Spook Country

  “Up the street here,” Skink said, fiddling with the ring through the outer limit of his right eyebrow.

  Milgrim always found these worrying. They seemed more prone to infection than things put through other, more central, more traditional parts of the face. Milgrim was a believer in evolution, and knew that evolution strongly favors bilateral symmetry. Asymmetrical individuals tended to be less competitive, in most species. Though he had no intention of mentioning it to Skink.

  “In here,” said Skink, portentously, stepping sideways into an entranceway. He opened an aluminum-framed door whose original glass had been replaced with plywood.

  “It’s dark,” protested Milgrim, as Skink grabbed his shoulders, hauling him into a dense, ammoniac reek of urine. Skink shoved him, hard, and he fell back against what were all too obviously stairs, their painful impact complicated by a loud confusion of toppling bottles. “Chill,” Milgrim quickly advised an abrupt darkness, Skink having shut the door behind him. “Money’s yours. Here.”

  Then Brown was through the door, in a brief burst of sunlight. Milgrim felt, rather than saw, Brown lift Skink bodily off his feet and drive him headfirst into the stairs, between Milgrim’s legs.

  A few more empties toppled from the stairs.

  An uncomfortably bright beam, recalled from the IF’s room off Lafayette, darted clinically across the crumpled Skink. Brown bent, ran one hand over Skink’s lower back, then, with a grunt of effort, used both hands to flip him over. Milgrim saw Brown’s spotlit hand unzipping the fly of Skink’s saggy pants. “Glock,” said Brown, thickly, plucking, like some gross-out conjuring trick, a large pistol from Skink’s open pants.

  Then they were back on the street, the sunlight surreal now. Getting back into the Taurus.

  “Glock,” Brown said again, pleased.

  Milgrim remembered then, and to his relief, that this was a make of gun.

  65. EAST VAN HALEN

  She opened her PowerBook on the counter of Bigend’s crypto-kitchen, taking wifi for granted. None of her trusted networks were available, she was advised, but did she want to join BAntVanc1?

  The phrase “trusted networks” briefly made her feel like crying. She wasn’t feeling as though she had any.

  Bigend, she saw, pulling herself together, hadn’t activated his WEP. No password required. But then he had Ollie, she supposed, who could eavesdrop on hundreds of other people’s wifi at once, so maybe it all balanced out.

  She joined BAntVanc1 and checked her e-mail. Nothing. No spam, even.

  Her phone rang, in her purse. It was still attached to the scrambler. How would that work if it were anyone other than Bigend? She answered. “Hello?”

  “Just checking,” said Bigend, and suddenly she didn’t want to tell him about Sarah.

  A reaction to her sudden sense of his ubiquity, if not yet actual then potential. Once he was established in your life, he’d be there, in some way no ordinary person, no ordinary boss, even, could be. Once she accepted him, past a certain point, there was always going to be the possibility of him ringing her up, to say “Just checking,” before she could even ask who was calling. Did she want that? Could she afford not to?

  “Nothing yet,” she said, wondering if Ollie might not already have somehow transmitted their lunch conversation to Los Angeles. “I’m nosing around Odile’s art circles here. She has a lot of them, though, and it can’t be done too obviously. No telling who might let him know I’m here looking.”

  “I think he’s there,” said Bigend, “and I think you and Odile are currently our best chance of finding him.”

  She nodded silently. “This is a big country,” she said. “Why wouldn’t he head somewhere he’d be less likely to be found?”

  “Vancouver is a port,” said Bigend. “A foreign container port. Our pirates’ chest. He’s there to monitor the off-loading, though not for the shippers.” There was an utterly silent digitized pause. “I want to set you up on a darknet we’re having built for us.”

  “What’s that?”

  “In effect, a private Internet. Invisible to nonmembers. Scrambled phones, at this point, just serve as strings around our fingers to remind us of a fundamental lack of privacy. Ollie’s working on it.”

  “Someone’s here,” she said. “Have to run.” She hung up.

