The City & the City - China Mieville [97]
“Breach would get her out.”
“You prepared to swear she’s wrong? You prepared to abso-bloody-lutely swear she’s got nothing to worry about from them?” I was whispering. This was dangerous talk. “They’ve no way in yet—nothing’s fucking breached—and she wants to keep it that way.”
“So what do you want to do?”
“I want to get her away. I’m not saying anyone here’s got her in their sights, I’m not saying she’s right about anything she’s saying, but someone killed Mahalia, and someone got to Bowden. Something’s going on in Ul Qoma. I’m asking for your help, Dhatt. Come with me. We can’t do this officially; she won’t cooperate with anything official. I promised her I’d look after her, and this is not my city. You going to help me? No, we can’t risk doing this by the book. So are you going to help me? I need to get her to Besźel.”
We did not go back to the hotel room that night, nor to Dhatt’s house. Not overcome by anxiety but indulging it, behaving as if this all might be true. We walked instead.
“Fuck’s sake, can’t believe I’m doing this,” he kept saying. He looked behind us more than I did.
“We can find a way to blame me,” I told him. It was not what I might have expected, despite that I’d risked telling him what I had, to have him be part of this, to put himself so on this line.
“Stick us to crowds,” I told him. “And to crosshatching.” More people, and where the two cities are close up they make for interference patterns, harder to read or predict. They are more than a city and a city; that is elementary urban arithmetic.
“I’ve got an exit anytime on my visa,” I said. “Can you get her a pass out?”
“I can get one for me, sure. I can get one for a fucking cop, Borlú.”
“Let me rephrase that. Can you get an exit visa for Officer Yolanda Rodriguez?” He stared at me. We were still whispering.
“She won’t even have an Ul Qoman passport …”
“So can you get her through? I don’t know what your border guards are like.”
“Oh what the fuck?” he said again. As the numbers of walkers fell our pedestrianism ceased being camouflage and risked becoming its opposite. “I know a place,” Dhatt said. A drinking club, the manager of which greeted him with almost convincing pleasure, in the basement opposite a bank in the outskirts of Ul Qoma Old Town. It was full of smoke and men who eyed Dhatt, knowing what he was, despite that he was in civilian clothes. It looked for a second as if they thought him there to bust the drag act, but he waved at them to get on with it. Dhatt gestured for the manager’s phone. Lips thinned, the man passed it to him over the counter and he passed it to me.
“Holy Light, let’s do this, then,” he said. “I can get her through.” There was music, and the growl of conversation was very loud. I stretched the phone to the extent of its cord and huddled down, squatting, by the bar, at stomach-level of the men around me. It felt quieter. I had to go through an operator to get an international line, which I did not like to do.
“Corwi, it’s Borlú.”
“Christ. Give me a minute. Christ.”
“Corwi, I’m sorry to call so late. Can you hear me?”
“Christ. What time … Where are you? I can’t fucking hear a word, you’re all—”
“I’m in a bar. Listen, I’m sorry about the time. I need you to organise something for me.”
“Christ, boss, are you fucking kidding?”
“No. Come on. Corwi, I need you.” I could almost see her rubbing her face, maybe walking phone in hand and sleepy to the kitchen and drinking cold water. When she spoke again she was more focused.
“What’s going on?”
“I’m coming back.”
“Serious? When?”
“That’s what I’m calling about. Dhatt, the guy I’m working with here, he’s coming over to Besźel. I need you to meet us. Can you get everything in motion and keep it on the QT? Corwi—black-ops stuff. Serious. Walls have ears.”
Long pause. “Why me, boss? And why at two-thirty in the morning?”
“Because you’re good, and because you’re the soul of discretion. I need no noise. I need you in a car, with your gun and preferably one for me, and that’s it. And I need you to book a hotel