Zero History

  Walking from his room to the elevator, he wondered why they had decided to build a Holiday Inn here, beside this canal.

  In the lobby, he waited at the concierge desk while two young American men received directions to the Victoria and Albert. He looked at them the way he imagined Blue Ant’s young French fashion analyst might. Everything they were wearing, he decided, qualified as what she’d call “iconic,” but had originally become that way through its ability to gracefully patinate. She was big on patination. That was how quality wore in, she said, as opposed to out. Distressing, on the other hand, was the faking of patination, and was actually a way of concealing a lack of quality. Until he’d found himself in Bigend’s apparel-design push, he hadn’t known that anyone thought about clothing that way. He didn’t imagine that anything these two wore was liable to acquire any patina, except under different and later ownership.

  When they’d moved on, he asked for directions to Voytek’s Biro Shack, explaining where he’d been told it was.

  “I don’t see it listed, sir,” said the concierge, clicking his mouse, “but you aren’t far, if it’s where they told you it would be.” He ballpointed a map in a colored brochure and handed it to Milgrim.

  “Thanks.”

  Outside, the air smelled differently of exhaust. More diesel? The neighborhood felt theme-parky but downscale, a little like a state fairground before the evening crowds arrive. He passed two Japanese girls eating what seemed to be corn dogs, which heightened the effect.

  He was keeping an eye out for Winnie, but if she’d arrived he didn’t see her.

  Following the ballpoint line on the concierge’s map, he found himself in a brick-arched under-mall, some Victorian retrofit, stocked mostly with merchandise that reminded him of St. Mark’s Place, though with an odd, semi-Japanese feel, perhaps an appeal to foreign youth-tourism. Further back in this, glassed behind half a brick archway, floridly Victorian gilt lettering announced BIROSHAK & SON. A surname, then. As he entered, a bell tinked, bouncing on a long Art Nouveau lily stem of brass, attached to the door.

  The shop was densely but tidily packed with small, largely featureless boxes, like old-fashioned TV-top cable units, arrayed on glass shelves. A tall, balding man, about Milgrim’s age, turned and nodded. “You are Milgrim,” he said. “I am Voytek.” There was a battered plastic pennant behind the counter: AMSTRAD, both the name and the logo unfamiliar.

  Voytek wore a wool cardigan pieced together from perhaps half a dozen donors, one sleeve plain camel, the other plaid. Under it a silky ecru T-shirt with too many pearl buttons. He blinked behind harsh-looking steel-framed glasses.

  Milgrim put his bag on the counter. “Will it take long?” he asked.

  “Assuming I find nothing, ten minutes. Leave it.”

  “I’d rather stay.”

  Voytek frowned, then shrugged. “You think I will put something in it.”

  “Do you do that?”

  “Some people do,” said Voytek. “PC?”

  “Mac,” said Milgrim, unzipping his bag and bringing it out.

  “Put it on the counter. I lock up.” He came from behind the counter, wearing those gray felt clogs that reminded Milgrim of the feet of toy animals. He went to the door, slid a bolt into place, and returned. “I hate these Air,” he said, amiably enough, turning the laptop over and producing the first of a number of tiny, very expensive-looking screwdrivers. “They are very bitch, to open.”

  “What are all these boxes?” Milgrim asked, indicating the shelves.

  “They are computers. Real ones. From the dawn.” He removed the bottom of the Air, with no evident difficulty at all.

  “Are they valuable?”

  “Valuable? What is true worth?” He put on an elaborate pair of magnifying glasses, with clear colorless frames.

  “That’s what I asked you.”

  “True worth.” LEDs in the clear temples illuminated the elegantly compacted guts of the Air. “You put a price on romance?”

  “Romance?”

  “These true computers are the root code. The Eden.”

  Milgrim saw that there were still older machines, some actually housed in wood, locked in a large, really quite seriously expensive-looking glass case, rising a good six feet from the floor. The wood-cased typewriter-y device nearest him bore an eye-shaped silk-screened ENIGMA logo. “What are those, then?”