  Leaving her PowerBook open on the counter, its sticker-encrusted lid the most colorful thing in sight, aside from the view, she went upstairs, undressed, and had a long shower. Odile had opted for a post-lunch nap.

  She dried her hair and dressed, got back into jeans, sneakers. Finding the Blue Ant figurine in her clothes, she looked around for a perch for it. Selected a head-high ledge of talcum-smooth concrete and stood the ant on it, icon-style. It made the ledge look slightly ridiculous. Perfect.

  She chanced on her passport, as she was folding things, and tossed it into the Barneys bag.

  She put on a dark cotton jacket, took her purse, and went down to the crypto-kitchen, where she shut her PowerBook and wrote Odile a note on the back of a Visa charge slip, which she left on the counter: “Back later. Hollis.”

  She found the Phaeton where she’d left it, followed Ollie’s advice to remind herself how wide it was, did some work with the map from the glove compartment, avoided activating the GPS screen (it spoke, if you let it), and drove out into late afternoon sunlight, feeling reasonably confident she could find Bobby’s place, and not confident at all that she’d know what to do when she did.

  He didn’t live that far from here, to judge by the map.

  Rush hour. After a few moves designed to get her headed east, crosstown, she got with the flow, such as it was. Edging more or less steadily eastward, amid what she assumed to be commuters headed for eastern satellites, she saw that Bobby’s place probably wasn’t all that close, at least not psychogeographically. Bigend’s strata-title, atop one tower in a variegated hedge of greenglass, along what her map said was False Creek, was high-end twenty-first-century. Here, she was driving into what remained of a light-industrial zone. The way they’d built on railway land, when land had been surplus. Not unlike the feel around Bobby’s rental on Romaine, though studded now, here and there, with large pieces of brand-new metropolitan infrastructure, most of these apparently still under construction.

  When she finally turned left, onto a wide, north-south street called Clark, she was past the fancy infra-bits and into a more low-down, more careworn architecture, a lot of it clapboard. Nonfranchise auto-repair shops. Small manufacturers of restaurant furniture. Chrome chairs recovered. At what she guessed was the foot of this wide street, suspended against distant mountains, some truly kick-ass Soviet Constructivist project appeared to have been erected, perhaps in belated honor of a designer who’d earned himself a one-way to the Gulag. Vast crazy arms of orange-painted steel, canted in every direction, at every angle.

  What the hell was it, though?

  Bigend’s port, she guessed. And Bobby so close by.

  She turned right when she spotted Bobby’s street.

  She’d lied to Bigend, she admitted to herself now, and it was bothering her. She’d told him she’d work with him as long he didn’t hold back information, or lie to her, and now she’d done exactly that, to him. She wasn’t comfortable with that. The symmetry was a little too obvious. She sighed.

  She drove to the end of the block, turned right again, and pulled over, behind a rust-streaked dumpster with EAST VAN HALEN painted across its back in runny black spray-bomb.

  She got her phone and Bigend’s scrambler out of her purse, sighed, and rang him back.

  He answered immediately. “Yes?”

  “Odile’s found his sister.”

  “Very good. Excellent. And?”

  “I’m near a place he has here. His sister told us where it is. She thinks this is where he’ll be.” She didn’t see any need to tell him she’d known this when she’d last spoken with him. She’d squared things.

  “Is that why you’re a block east of C
lark Drive?” he asked.

  “Shit,” she said.

  “This display only names the main streets,” he said, apologetically.

  “This car’s telling you exactly where I am!”

  “It’s a factory option,” he said. “A lot of Phaetons go to corporate fleets in the Middle East. Standard security feature, there. Why did she tell you, by the way? Do you know?”

  “Because she’s fed up with him, basically. Not an easy sibling. I just saw your port, a minute ago. It’s down at the foot of the street.”

  “Yes,” he said, “handy. What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Look around a little.”

  “Would you like me to send Ollie?”

  “No. I doubt I’ll be long.”

