July 2008 Archives
"Santé!" said Yvette.
"Sláinte!" said Mao.
They clinked their glasses of the cloudy liquid. Mao wasn't a big drinker, but he had a secret liking for absinthe that dated to a reading of Ernest Hemingway's "Death in the Afternoon" during his university days in Dublin. He was not a fiction fan, but he had been impressed by Hemingway's cocktail recipe, which he immediately memorized: "Pour one jigger absinthe into a Champagne glass. Add iced Champagne until it attains the proper opalescent milkiness. Drink three to five of these slowly."
It was an odd thing to commit to memory, no doubt, but anything that acted as an antidote to the perpetual rain was a welcome diversion for the young student. Later that day, he hit the Musée d'Orsay website and made Edgar Degas' painting L'Absinthe his notebook background.
Shortly after he'd drifted to the south of France, he was shopping in a supermarket when he saw a bottle labelled spiritueux à base de plantes d'absinthe. He bought it and made it last a fortnight, adding restrained measures of the spirit to glasses of water every second evening before going to bed.
"Did you know," Mao asked, "that Oscar Wilde, Baudelaire, Verlaine, Rimbaud and van Gogh were absinthe drinkers?"
Yvette shook her head, although she knew. Obviously he needs to talk, she thought to herself. Besides, he was weirdly attractive.
"There was something about absinthe that made people mad, if they weren't mad already, in which case it made them bad," said Mao. "For example, the year Oscar Wilde was arrested and imprisoned happened to be Aleister Crowley's first year at Cambridge."
And Mao, who had once seen a documentary about this strange character, launched into a vivid description of Crowley's occult life, which was filled with taboo-breaking rituals, with both men and women, and mystical rites.
At one point, he looked across the table and saw Yvette sneaking a glance at her watch.
"Oh, my God," said Mao. "I'm such an idiot. You should have told me to shut up."
"No. No. It's fascinating. It's just that I have to catch a flight to Amsterdam in a few hours. I'm doing a workshop for a week with Erik-Jan De Jong, you might have heard of him, of the Koninklijk Concertgebouworkest."
Mao had never heard of Erik-Jan De Jong or, for that matter, the Koninklijk Concertgebouworkest, but he nodded his head vigorously. Yvette had told him she played the cello, but he thought she was talking about a hobby.
"How about if I pay here," said Yvette, "and you get the next bill?"
He was fully unprepared for this gambit and tried to think through the implications. She was either brushing him off, kindly, or she was probing what the advice sites usually referred to as "his intentions."
Truth to be told, he'd had a pretty disastrous record with women, once he'd decided that he wasn't bisexual or gay. His intensity frightened them away, and although he'd read on the advice sites that women liked men who had a sense of humour, especially if they turned it against themselves, he had no idea how that worked. He was what he was and a few furtive disasters and regular porn amounted to the totality of his experiences to date.
"Great," he said. "Let's synch, then."
"Fine," said Yvette, taking out her communicator, a sliver of metal that screamed money and, probably, Indian design and Iraqi manufacture.
This kind of synching was a bit like shoot-outs in those old Western films. Everything happened instantly and the level of access each "shooter" granted the other, in real time, revealed everything about their objective. If he went high and she went low... If both went low...
He went for high because he felt he had to see her again and he'd nothing to lose. He closed his eyes.
The communicator's vibration forced him to look at the display. He smiled. Yvette Guiliano's lifestream was his to explore. The high-level one he had exchanged with her looked authentic and was authentic in its own way, but it wasn't real. He had to be careful.
"Can I get Mireille to call a taxi for you?" asked Yvette as she beckoned to the women polishing glasses behind the bar.
"Ah, no, thanks. I'll walk," said Mao.
"OK. Well, thanks," said Yvette, standing up. "It was a fun evening and we'll be in touch."
She placed a hand on his arm and lightly kissed his cheek.
"My parents weren't political at all, you know," said Mao Kelly.
It was early morning and they were in a small bar on the Cours Masséna.
Yvette had ordered two different types of absinthe and was sipping hers tenderly. Mao hadn't touched his.
She had seen dark hair before but nothing quite like the blackness of the mane that sprouted from his head, fell to the left and right and encircled his face. She tried to imagine him without clothes.
