Chapter Thirteen

A MAN’S GRUFF voice answered in English. I told him a mutual friend who worked on the twenty-third floor of a nearby building had suggested I call around. He buzzed me in and I climbed a flight of stairs, noting that someone had worked hard to conceal four closed-circuit cameras monitoring the stairway. Worried about the Russian mafia, I guessed.

I turned into a corridor, and it was only after my eyes had adjusted to the gloom that I saw him: Battleboi was standing straight ahead, just inside the type of steel door which would have made a crack house proud. The most surprising thing about him wasn’t his size – though he weighed in at around four hundred pounds – the shocking thing was that he was dressed like a medieval Japanese daimyo. A samurai cracker of the first order, I realized.

He was wearing a shockingly expensive silk kimono and traditional Japanese white socks notched for the big toe, his black hair oiled and swept back tight into a topknot. If anybody ever needs a Hispanic sumo wrestler, I know just the guy. He bowed slightly, the minimum of good manners – I guessed he didn’t like our friend from the twenty-third floor very much – and stood aside to let me enter.

Admittedly, his feudal lands only extended to four rooms on a side street, but beautiful tatami mats covered the floors, shoji screens separated the spaces and on one wall was an antique painted screen of Mount Fuji which I bet would have cost at least twenty thousand of his most expensive files.

Once across the threshold, I only just avoided a social disaster – at the last moment I realized I was supposed to swap my shoes for a pair of guest sandals. While I undid my barbarian boots I asked what I should call him.

He looked blank. ‘What do you mean – they didn’t tell you? ’

‘Well, yeah, they told me, ’ I replied. ‘It just doesn’t seem right calling somebody Battleboi to their face. ’

He shrugged. ‘Doesn’t worry me, dickhead, ’ he said, and led the way to a pair of cushions on the floor.

‘The deputy director says you’re cooperating with him, ’ I said, as if I were there with The Man’s complete authority.

He looked at me with disgust but didn’t deny it. ‘What do you want? ’

As we sat cross-legged I explained about deleting every reference to Scott Murdoch from the databases held by the alumni associations of my former schools. I figured that was as good a place as any to start.

He asked who Murdoch was and I told him I didn’t know. ‘It’s been decided to deep-six his past – that’s all we’ve got to worry about. ’

He asked for Murdoch’s date of birth, details of the alumni associations and a host of other questions to make sure that he got the right person. After I answered, he adjusted his kimono and said we’d start in a few minutes.

‘Cha, neh? ’ he said casually, but I got the subtext: I was supposed to look blank and feel inferior but, honestly, I wasn’t in the mood.

I reached into memory, to a summer long ago. I was on a blood-soaked beach, surrounded by a rash of beheadings and scores of samurai committing ritual suicide. In other words, I had spent my vacation reading Shō gun. Out of all those epic pages I remembered a few key phrases – cha was tea.

‘Hai, domo, ’ I said, hoping my memory hadn’t failed me and I was saying ‘Yes, thank you’ and not ‘Go fuck yourself. ’

I must have got it right. ‘You speak Japanese? ’ he said, with a mixture of astonishment and respect.

‘Oh, just a little, ’ I said modestly.

He clapped his hands, and one of the screens slid open. A slim Hispanic chick dressed in a red silk kimono entered and bowed, prompting in me a question which has occupied the minds of great philosophers since time immemorial. How come unattractive guys nearly always get the hot women?

She was a couple of years younger than him, with large eyes and a sensuous mouth. On closer inspection, it was clear she had freely adapted the traditional kimono – it was much tighter across her hips and boobs than you would ever see in Tokyo. To facilitate movement, she had slashed it at the back from the hem up to her thigh and as she moved across the room it was obvious from the way the silk rippled and clung to her she didn’t have to worry about panty-lines and bra-straps. She wasn’t wearing either. The overall effect was both alluring and crazy.

‘Tea? ’ she asked.

I nodded, and Battleboi turned to me. ‘This is Rachel-san. ’ She glanced my way and gave the thinnest of smiles.

