Zero history

56. ALWAYS IS GENIUS

Milgrim, on his side in the sleeping bag, on the medicinal-looking white foam, was caught in some frustrating loop of semi-sleep, slow and circular, in which exhaustion swung him slowly out, toward where sleep should surely have been, then overshot the mark somehow, bumping him over into a state of random anxiety that couldn’t quite qualify as wakefulness, then back out again, convinced of sleep’s promise…

This was, his therapist had told him, on hearing it described, an aftereffect of stress-excessive fear, excessive excitement-and he was there. That it was the sort of thing that a normal person could escape with the application of a single tablet of Ativan added a certain irony. But Milgrim’s recovery, he’d been taught, was dependent on strict abstinence from the substance of choice. Which was not the substance of choice, his therapist maintained, but the substance of need. And Milgrim knew that he’d never been content with a single tablet of anything. It was the very first single tablet, he told himself, rehearsing these teachings like a rosary, as he swung back out toward the false promise of sleep, that he was required not to ingest. The others were no problem, because, if he successfully avoided the first, there were no others. Except for that first one, which, in potential at least, was always there. Bump. He hit the random anxiety, saw those few sparks thrown off Foley’s car’s fenders as Aldous drove it back, through that narrow space.

He tried to recall what he knew about cars, to explain those sparks. They were mostly plastic now, cars, with bits of metal inside. The surface of the body had been ground down, he supposed, to a little metal, producing sparks, and then perhaps the metal had been abraded away… I know that, stupid, his mind told him.

He thought he heard something. Then knew he did. His eyes sprang open in the small cave of the MontBell, the office faintly illuminated by the dance of abstract shapes on the screen of the Air.

“Shombo, always,” he heard Voytek say loudly, the accent unmistakable, growing closer, resentful, “is genius. Shombo is genius coder. Shombo, I will tell you: Shombo codes like old people fuck.”

“Milgrim,” Fiona called, “hullo, where are you?”

The current crisis, whatever underlay it, didn’t seem to have affected Bigend’s appetite. They were all having the full English. Bigend was working steadily through his, Garreth doing most of the talking.

“This is a prisoner exchange,” Garreth said. “One hostage for another. Your man assumes, correctly, that you’re unlikely to call the police.” Bigend looked pointedly at Hollis. “We can assume that he hasn’t much of a network here,” Garreth continued, “else he wouldn’t have sent an idiot after Milgrim. Neither, at this point, do you, given the situation in your firm, and we can assume that he knows that, via your mole.”

“Can one have been a mole on one’s own behalf?” asked Bigend. “I would assume that everyone is that, to whatever extent.”

Garreth ignored this. “Your mole will know that you aren’t much inclined to hire outside security, for the reasons you stated. Likewise your man will know this. Since your man would never have signed off on such a patently ridiculous abduction plan, we can assume that Foley was the planner. Therefore, your man was either not present during the attempt or somehow out of the loop. My guess is that he was already on his way here, likely out of a sense that Foley was cocking up. Foley possibly acted when he did in order to get at Milgrim before the boss arrived.”

Hollis had never heard Garreth unpack a specific situation this way, though something in his tone now reminded her of his explanations of asymmetric warfare, a topic in which he had a keen and abiding interest. She remembered him telling her how terrorism was almost exclusively about branding, but only slightly less so about the psychology of lotteries, and how this had made her think of Bigend.

“So,” Garreth said, “it’s likely we’re dealing with an improvisational plan on their part. Your man has opted for a prisoner exchange. Those of course are eminently gameable. Though your man knows that, certainly, and is familiar with all applicable tactics, including the one I imagine I’d be most likely to employ.”

“Which is?”

“Your man Milgrim. Is he obese? Extremely tall? Memorable-looking?”

“Forgettable,” said Bigend. “About ten stone.”

“Good.” Garreth was buttering a slice of toast. “There’s a surprising amount of mutual trust necessary in any prisoner exchange. Why it’s gameable.”

