North sidestepped the curious foreign tourists and the Japanese taking photographs amid the chatter and burble of languages, and showed his embossed invitation to one of the dark-suited bouncers at the gate. The wind whipped at him. A storm was forecast for later in the evening. He took another step forward as if to emphasize his right to be there.
‘Monty De’Ath – pronounced Day-ath,’ North said, and the security guard shook his head as he stared at his iPad, scrolling up and down the names at speed and then more slowly. ‘Sorry, sir, you’re not on the invite list. Perhaps you could move aside and make a call?’
‘Would you mind checking once more,’ North said. It was a narrow line between being insistent and rude. If he made too much fuss, the guard would be tempted to dig in. Sighing, the guy checked the database of official guests on his iPad again and this time found the name Fang had inserted seconds before. ‘Apologies. I don’t know how I missed it. There you are, Mr Day-ath,’ the guard said, the light catching his gold tooth as he tried to suppress a smile.
North nodded. No problem. Walked through in the dinner jacket Plug had obtained from God knows where. He had to hope it wasn’t from a corpse but he had his doubts. He tucked the invitation Fang had faked into the inside pocket and missed the weight and coldness of the SIG that had been there minutes before. He’d palmed it off to Plug when they’d glimpsed the metal detectors beyond the gate. At the time it seemed like the thing to do; now he wasn’t so sure. He wasn’t so sure of the new name either.
‘Monty De’Ath?’ he said, under his breath. ‘Seriously?’
It’s foolproof, Fang had told him. Who makes up a name like that? It has to be legit.
North glanced back. The security guard’s head was bent as he inspected the invitation of a silver-haired man obviously unused to being kept waiting for anything. The guard took his time. He was doing a decent enough job, North assured himself. Security at an event at the British Museum was always going to be tight. It must have cost the Hawkes a small fortune to hire the place and they were probably more secure here among all the treasures than they were in their own offices.
But was Esme safe? He had to admit he was worried. Exiting the stand-alone marquee with its metal detectors and X-ray machines, he slid a tiny Bluetooth earpiece out of the pocket of his dinner jacket and into his ear. Pulled out his phone. ‘Before you go in, you need to know that hack on the Lamborghini…’ – as ever, Fang jumped straight in – ‘…wasn’t a straight-out hack from someone intent on driving you off the road.’
‘It sure felt like that,’ he said, trying not to shudder at the memory of the metal fencing scraping and screaming along the door, the lift and tumble of the car round and round before the bone-shuddering impact as it hit the water. ‘But the hack is going to have to wait.’
‘North, it can’t.’ Fang’s voice went up a notch. ‘You don’t get it. All sorts of tech and motor manufacturers are neck-deep in self-drive cars already. I kept thinking, even if ideas are exploding all over the shop at Derkind, why would Hawke go there? Self-drive is not where his expertise is.’
The noise of her gum-chewing filled his ear and he waited as she presumably blew and popped a bubble.
‘The Chinese didn’t hack that car, or if they did, it’s way more complicated than it looks, because they had a lot to work with when they got in there. It turns out Tobias Hawke is working up systems to sabotage autonomous vehicles.’ There was a note of triumph in her voice. ‘The Lambo was Tobias’s guinea pig.’
‘What are you saying, Fang?’ Hawke was a tech genius and a humanitarian. His medical program proved his motivation. He wanted to cure cancer so that little kids didn’t die like his own son had died. Why would he be trying to kill people? ‘That makes no sense.’
‘North, the car’s systems have been thoroughly wiped down but it was done in a hurry. I’ve found any number of patches to its system that would wreck the autonomous driving. These cars have to know where all the other cars and pedestrians and barriers are – they literally compute what might happen in terms of the other traffic and act accordingly. Someone messed with the Lambo’s probabilistic distribution algorithms.’ North had no idea what that meant, but it didn’t sound good. ‘Basically, they told the car that whatever it did, it wasn’t going to crash. Hawke must have run the program before, over and over – theoretically – but each time, he restored the system. That must be why Hawke recovered the Lambo so fast to the Derkind HQ. He didn’t want the police to start going over the wreckage.’
