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By Root 452 0

the shape instantly blossomed into a bulge on the wooden rafter and then became closer still, a huge mass of moving spiked structures crawling with insects, like squirrels among oddly smooth conical tree branches. She relaxed her eyes and the system zoomed back, individual hairs and fleas dwindling into an indistinguishable glossy pelt on the mouse. Ace watched the creature running across the dark ceiling space, its eyes glinting, small clawed feet in motion, unaware that it could be seen. She studied the wooden beam beneath the mouse, every scar and knothole visible. Ace examined a bent nail hammered into the wood and the helmet enlarged it relentless until it stood like a vast pitted metal tower standing drunkenly on a bare mountain plain. Ace grinned inside the helmet. She hadn’t quite got the hang of it yet, but it would be fun learning.

She looked down from the rafters again. In the darkness at the back of the warehouse Ace could see Dfewar busy in the Suzuki. He had a battered Apple Mac clone set up on the back seat beside another computer of a different design. Ace concentrated on it and the night‐sighting system zoomed in tight until the machine filled her field of vision like an art‐deco office block. She could see the dirt and pits on the plastic surrounding the screen but she still couldn’t find any kind of manufacturer’s badge or serial number that she recognized. Ace panned down and the computer screen swept dizzyingly up and out of her field of vision. It was like falling from a window and watching the front of the building sweep past. She steadied herself and the auto focus on the eyepieces buzzed on either side of her head as they locked in. The keyboard of the computer she studied was attached to the screen unit by a thick umbilical wire, spooled like a telephone cord. It featured Cyrillic script on a black rubberized membrane. Dfewar had used Ace’s cables to connect the two machines. Now he fed one of the disks into the front of the Mac clone. At some point in its life the computer had been exposed to extreme heat. The plastic shell surrounding its screen had melted and run, giving the machine a surreal look. The screen and keyboard seemed to be functioning normally. The only identifying mark on the fascia were two symbols embossed in the melted plastic. It took Ace a moment to make them out. The first symbol was a cartoon of a bumble bee in flight. The other was a human eye. A bee and an eye. Now she looked more closely, Ace decided that the other computer had previously been fitted in a vehicle of some sort. It still had bent steel brackets holding heavy bolts fitted to the back of it, obviously wrenched from a bulkhead with considerable violence. Ace imagined the computer being salvaged from a bombed‐out tank on the Mongolian border and smuggled south.

Dfewar was bent over the screen of the Mac clone. Some simple cartoon graphics pulsed, showing data transmission. Ace zoomed in close enough to see the coarse staircasing on the pixels, smooth curves turned jagged by the extreme resolution. Then she zoomed out in time to see Dfewar turn and walk towards her, smiling. He’d assured himself that the disks and cables she had given him worked. Now the Kurds could download software from the half‐melted machine and process it. The disks she had brought with her contained communications protocols and software links and the cables were universal adaptors for connecting different models of computer.

Dfewar was saying something to Miss David, speaking quietly.

‘They’re happy.’

Ace held out her hand. Dfewar returned the cables and disks. Now he’d confirmed that the merchandise was sound, Ace would retain them until it was time to make payment. Keep them somewhere safe. In this part of the world communications software had replaced gold or hashish or weapons as the universal currency.

Miss David was tapping her foot impatiently. Ace took out the black envelope containing charts and several pages of instructions on yellow legal paper. She left the drawing inside. The instructions had been written in fluent Turkish