Battleboi? Rachel-san? Old Japan above Walgreens? No matter what the FBI said about his abilities, I didn’t hold out much hope. It looked to me like I was dealing with a pair of care-in-the-community cases.

Three hours later, I was forced to revise my opinion drastically. Not only had Lorenzo – at least that’s what Rachel had called him once – deleted all references to me from the alumni-association records, he said he could do the same to the far more complex files held by Caulfield Academy and Harvard themselves.

‘You can get rid of an entire academic and attendance record? ’ I asked. ‘Make it look like Scott Murdoch never even went to Caulfield or Harvard? ’

‘Why not? ’ He laughed. ‘There are so many people on the fucking planet now, that’s all we are – lines of code on a hard drive. Take the lines away and we don’t exist; add to it and we’re really somebody. Want a full professorship – tell me the faculty. Need a hundred million large? Wait while I manipulate some binary code. By the way, you can call me God if you like. ’

‘Thanks, but I’ve kinda come to like Battleboi. ’ I smiled.

Late that night, I watched as he consigned the last of Dr Murdoch’s academic achievements to the electronic void. ‘It’s a shame – all that study, and now it’s gone, ’ he said.

There was little I could say, too awash with memories, especially of Bill – he’d driven up in his old Ferrari to Boston, the only person who had come to see me graduate.

Once Lorenzo was satisfied that he hadn’t left behind any sign that he had accessed the data, I told him about the next item on my list: the information that had to be excised from government computers and job announcements.

‘How many entries? ’ he asked.

‘A couple of hundred, probably more. ’

From the look on his face you would think I had invited him to commit seppuku.

‘Let me guess – this is urgent, neh? ’ But he didn’t wait for a reply; he knew the answer. ‘You got copies of these announcements, or do we have to dig ’em out ourselves? ’

I hesitated. Ben Bradley and his wife had all the information, but they were the last people I wanted to ask. ‘I’d have to think about that, ’ I replied.

‘If we’ve gotta start from scratch, it could take months. Let me know what you decide, ’ he said, and started closing down his racks of hard drives.

As he walked me to the door, he’d become relaxed enough for a little small talk. ‘I’ve been studying Japanese for three years – bitch of a language, huh? Where’d you learn it? ’

‘Shō gun, ’ I said simply and, after he had overcome his shock, I have to say he took it with enormous good grace. The mountain of flesh shook as he laughed at his gullibility and, with his eyes dancing and that great generosity of spirit, I glimpsed what Rachel must have first seen in him.

‘Shit, ’ he said, wiping the tears from his eyes, ‘and I’ve spent the last six hours feeling inadequate – just like being in high school again. ’

As I put my boots back on, emboldened by our laughter, he asked: ‘What exactly do you do at the FBI? ’

‘I don’t … It’s complicated. I suppose you could say I used to be a fellow traveller with them, that’s all. ’

‘Are you Scott Murdoch? ’

I laughed again. ‘You think if I had those qualifications I’d be sitting on my ass talking to you? ’ I hit just the right tone of bitterness and humour – I’m a helluva good liar when I need to be.

‘Whoever you are, you must be tight with the twenty-third floor. ’

‘Not really. Why? ’

‘I was hoping you could put a word in with the deputy director, ask him to go easy on the charges. ’

‘My understanding is, if you keep cooperating, there may not be any charges. ’

‘Sure, ’ he laughed bitterly. ‘That’s why they’ve set up a special division for cybercrime. It’s their brave new world – I figure they’ll bleed me for everything I’ve got then double-cross me. You know, just to make an example. ’

I shook my head, telling him he was paranoid, they didn’t operate like that. But of course he was right. Some months later they hit him with every charge they could find, then offered him a plea deal that was no deal at all. In the end, unable to afford any more lawyers – he had even sold his treasured Mount Fuji screen – he was forced to sign it. Fifteen years in Leavenworth was what he got.

And he would have languished there, virtually forgotten, except that – in a frightening avalanche of developments – the search for the Saracen hit a desperate pass.