‘Did Esme know?’
There was a ping on his phone and suddenly, on the screen, he was looking at a pale-faced Esme, a dressing taped to her forehead. North winced at the memory of the crack of her temple as it hit the driver’s-side window. Swiping her security pass through the electronic lock, she took a quick look over her shoulder as if checking for her husband before pushing through a door marked ‘Laboratory 1’. Motion sensors, detecting her presence, lit up the darkened laboratory in a blaze of harsh white light. In the centre of the lab, raised on a hydraulic jack, the yellow car was a crumpled ruin. Its glass smashed, its right side pushed into the centre of the car and the steering wheel sheared off. Water dripped from its undercarriage.
North fought against nausea. The Lamborghini Aventador had been one of the most beautiful cars he’d ever seen and it was a ruin. They could both have died. Nearly did.
Syd, roll dashboard film, please. On the video, Esme spoke out into the listening emptiness of the laboratory. He thought he sensed a quaver in her voice, and he didn’t blame her. It was her second brush with death within a matter of days. Someone was trying to kill her, and she had to be praying that it wasn’t three times a charm.
The picture jumped, cutting between various angles taken from the exterior of the car and the interior. The road surface seemed dry. Passing vehicles. London landmarks. Picking up speed. He heard his own voice and then Esme’s but couldn’t make out the words, then his frantic call to Fang. Smashing through the airport perimeter fence. The perspective of the film shifting from right to left and then over and over – the rush of the water coming to meet the car. Esme raised her hand to her mouth as if to stop herself from screaming as the footage ended.
North considered what Fang had said and what he had just seen. Esme didn’t know anything about Tobias’s sabotage programs. She would never have got behind the wheel if she knew and, thinking back, she’d admitted in the car that she had taken it without Tobias’s knowledge. His work on wrecking self-drive cars would explain why he didn’t want North, or indeed ‘Uncle’ Ed, anywhere near Derkind. Esme had told North that Tobias had done something wrong. But Esme had also said Tobias was compelled to change the world for the better after the death of his son, so why was he destroying the future, rather than creating it?
North figured he’d better ask. ‘Fang, do you think Tobias tried to kill his wife?’
‘If he wanted to kill Esme, he wouldn’t have had to hack his own system. Plus, don’t wife-murderers keep it on the down-low? Plus, I think he loves her, so I’m going with no.’
‘How did you get this footage, Fang?’
Silence.
‘Fang?’
‘All right – I sent the baby drone back in,’ she said. ‘I tweaked it so it fed back the footage to me. Esme is so used to those things, she didn’t even blink.’
North knew better than to argue with her. Standing to one side in the forecourt, just short of the steps leading up to the Greek revival columns and magnificent neoclassical pediment, North watched the latecomers gathering in the bottleneck at the Great Russell Street entrance waiting to file through the marquee. This was tech aristocracy. Fifteen hundred scientists, business people, academics, investors and journalists had been invited to tonight’s gala to hear about Tobias’s creation. Flying in from all over the world. And North had just proved how easy it was to lift or fake an invitation. Did any of them know about Tobias’s sabbotage work? Surely, they’d be horrified? Some of them had billions invested in self-drive cars. Had Tobias just been playing around with the tech to see what was possible. He was a genius – geniuses did crazy things, right? He gazed through the bars at the crowds of tourists, feeling their eyes on him, assessing his status and appeal. Their interest in the broad-shouldered guy in the dinner jacket dying as they realized he was good-looking but no one famous – he was a visiting academic or a City banker. Barely worth watching. Which suited him just fine.
*
Once inside and through the cold and shadowy entrance hall, the shingle roar of conversation and expectation was almost deafening. The crowd in the Great Court with its vaulted glass ceiling was a living thing as huddles of financiers and AI experts moved back and forth, drinks in their hands, breaking apart before coming together, all the time talking and touching. Handshakes, kisses on cheeks, a buzzing, humming sense of excitement as to what Tobias was about to reveal. North didn’t feel safe. He felt exposed, as if he was being watched. Was that possible? He glanced around but the partygoers were intent on each other. He was being paranoid. He’d come into the country without any red flags going up, as far as he knew.
