Sweet Talking Money Page 13
Kessler performed the first three numbers from bed, lying quiet, showing none of the energy she had once poured into performance. Upright or prone, Kessler was good enough to command the absolute attention of her fans, but still, somehow, even in the midst of the concert, the rumours swirled. Tonight was stupendous. Tonight was astounding. Tonight would shake the world. Nothing appeared to support the rumours – nothing except the fact that since Kessler’s illness, her performances had always seen her draped in more than a flimsy silk nightie: sometimes furs, sometimes velvets, once a kind of goose-down ball dress trimmed with ermine; anything at all, but always warm, always enveloping. It wasn’t much to go on, but still the rumours hurtled.
Then the fourth number. Drumbeats and a bass line, unfamiliar chords. A melody sketched over the top on synth and saxophone. The audience listened to the first couple of bars, then doubt settled into certainty. This was a new song, one never heard before. The rumourmongers sensed imminent vindication. Howls and cheers, clapping and stamping, rose from the audience and fell back. History was being made. It was too important to miss. For the first time since becoming ill, Kessler sat up to sing.
‘Dead man doctors, bullshit spivs …’
Wild cheering. Cheering not for the song or the merit of the song. Cheering because of all her gigs to date, this would be her most famous: bigger than her sell-out gig in Central Park, bigger than her first discovery in an Atlantic City nightclub, bigger even than the Vatican City concert where she’d burned an effigy of Torquemada, the Spanish inquisitor.
‘Condemned me to prison, life behind bars.’
Artistically, musically, it wasn’t a song which would live long in the annals of rock. But that didn’t matter. Something extraordinary was happening. Kessler was rising from her bed, throwing off her sheets. The bass line, which had been quiet, became louder, impossible to ignore. ‘Eeeee-ooooo-oough.’ Kessler screamed, leaping to her feet, standing at the foot of her bed. ‘They were wrong.’ She leaped to the floor, then hurled herself to the ground: a forward flip, a cartwheel, another forward flip. ‘They were wrong, wrong, wrong.’ The huge bed began to roll backwards into the darkness of backstage. Kessler leaped around it, hurling pillows into the audience. ‘They were wrong, wrong, wrong.’ She kicked, flipped, and kicked again; but her breath held steady as she roared out her words.
The screams of the fans reached the point of actual hysteria: emotions so big they no longer knew what to do with themselves. Medical teams hauled the first faint-victims from the crowd, treating them quickly, clearing the decks for the next crop. From the wings, Bryn and Cameron waited and watched. Cameron was bored. She didn’t see the need to be there in person, she didn’t like the music and Bryn had stopped her from bringing anything useful to read. She was absent and unco-operative.
Bryn was aware of his partner’s discontent, but he didn’t care. After the concert, Kessler was holding a press conference. Her awesome PR machine had pulled together twelve TV stations from around the world, all of the UK press, most of the European and US papers big enough to have a London correspondent. The international press agencies would be there, photographers on assignment, as well as freelancers looking to syndicate their pictures. Editors in London had been warned there was a big story pending and produced mock-ups of their early editions with big blanks on the front page. Phone and satellite links had been tested, expanded and tested again. When the story came out, it would reach the world in seconds.
Kessler had promised gigantic. She would deliver humungous.
5
But later that night, as Bryn made his way home to his barge tired but happy, another emotion began to intrude: fear.
The publicity was good news for the clinic, good news for Cameron, good news for the entire venture. But there was a catch. Up till now, they had been walled off from the outside world, hidden, invisible, beyond reach. Tonight that had changed, and changed for ever. When Brent Huizinga picked up his morning paper, he’d know that Cameron Wilde was alive, well, and more dangerous than ever.
Bryn licked his lips. The fight was on.
TWELVE
1
In the clinic’s high-vaulted reception area, morning light streamed horizontally from the east, reflecting from the Thames. The boat-hulled reception desk looked submerged as the room filled with watery light right up to the white-beamed rafters. The waiting room table was littered with the morning’s papers and there was a jugful of coffee (mocha Mysore, regular blend) brought in by Bryn, steaming hot from the barge. But it was the headlines which caught the eye, big as banners in the tabloids, front page even in the broadsheets.
