Zero History (27 page)

“Or,” said Ajay, still considering the tracker bug, “you could keep this, but reglue your ant. That would give you a degree of lateral control.”

“How do you mean?”

“If you keep the bug hidden in the vicinity of the ant, rather than
in
the ant, they’ll think it’s still in the ant. So they’ll assume the bug is where the ant is. It has possibilities. Bit of wiggle room.” He shrugged.

“I’ve had it since Vancouver,” Hollis said to Heidi. “Hubertus gave it to me. I thought I’d left it there, deliberately, but then I found it in my luggage, in New York. Somebody here put it in my bag before I went to Paris.”

“Do what Ajay says,” Heidi said, tousling his waterfall. “He’s handy. Now come with me.”

“Where?”

“Your room. You’re going to make that call. I’ll be your witness.”

B
igend was having the No. 7 Breakfast: two fried eggs, black pudding, two slices of bacon, two slices of bread, and a mug of tea. “They get the black pudding right, here,” he said. “It’s so often overcooked. Dry.”

Milgrim and Fiona were having Thai noodle dishes, which Milgrim found an unexpected option in a place serving the sort of breakfast Bigend was having, but Fiona had explained that the Thais had quite seamlessly integrated the two, much in the way Italians had once learned to offer the full English, in a setting of pasta, but even more convincingly.

It was a tiny place, crowded, not much larger than Bigend’s Vegas cube, the clientele a mixture of office workers, builders, and the arts-oriented, consuming lunch or late breakfast. The china and tableware were random, unmatched, and Bigend’s mug of tea bore a smiling teddy bear.

“You don’t think Foley was following me in Paris?”

“You went back to the hotel,” Bigend said. “I phoned and said that Aldous would be picking you up. You were using a phone Sleight gave you, but I didn’t say where you were going, or who you were meeting. Fiona followed the Hilux.” He nodded in her direction.

“No tails,” said Fiona.

“But I’d phoned Hollis first,” Bigend said, “to find out where she’d be, in order to send you there. They might have overheard that. But if your Foley was there just as you arrived, I imagine he either followed Hollis to Selfridges or knew that she’d be going there.”

“Why would they be interested in Hollis? What does she have to do with Myrtle Beach and those army pants?”

“You,” said Bigend, “and me. They may have seen us all together at lunch, the day before. Sleight has allies within Blue Ant, almost certainly. They would assume that Hollis may be involved with our contracting project. And she is, of course.” Bigend forked a large piece of bacon into his mouth, and chewed.

“She is?”

Bigend swallowed, drank tea. “I’d like to see what the Gabriel Hounds designer could do for us for military contracting.”

Milgrim glanced at Fiona, curious to see whether she’d respond to the mention of the brand, but she was deftly picking shrimp from her noodles with chopsticks. “Hollis is upset,” Milgrim said to Bigend. “Her boyfriend.”

“Really? She has one?”

“Had,” said Milgrim. “They aren’t together. But she’s learned he was in an accident.”

“What kind of accident?”

“Automobile,” said Milgrim, which was literally true.

“Nothing serious, I hope,” said Bigend, tearing a slice of bread in half.

“She thinks it may have been,” said Milgrim.

“I can keep her on track,” said Bigend, sopping up yolk.

Milgrim looked at Fiona, who was looking at Bigend quite coldly now, he thought, but then went back to her noodles.

“You want the Gabriel Hounds designer to design for the U.S. military?”

“If a great deal of men’s clothing today is descended from U.S. military designs, and it is, and the U.S. military is having trouble living up to their heritage, and they are, someone whose genius lies in some recombinant grasp of the semiotics of mass-produced American clothing … Foolish not to look at the possibilities. In any case, it’s getting hot now,” said Bigend.

“What is?”

“The situation. The flow of events. It always does, when people like Sleight decide to have a go. And the person in my position is expected to focus, narrowly, on the situation at hand. Terrible waste, tactically. You can often make a killing in the market, while an attempted coup is under way.” He wiped up yolk and grease with his final bit of bread and popped it into his mouth, leaving his plate perfectly clean.

Fiona put down her chopsticks, having picked a last shrimp from her noodles. “And where will I be taking Mr. Milgrim?”

“Holiday Inn, Camden Lock,” said Bigend. “Everyone seems to know about Covent Garden.”

“I saw one of the Dottirs, in Paris, at the restaurant,” said Milgrim, “and Rausch.”

“I know,” said Bigend. “You told Fiona, last night.”

“But was it an accident that we were there? When they were?”

“It appears to have been,” said Bigend, cheerfully, wiping his fingers with a paper napkin. “But you know what they say.”

“What?”

“Even the delusionally paranoid have enemies.”

“He’s put you in the Holiday Inn,” said Fiona as they walked back to the repair yard along what she’d said, when he’d asked, was lower Marsh Street.

“Yes?”

“Certainly not as posh,” she said, “but where you were has a lot of inherent security, simply in the ground plan. Stars have ridden out serious press-sieges there. Nothing wrong with the Camden Holiday Inn, but it’s not that tight.”

“He thinks too many people know where I’ve been staying,” Milgrim said.

“I don’t know what he thinks,” said Fiona, “but you’d better watch yourself.”

I do, thought Milgrim. Or rather, he had. Pathologically, his therapist had said. “You were going to explain what I need to do in order to be a better passenger,” he said.

“Was I?”

“You said I needed a passenger lesson.”

“You need to sit closer to me, and hold on tight. Our mass needs to be as one.”

“It does?”

“Yes. And you need to stay with me, lean with me, on the turns. But not too much. It’s like dancing.”

Milgrim coughed. “I’ll try,” he said.