He seized a glass of champagne from a passing waitress, and considered drinking it, drinking a bottle and then another bottle. But he wasn’t in Berlin, he reminded himself. He was in London and he was working. Which gave him every excuse to search the crowd for Esme. He needed to see her and to make sure she was all right. His heart lifted as he caught sight of her among the revellers. She was in a red dress with a nipped-in waist and a huge ruffled slit slashing through the skirt, her dark hair down in deep waves like a Hollywood star from the Forties, a petalled bag dangling from a narrow chain across her body like an oversized peony rose. He watched as she drifted from group to group – shaking hands, listening, nodding – eyes wide, her head back, laughing. Even so, he sensed her preoccupation – the way her gaze occasionally skittered away from the company she was in, the tiniest of frowns. Was she waiting for someone? Waiting for him, perhaps? Or was he flattering himself?
He wondered if it had been her idea to hold the party in the museum. It felt like her. Making history. Launching an artificial intelligence revolution among a treasure trove of ancient artefacts, shedding light on the past and civilizations long gone. An artificial intelligence that might mean the end of our own civilization, or the start of a better one. What would Syd mean for humanity’s future? What would the machines put away in their own museums to remember humanity? Phones? Crucifixes? Bones? Who would we be to them?
Instinctively, Esme reared back as a Chinese man, the size and shape of a blimp, called out her name and then steamed through the crowds to get to her. Dressed in a white dinner jacket and a black shirt, he mopped at his forehead with a huge silk handkerchief. The heat of the crowds was getting to the guest. From a distance he didn’t look like anyone Esme would want to talk to, but she stood patiently in the lee of a marble youth riding a marble horse, waiting for him to reach her. She spoke first but North was no lip-reader. It had to be interesting though, because the blimp grabbed hold of her wrist, pulling her closer. He had her trapped against the plinth, North thought, and escape would be difficult. They stood with, their heads close together. Was the overly familiar guest Octavius Chin? But Hone had said Derkind didn’t take Chin’s money, so why then did Chin think he was within his rights to take hold of Esme and monopolize her? After a minute, she made to move off, but the Chinese agent blocked her path. He wasn’t done.
North kept a smile on his face as he approached.
‘I really do have to go,’ he heard Esme tell Chin as she attempted to step away again. The man showed no sign of wanting to release her.
North figured Esme wouldn’t want him to make a fuss. ‘Why don’t you circulate, Esme,’ he said.
Esme’s face changed from astonishment to delight to concern, all within a blink. Chin’s sharp eyes peered at him from the doughy face. There was a crackle of recognition as, sneering, Chin released Esme – her slender wrist covered in red marks.
‘North! My God, I feel so guilty about what happened.’ Esme’s fingertips grazed his sleeve and he thought how pleased he was that she was here next to him and not dead on a slab thanks to a killer car. It was good to think the feeling was mutual.
He shrugged. ‘Let’s agree that I’ll drive next time. Or at least you will. Go mingle.’ His gaze took in Chin. ‘I’ll take care of your guest.’
She hesitated as if she had more to say, before sparing North a brief smile. Holding her evening bag close to her, she stepped away, turning on her heel and forcing her way through the crowds. She looked back at him once – smiled again – before someone blocked her path. She was the woman of the moment – of the future – he thought, and everyone wanted a piece.
Close up, Chin looked fatter and sweatier than he did from a distance. He mopped at his forehead again – the silk handkerchief covered in a motif of tiny octopuses. ‘I know who you are, Michael Xavier North.’ North kept the surprise from his face. Chin, he reminded himself, was an agent of the Chinese security services. ‘You are a former executioner and lackey of the capitalist system. Until, that is – wàng ēn fù yì. As you would say, “you bit the hand that fed you”. Or rather, you assassinated seven members of the British establishment in revenge for the death of your lover. We all mourn in our own way. My condolences, Mr North.’ Chin bowed and his chin disappeared into the flesh of his neck. But when the agent looked up, there was no sympathy in the narrowed eyes, only a dark, infinite malevolence.
