Joe Country полностью

The picture on his screen juddered, halted, and the dialogue box conjured a message: Refer to Annex C. This referred to a database of known mercenaries—legit, grey area and downright nasty—and the highlighted face belonged to a man with the pitted skin of an acne survivor, and eyes that revealed nothing. They didn’t usually, in Coe’s experience. Those with something to hide knew not to put it in their windows. The man’s hair was short enough to qualify as military; his gear—a black polo-neck under a thigh-length winter coat, combat trousers, boots; a dufflebag over one shoulder—ticked the same boxes. Way too young to be Harkness so not on Coe’s agenda, and besides, he couldn’t find the match on Annex C while running face recog; not on hardware that was creaky when scooters were hip. Coe put his sandwich down, scribbled a reminder on its wrapper, then hit return, allowing the program to re-start. The way it trip-hopped face to face, superimposing geometric shapes upon each, was as mesmerising as a screensaver, and about as productive. What would the program make of him, he wondered? He barely recognised himself anymore, that was for sure. And then the program stalled again, and he thought he’d over-pushed it, but no; after a quivery moment, another dialogue box appeared. Refer to Annex A.

Thinning fair hair, noticeable cheekbones. A middle-aged face on a capable-looking body.

“Cartwright?” he said.

Cartwright grunted.

“This him?”

Cartwright looked up, came over, squatted by Coe’s desk. After a while he said, “Where’s this?”

“Southampton. Ferry arrivals. Yesterday.”

“It’s him.” He tapped the screen. “Annex A?”

Coe said, “Big and bad.”

“Well don’t access it. No need to let the Park know we’re looking.”

Three bags full, thought Coe.

“Almost certainly Jay Featherstone, then,” said River Cartwright, even as his own computer pinged incoming paperwork from the car hire firm.

From upstairs came a familiar explosion: a Jackson Lamb coughing fit, though by the noise, you’d be forgiven for assuming he was giving birth. The two men shared an uneasy moment, one broken by a voice from the doorway: Louisa Guy, delivering a farewell.

“You’re away?”

“Leave.”

“With this going on?” said River.

But Louisa was already halfway down the stairs.

Coe glanced to the window. It was dark outside, the pavements bracing themselves for overnight frost. Soon there’d be snow, and the country in the grip of its annual pantomime: cancelled trains, motionless airports, unnavigable roads. He hit return on his keyboard and the program chuntered back to life, sorting through the rest of Southampton’s arrivals: the weary, the footsore. It had already found what Coe was looking for, had pinned Frank Harkness to its memory-board, but why stop there? He was dimly aware that the coughing upstairs had subsided; that Cartwright had returned to his desk. Other aural irritations continued: the burping of radiators, the passive-aggressive grumbling of the fridge. A slamming door would be Shirley Dander; the scraping of a chair, Roddy Ho. He had grown used to this, both the discordant soundtrack and the occasional harmonies it hid; had learned to find comfort in continuity, though knew full well that the only reliable constant was fracture, that eventually everything broke. Which might happen as easily in the snow as at any other time.

And his computer blipped once more, as another Annex C match was made.

“Why didn’t I know that Frank Harkness was in-country?”