H
eidi perched on the edge of the Piblokto Madness bed, like an expensively coiffed gargoyle, pale knees protruding through the holes in her jeans, long pale black-nailed toes extended over the scrimshawed trim. “Number’s in your phone?”

“No,” said Hollis, standing in the middle of the room, feeling trapped. The insectoid wallpaper seemed to have closed in. All the various busts and masks and two-eyed representations staring.

“Bad sign,” said Heidi. “Where is it?”

“In my wallet.”

“You never memorized it.”

“No.”

“It was for emergencies.”

“I never really expected to need it.”

“You just wanted to carry it around. Because he wrote it.”

Hollis looked away, through the open door to the vast bathroom, where fresh towels were hung, warming, on the horizontal pipes of the Time Machine shower.

“Let’s see it,” said Heidi.

Hollis got her wallet out of her purse, her iPhone with it. The little strip of paper, which he’d neatly torn from the bottom of a sheet of Tribeca Grand notepaper, was still there, behind the Amex card she only used for emergencies. She drew it out, unfolded it, and passed it to Heidi.

“American area code?”

“It’ll be a cell. It could be anywhere.”

Heidi dug in a back jeans pocket with her other hand, came up with her own iPhone.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m putting it in my phone.” When she’d finished, she handed the strip of paper back to Hollis. “Have you thought about what you’ll say?”

“No,” said Hollis. “I can’t think about it.”

“That’s good,” said Heidi. “Now do it. But put your phone on speaker.”

“Why?”

“Because I need to hear it. Because you may not remember what you say. I will.”

“Shit,” said Hollis, sitting down on the bed, nearer its foot, and switching on the speaker.

“No shit,” agreed Heidi. “Call him.”

Hollis blankly entered the number.

“Put his name on it,” Heidi said. “Add it to your numbers.”

Hollis did.

“Give it a speed-dial code,” said Heidi.

“I never use that.”

Heidi snorted. “Call him.”

Hollis did. Almost immediately, the room filled with the sound of a ring tone, unfamiliar. Five rings.

“He’s not there,” said Hollis, looking up at Heidi.

“Let it ring.”

After the tenth ring, there was a small, nondescript digital sound. Someone, perhaps a very old woman, began to chatter fiercely, demonstratively, in what might have been an oriental language. She seemed to make three firm statements, increasingly brief. Then silence. Then the record tone.

“Hello?” Hollis winced. “Hello! This is Hollis Henry, phoning for Garreth.” She swallowed, almost coughed. “I just heard about your accident. I’m sorry. I’m worried. Could you call me, please? I hope you get this. I’m in London.” She recited her number. “I—” The record tone sounded again, causing her to jerk.

“Hang up,” said Heidi.

Hollis did.

“That was good,” said Heidi, punching her shoulder softly.

“I feel like throwing up,” said Hollis. “What if he doesn’t call?”

“What if he does?”

“Exactly,” said Hollis.

“Either way, we’ve moved it forward. But he will.”

“I’m not so sure.”

“If you felt like he wouldn’t, you wouldn’t be going through this. You wouldn’t need to.”

Hollis sighed, shakily, and looked at the phone in her hand, which now seemed to have taken on a life of its own.

“I’m not doing Ajay,” Heidi said.

“I wondered,” said Hollis.

“What I
am
doing, very actively, is not doing Ajay.” She sighed. “Best sparring partner I’ve ever had. You wouldn’t believe the way those squaddies can mix it.”

“What are ‘squaddies’?”

“I don’t know.” Heidi grinned. “I think it might just mean regular soldiers, in which case it’s a joke, because they aren’t that.”

“Where did you find them?”

“The gym. Hackney. Your boy at the front door found it for me. Robert. He’s cute. I went over there in a cab. They laughed at me. Don’t get women there. I had to put some whup-ass on Ajay. Which was not easy. Picked him ’cause he was smallest.”

“What are they?”

“Something. Military. Listening to them, you can’t tell whether they’re still in or not. Bouncers, bodyguards, like that. Moonlighting? Between assignments? Fuck if I know.”

Hollis was still looking at the iPhone.

“You think that was Korean? On his voice mail?”

“I don’t know,” said Hollis. The phone rang.

“There you go,” said Heidi, and winked.

“Hello?”

“Welcome back.” Bigend’s voice filled the room. “I’m on my way back to the office. Can you join me there, please? We should talk.”

Hollis looked up at Heidi, tears starting to come. Then back down at the phone.

“Hello?” said Bigend. “Are you there?”

H
is room here overlooked a canal. He’d only been vaguely aware of London having canals, before. It didn’t have them to the extent that Amsterdam did, or Venice, but it did have them. They were a sort of backdoor territory, evidently. Shops and houses didn’t seem to have faced them. Like a system of aquatic alleys, originally for heavy transport. Now, to judge by the view from his window, they were repurposed as civic and tourist space. Turned into a framework for boat rides, with paths for jogging and cycling. He thought of the boat on the Seine, with its video screen, the Dottirs and George’s band, the Bollards. The boat he’d seen here, earlier, had been much smaller.

The room phone rang. He left the bathroom to answer it. “Hello?”

“I am Voytek,” a man said, with some accent that caused Milgrim, on the off chance, to repeat himself in Russian.

“Russian? I am not Russian. You are?”

“Milgrim.”

“You are American.”

“I know,” said Milgrim.

“My shop,” said Voytek, whose name Milgrim now remembered from brunch in Southwark, “is in market, near your hotel. Under, in old stables. You bring your unit now.”

“What’s the name of your shop?”

“Biro Shack.”

“Biro Shack? Like the pen?”

“Biro Shack. And son. Goodbye.”

“Goodbye.” Milgrim returned the phone to its cradle.