“Why do they call it that?” Hollis asked.
“ ‘Engrish,’ ” said Heidi, with a shrug. “ ‘Beast,’ maybe? Or sometimes they just like the shape of the letters. It’s a beginner’s kit.” This last addressed to Ajay, accusingly. “I ask him to get me a kit by Bandai, something in their Gundam series, expert-grade. Gold standard of figure kits. He brings me fucking Breast Chaser Galvion. Thinks it’s funny. Not Bandai, not Gundam. A kid’s kit.”
“Sorry,” said Ajay, who’d obviously heard about this before.
“You build them?” Hollis asked.
“Helps me focus. Calms me down. Fujiwara says it’s the only thing that works, for some people. Only thing that works for him.”
“He does it himself?”
“He’s a master. Incredible airbrush technique. Scratch-built modifications.”
“Do you want me to open this?” Ajay jiggled the tip of the razor knife.
“Yes,” said Hollis.
“If it’s full of anthrax, we’ll all be sorry.” He winked.
Heidi got up from the bed and came over. “Hey. Don’t blunt that.”
“It’s vinyl,” said Ajay, laying the ant down, on its back, and deftly wielding the razor knife. Hollis watched the tip of the blade slide smoothly into the side of the round base. “Yes. Been cut, glued. Easy. There.” The bottom of the base lay flat on the newsprint, a round of blue a few millimeters thick. “Well,” said Ajay, peering into the twin small tunnels of the ant’s hollow legs, “what’s this, then?” He put down the knife, picked up a long, slender pair of tweezers, with canted tips, and inserted them into one leg. He looked up at Hollis. “Watch. I’m going to pull out… a rabbit!” He produced, gradually, a spongy sheet of thin yellow foam. Displayed it dangling limply from the tweezers’ sharp jaws, five inches square. “Rabbit,” he said, dropping it. “And for my next trick…” He inserted the tweezers again. Felt around with them. And slowly, carefully, drew out a two-inch length of narrow, transparent flexible tubing, plugged at either end with a tiny red cork. “Looks like very professional funny business to me.” There were various differently cylindrical bits of metal and plastic inside the tube, like a section of a hippie-techno necklace. He looked at it more closely, then looked up at Hollis, raising his eyebrows.
“Huh,” said Heidi, “ant’s been LoJacked. Bigend.”
“I’m not sure,” said Hollis. “Can they hear us?” she asked Ajay, suddenly afraid.
“No,” he said. “It was sealed in the doll. The foam was to keep it from rattling. You’d never set up an audio bug that way. You’d want a little needle mike, through the vinyl, for that. This is a transponder and a battery. What do you want to do with it?”
“I don’t know.”
“I can replace it. Reglue the base. I’ll bet Heidi can fix it so you’d never know we opened it.”
“I’m much more concerned with Garreth at the moment,” said Hollis.
“We’ve discussed that,” said Heidi. “You have to call that number. That’s all. If that doesn’t get him, plan B.”
“Or,” said Ajay, still considering the tracker bug, “you could keep this, but reglue your ant. That would give you a degree of lateral control.”
“How do you mean?”
“If you keep the bug hidden in the vicinity of the ant, rather than in the ant, they’ll think it’s still in the ant. So they’ll assume the bug is where the ant is. It has possibilities. Bit of wiggle room.” He shrugged.
“I’ve had it since Vancouver,” Hollis said to Heidi. “Hubertus gave it to me. I thought I’d left it there, deliberately, but then I found it in my luggage, in New York. Somebody here put it in my bag before I went to Paris.”
“Do what Ajay says,” Heidi said, tousling his waterfall. “He’s handy. Now come with me.”
“Where?”
“Your room. You’re going to make that call. I’ll be your witness.”
38. GETTING HOTTER
Bigend was having the No. 7 Breakfast: two fried eggs, black pudding, two slices of bacon, two slices of bread, and a mug of tea. “They get the black pudding right, here,” he said. “It’s so often overcooked. Dry.”
Milgrim and Fiona were having Thai noodle dishes, which Milgrim found an unexpected option in a place serving the sort of breakfast Bigend was having, but Fiona had explained that the Thais had quite seamlessly integrated the two, much in the way Italians had once learned to offer the full English, in a setting of pasta, but even more convincingly.
It was a tiny place, crowded, not much larger than Bigend’s Vegas cube, the clientele a mixture of office workers, builders, and the arts-oriented, consuming lunch or late breakfast. The china and tableware were random, unmatched, and Bigend’s mug of tea bore a smiling teddy bear.
“You don’t think Foley was following me in Paris?”
“You went back to the hotel,” Bigend said. “I phoned and said that Aldous would be picking you up. You were using a phone Sleight gave you, but I didn’t say where you were going, or who you were meeting. Fiona followed the Hilux.” He nodded in her direction.
“No tails,” said Fiona.
“But I’d phoned Hollis first,” Bigend said, “to find out where she’d be, in order to send you there. They might have overheard that. But if your Foley was there just as you arrived, I imagine he either followed Hollis to Selfridges or knew that she’d be going there.”
“Why would they be interested in Hollis? What does she have to do with Myrtle Beach and those army pants?”
“You,” said Bigend, “and me. They may have seen us all together at lunch, the day before. Sleight has allies within Blue Ant, almost certainly. They would assume that Hollis may be involved with our contracting project. And she is, of course.” Bigend forked a large piece of bacon into his mouth, and chewed.
“She is?”
Bigend swallowed, drank tea. “I’d like to see what the Gabriel Hounds designer could do for us for military contracting.”
Milgrim glanced at Fiona, curious to see whether she’d respond to the mention of the brand, but she was deftly picking shrimp from her noodles with chopsticks. “Hollis is upset,” Milgrim said to Bigend. “Her boyfriend.”
“Really? She has one?”
“Had,” said Milgrim. “They aren’t together. But she’s learned he was in an accident.”
“What kind of accident?”
“Automobile,” said Milgrim, which was literally true.
“Nothing serious, I hope,” said Bigend, tearing a slice of bread in half.
“She thinks it may have been,” said Milgrim.
“I can keep her on track,” said Bigend, sopping up yolk.
Milgrim looked at Fiona, who was looking at Bigend quite coldly now, he thought, but then went back to her noodles.
“You want the Gabriel Hounds designer to design for the U.S. military?”
“If a great deal of men’s clothing today is descended from U.S. military designs, and it is, and the U.S. military is having trouble living up to their heritage, and they are, someone whose genius lies in some recombinant grasp of the semiotics of mass-produced American clothing… Foolish not to look at the possibilities. In any case, it’s getting hot now,” said Bigend.
“What is?”
“The situation. The flow of events. It always does, when people like Sleight decide to have a go. And the person in my position is expected to focus, narrowly, on the situation at hand. Terrible waste, tactically. You can often make a killing in the market, while an attempted coup is under way.” He wiped up yolk and grease with his final bit of bread and popped it into his mouth, leaving his plate perfectly clean.
Fiona put down her chopsticks, having picked a last shrimp from her noodles. “And where will I be taking Mr. Milgrim?”
“Holiday Inn, Camden Lock,” said Bigend. “Everyone seems to know about Covent Garden.”