“Your son?” asked Milgrim.

“Son?” He frowned. “It is Shombo.”

“Is what?”

“Is arse-pain. Nightmare. Bigend.” He’d picked up the Air now and was peering savagely into it from a few inches away.

“Bigend is?” Milgrim was not unfamiliar with the opinion, if the man meant Bigend.

“Shombo. I must keep him here, take him home. I lose track of the months.” He tapped the little Mac with a screwdriver. “Nothing has been added here.” He began to smoothly reassemble it, his efficiency fueled, Milgrim sensed, with resentment. Of gray-robed Shombo, Milgrim hoped.

“Is that all you need to do?”

“All? My family is living with this person.”

“To my computer.”

“Now software analysis.” He produced a battered black Dell from beneath the counter and cabled it to the Air. “Is password?”

“Locative,” Milgrim said, and spelled it. “Lowercase. Dot. One.” He went to the showcase to look more closely at the Enigma machine. “Does patination make them more valuable?”

“What?” LEDs flashed in his direction from the plastic glasses.

“If they’re worn. Evidence of use.”

“Most valuable,” said Voytek, staring at him over the tops of the glasses, “is mint.”

“What are these things?” Black, shark-toothed gears, the size of the bottom of a beer bottle. Each one stamped with a multidigit number, into which white paint had been rubbed.

“For you, same as burst encoder: one thousand pounds.”

“I mean what are they for?”

“They set encryption. Receiving machine must have day’s identical rotor.”

A single rap on the door, tinkling the lily bells. It was the other driver, the one who’d driven Milgrim in from Heathrow.

“Shit-persons,” said Voytek in resignation, and went to unlock the door again.

“Urine specimen,” the driver said, producing a fresh brown paper bag.

“The fuck,” said Voytek.

“I’ll need to use your bathroom,” Milgrim said.

“Bath? I have no bath.”

“Toilet. Loo.”

“In back. With Shombo.”

“He’ll have to watch,” Milgrim said, indicating the driver.

“I don’t want to know,” said Voytek. He rapped on the door through which Shombo had vanished. “Shombo! Men need loo!”

“Fuck off,” said Shombo, muffled by the door.

Milgrim, closely followed by the driver, approached it, tried the knob. It opened.

“Fuck off,” said Shombo again, but abstractedly, from a multiscreened rat’s-nest quite far back in a larger, darker space than Milgrim had expected. The screens were covered with dense columns of what Milgrim took to be figures, rather than written language.

With the driver behind him, Milgrim headed for the plywood-walled toilet cubicle, illuminated by a single bare bulb. There wouldn’t have been room for the driver, who simply loomed in the doorway, passing Milgrim the paper bag. Milgrim opened it, removed the sandwich bag, opened that, removed the blue-topped bottle. He broke the paper seal, removed the lid, and unzipped his fly.

“Piss off,” muttered Shombo, without a trace of irony.

Milgrim sighed, filled the bottle, capped it, finished in the grimy toilet, flushed by pulling a chain, then put the bottle in the sandwich bag, the sandwich bag in the paper bag, handed the paper bag to the driver, then washed his hands in cold water. There didn’t seem to be any soap.

As they left the room, Milgrim saw the reflection of the bright screens in Shombo’s eyes.

He closed the door carefully behind him.

The driver handed Milgrim a crisp manila envelope of a pattern suggesting deeply traditional banking practices. Within it, Milgrim felt the sealed bubble-pack containing his medication.

“Thanks,” said Milgrim.

The driver, without a word, took his leave, Voytek bustling irritably to lock the door behind him.

41. GEAR-QUEER

He’ll be right down,” said Jacob, smiling and luxuriantly bearded as ever, when he met her at Blue Ant’s entrance. “How was Paris? Would you like coffee?”

“Fine, thanks. No coffee.” She felt ragged, and assumed she looked it, but also better, since Heidi had forced her to make the call. Looking up at the lobby’s used-eyeglasses chandelier, she welcomed whatever distraction or annoyance Bigend might be able to provide.

And here he suddenly came, the optically challenging blue suit muted, if that could be the word for it, by a black polo shirt. Behind him, silent and alert, his two umbrella-bearing minders. Leaving Jacob behind, he took Hollis’s arm and steered her back out the door, followed by the minders. “Not good, Jacob,” he said to her, quietly. “Sleight’s.”

“Really?”

“Not entirely positive yet,” he said, leading her left, then left again at the corner. “But it looks likely.”

“Where are we going?”

“Not far. I’m no longer conducting important conversations on Blue Ant premises.”

“What’s happening?”

“I should have the whole phenomenon modeled. Have some good CG visualizations done. It’s not clockwork, of course, but it’s familiar. I’d guess it takes a good five or six years to cycle through.”

“Milgrim made it sound like a palace coup, some kind of takeover.”

“Overly dramatic. A few of my brightest employees are quitting. Those who haven’t gotten where they’d hoped to, with Blue Ant. So few do, really. Someone like Sleight tries to quit with optimal benefits, of course. Builds his own golden parachute. Robs me blind, if he can. Information flows out, before these parties depart, to the highest bidders. Always more than one golden parachutist.” He took her arm again and crossed the narrow street, in the wake of a passing Mercedes. “Too many moving parts for a solo operator. Sleight, probably Jacob, two or three more.”

“You don’t seem that alarmed.”

“I expect it. It’s always interesting. It can shake other things out. Reveal things. When you want to know how things really work, study them when they’re coming apart.”

“What does that mean?”

“Increased risk. Increased opportunity. This one comes at an inopportune time, but then they do seem to. Here we are.” He’d stopped in front of a narrow Soho shopfront, one whose austerely minimalist signage announced TANKY amp; TOJO in brushed aluminum capitals. She looked in the window. An antique tailor’s dummy, kitted out in waxed cotton, tweed, corduroy, harness leather.

He held the door for her.

“Welcome,” said a small Japanese man with round gold-framed glasses. There was no one else in the shop.

“We’ll be in back,” said Bigend, leading Hollis past him.

“Of course. I’ll see that you aren’t disturbed.”

Hollis smiled at the man, nodded. He bowed to her. He wore a tweed hacking jacket with sleeves made partially of waxed cotton.

The back office in Tanky amp; Tojo was tidier, less shabby than she expected spaces like this to be. There was no evidence of employees attempting to alleviate boredom, no stabs at humor, no wistful pockets of nonwork affect. The walls were freshly painted gray. Cheap white shelving was piled with plastic-wrapped stock, shoe boxes, books of fabric samples.

“Milgrim and Sleight were in South Carolina,” said Bigend, seating himself behind the small white Ikea desk. One of its corners, facing her, was chipped, revealing some core material that resembled compacted granola. She sat on a very Eighties-looking vanity stool, pale violet velour, bulbous, possibly the last survivor of some previous business here. “Sleight had arranged for us to have a look at a garment prototype. We’d picked up interesting industry buzz about it, though when we got the photos and tracings, really, we couldn’t see why. Our best analyst thinks it’s not a tactical design. Something for mall ninjas.”

“For what?”

“The new Mitty demographic.”

“I’m lost.”

“Young men who dress to feel they’ll be mistaken for having special capability. A species of cosplay, really. Endemic. Lots of boys are playing soldier now. The men who run the world aren’t, and neither are the boys most effectively bent on running it next. Or the ones who’re actually having to be soldiers, of course. But many of the rest have gone gear-queer, to one extent or another.”