by Greg Chivers
‘If you want me to plan a break-in, I need to see everything.’
He shakes his head and smiles, but there is no warmth in his expression. ‘I think you’re labouring under a misunderstanding. I don’t need you to plan anything. I need someone quick and smart to do the legwork, that’s all.’
‘How do we get past the security? There’ll be alarms, cameras …’
‘You won’t need to worry about any of that stuff. It’s taken care of.’
‘I worry if it’s my picture they’re taking.’
Levi’s mouth pinches like he’s tasting something sour; then he shakes his head again. ‘I already told you too much. Get out.’ He spits the last word and leaves a silence, waiting for her to move.
His anger vents in sharp, shallow breaths, a warning hiss, but Clementine doesn’t shift. The thought of tomorrow morning’s cleaning routine echoing infinitely into the future keeps her rooted to her seat.
‘Go on, move! If you breathe a fucking word to anyone, we will find you. Nothing moves in this city Yusuf doesn’t know about it.’
Her head jerks around at the mention of the other man’s name. He’s still standing watchfully by the door, barring her exit, but there is no malice in his pose. The tablet lies tantalizingly out of reach, but she can almost taste the trickle of current flowing through the solid-state circuitry from the tiny block of lithium at its core. Just a little nudge …
Blue light from the tablets suddenly illuminates Levi’s face. He blinks in disbelief. ‘What the fuck did you do?’
‘Like I said, I need see everything.’
Heavy footsteps from behind warn of the big man’s approach, but Levi holds up a hand, and they stop. She feels the looming presence no more than a metre behind her.
‘May I?’ She gestures to the tablets shining through Levi’s caged fingers and he nods cautiously, pulling his hand away.
The moment her index finger brushes the tablet’s casing, data rushes up to greet her, coursing through the fingertip interface into her grey matter, flowing in a stream of firing neurons into the tiny auxiliary processor at the base of her frontal cortex. An itch in her brain is a long dormant sub-routine kicking into life, processing, sorting through thousands of files. The storage is archaic: pointless partitions and fragmentation make it needlessly cumbersome, but a few microseconds suffice to realize it is mostly redundant information. Almost all the files are copies of each other with small, pointless modifications. This data is an illusion, a pantomime of rigour.
‘This isn’t everything.’ Clementine’s voice comes out in a lifeless monotone.
‘What do you mean? I have contacts. This is the skinny.’
‘Look.’
The micro-projector on one of the tablets sparkles into life, and the photographs from its data files flicker into the air above the table on its beam of light. One after the other, they seem to hover, connecting with each other through some algorithmic alchemy to form a glowing three-dimensional wireframe of the target building that rotates slowly between Clementine and Levi.
‘Fuck.’ She turns in her chair at the sound of Yusuf’s voice. The big man is staring at the ghost building she’s conjured, mouth wide open.
‘How? How do you do that?’ Levi’s stare is intense, but his voice betrays a note of excitement.
‘It’s easier than the orange.’
‘That’s not an answer.’
‘You’re right, it isn’t. Is that going to be a problem?’
A calculating look comes into his eyes, and he shakes his head. ‘What’s going on here?’ He points to one of five blurred areas in the rotating schematic. It stops, and the relevant area enlarges, obeying an unspoken command.
‘This is how I know you’re not being given everything – there’s no source data available for me to process into the larger model. Is there a reason your contact wouldn’t give you the whole picture?’
‘Maybe. Maybe these areas just aren’t important.’ He waves a hand, and the model continues its rotation. ‘This doesn’t change anything.’
‘I think it does. I think my fee is four thousand.’ Clementine pulls her finger away from the tablet and the schematic winks out of existence, casting them both into gloom. Levi emits something like a growl, a sound of reluctance from deep in his throat; then he leans forward, face cracking in a sudden smile.
‘Yeah, yeah, four thousand is cool. You bring a lot to the party. I can respect that. I think we should regard this as the beginning of a business relationship.’
‘No, I do this and then I’m out.’
‘Let’s just see how this goes and then maybe consider it further down the line.’