‘Revolutionary approach cures the incurable’, said one of the more sober papers. ‘Rock star first to benefit from immune technique’.
That wasn’t what the tabloids talked about, at least not on the front page, and not in the two-page photo-spreads. ‘Kessler cured – and it’s straight back to bed’, commented one. Or even more simply: ‘Welsh boyo beds Kessler’.
‘Get this,’ said Meg. ‘The Sun’s got a league table listing Kessler’s celebrity shags. You’re number four on the list ahead of Warren Beatty.’
‘Bloody hell, that I could live without.’ But he reached for the paper.
Meg held it away from him, reading titbits out loud. ‘Kessler rated thirty-five-year-old hunk, businessman Bryn Hughes, as her best shag of the year. We give him eight out of ten for sex appeal.’
‘It’s like you’ve been cloned,’ commented Mungo, examining the multiple images of Bryn which lay on the table, prodded and fingered by shafts of sunlight. ‘Bryn Hughes, Replicator Man.’
‘Sounds like you can replicate without cloning, Bryn, m’boy,’ said Meg. ‘Here, it goes on to say, “Hughes has so far refused to comment on Kessler’s own performance, except to say that she responded well to treatment”. Well, how was she?’
Then something extraordinary happened. Cameron, who’d been sitting silently, exploded from her seat.
‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ she snapped. ‘This is a research establishment, not a goddamn whorehouse.’
Kicking her chair away from her, she marched into the laboratory, slamming the door hard in her wake. The sound crashed around the room before fading out amongst the rafters. The others looked at each other guiltily. As they shifted in their seats, Bryn’s leg happened to fall against Kati’s. He didn’t move his. She didn’t move hers. Bryn could feel the warmth of her calf bleeding through the fabric of his trousers.
He caught her eye. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said to no one in particular. ‘The Kessler thing meant nothing. It didn’t mean anything at all.’
Kati smiled. She was smart. She knew that. Her leg continued to rest against Bryn’s, his against hers. From the laboratory, sounds of Cameron’s anger continued to trickle out: drawers being closed with unnecessary force, glassware being slammed down on to worktops, an angry mutter. Kati moved her leg away. Bryn continued to smile, his face bathed in light.
2
One week later, and the clinic was running full blast.
The clinic had already recruited four full-time doctors as well as Cameron, with more on the way. They’d chosen an outstanding clinical virologist, Dr Rauschenberg, to act as the clinic’s medical director under Cameron’s overall supervision. Rauschenberg, a tall, bearded, German-accented doctor of twenty-five years’ experience, was already a complete convert to Cameron’s style of medicine.
‘When I was a young medical student, training in Heidelberg, many of us believed that if we studied to be virologists, we would need to train again before we retired. We were going to defeat the virus, ja. No virus, no virologist. But now? We are as far as ever, maybe further than ever, from winning. But this Reprogramme technique is incredible. Again now, I think maybe I need to retrain myself.’
Until Cameron had finished her research, of course, patients couldn’t obtain the full Immune Reprogramming from the clinic, but, as Rauschenberg was quick to see, there were countless w
ays in which Cameron’s expertise could be used to enhance the standard drug-oriented medicine on offer. ‘With Cameron’s technique, we understand so much more about blood. We can test our patients to see which drugs are working best for them, and in which doses. We find out what support materials they need. We are still using mostly drugs, ja, but the right drugs hopefully, in the right amounts.’
And if the doctors were enthused, the patients rang the phone off the hook. Meg kept an appointments book running eight weeks ahead of the current date. Every Monday morning, she opened up a new week for appointments, and by eleven thirty every Monday morning the entire week was booked solid.
The mood was good.
3
April. Each day was busier than the one before. Nurses came and went. Upstairs, in the consulting rooms, doors banged, and doctors barked instructions, advice and orders.
Downstairs, the clinic’s waiting area – a horseshoe of green sofas by the huge windows overlooking the river – was already overflowing. One morning, as Meg was marshalling the stream of patients, there came a tap at the window, fifteen feet up on the river side. Meg stared. A blue-green shape looked down at her and gave another brusque tap of impatience. Meg’s face broke into a broad smile as she ran to open one of the lower windows. The parrot flew down, perched for a few moments on the lip of the window, then with another sharp downward nod of its head, flew straight in, alighting on the back of Meg’s chair. ‘You little darling,’ said Meg. ‘I thought you’d never ask.’