"My mother was the only girl in her family," he continued. "Which was very lucky for her because if she'd had an older sister, I wouldn't have had a mother. If you know what I mean."
"What do you mean?" asked Yvette.
"They'd have strangled her, of course," said Mao. "It's called gendercide in English. The Chinese prefer boys, always have, and then there was the one child policy..." He trailed off and they looked across the table at each other.
Perhaps Sun Jen and Hu Xinpeng had looked at each other like that once. In China. They worked on a collective farm, Mao explained, and it was love at first sight. Jen was the most beautiful woman Xinpeng had ever seen and he was unable to eat for three days after they first met, at a tractor repair class.
A week later, he contrived for the imported Russian machine, a DT-20 made by Harjkovskii Traktornyi Zavod, to stop as it passed the irrigation works that Jen was overseeing. He insisted that it was a chassis problem in the hope that she would join him under the machine. Which she did. And she didn't slap him as he placed his hand on her thigh and planted a kiss on her lips.
They made such a fuss of pretending to coax the machine back to life that a crowd gathered. Oil and water levels were checked twice, the fan belt was removed and replaced and the battery plugs were inspected from different angles. Then, banging down the hood, Xinpeng mounted the tractor, switched it on and the engine growled to life. The spectators clapped and cheered, delighted by the drama that had taken them away from their mindless, back-breaking chores.
Three days later, at the collective's monthly production discussion, after a visiting party official had spent an hour denouncing teachers and bureaucrats, and calling selected Communist Party leaders "capitalist roaders", Jen and Xinpeng were suddenly called forward.
Had someone seen them kissing under the tractor and betrayed them? Would they be sent to re-education camps? Might they be indoctrinated to death?
"Comrade Sun. Comrade Hu," began the official. "Your conduct has been brought to my attention."
They looked at each other and Jen almost fainted with fear.
"You put the knowledge gained in the tractor repair class to the best possible use. By repairing the people's machine, which was acquired at great expense, you helped your community to meet its production target, and as a token of our appreciation, I hereby present each of you with a copy of our Dear Leader's thoughts."
At this, a pale functionary, wearing very thick glasses, and unknown to all in the room, rose, walked forward to the two barely-literate peasants and handed them copies of a little red book. He then asked then to hold them up and another man approached and took two photographs.
"You haven't touched your drink," said Yvette. "Do you mind if I order another?"
"Not at all," said Mao, who had never revealed the family story to a stranger, but felt unable to suppress the torrent of words that kept gushing out.
"And did they get married and become happy communists?" Asked Yvette, sipping her second absinthe.
"Not quite," answered Mao.
His father, he said, became quite friendly with the local party bigwig after he'd repaired the man's bike and one evening, he invited Xinpeng to meet him at his home for a "discussion".
He began with the theory of ownership and its evils, but stopped abruptly as if someone had cut off his information supply.
"That's enough of that," he said. "Let's try something that's not as dry" and he winked at Xinpeng, who had no idea what he was referring to.
The man produced a bottle, opened it and filled two small rice bowls with a crystal clear, aromatic liquid. He offered one of the flowing bowls to Xinpeng, who drank it down in a gulp and began to cough uncontrollably.
"Easy, easy. That's very good stuff. You're not supposed to treat it like a pig treats swill."
"I'm sorry," said Xinpeng, who had never tasted anything with such a remarkable flavour before.
"Would you like a cigarette? It might help stop that cough of yours," said the official, and he handed Xinpeng one that was white, quite unlike the yellow ones everyone else smoked.
"Now, what do you think of this?" asked the official, as he pulled out a newspaper clipping showing a photograph of Xinpeng and Jen at the collective's meeting. "Tractor heroes drive production forward", was the headline.
"That's lovely," said Xinpeng, who would have liked to say more but the aromatic liquid seemed to be affecting his concentration and clouding his thoughts.
"Yes, she is a beauty, isn't she?" said the official. "Did you know that there's a shortage of marriageable women in the capital?"
Xinpeng shook his head, which felt heavy. "Some VIP there saw this photo, apparently. He likes country girls. Likes to 'break them in', is what I've heard and he then passes then on to a party member who needs a wife because if you don't have a wife you don't get invited to important social gatherings."
Xinpeng puffed his cigarette in the hope that it might help him think clearly so he could make sense of what he was hearing.
