William Gibson: Pattern Recognition

“Time to meet the big guy” Parkaboy says quietly, smiling and offering her his arm. Which she takes, in an absurd flashback to prom night, and they walk forward together.

“Peter,” Bigend says, “we've all heard you were the one who found her.” He shakes Parkaboy's hand, then hugs and air-kisses Cayce. “We've been very worried about you.” He's roseate with some dire new energy she hasn't seen in him before. His dark forelock falls across his eyes; he tosses his head to throw it back, entirely too coltish for anyone's good, then turns to the man beside him. “Andrei, this is Cayce Pollard, the woman who's brought us all together. You've already met Peter. Cayce, this is Andrei Volkov.” Displaying his white and worryingly numerous teeth.

Cayce looks at Volkov and thinks immediately of Eichmann in the dock.

A nondescript, balding man in indeterminate middle age, gold glinting at the temples of his rimless glasses. He wears the sort of dark suit that rewards its expense primarily with a certain invisibility, a white shirt whose collar might be linen-finish porcelain, and a necktie of thick, lustrous, patternless silk, midnight blue.

Volkov takes her hand. His touch is ritual and brief.

“My English is poor,” he says, “but I must tell you how sorry we are, that you were treated so badly. I am sorry also,” and here he turns to a young man Cayce realizes she recognizes from the squat behind Georgievsky, and continues in Russian.

“He regrets that he is unable to join you now for dinner, but he has pressing engagements in Moscow,” translates the young man, his bushy ginger hair a few shades lighter than Parkaboy's. He's wearing a suit as well, but one that looks as though he's rented it.

Volkov says something more, in Russian.

“He says that Stella Volkova also apologizes for the discomfort you have so unnecessarily suffered, and that she would be here, tonight, but, as you know, her sister requires her in Moscow. Both the Volkovas look forward to your next visit, upon your return to Moscow.”

“Thank you,” Cayce says, noticing the neat deep wedge missing from the upper curve of Volkov's right ear, and hearing the doctor's shears cutting through the suede of the Parco boots.

“Goodbye, then,” Volkov says. He turns to Bigend and says something in what she guesses is quick and probably idiomatic French.

“Goodbye,” Cayce says, automatically, as he starts for the door, two young men in dark suits falling into step beside him. A third remains, standing nearby, until Volkov is out of sight, then follows.

“Systema,” Bigend says.

“What?”

“Those three. The Russian martial art, formerly forbidden to all but Spetsnaz and KGB bodyguards. It has its formal basis in Cossack dancing. Quite unlike anything Eastern.” He looks like a very determined child, on Christmas morning, who's finally gotten his way and been allowed downstairs. “But you haven't been introduced to Sergei Magomedov,” he says, indicating the young translator, who offers her his hand.

“I saw you at the studio,” the young man says. Twenty-three at the oldest.

“I remember.”

“And Wiktor Marchwinska-Wyrwal,” Bigend says, introducing the fifth member of the remaining party, a tall man with very carefully barbered gray hair, dressed for a French preppie's idea of a British country weekend, the silky tweed of his jacket looking as though it were woven from the wool of unborn lambs. Cayce shakes his hand. He has Voytek's perfectly horizontal cheekbones, and a phone plugged discreetly into his right ear.

“A great pleasure,” this one says. “I am, of course, hugely glad to see you here, safe and I hope relatively sound. I am, I should tell you, Andrei Volkov's security chief, new to the job, and I have you to thank for it.”

“You do?” She sees three men in white jackets and dark trousers enter, pushing stainless-steel carts on hard rubber wheels.

“Perhaps I can explain over dinner,” he says, gesturing to a round table she hasn't noticed, its white cloth set for six. Two of the three in white coats are positioning the carts, but the third is removing the sixth setting.

“Who was that for?” she asks.

“Boone,” says Bigend. “But he's getting a lift back to Moscow with Volkov instead. Asked me to tell you he's sorry.”

Cayce looks from Bigend to Parkaboy, then back to the sixth chair, and says nothing.

“ANDREI Volkov,” says Marchwinska-Wyrwal, with no preface, as the plates from the soup course are being removed, “is now the wealthiest man in Russia. That this is not more common knowledge is a remarkable reflection on the man himself.”

They're dining by candlelight, the curved strip lighting overhead dimmed to a faint amber glow.

“His empire, if you will, has necessarily been assembled piecemeal, owing to the recent, extraordinary, and very chaotic history of his country. A remarkable strategist, but until recently unable to devote much time or energy to the shaping of that which he's acquired. Corporations and properties of all sorts have simply stacked up, if you will, awaiting the creation of a more systematic structure. This is now being done, and I am happy to say that I am a part of that, and you should know that you have had a part in it as well.”

“I don't see how.”

“No,” he says, “it certainly wouldn't have been obvious, least of all to you.” He watches as one of the waiters pours more white wine into his glass. Cayce notices the black tips of a tattoo of some kind, showing above the collar of the waiter's white jacket, and thinks of Damien. “He loved his brother deeply, of course,” the Polish security chief continues, “and after the assassination made certain that his nieces would receive constant protection, as well as whatever they might require in order to be as comfortable as possible. Nora's plight particularly moves him, as indeed it must any of us, and it was at his suggestion that an editing room was assembled for her in the clinic in Switzerland. As that aspect of the efforts toward her recovery evolved, so evolved a certain division in methodologies —”

“It was inevitable,” interjects Sergei Magomedov, who perhaps has been drinking a little too quickly, “as the system created to assure the security of the Volkovas was about a rigid secrecy, and the mechanism created to make the work public was not. The anonymity, the encryption, the strategies, as they evolved —”

“Take credit, Sergei,” says Marchwinska-Wyrwal, lightly but, Cayce thinks, meaningfully. “You yourself invented much of that.”

“— involved an inherent risk of exposure,” Sergei finishes. “The work would not be viewed unless it were somehow able to attract the attention of an audience, and it was Stella Volkova's heartfelt wish that that audience be global in scope. To that end, we devised the method you are familiar with, and we ourselves 'found' the first few segments.”

“You did?” Cayce and Parkaboy exchange glances.

“Yes. We sometimes, also, were able to point people in the right direction. But the result, almost from the beginning, far exceeded anything any of us had anticipated.”

“You watched a subculture being born,” says Bigend. “Evolving exponentially.”

“We hadn't anticipated the numbers,” Sergei agrees, “but neither had we anticipated the level of obsession engendered in the audience, or the depth of the desire to solve the mystery.”

“When did you come into this, Sergei?” Parkaboy asks.

“In mid-2000, shortly after the Volkovas' return to Moscow.”

“Where from?”

“Berkeley. A private scholarship.” He smiles.

“Andrei Volkov has been particularly farseeing, in his recognition of the importance of computing,” Marchwinska-Wyrwal says.