Zero history

He reminded himself to ask Bigend.

›››

“You don’t know where you’re going?” Hollis asked, from the cab, as he lifted her bag in.

“No,” said Milgrim, “I’m supposed to wait here.”

“You’ve got my number,” she said. “And thank you. I wouldn’t have wanted to do that alone.”

“Thank you,” said Milgrim. “And for the laptop. I’m still not-”

“Never mind,” she said. “It’s yours. Be careful.” She smiled and pulled the door shut.

He watched the cab pull away, another taking its place. He stepped back, gesturing for the couple behind him to go ahead. “I’m meeting someone,” he said, to no one in particular, glancing around. As Fiona’s horn pipped, just beyond the cab’s black fender. She gestured, urgently, the yellow helmet jerking, astride a large, dirty, gray bike.

She took his bag as he reached her, and began securing it to the gas tank with elastic cords, shoving a black helmet into his hands. The visor of her helmet was up. “Put that on. I’m not supposed to be in here. Get on behind and hold on.” She flipped the visor down.

He fumbled the helmet over his head. It smelled of something. Hairspray? The transparent visor was scratched and thumb-printed, greasy. He didn’t know how to fasten the under-chin thing. Padding rested uncomfortably on the crown of his head.

“Put your arms around me, lean forward, hold on!”

Milgrim did.

She sounded her horn again as they rolled forward, Milgrim unsure where to put his feet. He shifted, trying to look down. Heard her yell something. Found muddy pegs for passenger feet. Saw a rapidly strolling pigeon framed for an instant in the narrow, smudged field the jiggling helmet allowed his vision.

Fiona felt like a very determined child, encased in layers of ballistic nylon and an indeterminate number of armored plates. Milgrim locked his fingers together, instinctively, and leaned into her back. Hard automotive protrusions, some chromed, were zipping past his knees, either side.

He had no idea where they’d emerged from the station, what street they were on, or which direction they might be going. The hairspray smell was giving him a headache. When she stopped for a light, he kept his feet on the pegs, dubious about finding them again.

Pentonville Road, on a sign, though he didn’t know whether they were on it or near it. Midmorning traffic, though he’d never seen it from a motorcycle. His jacket, unbuttoned, flapped energetically in the wind, making him glad of the Faraday pouch. His money, what was left of it, was in his right front pocket, the memory card with the photographs of Foley tucked down into his right sock.

More signs, blurry through the plastic: King’s Cross Road, Farringdon Road. He thought the hairspray fumes were making his eyes sting now, but no way to rub them. He blinked repeatedly.

Eventually, a bridge, low railings, red and white paint. Blackfriars, he guessed, remembering the colors. Yes, there were the tops of the very formal iron columns that had once supported another bridge, beside it, their red paint slightly faded. He’d come this way once with Sleight, to meet Bigend in an archaic diner, for one of those big greasy breakfasts. He’d asked Sleight about the columns. Sleight hadn’t been interested, but Bigend had told him about the railway bridge that had stood beside Blackfriars. When Bigend talked about London, it felt to Milgrim that he was describing some intricate antique toy he’d bought at auction.

Leaving the bridge, she turned, deftly negotiating smaller streets. Then she slowed, turned again, and they rode up on oil-stained concrete, into a workyard full of motorcycles, big ugly ones, their fairings patched with tape. Almost stopping, she dropped her booted feet to the ground and supported the motorcycle with her legs, walking with it as she crept it forward, between the others, past a man in a filthy one-piece orange suit and a backward baseball cap, a gleaming socket wrench in his hand. Through a wide opening and into an interior littered with tools, disassembled cycles and their engines, white foam cups, crumpled food wrappers.

She cut the engine, put down the kickstand, and swatted at Milgrim’s hands, which he quickly withdrew. The sudden silence was disorienting. He struggled off, knees stiff, and removed the helmet. “Where are we?” He looked up at the high, soot-blackened ceiling, hung with shattered fiberglass fairings.

Now she dismounted, swinging one multibuckled boot over the seat. “Suthuk,” she said, after removing the scarred yellow helmet.

“What?”

“South-wark. South of the river. Suth-uk.” She set the helmet on a cluttered tool cart, and began to undo the elastic net that held Milgrim’s bag atop her gas tank.

“What is this place?”

“A roll-in. Vinegar and brown paper. Quick and dirty repairs. No appointment necessary. For couriers.”

Milgrim raised the helmet, sniffed at its interior, put it on the motorcycle where he’d sat. She handed him his bag.

