Zero history

12. COMPLIANCE TOOL

Bigend’s office, when Milgrim was finally ushered in, was windowless and surprisingly small. Perhaps it wasn’t that specifically his office, Milgrim thought. It didn’t look like an office anyone actually worked in.

The Swedish boy who’d brought Milgrim in put a gray folder on the teak desk and left silently. There was nothing else on the desk except a shotgun, one that appeared to have been made from solidified Pepto-Bismol.

“What’s that?” Milgrim asked.

“The maquette for one of the early takes on a collaboration between Taser and Mossberg, the shotgun manufacturer.” Bigend was wearing disposable plastic gloves, the kind that came on a roll, like cheap sandwich bags. “A compliance tool.”

“Compliance tool?”

“That’s what they call it,” said Bigend, picking the thing up with one hand and turning it, so that Milgrim could see it from various angles. It looked weightless. Hollow, some sort of resin. “I have it because I’m trying to decide whether a collaboration like this is the equivalent of Roberto Cavalli designing a trench coat for H amp;M.”

“I’ve been made,” said Milgrim.

“Made?” Bigend looked up.

“A cop took my picture this morning.”

“A cop? What kind?”

“A Chinese-American missionary-looking one. Her sweatshirt was embroidered with the South Carolina state flag.”

“Sit down,” said Bigend.

Milgrim sat, his Hackett shopping bag on his lap.

“How do you know she was a cop?” Bigend removed the glove-baggies, crumpled them.

“I just did. Do. Not necessarily in the sense of a law enforcement officer, but I wouldn’t put it past her.”

“You’ve been shopping,” said Bigend, looked at the Hackett bag. “What did you buy?”

“Pants,” said Milgrim, “a shirt.”

“Ralph Lauren shops at Hackett, I’m told,” said Bigend. “That’s an extremely complex piece of information, conceptually. Whether it’s true or not.” He smiled. “Do you like to shop there?”

“I don’t understand it,” Milgrim said, “but I like their pants. Some of their plainer shirts.”

“What don’t you understand?”

“The English football thing.”

“How so?”

“Are they serious about that, Hackett?”

“Exactly what I value in you. You go effortlessly to the core.”

“But are they?”

“Some would maintain that a double negative amounts to a positive. Where did this person take your picture?”

“Coffee place near the hotel. Seven Dials.”

“And you have informed-?”

“You.”

“Don’t mention this to anyone else. Except Pamela. I’ll inform her.”

“Not Oliver?”

“No,” said Bigend, “definitely not Oliver. Have you spoken with him today?”

“He had me leave my phone in the room, charging and turned on. He said that he needed to reprogram it. I haven’t gone back there yet.”

Bigend stared at the pink shotgun.

“Why is it that pink?” asked Milgrim.

“Output from a 3-D printer. I don’t know why they use pink. Seems to be the default shade. Those phones are an Oliver project. When you use one, you aren’t to consider it secure, whether for voice, text, or e-mail. But since this is England, really, you aren’t to consider any phone secure. Understood?”

“You don’t trust Oliver?”

“I don’t,” said Bigend. “What I want you to do, now, is to go about your business, as though you hadn’t noticed being photographed. Simply that.”

“What is my business?” asked Milgrim.

“Did you like Hollis Henry?”

“She seemed… familiar?”

“She was a singer. In a band. The Curfew.”

Milgrim remembered a large silvery black-and-white photograph. A poster. A younger Hollis Henry with her knee up, her foot on something. A tweed miniskirt, that seemed mostly to have unraveled, drawn taut. Where had he seen that?

“You’ll be working with her,” said Bigend. “A different project.”

“Translating?”

“I doubt it. This one is apparel-based as well.”

“Back in Vancouver,” Milgrim began, then stopped.

“Yes?”

“I found a woman’s purse. There was quite a lot of money in it. A phone. A wallet with cards. Keys. I put the purse and the wallet and the cards and the keys in a mailbox. I kept the money and the phone. You started phoning. I didn’t know you. We started talking.”

“Yes,” said Bigend.

“That’s why I’m here today, isn’t it?

“It is,” said Bigend.

“Whose phone was that?”

“Do you remember that there was something else in that purse? A black plastic unit, roughly twice the size of the phone?”

Milgrim did now. He nodded.

“That was a scrambler. It belonged to me. The person whose purse you found was an employee of mine. I wanted to know who had her phone. That was why I tried the number.”

“Why did you keep phoning back?”

“Because I became curious about you. And because you kept answering. Because we began to have a conversation that led eventually to our meeting, and, as you say, to your being here today.”

“Did it cost more to have me here today than…” Milgrim thought about it. “More than the Toyota Hilux?” He felt as though his therapist were watching him.

Bigend’s head tilted slightly. “I’m not certain, but it probably did. Why?”

“That’s my question,” said Milgrim. “Why?”

“Because I knew about the clinic in Basel. It’s highly controversial, very expensive. I was curious as to whether or not it would work, with you.”

“Why?” asked Milgrim.

“Because,” Bigend said, “I’m a curious person, and can afford to satisfy my curiosity. The doctors who examined you in Vancouver were not optimistic, to put it mildly. I like a challenge. And even in the condition I found you in, in Vancouver, you were an exceptional translator. Later”-and Bigend smiled-“it became evident that you have an interesting eye for a number of things.”

“I’d be dead now, wouldn’t I?”

“My understanding is that you probably would be, if you’d been withdrawn from the drug too quickly,” Bigend said.

“Then what do I owe you?”

Bigend reached for the shotgun, as though he were about to tap it with his finger, then caught himself. “Not your life,” he said. “That’s a by-product. Of my curiosity.”

“All that money?”

“The cost of my curiosity.”

Milgrim’s eyes stung.

“This is not a situation in which you’re required to thank me,” Bigend said. “I hope you understand that.”

Milgrim swallowed. “Yes,” he said.

“I do want you to work with Hollis on this other project,” Bigend said. “Then we’ll see.”

“See what?”

“What we see,” said Bigend, reaching across the shotgun for the gray folder. “Go back to the hotel. We’ll phone you.”

Milgrim stood, lowering the Hackett bag, which had been covering the startled-looking digital portrait of himself he wore around his neck, on its lanyard of chartreuse nylon.

“Why are you wearing that?”

“It’s required,” said Milgrim. “I don’t work here.”

“Remind me to fix that,” said Bigend, opening the gray folder, which contained a thick sheaf of what appeared to be clippings from Japanese magazines.

Milgrim, who was already closing the door behind him, said nothing.