"I'll be at Elliptical House working with clients. Is two pm too late?"
"Perfect."
"Then I'll see you."
"See you. Cheers."
Outside the window a silver summer rain began to fall, rippling with sunlight, like magic. Probably it was there all the time, the wonder, but people were too busy to see it.
Two o'clock. Lunch.
"Oh, yeah."
Good news. He could almost forget Sophie lying comatose, the beeping life support, or the wreckage of his marriage to Maria, testament to a decade or more of bad decisions.
Like hell he could forget.
The Tube carriage rocked, half full, as Josh checked the hidden and not-so-hidden cameras. They were potential routes into the surveillance net – most transmitted realtime to relays and servers outside – but too restricted for what he needed. At the far end of the carriage, two men bumped into each other, hands going for hilts, then stopping as they rethought their situation. An abbreviated apology, a delayed nod, and they moved away from each other, eye contact broken.
Josh's phone gave a characteristic vibration.
Who's sending this?
There were people looking relaxed or bored or hacked off by their jobs; none looked away suddenly at his gaze. Someone professional then, who had redfanged a short-range message while his attention was on the two guys. There was no easy way of telling who it was; and besides the train was slowing. This was his intended stop.
"Victoria Station. Mind the gap."
He could have played tag games, trying to flush out the message sender, but instead he got out as planned, keeping in the midst of other passengers as he ascended to the mainline station. Far outside rush hour, the concourse was still busy. Hunching his shoulders, he pulled out his phone, tilting it so no surveillance cams could see the screen.
TELL YOUR GIRLFRIEND
Slipping the phone into his pocket, he headed outside, walked the single block to the red brick cathedral, and went inside. Heavy darkness seemed a permanent denizen in here. In a pew at the back, he sat down, then knelt, cupping his phone again to read the words in full.
TELL YOUR GIRLFRIEND TO LEAVE HER PHONE AT HOME. BIG EARS EVERYWHERE.
Getting to his feet, he crossed to one of the shadowed side-chapels, and stopped at a metal stand bearing rows of candle holders, some two-thirds in use. He used cash, bought a candle and lit it, then pressed it into place. Call it cover, acting like the real worshippers. Or call it a prayer to an imaginary entity he had no belief in: a plea to the universe for a miracle, for Sophie's sake.
Get out of here.
Leaving, he kept his head down, using natural movement to disguise the way he scanned the environment, checking everyone, detecting no patterns, knowing that the real watchers were everywhere: lenses ranging in size from pinholes to golf balls, overtly on posts and hidden in nooks, outside and inside the buildings, reporting every second of every day on the ant-like behaviour sweeping through their fields of view. A camera does not blink; a server does not sleep.
Why was someone eavesdropping on Suzanne? And who was the helpful message from, if it was real?
He wandered into Stag Place, buffeted by wind – some kind of tunnel effect produced by the glass buildings – and found Elliptical House, its outline living up to its name. Inside, a receptionist with weightlifter muscles nodded at Josh's name, and said he was on the visitor's list.
"Fourth floor. Lift is over there."
"Thanks."
There was a mutual nod, a recognition of physical potential; then Josh made his way to the lift, wondering what Richard Broomhall had thought as he made this journey, and what had flipped inside his head to make him act so differently afterwards. On the fourth floor, he found a mother-and-daughter pair just leaving Suzanne's office. Consulting room. Whatever.
"Hey," he said.
"Hey." Suzanne watched her clients go, then: "Come in while I grab my things."
A smart remark rose up inside him, about grabbing her things, and he pushed it back down. As he followed her inside, he checked the observation vectors – the placement of the four internal office cameras was obvious – then turned his phone towards her, its screen hidden from surveillance.
LEAVE YOUR PHONE HERE A blink of polished-chestnut eyes; a raised eyebrow. "Least I can do is buy you a sandwich," he said. "A sandwich? Is that all you're offering?" "I could have made cheese sarnies in my hotel, brought them along in a plastic box."
"Lucky escape for me, then."
By this time they were out in the fourth-floor lobby, and Suzanne was checking that her door was shut, while her phone remained inside atop her desk. She looked at Josh; he dipped his chin, then asked her about the rubbish strike, whether she thought the dustbin collections might restart any time soon, and if she had seen any rats around where she lived.
"Not as yet, but I'm hoping," she said inside the lift. "Think of all those phobic patients I'll be gaining."
"All coughing at you and spreading their bubonic plague."
"There is that."
Outside, they strolled past the mall, then Josh pointed as if suggesting a place to eat, and led her between a glass pillar and the main exterior wall.
"Dead zone," he said. "Your phone is compromised, or so I've been told."
