William Gibson - Pattern Recognition

“No,” he says.

“She works for Heinzi and Pfaff, the graphics people. She deals with Blue Ant for them. I think she had someone get into Damien's apartment for her. They used his computer.”

“How do you know?”

She walks over to what she guesses was originally a storage alcove for bedding. This one has been converted into something closer to a Western closet. A woman's clothes are hung there, along a wooden pole, and they make her feel somehow self-conscious. If there were a door, she'd close it. “Whoever did it called her from Damien's phone. I redialed and heard her voice-mail message.” And she tells him the story then: Dorotea, the Rickson's, Asian Sluts.

By the time she's finished, they're sitting cross-legged on cushions on the tatami, the kitchen light off, drinking green tea he pours from an earthenware pot. “So it might be that our Italians here aren't about the fact that you're working for Bigend, or about the footage,” he says. “The break-in predated that.”

“I don't know if I'd call it a break-in,” she says. “Nothing broken. I don't know how they got in.”

“A key-gun, if they were pros. Nothing you'd notice. You wouldn't have noticed anyway, if they hadn't used your browser and your phone. Neither of which is entirely professional, but we'll let that pass. And Bigend told you she'd worked for someone in Paris who'd done industrial espionage?”

“Yes. But he thought she had it in for me because she assumed he was going to offer me a job she wants, at Blue Ant London.”

“And you didn't tell him about the jacket, or your apartment?”

“No.”

“And our boys speak Italian. But we don't know whether they were here to begin with, or whether they were sent here. They weren't on our flight, I'm sure of that. I watched them watch you, today. Hard to say if they know the city or not. They had a car and a Japanese driver.”

She studies his face in the glow of the bamboo filaments, the Edison bulbs. “Dorotea knows something about me,” she says. “Something very personal. A phobia. Something that only my parents, my therapist, a few close friends would know. That worries me.”

“Could you tell me what it is?”

“I'm allergic. To certain trademarks.”

“Trademarks?”

“Since I was a kid. It's the downside of my ability to judge the market's response to new logo designs.” She feels herself blushing, and hates that.

“Can you give me an example?”

“The Michelin Man, for one. There are others. Some are more contemporary. It's not something I'm very comfortable talking about, actually.”

“Thank you,” he says, very seriously. “You don't need to. Do you think Dorotea knows about this?”

“I know she does.” She tells him about the second meeting, Bibendum, the doll hung from Damien's doorknob.

He frowns, says nothing, pours more tea. Looks at her. “I think you're right.”

“Why?”

“Because she knows something about you, something she couldn't easily have found out. But she has. That means someone's gone to a lot of trouble. And she was the one who pulled that image out of the envelope and showed it to you. Then she left the doll, or had someone leave it. But I think the doll was supposed to help make you go away, back to New York. But you didn't, and then I turned up, and now we're both here, and my guess is that the men who were watching you are working for her.”

“Why?”

“Unless we can find them, which isn't very likely now, and convince them to tell what they know, which very likely isn't much, I have no idea. And less idea who she might be working for. Will you let me have a look at your computer now?”

She gets the iBook out of the bag, where it lies on the matting beside her, and passes it to him. He puts it on the low table beside his own and takes a neatly coiled cable from his suitcase. “Don't mind me. I can do this and talk.”

“Do what?”

“I want to make sure this isn't sending your every keystroke to a third party”

“Can you do that?”

“These days? Not absolutely.” Now both computers are cabled together, and on, and she watches as he turns to his and inserts a CD-ROM. “Things have been different in computer security, since last September. If the FBI were doing what they admit they can do, to your laptop, I might be able to spot it. If they were doing what they don't tell you they can do, that would be another story. And that's just the FBI.”

“The FBI?”

“Just an example. Lots of people are doing lots of different things, now, and not all of them are American, or government agencies. The ante's been upped right across the board.” He does things to her keyboard, watching his screen.

“Whose apartment is this?”

“Marisa's. I told you.”

“And Marisa is?”

He looks up. “My ex.”

She'd known that, somehow, and hadn't liked it, and doesn't like it that she doesn't like it.

“Just friends now,” he says, and looks back to the screen.

She raises her hand and opens it, palm out, exposing Taki's number. “So what can you do with this?”

He looks up. Seems to brighten. “Find the company that did the watermarking, if it was done by a company. Then see what we can find out from them. If they've marked each segment, there should be an account. The client would be that much closer to your maker.”

“Would they tell you?”

“No. That's not the same as my finding out, though.”

She lets him work, and sips her tea, and looks around at the eight-mat apartment in the amber glow of the Edison bulbs, and wonders, though she doesn't want to, about the woman who lives here.

She has a lump on her forehead, and the fabulous fanny stuff is probably a disaster now, and she wants to find a well-lit mirror and check the damage, but she doesn't.

She doesn't feel tired, though, or lagged, mirrored-out, or anything at all. Whatever else is going on, she seems to have graduated to a more serious league of soul-displacement. Wherever her serotonin levels are, right now, its like she lives there.

The night security man at her hotel looks like a younger, slightly less approachable version of Beat Takeshi, the Japanese actor whose existential gangster films have been the favorites of two former boyfriends. Ferociously upright and tightly buttoned into an immaculate black blazer, he leads her into the elevator and up to her room.

She's told them at the desk that she's left her key in the room, and so is accompanied there by this stern man, who produces his own key, a real metal one, sturdily chained to his belt, and unlocks her door. He opens it for her, turns on the lights, and gestures her in.

“Thank you. Just a moment, please, while I find my key.” Actually it's in the pocket of her Rickson's, ready to be palmed when needed, but she checks the bathroom, the closet, glances behind the black furniture, then notices a large gray carrier bag, with the Blue Ant logo on the side, at the foot of her bed. She kneels to look under the bed, discovers that it isn't the kind you can look under, and comes up, still kneeling, with the key, a plastic mag-strip card, in her hand. “I've found it. Thank you very much.”

He bows and goes, closing the door behind him. She locks and chains it. Just to be sure, she manages to scoot the large black armchair close enough that the door can be only partially opened. This hurts her neck. She resists the urge to curl up, there, and become unconscious. Instead she goes back to the bed and looks in the Blue Ant bag. It contains, carefully folded in black tissue, an unworn black Rickson's MA-1. The morning seems a very long time ago.

She becomes aware of the smell of Tiger Balm from her own Rickson's. She stuffs the new one back into its bag, removes the Luggage Label bag, and undresses.