Borderless Deceit (10 page)

“Only take a sec, Irv. Hang on.”

The Czar, powerless, slouched forward on the stool. The screen-saver before him showed swirling interstellar gasses forming, dissolving and reforming, great swirls of nebulae. Jaime's rhythmic voice was that of a priestess chanting.

Take an encrypted message. Separate the binary building blocks. List them. Carry out a statistical analysis of their frequency. Assign a letter of the alphabet to each block using linguistic probability data
.

Heywood heard words recited in monotone, but was unable to lift meaning from them. A mental block, he thought. Must be a mechanism that prevents you from getting converted to religion.

Next he was being questioned.

What's the probability of the letter ‘a' being used, say 20 times, in a message of, for example, 100 words? What's the probability of the letter ‘q' being used 5 times in the same message? What's the probability of each respectively being used, for example, 30 times and 3 times?

I don't know, Heywood droned silently to himself at each of Jaime's questions. I don't know. I don't know. And I don't care.

Yet the monosyllabic chant caressed his ears and was in harmony with the swirling colours on the screens. The combined effect tickled a deep centre of sensation in his brain. How pleasurable, he thought, when he felt his great mass was beginning to free itself from gravity.

TABU matches the countless probabilities of meaning with the binary blocks
.

Oh yes, Heywood thought from high up. Hannah and I, we were hotly binary when we searched out boundaries and when we found them we dared cross them and beyond them, we found still richer binary meaning.

Matching, rematching, thousands of times a second, TABU distills kernels of meaning out of an unintelligible mix
.

Heywood stopped listening. He was rising fast and reached an altitude from which he gazed back over a terrain of forty years. He saw himself beginning his epoch of free sex with Hannah. With pristine clarity he saw how with each of their innumerable copulations they distilled meaning out of a world that was truly an unintelligible mix.

Little by little, as the first letters are deciphered with a steadily higher probability that they are correct, the remaining letters emerge and because the probabilities are reduced, they start to come quicker
.

Come quicker? Or come lazily? Heywood, from far away, sensed Jaime was scrutinizing him. It forced him to lose altitude fast. When she said, “Irv, you okay?” he hit earth with a thud.

He realized in that same moment that hidden under his protruding gut was a good old-fashioned rock-hard dick. He shifted on the stool. “Fine,” he said, looking aside like a guilty child caught in some act.

“For a sec I thought you were swooning.”

“Blood sugar, Jaime. Probably a bit low. Need a doughnut. Thanks for the explanation. Dynamite stuff. Guess you have all the hardware here to get it done.”

“Yeah. Getting the first five letters may take an hour or two, but the last five only a minute. Depending on punctuation marks, use of numbers in a message, the complexity can be higher, but a message can get cracked in three, four hours. I'd like to invite Ranjit in here when I've got it done. That okay with you?”

“Invite the world, Jaime. Sure. Sexy stuff, this taboo. Some brother you've got.”

“Once I've found the server the bug used for entry, I'll start the decryption full speed. Couple of days and you'll see first results.”

“Let's hope taboo delivers.”

“It will, Irv. What my brother tosses together always does.”

When the Czar departed Jaime's chamber she was humming quietly, beginning her voyage of discovery. Millisecond differentials had to be found between the digital humps on four dozen tapes. She seemed productive and at peace.

Returning slowly to his office some floors up, Irving stuck his hand into his trouser pocket to adjust a dick erect for the first time in many weeks. On the empty staircase, feeling nostalgic, he fondled it a bit.

An exchange of rucksacks at Herridge Cabin.

Of course, there were easier ways to get the Exocet file to Hugh-S, but on the phone he treated the missile plot so casually. Hugh-S often sounded that way – bored by humanity's sins.
So much moral failure,
he would shrug through the line that scrambled all our conversations.
So many shitheads in queue. It takes time to clean them up, to get around to them one by one
. His world, different from the silent observing at which we the watchers excelled, was about blood flowing free, guts spilling out, brutal counter-counter plots and pre-planned pin-point death. Knowing this, I couldn't help but respond to his nonchalance with irony and so proposed the file drop in a place so remote that not even cell phones work. But operational secrecy, absurd or otherwise, always struck Hugh-S as a wise investment and he hadn't noticed that I'd spoken tongue-in-cheek.

And so the arrangement stood.