4
She wasn’t the only one to have similar thoughts that day. Since arriving in England, Kati had been staying with a friend in Notting Hill, but had recently found herself a flat of her own in a quiet residential area off Shepherds Bush. Ever attentive, Bryn had offered to help her with the move and arrived at dusk, a few minutes on the late side.
As he began to park, he glanced up and glimpsed light spilling from an open door, Kati in a state of shock, and two kids racing off up the road. Bryn leaped from the car and thundered off after them, yelling. They looked round, saw the size of their pursuer and dropped the handbag they’d stolen, whilst continuing to run like the wind.
Panting heavily, Bryn retrieved the handbag and jogged back down the road.
‘Your bag,’ he puffed.
‘Thanks. Are you OK?’
‘No. Bloody unfit is what I am. Are you OK?’
‘Fine. I came outside to see if I could find you. The two boys walked right past me, then just turned around and demanded my bag. There was nothing inside, really. I was just worried they might produce a weapon.’
‘You did right.’
‘But thanks. It wasn’t like I wanted them to have it.’
‘You’re welcome.’ They were just inside the doorway now. Kati’s flat shared a communal hallway, and it smelled like communal hallways always do: carpet which ought to be replaced, mould, the smell of old wallpaper and other people’s kitchens. The passage was narrow, and Bryn and Kati were forced close together. ‘Are you sure you’re OK?’ he said.
She put her hand to his cheek, then the back of his neck. She nodded. Her hand felt nice, as did the smell of her hair, and the look of her upturned spaniel eyes. He felt a surge of fondness and a sweet, sharp stab of lust. Aside from his brief, albeit well-publicised, fling with Cheryl Kessler, he hadn’t so much as touched a woman since Cecily had left, and Kati wasn’t just a woman, she was a particularly nice one.
‘I’m really glad you came tonight,’ she said.
‘Me too,’ he nodded.
He put his hands to her cheek, then his lips to hers, cautiously at first, not knowing if she would accept.
She did. It had been a lonely haul for her too, and Bryn had been lovely to her right from the start. She kissed him back, first with fondness, then with passion. They backed through the door into her flat, and got no unpacking done that night.
5
And meantime, on a field sloping steeply up to the downward thrust of the Brecon Beacons, a man is sitting on a sandstone boulder, as fluffy spring clouds skitter across a glorious blue sky. All is not well. A dog alternately licks the man’s hand and barks. The man strokes the dog automatically, an impulse no longer guided by the brain. The man isn’t old – at least, not unless you count a weather-beaten sixty-ish as old – but there’s a dazed look on his face, a blinking attempt to make sense of a confusing world.
He doesn’t know how long he’s been sitting there, but the dog, Rhys, knows something is out of the ordinary, and in the ways that animals can be worried, Rhys is worried.
A long distance below the man and his dog, there’s a grey-haired lady stepping out into the stone-flagged farmyard, calling out a name. ‘Mervyn?’ shouts Gwyneth. ‘Mervyn? Mervyn?’
Rhys barks. Something’s wrong.
THIRTEEN
1
The internet is badly named. It’s not a net, it’s an ocean. You, you’re the net. If you want to find treasure in the deep, dark sea of nonsense, you’ve got to be skilful, patient and usually lucky as well.
Right now, Bryn wasn’t leaving a whole lot to chance. Like Gari Kasparov playing three games of chess simultaneously, or a circus stuntwoman riding three horses bareback round the ring, he had three computers and three printers on the go, trawling for information with drag nets and dynamite. Meg hovered round, sorting and stacking the paper, feeding the printers extra paper or toner as needed.
Mungo shuffled in, trying to fit a can of Diet Coke and a lump of cold hamburger into his mouth at the same time. He’d set up the computers on the green sofas of the waiting area, because, once the clinic was closed for the night, the reception bay offered the most space for work. He inspected his babies, unhappy with what he saw.
‘I can get you into Dataworld for free,’ he mumbled.
