“I know.”
“Guy who turned me on to it—to div—he said to me: we got a mission. All of us. All of us who know, right? Big government. Big industry. Big pharma. They got this power, and they hold it for themselves, and what we need to do, what we need . . .” He cupped his cigarette in both hands. “What we need to do is let it go, yeah? Just . . . let it out.” He opened his hands, cigarette smoke fluttering up. A giggle shook him. “Let it go, uh huh? Fly free.”
“Yes,” said Silverman’s voice.
“In the beginning, see—in the beginning, everything belonged to everyone. You know that. People know that. The whole world was alive. And we were part of it. Everything alive.” He spread his fingers. “Connected up. But then . . .”
He pulled on his cigarette. “Then we got . . . isolated. Cut off from the scheme. Became . . . individuals. Single units. When that happened, we died.” Without moving his head, he looked down. “You’re recording, aren’t you? You fucking liar! You’re recording this—”
Back in the present, Silverman tapped a key, and the image froze, blurred, the man’s face caught mid-scowl.
“This sound familiar?” he said.
“A bit.”
“There was more, earlier. I couldn’t get the camera on him. I’m guessing this is your distributor, though. You think?”
He raised his brows; a puppy dog, all keen to please.
But I’d spent four days talking with Melody Duchess Vanderlisle de Vere, and if I knew one thing, it was this: that she would never, never buy from somebody like that. No matter how lonely, how desperate. Never.
I said, “Any more?”
“Couple of minutes. Nothing important.”
“It might be. Let’s see.”
Silverman waved a hand, dismissively. But then his eyes narrowed.
“You want the Herzog moment, don’t you?”
“What’s that?”
He pulled at the lobe of his ear, an oddly child-like gesture.
“Well . . . Herzog. He does an interview, he always leaves a few more seconds, just before he cuts. So you get the silence afterwards. The reactions. Everyone just being, kind of uncomfortable with it . . .”
“And that’s the rest of this? Uncomfortable silence?”
“Um. No. Not really.”
“What then?”
“He punched me out, you really want to know. It was . . . kind of embarrassing.” He sucked his lower lip, eyes on the screen. “Luckily he wasn’t very good.”
Chapter 26
A History Lesson
“See?” she said. “It’s trees and open ground. We can bring the car right up, almost to the pond.”
I couldn’t deny this. The park had beautiful stone gates, but it didn’t have a wall around it. A few bumps, and we could drive straight in, through the trees, almost to the water’s edge. And be practically invisible. At nighttime, anyway.
Sunlight glittered on the water. Across the lake, the pink and blue of Cleary’s tent had a cheery carnival air.
I kicked at the mulch and fallen twigs.
I sniffed the air.
I said, “They’ll hear the generator.”
“I was thinking about that. First, we can muffle it. Second . . . can we do it all on battery?”
She’d worked it out. Between last night and this morning, she’d come up with a plan.
“Hell, I don’t know.” It was weird, looking around: the sunlight, the trees, the smell of earth and grass . . . and talking like this. Knowing what was in the water there, no matter how calm it might look. I said, “You rouse the thing, you want the power to put it down. If the battery cuts out, and you’re left standing . . .”
“You said we’d have to be quick. We need to generate the power. We don’t need to sustain it. Right?”
I didn’t answer.
“Right, Chris?”
“It’s a risk,” I said. Then, “The real question—is it worth it? We phone in, say there’s trouble with the locals. Which there is. They send us somewhere else.”
“It’s worth it to me, Chris. Is it possible?” she asked me. “Can it be done?”
Then I saw Silverman. “You filming this?”
“Um . . . sure.”
He didn’t put the camera down.
“Christ’s sake,” I said.
So we went back to the coffee shop.
He was trying to do an interview. I’d spent the last ten minutes trying not to answer him, and still he wasn’t giving up. The little red light on the camera glared at me. I sipped my coffee and I glowered back. Then Angel put her hand upon my arm.
“Chris,” she said.
“What?”
“Be nice.”
So I sat there, and I looked at him, and told myself whatever I might say would probably be lost for decades in the Silverman archives, if we were lucky.
He said, “This is unusual. This case.”
I grunted. “Hnh.”
Angel dug me in the ribs.
“That’s right,” I said.
“You wouldn’t normally go after it?”