Except the weather that Saturday was foul. The temperature had dropped all night. By morning it was minus thirty with a sharp wind gusting from the north. When I started out on the trail foreboding sat in me like a dead weight. Who had been assigned to meet me? Would Hugh-S's courier come prepared for extreme conditions? If not, what then? Had I unwittingly become the architect of an operational fiasco?

I skied into the wind, the cold assailing me. It pierced the layers
of my high-tech thermal wear, chilling the flesh, biting my face, turning my fingers into stumps that ached. No matter how hard I poled, I could generate no warmth. Racing through savage snow squalls, balaclava clad, in a body-hugging suit, my back covered by a small blue pack vaingloriously adorned with a bright maple leaf flag (held in place by safety-pins), I was a bizarre figure on the winding track. It climbed and fell like a roller coaster, crossed frozen bays and dissected swamps hard as granite. Had someone observed my ten kilometre contest into the wind they would have questioned the purpose. But the forest was deserted. On that bitter day the arctic wind in the trees howled out a dirge; the hostile hills cried out for sacrifice; and the trail with all its icy beauty underlined the fragility of life.

To my relief, at the cabin, another backpack (maple leaf neatly stitched on) was resting on the snow next to a pair of skis. Hugh-S's man hadn't wasted time. I undid my bindings and dropped my pack next to the one there. Immediately, a thick-set figure with the muscular gait of a fullback came out. He wore a black tuque, purple goggles and a baggy, white, military-issue winter coverall. His breath came out in short athletic puffs. The pre-arranged greeting ritual began.
Nothing like the great outdoors!
He said this in a loud, hail-fellow-well-met voice. As forcefully I answered:
Had a good run in?
Then he:
Oh fine. Fine. Mighty fine
. This pre-agreed ridiculous exchange established our bona fides.

Reaching down to take my rucksack he growled, “Bitch of a day. Mother-raping cold wind. Damn near froze my balls off.”

I apologised, saying it turned out to be colder than forecast.

“Bitch of a country too. Who the fuck lives up here?”

Hardy, well-meaning people, I ought to have replied. Instead, I asked what he thought of the trail. He said he liked the uphill parts, and it wasn't long before I knew he'd been an army colonel who had done NATO survival training in northern Norway. He chatted away for some minutes. “So I thought when they asked, well, here's a helluva chance to see snow again. But the cold up here…flying fucking Jesus!” He nodded towards the cabin. “No warmer in there.” Taking my pack with the Exocet dossier, he slung it over his shoulders, stepped into his skis and poled off with the momentum of the college football all-star he probably once was. A pole high in the air delivered a last triumphant wave before he disappeared behind a clump of spruce. The great forest
had consumed him. I took his pack into the empty cabin, opened it and found the wafer thin, ultra-powerful, special access laptop Hugh-S said he would be issuing me, to make me independent of the still defunct Service network and allow me quicker access to his data products. Digging deeper in the rucksack I also hauled out a frozen banana and some cans of solid Coke.

Hugh-S told me later that the posse he sent out soon after the colonel was back with my files denied the Iranians their new toys. As per the plan hatched in the elegant summer homes north of Toronto, the containers with the missiles were transported by ship into the Black Sea and unloaded in the Georgian port of Batumi. From there they made their way by truck through Turkey into Iran. But when they were opened on an army base near Qazvin not far from Tehran, out spilled not a cargo of Exocet missiles, but thousands of cheap, Romanian rubber boots. “Arranged a substitution,” grinned Hugh-S through the phone. “Cute, right? Oh, Cahsun, thanks again. Damn fine file you done up.”

I settled in a corner of the cold cabin and thrust my hands inside my jacket to warm them underneath my upper arms. I thought back to another day, to what Rachel said when we paused here. I also thought of what she had kept to herself. I had no right to know about her lovers in Vienna, but I had wanted her to confide in me about them all the same. And now, sunk away, I wondered why. Why did I crave the details? And why did I want them from her? So as to be drawn by a few precious minutes of story-telling into her world and sense she enjoyed sharing its richness with me? But that day not a hint, not the faintest indication of her affairs had passed her lips. I wondered, when we sat so amiably on the bench outside, had Rachel described her men to me, how she would have presented them. As mere life intrusions, mildly interesting at first, but causing ennui soon enough? Or were they opportunities for exploration, both of herself and them? Or was their purpose memory creation, to allow an ardent late-in-life reliving? Or maybe it was simpler. Maybe in an uncomplicated way she just liked her men. Maybe they allowed her to give expression to her body, as her work gave expression to her mind. I wanted to know the colouring, the composition, the splendid artistry with which Rachel painted the canvasses of these affairs. I wanted to hear the words that started them,
the acts that sustained them, the mood shifts that ended them. My urge was a collector's. I ached to own rare treasures and, were I to possess them, to hoard them, to lock them away deep inside my brain. I rationalized it too. I convinced myself I wanted her to share all this because, really, I just wanted to understand.

