The Sudden Appearance of Hope

Chapter 84

Meeting spies.

I paid a prostitute whose working name was Portia (“Like… Porthos?” I hazarded, and she glared and said, “Like Shakespeare, idiot”) four hundred euros to sit with a mobile phone outside a café on the Riva degli Schiavoni, drinking thick black coffee and huddling in a fur-lined coat. The weather was turning cold; a bare spit of snow fell upon the rooftop and melted again, but for four hundred euros Portia wasn’t going anywhere, and for a further two hundred neither was my water taxi, the driver sat with his feet up on the dashboard, a cigarette drooping from the corner of his mouth, a book about giving up everything to become an alpaca farmer open on his lap.

I sat at the back of the cab as the wake from the passing buses tossed us from side to side, and watched the café through a pair of binoculars. First to arrive were three security goons, two men and a woman. When they were settled, Gauguin approached on foot from the direction of the Arsenal, sensibly dressed in rubber boots and a waxy brown anorak. Luca Evard walked half a step behind him, thick black jacket and dull green jeans, an offence to fashion even at five hundred yards, head down, eyes up, a hint of bald spot becoming a definite declaration on his shining skull, panda rings around his sleepless eyes.

They arrived at the café, consulting their phones, images of my face saved within, and as they looked I dialled Portia, and said, “Those two.”

Portia harrumphed, a busy woman having her time wasted, stood up, marched to Gauguin, and thrust the phone towards him screen first, arm locked and straight, and said, “It’s for you.”

Gauguin thanked her cordially, took the phone. She marched away, all buttock and thigh, haughty chin and Shakespearean pride.

“Who am I speaking to?” Gauguin enquired, English, polite, clipped.

“My name is Why,” I replied, watching him turn, turn, through my binoculars. “I want to talk about Byron14.”

A shuffle on the spot, Luca Evard behind, Luca wants the phone, glances at his own, at my face on it, stares at the crowd, sees no one he knows, looks down. A thing which might be anger; a thing he does not want the world to see in his eye.

I look away too, and it’s obviously shame, pure and true.

“I thought we would—”

“Meet personally? You have a habit of knives and guns, Mr Gauguin.”

“Do I?”

“You’ve watched the CCTV? Tokyo, Oman? Might not have footage of Istanbul, but seriously — knives. I assume you’re recording this?”

“I am now.”

“Good: that will save me having to repeat myself. I think that Byron has hacked Perfection, altering the treatments given to the 106. Louise Dundas was one of several people to have violent reactions to trigger words, probably poetry, probably by Byron or Wordsworth. You know this. What you don’t know is that the process began in Berkeley eleven months ago. Look for a student called Meredith Earwood, look for Agustin Carrazza, ex-MIT professor. On the phone in your hand you’ll find the addresses of facilities used in the San Francisco area by Byron to conduct her research. I haven’t been able to find her from this information, but you have more resources. There are also photographs of her journal, and the codeword to read it. I have a complete inventory of the goods she travelled with, including three separate passports which you may be able to do something with.”

“This is all—” he began, but I ploughed through the banality.

“I need you to stop the 206 event you currently have planned for the Hotel Madellena the week after next. Shut it down. Keep the app going if you like, but cancel all treatments and identify everyone in the last eleven months who may have received them.”

“Why?”

“Because the treatments will make them fucking insane murderers whenever they hear a bit of fucking poetry, are you stupid or just annoying? Because Byron wants to destroy Perfection, and what’s a spy with a grudge gonna do?”

“What do you think she is going to do?” he asked, easy and calm, a tourist enjoying a pleasant chat in a pleasing city.

“You’re launching the 206. The world’s press is going to be watching. If I were Byron, and I had a room full of people who’d received treatments — my treatments — I’d make them tear each other to pieces.”

A little pause, a slow intake of breath.

“She’ll do it,” I added, when his silence stretched. “Louise Dundas was a test and it worked beautifully. Filipa can see it — so can I. You put members of the 206 in front of the cameras, and Byron will turn it into a bloodbath.”

“Do you have any proof?”

“Nope.”

“But you seem very confident.”

