"eBay," says Ngemi. "He's very adroit there, and has sold many Cur-tas to Americans, always for more than they would fetch here. Global values are being established."
"Do you… like them? The way he does?"
Ngemi sighs, his jacket creaking sharply. "I appreciate them. I enjoy them. But not to the depth of Hobbs's passion. I love the history of computing, you see, and the Curta is simply a step, for me. A fascinating one, but I have Hewlett-Packards that I enjoy as much, or more." He glances out at featureless fields, the dark spire of a distant church. "Hobbs," he says, turning back to her, "suffers and enjoys as only the specialist can. I imagine it is not so much about the artifact, in his case, as about the ultimate provenance."
"How's that?"
"The camps. Herzstark in Buchenwald, surrounded by death, by methodical erasure, by an almost certain fate. He continued to work. In the end, the camp was liberated. He walked free, never having abandoned his vision of the calculator. Hobbs honors that triumph, that escape."
"He has something he needs to escape, himself?"
"Himself exactly." He nods. Then changes the subject. "What is-it that you do? I didn't understand it, in the restaurant."
"I'm in marketing."
"You sell things?"
"No. I find things, or styles, for other people, companies, to market. And I evaluate logos—trademark emblems."
"You are American?"
"Yes."
"I think it must be a difficult time to be American," Ngemi says, settling his large head firmly back against the headrest of his non-relining second-class seat. "If you don't mind, I will sleep now."
"1 don't mind."
He closes his eyes.
She looks out at the patchwork fields, sunlight flashing from the occasional puddle. When had she last ridden on a train, not a subway, through open country1? She can't remember.
Instead she remembers her first view of Ground Zero, in late February. The viewing platforms. The unnaturalness of so much sunlight, in that place. They had been pulling out a PATH train, buried there.
She closes her eyes.
IN Bournemouth, Ngemi leads her several blocks from the station, through the oddness, for her, of any England not London, to a greengrocer's shop.
Here he is greeted by an older, very earnest-looking man, lighter-skinned, with neat gray hair and a nne-bladed Ethiopian nose. The greengrocer, evidently, from his spotless blue apron, who looks to Cayce like a Tory Rastafarian. Ngemi and this man exchange extended greetings, or perhaps news, in what might, for all she knows, be Aramaic, or some utterly impenetrable dialect of English. Ngemi does not introduce her. The man gives Ngemi a set of car keys and a plastic bag containing plums and two ripe bananas.
Ngemi nods gravely, she assumes in thanks, and she follows him along the street, to where he stops and unlocks the passenger door of a dark red mirror-world car. This one, she notes, is a Vauxhall, but nothing like the car she'd seen Hobbs drive in Portobello. It's scented, inside, with some alien air freshener, more African than mirror-world.
Ngemi sits behind the wheel for a moment, then inserts the key.
Very shortly, they're negotiating complex roundabouts at speeds that have Cayce closing her eyes. Finally she opts to keep them shut.
When she opens them, she sees rolling green hills. Ngemi drives on, silently, giving great concentration to the task.
She sees a ruined castle, on a hill.
"Norman," Ngemi says, glancing over at her, but doesn't choose to elaborate.
Without waiting for the fruit to be offered, she removes a banana from the greengrocer's bag and peels and eats it. Cloudy now, and a light drizzles settles in. Ngemi turns on the wipers.
"I'd offer you lunch before we see Hobbs," Ngemi says, "but timing, when visiting him, can be crucial."
"We can phone him, to make sure he'll be in."
"He has no phone. I was able to reach him at his local, last night. He was drunk, of course. He should be awake, by the time we arrive, and I hope that he won't have started again."
Twenty minutes later he exits from the main road, following what Cayce thinks of as two-lane blacktop. They are in countryside of a vaguely agricultural sort. Sheep on a hillside. Soon they are climbing single-lane gravel around the side of a hill. As they round it, Cayce sees, below them, a curiously desolate-looking complex of buildings of various sizes, all of brick. No visible activity.
Descending, the Vauxhall's tires crunching gravel, she sees chain-link and barbed wire.
"It is a former training facility," he says. "MI5 or MI6.1 think 5. Now they breed and train police dogs here, according to Hobbs."
"'They' who?"
"No idea. A most ill-favored place."
Cayce has no idea where they are. Bournemouth? Poole?
He turns off the gravel, onto actual dirt, no more than a rutted path. Splashing through brown puddles.
She sees small trailers parked between woods and the fenced compound. Perhaps seven of them. As deserted-looking as the brick structures. Next to that, but clearly not a part of it.
"This is where he lives?"
"Yes."
"What is it?"
