“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.
Chapter 85
I gave Gauguin everything I’d promised. Meredith Earwood, Agustin Carrazza, Berkeley, the hydroponic clinic, photographs of her passports, snapped from a hotel room in Korea, copies of her journal written in San Francisco. He replied through the darknet, politely thanking me for my information. He even activated his old name: mugurski71, and I replied as _why, all things returning to where we had begun, back to Dubai, back to Reina, the summer sun and a bunch of stolen diamonds. It all seemed a long way away, now.