"I'm Bradlee, with an e," announced the driver.
He pointed his thumb at the passenger seat. "This
'ere's Ronnie. And with you in the back, that's Eric."
Ronnie was wearing a blue and white striped soccer shirt, so Danny took the opportunity for light conversation. "Are you a Tottenham fan, Ronnie?"
"Fuck off! Arsenal." His accent was distinctly South African, so it came out 'Airsnil'.
Yet the shirt was unquestionably the colours of Tottenham Hotspur, Arsenal's hated rival.
"Ronnie's hiding," explained Bradlee.
"Nobody would ever think of lookin' for him inside a Spurs shirt."
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Eric approved. "Nice one."
Eric; being the most presentable of the three. He was slightly built and smart in a black roll-neck top and jacket. His hair was pure black and short, but carefully groomed rather than the straight number two of the driver. Danny guessed that he and Eric were around the same age, early-thirties, though there was a chance Eric was older but well-preserved. Unfortunately, he'd overdone the aftershave and it didn't mix well with the smell of seat leather.
"What side of the business are you in?"
Danny asked him.
"Interfacing-Automation," answered Eric.
"I do that too - the programming."
"I'm more into the servos and mechanicals."
Eric's London accent was strong but clearly estuarine when compared to Bradlee's Cockney, and stopped short of influencing his grammar and the completeness of his words, which made it sound peculiar! like an affectation.
"How about you, Bradlee?" asked Danny.
Sharon had often told him that he wasn't very good at assessing people, but that was the kind of thing that long-term partners were liable to say, and was best ignored. It was true that she did talk through his office politics with him once
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a week, and was a great help, but there she had the advantage of distant perspective. After just a few minutes in the car, already he was beginning to suspect that Bradlee and Ronnie weren't really in the computer business.
"More the security side, yer boat-race has to fit in the line of work you do" replied Bradlee, after a pause.
They turned right at traffic- lights on to Hammersmith Road. Traffic was light.
"We used to do memory chips," said Ronnie.
"' right," agreed Bradlee. "Ronnie could find 'em in any piece of kit ever made, couldn't you Ron?"
Ronnie nodded. Danny was becoming very familiar with the back of Ronnie's broad neck, though it was lit only periodically by headlights. His head-shave was so complete it highlighted the shape of his skull and the individual plates of bone that fused together to create it, like a small planet with Tectonic plates.
Danny amused himself thinking it was a shame there were no zits along the seams to represent volcanoes.
He'd wondered if Ronnie and Bradlee were father and son. The ages would be about right, but the accents were wrong and there was
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no family resemblance. Maybe they'd spent so much time together they'd picked up the relationship without the genes.
"'Course, we'd like to get into the Internet side of things," said Bradlee. "Future of the business. Do it all on the Internet, chance you'll make millions and fuck all chance you'll get your collar felt. I'm just pissed off I'm too old to join in. Like, you see it all movin' away from you, all this technology and stuff, kids on their mobiles talking a new language, bashin' the keys on their little electronic games. 'Course, Ronnie 'ere, is too pig-shit ignorant to get into all that. Ain't you Ron?"
Ronnie didn't nod this time.
Bradlee often made eye contact with Danny in the rear view mirror, like cabbies do, sometimes lifting his face to show his mischievous smile. He was an excellent driver, accelerating and braking hard but with the elegance of a professional.
"Nice car," said Danny. "It's an unusual colour. What made you choose it?"
"It was unlocked." Bradlee ignored the road to watch Danny's face for a long time, then turned back and shook his head. He swung the Audi through the bends of the Knightsbridge one-way system. The place was seedy compared
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to affluent Chelsea. Many of the locals shared Ronnie's stoop, his scavenger alertness.
The cuffs of Bradlee's fine suit rode up on the turns, exposing his cufflinks and the blue of tattoos circling his arms, and what looked like an expensive watch. Ronnie had a big watch too, possibly a Rolex, though in the irregular light it was difficult to tell. He had the strap set so loose it caught only on the base of his thumb. Every few minutes - or so it seemed to Danny - he shot his hand into the air to bring the watch further up his arm. Bradlee appeared to find this action invisible, but Danny was sure he would go nuts if he was exposed to it for long.