"Yeah. That's how it works. Here, have some more. Anyway, he's sending some of his men next week and they're going to take her. Abduct her, so to speak."
Xinpeng's heart almost stopped.
"No!" said Yvette.
Mao raised his glass and drained the absinthe with one swallow.
"I think I'll have another," he said.
He stopped and looked back and saw the video intercom showing two young men wearing the kind of über-scruffy clothing favoured by those employed to do the dirty work of state agencies. They held up some sort of ID to the camera and spoke urgently to the lens. Because Mao preferred to keep the volume muted, the men gave the impression of burly fishes as they opened and closed their mouths, silently pouting; noiselessly talking.
If only he had paid attention to politics, this wouldn't be happening.
Mao Kelly moved to the south of France because he didn't like rain. He stayed because he fell in love with Yvette, who played the cello. And the biotech, robotics and artificial intelligence firms clustered there needed people with outstanding mathematical abilities, so he had interesting, satisfying and well-paying work.
Yvette.
They met in July in an Irish bar on the harbour not far from the train station. It was a favourite with loud Australian backpackers in summer and huge Welsh rugby supporters in winter. The locals came to watch the visitors drink beer and fight and experience the thrill of being near people who didn't seem to care how they looked or behaved.
For the carefully groomed and discreet expat knowledge workers, the Australians and the Welsh represented a world many of them had fled from but couldn't quite leave behind. They felt superior to but envious of those who were happily monolingual and multiculturally uncouth.
"Mao, this is Yvette," said Dinesh Ashenfelter, introducing him to a woman wearing a startlingly white top, which melded with her skin and struggled to restrain her nipples.
"Pleased to meet you," said Mao, who was famously single and meticulously polite.
"Guys, there's Jarol. I need to talk to him for a minute." Ashenfelter was already deep in the crowd before Mao could figure out a way to use him as a shield in what might become an uncomfortable situation.
"Is that your real name?" asked Yvette.
"Kelly is as Irish as I am," replied Mao.
"I'm singing in the rain / Just singing in the rain / What a glorious feeling / I'm happy again," sang Yvette and heads turned.
Mao was mortified. Public exhibitions of emotion didn't come naturally to him and now this woman was placing him at the centre of attention.
"Kelly. You know?" said Yvette.
But he didn't know what she meant.
"There was an American actress called Kelly who was a princess in Europe during the last century, if that that's what you mean," said Mao. "Did she sing when it rained?"
"You are funny," said Yvette and she laughed. But he knew at once that she was laughing not at him, but for him. Her brown eyes and her tanned body laughed and he had the odd sensation that he was now the only other person in the room.
Suddenly, glasses shattered and someone yelled, "Pig's arse! That's bullshit, and you know it."
"It's the Australians," said Mao to Yvette, explaining.
"Screw you with a broomstick, mate!" And a table crashed over.
"Come," said Yvette, and she caught his hand.
They walked along the Boulevard Amiral de Grasse and heard the surf break on the rocks below, while the walls, buildings and castle above them were bathed in light.
"Tell me about your name," commanded Yvette and Mao, sensing that this was going to be a long night, began to unfurl the family story that began in eastern China's Shandong province and ended in Dublin, which the human traffickers told his parents was Liverpool.
It was evening when Mao Kelly woke. He'd slept for a solid 14 hours and was grateful to the Norwegian apartment owners for their king-size bed, crisp sheets and the twin comforters, around which he'd wandered during the night-into-day slumber. Now, he was awake, thirsty and hungry.
The fridge was Scandinavian. There were containers of juice concentrate — mango, kiwi, papaya — and two bottles of what looked liked spirits and labelled Løiten Linie. Jars of pickled herring stood side-by-side with sealed packages of smoked fish and something that might have been meat and which was branded "Pinnekjøtt". He opened a plastic box marked "Knäckebröd" and found what must have been some kind of rye bread before it had turned to cardboard.
Taking a bottle of the akevitt, Mao wandered from the kitchen to the dining room and stopped for a minute in front of a large painting of a blue cat with celadon eyes and inscribed "S Knight" in the lower right-hand corner. It dominated the room's curved space, which consisted of a white wall that merged with a glass one and created a cocoon from which he could watch the serene Mediterranean, light blue here, purple there. White boats dotted the seascape. He opened the bottle.
