger, less mechanical Bleep standing in a desert wearing combat gear. “Unless you’re Hooker, of course.”
Hooker saw the photo and smiled. “You know we met at the military hospital in Tangiers?”
“No, you never said. You were injured too?” asked Leah.
“Nothin’ serious,” he replied. “Shrapnel wound. Bleep, on the other hand…”
Bleep looked at his legs and laughed. “I’m a fiery phoenix, rising from the ashes.”
“Is this a new rig?” Hooker pointed at the gleaming array of computers crowding Bleep’s hovel, trunked cables lining the walls. Servers hummed, surrounded by a henge of frost-furred cooling towers.
“This? Just a little something I prepared earlier.” Bleep replied, trundling towards the machines, “this baby’s equipped with Quantum Two-Twenty processor spurs and Xenon liquid-state drives. Sublimia omniscreens and Tsinghua Everest-Nine chill-towers.”
“How d’you afford all this stuff?” said Leah.
Bleep gestured around the dingy room. “What I don’t spend on interiors, I squander on technology.”
Hooker ran a finger along a tower, frost tingling the tip. “You’ve got the data I sent?”
“Of course,” Bleep replied, fingers dancing across a keyboard. Columns of digits swirled across the omnis, swaying like shoals of digital fish. “I’d say this comes from Gordy Rice’s best blagger. Minty-fresh from the service provider. Very comprehensive.”
Leah’s face glittered in the data-flow, zeroes and ones flashing across her cheek. “Have you worked out who the target is?”
Bleep nodded. “Of course. A cutie called Charlotte Elizabeth Rhys.”
“Cutie?”
“Come on, that was only a level-four microaggression,” Bleep grinned. “Charlotte, known to family and friends as Lottie. Nineteen years old next month, evernets using a GCHQ-encrypted feed registered to a dryer-than-dry Holland Park address. She’s Damon Rhys’s daughter, of course. Straight ‘A’ student, enjoyed a starry gap year in Washington DC working for the New Democrats. Soon she’ll be off to Oxford to read Politics, Philosophy, Probability Mechanics and Ethics.”
Hooker clapped a hand on the infomancer’s shoulder. “Which is all crap I don’t need to know. Come on, Bleep, where is she?”
The infomancer sighed. “Can you tell me why she’s missing? It might help.”
Hooker didn’t have time to lie. “The girl’s been kidnapped by terrorists. The family don’t want any police involved.”
“Terrorists?” Bleep rolled the word around his mouth, grinning. “Which flavour? Woad-painted Celt Ultras? Derrida-quoting Bloc nihilists? Hyperventilating Caliphate medievalists? I must say, you two must be going up in the world.”
“Crimson Brigade,” Hooker replied.
Bleep’s face was grey. “Oh fuck.”
A face appeared on the screen. “That’s her?” asked Leah.
“This is indeed the fragrant Charlotte Rhys. I found it on a Wessex lifestyle site – London’s most Eligible Debutants.”
“Debutant?”
“Not a microaggression,” Bleep replied. “Dunno why.”
Lottie Rhys. Golden hair, bee-stung lips and a button nose. The spray of freckles across her face might’ve been painted on individually. She posed on a beach in a wetsuit, a surfboard tucked under her arm, a Jack Russell capering at her feet. Bleep summoned more images. Lottie in a dark business suit, attending a fundraiser for No-Zone orphans. Lottie at the Lord-Protector’s ball, dressed in taffeta and lace. Lottie in a wood-panelled officers’ mess, posing with a lusty row of red-jacketed soldiers. The infomancer chuckled. “There used to be a writer called Jane Austen. Her stories described the social mores of Georgian England. I’m convinced whoever’s in charge of Wessex think
s they’re instruction manuals.”
“I’d love to go there,” Leah replied, baring crooked teeth. “With a flamethrower.”
Bleep swept chat logs with a finger, blinking his metallic eye and enlarging the text. “Here we go… the last twenty-four hours in the life of Lottie Rhys. Last person to fob her was a girl called Evie. Standard-issue rich-kid. Plastic revolutionary too, if her LibNet browsing history is anything to go by.”
“Evie Kendrick. Lottie Rhys’s best friend,” said Hooker, pulling up a garden chair.
Bleep swept a data-suite from Evie’s fob records. “Evie’s been using LibNet to access Medway content, naughty girl. Amateur hour encryption… ah, here we go. Silly bitch, she only went and joined the F4P a few months ago...”
“Front for Progress?” said Leah, studying the chat logs, “that’s a Bloc sock puppet.”