  “If I don’t see the car go back to the flat this evening, and I haven’t heard from you, I’ll send Ollie.”

  “Fair enough.” She hung up.

  She sat there, looking at East Van Halen’s dumpster. Beyond it, a few car lengths, was the opening into an alley. An alley that might lead, she supposed, to some rear entrance in whichever of these buildings was Bobby’s.

  She got out, activating the Phaeton’s alarm system. “You take care of your crypto-luxurious ass,” she told it. “I’ll be back.”

  66. PING

  Tito sat on a paint-spattered steel stool, looking up at a dirty skylight of wire-embedded glass. Pigeons kept landing on its peak, and taking off, with a flutter of wings he doubted the others were hearing. Garreth and the old man were talking with the man who’d been waiting for them here, in this dim third-story space, in a city and country Tito had scarcely even thought about before.

  The boat that had come to pick them up was white; long, low, very fast. The boat’s pilot had worn large sunglasses and a tight nylon hood, and had said nothing at all.

  Tito had watched the island and its runway recede, and finally vanish, though it took a long time.

  After changing directions several times, they’d approached another island. Cliffsides of soft, wind-eroded rock. A few small isolated houses, facing the sea. They’d followed the coastline to a wooden pier, jutting from a taller, more substantial-looking wharf. He’d helped Garreth swing the black plastic Pelican up out of the boat. It was too heavy to lift by its plastic handles, Garreth said; they might break, under the weight.

  The pilot of the white boat, saying nothing, took it out fast, in a direction other than the one he’d come.

  Tito listened to a dog barking. A man came to the railing of the high wharf and waved to them. Garreth waved back. The stranger turned away, was gone.

  The old man looked at his watch, then at the sky.

  Tito had heard the seaplane before he’d seen it, coming in only a few feet above the water. “Don’t say anything,” Garreth told him, as the plane’s propeller stopped and it floated the last few yards to the pier.

  “How are you gentlemen?” asked the pilot, a man with a mustache, climbing down onto the nearest pontoon as Garreth held the plane’s wing.

  “Very well,” said the old man, “but I’m afraid we’re overweight.” He indicated the Pelican. “Mineral samples.”

  “Geologist?” the pilot asked.

  “Retired,” said the old man, smiling, “but it seems I’m still hauling rocks.”

  “Shouldn’t be a problem.” The pilot opened a hatch in the side of the plane, which looked nothing like the Cessna. It had only one propeller, and looked built for work. Tito watched as Garreth and the pilot wrestled the Pelican case off the dock and up into the hatch.

  He saw the old man blow air between his pursed lips, relieved, as they got it into the plane without dropping it.

  “How long will we be?” the old man asked the pilot.

  “All of twenty minutes,” said the pilot. “Shall I call you a cab?”

  “No, thank you,” the old man said, climbing up into the plane. “We have our own transportation.”

  They landed on a river, near a very large airport, where Tito, still amazed at the mountains he’d seen in the distance, helped Garreth push the Pelican case and their other few pieces of luggage, on a cart, up a long ramp of steel mesh.

  Tito sat on the edge of the cart, looking toward the river, where another seaplane was taxiing for takeoff in late-afternoon sunlight. Gravel crunched as Garreth and the old man drove up in a white van. Tito helped Garreth load the case and their other bags into it.

  There were only two seats in the van, no side windows in the back. Tito settled himself, squatting, on the Pelican case. The old man looked back. “Don’t sit on that,” he said. “It wouldn’t be good for your descendants.” Tito moved away from the case, and used his own bag as a cushion instead.

  After that, as they’d driven through a city, he’d seen almost nothing. Fragments of buildings, through the windshield and the rear windows. Until they’d arrived here, Garreth opening the rear doors onto an only partially paved alley, strange green ferns growing between broken asphalt and the peeling walls on either side. He’d helped Garreth with the Pelican case, up two flights of decrepit wooden stairs, and into this long, cluttered room.