Had seven years really passed since Mao received that message? Apparently.
It was a June morning and he was working on an artificial intelligence project near the Sophia Antipolis technology park northwest of Antibes. It was a discreet operation. It had to be.
"EUSA Office of Professional Accountability" was the sender's address. Having good reason to be suspicious of bureaucracy, Mao opened the message and simultaneously called Kate Houlihan on the Paddyfields secure network.
"Hi Mao, how's she cuttin'?" asked Kate, before he'd had time to say anything.
"Fine, Kate. How're you?"
"Same as ever. Tryin' to keep warm. Iceland's fucking freezing today. Anyway, what can I do you for?"
"Just got this weird message from something called the 'EUSA Office of Professional Accountability', and they want me to confirm, within 24 hours, that my profession matches their records."
"Jaysus, Mao, are you serious?"
"Yes, Kate, I am. Why?"
"Listen. You've gotta drop what you're doin' and get out of that place at once. Do you hear me?
"Kate. You're joking, right?"
"Mao. I'm deadly serious. Someone's tipped them off. That 24 hours — you can forget it. The OPA is an anti-immigration operation run out of Strasbourg. One of their squads will be up the stairs inside an hour. I'm tellin' you. Get out of there now and run."
"But what will I tell Yvette?"
"Mao. Forget Yvette for a moment. Get out of the apartment and across the border. Then you can think about Yvette."
"But..."
"Mao, I have to go. And you better go, too. Call me when you get to San Sebastian. OK?"
He stared at the communicator as if it developed some contagion. A minute, or maybe five, passed before he shook off the inertia. Then, calling up banks in Ireland and Bahrain, he quickly transferred money to an account in the Republic of Euskal Herria and saved some maps of the Western Pyrenees.
After throwing a change of underwear, two t-shirts and a wash bag into his backpack, he looked around the apartment and walked towards the window.
Over the course of 147 seconds, the Rosenborg facility management system noted the loss of one terabyte of data, a power outage, a power spike and the apparent fact that the data was not missing at all. This unprecedented sequence of events caused the system to run a number of cross checks, thereby granting the intruder the necessary time to complete his plan.
Having logged and processed the incident in Spain, the Norwegian system, now in amber alert mode, handed off the matter at 3.41 am to the company that had written the software, SimbaCode in Nairobi.
There, Samuel Mubigambo, 22, the Rosenborg junior account manager, was working his way through a series of mathematical questions in preparation for the SAT Reasoning Test he would take at the weekend and thereby pave the way for his entrance to HarvardU Online. Fifty two seconds elapsed before Mubigambo put away his mobile test device and attended to the message that was flashing on his terminal's screen.
Two hours later, after he'd run a series of standard diagnostic checks, chatted to his friends on a half-dozen social networks and had four cups of coffee, Samuel Mubigambo informed Rosenborg Retirement Ltd. that his team had found the bug that had led to the error reading.
SimbaCode, he added, would be billing for the trouble-shooting on top of its monthly retainer.
As Samuel Mubigambo hit the "Send" button, Mao Kelly was enjoying a blissful sleep in one of Hacienda Brûlé's finest apartments.
After hacking into resort's "cloud", he had downloaded a terabyte of its data, an amount the covered the preceding 24 hours, and then copied the lot. That done, he forced the energy supply to shut down for 147 seconds and began to run through the darkened complex.
He'd set his communicator to search for vacant apartments and once it found one that matched the parameters he'd given it, the gadget began directing him towards the door. Apartment 12B, owned by Petter Sjo (58), a self-employed arms dealer, and his wife Gro Eli Thrane (54), a professor of male oppression studies at the University of Agder, had been serviced that morning in anticipation of their arrival and was due for inspection 72 hours from now, the day of their checking in.
"Left, straight ahead, left again, up the stairs and the second door on the right," said the communicator's synthetic voice in Mao's ear. He noted that 67 seconds had elapsed since he'd set foot in Hacienda Brûlé, and that he had another 40 seconds left before the power supply kicked in and the CCTV cameras began their unremitting recording.