After various rippings of Velcro, the zipper down the front of her jacket made its own loud noise. “You hadn’t ridden a motorcycle before?”

“A scooter, once.”

“There’s a center-of-gravity concept you’re missing. You need passenger lessons.”

“Sorry,” said Milgrim, and he was.

“Not a problem.” Her hair was a pale brown. He hadn’t been able to tell in Paris, in the darkened hotel lobby. The helmet had made it stick up in back. He wanted to smooth it down.

The man in the once-orange boiler suit came to the entrance. “Himself is on the bridge,” he said to Fiona. He sounded Irish, but looked to Milgrim to be of some other, darker ethnicity, his face battered and immobile. He took a cigarette from behind his ear and lit it, using a small transparent lighter. Put the lighter in a side pocket and absently wiped his hands on the stained orange fabric. “You could wait in the room,” he said, and smiled at Fiona, “for all that’s good in it.” His two front teeth were framed in gold, and protruded at an unusual angle, like the roof of a tiny porch. He drew on his cigarette.

“Is there tea, Benny?”

“I’ll send the boy,” the man said.

“Carburetors aren’t right,” she said, looking at her bike.

“I told you not to go with the Kawasaki, didn’t I?” said Benny, pinching the cigarette for a final fierce drag, then letting it drop, to crush it with a battered, grease-soaked toe, through which dull steel showed. “Carbs wear out. Dear to replace. Carbs on the GT550’ve been very good to me.”

“Have a look at it for me?”

Benny smirked. “Not like I’ve real couriers needing repairs. Family men, working for a guarantee.”

“Or home in bed, radio on, skiving,” said Fiona, taking off her jacket. She looked suddenly smaller, in a gray turtleneck jersey. “More your usual description.”

“I’ll have Saad look into it,” Benny said, turning and walking out.

“Is Benny Irish?”

“Dublin,” she said, “father’s Tunisian.”

“And you work for Hubertus?”

“As do you,” she said, slinging the heavy jacket over her shoulder. “This way.”

He followed her, avoiding oil-soaked rags and white foam cups, some half filled with what he assumed had once been tea, past a sort of giant red toolbox on wheels, to a battered door. She fished a small ring of keys from her trousers, which looked as heavy, and nearly as well armored, as her jacket.

“Did you want to?” he asked as she unlocked the door.

“Want to what?”

“Work for Hubertus. I didn’t. Didn’t plan to, I mean. It was his idea.”

“Now that you mention it,” she said, over her shoulder, “it was his idea.”

Milgrim stepped through after her, into a tidy white space perhaps fifteen feet on a side. The walls were recently painted brick, the concrete floor a glossier white, nearly as clean. A small square table and four chairs, matte steel tubing and bent, unpainted plywood, expensively simple. An enormous light glowed softly, something on a clinical-looking metallic pedestal, a sort of white parabolic umbrella, angled up. It looked to Milgrim like a very small art gallery between shows. “What’s this?” he asked, looking from one blank wall to another.

“One of his Vegas cubes,” she said. “Haven’t you seen one before?” She went to the light and did something, dialing the illumination up.

“No.”

“He doesn’t understand gambling,” she said, “the ordinary kind, but he loves Las Vegas casinos. The sort of thought that goes into them. How they enforce a temporal isolation. No clocks, no windows, artificial light. He likes to think in environments like that. Like this. No interruptions. And he likes them to be secret.”

“He likes secrets,” Milgrim agreed, putting his bag on the table.

A boy with an almost-shaven head came in, a tall white foam cup in either grimy hand, and placed them on the table. “Thanks,” said Fiona. He left without a word. Fiona picked up one of the cups, sipped through the hole in the white plastic lid. “Builder’s tea,” she said.

Milgrim tried his. Shuddered. Sweet, stewed.

“I’m not his daughter,” Fiona said.

Milgrim blinked. “Whose?”

“Bigend’s. In spite of rumors to the contrary. Not the case.” She sipped her tea.

“I wouldn’t have thought that.”

“My mother was his girlfriend. That’s where the story started. I was already around, so it actually doesn’t make any sense. Though I did wind up here, working for him.” She gave Milgrim a look he couldn’t read. “Just to get that straight.”

Milgrim sucked down some tea, mainly to cover his inability to think of anything to say. It was very hot. “Did he train you,” he asked, “to ride motorcycles?”

“No,” she said, “I was already a courier. That’s where I know Benny from. I could walk out on Bigend today, have a job in an hour. It’s like that, being a courier. If you want the day off, you quit. But it was driving my mother crazy. Worried about the danger.”