  “Before the Eden. Enigma encryption. As called forth by Alan Turing. To birth the Eden. Also on offer, U.S. Army M-209B cipher machine with original canvas field case, Soviet M-125-3MN Fialka cipher machine, Soviet clandestine pocket-sized nonelectronic burst encoder and keyer. You are interested?”

  “What’s a burst encoder?”

  “Enter message, encrypt, send with inhuman speed as Morse code. Spring-winder. Twelve hundred pounds. Discount for Blue Ant employee, one thousand.”

  Someone rapped on the door. A young man with a massive diagonal forelock, wrapped in what appeared to be a bathrobe. He was grimacing with impatience. Voytek sighed, put down the Air, on a battered foam pad that bore the Amstrad logo, and went to open the door, still wearing the illuminated magnifying glasses. The bathrobed boy—Milgrim saw that it was a very thin, very wrinkled sort of overcoat, perhaps cashmere—swept past Voytek without eye contact, to the rear of the shop, and through a door Milgrim hadn’t previously noticed. “Cunt,” said Voytek, neutrally, relocking the door and returning to the Air and the task at hand.

  “Your son?” asked Milgrim.

  “Son?” He frowned. “It is Shombo.”

  “Is what?”

  “Is arse-pain. Nightmare. Bigend.” He’d picked up the Air now and was peering savagely into it from a few inches away.

  “Bigend is?” Milgrim was not unfamiliar with the opinion, if the man meant Bigend.

  “Shombo. I must keep him here, take him home. I lose track of the months.” He tapped the little Mac with a screwdriver. “Nothing has been added here.” He began to smoothly reassemble it, his efficiency fueled, Milgrim sensed, with resentment. Of gray-robed Shombo, Milgrim hoped.

  “Is that all you need to do?”

  “All? My family is living with this person.”

  “To my computer.”

  “Now software analysis.” He produced a battered black Dell from beneath the counter and cabled it to the Air. “Is password?”

  “Locative,” Milgrim said, and spelled it. “Lowercase. Dot. One.” He went to the showcase to look more closely at the Enigma machine. “Does patination make them more valuable?”

  “What?” LEDs flashed in his direction from the plastic glasses.

  “If they’re worn. Evidence of use.”

  “Most valuable,” said Voytek, staring at him over the tops of the glasses, “is mint.”

  “What are these things?” Black, shark-toothed gears, the size of the bottom of a beer bottle. Each one stamped with a multidigit number, into which white paint had been rubbed.

  “For you, same as burst encoder: one thousand pounds.”

  “I mean what are they for?”

  “They set encryption. Receiving machine must have day’s identical rotor.”

  A single rap on the door, tinkling the lily bells. It was the other driver, the one who’d driven Milgrim in from Heathrow.

  “Shit-persons,” said Voytek in resignation, and went to unlock the door again.

  “Urine specimen,” the driver said, producing a fresh brown paper bag.

  “The fuck,” said Voytek.

  “I’ll need to use your bathroom,” Milgrim said.

  “Bath? I have no bath.”

  “Toilet. Loo.”

  “In back. With Shombo.”

  “He’ll have to watch,” Milgrim said, indicating the driver.

  “I don’t want to know,” said Voytek. He rapped on the door through which Shombo had vanished. “Shombo! Men need loo!”

  “Fuck off,” said Shombo, muffled by the door.

  Milgrim, closely followed by the driver, appro
ached it, tried the knob. It opened.

  “Fuck off,” said Shombo again, but abstractedly, from a multiscreened rat’s-nest quite far back in a larger, darker space than Milgrim had expected. The screens were covered with dense columns of what Milgrim took to be figures, rather than written language.

  With the driver behind him, Milgrim headed for the plywood-walled toilet cubicle, illuminated by a single bare bulb. There wouldn’t have been room for the driver, who simply loomed in the doorway, passing Milgrim the paper bag. Milgrim opened it, removed the sandwich bag, opened that, removed the blue-topped bottle. He broke the paper seal, removed the lid, and unzipped his fly.

  “Piss off,” muttered Shombo, without a trace of irony.

