Sam Leith - The Coincidence Engine

‘And that means that your position, gentlemen, is going to look even weaker still. This is incredibly fucking important, this thing,’ he said, letting his profanity hang in the air for a bit.

There were people who knew how to swear, Sherman reflected, and people who thought they knew how to swear, and Ellis, with that stupid little vein throbbing self-importantly in his forehead, fell into the latter camp.

Ellis prided himself on his swearing, you could see. It was important for his self-esteem, as an ocean-going civilian sub-craphat, to be able to swear in front of ex-servicemen. Sherman worked really hard to see if he could bring himself to be even the faintest bit intimidated by Ellis. He could not. Davidoff, Sherman could respect. Davidoff was a squarehead, but he was quite a dangerous squarehead. Ellis was… His thoughts drifted off.

‘This is the future of this company. We own this thing. We paid for it. And our proprietors are not going to sit back and give it away for free to any teenage geeks, Islamist loons, Marxist wackjobs, or any fucking fucking blue-hatted save-the-world fucking ponce-fucker.’

Ponce-fucker, eh?

‘Fortunately, we have a lead. Our friend in the States has learned of a young man connected to the Banacharski Ring who has just unexpectedly upped and flown across the Atlantic. No warning. Just went. And there’s no good reason we can see why he might have decided suddenly to go on holiday by himself.’

Ellis knitted his fingers together, and cracked his knuckles.

‘His name is Alex Smart. Postgraduate student, close associate of this Hollis. While we were looking at the supervisor, this lad skipped out and there’s very good reason to believe that he has the device. He was booked on a flight for San Francisco, but he wasn’t flying direct. For no reason we can readily understand, unless he was trying to discourage pursuit, he flew via Atlanta. Two different airlines. Tickets booked at different times – the first through an agent. Only the second was on his own credit card. But the onward flight was grounded by the hurricane. He never got back on a plane, according to our intel.’

Intel? thought Sherman. He noticed that Ellis had a monogram on his shirt. He enjoyed hating him for a bit.

‘We’ve lost track of him,’ Ellis continued. ‘But so have they. So enough messing about. Do not shoot anyone if you can help it, do not get shot yourself, and if and when you find it helpful to do something illegal, do not get caught doing it. I need scarcely remind you that we have no status either in the UK or in the States. You are private citizens. Whatever favours our proprietors are able to call in when from time to time we find ourselves in a legal grey area, you can be sure they will not call in for you. If you get in trouble, MIC will disavow you so fast your heads will spin.’

‘Disavow’ could mean lots of things. Which was, Sherman thought, probably why the two of them were being better paid than they would be if they’d been working for private hire even in Iraq.

Ellis looked at them both, one after the other, and then enunciated, slowly: ‘Go to America, find him, and get our toy.’

‘America’s quite big,’ said Davidoff. ‘How do you suggest we go about that?’

Sherman was surprised when Ellis replied: ‘There is one idea. Look – this device affects the way probability works, as we understand it. Like a magnet in iron filings. We think the effect is more powerful when it’s closer by. But it’s eccentric. For some reason one of the things it seemed to affect strongly, if the literature is to be believed, are these.’

Ellis, who had remained sitting throughout this conversation, reached into the drawer of his desk. He pulled out something attached to a tangle of white wires and put the tangle on the desk.

‘There’s one each,’ he added.

‘The literature,’ said Sherman.

Davidoff’s big hand went down first. He fished up a small square of plastic that brought some of the white wires with it. He looked at it.

‘This is an iPod,’ he said.

‘An iPod Shuffle, yes,’ said Ellis. ‘It’s preloaded.’

Sherman picked the other one up and looked at it.

‘What are we supposed to do with these?’

‘Listen to them,’ said Ellis. ‘Listen for patterns. Songs that seem to keep repeating; runs of the same artist; albums that come out in order.’ He looked a little sheepish. ‘Even things like… songs that begin with the same word, or something.’

‘This is what we’re supposed to use to hunt down this super-weapon, or whatever it is. An iPod. Are you having a laugh?’

‘I hate rock music,’ said Sherman.

Three hours later he and Davidoff were on a plane.

‘Does the name “Banacharski” mean anything to you?’ Red Queen asked.

The man looked confused and disoriented, as he was entitled to. Four hours previously he had been teaching a class of students in MIT. Three hours and forty-five minutes previously, he had been on his way off campus when a couple of men in suits had started steering him by the elbows as if – he had thought with indignation – he were not a small, bald professor of mathematics but a small, bald bicycle.

Two hours previously he had been, for the first time, in a helicopter. An actual black helicopter, tilting over Boston and heading out into the country. During that short, fast journey, Professor Hands had become quite convinced that his voluntary work leafleting for a human rights organisation had made him a target for extraordinary rendition. His whole short body had been flushed, moment by moment, with the chemicals of terror and the lip-trembling self-righteousness of a liberal academic facing a non-fatal kicking from the forces of reaction.

America, he knew, was a totalitarian enemy of free speech – but it didn’t actually kill middle-class white men. He expected to endure pain, speak eloquently, and become a cause célàbre. He imagined Chomsky talking about him on CNN; Glenn Beck denouncing him by name on Fox.

Now they were asking him about Banacharski.

‘Of course it does,’ the man said. ‘He’s a very distinguished mathematician. Or was, I suppose – depending on who you want to believe. But this has to do with Banacharski? I can’t see why he’d be of any interest to the CIA.’

‘We’re not the CIA, Professor Hands,’ said Red Queen. ‘We do a different job than they do. Remember all those bits of paper you signed earlier?’

He nodded.

‘They don’t mean very much. They say that you’re breaking various national security laws if you disclose the existence of this organisation, let alone disclose the contents of our conversation, but the nature of what we do means that we could never actually drag you through open court if you break the agreements.

‘So we’re adult about this. However, I do want to impress on you two things. One of them is that if you tell people about us, these people will think you are mad. Your first point of contact with us was, was it not, with two burly men in dark suits wearing wraparound sunglasses?’

Hands nodded.

‘You were brought here in an unmarked black helicopter.’

Hands nodded again.

‘And here you are, three floors below street level in New York in a secret -’ Red Queen chuckled ‘- a secret underground hideout. Talking to somebody with a name out of Alice in Wonderland .’ Red Queen’s palms turned upwards. ‘It might be enough to earn you a sabbatical, but your accommodation would probably be chosen for you.’

Red Queen gave him a friendly smile. ‘We are a serious organisation. What we do is extremely important. And we really do want your help. Contrary to the fantasies of all very highly educated and very poorly educated people, the government is truly not engaged in a conspiracy against the people. We do everything we can, in secret and in the open, to prevent them messing things up.