Zero Days, page 25
Drayton bided his time, working the room, engaging in bits of meaningless small talk, the sort of mindless jargon which seemed to come naturally to the techies. The room was hung with plenty of expensive looking art, much of it with a Buddhist theme.
Bell and his superheroes climbed a wide spiral staircase to the next level of the cake, then went out onto a terrace overlooking a lawn for more photographs. After a while, they began to drift back inside, until Bell was alone with his photographer, posing for some solo photographs, the snapper telling him to straighten his back, but to keep it casual, that casual was good.
‘Smart kids, your superheroes,’ said Drayton.
‘Very smart,’ Bell replied. ‘The sort of kids we need to encourage. My dream is to harness the best technical brains on the planet. The winners here are mostly data-driven start-ups. Jürgen is developing digital maps for self-driving cars that can tell you where you want to go before you know yourself. The key is to teach the map by feeding it so much data that it can anticipate your mood and correlate that with your interests and desires, with the time and day of the week as well, and then feed you suggestions for your trip. Danielle is developing virtual reality goggles that will enable football fans to see what the players are seeing while they’re playing the game.’
‘Cool,’ said Drayton.
‘It’s more than that. Imagine where we can go with that technology. It means getting inside somebody else’s head. Seeing things as they see them. Imagine, understanding the criminal mind. The political mind, the military, the consumer. Or even your friends and colleagues. All you need is data. Lots of data. And there’s a mountain being generated all the time. It’s just a question of harvesting it. That’s the big race we’re in. We live in exciting times, Andreas,’ Bell said, looking at Drayton’s name tag.
‘Or scary times,’ said Drayton. ‘You think people will simply accept their data being harvested and used like this? I already see push-back.’
Bell shook his head, sort of smiling, though it struck Drayton as more of a sneer.
‘That’s pure ignorance,’ he said. ‘We can’t be held back by digital luddites. We have to take people out of their comfort zones. It was Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg who said, “Move fast and break things. Unless you are breaking stuff, you are not moving fast enough.” We have to take up that task and challenge old attitudes’.
He adjusted his long grey ponytail.
‘We have to learn to trust in the future. The problem is that people don’t always know what is best for them. Privacy is gone, Andreas. It’s yesterday’s battle.’
‘Comrades, we must know everything,’ Drayton said.
‘What?’
‘It’s a quote.’
‘Was that Zuckerberg too? Maybe Apple’s Steve Jobs? Or was it Google’s Eric Schmidt?’
‘It was the Stasi’s Erich Mielke, a few words of wisdom from the long-time head of the East German secret police. He was a great data harvester and terrific when it came to dealing with non-believers.’
‘What exactly are you getting at, Andreas?’ said Bell, the tech evangelist suddenly looking a lot less happy, like somebody had just thrown a shoe at his pulpit.
‘Nice area, Efren,’ Drayton said, ignoring the question, and looking out across the lawn. ‘You know this whole settlement used to be a walled-off compound for East German leaders. Pretty plush for a bunch of communists, don’t you think? And that house over there, beyond the end of your lawn, the old one that’s now a kindergarten, that was once the home of Erich Honecker, the head of the party, the Socialist Unity Party, I think they called themselves.’
‘And?’
‘And none of that makes you feel uncomfortable?’
‘This area is now home to some of the leading figures in the tech industry Andreas, looking to the future, not dwelling on the past. And you, you’re quite the local historian.’
‘Not really. There’s an information board near the entrance to the settlement. And you know what? You can learn a lot from information boards.’
Bell moved a step closer to Drayton. There were now just the two of them on the terrace.
‘Do I know you, Andreas? I have a feeling we might have met.’ His tone was now cold and suspicious, his face empty of its trademark bonhomie.
‘I don’t think so Efren. Though I was at your party at the old Berlin brewery when you announced you were raising one hundred billion dollars for your Digital Pagoda Fund. Pretty ambitious. How’s that going?’
‘The money’s flowing in, since you ask. Investors want a stake in the future. In groundbreaking technology.’