He couldn't see the display on Ronnie's watch clearly, but on a right turn saw that Bradlee's said twenty past nine. He never wore a watch himself, they always went wrong -
something to do with his personal magnetic field, according to Sharon - but he took out his mobile to check the time on the display matched up.
"You need to switch that off," said Eric.
"What?" Bradlee swung his head round.
"You fucking wanker! You got your mobile on?"
Danny didn't understand.
"They can trace that," explained Eric.
"Just like a radio beacon."
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"Been fucking 'ell to pay if you did the job with that on," growled Bradlee. "You tosser. I thought you were a computer expert?"
Danny switched off the phone. "I am. I just don't see why it matters if somebody tracks me."
Bradlee exhaled loudly. "How did you get in on this job?"
"Frank asked me."
"What'd he say?"
"He asked me to retrieve a program from a secure computer."
"Yeah, that's about it. But me and Ron and Eric here, like, we want to keep this all a secret, don't want anybody knowing about it. You got that?"
"Sure."
"Here's a few tips for you. No mobiles, no talk about any of this to wife-girlfriend-mates.
Right? After the job, take that New Romantic shit you're wearing and burn it if you can, else put it in a bin - not your own. And get a fucking haircut while you're at it. You look like a beach bum.
Then try and forget about everything. Forget the date, forget me, forget Ronnie, forget Eric.
Them's the rules. After the job, we never see you again. You never see us again. You do it any
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other-way, Ronnie calls round and explains it in more detail. You got that?"
"Wouldn't it be easier if Ronnie explained it now?"
Bradlee exhaled again. His face darkened.
He began to speak but couldn't find the words.
"Just keep it a secret, all right?"
"Sure."
Danny had no intention of burning his clothes. The chinos were Armani and the baggy-sleeve shirt was custom made, a present from Sharon. He couldn't imagine that Bradlee intended to burn the expensive suit he was wearing.
They made their way down the Euston underpass and back up the other side. On the right they passed the peculiar Abbey National Buildings, four of them, each decorated with external frames of louvered glass that resembled huge cooling coils - at a glance they looked like the backs of four giant refrigerators.
For more than a mile the closely-packed traffic lights were coordinated, so that -
depending on the time of day - a vehicle travelling east to west or west to east stood a chance of getting a clear run. The six lanes were narrow and to the left of the Audi A8 an articulated lorry kept pace, giving Danny a barely
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changing view of the dark underside of its trailer and its outsize wheels. Streetlight angled in through the front and rear screens of the car, advancing and receding in hypnotic repeating patterns. They passed Madame Tussaud's and the London Planetarium, with a tramp pissing against its closed doorway. Then Baker Street Tube station arrived and Danny abruptly came to life.
This was where Sharon's sister, Danielle, had had her accident two days ago, right here, on the junction of Baker Street and Marylebone Road. Sharon adored her sister, and the pair of them were so similar that Danny couldn't help but adore Danielle too. She was a kind of acid-house version of Sharon: younger, a lot wilder and without the big hair.
He took in the bollards, the many lanes of traffic. This was a terrible junction for a cyclist.
And what a lot of traffic cameras there were! It was strange that he'd never noticed them before, but there were three around this single junction, now visible through the rear window, three moveable traffic cameras on enormous poles, one so tall it towered above the streetlights.
" Sit still, you twat!" yelled Bradlee.
"A friend of mine had an accident here. I was looking at the junction."
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"Maybe he was bouncin' around on the back seat of hooky car, with all the fucking cameras around, and the driver turned round and brained him," suggested Bradlee, very forcefully.
"Her," corrected Danny, but he did sit still.
"Two days ago," said Ronnie.
"What?"
"Your friend's crash."
"That's right. How did you know?"
"All green robots, green in every direction. There were scores of accidents."
"Nah, don't follow you," said Eric.
"It's what we call traffic lights in South Africa," explained Ronnie. "Robots. The machines that replaced traffic policeman."
"Surely if there had been so many accidents it would have been on the news," said Danny.
"No," answered Eric. "There was too much other stuff going on, remember? That was the day the whole world got out of the wrong side of bed."
The news had been worth watching that day, with the sound turned on. A Lufthansa flight from Geneva had missed Frankfurt airport and crashed into the Deutsche Bank building downtown. Two Japanese bullet trains collided at
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full speed just outside Tokyo. The New York Stock Exchange reversed seven thousand deals and was forced to shut down. These were the top three news items of the day, and there were dozens more. Hundreds of people had died in this worldwide rash of accidents, this banana-skin day for the planet.
