Pattern Recognition

24. CYPRUS

Bernard Stonestreet, uncharacteristically sour and distracted, is passing the head of the stairs as she reaches the third floor, his upthrust thatch and immaculately disheveled black suit reminding her all too clearly of her previous visit.

“Hullo,” he says, with an instant's confusion. “I'd wondered where you were. Meeting Hubertus and Dorotea?”

“Looks like it.”

“Is everything all right?” Seeming concerned at her tone. “Dandy,” she says, biting it off between her front teeth.

“It's a bit of a surprise, isn't it?” Lowering his voice slightly, though there's no one to hear. “Dorotea, I mean.”

“What about her?”

“He's bringing her in as client liaison for graphics. Entirely counter to the way he structured it in the first place. Always insisted on the designers working directly with the client.” Bernard's mouth has gone a bit narrow, telling her this. “Though of course she's experienced.” He shrugs, the beautiful black shoulders of his suit jacket moving expressively. “She gave Heinzi notice — this morning.”

“When was she hired?”

Stonestreet looks surprised. “This morning. I've only just been told.”

“Where are they?”

“The room where we met. There.” Indicating a door.

She steps past him.

Opens that door.

“Good morning!” Bigend is seated where Stonestreet had sat, before, at the head of the long table. Dorotea is seated to his left, down the table's side, toward the door, closer to Cayce. Boone opposite her.

Neither Boone nor Dorotea say anything.

Cayce closes the door behind her, hard.

“Cayce —” Bigend begins.

“Shut up.” It isn't a voice Cayce has often heard, but she knows when she hears it that it's her own.

“Cayce —” Boone, this time.

“What the fuck is going on here?”

Hubertus starts to open his mouth.

“Did you just hire her?” Pointing at Dorotea.

“It would be too much to expect you not to be angry,” Dorotea says, with the utmost calm. She's wearing something soft-looking, in a very dark gray, but her hair is straining back as tightly as ever.

“The man,” Cayce says, turning to Bigend in mid-sentence, “who tried to mug me in Tokyo —”

“Franco,” Dorotea interrupts, quietly.

“Shut up!”

“Dorotea's driver,” Bigend says, as though that explains everything. He looks, Cayce thinks, even more self-satisfied than usual.

“Mugger,” Cayce says.

“And what did poor Franco do, when he encountered you?” Dorotea asks.

“He ran.”

“Terrified,” Dorotea says. “The doctors in Tokyo told him that if you had been an inch shorter, you might have killed him. The cartilage in his nose might have been driven into his forebrain, is that the word? He's concussed, has two black eyes, has to breathe through his mouth, and will probably require surgery.”

The lightness of Dorotea's delivery stops Cayce, as much as the content.

“He isn't driving, now,” Dorotea concludes, “certainly not for me.”

“Is he mugging, then?” But it's not the same voice. Something is back in its accustomed box, now. She misses it.

“I'm sorry about that,” Dorotea says. “If I had been there, it wouldn't have happened. Franco is not so heavy-handed, but someone was demanding results.” She doesn't shrug, exactly, but somehow conveys the impression of having done so.

“Cayce,” Hubertus says, “I know you're upset, but would you sit down, please? We've just been having an extraordinarily fruitful meeting. Putting our cards on the table. Dorotea knows a great deal about what's going on, and all of it, it seems, concerns you directly. Very directly, as her business with you predates the Heinzi and Pfaff project — or, at least, our meetings here. Do. Sit.”

Boone, Cayce notes, to her considerable resentment, looks attentive but absolutely neutral, sitting there in his old black coat; some kind of major Chinese-guy poker face going on. He looks as though he should be whistling, but isn't.

Cayce feels herself make a decision, though she couldn't say what exactly it is, pulls out the chair at the end of the table and sits, but without putting her legs under the table. If she needs to stand and walk out, it's one less movement.

“Boone,” Bigend says, “decided that it was necessary to tell me about your interactions with Dorotea, what you knew had happened and what you supposed might have happened.”

“'Supposed'?”

“Correctly supposed, in every case.” Bigend leans back in his chair. He needs the Stetson now, she thinks; he's started to play to it. “She was very rude and unfriendly, she did burn your jacket, she did send Franco and his associate to burgle your friend's flat and install a keystroke recorder on the computer there. She did deliberately expose you to an image she knew would unsettle you, during your second meeting here, and she did leave a toy, again meant to frighten you, outside your friend's apartment. Your friend's phone is also bugged, incidentally, and Franco has followed you at various times, including your stroll with Boone, during your first meeting together. And of course in Tokyo.”

Cayce gives Boone a look she hopes will be read as “I'll get to you when I have the time.” Then she swings back to Bigend. “And? What, Hubertus? Knowing that, you hire her?”

“Yes,” Bigend nods, patiently, “because we need her on our side. And now she is.” He looks to Dorotea.

“Cayce,” Dorotea says, “it's a career decision for me.” She puts a particular stress on “career” that might once have been heard more often on “religious.” “Blue Ant is where I need to be. Hubertus knows this.”