"Compromised?" Her expression looked like the beginning of a smile; then she glanced to her left. "The police gave me a replacement handset."
"We're on the same side."
Except that my search methods are illegal.
"So what now?"
"We go to lunch. I'm going to ask you to come somewhere with me tonight, and we can talk about that openly. If you do say yes, can you remember to forget your phone?"
Her smile was unrestrained.
"Josh Cumberland, you have a way with hypnotic language."
"Er…"
Some ninety minutes later, in another dead zone free from surveillance, Josh made a call.
"Tony? How're you doing?"
"OK. Just on a break."
"Good guess on my part."
"Guess, my arse. Some of us are organised, stick to a timetable."
"Uh-huh. Does Terry B still have his black cab?"
"Big Tel? Course he does. Want me to have a word with him?"
"I was hoping to book a taxi for, say, six tonight."
"Christ, leave things till the last minute, why don't you? This job working out, is it?"
"Keeping me busy."
"And you need Tel? It's that sort of gig?"
"Just for the wheels."
"Huh. Call you right back."
"OK."
At twenty past six, Suzanne stepped from a doorway in a Bloomsbury sidestreet, and slid into the black cab that had just pulled up. Josh, on the bench-seat beside her, smiled at her.
"We can talk." He pointed at the ceiling-mounted cam. "We won't be recorded."
"Is that legal?"
"Not in the slightest."
From the driver's seat in front of the plexiglass partition, a big hand waved in greeting.
"He's a friend," Josh added.
"If the police check his video log," said Suzanne, "he'll be in trouble."
"Actually, there'll be a perfectly good-looking record of someone making this journey, with the correct background showing through the windows and all, but it won't be us. Two other people, having a harmless conversation, and the lighting on their faces just right, matching the light from outside."
She did not really know this man. Perhaps it was worth remembering that.
"So are we going to see someone called Petra, or is that more subterfuge?"
"That's real. She's a police officer, and she can help us. But not by staying inside the rules."
"Oh."
"Her being a career police officer and all, she might be reluctant. Maybe someone who understands people really well can persuade her to slip a querybot into the system."
"Was that persuade as in manipulate?"
&nb
sp; "Surely you wouldn't act unethically, Dr Duchesne."
"Huh. So that's the only reason you wanted me along."
"Well." There was something about the muscles in Josh's face that made his smile compelling. "What other reason could there be?"
She smiled back.
It was half an hour and one traffic jam later when they stood outside the railway arches, watching the taxi drive off. Rain from an earlier shower was dripping from Victorian archways; their brickwork thrumming with the sound of electromag trains sliding overhead. Broken furniture, rusted junk, and dark-stained weeds were prevalent. Welcome to Wandsworth: so near to MI6 HQ, that severe and glistening fortress, and yet a world away.
Perhaps it was Josh's past that had her thinking about the intelligence services; in any case, when he knocked four times on a metal door – thump, thumpthump, thump – she had to fight down a giggle.
"Don't tell me it's a secret signal."
"Just don't knock it."
Was that a pun? She might have asked, but a small hatch scraped back, something silver shone – checking out with a mirror, not exposing an eyeball – then the hatch clunked shut, and the door swung inward.
"Petra teaches paranoia." Josh's tone lightened, but not in humour. "The kind that keeps you alive when they're really out to get you."
"Oh. That kind."
Inside, old khaki mats stretched across a stone floor. Battered-looking punchbags hung from chains. In front of the class stood a lean, fit-looking woman wearing old sweats, her hands wrapped in stained pink bandages.
"See Petra's hand wraps?" Josh kept his voice low. "As dainty she gets."
The stains looked to be old blood. Petra's, or other people's? Two rows of men and women in pyjama-like white outfits stood ready, intent on Petra.
"Why isn't she dressed like her students?"
"Actually" – Josh pointed to one corner where a smaller number waited, in tattered shorts and T-shirts – "they're the regulars."
Also, they were smiling. In front of the others, Petra was talking with hands clasped behind her back.
"So in your dojo" – she nodded to the black belts in the group – "you teach, what do you call it, focused awareness."
"Zanshin."
"Right. While on the street, awareness is your first weapon. Run if you can, fight if you have to, in which case fight to win."
The black belts nodded first, then the others. Beside Suzanne, Josh was failing to stop his grin widening.
"And then there's distancing and timing, right? What do you guys call them?"
"Ma-ai and–"
"YAAHHH!" She whipped something silver against a black belt's throat. "You're fucking dead."
Then she had spun away and was standing beyond kicking range, blade held high.
Baise-moi.