  Milgrim sighed, filled the bottle, capped it, finished in the grimy toilet, flushed by pulling a chain, then put the bottle in the sandwich bag, the sandwich bag in the paper bag, handed the paper bag to the driver, then washed his hands in cold water. There didn’t seem to be any soap.

  As they left the room, Milgrim saw the reflection of the bright screens in Shombo’s eyes.

  He closed the door carefully behind him.

  The driver handed Milgrim a crisp manila envelope of a pattern suggesting deeply traditional banking practices. Within it, Milgrim felt the sealed bubble-pack containing his medication.

  “Thanks,” said Milgrim.

  The driver, without a word, took his leave, Voytek bustling irritably to lock the door behind him.

  41. GEAR-QUEER

  He’ll be right down,” said Jacob, smiling and luxuriantly bearded as ever, when he met her at Blue Ant’s entrance. “How was Paris? Would you like coffee?”

  “Fine, thanks. No coffee.” She felt ragged, and assumed she looked it, but also better, since Heidi had forced her to make the call. Looking up at the lobby’s used-eyeglasses chandelier, she welcomed whatever distraction or annoyance Bigend might be able to provide.

  And here he suddenly came, the optically challenging blue suit muted, if that could be the word for it, by a black polo shirt. Behind him, silent and alert, his two umbrella-bearing minders. Leaving Jacob behind, he took Hollis’s arm and steered her back out the door, followed by the minders. “Not good, Jacob,” he said to her, quietly. “Sleight’s.”

  “Really?”

  “Not entirely positive yet,” he said, leading her left, then left again at the corner. “But it looks likely.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Not far. I’m no longer conducting important conversations on Blue Ant premises.”

  “What’s happening?”

  “I should have the whole phenomenon modeled. Have some good CG visualizations done. It’s not clockwork, of course, but it’s familiar. I’d guess it takes a good five or six years to cycle through.”

  “Milgrim made it sound like a palace coup, some kind of takeover.”

  “Overly dramatic. A few of my brightest employees are quitting. Those who haven’t gotten where they’d hoped to, with Blue Ant. So few do, really. Someone like Sleight tries to quit with optimal benefits, of course. Builds his own golden parachute. Robs me blind, if he can. Information flows out, before these parties depart, to the highest bidders. Always more than one golden parachutist.” He took her arm again and crossed the narrow street, in the wake of a passing Mercedes. “Too many moving parts for a solo operator. Sleight, probably Jacob, two or three more.”

  “You don’t seem that alarmed.”

  “I expect it. It’s always interesting. It can shake other things out. Reveal things. When you want to know how things really work, study them when they’re coming apart.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Increased risk. Increased opportunity. This one comes at an inopportune time, but then they do seem to. Here we are.” He’d stopped in front of a narrow Soho shopfront, one whose austerely minimalist signage announced TANKY & TOJO in brushed aluminum capitals. She looked in the window. An antique tailor’s dummy, kitted out in waxed cotton, tweed, corduroy, harness leather.

  He held the door for her.

  “Welcome,” said a small Japanese man with round gold-framed glasses. There was no one else in the shop.

  “We’ll be in back,” said Bigend, leading Hollis past him.

  “Of course. I’ll see that you aren’t disturbed.”

  Hollis smiled at the man, nodded. He bowed to her. He wore a tweed hacking jacket with sleeves made partially of waxed cotton.

  The back office in Tanky & Tojo was tidier, less shabby than she expected spaces like this to be. There was no evidence of employees attempting to alleviate boredom, no stabs at humor, no wistful pockets of nonwork affect. The walls were freshly painted gray. Cheap white shelving was piled with plastic-wrapped stock, shoe boxes, books of fabric samples.

  “Milgrim and Sleight were in South Carolina,” said Bigend, seating himself behind the small white Ikea desk. One of its corners, facing her, was chipped, revealing some core material that resembled compacted granola. She sat on a very Eighties-looking vanity stool, pale violet velour, bulbous, possibly the last survivor of some previous business here. “Sleight had arranged for us to have a look at a garment prototype. We’d picked up interesting industry buzz about it, though when we got the photos and tracings, really, we couldn’t see why. Our best analyst thinks it’s not a tactical design. Something for mall ninjas.”