“But, Hubertus,” Cayce offers, “what if Dorotea is…”

“Yes?” He leans forward, palms flat on the table. “A vicious lying cunt?”

Bigend giggles, a deeply alarming sound. “Well,” he says, “we are in the business of advertising, after all.” He smiles. “But you are talking about loyalty, not honesty. And I have a strong yet simple faith that Dorotea can be counted on to be absolutely loyal to…” He looks at Dorotea, his expression suddenly quite cold. “Her career.”

Reluctantly, Cayce realizes he may be right.

He's buying Dorotea's allegiance with the one thing that literally no one else can offer her: a potentially fast-track position in Blue Ant. And as Cayce recognizes this, she's suddenly very curious as to what it is that Dorotea knows.

“Then tell me,” she says, facing Dorotea, pointedly ignoring Boone, “what Hubertus imagines I'll find so very interesting.”

“I like your jacket,” Dorotea says. “Is it new?”

And Cayce will later think that Franco, just then, had come very close to not being the only one to risk having had nasal cartilage driven into his forebrain, but Dorotea is out of immediate reach and Cayce refuses to rise to the bait.

Dorotea smiles. “Three weeks ago,” Dorotea begins, “I took a call in Frankfurt from someone in Cyprus. Russian. A tax lawyer, he said. At first it seemed to be about a possible contract for Heinzi, but quickly it became obvious that he required services from my previous line of work.” She raises one eyebrow at Cayce.

“I know about that.”

“He wanted someone made sufficiently uncomfortable to not accept a position at a particular firm. This firm. And you, of course, are that person.” Dorotea folds her hands in her lap. “He came from Cyprus immediately, if indeed he was from Cyprus, and we met. He told me, then, who you were, and of course I had some sense of that from my knowledge of the business, this business. He was clearly aware both of my background and of the way I was positioned vis-à-vis Blue Ant. I noted that, carefully.”

“He was Russian?”

“Yes. Do you know Cyprus?”

“No.”

“It is a tax-shelter domain, for the Russians. It caters to them. There are many Russians there. I was given information regarding you, and paid a retainer.”

“Dorotea,” Boone says, “I didn't want to interrupt, when you were telling us this earlier, but what form did payment take?”

“U.S. dollars.”

“Thank you.” Boone falls silent again.

“What information?” Cayce asks.

“When did you stop seeing Katherine McNally?” Dorotea asks in reply.

“In February,” Cayce answers automatically, feeling her scalp creep.

“My Russian from Cyprus gave me typescripts of what seem to be her notes.”

Katherine had taken notes, during the sessions, in shorthand.

“From this I learned about your sensitivity to —”

“You don't need to go into that.” Cayce cuts her off. Could her therapist have betrayed her, this way? Katherine had had doubts about Cayce concluding, it was true, but they had come to an agreement, and had had a good closure. Katherine had wanted to work on her issues around Win, and his disappearance, but Cayce had been living them, and hadn't wanted to. “I can't believe that Katherine —”

“She probably didn't,” Dorotea says, as if reading her thoughts. “This man from Cyprus, I doubt you know this sort of man. I do. It is at least equally likely that he sent someone, in New York, to enter this woman's office and photograph the documents. She would never know.”

“Note,” Bigend says, “that we cannot date that. If you quit seeing her in February, they might have gotten them at any point afterward, up until contact with Dorotea.”

Cayce looks from Bigend to Boone, back to Dorotea. “And your…” She can't think of a term. “Mission statement?”

“To make you sufficiently uncomfortable that you would leave London. If possible, that you would then avoid Blue Ant, and particularly Hubertus. Also, I was to see that the software they gave me was installed on your friend's computer, and to monitor your movements in London.”

“They insisted that Dorotea return the software they provided for that installation,” Boone adds. “Unfortunately, she did.”

“So Franco got into Damien's, put something in the computer. What about Asian Sluts?”

“Asian?…” Dorotea's eyes widen slightly, as if in puzzlement.

“And he called you? To tell you he'd done it?”

“How do you know that?”

“He used Damien's phone.”

Dorotea says something, evidently obscene, in Italian, under her breath:

A silence ensues. They look at one another in turn.

“When they learned you were going to Tokyo,” Dorotea says, “they became, I think, excited. They insisted I cover you, there. With my responsibilities to Heinzi, I could not go. I sent Franco and Max.”

“'They'? Who are they?”

“I don't know. I only communicate with this Russian. He obviously works for someone. He wanted whatever it was he thought you might get from whoever it was you were meeting with.”

“But how did they know?…”

“That's down to me to sort out,” Boone says.

“But Pamela Mainwaring is no longer with us,” Hubertus says. “She was easy,” says Dorotea.

“And now,” says Hubertus, standing, “if you and Boone will excuse us, I want to introduce Dorotea to the designers she'll be working with.” Leaving Cayce and Boone alone with each other.