It was rare for Suzanne's thinking to be shocked back into French.
"Ah, Petra." Josh shook his head, teeth bared in a fighter's smile. "You're good."
The karate guys looked pale.
"We do street shotokan," said Petra. "No white gis, no tag-you're-it play-sparring. This is the real tradition, people." She threw the knife – thunk – into pockmarked chipboard. "And next time someone's holding a weapon and giving you the soothing verbals, you'll know precisely what they're fucking up to, won't you?"
Nods, and acknowledgements sounding like "Uss." Another Japanese word.
"All right, partner up." Petra pointed. "Every visitor with one of my gang. One-step drills, coming up. And… go."
The karate guys started to drop into fighting stances – then froze as the others started spitting, waving their arms and yelling: "You fucking want this?" "Who you fuckin' lookin' at?" "Come on then. Come on."
Then the gesticulating fighters leaped into the attack, and the defenders fell back with clumsy blocks. Only two of the karate guys – one black belt, one brown – roared into the onslaught and slammed their opponents back with heavy punches.
"Good." Petra nodded to the pair. "Everyone else, shape up."
Josh was chuckling.
I'm cold and sweating, about to pee myself, and he finds this funny? My God.
For the rest of the session, Petra dropped the disorienting antics but kept the pressure on. By the end, the visitors were responding well, their previous fighting reflexes now operating under conditions of adrenal overload, laid down in the amygdala, the brain's emergency response system. The old training would now kick in under circumstances where they might have frozen before. It wasn't any kind of cognitive strategy that Suzanne had instilled in her clients; but the mechanism was clear enough… and still, even now as they wrapped up the training session, touching fists or bowing to each other, frightening to observe.
"Can one of you close the place up?" Petra pulled off her sweat-soaked T-shirt – her sports bra was black – then pulled on a sweatshirt bearing the words: I FIGHT LIKE A GIRL – SAY GOODBYE TO YOUR BALLS. "I've got an old buddy here to beat up."
"Or I could buy you a drink," called Josh.
"Guess I'll let him off." Petra winked at her students. "Nice work tonight."
In a pub called the Thin Stiletto, Suzanne sat with Petra while Josh went up to the bar.
"Your students are impressive," said Suzanne.
"The visitors did all right."
"Now that their conditioned reflexes are triggered by appropriate cues, in the context of massive adrenaline dump."
"They just needed to field-strip what they knew, and take control."
"And you like empowering people."
"Uh-huh. You're good, aren't you, Dr Duchesne? Plus, you understood what was going on, even though you're not a fighter."
Josh came back with Petra's blackcurrant-andlemonade and Suzanne's coffee.
"You girls are such boozers. By the way, Suzanne left her phone at home."
"Good." Petra saluted him with her glass. "And yes, it was one of my officers that redfanged you that little warning."
"Thanks. Back in a mo."
While Josh was paying and fetching his drink – it looked like Coke – Petra checked her own phone, then nodded.
"No one's listening here and now."
"What about Josh's phone?"
"Oh, he's secure, except when he's talking to you. He and his mates use PFUC crypto among themselves."
"What's that? You did say pea-fuck, didn't you?"
"There's a polite version, but the truth is it stands for Pretty Fucking Unbreakable Code."
Suzanne realised that she had missed something.
"When you say someone's listening in, you mean the police, right?"
"Official authorities, let's say."
"So why is that a problem? We all want Richard back."
"And some of us might bend the regs to do so. In management circles, that's called breaking the law."
"Oh."
When Josh returned, he toasted them both.
"Your health. Tell me, you still run ShieldIx 3 for security?"
Petra said, "You're really not supposed to know that."
"So let's say, hypothetically, you were logged on. You'd be running a session pool with its own flows, processes, and threads. Marked with your user ID."
"Hypothetically, I'm a grandma and I know how to suck eggs."
"Uh-huh. So if you kick off a querybot – hypothetically – that would create a second session pool for it to execute in. Right?"
"Sure." Petra looked at Suzanne. "You following this?"
"I only speak French and English."
"You hang around with buddy boy long enough, you'll get fluent in Geek for sure."
"For God's sake," said Josh. "Now, a second pool with whose user ID?"
"Same as the first session pool. I log on, create a new pool, it picks up my user ID automatically."
Josh smiled. "Automatically is the keyword du jour. Substitute a subclass instance for the controller, and you can adopt chief security officer privileges."
"You're joking."
"If someone's installed a monitor, like some old Observer pattern – distributed across the net and with heavy use of proxies – then you're effectively screwing with its Observers list." Josh pushed a memory flake across the table. "That's all you need. There's another copy of the bot code, too."
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