“Met her. Lived with her. She’s got a cause. Fuck it, you’d think that having members of the 106 going insane and trying to kill people with their teeth would do it, but no, Rafe’s got his principles, like the fucking idiot that he is. So here we are, Gauguin, you and me, blowing smoke in the fog.”

A long quiet, interrupted by a police boat swooshing by, a little too close, the cops grinning at the cabbie as my boat swayed from side to side.

“Why are you helping us?” Gauguin asked at last.

“Byron is killing people. I gave her the means. That makes it, in its way, my fault. I’m not entirely without… honour.”

“I find that difficult to believe.”

Honour: honesty, fairness, high respect, worth, merit, rank, high esteem, fame, glory. Integrity in one’s beliefs and actions.

Idiom: there is no honour amongst thieves.

I said, “In Istanbul you found you had the diamonds I stole in Dubai. You also had my passports, which you used to destroy most of the life that I had built. I don’t know what fantasy you used to justify having these things, but you took them with you when you left. Can you remember what you did next?”

“I… we went to the airport and—”

“What did you do before going to the airport?”

“I was attacked…”

“And?”

“You attacked me?”

“Yes. To escape the knives, if you’re wondering.”

“How did you…”

“I hid. In the warehouse.”

“But we…” His voice trailed off. “We burned it. We burned the warehouse down.” Cold in his voice, cold on the waters, the growl of a bus as it rumbled by, grey skies overhead wanting to snow. “You were still inside.”

“Yes. You forgot.”

“That fast? In Tokyo, I remember coming too late to prevent your robbery. You’d left traps, explosives, tear gas, but you were gone. But I’ve seen camera footage that shows I came on time.”

“In Tokyo I could have killed you. Do you remember what I said?”

“No. But I remember trying to remember. I wrote a word, over and over again until I remembered the act of writing it. Your name is Hope.”

“And only by what you remember can you judge me.”

“No,” he snapped, sharp, turning where he stood, scanning the street. “By the consequences of your actions,” glancing back at his phone again, trying to force the image of my face into his memory, “we can judge you by those.”

“Can you? Do you have that right?”

I thought I heard a smile; hard to tell through binoculars. “Maybe,” he mused, softer. “You stole Perfection; you are a thief.”

“And now I am making good. Tell Rafe that if I was Byron, I would look at the 206 Club and I would rejoice to know that here, at last, is a chance to paint a picture soaked in blood. Tell him to pull the treatments; tell him to cancel the event.”

“And if he won’t listen?”

“Then you must ask yourself what you consider right, what is worthy.”

Turning, turning, he was still turning, and now he stopped, and looked straight at me, and looked at his phone, and looked again across the water, a tiny figure without the binoculars, no way he could clearly see me, but then, “Are you on the water?”

“Yes.”

“I think I can see you.”

“Yep. Guess so.”

Luca, following Gauguin’s stare, has also found me. He pulls a little sight from his pocket, a ×10 magnification telescope, no longer than his extended middle finger, and for a moment, he looks at me, and I look at him, our faces obscured by optics.

“Did Byron tell you why she is doing this?” murmured Gauguin, watching still.

“Yes. She said that Perfection was obscene.”

“Do you agree?”

“Totally. Perfection is derived by a consensus of society. Perfect — to perfectly fit the mould. Fuck that shit. My code, my honour, my… righteousness. I will help you bring down Byron, and I will find my own solution to my own problems, and maybe Perfection is obscene, the end of the world, and maybe it isn’t, but I’ll decide my own way, for my own reasons.”

“I’m not sure if that’s the sentiment of a hero or a sociopath.”

“Judge me by my actions,” I replied with a shrug, “if that’s all you’ve got going for you.”

“Hotel Madellena…” he began, a note of caution in his voice.

“Shut it down.”

“I may not be able to.”

“Then Byron will come. She will destroy everything.”

“Perhaps I want her to try; perhaps the 206 can serve as bait?”

“She’s smarter than you, don’t try and make this into a stupid bloody trap, Jesus that’d be dumb. Cancel the event. Stop the treatments. I’m helping you now; I don’t have to be co-operative.”

“You’re threatening me?”

“My code, my honour, my deeds, my actions,” I snapped. “Filipa said that Perfection was the end of the world, and she was right. Sociopath or hero, I just don’t care.”

I hung up, and threw my phone into the lagoon before he could call back.