“You the Egyptian?” the redhead asks in a phony brogue. “You P?”
“When the need arises,” Ptolema replies, “but not in my fucking trousers.” And she points at a stain on the crotch of the redhead’s jeans.
The girl with the braids laughs. “Cute,” she says. “Real cute.”
“Told you,” says the redhead, “that she’d be like this. Every one of them, they’re all cheeky, smart-mouthed cunts.”
Ptolema checks her watch again. “I assume tardiness is a point of pride with you.”
“Close enough,” says the redhead. Beneath her biker jacket, she’s wearing an oatmeal-and-mud-colored sweater that might once have been white. The array of buttons festooning the jacket is just a little too deliberate. But only subtly so, not the sort of affectation one would notice unless one were trying to spot affectations, which Ptolema can’t help but do. It keeps her on her toes. It’s kept her alive more than once. Even the selection of buttons—a red anarchy symbol on a black field, the Sex Pistols, a skull and crossbones, the Dead Kennedys, the Clash—and the array of spikes and studs set into the shoulders and collar and sleeves. It all comes off prefab, calculated, studied.
“Didn’t whoever holds your leash bother to inform you of the current decade?” Ptolema asks and points at the jacket. “The X must be even more desperate than usual.”
The one in braids (who isn’t wearing a biker jacket, just a ripped-up Bauhaus T-shirt and a ratty faux fur leopard-print coat) leans over and whispers in the redhead’s ear. The redhead laughs.
“I’m not going to ask your names, because I neither need nor want to know them,” says Ptolema.
“Good, because we weren’t planning on tellin’ you,” the redhead replies.
“Always convenient to be on the same page.”
“If you fuckin’ say so,” shrugs the redhead.
Ptolema removes an early model iPod from the inner pocket of her blazer, complete with earbuds. She sets it on the table between them.
“You’ve both assured me you’re turncoats,” she says, “but policy is to treat all defectors and moles as re-doubled agents. Ergo, I am proceeding on the assumption that this will, sooner or later, get back to Julia Set.”
“We don’t parlay with JS no more,” says the redhead. “Bridges burned good and fuckin’ proper.”
“Bureau policy. Not my call. Also, we know the X routinely factors traitors into its equations. Free variables, as it were. But, as I’ve said, that’s our working assumption, and we’ve taken it into account. Nonetheless, I am instructed to proceed on good faith.”
“Which means you lot are desperate,” smirks the woman with braids, and she reaches for the iPod. “What’s this, then?”
Ptolema lets her have it, though she’d intended the redhead to hear the recording first. There’s the second deviation from Barbican’s itinerary.
“That’s reason number one that we’re having this conversation,” she says. “Our people in Manhattan and Boston are picking it up all over the place. A twenty-four-second transmission broadcasting on pirate stations. On FM, it’s popping up at ninety to ninety-one megahertz, and on medium wave exclusively at 1710. We’ve spotted it on single sideband modulation, as well, and shortwave. And we have five instances thus far of it having been embedded in pop and country songs on several Top 40 FM stations.”
The redhead glances suspiciously at Ptolema. “Thought this was about—”
“We’ll get to that. But first, we’re getting to this. Consider it prologue, okay?” And Ptolema taps the iPod.
“Whatever you say, sister.”
The redhead takes the iPod from her companion, so, hey, a smidge of realignment, one less red mark. She puts the buds in her ears and presses her thumb against the click wheel. Immediately, she frowns and shakes her head.
“Just fuckin’ static,” she mutters.
“That passes. Shut up and listen.”
The redhead shuts up, and Ptolema watches her closely. The first tell could come right here, the very first hint the X might be lying. Long, long ago, Ptolema learned to read body language like it was words on a printed page. But the redhead’s reactions are genuine. Thirty seconds pass, and she takes out the earbuds and silently stares at the iPod a moment before she says anything. The woman with black braids watches her closely.
“Yeah, well, that is the dog’s bollocks of mental, I’ll give you that.”
Ptolema has a sip of her coffee, gone cold now, then asks the redhead, “Where’d they find you two, anyway? A trailer park in Muskogee, Oklahoma?”
The woman with black braids snickers and elbows her companion.
“So, tell me what you heard,” Ptolema says, setting down her cup.
“Nothin’ much,” the redhead replies. “The static, yeah. Then a little girl, kid’s voice. Creepy, innit?”
“What’d she say?” asks black braids.
“Six words. Just six words. ‘Black queen white. White queen black.’”
“What the feck does that mean?”
The redhead stares at Ptolema, as if waiting for an answer to black braids’ question. Instead, she has questions all her own.
“First time you’ve heard it? Either of you?”
“Sounds like chess shite to me,” the redhead mutters.
“Okay, fine, so I’ll take that as a yes.”
“Take it however you want. That’s all you got?”
Ptolema reaches underneath the table for her satchel. The worn leather is camel hide, and there are cracks here and there. She unfastens the strap and removes a manila folder. She lays it on the table next to the iPod.
“The phrase you heard is also turning up as graffiti, but the taggers we’ve questioned don’t know shit about it. Or if they do, they won’t say. A week ago, Xeroxed fliers started appearing in both cities, Boston and New York, just those six words, always on canary-yellow paper.”
“Canary,” says black braids. “Like the bird?”
Ptolema ignores the question, but does note that the woman no longer seems to have an interest in hearing the recording for herself. Which might mean several things or might mean nothing at all. But worth noting, regardless.
“It’s nothing from our cell,” the redhead says, then glances over her shoulder towards the doors and the big windows fronting Bewley’s. “Can’t speak for all the others, but you know that.”
“Of course,” Ptolema tells her. Then she opens the folder, and on top there’s a glossy color photo of a woman standing on a street corner. There’s nothing especially remarkable about her appearance, and if that’s deliberate she’s mastered the art of blending in. A little frowzy, maybe. She’s wearing a windbreaker the color of an artichoke.
“This was taken here in Dublin three days ago, up on Burgh Quay. I’m not going to ask if you know her, because all three of us already know the answer. She goes by Twisby.”
“Yeah,” says the redhead, and she doesn’t say anything else about the photo. She takes out a cigarette, but doesn’t light it. She just holds it between her fingers. Ptolema can see she’s getting nervous, but anyone could see that.