Devil in the Wires

 

 

Dedication

For Finn and Annie, without whom this book would have been finished a lot sooner. Riff says hi.

Contents

 

Chapter 1

Interested?

“B
ut it's a war zone,” I told him.

“Not technically. Not anymore.”

“Oh, good.” I folded up the map and passed it back. “So if I'm killed there, what? I'm not technically dead or something? That how it works?”

“No, Chris. If you're killed there—­God forbid, but if you are—­then you were never technically
there
at all. You follow me?” Dayling smiled, the gracious host. “Do try the
bamia
, by the way. It's delicious here.”

“I've lost my appetite.”

A dozen lidded bowls lay on the tabletop between us. A ceiling fan whisked tepid air over our heads. In the adjoining room, the only other customers—­ both westerners—­had just been served the pleasures of the
sheesha
, and a sweet drift of tobacco smoke began to mingle with the smell of sweat, and spice, and char-­grilled lamb.

“Please, Chris. Just hear me out, will you? For old times' sake?”

He raised his brows. His forehead wrinkled like a puppy's.

“I need your help,” he said.

And in a life spent saying many, many stupid things, I said one of the stupidest.

I said, “OK.”

H
is name was Dayling, Andrew Dayling, and I'd last set eyes on him about ten years back, at a Registry get-­together in Berlin or Berne or somewhere. It only stuck inside my mind because at one point he had taken me aside and told me he was leaving Field Ops. “I mean, you can't do this forever, can you?” He'd asked me for advice. I'm not sure what I said and don't imagine it was any help, but he'd seemed pleased, and for my own part, I'd felt flattered to be asked. (I found out later he'd approached a half a dozen others at the same event, each in the same hushed, confidential tones. But never mind.)

He'd closed the conversation with a running joke, a little gag we used to do that always made him laugh.

He'd asked me: “Any tricky jobs lately?”

“Yeah,” I'd said, waited a beat, and he'd joined me in the punch line: “All of them.”

He'd grinned and clapped his hands together. “Later,” he'd said, and, as I'd assumed, walked straight out of my life.

Till now.

He hadn't changed a lot. His face had filled out—­too much
bamia
, perhaps—­and his hair was touched with gray; there was a look of strain about the eyes, maybe, though no worse than I'd expect from living in a place like this. I'd recognized him instantly. In a profession that accepted, even fostered, certain shows of eccentricity, Dayling had been resolutely straight-­edge. A shirt-­and-­tie man through and through. Today he wore a linen suit, stained under the arms, his tie held with a small pearl pin. He looked every bit the Englishman abroad, remnant of an empire long ago dissolved and vanished into memory. We had been friends once, or, more accurately, friendly. We'd worked jobs together, kicked back and relaxed when we were done. He was charming, attentive, usually good company. Yet when he'd left the field, I hadn't kept in touch, and didn't know anyone who had.

Nonetheless, it should have been an amiable reunion. It should have been a lot of things. Most of all, it should have been a different job.

“I was told this was a quick assignment. In and out. Not a bloody two hundred mile trek through warring desert tribesmen. Come on—­”

“Hardly tribesmen. They're pretty sophisticated these days.” He raised the lid on the bowl nearest him. “This isn't
Lawrence of Arabia
, you know.”

“Shame. I know how that one ends.”

“The militias here are well-­armed, and they're ruthless. I won't lie to you. But it's a hundred to one that you'll run into them. I'll tell you: you're in a lot more danger here and now than you could ever be, out there.” He spooned a reddish tomato-­smelling stew into a bowl and handed it to me.

Well, I thought, if I was going to die, I'd rather do it on a full stomach. Perhaps the
bamia
was worth it after all.

He said, “You are currently in one of the most over-­crowded cities on the planet. Killing's easy here. It's a daily occurrence. And they don't discriminate. You'd think that Shia would kill Sunnis, and Sunnis would kill Shia, but it's not like that. I'd feel safer getting out of here myself. Who wouldn't?”

“I'd feel safer back at home, watching it on telly with my feet up. Personally.”

