She cut the engine, put down the kickstand, and swatted at Milgrim’s hands, which he quickly withdrew. The sudden silence was disorienting. He struggled off, knees stiff, and removed the helmet. “Where are we?” He looked up at the high, soot-blackened ceiling, hung with shattered fiberglass fairings.
Now she dismounted, swinging one multibuckled boot over the seat. “Suthuk,” she said, after removing the scarred yellow helmet.
“What?”
“South-wark. South of the river. Suth-uk.” She set the helmet on a cluttered tool cart, and began to undo the elastic net that held Milgrim’s bag atop her gas tank.
“What is this place?”
“A roll-in. Vinegar and brown paper. Quick and dirty repairs. No appointment necessary. For couriers.”
Milgrim raised the helmet, sniffed at its interior, put it on the motorcycle where he’d sat. She handed him his bag.
After various rippings of Velcro, the zipper down the front of her jacket made its own loud noise. “You hadn’t ridden a motorcycle before?”
“A scooter, once.”
“There’s a center-of-gravity concept you’re missing. You need passenger lessons.”
“Sorry,” said Milgrim, and he was.
“Not a problem.” Her hair was a pale brown. He hadn’t been able to tell in Paris, in the darkened hotel lobby. The helmet had made it stick up in back. He wanted to smooth it down.
The man in the once-orange boiler suit came to the entrance. “Himself is on the bridge,” he said to Fiona. He sounded Irish, but looked to Milgrim to be of some other, darker ethnicity, his face battered and immobile. He took a cigarette from behind his ear and lit it, using a small transparent lighter. Put the lighter in a side pocket and absently wiped his hands on the stained orange fabric. “You could wait in the room,” he said, and smiled at Fiona, “for all that’s good in it.” His two front teeth were framed in gold, and protruded at an unusual angle, like the roof of a tiny porch. He drew on his cigarette.
“Is there tea, Benny?”
“I’ll send the boy,” the man said.
“Carburetors aren’t right,” she said, looking at her bike.
“I told you not to go with the Kawasaki, didn’t I?” said Benny, pinching the cigarette for a final fierce drag, then letting it drop, to crush it with a battered, grease-soaked toe, through which dull steel showed. “Carbs wear out. Dear to replace. Carbs on the GT550’ve been very good to me.”
“Have a look at it for me?”
Benny smirked. “Not like I’ve real couriers needing repairs. Family men, working for a guarantee.”
“Or home in bed, radio on, skiving,” said Fiona, taking off her jacket. She looked suddenly smaller, in a gray turtleneck jersey. “More your usual description.”
“I’ll have Saad look into it,” Benny said, turning and walking out.
“Is Benny Irish?”
“Dublin,” she said, “father’s Tunisian.”
“And you work for Hubertus?”
“As do you,” she said, slinging the heavy jacket over her shoulder. “This way.”
He followed her, avoiding oil-soaked rags and white foam cups, some half filled with what he assumed had once been tea, past a sort of giant red toolbox on wheels, to a battered door. She fished a small ring of keys from her trousers, which looked as heavy, and nearly as well armored, as her jacket.
“Did you want to?” he asked as she unlocked the door.
“Want to what?”
“Work for Hubertus. I didn’t. Didn’t plan to, I mean. It was his idea.”
“Now that you mention it,” she said, over her shoulder, “it was his idea.”
Milgrim stepped through after her, into a tidy white space perhaps fifteen feet on a side. The walls were recently painted brick, the concrete floor a glossier white, nearly as clean. A small square table and four chairs, matte steel tubing and bent, unpainted plywood, expensively simple. An enormous light glowed softly, something on a clinical-looking metallic pedestal, a sort of white parabolic umbrella, angled up. It looked to Milgrim like a very small art gallery between shows. “What’s this?” he asked, looking from one blank wall to another.
“One of his Vegas cubes,” she said. “Haven’t you seen one before?” She went to the light and did something, dialing the illumination up.
“No.”
“He doesn’t understand gambling,” she said, “the ordinary kind, but he loves Las Vegas casinos. The sort of thought that goes into them. How they enforce a temporal isolation. No clocks, no windows, artificial light. He likes to think in environments like that. Like this. No interruptions. And he likes them to be secret.”
“He likes secrets,” Milgrim agreed, putting his bag on the table.
A boy with an almost-shaven head came in, a tall white foam cup in either grimy hand, and placed them on the table. “Thanks,” said Fiona. He left without a word. Fiona picked up one of the cups, sipped through the hole in the white plastic lid. “Builder’s tea,” she said.
Milgrim tried his. Shuddered. Sweet, stewed.
“I’m not his daughter,” Fiona said.
Milgrim blinked. “Whose?”
“Bigend’s. In spite of rumors to the contrary. Not the case.” She sipped her tea.
“I wouldn’t have thought that.”
“My mother was his girlfriend. That’s where the story started. I was already around, so it actually doesn’t make any sense. Though I did wind up here, working for him.” She gave Milgrim a look he couldn’t read. “Just to get that straight.”
Milgrim sucked down some tea, mainly to cover his inability to think of anything to say. It was very hot. “Did he train you,” he asked, “to ride motorcycles?”
“No,” she said, “I was already a courier. That’s where I know Benny from. I could walk out on Bigend today, have a job in an hour. It’s like that, being a courier. If you want the day off, you quit. But it was driving my mother crazy. Worried about the danger.”
“Is it dangerous?”
“Average career’s all of two years. So she talked to Bigend. Wanted him to take me on at Blue Ant. Do something there. Instead, he decided to have his own courier.”
“That’s less dangerous?”
“Not really, but I tell her it is. She doesn’t know the extent of the job. She’s busy.”
“Good morning,” said Bigend, behind them.
Milgrim turned. Bigend was wearing his blue suit, over a black knit shirt, no tie.
“Do you like them?” Bigend asked Milgrim.
“Like what?”
“Our Festos,” said Bigend, raising his index finger to point straight up.
Milgrim looked up. The ceiling here, as white as the walls, was a good ten ten feet higher than it was in the adjacent space. Against it floated confusing shapes, silver, black. “Is that the penguin? From Paris?”
“It’s like the one in Paris,” she said.
“What’s the other?”
“Manta. Ray,” said Bigend. “Our first custom order. They’re ordinarily in the silver Mylar.”
“What do you do with them?” Though he already knew.
“Surveillance platforms,” Bigend said. He turned to Fiona. “How was it, in Paris?”
“Good,” she said, “except that he saw it. But that’s the silver, and daytime operation.” She shrugged.
“I thought I was hallucinating,” Milgrim said.
“Yes,” Bigend said, “people do. In Crouch End, though, when we first tried the penguin at night, we triggered a mini-wave of UFO reports. The Times suggested people were actually seeing Venus. Have a seat.” He drew out one of the chairs.
Milgrim sat. Held the tall cup of hot tea in his hands, its warmth comforting.
When Bigend and Fiona were seated as well, Bigend said, “Fiona’s told me what you told her last night. You said that you photographed the man who was following you, or perhaps following Hollis. Do you have the photographs?”
“Yes,” said Milgrim, bending to fish in his sock top. “But he was following me. Sleight was telling him where I was.” He put the camera card on the table, opened his bag, brought out the Air, found the card reader he’d bought from the Persian man in the camera shop, and put them together.