“You’re not giving them Milgrim,” Hollis said.

“I need to see more to hang success on, Mr. Wilson, if you’ll pardon my saying so,” said Bigend, forking beans onto a quarter-slice of toast.

“God’s in the details, the architects said. But you have rather a bigger problem, here. Contextually.”

“You refer,” Bigend said, “to Hollis’s unseemly readiness to shop me to the Guardian?”

“Gracie,” Garreth said. “I imagine he’s doing this because he feels you’ve been fucking with him, successfully. He didn’t ask you for money?”

“No.”

“Doesn’t your mole want money?”

“I’m sure he does,” Bigend said, “but I would imagine he might be in over his head with these people. I imagine he was looking for a context in which to profitably betray me, but then they found him. He’s likely afraid of them, and likely with good reason.”

“If you were to turn Milgrim over to them,” said Garreth, “and get your Bobby back intact, they’d be back. You’re that wealthy. This bent officer may not yet be thinking in those terms, but your mole already is.”

Bigend looked uncharacteristically pensive.

“But if you do it the way I’d do it,” said Garreth, “you really will have fucked with them, in a very formal and personal way. They’ll come after you.”

“Then why would you suggest it?”

“Because,” said Hollis, “giving them Milgrim is not an option.”

“The thing is,” said Garreth, “you need to simultaneously fuck with them and neutralize them, in some seriously ongoing way.”

Bigend leaned slightly forward. “And how would you do that?”

“I’m not prepared to tell you,” Garreth said, “at the moment.”

“You aren’t proposing violence?”

“Not in the way I imagine you mean, no.”

“I don’t see how you could possibly mount anything very sophisticated in such a short period of time.”

“It would have to be something off the shelf.”

“Off the shelf?”

But Garreth had gone back to his breakfast.

“And how long have you known Mr. Wilson, Hollis?” his tone like some Jane Austen chaperone’s.

“We met in Vancouver.”

“Really? You had time to socialize?”

“We met one another toward the end of my stay.”

“And you know him to be someone capable, in the ways he’s proposing to be capable?’

“I do,” said Hollis, “although I’m under an agreement with him to say no more than that.”

“People who claim capabilities of that sort are most often compulsive liars. Though the most peculiar thing about that, in my experience, is that while most bars in America have alcoholics who claim to have been Navy SEALs, there are sometimes former Navy SEALs, in those same bars, who are alcoholics.”

“Garreth’s not a Navy SEAL, Hubertus. I don’t know what I’d say he is. He’s like you, that way. A one-off. If he tells you he thinks he can get Bobby back, and neutralize this threat for you, then…”

“Yes?”

“Then he thinks he can.”

“And what would you propose I do, then,” Bigend said to Garreth, “if I were to accept your help?”

“I’d need an idea of whatever tactical resources you may have, in London, if any, that remain uncompromised. I’d need an open operational budget. I’ll have to hire some specialists. Expenses.”

“And how much do you want yourself, Mr. Wilson?”

“I don’t,” said Garreth. “Not money. If I can do this to my own satisfaction, and I imagine that that would be to yours as well, you’ll let Hollis go. Release her from whatever it is she’s doing for you, pay her what she feels she’s owed, and agree to leave her be. And if you can’t agree to that, I advise you to start looking for help elsewhere.”

Bigend, eyebrows raised, looked from Garreth to Hollis. “And you’re agreeable to that?”

“It’s an entirely new proposition to me.” She poured herself some coffee, buying time to think. “Actually,” she said, “I would require an additional condition.”

They both stared at her.

“The Hounds designer,” she said to Bigend. “You won’t have her. You’ll leave her absolutely alone. Quit looking. Call everyone off, permanently.”

Bigend pursed his lips.

“And,” said Hollis, “you’ll find Meredith’s shoes. And give them to her.”

A silence followed, Bigend looking at his plate, the corners of his mouth turned down. “Well,” he said at last, looking up at them, “none of this would have been the least attractive before seven twenty this morning, but here we are, aren’t we?”