As he ran, he programmed the facility management to backdate by 24 hours the deduction of 100 litres of water from the apartment's account. The EUSA limit was of 50 litres per person per shower but Mao knew he'd need double that to wash away the sand and the salt and the tears. Another backdate, the disposal of bed linen, would help keep those searching for DNA off his trail for a while.
He made it into the apartment with eight seconds to spare. In the instant that the power supply resumed, an altered terabyte of data rejoined the resort's memory and Hacienda Brûlé once again purred with life. Rosenborg Retirement Ltd's decision to automate maintenance and security had been vindicated.
At 9.32 am, during the daily video conference, the company's chief of security, Solveig Kierulf, asked the attendees to prepare to implement an upgrade of SimbaCode's facility management software. A "vulnerability", she said, had led to an amber alert at Hacienda Brûlé during the night, but the matter had been resolved satisfactorily and security had not been breached and neither had sensitive data been lost or corrupted.
When he surfaced and looked back at the Malaga Barrier, Mao could see a major security operation cranking up. Floodlights were arcing out across the night sky, someone was barking commands, boat engines revved and helicopter rotors began to thump the air.
He shrugged off the two oxygen tanks, attached his face mask and scuba suit and let the lot sink into the dark water. Then, he took a risk: He fished the communicator out of his backpack, switched it on and waited for a location signal. But it was a calculated risk because the device was using Galileo, the flawed satellite navigation system the EUSA had introduced in 2013, after the American GPS had been outlawed. With luck, no one would lock onto him in this quadrant and even if they did, they'd probably get an inaccurate reading.
Galileo showed him that Nerja, a holiday resort to the east of Malaga, was the nearest coastal town. If he could make landfall somewhere below it, he'd throw on the change of clothes in the backpack and then break into an empty holiday home.
Calling up ProPedia and searching for Nerja, he found exactly what he needed: "<strong>Hacienda Brûlé</strong>... elegant, geometric structures ... wind-powered... muscular Finnish carpentry... Med-cool... linen... Nordic/Japanese... rest-space... workplace... best craftspeople from the Gulf of Bothnia... staff from... shuttle service... low-key utopian..."
He scanned another screen and turned off the communicator. It sounded perfect. Certainly too posh for guard dogs, not to mind armed security types, he thought. It probably had some kind of sensor fencing, and definitely retina ID, time locks and pressure alarms, all of which should not be that difficult to deal with. The real danger might be mature Scandinavian housewives prowling for anomalous sex. But after midnight? He began swimming towards Spain.
Ploughing the rolling waves of the Mediterranean, Mao Kelly was, for the first time in five years, at peace with the world. Naked, apart from the backpack, he felt as if the had been born for the water, like the sea turtle, which can be found in all the world's oceans, except the Arctic Ocean. He'd learned that in primary school in Dublin.
His parents had told him that for many Chinese, turtles symbolise health and longevity. Maybe that was why they ate so much turtle soup. Meat, skin and innards, nothing turtely was wasted in the Kelly kitchen. Seeing turtles in your dreams meant something, too, they'd said, but he'd forgotten what.
An object brushed against his leg. Sea turtle? Not very likely in the fished-out Mediterranean? Mine? Very possible in the Mediterranean, given the low-intensity war going on between the EUSA and the Salafist Maghreb states. But a mine behind the Malaga Barrier? Unlikely. So what could it have been, then?
"Think or swim", he said to himself, and ploughed on.
When the clouds pulled back, he saw a silvery chain of pin-prick light stretching out along a dark shoulder of coastline. He was almost there.
"And you never leave light trail, either, mate," Ajani said, jabbing his big index finger into the Iranian's chest.
"Is good, friend. Is good," answered the submariner, stepping back a pace. The Irishman and the Nigerian turned their attention back to the path that led towards the outer edge of the underground wall, which looked white on the screen and grey through the sub's viewports.
Kelly had hooked up his communicator, in protected mode, to the sub's navigation system and as far the co-ordinates went, it seemed as if the Dutch engineer had been telling the truth. If the zig-zag route he'd memorized was accurate, they'd get around the barrier, alright. After that, it was blue water and an hour's freestyle swimming.
"Time to go," said Kelly. The Iranian pecked again at his keyboard and the door of what was once the sub's rescue chamber opened. Ajani and Kelly entered, checked their scuba gear, double-checked that their headlamps were working and triple-checked that their communicators were safe in the pockets of their waterproof backpacks. They gave each other the thumbs up as the door closed behind them.
