Zero History (35 page)

He rubbed her lower back. “Better behind a locked door.”

While she was putting the chain on, he asked: “Who’s this for?” She turned. He was looking down at the fetish head. “To do with this deep shit your lairy drummer says you’re in?”

“Heidi?”

“Left a voice mail herself. About an hour ago.”

“How did you convince Robert to bring you up here?”

“Showed him the head-mount video of the Burj jump. Handicapped access is through the rear here. Your man had to help me in. When you weren’t here, I said I’d wait in the rear lobby, do some work on my laptop. He came back to check on me, of course. Saw the video, we got talking. I explained I was a friend of yours.” He smiled. “Is that whiskey?”

“Want some?”

“Can’t. Painkillers. Thought you might. You’re looking a bit pale.”

“Garreth …”

“Yes?”

“Missed you.” It sounded incredibly stupid.

“Mutual.” He wasn’t smiling now. “Knew I’d fucked up, really. When the Lotus hit me, actually.”

“You shouldn’t have jumped.”

He shook his head. “Shouldn’t have left.” He went slowly to the bed, supporting himself with the four-footed cane. Turned, as slowly, and carefully sat. “Himself,” he said, “sends regards.”

She had no idea how old the old man was. She would have thought seventy, at least. “How is he?”

“None too happy with me. I’m not likely to be that operational again for him. I think he sees the tricks are over, for both of us.”

She poured herself a half-inch of whiskey, in a highball glass. “I never understood exactly what motivated him,” she said.

“Some sort of seething Swiftian rage,” he said, “that he can only express through perverse, fiendishly complex exploits, resembling Surrealist
gestes
.” He smiled.

“And that was one, in Vancouver?”

“That was a good one. And I met you.”

“And then you went off to do another, before the election?”

“Night of the election, actually. But that was different. We were simply making certain that something
didn’t
happen, that time.”

The whiskey burnt the back of her throat. Made her eyes water. She sat down, gingerly, beside him, fearing that she might hurt him if she made the mattress move.

He put his arm around her waist. “I feel like a schoolboy at the theater,” he said. “With a date who can’t stand whiskey.”

“Your hair’s longer,” she said, touching it.

“Grows out in hospital. Quite a few procedures. Yet to murder a physiotherapist, but then I’ve not had my last chance.” He took the glass from her, sniffed at it. “Deep shit, your Heidi said. Harsh woman. Tell me: how deep?”

“I don’t know. I was in a truck tonight, in the City, leaving a meeting with Bigend, and a car cut us off. Our driver went into a passage, sort of alley, and I think we were meant to, because another car drove in at the other end, and drove right up to us. That driver had a balaclava, pulled down. We were trapped between the two cars.”

“What happened?”

“Aldous, our driver, pushed the car in front back out into the street, then crushed the front corner of it. It’s an armored truck, a Toyota, like a tank.”

“Hilux,” he said. “Jankel-armored?”

“How did you know?”

“It’s a specialty of theirs. Whose is it?”

“Bigend’s.”

“Thought you wanted shut of him.”

“I did. Do, actually. But he came back, a few days ago, and I agreed to a job. But it’s all gone sideways.”

“Pear-shaped. But how exactly?”

“His IT man and security expert’s defected. He has big plans for military contracting. In the United States.”

“The IT man?”

“Bigend. He wants to design clothing. For the military. Says it’s recession-proof.”

He looked at her. “It is that,” he said. “Do you know who was after your truck?”

“Someone Bigend pissed off. Another contractor. I heard the name earlier tonight but can’t remember it. An American arms dealer, I think.”

“Who told you that?”

“Milgrim. Someone who works for Bigend. Or is a
hobby
of his, more like it.”

“Crepuscular in here,” he said, looking around.

She got up, carefully, and went to the control. Turned up the halogens.

“Someone’s been to a lot of boot sales,” he said. “Regular Museum of Mankind in here.”