"All down to human error," said Danny.
"We need more robots, more computers in charge, then; these accidents wouldn't happen."
Eric looked at him askance. "Are you sure?"
Danny was very sure, and about to say so, but Bradlee butted in.
"You ever met this geezer Frank?"
"No," replied Danny. "Email only."
"Me and Ron the same. Eric too. Makes you wonder, don’t-it? None of us ever seen the bloke or 'eard his voice. Like, what's he got to hide?"
"On the Internet, nobody knows if you're a dog," suggested Eric.
"'Xactly."
"Yeah," agreed Ronnie. "In those chat-rooms, me, I'm an investment banker with a Porsche and an enormous cock."
"And you still get fucking nowhere."
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The Audi moved on to the Hammersmith fly-over, one of the few elevated urban expressways in London. Bradlee speeded up.
"So," he continued, "like we was sayin', what's he got to hide?"
Nobody replied. Bradlee tried again.
"You known the geezer long, Danny?"
"A few months."
"He ever talk about where he lives, about his girlfriend, holidays, stuff like that?"
"No."
"Then what does he talk about, or tap his keyboard about, whatever?"
This was getting difficult. Frank wasn't a subject that Danny talked about freely, not even to Sharon. Maybe he would do in a month or so, when Frank was ready, but right now he wasn't keen. Yet also he hated being deceptive - it wasn't in his nature. He could just about manage deception by avoiding a subject, but if he was pressed on it then he'd invariably tell the truth.
He hoped that Bradlee would stop pressing.
"We don't talk about stuff like that, Bradlee. We play Internet games together; and electronic chess."
"But you said you never met the geezer?"
"We play over the Internet."
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"Like, he's in one place and you're in another?"
"That's right."
"What's the fucking point of that?"
"Entertainment, I suppose. And we watch films together," Maybe Bradlee would find films easier to relate to than computer games.
"You go to the flicks together?"
"No, we watch them on DVD."
"In the same room."
"Not exactly. In separate locations but at the same time."
"You taking the piss, son?"
***
Humphrey Bogart stood at the foggy Casablanca airport with Ingrid Bergman, holding his friend, Police Captain Renault - Claude Rains - at gunpoint.
Frank was a big Bogart fan, and a week ago Danny had watched Casablanca with him, in that simultaneous but apart mode that would later puzzle Bradlee.
Bogart gave the two letters of transit to the Police Captain and instructed him to fill out the blanks, "In the names of Mrs Lazlo and Dave Walsh."
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"Eh?" Danny stared wide-eyed at his laptop screen. It was a great film and he'd watched it at least three times before. Like a large proportion of the planet's population he knew that Bogart, playing Dave Walsh, made the ultimate sacrifice and put Ingrid Bergman on the plane along with her husband, crusader for the oppressed, Victor Lazlo, played by Paul Henreid.
Bogart definitely did not get on the plane.
Bergman smiled and they embraced. "Oh Rick, I love you. I'm so glad we're together again."
"What?" yelled Danny. His hands reached for the keyboard.
—Frank, what the hell is going on?
The engines started on the plane to Lisbon. There was no "Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of your life" speech, and no "the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world", none of the four pages of brilliant script with some of Bogart's best-ever lines, delivered by the man of few words, who -
according to Frank, and Frank knew his Bogart -
only learned his lines on-set on the morning of the day he delivered them, and on that day at the end of filming Casablanca had been annoyed there were so many lines to learn. Instead, Bogart
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and Bergman made straight for the plane. Bogart looked a little strange from the back as he walked, like Paul Henreid's Victor Lazlo character made shorter and with his hat darkened.
Frank's reply arrived at the bottom of Danny's laptop screen, like a subtitle.
—Sorry, I'm still not great at manipulating visuals. But I did well with Bergman's voice, don't you think?
—Frank, you've completely wrecked the film. That's a terrible ending.
This was a digital version of Casablanca from an Internet film library that Frank had hacked into for a free viewing. Clearly he'd taken some liberties with the ones and zeros too.
—Come on, it's a lot better than the original. 'We'll always have Paris?' What kind of defeatist nonsense is that? He's got the letters of transit and he's in love with Bergman. He should ditch the loser and take her home.