Clementine breathes deep and shuts her eyes against memories: a year of running now. This is not her first opportunity to make money through crime. There were offers in Marseille as soon as people got a hint of what she was. Now, at the end of the money, choices are fewer. ‘This is not a career opportunity for me.’
‘I understand. I’m just saying things can change, that’s all.’
‘I hope we understand each other.’
‘Yeah, whatever, now do your thing.’
Clementine gestures the light model into being and it resumes its rotation between them, white lines of the wireframe scrolling across their faces like moving scars. Levi points as he talks.
‘It’s a warehouse – the main storage facility for the state Museum of Antiquities. It’s split between three floors, each corresponding to a different level of security – A, B, and C, but the order is all messed up. C is the low-level stuff you might just dig up if you get lucky – coins, pottery. It’s on the ground floor – not heavy security but there’s only one door in, and there’s a guard on it 24/7. I’m guessing some pressure sensors and beams – nothing crazy.’
He watches for any trace of a reaction. Clementine stays silent, mentally cross-referencing what he’s telling her with data already absorbed from the tablets, searching for inconsistencies. There are none. As far as she can tell, the picture they have is not false, merely incomplete, but that could be equally deadly.
‘The floor above C is A. I told you it was messed up. A is the really valuable stuff – this kind of thing, it’s either on the cover of the museum brochure, or they deny its existence, or maybe both, I don’t know. B is our destination, the top floor.’
‘Why aren’t we going for the valuable stuff?’
‘Because this is a real job. We’re getting what the client wants. That’s it.’
‘Who’s the client?’
Disbelief flattens Levi’s voice. ‘You don’t know. You’re never going to know, so don’t ask.’
‘Fine, you’re right. I don’t need to know the backstory, but I can’t work with these gaps in information. A single unexpected camera or sensor could turn any plan I make into a very bad idea. These are problems I can solve, but I need to take a look and make some guesses at what we’re dealing with.’
‘Now?’ He looks uncertain, the brittle pride of a few moments ago cracked in the heat of practicalities. A good sign.
‘No, daylight’s better. We’ve got time, haven’t we?’
‘Yeah, time is one thing we got. Do what you need to do.’
‘OK. Give me a couple of days to work things out, then I’ll meet you back here after lunch. I’ve got to serve breakfast at the Mission and clear up.’
‘For those bums?’
‘For those bums.’ She owes that much, and more, for the kindness she’s been shown. This is already enough of a betrayal, and they have problems of their own. Before she left to come here tonight, Hilda had been worried about something: one of the elders, a man she called a prophet, had been arrested.
Levi’s nose wrinkles as if he can smell the urine tang of the Mission gatehouse. ‘I could, like, advance you a little money – you get yourself a proper room somewhere.’ He hunches back into that jacket and it swallows him. All his edges are blunted but he still looks nervous about something, smoking with no
hands while he fingers the tablet. The tip of the straggly cigarette glows to the sound of a sharp inhalation. Is he trying to make nice after the confrontation, or is this some convoluted attempt at a pass? No, he’s smarter than that. Then the realization hits her; she’s become an asset worth looking after, and even this utilitarian kindness fits him about as well as that jacket. It’s not comfortable.
‘See you soon, Levi.’
8.
Silas
A red light flashes, urgent but ignored at the corner of the desk. For almost twenty-two delicious minutes he has sat, transported by the magic of the screen, but as the play nears its end, its analgesic comfort starts to fade, and the pressures of an endless day loom as a faint ache at the edge of perceptible sensation, a warning of what is still to come. That pitiless light will be someone else wanting something, imagining their desires correlate with his priorities. For a few more stolen moments, he pushes the unwelcome thoughts away, focusing his full attention on the scene unfolding before him.
