"Gypsy families. These are their caravans. Hobbs rents one."
"Have you seen them? Gypsies?"
"No," he says, bringing the car to a halt, "never."
She looks out at a large rectangular sign, peeling plywood up on two lengths of galvanized pipe, lettered black on white:
MINISTRY OF DEFENCE THIS IS A PROHIBITED PLACE
WITHIN THE MEANING OF
THE OFFICIAL SECRETS ACT.
UNAUTHORIZED PERSONS
ENTERING THE AREA MAY BE
ARRESTED AND PROSECUTED.
- /
Ngemi gets out stiffly, stretching his legs, jacket creaking. Reaches into the backseat for his colorful carpetbag. Cayce gets out too.
There is a silence here. No birds sing.
"If there are dogs, shouldn't we hear them?" Looking toward the low brick structures beyond the fence. The wire, she sees, is strung between tall square columns of discolored concrete. It all feels old, and somehow dead. World War II?
"I've never heard them," Ngemi says, darkly, and starts along a footpath, skirting small puddles. His shoes are black four-eyelet DMs, the ur-Martens of the first decade of punk, long since de-recontextualized into the inexpensive everyman's footwear they'd been designed to be.
Uncut grass. Wild shrubbery with small yellow flowers. She follows Ngemi toward the nearest mirror-world trailer. It is two-tone, the upper body beige, the lower burgundy, dented and dull. It has a shallow, centrally peaked roof that reminds her of drawings of Noah's ark in books for children, and on its back a square, faded mirror-world license plate, "LOB" and four numerals. It doesn't look as though it's been anywhere in a long while, grass grown up around it, hiding any wheels it may still possess. Its windows, she sees, have been sealed over with galvanized sheet metal.
"Hobbs," Ngemi calls, though not very loudly, "Hobbs, it is Ngemi." He pauses, advances. The caravan's door, beige and burgundy as well, doesn't look as though it could ever fully close. "Hobbs?" He raps twice, softly.
"Piss off," says someone, she assumes Hobbs, from within. It is a voice of utmost weariness, made peevish with pain.
"I've come for the calculators," Ngemi says. "To complete the Japanese transaction. I have your share of the money."
"Cunt." Baranov kicks open the door, it seems, without having to rise from where he must be seated, the opening presenting as a depth-less rectangle of darkness. "Who the fuck is she?"
"You met near Portobello, briefly," Ngemi says. "A friend of Voytek's." Which, Cayce supposes, is true, though after the fact.
"And why," Baranov says, leaning slightly forward, so that sunlight glints flatly on his glasses, "would you bring her here?" All weariness gone, now, the voice taut and careful, menacing in its precision.
"I'll let her explain that," Ngemi says, glancing at Cayce, "after you and I have sorted present business." He hefts the carpetbag in Baranov's direction, as if indicating the nature of that business. To Cayce: "Hobbs has room for only one visitor at a time. Excuse us, please." He climbs into the caravan, which sways on its springs, alarmingly, with a sound like the rattling of empty bottles. "I doubt we'll be long."
"Tedious cunt," Baranov says, though whether about her, Ngemi, or life, she can't tell.
Ngemi, hunched almost double beneath the low roof, settles himself on something unseen, casts Cayce an apologetic look, and closes the door.
Alone now, though aware of their muffled voices, she looks toward the other caravans. Some are more dilapidated than Baranov's, others newer and slightly larger. She doesn't like them. To escape their lines of sight, she walks around Baranov's. Finds herself facing the wire fence and the dead-looking brick buildings. Likes this no better.
Beneath her breath, recites the duck-in-the-face mantra.
There is a black cable between the toes of her suede boots from Parco. She looks back and sees where it snakes from a vent in the side of Baranov's caravan. She walks forward, following it, and finds the point where it's been inserted through the fence, close to the ground. It leads off through tussocks of yellowing grass, toward the brick compound. Electricity? From MIS, or whatever other keepers?
"Hello!" Ngemi calls her, from the side of the caravan. "Come and have your talk with Hobbs. He won't bite you. He might actually be in a better mood, now."
She walks back, pretending not to notice the cable.
"Go on," says Ngemi. He glances at the old-fashioned calculator-watch on his wrist, its chrome case flashing in the wan sunlight. In his other hand, the carpetbag, looking heavier. "I don't know how long he might give you. I'd like to catch the next train, if we can."
The caravan sways as she climbs in, blinking in the dark. A gloom that reeks of stale cigarette ash and unwashed clothing, horribly close.
"Sit down," Baranov orders. "Close the door."
She does, discovering that what she sits on consists of chair-high stacks of books, very old ones, large jacketless volumes with dull cloth covers.
He leans forward. "Journalist?"
"No."
"Name."
"Cayce Pollard."