“A club,” she said. “Inchmale joined. It’s all like this.”

He looked up at the whale ribs. “Portobello Road on acid.”

She saw that the right leg of his black trousers had been split neatly up the inner seam, from hem to crotch, and reclosed with small black safety pins. “Why is your leg pinned up?”

“Going goth. Difficult to find just the right black ones. Change the dressings myself, this way. Have the kit for it in back of my invalid chair.” He smiled. “Sutures are already starting to itch.” Then he frowned. “Not pretty, though. Best leave that.” He sniffed at the whiskey again, took a tiny sip. Sighed. “That’s your deep shit, then?”

“There was a tracker bug in this,” she said, picking up the Blue Ant figurine from the nightstand. “It may have been there since Vancouver, or it may have been put in later.” She opened a drawer and produced the bug, in its baggie. “Bigend? Sleight?”

“Who’s that?”

“Bigend’s IT specialist. The recent defector. Ajay left it out, when Heidi put this back together for me. Said there were more options, leaving it out.”

“A.J.?”

“Ah-jay. Heidi’s favorite sparring partner, at her new gym, in Hackney. He’s a fan of yours. Total fanboy.”

“That would be a change,” he said, “wouldn’t it?” Then he patted the embroidered velour beside him. “Come back and sit here. Make an old man happy.”

H
eidi said there was no cellular connection on the London subway, so Milgrim hadn’t bothered trying the dongle. The trip to Marble Arch had been a quick one, Milgrim seated and Heidi standing, ceaselessly eyeing the other passengers for signs of incipient Foleyism.

Heidi still had her jacket inside out. As she’d swayed in front of him, on the balls of her feet, he’d been able to look up, the jacket repeatedly swinging open, and identify what he’d earlier taken for a brooch as having been three darts, the kind they played a game with here, in pubs. He’d sometimes, on hotel television, glimpsed hypnotically tedious competitions that made golf seem like a contact sport. But now he understood what she’d done. There were two left. Not good. He supposed he should be grateful for her having done it, under the circumstances, but still, ungood. Though he noted that he didn’t find
her
frightening, however little he’d want to get on her bad side.

There was a KFC adjacent the Marble Arch exit, he saw as they emerged, but it was closed. It smelled horrible, and this struck him with some full and unexpected force of nostalgia and desire. Homesickness, he thought, another feeling he’d tamped down beneath the benzos, in whatever unventilated chamber of the self, however abstract the notion of home might be.

But then Fiona pipped her bike’s horn, twice, at the curb, gesturing to them. He walked over as she flipped her visor up, the particular angle at which the line of her cheekbone intersected the yellow helmet-edge striking him in some nameless but welcome way. “Coming with me,” she said, offering him the black helmet. Raising her chin slightly to make eye contact with Heidi, who’d come up beside Milgrim. “I’ll send a car for you.”

“Fuck it,” said Heidi, “I’m walking. Where’s Hollis?”

“At Cabinet. I’m taking Milgrim.”

“You do that,” said Heidi, taking the black helmet and placing it on Milgrim’s head. The hairspray was still there. She gave the helmet a sharp rap with her knuckles, in parting. Milgrim threw his leg over the seat behind Fiona and put his arms around her, conscious of girl within the armor. Blinking at the newness of that. Turned the helmet to see Heidi, dimly, through the miserable visor, marching away.

Fiona put the bike in gear.

“Faggot above a load,” said Bigend, seated behind a very basic white Ikea desk. It had a broken corner and was stacked with books of fabric samples.

“Excuse me?” Milgrim was perched on a ridiculous violet stool, deeply and cheaply cushioned.

“Archaic expression,” said Bigend. “Faggots, properly speaking, being pieces of firewood. When one had a faggot above a load, one was about to drop one. It meant that something was excessive, too busy.”

“Foley,” said Milgrim. “In the car in front of us.”

“I gathered as much.”

“Where’s Aldous?”