It is the culmination of an arc unfolding over six episodes. The alcalde, an unremittingly villainous official in charge of a generic rural settlement that could be anywhere from Panama to Peru, is about to reveal to the lovely Consuelo that she sacrificed her virtue for nothing. Her beau, Pablo – the man she hoped to save – is already dead. The denouement can take different forms but it is always an exquisite variation on the theme of moral compromise. For those too depraved to appreciate the melodrama, the Lat-Am import soaps offer two choices: alternative streams present the same storylines rendered as pornography of varying hideousness. The work must be wearing for the actors, but it creates a perfect product, a culturally pliable opiate for the worn workers of the Sino-Soviet bloc or their bourgeois counterparts in the West, perhaps even for the demi-human elite, although it’s hard to imagine what currents of emotion circulate in the hormone-regulated soup beneath their metal shells. The episode ends with a lingering close-up of Consuelo, her delicate jaw quivering with grief and shame. Silas leans back into the punched leather comfort of his chair to savour the image for a moment before allowing work to intrude.
‘Sybil.’
Unusually, his assistant fails to respond to the summons.
He lifts his feet from the desk, squares them on the floor in preparation to stand, pushing back the niggling urge to snap at her. There will be some good reason for her silence, and displays of hostility should be saved for the moments when they can serve some purpose. He pokes his head through the doorway separating their domains.
The spectacle of Sybil, with her artless mousy hair and dull, faintly bovine eyes, often provokes disappointment in visitors who come here. But in truth, she’s an asset infinitely more valuable than any office decoration. Sybil treads the razor line between blind obedience and initiative like no other. This quality requires a total absence of self – no guiding principles, no emotional attachments – an ability to make critical judgements, coupled with the capacity for selective blindness necessary for ruthless action. The trust he places in her is near total.
‘Sybil dear, when’s the diplomatic pouch from São Paulo due?’
She nods acknowledgement of the question but does not instantly respond, enmeshed in an incomprehensible array of tasks, all no doubt urgent and essential for the furtherance of his agenda. For more than a minute, information flows through her, sucked in through fingers jabbing and stroking at the floating arcs of data, outputted through clipped voice and text. Her effortless, natural manipulation of unseen lives exhibits a level of technical and managerial competence he could never attain, yet, he reflects, it is Sybil who performs his bidding, not her his. Proof, if it were needed, of the myth of meritocracy. Or to look at it another way, he possesses merit of a different kind he suspects Sybil will never own; he simply does not care that she is better.
‘Sorry about that, I thought I had a few minutes. I can never get my head around how short those episodes are with the commercials cut out. What’s Consuelo up to?’ The data arcs floating in front of her dim and become transparent.
‘She just found out Pablo’s dead. She’s taking it pretty hard. I don’t suppose the next month’s instalment is in yet?’
‘I’m afraid not. Two or three days would be my best guess.’
‘Oh well, work it is then. What was that light about? The Cult again?’
‘Actually, no. It was Vasily Tchernikov.’
‘Vasily? What does he want?’ Like anyone worth knowing, Vasily Tchernikov wears more than one face. Publicly, he serves as the cultural attaché within the embassy of the Sino-Soviet Republic of Humanity, but the niceties conceal a more demanding role as station chief for their intelligence operation within in the city. Until recently, someone like him would have regarded Jerusalem as a dead-end posting, but of late the Republic has been making an effort to cultivate client states outside of the Machine sphere of influence; this makes him an asset worth maintaining.
‘Something about repatriating some statues recovered from Palmyra. He says the Russian envoy in Damascus is insisting they be returned. Their presence in our Museum of Antiquities is “naked cultural larceny”.’
‘Vasily said that?’
‘No, that was Damascus.’
Silas stays silent, taking a moment to savour the subtext of what is, on the face of it, a banal request for a few lumps of badly eroded sandstone. The Damascene government styles itself as the flag-bearer for a new style of democracy in the Middle East, but in truth they are masters of an irradiated shit heap, dancing to the tunes of their masters in Sverdlovsk. Of all the Republic of Humanity’s client states, Damascus is the runt of the litter. The statues will no doubt be part of some gambit to claim cultural consanguity with the dead nations who used to occupy the real estate – a preamble to making wider territorial claims.
‘Fuck them … No, wait a minute – these statues – are they any good?’
‘They’re unique: representations of Moloch recovered from the ruins of the temple of Baal in Palmyra. To the Shias and the Haredim they’re blasphemies – both regard them as representations of Satan – but culturally they’re significant, so we have them on display.’
