It was past midnight when Granny Po emerged from Plug’s kitchenette with a tray bearing a Brown Betty teapot, four mugs and a plate of egg and bacon sandwiches. At the table where Plug and North were seated, the old lady poured the tea and handed a mug with due ceremony to Plug, bowing her silvered head, her cabbage-patch cheeks dimpling. North thought she was strangely taken with the drama of the drugs and the coffin and the giant. As Plug thanked her, there was a noise that might have been a giggle if the person making it had been eighty years younger.
The old lady put another mug and a sandwich in front of Fangfang, before letting loose a chirruping torrent of Cantonese, which her granddaughter waved away. North had finally stopped shivering, but he was still freezing cold. The coffee and brandy hadn’t touched the sides. Strong tea and food was exactly what he needed. Smiling, he held out his hand for his mug and the old lady handed it to him before ceremoniously leaning over, her soft hand staying his, and spitting into it.
The white blob of bubbling phlegm bobbed on the rust-coloured surface.
Granny Po stood upright again and shuffled with careful dignity across to the sofa, sitting for a moment as if to settle her aching bones in their rightful place, before reaching down into her enormous carpet bag and extracting her knitting. Her face was all innocence and wrinkles.
‘The flight over was bad enough,’ North said, ‘but the service this end is worse.’
Fang, her black eyes fixed on her phone, her fingers busy, ignored him. She wore a black-and-white-striped T-shirt printed with the words ‘United we stand, divided we fall.’ He turned for sympathy to Plug.
‘The old girl thinks it’s your fault the spooks lifted Mama Yu,’ Plug said. ‘She doesn’t want you getting the kid into trouble.’
North put down the mug. If Granny Po was gangsta enough to spit in his tea, he wasn’t putting it past her to have found rat poison in the kitchenette. She shared DNA with Fang, so Granny Po wasn’t fooling him that she was some old dear.
Fang showed no interest in the exchange. She took an enormous bite of her sandwich and, using the toes of her glittering bovver boots, propelled the captain’s chair 360 degrees around. North coughed to get her attention. ‘I’ll sort out this mess at Derkind. You’re not going anywhere near it.’
Plug folded his arms over his barrel chest and nodded in approval as Fang devoured the rest of her sandwich. North and Plug were hard men who would manage their business all the better without kids and old folks underfoot.
North braced himself for Fang to argue, but instead she slowed her second turn to gaze at him and Plug, as if evaluating their worth to the last penny. Calculations made, she folded in a stick of gum and blew an enormous bubble before popping it and using her tongue to reel in the translucent skin. All in all, she seemed resigned to her fate, which was a good thing. Maybe he could even get Fang and Granny Po on a train back up to Newcastle this afternoon before Hone realized what was going on?
Feeling his attention still on her, Fang stopped chewing her gum, and opened her eyes wide behind their heavy glasses. ‘Say what, Frankenstein?’ She unplugged one of the earbuds North hadn’t noticed before. She hadn’t heard a word.
He tried to control his irritation.
‘I said you’re not—’
She put the earbud back in and tapped her ear, shaking her head and mouthing I can’t hear you, moron-person.
North tried to stare her down. And failed. Fang wasn’t backing down till her mum was out of the detention centre.
Plug raised his bushy eyebrows in disbelief, and North made a ‘what can you do’ gesture. The kid would stonewall him until he gave in, so he might as well give in now. He gestured at her to take the earphones out and join the conversation, and a smile of triumph lit up the round face behind the Joe 90 glasses – white teeth and blue braces flashing.
‘I meant to ask – how’s the bullet in the brain, bozo?’
‘Still there.’
‘And your superpowers?’ Fang was the only person who had sensed the long-term consequences of his injury.
He shook his head and she frowned.
‘I can still hit people very hard.’
Fang looked sceptical, as if she was considering whether that would be enough. Then she shrugged. ‘Each to his own. So, I figure we’re working as government spooks?’ She cocked her head to one side, like a raven. ‘Which means we can do whatever we want.’
‘No, because if we get caught…’ – North knew there was no point sugar-coating anything with Fang – ‘… Hone hangs us out to dry, your mum gets posted to China, and we go to prison or worse.’
Fang drummed her fingers as she appeared to think through her options. ‘Okay,’ she said, as if prison or worse was of zero consequence to her. ‘What do you want to know about Derkind, moron-person? Because while you two were playing zombie apocalypse, some of us have been working.’