‘That’s OK, Mungo.’
‘MediaScan too, probably. Those outfits don’t spend much on security. Their clients aren’t street enough to try anything smart.’
‘Right. Where “not street enough” equals honest.’
‘Those databases are two hundred quid an hour, some of them.’
‘No, Mungo. Just no. OK?’
‘OK, OK. Chill.’
There was a pause. A dark shape bobbed up on the reception counter, emitting little squawks and demanding attention.
‘Good girl, Tallulah,’ said Meg. ‘Good girl.’ She found some seed for the parrot and scattered it on the counter. The parrot began to peck away on the waxed oak boards.
‘Tallulah?’ said Bryn. ‘You’re serious?’
‘Yes, matey. Short for Tallulah Belle.’
‘Good name,’ said Mungo. ‘Parrot – Tallulah – very sound.’
Bryn shook his head, baffled at their logic. ‘Mungo,’ he said, changing the subject. ‘Any chance of your getting inside Corinth?’
Mungo sniffed vigorously. ‘Well, I wasn’t going to tell you, man, least not unless I cracked it, but I’ve sort of been poking around.’
‘Trying to hack in?’
‘Crack, man. Crack. Hacking is holy, cracking is dark side only.’
‘Trying to crack them?’
Mungo nodded. ‘Jus’ the basics. Ping sweep. ICMP queries. Port scanning. TCP fingerprinting. That sort of thing.’
‘You think you’ll get in?’
‘Gimme enough time and I could probably get inside the Darth Vader’s knicker drawer, but it depends on how pushy you want to be. There’s always the risk of tripping a crack-alert, see. I mean, if they were awake, they probably already saw my ping sweep.’
‘They mustn’t know we’re trying.’
‘Like mustn’t? Or like mustn’t-mustn’t?’
‘Big mustn’t.’
Mungo wiggled his eyebrows. ‘You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs,’ he advised. ‘Least, not without spending one pound twenty-nine pee on a cheese an’ onion microwave omelette, with a crinkly bit of lettuce leaf as the most extremely imag’native serving suggestion.’
‘Yeah.’ About six syllables were crammed into the one tiny word. ‘To be honest, man, any teeny-bop lamer could have cracked you. The Brothers Lame of Lamesville, Arizona could have cracked you. I tell you, man, even –’
‘It wasn’t as bad as –’
‘Angus Lame McLoser and his mum –’
OK, Mungo. OK.’
The youngster trailed off. ‘Wee Jane McLimpie … Course, there might be another way, but it’s see-ree-ously difficult.’
‘And that is?’
‘Crack the phone system, then crack Corinth.’
‘You can do that?’
Mungo shrugged. ‘Used to do that kind of thing when I was a kid, but they’ve made it tougher now.’
‘You’ll give it a go?’
‘Yeah, man. I’ll try. Wish you hadn’t got me started on omelettes. Me belly’s doing a Dance of the Seven Gurgles now. Time for a chocolate waffle.’
He sniffed again, rubbed his belly, looked sadly at the money wasting away on-screen, shot a longer and fonder glance at Meg, then shuffled off again, a skinny little character in enormous trainers with his big saucer-shaped eyes. Bryn felt briefly paternal towards the youngster before turning back to the printers and the rising mounds of data on Corinth.
‘What’s this all for?’ asked Meg. ‘Aren’t we maybe going a bit O-T-T?’
He grimaced. ‘First rule of warfare, Meg. Know your enemy.’
2
Rescued, restored and now resplendent, the barge had returned from the dead.
The outside gleamed white-and-black with the brightness of new paint. Inside, Bryn had sanded back the grimy oak floor and brought it back to life with endless coats of linseed oil. The brass window fittings gleamed a spotless pale gold. The wood-panelled walls were hung with Bryn’s things – signed rugby photos, some decent oil paintings of the Welsh hills, photos of his mum, dad and brother, and a couple of framed newspaper stories commemorating his biggest deals. The room was comfy, male, welcoming. It smelled of linseed oil, candle smoke and old leather – and, best of all, the only lingering signs of Cecily were some faded but gorgeous Persian rugs that had somehow evaded the auctioneer’s hammer.