‘After which bloodletting, as I explained to my superiors, Michael Xavier North disappeared. Believed to be retired or dead. Yet, here you are. Presumably in the pay of British intelligence, for you to have the confidence to return? Despite all those you have angered. All those who must wish you, in your turn, dead. All those who would be suitably grateful for the news of your return.
‘Do you have anything for me, North? Any titbit you would like to trade in return for my silence on the matter of your return? Information is my business and you would not find my terms onerous.’ He stretched out a hand and slipped what North took to be a business card into his trouser pocket. A strangely intimate move. ‘So you know where to find me.’
North kept his face neutral.
But Chin was already moving off. North was a minnow. Chin’s huge bulk pushed its way through the thronging guests, regardless of the muttered grumbles at his passing. North glanced around for Esme but she was nowhere to be seen. He started moving through the crowds in search of her or a vantage point to keep watch over her. He’d be a lot more comfortable if she stayed in his line of sight at all times – for all kinds of reasons he didn’t want to admit, even to himself. And when this gala was over, he needed to tell her what Fang had discovered about the Lamborghini, and he needed to know what else she thought her husband had done.
‘North.’ Fang’s voice was in his ear again. She sounded appalled. ‘Is that true? Did you kill all those people?’
He moved out of the hubbub in the Great Court and into a doorway. Stepped into the Enlightenment Gallery. What to tell her? He’d killed a lot more than seven people in his time. The raised voices brought him back to himself.
The lights were low in the gallery, but even so its Greek Revival interior gleamed with gilt and knowledge acquired over centuries. He tapped his earpiece twice to tell Fang he couldn’t talk, as he kept to the wall, slightly behind a marble column with a bust of King George III. He was too far away to make out the men’s words. He moved closer, tucking himself behind a statue of Venus. Towards the back of the gallery, past the display cases full of antiquities and natural history specimens, Paulie and Tobias were engaged in a full-scale row – the two men so intent on each other they didn’t notice North.
‘You’ve ruined my life, Tobias. I want my job back.’
Tobias shook off Paulie’s restraining hand. ‘We make our own choices, Paulie. You made yours.’
North took a step closer to hear better and the mahogany and oak floor creaked. He took a breath, moved forward again.
‘This wasn’t the deal.’ Paulie’s voice cracked with the strain.
‘It’s not my fault if you were caught in a Chinese honeytrap, Paulie. Grow up.’
‘You know it wasn’t like that, Tobias…’
‘Getting out from under my shadow is the best thing that could happen to you, Paulie. I’m sure your Chinese mates will give you a job tomorrow.’
‘Please, Tobias, Esme said we should talk…’ His voice cracking, Paulie reached for the older man, but Tobias pushed past, his stick catching on a corner of the case, almost unbalancing him.
‘You’re a fool, Paulie.’ Tobias turned as he spoke from the door. ‘You shouldn’t be here.’ For the first time, North thought he caught proper emotion from Tobias – some flare of pity – before he extinguished it as quickly as it had come. With a departing expletive, Tobias turned his back on his former friend. North could hear the tapping of the silver-tipped cane as an unseen Tobias moved through the next gallery and away from Paulie.
Paulie’s back was to North, his hands spread out over a display case full of pinned butterflies, his bald head hanging. He swivelled hearing North’s step, and hope lit up his otherwise wretched face. ‘Do you have it – the passport?’
North thought about lying. Paulie would believe it because he wanted to believe it. Believe that a kindly stranger could magic up a British passport to rescue his one true love and that Paulie and Yan could live happily ever after together. Star-crossed lovers no more. North didn’t have the heart to do that to him.
‘It’s not happening, Paulie. I tried.’
There was a sound from somewhere deep and wretched and solitary inside Paulie, a cross between a shriek and a sob. He nodded too many times like he expected no less, his eyes filling with fat tears.
Blinking them back, Paulie looked around the gallery as if he were waking from a dream only to find himself in a nightmare.
He’d failed to persuade Tobias to give him back his job and he’d failed to persuade North to hand over a passport. Paulie’s anger was on a slow burn, but underneath the self-pity, it was starting to take hold.