  “For what?”

  “The new Mitty demographic.”

  “I’m lost.”

  “Young men who dress to feel they’ll be mistaken for having special capability. A species of cosplay, really. Endemic. Lots of boys are playing soldier now. The men who run the world aren’t, and neither are the boys most effectively bent on running it next. Or the ones who’re actually having to be soldiers, of course. But many of the rest have gone gear-queer, to one extent or another.”

  “ ‘Gear-queer’?”

  Bigend’s teeth showed. “We had a team of cultural anthropologists interview American soldiers returning from Iraq. That’s where we first heard it. It’s not wholly derogatory, mind you. There are actual professionals who genuinely require these things—some of them, anyway. Though they generally seem to be far less fascinated with them. But it’s that fascination that interests us, of course.”

  “It is?”

  “It’s an obsession with the idea not just of the right stuff, but of the special stuff. Equipment fetishism. The costume and semiotics of achingly elite police and military units. Intense desire to possess same, of course, and in turn to be associated with that world. With its competence, its cocksure exclusivity.”

  “Sounds like fashion, to me.”

  “Exactly. Pants, but only just the right ones. We could never have engineered so powerful a locus of consumer desire. It’s like sex in a bottle.”

  “Not for me.”

  “You’re female.”

  “They want to be soldiers?”

  “Not to be. To self-identify as. However secretly. To imagine they may be mistaken for, or at least associated with. Virtually none of these products will ever be used for anything remotely like what they were designed for. Of course that’s true of most of the contents of your traditional army-navy store. Whole universes of wistful male fantasy in those places. But the level of consumer motivation we’re seeing, the fact that these are often what amount to luxury goods, and priced accordingly. That’s new. I felt like a neurosurgeon, when this was brought to my attention, discovering a patient whose nervous system is congenitally and fully exposed. It’s just so nakedly obvious. Fantastic, really.”

  “And it ties into military contracting?”

  “Deeply, though not simply. A lot of the same players, where the stuff actually originates. But your civilian buyer, your twenty-first-century Walter Mitty, needs it the way a mod, in this street, in 1965, needed the right depth of vent on a suitcoat.”

  “It sounds ridiculous to me.”

  “Almost exclusively a boy thing.”

  “Almost,”
she agreed, remembering Heidi’s IDF bra.

  “Milgrim and Sleight were in South Carolina because it seemed someone there might be on the brink of a Department of Defense contract. For pants. Since it’s something we’ve been looking to get into ourselves, quite actively, we decided to have a closer look at their product.”

  “ ‘They’ who?”

  “We’re still looking into that.”

  “It’s not the sort of thing I’d have ever imagined you doing. Military contracts, I mean. I don’t get it.”

  “It’s the one garment industry with none of the fantastic dysfunction of fashion. And hugely better profit margins. But at the same time everything that works, in fashion, also works in military contracting.”

  “Not everything, surely.”

  “More than you imagine. The military, if you think about it, largely invented branding. The whole idea of being ‘in uniform.’ The global fashion industry is based on that. But the people whose prototype we had Milgrim photograph and make rubbings of, in South Carolina, have evidently turned Sleight. And here we are.”

  “Where?”

  “In a position,” he said, firmly, “of possible danger.”

  “Because Sleight’s your personal IT man?”

  “Because of who and what they seem to be. I’ve had a more genuinely personal IT man looking out for me, keeping track of Sleight and the various architectures he’s been erecting, both those he’s told me about and those he hasn’t. I did say I’ve been through this before. So in most cases, I wouldn’t be as concerned, and not in this way. But one of these people was here, in London. He followed you and Milgrim to Paris, with Sleight’s help.”

  “Foley, Milgrim calls him.”

  “We must assume that Foley, so-called, was following you as well. That overlap I mentioned, between the actual elite and the mall ninjas. That can be a problematic segment, in this particular Venn diagram.”

  “I saw him,” Hollis said. “He followed me into the basement of the building where I’d gone to—” She hesitated.

  “Meet Meredith Overton. I had Milgrim debriefed last night, in Paris. He was particularly unnerved to have run into Rausch.”