Holy Fire - Bruce Sterling [128]
She persuaded Benedetta to come to Milano to handle the money for her. Benedetta didn’t handle the funds herself, but she knew people, who knew people, who knew people who could handle money. Benedetta bought her a Milanese designer furoshiki, which was beautiful and useful, and a big Indonesian network server, which was useful and beautiful. Maya returned to Praha and the actress’s apartment, wearing the furoshiki and carrying the server in its shatterproof case.
The Indonesian server came with an elaborate set of installation procedures in sadly mangled English. Maya booted the server, failed, wiped it, rebooted it, failed again. So she fed the actress’s cats. Then she wiggled all the loose connections, booted the server, failed much worse than before, and had a frappé to calm down. She booted it again, achieved partial functionality, searched the processing crystal for internal conflicts, eliminated three little nasty ones. The system crashed. She ran a diagnostic test, cleaned out a set of wonky buffers, picked the main processor up and dropped it. After that, it seemed to work. She installed a network identity. Finally she plugged into the net.
The server rang immediately. It was a voice call from Therese.
“How did you know I was on-line?” Maya said.
“I have my ways,” said Therese. “Did they really throw you out of the Tête because you killed a cop’s dog?”
“Word gets around in a hurry, and no, I didn’t do that, I swear it was somebody else.”
“If word travels any slower than the speed of light now, it only means we’re not paying attention,” Therese said. “I was paying plenty of attention. Because I need a big favor from you.”
“Is it the favor, Therese?”
“It is the favor, Maya, if you are discreet.”
“Therese, I’m in so much trouble of my own now that I don’t think yours can possibly affect me. What is it that you need?”
“I need a very private room in Praha,” Therese said somberly. “It has to be a nice room with a very nice bed. Not a hotel, because they keep records. And I need a car. It doesn’t have to be a very nice car, but it has to be very private. Not a rented car, because they keep records. I need the room for one night and I need the car for two days. After that, I don’t need any questions, from anybody, ever.”
“No questions and no records. Right. When do you need these things?”
“Tuesday.”
“Let me call you back.”
The actress’s room was out of the question. Novak? She couldn’t. Paul? Maybe, but, well, certainly not. Klaus? Since she’d become a regular at the Tête, she’d come to realize that Klaus was a very interesting man. Klaus had many resources through every level of Praha society. Klaus was a genuine doyen. Klaus was universally known and respected in Praha, and yet Klaus seemed to owe nothing to anyone; Klaus belonged to nobody at all. Klaus even liked her, but …
Emil. Perfect.
She did what she could for Therese. The arrangements required a serious investment of time, energy, and wiles, but they seemed to work well enough.
At two in the morning on Tuesday she got a priority call from Therese. “Are you awake?”
“I am now, darling.”
“Can you come and have a drink with me? I’m in the Café Chyba on the forty-seventh floor of this big rabbit nest you found for me.”
“Are you all right, Therese?”
“No, I’m not all right,” said Therese meekly, “and I need you to come and have a little drink with me.”
Maya dressed in a hurry and went to the café. It took her forty minutes. When she arrived at the Café Chyba she found it deserted. It was a perfectly clean and perfectly soulless little bar, entirely automated, just the sort of place where one would end up at three in the morning when one was having an emotional crisis in an eighty-story modern Czech high-rise. Emotional crises seemed to be pretty rare in the high-rise, to judge by the lack of customers. This high-rise was inhabited by Emil’s parents, who were, conveniently, in Finland for a month.