Hooker studied the picture of Evie – a whip-thin girl with hooded eyes and a strong nose. “How’d she get into that I wonder?”
“There’s a TIM profiling code embedded in the cache,” said Bleep. “Targeted Ideological Marketing, they call it. Propaganda in old money.”
“Ain’t propaganda if it’s true,” Leah shrugged.
“Truth? Bah! That’s a social construct, ain’t it?” Bleep chuckled. He skimmed through images from Free Medway. Drone strikes on favelas. Tacticals posing with corpses. “She’s watched hours of this stuff.”
“Was it sent unsolicited?” said Leah.
“Initially, yes,” Bleep replied. “Although it’s been altered to look like Evie started it. Look at this – encrypted message logs, embedded inside video files.” He jabbed a finger at the omni, digits swirling as Bleep’s decryption tools unpacked the data.
This is a message in a bottle, cast into the sea. I beg you - if you receive this share it via LibNet or Darknet. The Government will not show it, their network blocking software deletes our messages. Please, If you can spare a minute, reply. To hear another voice, from someone who cares, means as much as food and clean water. Drones try to pinpoint our location, so they can bomb us. This is happening only 30 miles from London. 30 miles from YOU. The killing must stop - we must reunite our land, with justice for all, not just the few.
Clara of Free Medway
“Let’s see what Clara sent young Evie, shall we?” said Bleep, opening another file. “Some misery porn for Green Zoners, I’ll wager.”
A video camera panned across rubble, a jet flashing across the top of the screen. Explosions shook the ground, the cameraman stumbling into a rubble-strewn street littered with bodies. Then, a voice – This is Chatham, 18th February. Those are RAF jets. These are civilians. When will it stop? Who will help us?
“The Bloc place antiaircraft in civilian areas,” Leah shrugged. “Funny they don’t mention that.”
“Try explaining that to a Green Zone teenager,” said Hooker. “We can cut it anyway we like. The bottom line is we’re bombing our own people down there.”
Leah ended the video. “Civil wars are never civil.”
“Medway? Nobody has to live there,” said Bleep. “They ain’t my people. If the Bloc win, that means the Crimson wins.”
“Fucking hearts of gold, you two. Forget I mentioned it,” Hooker replied. “What did Evie do when she got this stuff?”
Bleep blinked, and an email appeared onscreen. “Looks like she fell for the pitch. Look at her reply.”
Dear Clara. My name is Evie. I live in the Green Zone and I will share your video.
“Clara comes back a whole seven minutes later, via encrypted Darknet.”
Thank you, Evie. This means more than you can imagine. I will send you my next video, if you will share that too. With love and respect, Clara x
Bleep looked up from the omni and reached for a can of energy drink. “I’ve seen this grooming model before. Evie will receive more replies from ‘Clara,’ who’ll eventually persuade her to join F4P. Then she’ll be introduced to a political mentor to help her discover the direction her activism might take.”
“They mean a Commissar?” said Leah.
Bleep nodded. “Although I think handler’s a better description. Here…”
You should meet my friend Roisin, Lottie. Roisin works in the Green Zone occasionally. She can help you understand more and show how you can help bring peace. She’s such a good listener, and has done so much with her life...
“I’ll wager a hundred guineas ‘Roisin’ knew Evie was one of Lottie Rhys’s closest friends.”
“So, Evie’s been spun into a sub-source? To provide access to Lottie?” said Hooker, tapping open more messages.
“It looks that way,” Bleep replied. “It’s consistent with Bloc and Crimson recruitment models.”
“Leah, we need to go,” said Hooker. “Right now.”
“Why?” said Bleep. “I’m not finished.”
Hooker shrugged on his coat. “If Roisin’s sophisticated enough to get at Lottie Rhys, she’d know any half-decent ‘mancer would have found this stuff by now. But she’s gone ahead and taken the girl anyway.”
“Why?” said Bleep.
Hooker headed for the door. “My guess? The kidnappers are working to a deadline.”
“Like they don’t care if they get caught?” Leah replied. “They’re just going to kill her anyway?”
“I’ve got a bad feeling. We need to identify Roisin, and soon.”
“I’m on it Rufus,” Bleep replied, hunching over his screen. “I’ll keep churning zeroes-and-ones.”
Hooker slapped a bag of guineas on Bleep’s desk. “There’s what I owe you with a cherry on top. We’re off to check Evie Kendrick’s place.”
“Barnes?” said Bleep, opening the bag and grinning. “Very posh. Hardcore Green Zone real estate, lots of security. It’ll be buttoned-down tight.”
