_why: No. I despise everything I have seen of Perfection. Is this relevant?
Byron14: To potential employment.
_why: You want to hire me?
Byron14: We should resume this conversation another time.
_why: Why?
Byron14: mugurski71 is looking for you, and the darknet is not immune to attack.
_why: He won’t find me.
Byron14: You are in Egypt, probably a coastal area, likely the Red Sea, probably a tourist resort.
I count.
My breaths.
My world.
I type slowly, carefully.
_why: Why’d you think that?
Byron14: I tracked mugurski71. He was in Oman five days ago. Logically you would flee after a failed exchange. Unlikely you would risk returning to Dubai; the border with Saudi Arabia is closed, and it is risky to cross into Yemen. The only options remaining are air travel or sea. Four days ago, a passenger on a cruise ship registered a complaint that her ticket had been stolen on a vessel headed for Egypt. That vessel arrived this morning, and according to customs, one passenger more than was registered on the vessel disembarked. These things are not so difficult to check. As I said: we could perhaps both benefit from suspending this conversation.
A moment, to consider all this. I could find nothing in it to pick apart.
I wrote, and was surprised to see that I had written it:
_why: What if we worked together? What then?
Byron14: Could you gain access to the 106 club?
_why: I can get into anything.
Byron14: I am not interested in boasts.
_why: I have the goods from Dubai.
Nothing.
I ran my fingers between the keys on the keyboard, the lightest of touches, feeling their shape.
When learning to lockpick, roll grains of salt between your fingertips to increase sensitivity.
I half closed my eyes, felt the tiny irregularities in the keys, dirt stuck to the sides, the raised bump of the letters.
I waited for Byron14 to reply, and wondered if he too was counting his breath.
Byron14: So you do at that. Would you care to resume this conversation in three days’ time?
Byron14: Good luck.
Byron14 was gone.
Chapter 21
Back to the hotel; a hasty pack, a premature checking-out. Has the time come to risk a plane? I look up Sharm el-Sheikh airport; not impossible to smuggle diamonds out, but what if mugurski71 is watching?
What if, what if, what if; the perpetual mantra of the thief on the run.
I count my breaths, looking for that fine line between sensible caution and unwise terror. It is perfectly possible for a man to hold a picture of my face in his hand, and look on my features, and know that the two are the same. In the future, he will remember only holding the picture, not my face, but it is the present tense we need worry about.
Standing in the hotel foyer, I ask the receptionist to call me a taxi.
“Where to?”
Nowhere to go, except the airport.
“I’m catching a cruise ship,” I lied. “I’m going to sail up the Suez.”
Doesn’t matter if she believes me or not; she’ll forget the lie as easily as the truth. The important thing to disguise is digital records. Let any calls recorded to a taxi company hear only reference to the sea.
“Ten minutes,” she said.
I smiled, and walked out into the smiting sun, to find a cab for myself.
The smell of air freshener, the sound of Arab pop, undulations and the tapping of the drum, a mat of wooden beads down the backs of the seats, the high scrape of the violin and twang of electric keys.
Where to? asked the driver.
The airport, I replied.
A nowhere building in the sand. Mountains behind, dust-yellow all around. They were thinking of adding another terminal, extending the runway, as people flocked to the sea. 
! Bienvenue! 
! 
!
I bought a ticket to Istanbul, waited in the departures lounge, watching people, watching security, waiting.
Quietly terrifying, going through customs.
I was tempted just to wear the necklace, but no; still too many images of the stolen jewels floating about. Ridiculous plans floated through my mind; a diamond in my shoe, swallowed diamonds in my stomach, in my pockets, in my coat, in the back of my mobile phone where a battery should be… but no. Once a customs inspector finds one diamond, they’ll start looking for them all. Best to just brave it out, and rely on memory failure should I need to run.
Nearly every courier and mule caught crossing a border, is caught because they look afraid.
I stand in the lady’s bathroom and paint a picture of who I want to be. Eyeshadow the colour of the desert at sunset; a smile to charm — weary from travel, wry at the thought of distances yet to be covered, but happy to be going home, relieved and relaxed, a body warmed in the Egyptian sun.
I am not Hope Arden.
I am not afraid.
(My parents would be ashamed of me, if they could see me now.)
I straighten my back, and head towards the border.
Chapter 22
I think I have met someone like me.
I say this with some hesitation, since I can’t remember the experience.
A collection of documents: letters, photos, a snowglobe with the Empire State Building inside, a ticket stub for a show on Broadway. I remember the show, I remember the Empire State, I remember a cold night in November, the snow beginning to fall — but I do not remember having company for any of it.
And yet, in a small lock-up in Newark, there is a plastic box, carefully sealed, which contains within it a photo taken of me and a man, a stranger to my memory, smiling together outside the theatre. Another picture, a face I can’t recall, on Fifth Avenue, waving, a woollen hat with ear flaps pulled down across his head, two green and white bobbles bouncing around his neck. He looks ridiculous. Maybe early thirties? A letter in an unknown hand says he’s thirty-two. If I look at his photograph I can say that he is probably five foot eight, with mousy blond hair, grey eyes, and a mole on his chin. He looks as if he should be overweight, but that is a trick of his features, of eyes too wide for the face that holds them, skin soft, a neck a little too short for the body on which it sits, for look — the camera pulls back and for a moment beneath the winter coat and winter boots he’s a kid, a skinny child who hasn’t yet reached his destiny as a portly old man.
Now I close my eyes.
Now.
And now I cannot remember his features at all, though I saw his photo not a minute ago. I remember writing them, and can write them still — hair, eyes, height — but these are just words, abstract concepts, not an individual. This must be how it is for Luca Evard.
I open a box full of recorded memories, and meet someone who was like myself.
A letter, from myself, to myself, written when I was twenty-four years old. A photograph of me writing, then another of a stranger in the same place, 53rd Street Station, waiting for the train to Queens. I remember writing; I don’t remember exactly what I wrote, but I’m sure there wasn’t anyone with me — no photographer. Why did I write the letter? Because I was bored, maybe, and waiting for the train. Why was I going to Queens? Curiosity. Nothing else. These are the memories I have, and yet I hold a letter which says, in my handwriting: