Pattern Recognition

31. THE PROTOTYPE

Monday morning, in Neal's Yard, she keeps the Blue Ant phone on, and nearby, while she works through her program.

It rings while she's on the PediPole, a device that makes her think of Leonardo's drawing of the human body's proportions as they relate to the universe. Her palms, fingers spread, are pressing down into black foam stirrups.

The woman using the nearest reformer frowns.

“Sorry.” Cayce lets up the springs, releases the stirrups, retrieves the phone from the pocket of the Rickson's. “Hello?”

“Good morning. It is Ngemi. Are you well?”

“Yes, thanks. And you?”

“Indeed well. Stephen King's Wang ships today. I am very excited.”

“From Maine?”

“From Memphis.” She hears him smack his lips. “Hobbs phoned. He says he has what you need, and now it is up to you. Shall we visit Mr. Greenaway and pay his ugly price?”

“Yes. Please. Can we do it now?”

“He will not open until eleven. Shall I meet you there?”

“Please.”

He gives her the number in Bond Street. “See you there.”

“Thank you.”

She places the phone at the blond wooden base of the PediPole and gets back into position.

IF there's any one thing about England that Cayce finds fundamentally disturbing, it is how “class” works — a word with a very different mirror-world meaning, somehow. She's long since given up trying to explain this to English friends.

The closest she can come is that it's somewhat akin, for her, if only in its enormity, to how the British seem to feel about certain American attitudes to firearms ownership — which they generally find unthinkable, and bafflingly, self-evidently wrong, and so often leading to a terrible and profligate waste of human life. And she knows what they mean, but also knows how deeply it runs, the gun thing, and how unlikely it is to change. Except, perhaps, gradually, and over a very long time. Class in England is like that, for her.

Mostly she manages to ignore it, though there's a certain way they can have, on first meeting, of sniffing one another's caste out, that gives her the willies.

Katherine, her therapist, had suggested that it might in fact be because it was such a highly codified behavior, as were all of the areas of human activity around which Cayce suffered such remarkable sensitivity. And it is, highly codified; they look at one another's shoes first, she's convinced, and Lucian Greenaway has just done that to Ngemi.

And doesn't like them.

Slightly dusty black DMs, their fat-proof (as advertised) air-cushioned soles now planted firmly before this counter in Greenaway's shop, which is known simply as L. GREENAWAY. Quite large, Ngemi's DMs, Cayce thinks, estimating a British size eleven. She can't see Greenaway's shoes, behind the counter, but if he were American, she guesses, they might be toe-cleavage loafers with tassels. Though they wouldn't be that here. Something by a Savile Row maker, but, she guesses, not bespoke.

She's met people here who can distinguish workable button holes on a suit cuff at twenty feet.

“I have to ask you, Miss Pollard, if you're entirely serious about this?”

L. GREENAWAY is the sort of shop you must be buzzed into, and Greenaway himself looks as though his toe might be hovering over a button that would summon large, helmeted men, with truncheons.

“Yes, Mr. Greenaway, I am.”

He looks at her black nylon flight jacket. “You are a collector?”

“My father.”

Greenaway considers this. “I don't recognize the name. Curtas are rather a small field.”

“Mr. Pollard,” says Ngemi, “a retired American government official with a background in the sciences, has a number of Type Ones, all dating from 1949 and of course numbered below three hundred. And several Type Twos as well, chosen primarily for condition and case variety.” The thumbnail of Win, not inaccurate, is the result of his gentle questioning on the pavement outside.

Greenaway glares at him.

“May I ask you a question?” Ngemi inquires, inclining slightly forward, with an audible creak.

“A question?”

“A question of provenance. Herzstark was known to keep three prototypes in his home in Nendeln, Liechtenstein. Upon his death, in 1988, they are known to have been sold to a private collector.”

“Yes?”

“Would the one on offer be one of those, Mr. Greenaway? I found the description on your website somewhat ambiguous, in that regard.”

Cayce watches Greenaway redden slightly. “No, it would not. It is from the estate of a master machinist, and comes with extensive documentation, including photographs of it in the hands of both Herzstark and the machinist, its fabricator. The three from the house in Nendeln are numbered one, two, and three, in romans. The one on offer is numbered four.” His expression perfectly neutral, he continues to stare at Ngemi with what Cayce takes to be absolute loathing. “In romans.”

“May we see it, please?” Cayce asks.

“Master machinist,” says Ngemi. “Fabricator.”

“I beg you pardon?” says Greenaway, who clearly doesn't.