  Where this strange man, the one they called Bobby, had been waiting for them. Tito’s mother’s illness, which had begun in Sunset Park, where they had gone to stay with Antulio, after the attacks on the towers, had made him very anxious around people who behaved in certain ways.

  He paced, this Bobby, and smoked, and spoke almost constantly. Garreth and the old man listened, listened and looked at one another.

  Bobby said that it wasn’t good for him, doing this from home. It wasn’t good for him to be here, in his hometown, doing this, but it particularly wasn’t good for him to be here, in his own place, doing this, with the box a few blocks away. Tito looked at the Pelican case. Was this what Bobby meant by a box?

  “But you knew that,” the old man said, quietly. “You knew that if it came here, it would be there.”

  “They’ve pinged it three times already,” Bobby said. “Not part of the pattern. I think they’re here, and I think they’re pinging it from here, and I think they’re pinging it as they drive around, trying for a visual. I think they’re that close. Too close.” He dropped his cigarette, ground it under his shoe, and wiped the palms of his hands on his dirty white jeans.

  What did “pinged” mean, Tito wondered.

  “But, Bobby,” the old man said, softly, “you haven’t told us where it is, exactly. Where is it? Has it been off-loaded? We do need to know that.”

  Bobby was lighting another cigarette. “It’s where you wanted it. Exactly where you wanted it. I’ll show you.” He crossed to the long tables, the old man and Garreth following. Bobby tapped anxiously on a keyboard. “Right here.”

  “Which means they don’t have anyone on the inside, otherwise they’d shuffle it deeper into the deck.”

  “But you do, right?” Bobby squinted through smoke.

  “That doesn’t concern you, Bobby,” said the old man, more gently still. “You’ve done a long and very demanding job, but it’s coming to an end now. Garreth has your last installment here, as we agreed.” Tito watched the old man’s hands, for some reason remembering him using the cane in Union Square.

  Garreth took a pager from his belt, looked at it. “Delivery. I’ll be five minutes.” He looked at the old man. “You’re okay?”

  “Of course.”

  Bobby moaned.

  Tito winced, remembering his mother.

  “I’m not ready for this,” Bobby said.

  “Bobby,” said the old man, “you don’t have anything you have to be ready for. You really have nothing else to do, other than monitor the box for us. There’s no need for you to leave here, tonight. Or for the next three months, for that matter. We’ll be leaving soon, about our business, and you’ll be staying here. With your final payment. In advance. As agreed. You’re extremely talented, you’ve done an amazing job, and soon you’ll realize that you can relax.” r />
  “I don’t know who they are,” Bobby said, “and I don’t want to know. I don’t want to know what they’ve got in that box.”

  “You don’t. You don’t know either.”

  “I’m afraid,” Bobby said, and Tito heard his mother, after the attacks.

  “They have no idea who you are,” said the old man. “They have no idea who we are. I intend to keep it that way.”

  Tito heard Garreth, and someone else, coming back up the stairs. A woman appeared at the top of the stairs, Garreth behind her. In jeans and a dark jacket.

  “What’s she doing here?” Bobby shook his hair back from terrified eyes. “What is this?”

  “Yes,” said the old man, flatly. “Garreth, what is this?”

  “I’m Hollis Henry,” the woman said. “I met Bobby in Los Angeles.”

  “She was in the alley,” Garreth said, and now Tito saw that he held a long gray rectangular case with a single handle.

  “She’s not supposed to be here,” said Bobby, sounding as though he was about to cry.

  “But you do know her, Bobby?” the old man asked. “From Los Angeles?”

  “The strange thing,” Garreth said, “is that I know her too. Not that we’ve met before. She’s Hollis Henry, from the Curfew.”

  The old man raised his eyebrows. “The curfew?”

  “Favorites of mine in college. A band.” He shrugged apologetically, the weight of the long case keeping one shoulder down.

  “And you found her, just now, in the alley?”

  “Yes,” said Garreth, and suddenly smiled.

  “Am I missing something, Garreth?” the old man asked.