by Greg Chivers
Tigran stands up and straightens his collar, prodding her in the ribs with a huge foot to check she’s really out. Shant works his jaw like he’s trying to get water out of his ear, then notices me kneeling in front of him and his eyes darken.
‘Does this mean we’re not friends any more, Shant?’
‘You’re not as funny as you think you are, Levi Peres. I would say “that’s your problem” but you got bigger ones than that.’ His backhand blow lands on my left eye socket. It hurts, but it’s not as bad as getting hit by a bruiser like Tigran. He gestures to the big guy. ‘Have a look around this shithole. See if there’s anything worth anything.’
Tigran nods and steps over to my coffee table, which is weirdly clear of all the merchandise I left on it – Clem must have been tidying again after she woke up.
‘Hold on a second. I can save you some time.’
Shant looks at me out of the side of his eyes, suspicious. ‘This doesn’t change anything. You know that, right?’
‘Wait ’til you see what I can offer. Maybe we can work something out.’ My dry tongue trips on the words, like I’m so scared I forgot how to speak. I’ve got nothing. Shant’s instincts are going to be telling him I’m full of it, that there’s nothing I’ve got he can’t just take. He’s right, but he can’t be sure. I have to get him curious, make him think there’s a bigger game he hasn’t seen yet.
My stash is in the drawers on the other side of the room. There’s close to a thousand tabs of bounce in there – not enough for a player like Shant to get excited, but maybe enough to arouse his interest if I can sell it as a taster. I edge away from him, slowly to make it clear I’m no trouble.
‘OK, let’s see.’ He waves me away, almost laughing. He’s so relaxed he doesn’t care what I do.
The strange sweet smell gets stronger as I get closer to the drawers and crouch down. The good stuff from my stash is in the bottom one, but I need to take my time. Any fumbling and he’s going to smell the bullshit right away. The drawer sticks a little on a twisted runner as it opens. It does that every time, but right now the half-second delay makes me want to puke. Instead I laugh, which is probably worse.
It’s there – a wholesale-size pharmaceutical bottle with a childproof cap that keeps me out on a bad day, and if this isn’t a bad day, I don’t know what is.
My bladder twitches.
The bottle is three-quarters empty. If I give this to Shant he’ll laugh for ten seconds and then feed me a bullet. Where is my shit? Right at my eyeline, there’s something on top of the drawers, a tray covered with a towel. The sweet smell is coming from there. Has Clem been baking? Why would she do that?
Oh.
I lower my eyes from the tray so it looks like I don’t want him to see what’s got my attention. Not too fast. Nothing hokey.
‘Tigran, go see what’s taking Mr Peres so long, will you? I don’t want to spend any longer in this shithole than I have to.’
The big guy steps over from his post by the door, still moving slowly from getting hit by Clem’s knee, and cranes down to see what I’m looking at. Now I just need to get him interested. Shouldn’t be hard; he looks as though he likes to eat.
‘Don’t touch that!’ My hand flashes towards the thing on top of the drawers but he’s ready for me, knocks my arm away, and I fall from a crouch to sitting on my ass, looking up at him. He grins and whips away the cloth to reveal a metal tray, and the smell intensifies. It’s sweet, nutty chocolate. The grin broadens and he digs a shovel-like hand into the tray, coming out with a crumbling mess of brownie, which he crams into his mouth leaving brown smears at the edges.
‘That shit any good, big guy?’ Tigran gives a messy smile and passes the tray over. Shant scoops some up and speaks through a mouthful. ‘This is some good shit, Levi! You got a cosy little arrangement here. Whoever heard of a thief that bakes?’ He laughs at his own joke. ‘Tigran, would you put Mr Peres into the bath please? We got to start clearing up in here.’
Those big messy fists clench around the lapels of my jacket and drag me to my feet. I don’t fight. If I fight, I’m out cold like Clem, and this is all over.
‘Shant, wait! I’ve got … stuff I can show you.’
His laugh is harsh. ‘What you got to show me, Peres? Uncle Leo told you – we’re all good for souvenirs.’