This he ignored.

“One truck,” he said. “Middle of nowhere. Unscheduled. Visible, it's true, but tough to hit. If anybody's bothered. Which they won't be.”

“Comforting.”

“We have a bodyguard lined up, former Royal Marine. Scots chap, top man, handles our security.
Very
reliable. He'll be assigned to you directly.”

“My very own Scotsman. Is it my birthday?”

He laughed now, as if I'd actually said something funny. It ended quickly.

“The interpreter's a local man. Again, we've worked with him before. He's sound. You couldn't be in safer hands.” He put his own hands on the tabletop and spread his fingers. “Really, Chris. Would I steer you wrong? Try the stew. Go on. Just try it.”

So I tried the stew.

“Good?” he said.

I nodded.

I looked at his hands, the knobby wrists protruding from his sleeves, so tanned they looked like they'd been dipped in paint. And I remembered, years ago, a girl saying, “But have you seen his
arms
?”

I hadn't at the time, and it was quite a while before I did.

“The thing is, Chris, see—­thing is this. It's all a bit hush-­hush, and I'm sort of . . . restricted in what I can tell you. But the fact is, you were
recommended
for this job. More than that.
Requested
, as it happens.”

“Yeah. Well, I've made enemies.”

“How's the
bamia
? Good, I hope? I'd suggest the
kibbeh
or
kofta
to follow. You can eat well here if you know the right places.”

“And you don't get killed.”

“Quite.” He put the spoon up to his mouth again. A line of red clung to his upper lip, looking unpleasantly like blood. “We've got a big, big presence here. The Registry, I mean. You won't read about it in the press, but it's true. Still,” he said, “this one site, we've held off on. Till now.”

He let me eat a little more. Then he asked me, “Interested?”

“Why should I be?”

“Well—­it's a job, for one. And you're professional.”

“Not good enough.”

“You're Field Ops.”

“That's on my card.”

“What's more—­” He leaned back, one hand stroking his wrist. I wondered if he could still feel the scars, even after all this time. “What's more,” he said, “you're proud of what you do. No, Chris, you are, I've seen you. You take a real pride in it. I know this because it's—­well, it's one reason I'm not in Field Ops anymore.”

He gave a small, self-­deprecating smile.

I held off asking for as long as I could. Then I said, “Go on.”

“Simple. I saw it mattered to you, that's all. But to me, it wasn't like that. It was a job. To you—­it was important. Getting it right. Doing it well.” He shrugged. “I had some bad experiences, and . . .”

“Well. We've all had that.”

“You got out for a time yourself, I heard.”

“Few years, yes.”

“But you got back in! That's what I mean! With you—­it's in the blood, Chris. It's what you do. And—­well. This job's special, like I say. You're going to want this job.”

“Try me.”

“This is—­this is probably the oldest entity so far identified. It goes back, I don't know, thousands of years, at least. Hm?”

“OK. Risk of death aside, I'll say that I'm intrigued.”

“I'm giving you the chance to be alone with it. Take a day, a night, however long you want. Talk to it.
Commune
with it, if that's what you do. Because you know that once you get it back, you're never going to see the thing again, don't you? It'll disappear into some workshop or research facility, or get left in one of those big bloody storerooms for about ten years till someone works out what to do with it.” He made a gesture with his hands, placing an unseen bundle on the table. “What I'm offering you—­what I'm offering is a chance. To know what it knows. I can't promise, but I
can
give you the chance. And I think you'll take it, won't you? Yes?”

I didn't answer him.

“You'll take it, because—­well. Because somewhere in the world, there's a god walking around with your face, and that bothers you. I'll tell you, frankly,” he pursed his brow, “it would bother me.”

He raised his water glass, watching me over the rim of it.

“Half right,” I said. I raised my own glass, made to clink with his, but then pulled back. “It hasn't got my face,” I said. “Not anymore.”

“No?”

“Update your intelligence.” I put the glass down carefully in front of him. “One of us got older. I don't suppose it looks much like me now at all.”