‘I lost my dad when I was seven. Even that wasn’t as bad as when I lost my hair. Alopecia universalis.’ He said it like it was a magic spell. ‘It’s an autoimmune disease. My mother took two jobs and we tried anything and everything – steroids, immunotherapy drugs, ultraviolet light – but nothing worked. Without my sister and my mum, I’d have killed myself, because through it all, boys like you made my life a living hell.’ North had never made anyone’s life hell at school, but Paulie was on a roll. ‘Then it all changed, because I put the work in and I made something of myself. But look at me now. I’m back to being a laughing stock – a fool.’ He gestured to the gallery. ‘Do you even know anything about the Enlightenment, North? Is it anything you cover in thug school?’
Was Paulie right to brand him a thug? Maybe. When he had to be. But not always.
‘Tell me,’ North said.
Paulie wanted to refuse, but the urge to impress was too strong to resist. ‘Reason, liberty, the scientific method, scepticism about religion – revolution. There’s a German philosopher called Immanuel Kant…’
North had read Kant. Like many autodidacts, he read books like he breathed and drank coffee. But he figured if Paulie kept talking, he might reveal something useful.
‘… he said “dare to know” – sapere aude – that we should think independently, have the courage to use our own reason. That’s what Tobias does – he dares to know. He isn’t frightened of anything. Not like me. He has this once-in-a-generation mind but sometimes I think that’s the only good thing to say about him. I want to hate him and some days I do – he’s a bully, he’s obnoxious, he frightens people with all his shouting and carrying on. Worse, he has everything. Esme is smart and beautiful. She’s the most decent human being I have ever met, and she loves him beyond reason. He just takes it all as his due because he is the great Tobias Hawke. But then he does something astonishing, and the hate goes away.’
North thought that if Paulie truly hated Tobias, he wouldn’t be hurting so badly.
‘That prosthetic leg he designed could have made him a fortune,’ Paulie said. ‘But he gave it away. Industry adapted the AI-enabled joint mobility for aeronautical engineering. He could have made millions.’ At the thought of the millions to be made, a spasm of envy passed over Paulie’s cherubic face. This was someone who’d never had money. ‘But Tobias said he didn’t care. Because he wanted everyone to have access to a better-quality prosthetic.
‘So what if the medical program is out there! This way it will acquire more and more data, learn faster and faster, and save more and more lives. But the moneymen out there drinking their champagne don’t want that to happen, and Tobias knows that. They aren’t interested in saving kids’ lives, or in science or knowledge. Only in the bottom line.’
Was Paulie saying what North thought he was saying? ‘Who leaked the medical program, Paulie?’
‘This is a new world now, thanks to Tobias and Esme...’ – he gestured at the party going on outside the gallery that they could hear but not see – ‘... and I’m not welcome in it any more.’
‘The leak, Paulie?’
Paulie opened his mouth to reply, but before he could, the noise of heavy gunfire, screaming and breaking glass shattered the calm. Automatically, North reached for his gun – then remembered it wasn’t there.
Paulie’s eyes widened with panic. He made as if for the door before, in the same motion, North hauled him back, swung him round and pressed him against the display cabinet. ‘Tell me. Who leaked the medical program?’
It was a primal thing, he thought – the impact of other people’s terror on your own system. Adrenaline. Spiked heartbeat. Blood pounding in his ears.
‘Are you insane?’ Paulie’s soft hands clutched at North’s fingers, but there was no strength in them as he tried to wrestle himself free. ‘Someone out there is shooting people.’
North took a tighter hold of the scientist as Fang spoke into his ear. ‘North, get out of there!’ Her voice made him jump – he’d almost forgotten she could hear what was going on. He wanted to get out of there, of course he did. Someone, somewhere, was firing a gun, and he didn’t want to get shot. But he couldn’t go anywhere, because he was right here, and here was where it was happening. There were too many questions. He had to know who leaked the medical tech.
‘North! What the hell is wrong with you. Let Paulie go, and get someplace safe. Now, moron-person.’ Fang’s voice was brooking no argument. Cursing, North released his grip on Paulie just as the noise of gunfire moved closer.