—He's not supposed to finish up with Bergman.
—You're quite right. He's better off with Bacall. I bet she was a little minx in bed. She always sounds dirty to me.
—I think you're missing the point Frank.
The film isn't about sex or successful personal relationships. It's about nobility, about
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recognising a love more important than your own, and a cause more important than yourself, and making sacrifices so it all works out ok.
He hadn't analysed the film in that way before, but the more he thought about it, the more this instant analysis sounded right, even if he hadn't found the perfect way to express it.
—You mean that in this case the love between Lazlo and his wife, and Lazlo's work against the Nazis, are more important than the love between Bogart and Bergman?
—Exactly.
And though Danny typed that word almost on automatic, it seemed to gain in significance as he reached the last few letters.
Frank truly did understand what was going on in the film. Danny had presented the noble causes in abstract terms, and Frank, with no outside help, had turned them into specifics. Clearly he'd also been able to recognise the strong relationship between Bogart and Bergman, which was why he'd changed the ending. Even though the new ending was wrong, it had been created for all the right reasons.
This was a shock. Frank had shown absolutely no understanding of relationships before. He'd always relied on Danny to walk him through that kind of stuff. And Danny had always
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obliged. That was their usual relationship, teacher and pupil, father and son. Danny had put a lot of effort into advancing Frank's understanding of the world, spent so much time with him that Sharon had twice complained about becoming a computer widow.
Frank's learning cycle for this new emotional awareness had been dramatically short, as it always seemed to be when he applied his mind to understanding something. Just two weeks ago they'd watched the African Queen together in their simultaneous but apart mode, and Frank had struggled to make sense of it. He'd enjoyed Bogart's acting, he said, and Katharine Hepburn's, and the scenery, but it seemed to him that very little happened in the middle of the film.
—But Frank, they fall in love! That's the whole point of the film, the very reason why it's so popular. Two dissimilar people fall head over heels in love with each other, and improve themselves as they go. He gets himself organised and sober, she gets less prissy.
—This 'love' business. It's not easy to understand.
—Nobody understands it, you only feel it.
—I've been looking into the chemical angle. Recently I investigated testosterone and managed to synthesise it as a software program,
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in digital form. It seems to work. I feel confidence without reason, and aggression. But it gives me strange urges I can't satisfy.
—You might be confusing lust and love.
—Is that a common problem?
Danny smiled to himself.
—Yes.
And perhaps it was even more of a problem for Frank than it was for a regular mortal. With his brilliant hacking skills, Frank had unrestricted access to the Internet and its misleading and disorganised library of information, a very pornographic library simplified by the separation of sex from transmissible disease, baby production, love, relationships and the viewpoint of women.
His naiveté had been very obvious when they'd first got to know each other, when Frank had come out of the wilderness of illiteracy and learned to read and write, when he'd made his first comments on the world as it appeared to him through his email inbox.
––Today I got a mail from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. In the photo, Snow White has her legs wide open and her fingers are playing between them. The dwarfs are very strange and have small bodies and small hands and feet but huge sex organs. Should I tell Snow
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White that these people are freaks? I'm not sure I should, because she seems very happy even though her companions are clearly deformed.
He'd sent that naïve message to Danny just two months ago.
***
Their route west across the top of central London and out to the Home Counties was straightforward. They carried on in almost a straight line while the road beneath them repeatedly changed identity. It had started out as Hammersmith Road, then become Euston Road, Marylebone Road, the Hammersmith fly-over, and then onto the M4 motorway. As they passed Heathrow Airport in darkness, the height of the lampposts came down so their tops didn't catch the undercarriages of approaching aircraft. The squat little posts looked cute, like infant versions of tall lamppost parents.
"So, how old do you reckon he is?" asked Bradlee.
"Who is?" asked Eric.
"Frank, you wally. Don't seem that old to me."
Eric didn't answer.
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"Danny?" Bradlee glared into his rear-view mirror.
Danny didn't know what to say. He'd been hoping this wouldn't happen. He'd avoided answering Bradlee's earlier questions, but now he'd run out of tactics, or at least the willingness to use them. He could tell Bradlee that Dan was a few months old, a mere babe in real terms. Or he could say that Frank was a teenager, in terms of human understanding. Most truthful of all, he could explain both.
The Fly-over became the M4, but Bradlee didn't speed up, i