When the red light came on, they pulled on their dome masks and switched on the oxygen. The chamber began to fill with water and the digital meters on the wall sprang into action. A minute later, the two men were out in the Mediterranean.
"He leads me in paths of righteousness," Kelly murmured and began to swim.
With an almost comical inevitability, the mini-sub's tracking beam vanished before they'd covered the first 100 metres. Darkness. The Iranian didn't intend to hang around and see them die. He wanted to be back inside the Mediterranean Union's border before the EUSA patrols tracked him.It was madness to trust the Iranians, Kelly knew, but they were the only ones who would risk this kind of operation, now that their contaminated country offered no economic prospects for native ingenuity and recklessness. They hated the world and double-crossed their partners on every deal, but they were the best fixers and they didn't fear death.
That's why a plan B was always needed when working with them.
Treading water, Kelly switched on his headlamp, held up his right hand and stopped. It was going to be memory and fancy footwork from now on. He hoped Ajani would follow his every move.
A metre to the left, two to the right, three to the left and then straight ahead. That was the way. Soon, the wall was within reach, but first they had to duck under a line of sensors thinly disguised as marine algae. Suddenly, Kelly was flattened by a pressure wave. Sand, stones, dirt and body parts swirled around him.
Ajani, who'd saved Kelly's life in a battle with fundamentalist Islamists outside Fez, must have triggered a mine. The big Igbo had family in London and he'd had his heart set on seeing them. Now, he was part of the Mediterranean eco system.
Kelly waited, face down, for an after-blast, but nothing happened.
"Fucking Iranians!" "Fucking Irish!" "Fucking world!" But no one could hear him cry.
Three minutes after he resumed swimming, he touched the Malaga Barrier with both feet and propelled himself around the corner. All clear. For now. The two small tanks on his back were calculated to provide air for 40 minutes based on the dept and his breathing rate so he could stay underwater for a good half hour still, if he wished to do so. But he didn't.
"Zoo kay to bury 'er." The Iranian's English buzzed in Mao Kelly's earpiece. The Irishman nudged Ajani and the big Nigerian turned to see Kelly tap two fingers against the palm of his hand.
They were just two kilometres out from the Malaga barrier.
Forty minutes earlier, under a shroud of midnight darkness, the converted submersible vehicle that had formerly been the property of the British Royal Navy slid off the Moroccan coast, north of Ksar-es-Seghir. Now, it was nearing the drop point. Once discharged, the two passengers would swim around the underwater barricade and illegally enter the territory of the European United States Association.
Kelly had paid €300,000 for the trip but he still doubted that he'd ever touch the dry land of Spain. 
There were simply too many improbables. He didn't trust the Iranians who ran the mini-sub, and he wasn't convinced that the blueprint he'd downloaded in Essaouira claiming to show the location of the mines and sensors was genuine. The guy he'd dealt with on the grid said he was a Dutch engineer and that he'd worked on the EUSA project to build the Mediterranean fortifications that were meant to keep Africa from spilling under and over Europe's borders, once and for all.
Sure, he ran the scans on the image and it seemed to have been created no earlier than 2012, but it could have been sophisticated fakery. That's what ten grand usually bought you these days. Still, he transferred the money to the account in Belize after deleting the file. But not before he'd added the co-ordinates to his communicator.
"Wun kay to bury 'er." Kelly looked back at the Iranian, who sported the trademark post-Natanz facial disfigurations. What an insane world this is, he thought to himself. But it was the only one he knew and he longed to be in a calmer, cooler, wetter part of it. And if this didn't work out tonight, well, he'd soon be where his mother always believed he was going anyway.
A fragment of the prayer she'd taught him came back: "He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters." Kelly repeated the couplet silently and then transposed it: "He leads me beside still waters. He makes me lie down in green pastures." Yes. That'd be the proper sequence for tonight, tomorrow and the day after, he thought.
The sub began to slow, its hydraulic side thrusters making an almost imperceptible sound, and the three men in the command module focussed on the central screen. The Iranian tapped a few keys and, while the sonar pinged, a beam of fluorescent light slowly illuminated a swath of the sea floor that led to the barrier.
"Shit," said Ajani. The security mesh looked impenetrable.
