William Gibson - Pattern Recognition

“And what did you do, exactly, Sergei?” asks Cayce.

“Sergei was instrumental in the creation of this production facility,” says Marchwinska-Wyrwal, “as well as arranging the watermarking operation with Sigil. We are particularly interested in learning how you were able to obtain the address you used to contact Stella. Did that come through Sigil?”

“I can't tell you,” Cayce says.

“Would that be because it came through some connection of your father's? Or perhaps from your father himself?”

“My father is dead.”

“Wiktor,” says Bigend, who Cayce suddenly realizes has just been silent for far longer than she's ever known him to be, “Cayce has had a very long, very trying day. Perhaps this isn't a good time.”

Cayce lets her fork drop, ringing on the white china. “Why did you say that, about my father?” she asks, looking at Marchwinska-Wyrwal.

Who starts to reply, but is cut off by Bigend. “To dispense with being so charmingly old world about it, Wiktor and Sergei represent the two malcoordinated tips of the pincers of Volkov's security operation. Wiktor in particular seems to have forgotten that he's here to apologize to you for the clumsiness of its grasp.”

“I don't understand,” Cayce says, picking up her fork. “But you're right: I'm very tired.”

“I think I can explain,” says Sergei, “if Wiktor will allow me.”

“Please do,” says the Pole, his tone now lethally amiable.

“There have always been two security operations around Stella and Nora. One is a branch, or subsidiary, of the group that protects Volkov himself. The flavor is ex-KGB, but in the sense that Putin is ex-KGB: lawyers first, then spies. The other, largely the creation of colleagues of mine, is less conventional, largely web-based. Wiktor has been brought in very recently to attempt to sort out a serious lack of understanding, of communication, between the two. Your arrival on the scene, via your discovery of the stellanor address, is glaring proof of our difficulties.”

“But what does any of it have to do with my father?”

“You first came to their attention,” Bigend says, “when you suggested in a post that the maker might be a Russian mafia type. It was merely for example, but you struck a nerve.”

“Not with us, directly,” Sergei says, “but with a pair of American graduate students we'd hired, to search for, read, and collect commentary on the footage. Your site had quickly emerged as the liveliest, the most interesting forum. And potentially the most dangerous.”

“You paid people to lurk on F:F:F?”

“Yes. Almost from the start. We made it a rule that they weren't allowed to post, but we later discovered that one had created a persona and had been posting quite frequently.”

“Who?” asks Parkaboy “No,” he decides, “I'd rather not know.”

“Cayce,” Sergei says, “when you attracted our attention, a report was passed on to the more traditional arm, and that is where your father comes in. You were tracked, via your post's ISP, your name and address determined, and logged. Somewhere, then, it rang a very old bell. They went into the paper files, in Moscow, and found your father's dossier, and verified that you were his daughter. To further complicate things, being traditionalists,” and here he stops, and grins, “probably, I should say, simply being Russian — they became more deeply, more baroquely suspicious: that the name of this brilliant man, an old opponent, supposedly long retired, should be again before them… But they cannot locate him. He is gone. Vanished. On nine-eleven. But is he dead? No? Where is the proof? They took certain steps.” Sergei pauses. “Your apartment was entered and devices were installed to allow your phone and e-mail to be monitored.”

“When was that?” Parkaboy asks.

“Within a week of the post that attracted the attention.”

“Someone's been in my apartment within the past two weeks,” Cayce says.

“They were checking,” Marchwinska-Wyrwal says, “to see whether the devices had been compromised. It is routine.”

“Your psychologist's records were copied,” Sergei continues. “She had absolutely no knowledge of this. Burglary, not bribery. But all of that was the traditionalist response, not ours. Ours was to employ Dorotea Benedetti to keep track of you, both through the site and through her ongoing business contacts with firms you worked for in New York.”

“Why her?” Parkaboy again. They all look at him. He shrugs.

“The traditionalists had had dealings with her previous employer,” Sergei says. “They felt they understood her. We felt she understood us.”

“She bridged the two cultures.” Bigend smiles, sips wine.

“Exactly. And when it became apparent, recently, that you were coming to London to work for Blue Ant, another bell rang. Mr. Bigend had come to our attention as well, through Blue Ant's very creative investigation of the web culture around the footage. It registered quickly on the Sigil software we use to observe the movement of the footage. The interest of Blue Ant, and of Hubertus Bigend, for reasons that must be obvious, we found cause for concern.”

“Thank you,” says Bigend.

“The idea of both of you together, we did not like at all. The traditionalists liked it even less. We allowed them to take over our handling of Benedetti, and she was ordered to disrupt your relationship with Blue Ant. She used her own people to compromise the phone and e-mail in your London flat.”

“The man from Cyprus?” Cayce asks.

“A traditionalist, yes. Her handler.”

Cayce looks from Sergei to Marchwinska-Wyrwal to Bigend, then to Parkaboy, feeling much of the recent weirdness of her life shift beneath her, rearranging itself according to a new paradigm of history. Not a comfortable sensation, like Soho crawling on its own accord up Primrose Hill, because it has discovered that it belongs there, and has no other choice. But, as Win had taught her, the actual conspiracy is not so often about us; we are most often the merest of cogs in larger plans.

The waiters are clearing the main course now, and bringing smaller glasses, and pouring some sort of dessert wine.

It occurs to her then that the meal has been entirely free of toasts, and that she's always heard that a multitude of them are to be expected at a Russian meal. But perhaps, she thinks, this isn't a Russian meal. Perhaps it's a meal in that country without borders that Bigend strives to hail from, a meal in a world where there are no mirrors to find yourself on the other side of, all experience having been reduced, by the spectral hand of marketing, to price-point variations on the same thing. But as she's thinking this, Marchwinska-Wyrwal taps his glass with the edge of a spoon.

“I wish to offer a toast to Miss Pollard's father, the late Wingrove Pollard. It is an easy thing, for those of us who remember how it was, to lapse for a moment into old ways of thought, old rivalries. I did that myself, earlier, and now I must apologize for it. Had there not been men like her father, on the side of democracy and the free market, where would we be today? Not here, certainly. Nor would this establishment serve the purpose it does today, assisting the progress of art while bettering the lives and futures of those less fortunate.” He pauses, looking around the table, and Cayce wonders exactly what it is he's doing, and why? Is it a way of covering his ass with Volkov, after having upset her? Can he actually mean this, any of it?

“Men like Wingrove Pollard, my friends, through their long and determined defense of freedom, enabled men like Andrei Volkov to come at last to the fore, in free competition with other free men. Without men like Wingrove Pollard, Andrei Volkov might languish today in some prison of the Soviet state. To Wingrove Pollard.”