‘So getting rid of them could actually make a lot of people happy?’
‘And annoy anyone in the city who cares about real history.’ A mischievous smile curls the edges of Sybil’s lips. This is what visitors to Silas’s office do not see – the perfect sympathy, the way she moulds herself to his needs. It is a gift almost beyond price.
‘You’re making this decision too easy. Call the relevant curator. Tell him to pull the Moloch stuff from display and get it ready for transit.’
Sybil’s gaze drops and she shifts awkwardly in her seat. ‘Ah, I’m afraid that won’t be straightforward. Boutros wasn’t in today. Nobody seems to know where he is.’
‘Boutros?’
‘The “sanctimonious plank” who raised an official protest when you moved the Antikythera Mechanism into storage. He hasn’t turned up to work since.’
‘I imagine it’s some sort of protest. Never mind, with any luck, he’ll keep himself out of the picture for a while. Honestly, the fuss that man makes, you’d think he owned the bloody thing. And he used to seem such a reasonable sort too. Well, you’ll have to get someone else to deal with the statues. It doesn’t take a PhD to cover a statue in bubble wrap and tape … and call Vasily. Tell the Russian bastard he owes me a favour.’
‘Of course. Would you like to run through your schedule now?’
‘No, I need you to make some excuses for me. I’m going to court.’
Her head tilts. ‘Court?’
‘Our esteemed Chief Justice is presiding over a case that could cause him a little trouble. I might just catch the end of the evening session if I’m quick. I sense an opportunity here and I don’t want to miss it. Is there anything that can’t wait?’
She makes a face and swallows the answer she wanted to give. ‘Just some griping. Nothing I can’t han
dle.’
The prophet’s eyes shine with the moist intensity of the unhinged, as if some hidden wellspring of emotion was constantly threatening to overflow. Beneath weeks of hair and dirt he is still a handsome man, an anomaly in a courtroom packed with decaying functionaries of the legal system. When he speaks, his teeth glint bright white between lips cracked and darkened by the sun.
‘The Lord will be my judge.’
The actual judge seems unaffected by the implied insult. From Silas’s seat in the galleries, Amos Glassberg might be a statue of Solomon, a lean figure swathed in purple fabric that can serve no practical purpose but to evoke the required history. The whole courtroom is an absurd parody of something imagined from the city’s ancient past. Faux marble covers the walls and the steps leading up to the raised judge’s chair. In places it is cracked and warped. Where moisture leaks around the outlets for the air-conditioning units, it darkens with mould. The cool they bring is worth a little rot. The heat of human bodies pressed together in the galleries is relentless.
Of course, the Solomon schtick is all part of Amos Glassberg’s carefully cultivated image. The city’s Justice Minister might be boredom incarnate, but he possesses a canny instinct for what the people want from the law, and in public he always maintains the stoic visage of a father governing quarrelsome children. Jerusalem doesn’t do kings anymore, or even heads of state – the idea of all that power in the hands of one person is unacceptable to everyone who knows it won’t be their man. Glassberg is as near to a ruler as the city’s broken democracy permits. Other ministers have their fiefdoms, but all are answerable to the law. He rests an elbow on the elaborately carved arm of his judge’s seat and addresses the man in the dock. ‘I see. And which Lord would that be?’
A gentle smile calms the deranged face, hinting at some hidden joke, but Glassberg ignores it. He has seen too many messiahs fall into the trap of thinking this is a real conversation. This one is only the latest in the recent wave of immigrant Christian criminals to fill the courts. At moments like this, it is all too clear the centuries have not diminished the city’s fearsome appetite for martyrs. Their particular faith seems to be of no consequence. Prophets, poets, and crusaders have all placed Jerusalem at the centre of Creation, and the people of the city love and fear them for it. The trouble is, however bright the ideal shines, the intellectual property is still tied to this grubby real estate surrounded by desert. When the conceptual city collides with the reality, the spectacle of collision draws the public to the courtroom like flies to a slaughterhouse. Glassberg knows this. Despite the staid exterior, his feel for the ebb and flow of the city’s passions rivals Silas’s own, which is why he must go.