‘And secure technology. Isn’t that what you’re promising?’
‘Naturally. In a world where hardly a day goes by without another damaging hack or another theft of data, investors are naturally excited by the promise of security. AI-driven security.’
‘And the more scary it gets out there in cyberspace, the more they flock to you.’
A woman appeared at the door to the room. ‘Efren darling, you’re needed downstairs. More photographs, I’m afraid.’
As he moved towards the door, Drayton called after him. ‘I was in Hong Kong too Efren, at the party on the Peak. Nice spread. So, I’m quite the groupie. You might have seen me in the crowd. Apologies if I looked a little sceptical. Such a tragedy about that young woman who drowned in the harbour. On a cruise after the party. Anna Schultz, I believe her name was.’
Efren Bell stopped and turned slowly back towards Drayton. ‘I wouldn’t really know about that. Now, if you’ll excuse me.’
‘Sure, Efren. Wouldn’t want to keep you from your disciples. It’s just that I’m sure she said she was working for you.’
*****
Drayton followed Efren Bell back inside the house, pausing near the top of the spiral staircase to look at the artwork hung on the walls. Watercolour paintings showed temples with monks carrying umbrellas, water buffalos up to their necks in mud, smiling village girls with flowers in their hair. They shared the same fuzzy lines, giving the paintings a slightly chaotic feel if you stood too close, the work of the same artist, whose scrawled signature was in the corner of each of them.
Heavily stylised photographs showed red-brick temples topped by golden spires, shot at weird angles, playing with the sun’s rays and the late afternoon light that Drayton remembered from Bagan. One had been taken from a low angle beneath a temple entrance, the sun acting like a spotlight on the engravings above, highlighting the vicious faces of the snarling dogs.
Two large teak chests with a series of Buddha statues stood in a room to one side of the staircase. Most were of the Buddha sitting with various hand poses. They were old and weathered, originals or else very good copies. Drayton’s eyes were drawn to a display cabinet in the centre of the room. This one contained another Buddha head, only this one was fixed on top of a stone, a four-sided stone, with words engraved on each face, like those he’d seen in Bagan. Very valuable, and very rare, that’s how Tun Zaw has described them, only found in Bagan, and just like the one Professor Richard Pendleton had been working on before he died. Drayton raised his cell phone and photographed it, moving around and capturing each of its four sides. Then he heard a noise behind him.
‘It’s a Myazedi Quadrilingual stone. An inscription stone, and it’s very special,’ said Efren Bell, who was standing along with four men with cropped hair and dark jackets, doing a bad impersonation of bouncers outside a second-rate night club, looking at Drayton as if he definitely wasn’t welcome on the dance floor.
Bell joined Drayton beside the cabinet, the bouncers remaining by the door. ‘From the twelfth century. The ancient Bagan civilization. The pride of my collection.’
‘It must have been difficult to get hold of.’
‘Nothing’s difficult to get if you want it badly enough.’
‘I prefer the plain old Buddhas. More pleasing on the eye than all these squiggles.’
‘You really don’t understand,’ Bell said, as if talking to a slightly dim child. ‘The meaning of this stone. The power of it. What it represents. Back then, and today too. Today more than ever.’
‘Tell me,’ Drayton said.
‘Most temples had inscription stones, though not many have survived. They were an expression of the power of the donor, because he had the money, but also because he was literate. In an age when few people could read or write, language was power. And this stone is not just one language, but four.’
‘That’s a lot of power,’ Drayton said. ‘Mon, Burmese, Pyu and Pali, if I’m not mistaken.’
‘Very good. So you’re a scholar of ancient Bagan?’
‘When I’m not doing Cold War Berlin. But maybe this guy, this donor, just got a monk to write it. You, know, a ghost writer. Weren’t they the literate ones?’