“Is it dangerous?”

“Average career’s all of two years. So she talked to Bigend. Wanted him to take me on at Blue Ant. Do something there. Instead, he decided to have his own courier.”

“That’s less dangerous?”

“Not really, but I tell her it is. She doesn’t know the extent of the job. She’s busy.”

“Good morning,” said Bigend, behind them.

Milgrim turned. Bigend was wearing his blue suit, over a black knit shirt, no tie.

“Do you like them?” Bigend asked Milgrim.

“Like what?”

“Our Festos,” said Bigend, raising his index finger to point straight up.

Milgrim looked up. The ceiling here, as white as the walls, was a good ten ten feet higher than it was in the adjacent space. Against it floated confusing shapes, silver, black. “Is that the penguin? From Paris?”

“It’s like the one in Paris,” she said.

“What’s the other?”

“Manta. Ray,” said Bigend. “Our first custom order. They’re ordinarily in the silver Mylar.”

“What do you do with them?” Though he already knew.

“Surveillance platforms,” Bigend said. He turned to Fiona. “How was it, in Paris?”

“Good,” she said, “except that he saw it. But that’s the silver, and daytime operation.” She shrugged.

“I thought I was hallucinating,” Milgrim said.

“Yes,” Bigend said, “people do. In Crouch End, though, when we first tried the penguin at night, we triggered a mini-wave of UFO reports. The Times suggested people were actually seeing Venus. Have a seat.” He drew out one of the chairs.

Milgrim sat. Held the tall cup of hot tea in his hands, its warmth comforting.

When Bigend and Fiona were seated as well, Bigend said, “Fiona’s told me what you told her last night. You said that you photographed the man who was following you, or perhaps following Hollis. Do you have the photographs?”

“Yes,” said Milgrim, bending to fish in his sock top. “But he was following me. Sleight was telling him where I was.” He put the camera card on the table, opened his bag, brought out the Air, found the card reader he’d bought from the Persian man in the camera shop, and put them together.

“But Sleight may simply have assumed you’d be with Hollis,” Bigend said as the first of the photographs of Foley came up.

“Foley,” Milgrim said.

“Why do you call him that?”

“Because he was wearing foliage green pants. That was what I first noticed about him.”

“Have you seen him?” Bigend asked Fiona.

“Yes,” Fiona said. “He was in and out of the old-clothes fair. Busy. I could see he was doing something. Or wanting to.”

“Was he alone?”

“He seemed to be. But talking to himself. You know: not to himself. An earpiece.”

“Sleight,” said Milgrim.

“Yes,” agreed Bigend. “We’ll call him Foley, then. We have no idea what he goes by at the moment. These people have access to quite a bit of documentation.”

“What people?” asked Milgrim.

“Foley,” said Bigend, “knows the man whose trousers you documented for us in South Carolina.”

“Is Foley… a spy?” asked Milgrim.

“Only to the extent that he’s a clothing designer, or wants to be,” said Bigend. “Though he’s probably a fantasist as well. When you slipped your phone into that Russian woman’s pram, what was your intention?”

“I knew that Sleight was tracking it, telling Foley where I was. Foley would follow the Russians instead. Out of town. They mentioned a suburb.”

Bigend nodded. “Just because a man wants to be a clothing designer,” Bigend said, “and is a fantasist, doesn’t mean that he isn’t dangerous. If you should see Mr. Foley again, you’ll want to stay well away from him.”

Milgrim nodded.

“I’ll need to know, immediately, if that happens.”

“What about Sleight?”

“Sleight,” said Bigend, “is behaving as though absolutely nothing has happened. He’s still very much at the center of things, as far as Blue Ant goes.”

“I thought he was in Toronto.”

“He’s in a post-geographical position,” said Bigend. “Where did you get this laptop?”

“Hollis gave it to me.”

“Do you know where she got it?”

“She said she bought it, to write on.”

“We’ll have Voytek give it a once-over.”

“Who?”

“He predates Sleight. Someone I’ve kept out of the loop, in case something like this should happen. My IT backup, you might say. Have you had breakfast?”

“A croissant. In Paris.”

“Fancy the full English? Fiona?”

“Could do. Saad’s looking at my carbs.”

They looked at Milgrim. He nodded. Then looked up at the silver penguin and the black ray, floating against the bright white ceiling. He tried to imagine the black ray above a Left Bank intersection. “What’s it like, flying those?”

“It’s like being one,” said Fiona, “when you get into it. The iPhone app’s made a huge difference. The one in Paris hasn’t had the upgrade yet.”