Alexandra had been told his name had once been Allsworth. She had not, of course, been told Bill was Wright’s alias for Jeremy when they met these days, a riff on Wilhelm, the real third name of E. T. A. Hoffmann. Jeremy called Wright Ray. And it was from Ray, or rather Wright’s former name Wilmington, that Jeremy had learned in Lisburn how secrets could thicken a man, accrete rings so that one was not diminished by the work, worn by it. In invisibility, he had expanded like hot air, but in recent years, his hands shook except when he spoke of Northern Ireland. “The voices of bureaucrats dismantle years of our life,” he said. “It is all cartoon legitimacy, redeemed outlaws. Terrorists don’t get better. They must think we’re stupid.”
Jeremy looked at his feet. “It’s other fish now.”
“The other fish they know to be sharks. PIRA painted pretty pictures of Basques. They would cry about rubber bullets and human rights. Meanwhile,” Wright said.
“Fertilizer and Barrett Lights.”
“Thinking shock to be astonishing. Thinking martyrs to be saints.”
Jeremy spoke slowly. He stared into the white pane of a cocktail napkin, skated it on the edge of the table. “But that isn’t why you asked me here. That’s old news now.”
Wright flicked his hand in and out of his pocket, pushing a folded piece of newsprint toward Jeremy. It was a short piece in the financial section. An AP bite. According to the story, Cathexis had moved its headquarters to Dublin. Then an Irish subsidiary of the company moved to Bermuda, a tax haven. Jeremy read it twice to see if he’d missed something.
Wright agitated his hands, vibrated. “If you’re seeing what I’m seeing,” he said, pointing to a line in the clipping, “you’re seeing this goodly American running the show is the same goodly American who made the call on a number of crises. You’re remembering that these crises, they were addressed with coups.”
“And,” Jeremy said.
“And you see the connections or you are naïve. I smell fish, Billy. Mackerel, salmon. Our American friends are demanding from private enterprise weaknesses in the software they can exploit for surveillance, digital weapons R&D, misinformation campaigns, or all of the above.”
Jeremy’s knee began to pop like a sewing machine needle. “It isn’t the worst idea.”
“They can’t control this kind of warfare, Bill, because they don’t understand it. They don’t understand the science of hitting buttons in a room.”
“Maybe they are not card-carrying Luddites, Ray.”
The surface of Wright’s face peeled back, gleaming, gray teeth peeking out from thin, tense lips. He arched his neck back. “If you’re talking about that adorable little idea out of the Weapons Intel Unit.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Tried to bug PIRA weapons to snatch the dirty talk. All the techies thought electronics were going to win a deathless war, but what happens? Republicans get wise to the jarking, sussed out all the funny gunnies. It was as though the WIU had given the Provos a list of touts. A load of executions caused by the fastest-fingered secretaries in the army.”
“That was then.”
“Private companies though, Bill. How do we know they are secure? Or, how do we know they don’t sell the same technological weapons to terrorist groups or hostile governments? Security. Mercenaries. Go ahead and say it’s not a woodchuck. It’s a groundhog. No, it’s a whistle-pig. But it’s all the same squirrel. Every agent thinks he is offering the best of all possible worlds. Find out the mistress is everyone’s mistress, but you cannot trace the beds because these are black ops. Because there are no checks on men like us.”
Jeremy couldn’t quite keep up, follow the progression of conversation. What he saw looking at Wright was a hunger for action that made the air vibrate, that hunger that would find any opening. It made Jeremy’s ears ring or maybe it was the music they ducked into to cordon off their words to everyone but each other. He took a long drink so that the heat spread in long fingers through his chest.
“This is not even to speak of whether actors within governments can be trusted. Think of all the Sinn Féin TDs in the Dáil or Seanad, the NIA, lapsed PIRA with their ballot box legitimacy and their old friends. People don’t change, Bill.”
“You don’t change, Ray,” Jeremy said.
“In Lisburn, Lawrence wanted to believe entering information in intel databases was multiplying knowledge, that it would skim away inefficiencies in interagency sharing. Trust MI5, RUC. Please. We might as well shout secrets through microphones. So where does that leave us?”
“In new lives, Ray.” Jeremy meant it gently. “You’re paranoid.”
Wright reached over the table, flicked a speck of something from Jeremy’s collar. He peeled back slow and uniform as the second hand of a clock moving from ten to twelve. “What if I were to tell you that a Sinn Féin councilor had met with someone on the payroll of that pinguid little security firm Tyle headed by Lawrence?”
“Are you?”
“And happens to be Tyle’ve gone very deep into cyber.”
Jeremy inspected the collar Wright had undirtied. “How would you know who meets with Lawrence’s men?”
“You don’t think that’s interesting.”
“I think there are a lot of reasons for contact,” Jeremy said.
“You’re not listening, Bill. Lawrence. Irish. Public-private. Cash flows. What’s the sum?”
Jeremy worked over logic, refutations, but these were useless devices here. He knew the prolonged pinnacle of danger was the last bastion of reality to Wright.
“Lawrence is playing both sides of the pitch, Bill.”
“There’s no way to know that,” Jeremy said.
“You know what Wittgenstein said about the human soul?” Wright said.
“Ah yes, Professor Wright.”
“Don’t be cruel,” Wright said. “Be smart.”
“It doesn’t matter how many wit’s ends you’ve got, it doesn’t make a knot.”
Wright sucked his cheeks tight to his teeth. “And would it be tied in a pretty enough ribbon for you if I said Lawrence had also personally met with your old colleague Gavin Thomas? That there was some very interesting talk about capital flows from Belfast?”
“How would you know that?”
“You asked, Jeremy. You came to me for help with Thomas.”
“You said he was just another hedgie.”
“And you convinced me otherwise, Billy.”
“Jeremy,” someone said.
He turned, squinted. Two women. One unrecognizable. The other saying his name again. His throat was dry. “Genevieve.”
“What are you doing here?” she said.
“What are you? Decide against the reunion?”
She put her drink down. The other woman was smiling, looking back and forth between them. She reached to shake Wright’s hand.
“What reunion?” Genevieve said.
“Yours.”