She ordered Plug to remove a tasteful print of a Victorian stone angel to use the blank wall as a projector, bouncing the presentation from a tablet she dished out of her Yoda haversack.
An image flashed up on the wall. The photograph was of a handsome man in a denim shirt leaning on a silver-topped cane. An expression of belligerence and impatience on his face. Designer stubble and startling black eyebrows contrasting with a mane of wavy snow-white hair. North had never noticed another man’s hair before, but he thought that, despite the scowl, this guy had hair women would want to run their fingers through. He ran his hand over his own skull, velveteen on the way down, bristling on the way up. He’d had his hair cropped in Berlin, partly to hide the flash of white that covered the scar. He hadn’t missed it till this minute.
‘The hair belongs to computer scientist Tobias Hawke. He’s thirty-five – way younger than he looks. His hair turned white overnight when he hit nineteen and the twin-engine plane he was in went down in the Australian outback. He took off his own foot to get out from the wreckage…’
North decided Hawke was allowed his good hair.
‘He chewed off his own foot?’ Plug sounded disbelieving.
‘Not chewed, dodo. He used a Swiss Army knife and a piece of the fuselage.’ For this alone, Fang liked the guy, North could tell. ‘He wrapped up the stump in who-cares-what, applied some sort of crude tourniquet and dragged himself nine miles before search and rescue came across him. Surgeons ended up having to amputate his leg above the knee.’ Fang looked momentarily downcast that the best part of the story was over. ‘He competed in the 400 metres in the Beijing Paralympics six years after the amputation. According to gossip, people admire the guy while hating his guts. He’s an obsessive, temperamental workaholic with a massive ego, and he drives the techies who work alongside him crazy with his relentless demands. Despite that, everyone wants to work with him because they think he’s going to make them rich and famous.’ Page after page of magazines and online blogs flashed up on the wall, all of them about Hawke. ‘The AI community is waiting for Hawke to change the world.’
Now she said it, North thought that perhaps he had heard of Hawke. The story of the amputation wasn’t one you’d forget in a hurry.
They were staring at a picture of Hawke on the front cover of Wired under the headline ‘Brit Tech – Red Hot and Happening’. They’d styled the picture with an unfurling Union Jack. A scowling Hawke was in a denim shirt again, standing with his arms folded. Although his face was grim, his eyes told the camera that he enjoyed the fact he was such a big scientific deal. The woman alongside him was in profile, looking upwards, as if she would rather be anywhere but the front of a magazine. Statuesque – a couple of inches taller than her husband – dark hair in old-fashioned waves, cheekbones so sharp they could cut you. She sported a red trouser suit cropped at the ankles and designer trainers. The magazine had imported a British bulldog, which gazed up at her adoringly.
‘His wife and business partner is Esme Sullivan Hawke. Same age as Hawke. Plenty of people rate Hawke but she’s the only person in the world who seems to like the guy. They met at Imperial College London, which by the way they both quit before graduating. She’s an ethicist and chief exec of the tech company they set up in 2003 – aka Derkind – that was the year after he hacked off his foot, by the way. According to their last filing at Companies House…’ – Fang swapped out the happy couple for the summary of accounts, and North missed the sight of Esme Sullivan Hawke already – ‘… the company has a market value of more than a billion. It makes Derkind what’s called a “unicorn”. I can’t trace where the money came from to set it up, which is odd. But it’s about to be worth an awful lot more. Investors are begging to give them money. But for the minute Tobias and Esme own the whole caboodle, apart from some share options that kick in next year.’
‘I hate them already,’ Plug said.
‘They’re brilliant, they look like Greek gods, and they’re about to be gazillionaires, but if it makes you feel any better, five years ago they lost a son from something called diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma.’ Fang brought up a snapshot from a summer’s day of a beaming freckle-faced boy. ‘This is Atticus – he was three.’
North could have been wrong, but it looked like Plug’s eyes glistened. ‘So now I feel like a complete bastard,’ Plug said, under his breath.
‘Hone mentioned AI?’ North said, as much to distract Plug as because he wanted to know.
‘Yes. Artificial intelligence. Do you even know what that is? Because one of you just flew economy in a coffin, and the other one made it happen, so intelligence isn’t your strong point.’