Leah shrugged. “If they know what’s good for ‘em, they’ll un-button themselves.”
Bleep chuckled, making a strange gurgling noise in his throat. “I forgot how much you like Green Zoners.”
Leah finished the rest of the infomancer’s energy drink. “I fucking hate ‘em.”
“In which case, maybe I’ll hack their CCTV,” Bleep cackled, sniffing the empty can. “This I’d love to see.”
six
Paolo crossed the lagoon bridge, eyes hidden behind sunglasses. Beyond lay the Thames, a ziggurat island rising from the water. Built from cargo crates, it served as a monastery for the order of monks who called themselves Answerers. A robed figure saw Paolo and waved cheerily. Paolo found himself waving back. Finishing his cigarette, he walked to the Crosland Estate.
The lock-up was in a back-alley, adjacent a long-abandoned industrial estate. Paolo crossed a litter-strewn plaza, all boarded-up shops and burnt-out cars. Lagoon kids lounged on garden furniture, smoking skanj and tipping hooch into their gap-toothed mouths. A girl, face dotted with light-studs, danced to electronic music. A youth saw Paolo and grunted in the guttural language they called ‘Tois. “Who youk be middy?” he said.
Paolo pulled a guinea from his pocket and flicked it at the kid. He spoke English in reply. “Ciao. Have you seen any police patrols today?”
The kid caught the coin one-handed and tested it with his teeth. Smiling, he switched to English. “Nah not today, gaffer. Munis come sometimes, but we only see tacticals if there’s proper trouble.”
Paolo nodded. The Municipal police were little more than underfunded street wardens who posed little threat. Tacticals, on the other hand, were from the National Security Constabulary. Well-armed, lavishly-resourced and ruthless.
“Ain’t scared o’ no muni-pigs, ain’t scared o’ no tacticals,” another kid announced, swaying in a plastic hammock.
“Will you make some noise if you see any?” said Paolo. “I’d appreciate it.”
A grin split the kid in the hammock’s face. “Oh yeah, Mister. We’ll make you a proper racket if we see d’pigs.”
“Good.”
“I’ve peeped on you ‘
round the Commune,” said a girl, ratty eyes roaming the plaza. “They say you’re from It’lee.”
“It-aly. Yes, I am.”
The girl nodded, “There’s like a big fightin’ gun-a-war there, right?”
“There is. Actually, it’s not much different from the one fifteen miles that way,” Paolo replied, pointing south.
“That’s diff’rent. That’s against the Bloc, innit? Reds wanna take our stuff and give it someone else. Make us all the same an’ shit.”
“Yeah,” said another. “Dirty-fucking-Reds.”
Paolo sighed. No wonder the anarchists were unable to mobilize these dolts. He handed the girl a Marlboro Red. “Here, try one of these. It’s what they smoke in Italy.”
“Gaffer, I like dat,” the girl grinned, spluttering at the strength of the cigarette. The other youths cackled along, asking for a drag.
Paolo left the plaza, ducked into an alleyway and waited. Nobody followed. He opened a garage door and locked himself inside, leaving a tin of nails against the door jam. The lock-up contained an electric-hybrid pickup truck, liveried with the logo of a Green-Zone courier service. Pulling on surgical gloves, he scanned the interior, prising open panels where he’d conceal plastic explosives. The voids beneath the seats were already seeded with nuts and bolts. When Abid detonated the device, it would make a storm of shrapnel.
The roof-space concealed another hide. Paolo pulled out shrink-wrapped packets of US Dollars, enough to sate Rourke’s agent’s greed. He tucked the cash in a fabric belt, fastened tight around his stomach. How he missed the days of cryptocurrencies, when he could do business by pressing a screen.
It was cool inside the lock-up, Paolo enjoying the aroma of engine oil and tobacco and coffee. Honest smells, not like the Crosland’s stink. Trash and fried food, sweat and cheap body spray. Inside an ammunition box, Paolo kept a tiny coffee machine. It chugged and hissed as he prepared espresso, sipped from a china cup. Time for another cigarette and coffee, he decided, up on the roof. Watching the river, Paolo enjoyed the Bourgeois pleasure of Arabica, watching dhows bobbing on the chocolate-brown Thames. Gulls haunted the river traffic, clouds bubbling overhead, Stamp music on the wind. Draining his cup and stubbing out a cigarette, Paolo dropped back inside, locked the ceiling hatch and checked it twice.
Dark as Angels: We are the Enemy Page 5