‘You’re a very funny man Andreas, but I think you miss my point. Ancient Bagan was like Europe of the Dark Ages, where education and literacy vanished and reading and writing was restricted largely to a small elite. In Europe’s case, the Catholic Church. A time of widespread ignorance and superstition. Outside the elite, goblins, dragons and fairies ruled the day. Not dissimilar to today, when the only language that matters is zeros and ones. That’s the language that drives everything, and yet ninety-nine per cent of the population is as illiterate as the peasants of the Dark Ages or of ancient Bagan.’
‘And I suppose the superstition, the modern day fairies, goblins and dragons, that would be social media?’ Drayton said. ‘The ignorant masses running around and burning effigies created by fake news. That’s a very bleak view.’
‘We have to nurture and empower those who speak the language of the future,’ said Bell. ‘The superheroes, we have been honouring today. Let them – let us – lead the way. That’s what drives everything I do. Ignorance is inevitable in an age of rapid technical change. The important thing is that technology is allowed to forge ahead, and that technologists become leaders. Ignorance should not be allowed to stand in the way of progress.’
‘The vanguard of the people. Wasn’t that Lenin?’ Drayton said. ‘The new Masters of the Universe. Isn’t that what you and your friends on Wall Street used to call yourselves before you brought the world’s economy to its knees? But of course, you survived the financial carnage, didn’t you Efren. Cashed in big time. Clever algorithms, isn’t that what you called it? And whatever did happen to your old partner. Dmitry, wasn’t that his name? Dmitry Gerasimov.’
Bell ignored the question, circling the inscription stone. Circling Drayton.
‘Now perhaps you can understand why I had to have this stone Andreas. Or is it Chuck? Chuck Drayton?’
*****
At that moment they were interrupted by loud voices and shrieks of laugher from just outside the room, into which bounded the big, bouncy superhero called Danielle, pulling along in her wake a diminutive man with round glasses and peroxide hair, together with the photographer and several other techies.
‘Efren, darling, look who’s here. Its Michel Bandini. The Michel Bandini.’
Bell switched into warm smile mode, stretching out a hand to greet Bandini, telling him how simply wonderful it was to see him and how his art was truly groundbreaking.
‘He’s created the most amazing visualisation,’ said a gushing Danielle. ‘It represents the ebb and flow of SMS data from cell phones all across Berlin, can you believe it? All superimposed on data flows from weather beacons. It’s like unreal. You must see it Efren.’
‘That is so amazing,’ Drayton said, inserting himself in the conversation, and remembering the exhibition at Anna’s gallery. ‘I’ve seen your work. In fact, it’s beyond amazing. You must get a photograph with Efren. Perhaps with our guests from the Berlin government too.’
As they moved out of the room and towards the spiral staircase, Bell’s bouncer-like minders stepped forward, but Bell raised a hand, ever so slightly, but enough to send a message and have them retreat. Not now, not here.
They gathered in the garden for the photographs. As they did, Drayton ducked behind parked cars, the BMWs of the Berlin government officials next to Efren Bell’s OmniX, and out of the gate. Once on the road, he began to run towards the exit of the compound, moving quickly past the sprawling villas, sitting like monuments to the privilege of old communist elite, and now seamlessly colonised by Efren Bell and the high priests of tech. Had he gone too far with Bell? His plan had been to stir things up. To provoke. He’d certainly done that, and more, as looking behind him he saw Bell’s men in black coming out of the villa.
He reached the gate leading to the grounds of the old palace, the Schloss Schönhausen, sitting pretty beyond a perfectly manicured lawn, looking like a picture on a tin of biscuits. He looked all around him thinking, where the fuck are they when you need them? Then he saw them, Cullen’s not-so-secret surveillance team in their black Mercedes with the darkened windows, parked just inside the gate. He tried to open the rear door. It was locked, so he banged on the window, then banged again, more urgent now, because he could see Efren Bell’s bouncers getting closer.
There was a muffled click as the car’s central lock was disabled. Drayton opened the rear door and quickly climbed in. Two sat up front, big men, puzzled men, because a surveillance target wasn’t supposed to join them in the car. That wasn’t in the manual.
‘Can you please drive?’ Drayton said.