‘How about a thousand tabs of bounce?’ He doesn’t know I’m all out. By the time he figures it out, I’ll either be dead or out of trouble.
‘A thousand? You are moving up in the world, Levi. Where?’
‘In …’ Think, Levi, think. Where’s going to buy you time? ‘In the bathroom, under the shower tray. You’ll need a screwdriver.’
‘Or a hammer. Tigran, go get some tools from the car.’ The big guy leaves and Shant stands back and pulls out his gun, a sleek Makarov hardly any bigger than his hand. Clem’s still not moving, but the way he points the gun says he’s more worried about her waking up than anything I’m gonna do. The tetchy silence while we wait is broken by the clump of Tigran’s boots on the stairs and the hum of the washing machines coming through the floor. A couple of times Shant looks around the apartment and shakes his head at me, as if he can’t quite believe I dragged him to this shithole. More heavy steps and clanking tools announce Tigran’s return.
‘Any last words, Levi Peres? Something smart I can use to entertain the guys?’
‘Dream on, Shant. All my shit is copyrighted.’
The dull crack of ceramic breaking comes from the bathroom, then stops.
‘Tigran, you got that bounce yet? We got shit to do today.’ The sound that comes back is a high-pitched giggle, like air leaking from a balloon. ‘What the fuck, Tigran? Cut your shit. Get the stuff, get in here, and kill these motherfuckers for me.’
‘That’s your problem, Shant. You’re too serious all the time. You need to see the funny side. You know, I can help with that.’
‘Shut your mouth, you punk.’ He straightens his arm to point the pistol, but his hand wobbles at the wrist joint, like it’s hardly even connected to his arm. ‘What the fuck?’
‘That’s better. You’re starting to relax a little.’ From the bathroom comes the sound of a heavy body hitting the floor, followed by squeals of high-pitched laughter. I nod in the direction of the noise. ‘Sounds like Tigran is feeling it.’ I stand up. The non-stop washing machine hum from below vibrates up through the bones of my feet. This is my home.
Shant wills his treacherous fingers to close around the gun’s trigger, but their spastic movements spill it to the floor. ‘What the fuck did you do to me?’
‘I didn’t do anything. You did it to yourself. You should have kept your hands off my stuff. That’s the funny thing about bounce. If you take it like a pill or a powder, it’s a hell of a dance drug. But if you heat it up, like maybe in an oven in some brownie mix, the crystal structure expands and it becomes something a little different – guaranteed to put a smile on your face.’
I push him in the chest and he falls to the floor like he’s made of water. The impact shatters any composure he had left and he erupts in paralysing laughter. He’s not even looking at me any more, just staring red-faced at his own hands and giggling every time they twitch.
I reach down to touch Clementine, only to see she’s already getting herself up. She must have been playing possum. ‘Are you OK?’ There’s a sticky patch of drying blood beneath her nose, but she nods. ‘We’ve got to leave. Get your stuff. Wait, you don’t have any stuff. OK, I’ll get my things together. Give me a minute.’
She stands up and casts a sour look at Shant’s twitching form. ‘You should kill them.’
‘Kill them yourself, you’re such a badass.’
‘They’ll kill us if they get the chance.’
Something in Shant’s twitches tells me he’s hearing this conversation, but his body’s got him locked down. ‘Did I ever make out I was any kind of killer to you? Let’s get our stuff and get out of here.’ I take the gun and put it in th
e bag along with the metal box and the brown plastic bottle containing what’s left of my bounce. ‘Shit, how much did you put in that brownie?’
‘I’d say just about the right amount.’
19.
Silas
Levi Peres has somehow contrived to make the Antikythera Mechanism disappear. I went to the warehouse. The box containing the thing is gone, and there is no record of anything coming or going; a spam storm yesterday afternoon is presumably cover for whatever he did. I’ve had to import an expensive data miner all the way from Korea to pick through the pieces of his handiwork, and apparently it could take days to find anything, if there’s anything to find. What have you done, you little shit?