“When exactly was this prototype fabricated, then?” Ngemi smiles blandly.

“And what are you implying by that?”

“Nothing at all.” Ngemi raises his eyebrows. “In nineteen forty-six? Forty-seven?”

“Nineteen forty-seven.”

“Please show it to us, Mr. Greenaway,” Cayce tries again.

“And how would you propose to pay, were you to decide to purchase? I'm sorry, but I can't accept a personal check unless I'm acquainted with the buyer.”

The Blue Ant Visa, ready in her hand, is withdrawn from the Rickson's pocket and placed on the rectangular blotter-like suede pad atop Greenaway's counter. He peers at it, obviously puzzled by the Egyptianate ant, but then, she guesses, makes out the name of the issuing bank. “I see. And your credit is adequate, for the price of the piece, plus VAT?”

“That's a very insulting question,” says Ngemi, levelly, but Greenaway ignores him, watching Cayce.

“Yes, Mr. Greenaway, but I suggest you check, now, with the issuer.” Actually she isn't entirely sure, but vaguely remembers Bigend mentioning that she is authorized to buy automobiles but not aircraft. Whatever other faults Bigend has, she doubts he's prone to exaggeration.

Greenaway is looking at them, now, as though they were in the process of robbing him at gunpoint, assuming that that process would cause him neither fear nor anxiety, just a sort of irritated amazement at their effrontery. “That won't be necessary,” he said. “We'll find out during the authorization process.”

“May we see it now, please?” Ngemi places his fingertips on the counter, as if laying claim to something.

Greenaway reaches beneath it, coming up with a gray cardboard box. It is square, perhaps six inches on a side, and has two U-shaped wire fasteners that protrude through slots at the edges of the lid. It is probably much older than she is. Greenaway pauses, and she imagines him counting, silently. Then he lifts the lid away and puts it to the side.

The calculator is cushioned in funereal gray tissue paper. Greenaway reaches into the box, draws it carefully out, and places it on the suede pad.

It looks, to Cayce, very similar to the ones she'd seen in Baranov's trunk, though perhaps less finely finished.

Ngemi has produced a loupe, and screws it carefully into his left eye. He leans forward, creaking, and gives the Curta his full and cyclopean attention. She can hear his breath, now, and the ticking of the dozens of clocks all around her, which before she'd not been aware of.

“Um,” says Ngemi, and more deeply, “Um.” Sounds she imagines are quite unconscious. He seems in that moment to be very far away, and she feels alone.

He straightens, removing the loupe. Blinks. “I will need to handle it. I will need to perform an operation.”

“You're entirely certain you're serious about this? You wouldn't simply be winding me up, you two, would you?”

“No, sir,” says Ngemi, “we are serious.”

“Then go ahead.”

Ngemi picks up the calculator, first turning it over. On its round base Cayce glimpses “IV,” stamped into metal. Righting it, his fingers slide over it, moving those studs or flanges in their slots or tracks. He pauses, closes his eyes as if listening, and works the little pepper-mill crank at the top. It makes a slithering sound, if a mechanism can be said to slither.

Ngemi opens his eyes, looks at the numbers that have appeared in small circular windows. He looks from them to Greenaway. “Yes,” he says.

Cayce indicates the Blue Ant card. “We'll take it, Mr. Greenaway.”

A block from L. GREENAWAY, Ngemi carrying the boxed calculator against his stomach as though it contained the ashes of a relative, Baranov is waiting, a half-inhaled cigarette screwed into the corner of his mouth. “That's it?”

“Yes,” says Ngemi.

“Authentic.”

“Of course.”

Baranov takes the box.

“These are interesting as well.” Ngemi unzips his black coat and withdraws a brown envelope. “Documentation of provenance.”

Baranov tucks the box beneath his arm and takes the envelope. He hands Cayce a business card.

The Light of India Curry House. Poole.

She turns it over. Rust-colored fountain pen. Neat italics. stellanar@armaz.ru

The eyes behind the round lenses fix Cayce with contempt, dismissal. “Baltic oil, is it? Thought you might be a bit more interesting than that.”

He flicks his cigarette down and walks on, in the direction they've just come, the Curta prototype beneath his arm and the brown envelope in his hand.

“Do you mind my asking,” Ngemi says, “what he meant?”

“No,” she says, looking from the dung-colored back of Baranov's retreating jacket to the rust-colored e-mail address, “but I don't know.”

“This is what you wanted?”

“It must be,” she says. “I suppose it must be.”