Zero history

55. MR. WILSON

There were few guests for breakfast.

The Italian boy and another waiter were arranging screens, to the west of the narwhale rack. She’d seen these deployed here before, for the heightened privacy of business breakfasts. The screens were made of what she’d assumed to be extremely old tapestries, faded to no particular color, a sort of variegated khaki, but now she noticed that they depicted scenes from Disney’s Snow White. At least they didn’t appear to be pornographic. She was about to take her accustomed seat, beneath the spiral tusks, when the Italian boy noticed her. “You’ll be here, Miss Henry,” indicating the newly screened table.

Then Bigend appeared at the head of the stairs, moving quickly, trench coat over his arm, the aura of his blue suit almost painful.

“It’s Milgrim,” he said, when he reached her. “Bring coffee,” he ordered the Italian boy.

“Certainly, sir.” He was gone.

“Has something happened to Milgrim?”

“Nothing’s happened to Milgrim. Milgrim has happened to me.” He tossed his trench coat over the back of his chair.

“What do you mean?”

“He tried to blind Foley, so-called, outside Bank Station. Last night.”

“Milgrim?”

“Not that he told me about it,” said Bigend, sitting down.

“Tell me what’s happened.” She sat opposite him.

“They came to Voytek’s flat this morning. They took Bobby.”

“Bobby?”

“Chombo.”

The name, once heard, recalling the man. Encountered first in Los Angeles, and then, under very different circumstances, in Vancouver. “He’s here, in London? Who came?”

“Primrose Hill. Or was, until this morning.” Bigend glared at the Italian girl, arriving with the coffee. She poured for Hollis, then for him.

“Coffee will be fine for now, thanks,” Hollis told her, hoping to give her a chance to escape.

“Of course,” said the girl, and ducked smoothly behind the apparently four-hundred-year-old Disney screen.

“He was a mathematician,” Hollis said. “Programmer? I’d forgotten him.” Perhaps partly because Bobby, a markedly unpleasant personality in his own right, had been so deeply embedded in that first experience of Bigend being, in many ways, so bad to know. “I remember that I thought you seemed to be courting him, in Vancouver. As I was leaving.”

“Extraordinary talent. Terrifically narrow,” he said, with evident relish. “Focused, utterly.”

“Asshole,” suggested Hollis.

“Not an issue. I sorted his affairs, brought him here, and set him a task. A challenge truly worthy of his abilities. The first he’d had. I would have provided any sort of lifestyle, really.”

“Remind me to be a bigger asshole.”

“As it was,” Bigend said, “because he’s essentially a parasite, with an emotional need to constantly irritate the host, and because I wanted the project to remain separate from Blue Ant, I had Voytek put him up. At home. Compensating Voytek, of course.”

“Voytek?”

“My alternative IT person. My hole card against Sleight. I can’t be certain that Sleight didn’t discover that, but he evidently did, at some point, discover where I was keeping Chombo while he worked on the project.”

“What’s the project?”

“A secret,” said Bigend, with a slight lift of his eyebrows.

“But who took Bobby?”

“Three men. American. They told Voytek that they’d come back for him, and his wife and child, if he tried to alert anyone prior to seven this morning.”

“They threatened his wife and child?”

“Voytek understands that sort of thing. Eastern European. Took them instantly at their word. Phoned me at seven twenty. I immediately phoned you. I may need you to help me with Milgrim.”

“Who were they?”

“Foley, by the description. Unable to stop muttering about Milgrim. The other two, I’d assume, were Gracie, Milgrim’s arms dealer, and someone else. Gracie clearly in charge, calm, businesslike. The third man had a mullet, Voytek said. I had to Google it. Foley apparently has seen the inside of an emergency ward twice this week, and holds Milgrim personally responsible. Gracie, however, assumes that Milgrim may have been following orders. Mine.”

“He told Voytek that?”

“He told me.”

“When?”

“On the way over here. Sleight having given him, obviously, my private mobile number.”

“He sounded angry?”

“He sounded,” Bigend said, “like voice-distortion software. Impossible to read affect. He told me what he requires in exchange for Bobby’s safe return, and why.”

“How much?”

“Milgrim.”

“How much does he want?”

“He wants Milgrim. Nothing else.”

“There you are,” said Garreth, from the opening between the two frames. “Might have left a note.”

Bigend looked up at Garreth with a peculiar childlike openness. Hollis had only seen this expression a few times before, and dreaded it. “This is Garreth,” she said.

“Wilson,” said Garreth, which wasn’t true.

“I take it, Mr. Wilson, that you are Hollis’s friend? The one recently injured in an automobile accident?”

“Not so recent,” said Garreth.

“I see you’re joining us,” Bigend said. Then, to the Italian boy, who’d anxiously appeared: “Move the screen for Mr. Wilson. Arrange a chair for him.”

“Very kind,” said Garreth.

“Not at all.”

“Should you even be walking?” asked Hollis, starting to rise.

As the boy slid the screen aside, Garreth stepped past it, heavily, supporting himself on the quadrupedal cane. “I took the invalid chair, then the service elevator.” He put his free hand on her shoulder, squeezed. “No need to get up.”

When the boy had helped him into the high-backed armchair brought from an adjacent table, he smiled at Bigend.

“This is Hubertus Bigend,” said Hollis.

“A pleasure, Mr. Big End.” They shook hands across the table.

“Call me Hubertus. A cup for Mr. Wilson,” he said to the Italian boy.

“Garreth.”

“Were you injured here in London, Garreth?”

“Dubai.”

“I see.”

“You’ll pardon me,” said Garreth, “but I couldn’t help overhearing your conversation.”

Bigend’s eyebrows rose a fraction. “How much of it?”

“The bulk,” said Garreth. “Are you considering giving them this Milgrim, then?”

Bigend looked from Garreth to Hollis, then back. “I’ve no way of knowing how much else you may know of my affairs, but I’ve invested a great deal in Milgrim’s health and welfare. This comes at a very difficult time for me, as I’m unable to trust my own security staff. There’s an internal struggle in the firm, and I’m loath to go to any of the many corporate security firms here. The equivalent of hiring the lousy to rid you of lice, in my experience. Milgrim, through his unfortunate actions, has endangered a project of mine, one of the utmost importance to me.”

“You are,” said Hollis, “you are! You’re going to give them Milgrim!”

“I certainly am,” said Bigend, “unless someone has a better suggestion. And will have done, by this time tomorrow.”

“Stall,” said Garreth.

“Stall?”

“I can probably put something together, but I’ll need closer to forty-eight hours.”

“There may be risk for me, in doing that,” said Bigend.

“Not as much risk as there is in my calling the police,” said Hollis. “And the Times and the Guardian. There’s that man at the Guardian who particularly has it in for you, isn’t there?”

Bigend stared at her.

“Tell them you’ve lost him,” said Garreth, “but that you’ll get him back. I’ll help you with messaging.”

“What are you, Mr. Wilson?”

“A hungry man. With a gammy leg.”

“I recommend the full English.”