His jaw tightening, Plug switched his gaze from Atticus to North, as if to say, Who have you brought into my house? Fang carried on: ‘Artificial intelligence promises progress in health and transport and defence. A transformation in the way we live. People working less and accomplishing more. Rumour has it that Derkind is on the verge of something that will change our relationship with machines forever. One report predicts AI will add more than fifteen trillion dollars to the global economy by 2030. With our economy struggling to find its feet, Derkind is an even bigger deal than it would be otherwise. This is the next techno frontier, and if Derkind comes up with the goods, Britain’s going to lead the way. Politicians are talking about advances in AI “securing the country’s future for a generation”. This guy in particular…’
Fang spooled through pages that passed in a blur, and a picture appeared of a cadaverous, forty-something man with tightly razored sides to his hair, a lank auburn fringe and jug ears, carrying a red box and a green juice and dressed in a suit jacket but no tie. He was wearing what looked like leather bicycle clips, although there was no bike in sight. ‘Home Secretary Ralph Rafferty. Allegedly he can do The Times crossword in four minutes flat, speaks six languages, and has a double first from Cambridge, though I can’t find any record of it. Rafferty is all over Derkind – bigging them up abroad, telling everyone who’ll listen that the UK is set to be the new Silicon Valley. He’s always banging on about “the future”.’
Ralph Rafferty? North kept up with current affairs. As Fang hurtled through pictures of Rafferty, North’s mind trawled through what he knew about the minister – snippets of his voice, his pale face, speaking at the despatch box, explaining away the deportation of a terminally ill baby and her Ghanaian mother. Fang continued scrolling through pages, searching and clicking like someone possessed.
‘Back,’ North said.
Fang reverse-ferreted. Rafferty stood with Hawke at some function alongside an older, heavyset man in uniform.
‘Who’s that with Rafferty and Hawke?’
She clicked and zoomed and enhanced the image. The caption read: ‘The Rt Hon Ralph Rafferty, MP, Home Secretary; Tobias Hawke, Chief Innovations Officer, Derkind PLC; and General Sir Aeron Kirkham, Joint Forces Command.’ There was something familiar about the man, about the name. North thought hard. Raking back through his memory. A uniform, the barrel chest dripping with medals, a hatchet face with eye bags hanging down almost as far as his jowls.
Fang was skimming one website after another. ‘Ten years ago when soldiers under his command shot up some Afghan girls out playing, the General defended them.’ Her mouth turned down in disapproval. ‘He said the kids had stoned them and one of them had a gun. Turned out the eldest was eight. There was an inquiry but he managed to get all the men honourably discharged. When there was a stink about it, he described the soldiers as “casualties of war” as much as the girls. So, he’s a twat then.’
‘When you say “artificial intelligence”... Are we talking robots?’ Plug sounded hopeful. ‘Like in Terminator?’
Fang rolled her eyes. ‘No – the big AI guys hate that. When we talk about artificial intelligence, broadly speaking we’re talking about systems that learn to replicate intelligent human behaviours. At the minute, it’s what they call “narrow” or weak – things like internet searches, facial recognition or self-drive cars. They can do one thing. But researchers are working towards “general” or strong AI, where machines would outperform humans at nearly all cognitive tasks, not just some. That multitasking could lead to superintelligence with machines learning to think for themselves, explain their decision-making even – machines themselves designing more and more intelligent machines. But nobody is anywhere close to that yet.
‘One weird thing is they aren’t admitting it publicly, but seven days ago GCHQ picked up on a massive leak of Derkind’s intellectual property to China – medical tech – and the UK government is freaking out in case they lose it all.’
‘Can you tell where the leak came from?’
Fang shook her head. ‘I’m trying, but everything in the company is encrypted. It’s going to take time and they don’t have it.’
North looked at her, puzzled.
Fangfang frowned. ‘They don’t have it because Hone’s right – someone already tried to murder Esme Sullivan Hawke. What Hone didn’t mention, by the way, is that she killed the guy they sent.’
‘Killed him?’
Fang nodded. ‘Stone-cold dead. But the chances have to be high that they’ll try again before tomorrow night’s gala launch at the British Museum.’
‘What are they launching?’ Despite himself, North was intrigued.
‘No one knows. But whatever it is, the tech community think it’s going to be huge. People are flying in for it from all over the world. Big names. Of course, Esme has to live that long.’