“Being questioned by various species of police. He’s good at that.”

“Will he be arrested?”

“Unlikely. But when Fiona debriefed you, in Paris, you told her that you’d gone to Galeries Lafayette. That Foley had followed you there, as you’d guessed he would, and that you’d slipped the Neo, having determined that Sleight was using it to allow Foley to track you, into, I believe she said, a pram.”

“Not a pram,” said Milgrim, “exactly. More modern.”

“Was there a reason for choosing that one particular pram?”

“The woman, the mother, was Russian. I’d been eavesdropping.”

“What sort of a woman did you take her to be?”

“The wife of an oligarch, would-be oligarch …”

“Or gangster?”

Milgrim nodded.

“Accompanied by at least one bodyguard, I would imagine?”

Milgrim nodded.

Bigend stared at him. “Naughty.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It isn’t as though I don’t want you to become more proactive,” said Bigend, “but now that I understand what you did, I see that you’ve been irresponsible. Impulsive.”

“You’re impulsive,” said Milgrim, surprising himself.

“I’m
supposed
to be impulsive. You’re supposed to be relatively circumspect.” He frowned. “Or, rather, not that you’re supposed to be, particularly, but that I expect it of you, on the basis of experience. Why did you do it?”

“I was tired of Sleight. I’ve never liked him very much.”

“One doesn’t,” agreed Bigend.

“And I’d never really thought about the idea of his being able to track me with the Neo before. I’d taken that for granted, assumed it was something you wanted him to do, but then you were expressing distrust for him, suspicion …” Milgrim shrugged. “I felt impatient, angry.”

Bigend studied him, the weird cathode blue of his suit seeming to float in Milgrim’s retina at some special depth. “I think I understand,” he said. “You’re changing. They told me to expect that. I’ll factor it in, in future.” He took an iPhone from an inner pocket and squinted at its screen, replaced it. “The woman in Seven Dials. The federal agent. I need to know more about that. All about it.”

Milgrim cleared his throat, something he tried never to do in situations like this. His bag was at his feet, the laptop in it, and now he resisted the urge to look at it. “Winnie,” said Milgrim, “Tung Whitaker.”

“Why are you wearing the Sonny logo?” interrupted Bigend.

“Heidi bought it from a cleaner.”

“It’s a Chinese brand, if one can call it a brand. Logo, rather. Used for the African market.”

“I don’t think he was African. Slavic.”

“Jun,” called Bigend, “come here.”

A small man, Japanese, with round gold glasses, entered from the darkened shop. Milgrim hadn’t seen him when Fiona had ushered him in, only the other driver, the urine-sample man. “Yes?”

“Milgrim needs some clothes. Put an outfit together.”

“Would you mind standing, please?” asked Jun. He wore a type of pointedly British hunting cap, Milgrim thought by Kangol. Milgrim associated it with the Bronx of another era. He had a small, very neat mustache.

Milgrim stood. Jun walked around him. “A thirty-two waist,” he said. “A thirty-two inseam?”

“Thirty-three.”

He looked at Milgrim’s shoes. “Eight?”

“Nine,” said Milgrim.

“British eight,” said Jun, and went back to the darkened front of the shop, where Milgrim knew the urine-sample driver was sitting, with his umbrella.

“She’s not interested in you,” Milgrim said. “She thought you might be Gracie’s business partner. She had no way of knowing what she was watching, in Myrtle Beach. So she followed me back here. And I think …”

“Yes?”

“I think she wanted to see London.”

Bigend raised an eyebrow.

“But the police, authorities, wouldn’t really help her much with you. She said you were connected. With them.”

“Really?”

“But they asked her about your truck.”

“Asked her what?”

“They were curious about it.”

“But what did she want from you?”

“She’d thought that by learning more about you, she’d learn more about Gracie, about Foley. But as soon as she learned that you were just a competitor, that you were interested in U.S. military contracts yourself, she stopped being interested in you.”