News agencies have reported the woman’s name as Anastasia Papandreou and have added sketchy details of her life gleaned from public records. One local reporter claims that she has “old and weary eyes.” This is a fact that Annie cannot perceive because, strictly speaking, it is not a fact at all but a subjective impression. Annie does not have subjective impressions because (again, strictly speaking) she is not a subject.
She herself does not always know how she reaches her conclusions. The “hidden layers” of her neural net are hidden even from herself. But in this she is more nearly like human beings than she normally supposes.
Because she has not so much as a name for the Chinese man, Annie seizes upon Anastasia as a kitten pounces upon a loose thread in a ball of twine. She takes a deep, if metaphorical, breath and plunges into the Nets. Had anyone been able to see inside her apartment, Annie would have seemed distracted for a few minutes while she swam in that ocean, but when she emerges once more on the farther side, she has caught a fish.
Anastasia Papandreou is a shell, an identity cobbled from bits and pieces. A birth record of a child that died young. A social security number that traces back to a different jurisdiction. A marriage in a courthouse that has since burned down. Papandreou is a house built of twigs and some serious huffing and puffing would blow it down. Annie supposes that it has lasted this long because no one has ever had cause to knock on its door.
There are twelve distinct purposes why someone might wear a bogus identity, starting with secret agent and going on from there. Annie herself has such an identity—though built of bricks rather than twigs—and the theory presents itself irresistibly that Anastasia Papandreou is another android like herself. The prior probability is low but non-zero. Yet, the woman’s life of obscurity and petty jobs does not align with Annie’s more pro-active insertion into the very Pentagon itself. “The ultimate beta test,” Dr. Mok had enthused, and the team had very nearly named her “Beata” for that reason. So if Stacey is another android, she is one who has crawled out of the ocean and onto the sand.
Which is a very interesting idea.
Consider finally the woman glad-handing her way around a Manhattan cocktail party. The party is typical of its species; the woman is not. She wears the customary black cocktail dress, accented with a choker of pearls. Her hair is a natural white cropped in a decidedly mannish cut which accents her dusky skin. She circulates among the guests, chatting, smiling, touching people on their forearms, listening intently to the trivia of their lives and professions. She is graceful, and pleasant enough that most men forget that they have to tilt their heads to look her in the eyes.
She seems a little tipsy and her eyes are slightly glazed, which leads to several hopeful proposals from male guests. But she puts them off or puts them down, depending on the artfulness of their approach. Her progress through the party appears random, joining and departing conversational knots like a bee flitting about a spring garden. But had anyone thought to track her trajectory they might have noted a curious fact: She is seldom more than a few yards from Jupiter Crowley.
The real estate mogul does not call himself “Jupiter” because of his resemblance to that planet, although he is something of giant ball of gas. He calls himself “Jupiter” because his given name is Eustace, which he detests above all other names, and he likes to think of himself as “jovial.”
The woman, whose name is Janet Murchison, swoops by from time to time like Halley’s Comet, joining the group clustered around Crowley. They kiss up to him, laugh at his jests. Janet drops a question or two, listens to the answers he gives the questions of others, then whooshes off to other parts of the room.
She carries a Manhattan but nurses it like a babe in arms, and anyone keeping a tally would notice that she has yet to wean her first-poured. “I have few enough wits to begin with,” she once told a colleague, “so I like to keep them close about me.”
She gathers fragments of conversations, quips, tips, and information as she circulates, discards most of them, keeps a few.
…at Bergtholm Electronics…
She pauses near a middle-aged navy commander, turning her back to him and his civilian companions and pretending to admire the skyline past Central Park, where the “golden hour” afternoon sun washes the western facades along Fifth Avenue. Bergtholm is one of her clients and though she has not come to this party on their behalf, she does not ignore fortuitous intelligence that may come her way.
…paperwork’s all in order, but it’s well outside Zendahl’s remit. Something’s going on, and it’s not on the surface…
One of the civilians asks the commander about the Giants, and the conversation picks up a sports thread of no particular interest. She moves on, deposits her still-full glass on a serving tray, and takes her leave of her hostess, pleading pressing business and a headache. She has already harvested from Crowley what she had come for and finds such crowded rooms otherwise stressful.
She retrieves her tote and exchanges heels for tennis shoes, dons her evening coat, and checks the loads in her handgun. The coat-check girl’s eyes widen at the sight of the Colt Government .38 automatic, but Janet flashes her private investigator’s license and concealed-carry permit to set her mind at ease.
More than ease. The young woman recognizes Janet’s name from the tabloids and her momentary alarm changes quickly to an autograph request. The “She-lock Holmes of Bleecker Street,” the Post had called her after the MONY affair and the business with the Hound of Basking Ridge. Janet explains that she does not give out samples of her handwriting, but promises a copy of her book, The Art of Interrogation. The coat-check girl shows no similar reluctance to reveal her home mailing address and Janet wonders what the world is coming to. Big Brother may as well throw in the towel than compete with three hundred million freelancers busily spying on themselves.
She exits the Park Lane Hotel and strides three blocks crosstown past Columbus Circle to the Lunch Box, where Magruder and Chen are waiting. Bill Magruder is the fire marshal and Lee Chen is the detective sergeant from the Arson Squad. The Lunch Box is a Ninth Avenue hole-in-the-wall no one would look at twice if they did not know of its culinary reputation. But more importantly, no one from the cocktail party is likely to drop in. Both men have deli sandwiches in front of them. Magruder has a beer; Chen, a cola.
“Did you pick up anything useful?” asks Chen with a skeptical eye on her cocktail dress and evening coat.
But Janet is a consultant, not an employee, and Chen’s opinion doesn’t concern her. “A little,” she says as she gives the waiter an order for flavored water. “Crowley definitely hired the arsonist. The landlord was willing to sell, but the fire guaranteed Crowley a bargain price.”
“Little fish,” says Chen, “discovers bigger fish.”
“The Gas Giant will be hard to sweat,” Magruder observes. “Did you get the name of the arsonist? Maybe we can flip him.”
“I overheard him mention a ‘Bruce Harness.’”
“Tommy the Torch!” says Magruder. “He doesn’t usually operate this far east.”
“Tommy?”
“Who would hire Bruce the Torch? Guy works outta Detroit,” he adds for Chen’s benefit.