A light blinks red on my desk. I ignore it, but Sybil’s voice cuts in on my personal line. ‘It is Hierophant Barnes of the Machine Cult, sir. He insists the issue is most pressing.’
‘Be a dear and tell him to fuck himself with one of his mechanical appendages, would you, Sybil?’
This vanishing places me in a somewhat awkward position. I’d made certain well-founded assumptions about young Levi’s competence, and thus the manner in which the operation would be carried out. I’d even shown him the rather generous consideration of ordering maintenance to the air-conditioning units which would render their monitoring systems temporarily inactive. For some reason, he’s ignored every discreet assistance I provided, instead performing this inconvenient little miracle.
Hence, the matter of pickup was not something I’d given any consideration to. A well-publicized police manhunt, launched off the back of perfect CCTV images of the criminal caught in the act, would have brought the artefact within my grasp. Young Levi would have died in an unfortunate gunfight while resisting arrest, and a carefully timed announcement would then break the sad news that the criminal, a notorious smuggler, had succeeded in getting the Antikythera Mechanism out of the country before he was tracked down. As planned, it was all going to be very tidy, as well as a great bit of publicity for my campaign for the Justice Ministry, but Peres has somehow fucked it all.
The red light blinks again. Those half-human monstrosities will attempt to intimidate me, they can’t help themselves, and any conversation carries a risk I might say something I’ll regret. Unfortunately, I need their money; elections are expensive.
‘Sybil, if the Hierophant calls again, please put him on hold but make sure to say I’ll be available very shortly. As long as he stays on the line, keep checking in with him every couple of minutes – string him along. Oh, and change the hold music to something unpleasant, will you? Anything you can do to keep them off my back until I’ve sorted this mess out.’
‘Yes, minister.’
Obedience of the kind Sybil provides truly is a gift from the gods, but for all her talents, the one thing she cannot do is materialize the Antikythera Mechanism. I punch the code for Peres’s line into the desk terminal. Somewhat to my surprise, he answers immediately. His voice cuts across the sound of a jackhammer in the background. ‘What do you want, Mizrachi?’
‘What I’ve paid you for. Nothing more, nothing less.’
‘I’m glad you put it that way. Your upfront payment didn’t even cover expenses. I have gone through some serious grief to get this doohickey. I’m gonna need half a mil.’
Among my other skills, I pride myself on being able to measure a man by his voice: he’s serious, but I can’t tolerate an outbreak of courage at this juncture. ‘Listen to me, Levi. The only reason I’m not going to put a hit out on you right now is a certain grudging respect or, dare I say it, fascination for how you pulled this job off. The original deal, with the original terms, is still available for the duration of this conversation. I suggest you take it.’
Silence at the other end of the line betrays thinking. ‘Where?’
‘Leave the Old City by the Lions’ Gate. Follow the Jericho road almost to the top of the Mount of Olives. There’s a defunct electrical substation by the side of the road. Open the service hatch of the main transformer. The money’s in there – swap it for the artefact and you can walk away from this with your head high. Word will get around that Levi Peres pulled off something big.’
The line goes dead. That’s the problem with the young – their pride is so brittle.
‘Sybil, would you inform Jerusalem’s finest that their assistance may soon be required on the Jericho road in relation to stolen antiquities, and be a dear and put a sniper team on the Mount of Olives. Tell them not to shoot any policemen.’
The light on my desk informs me the Hierophant is enduring Sybil’s choice of hold music. Barring any absurd mishaps, today could turn out rather well, even though it’s an unwanted distraction from the day’s real business. I have to work out what to do about Amos Glassberg. The ministerial elections are looming, and despite his excruciating dullness, he remains a formidable incumbent. Getting rid of him will take some doing.
A translucent projection of his grimly patrician face glares at me from the glowing hemisphere of documents that constitutes his file. There’s something faintly funereal about those high cheekbones and deep-set eyes. Looking at him, it would be easy to write him off as another pointless bureaucrat, but I have known him too long to fall into that trap. The Minister of Justice is dangerous, a man of principle with a strong pragmatic streak. However inert he has appeared up to this point, he remains a threat as long as his credibility is intact.
The documents offer me little to work with: a possible homosexual liaison at university is useless – the only people who would care about that are the hardliners who already hate him. He seems to have a passionless relationship with his somewhat homely wife, but over the years he’s steered clear of even the subtlest honey-traps I’ve set in his path – whether out of perceptiveness or principle, I cannot say. I think part of the problem is that he comes from money. Being born to it simply extinguishes so many of the little fires of inadequacy that burn in the rest of us, and leaves him less vulnerable to manipulation. Through no fault of his own, he’s inherited substantial property. In another era that would mark him as out of touch with the ordinary man, but there is no such thing in Jerusalem; certainly money is no sin, and offers me no leverage.
No, Amos Glassberg is a man of ideas: they must be the key to his soul. My eyes wander across the glow of files surrounding me and settle upon something unlabelled, marked only with a primitive chronological tag. A glance reveals it to be the intelligence file covering his student days. It is thin, but extant nonetheless; as a scion of one of the city’s more notable families he was worthy of modest surveillance from his late teens. In preparation no doubt for a future in politics, he chose to serve his final undergraduate year at the Sankore Masjid in Timbuktu. It’s quite normal for the city’s elites to send their young abroad to acquire a touch of sophistication, but it’s his next step that’s interesting – the Patrice Lumumba People’s Friendship University in Moscow. He’d have been just old enough to go there before the Machines made their big push east at the outbreak of the fourth great war. There’s no mention of any course of study, and he was there for eighteen weeks – hardly long enough to pick up the language, never mind learn anything substantive. Even before its destruction, Moscow was not a city where young men went to acquire sophistication. What brings the man of ideas to the world’s intellectual backwaters?
He is now an admittedly youthful fifty-eight years old. He’d have been twenty-two when he made that journey … Those dates … He almost walked into the final act of the last war! He must have been in Moscow a matter of weeks before the city fell, before the Russians fell back to the fortified line on the Urals and forged the desperate alliance that became the Sino-Soviet Republic of Humanity. There I have the beginnings of a narrative – Amos Glassberg, fearless champion of humanity. In reality, he most likely ran before the fighting got within a hundred miles of the city, or someone persuaded him to get out, but the reality doesn’t matter. I don’t need the truth when I can make my own. This is a dark
spot in the past of a man who prides himself on transparency. Filling in the blanks is a matter of legitimate public interest. I don’t expect the electorate will be delighted to discover their noble Minister of Justice was training as a Soviet spy.
‘Sybil?’
‘Yes, minister?’
‘How’s Hierophant Barnes getting along?’
‘It’s a little hard to tell. I think a lot of the sounds he’s making aren’t words. He rang off a couple of minutes ago.’
‘Jolly good. See if you can get him back on the line.’
‘Shall I put him through?’
‘No, no, just keep feeding him the hold music: as much as he’ll take. What’ve you got him on?’
‘Ah, it’s a medley of children’s vid-feed theme tunes, sir.’
‘Perfect. Can you get me Vasily Tchernikov please?’
The line goes silent for four seconds before a click informs me someone has picked up at the other end. Typical Russian paranoia, waiting for the other guy to speak first. ‘Vasily! How’s the espionage business?’
‘I wouldn’t know, minister, but may I commend you on the museum’s excellent retrospective of Hellenic art? I thought the juxtaposition of ancient and modern was surprising, yet apposite. My compliments to your curators.’ If you didn’t know Vasily, you’d hear that voice as deadpan, maybe even hostile. It takes a while to realize that his default mode is irony. There’s usually a joke in there somewhere, even if it’s hard to see. In my view, he takes the culture bit of his cover altogether too seriously. I can’t tell whether or not he derives genuine amusement from rubbing my nose in my philistine shortcomings. He might think his needling goes some way to getting under my skin, but I suspect he is smarter than that. At heart, we are both pragmatists.