They looked at Drayton, then looked at each other.
‘Because those two guys,’ said Drayton, pointing. ‘Yes them. The ones in black heading right towards us, looking less than happy. Well, they ain’t coming to visit the Schloss. You get what I’m saying?’
But they didn’t get what Drayton was saying, and for a while just sat looking straight ahead, weighing up the situation, because the target they’d been told to watch from a distance now filled their rear-view mirror, and he was telling them what to do. That wasn’t in the manual either.
Looking at the back of their heads, Drayton could almost see the cogs turning.
The men in black getting closer, bouncers on a mission.
‘Look, if they hurt me, that is not good for your boss, Ric Cullen. Because he won’t get the information he wants. And that is very bad for you. And it’s especially bad for me. So can we please get the fuck out of here.’
They were just a few feet away now, reaching inside their jackets, reaching for guns. That definitely was in the manual, because the car’s engine burst to life, and with a screech of tyres, the Mercedes accelerated away. Drayton looked behind to see the men running back towards the compound. They wouldn’t be far behind.
The Mercedes moved quickly through the Pankow traffic, weaving in and out and almost colliding with an oncoming tram. It then turned and drove beside an elevated railway line back towards the centre of Berlin.
‘Thank you. Now I’d like you to call Cullen and tell him we need to meet and we need to meet now.’
Once again the men in the front took time to process the request. They had still not spoken a word to Drayton. The driver, who seemed to be in charge, gave an almost imperceptible nod of his head, and the one in the passenger seat pulled out a cell phone and made the call. He spoke with a southern American drawl, cupping the phone in an attempt to keep the call private, but Drayton still picked up some of the muffled words.
‘Yes, he’s in car now, sir … I don’t know … No real choice … That’s what he said …’
Then he hung up.
Drayton looked at the photographs he’d taken of the inscription stone in Bell’s villa. Then he emailed them to Tun Zaw, along with a two word message, ‘Look familiar?’
He pressed ‘send’ just as they turned into a narrow cobbled street with tram lines running down the centre, and from there into a courtyard, stopping beside rubbish bins and several bicycles, chained to a fence. The driver pointed at a side door leading into a tenement block. There was a café on the ground level.
‘In there. Follow the stairs. Above the café.’ The driver said.
Drayton did as instructed; the stairs leading to a dark first floor corridor. A woman emerged from an unmarked door and gestured for him to come inside and through to a stuffy inner office with bare white-washed walls. The only furniture was a table in front of the window, chairs either side, and an old metal cabinet. It looked a lot like the interrogation rooms at the Stasi prison. Drayton took the chair in front of the window.
Five minutes later Ric Cullen entered the room, closing the door behind him. He sat down in front of Drayton. ‘So what’s the urgency?’
‘You’re wrong about Schoenberg.’
Drayton told Cullen about the inscription stone in Efren Bell’s villa, showing him the photographs, and about how that led to Myanmar, to Professor Richard Pendleton. And to Dmitry.
‘He’s working with Dmitry,’ Drayton said. ‘They go back a long way. And every time Dmitry breaks into the computers of another hospital, or a dam, or a water company, it sends investors flocking to Efren Bell’s Digital Pagoda Fund with its promise of a future you can’t hack.’
‘That’s a very interesting theory,’ Cullen said. ‘You’re saying that one of the world’s greatest technological visionaries, who is also an American, is a cyber-crook.’
‘I don’t see any other explanation.’
‘Well, try this. He likes Buddhist art and he’s a rich man. Rich men aren’t always picky about where they buy their art from. And as for Dmitry, don’t you think that’s a little far-fetched?’
‘Efren Bell knows the origin of the stone.’
‘So you’re now an expert on antiquities, are you Drayton?’, Cullen sneered, tossing back Drayton’s phone. ‘Maybe there’s another explanation. That your judgement is being clouded by hatred. By revenge. Maybe even jealousy. That it’s all gotten very personal because you’re blaming Efren Bell for your girlfriend’s accident.’