Slumping forward, my breath expanding before me in white wisps, as if on cue the dreaded inner whispering set in. It never failed. When Rachel's Vienna days swept over me, my conscience turned black. And when an inner voice muttered that in contemplating scenes of Rachel entwined with her lovers I demeaned myself –
Voyeur,
it whispered – I moaned with pain. Yet, I was a captive to the Vienna episodes. They played through my mind like newsreel images – old, blurry, shaky, yet terrifyingly real. Once in motion they couldn't be shut off. I created them, I watched them, I was addicted to them, and they made me feel unclean.

Perhaps because Rachel had once sat here with me so pleasantly, I began wrestling especially hard with feelings of wrong. The wind beating at the cabin windows made it worse. It sounded like a drum roll and all around a vortex began spiralling. It narrowed my field of vision; it dragged me down. And as things went dark three apparitions, one after the other, formed…

Eduardo de Castro Santiago. A Brazilian diplomat. Dark good looks. The manners of an aristocrat. Rachel's age. Her first Viennese lover.

They meet at a diplomatic function. Rachel spins her charm, uses her quick eyes and sharp intelligence to create an aura.
Around me life is enticing!
At once he's captivated. An exhilarating psychological dance begins. Spoken words are mere cover for two pairs of eyes to pierce. With Latin pride he talks about Brazil and then himself. Rachel, steadily inquisitive, blowing warm air into his expanding self-esteem, mesmerizes Eduardo. The reception conversation ends as it began, with Eduardo's slight formal bow. The next day he does the normal thing. He calls…

This is Eduardo. Please excuse me. I hope I am not interrupting
.

Eduardo! No. Not at all. How are you?

I am well, thank you. Well, I wanted to call to say I enjoyed our
conversation last night
.

I did too
.

One does one's duty attending the social functions, but, I must say, I am glad now I performed mine yesterday
.

Duty? I don't mind receptions. There are always interesting people to meet
.

Ah…thank you…and for me also…you are a most interesting person. I would like to continue our conversation if you agree. I would be honoured if you lunched with me. Would that be possible? This week, or perhaps next?

Why not? A lovely idea. Thursday is open. Or next week, any day
.

Thursday would be fine for me too. Do you know a restaurant on the Schottengasse called Kupferdachl?

I'll have no problem finding it
.

Excellent. At 1:00 pm?

Yes…

I knew they quickly became lovers because three weeks later they went to Rome for an extended weekend. (They stayed in a small hotel near the Spanish Steps; he bought Rachel a gift, a fine silk scarf; and, judging from Eduardo's credit card record, they dined excellently well.) When I acquired this information, I recall, I dearly hoped one day Rachel would describe to me the first moments she had with Eduardo. Of course, it was easy to think Rachel was swept off her feet by the smooth, well-bred Señor de Castro Santiago. But I doubted that's how it was. I knew how she radiated charisma, how she used her vitality to enchant and disarm, and so I believed Rachel, not Eduardo, created the atmosphere. She determined the pace of the affair. After all, it was no different after him, with Pekka Svedlund, an athletic Finn. And then Iain Bruce came along, a Scot, a somewhat older man (and who for that reason brought a touching solicitousness to the relationship, combining sex with fatherly concern). I was sure Rachel, being in charge, kept much of herself in reserve. Alone with the man she liked, she would have played her role with directness and ease, for she possessed the gift of leading by not quite leading. But whenever the lovers looked for more, for another Rachel, for the woman behind the smile, behind the barrage of expressed interest and the other forms
of sorcery she practised that caused them to bare their psyches, they found themselves staring into a void. She gave them nothing to take hold of. And when they ventured the final step, when they said they wanted to transit that void to arrive at her deeper self, Rachel refused them that longer journey. It was also a sign that the relationship would soon end.