Chapter 2
The man sitting across from me scratches his armpit.
Not discreetly.
Not a quick adjustment beneath the sleeve of his expensive sweater.
He reaches inside the neck of it, works his hand down beneath the fabric, scratches with visible satisfaction, then returns that same hand to the croissant sitting on his plate.
I stare.
He smiles.
Apparently he thinks I'm admiring him.
This is my life.
“You were saying?” I ask in French.
Marc leans back in his chair and resumes the story I've already heard three different versions of since breakfast arrived.
Something about rowing.
Or sailing.
No.
Triathlon.
Definitely triathlon.
He completed one in Nice last year and has now decided this achievement deserves its own oral history.
“The last kilometer is all mental,” he tells me. “The body has nothing left. You have to decide you're stronger than the pain.”
I nod solemnly.
Fascinating.
I once stayed awake for thirty-six hours dismantling a military-grade encryption protocol because someone in Prague insisted it couldn't be done.
But please.
Tell me about jogging.
Again.
Marc is beautiful.
That's the irritating part.
Dark blond hair. Blue eyes. Broad shoulders.
The kind of face that makes women look twice when he enters a restaurant.
His family owns several hotels, he went to the correct schools, skis, sails, speaks three languages badly, and has spent most of his adult life being rewarded for the extraordinary accomplishment of looking good in fitted clothing.
He catches me staring and smiles wider.
There it is.
That expression.
The smile of a man who believes the universe has personally blessed him with beauty, money, and a body worth discussing before coffee.
“Do you train?” he asks.
“Sometimes.”
“You should come with me.”
“Where?”
“My gym.”
I look at him.
“Why?”
He blinks.
“To train.”
“Yes. I understood this part.”
Another blink.
“What part did you not understand?”
“Why I should want to.”
His smile falters.
Small.
Barely noticeable.
I feel guilty immediately.
Not because I want him.
Because Marc hasn't actually done anything terrible.
He's pleasant.
He's attractive.
He bought breakfast.
He probably kisses well.
This should be enough.
For most people, perhaps it is.
For me, physical attraction lasts approximately as long as it takes a man to begin explaining something I already understand.
Then my brain wanders away and leaves the rest of me behind.
Marc is still talking when I glance toward the street.
Paris moves beyond the café awning in soft gray morning light. Taxis. Bicycles. A woman walking two ridiculous little dogs in matching sweaters. Someone carrying flowers beneath one arm.
Normal people beginning normal days.
People who meet in cafés instead of encrypted networks.
People who know one another's names before developing feelings.
Novel concept.
My phone vibrates inside my bag.
Not the normal one.
The other one.
My pulse responds before I can stop it.
Ghost.
I know it without looking.
That irritates me too.
Marc says something.
I miss it entirely.
“Pardon?”
“I asked whether you wanted another coffee.”
“No. Thank you.”
His gaze drops toward my bag when the device vibrates again.
“Work?”
“Something like this.”
“Boyfriend?”
The question catches me.
“No.”
Too fast.
Marc grins.
“Good.”
I should return the smile.
Instead, my mind supplies black screens and Italian words.
Ghost isn't my boyfriend.
He isn't anything that has a convenient name.
Friend sounds inadequate.
Lover would require considerably more physical contact than we have managed.
Stranger should be accurate.
It isn't.
I know the cadence of his sarcasm.
I know when he's angry by the punctuation he pretends doesn't change.
I know he drinks Scotch and sleeps badly.
I know he hates people who chew loudly during meetings, has an irrational contempt for motivational speakers, and once spent forty minutes arguing with me about whether Machiavelli was misunderstood or merely an asshole with excellent marketing.
I do not know his name.
I don't know what he looks like.
I don't know precisely where he is.
And last night, apparently while spectacularly drunk, he invited me to somebody's wedding.
Or his friends did.
Same difference.
“Sabine?”
I look up.
Marc is watching me.
Right.
Date.
Actual man.
Physical universe.
“Sorry.”
“You disappeared.”
“Occupational hazard.”
He smiles.
“Where do you go?”
I almost say somewhere more interesting.
I don't.
Cruelty should at least serve a purpose.
“I have work.”
“On Sunday?”
“Computers do not know Sunday.”
“Computers.”
His expression changes.
Here we go.
Men divide into categories when I tell them what I do.
Some become intimidated.
Some become competitive.
Some immediately ask me to fix their laptop.
Marc chooses competitive.
“I've always been good with technology.”
I take a slow breath.
“Have you?”
“Very. I built my own gaming PC at university.”
There is no reason this should make me want to cry.
None.
It's perfectly respectable.
Millions of intelligent men build computers.
Some of them are undoubtedly fascinating.
Marc scratches beneath his sweater again. “Sorry— I used a new deodorant and I’m having an allergic reaction…”
I look toward my bag.
Ghost once built an encrypted relay architecture because I called his first version inelegant.
He spent two nights rewriting it.
Then sent me the result with one message.
GHOST: Better?
I found three weaknesses.
He fixed them before breakfast.
That's my problem.
Ghost ruined men for me without ever touching me.
I look back at Marc.
Handsome.
Successful.
Nice enough.
Impossible.
Has skin allergies.
“I think I should go.”
His face falls.
“Did I say something?”
“No.”
That part is true.
“This is me.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I am bad at this.”
“Dating?”
“Apparently.”
He leans forward.
“We could try again.”
I wish I wanted to.
“I don't think this is fair to you.”
Recognition arrives.
Marc isn't stupid.
He sits back. “There is someone else.”
My mouth opens.
Closes.
“Not exactly.”
He laughs once. “There is always someone else when a woman says not exactly.”
“He is not—”
I stop.
Who is Ghost?
Not my boyfriend.
Not my lover.
Not even technically a man I've met.
“He is complicated.”
Marc looks amused now instead of wounded.
“At least he's real?”
I think about London Bridge.
Cold wind.
A man I may or may not have seen from farther down the river.
Missing cameras.
Ninety-seven minutes he apparently counted.
I stand and reach for my coat.
“That is actually part of the complication.”
Marc stares at me.
I leave enough cash beside my cup to cover breakfast.
“Goodbye, Marc.”
“Sabine?”
I turn.
He points toward himself.
“Was it the triathlon?”
I consider lying.
Then smile.
“A little.”
His laugh follows me onto the street.
Twenty minutes later, I'm sitting alone at another café because apparently one failed breakfast requires a second breakfast.
This one is tiny.
Hidden on a side street.
Four tables inside.
Three outside.
No tourists yet.
Perfect.
I choose the table farthest from the door, order coffee, then pull the matte-black device from my bag.
The normal phone remains untouched.
Ghost doesn't exist there.
Vesper doesn't either.
NULL opens behind three layers of authentication.
The conversation from last night waits.
I have already read it twice.
I read it again.
GHOST: My friends have hijacked the evening.
Then the ridiculous invitation.
The drunk committee.
Miss London Bridge.
His friends calling me exhausting.
Me deciding I hate men I've never met.
Then the part that has kept me awake.
VESPER: You would actually invite me into your real life?
His hesitation had been long enough that I almost logged off.
Then:
GHOST: Ignore them.
And me:
VESPER: Do you want me to?
Fourteen hours later, it still makes something warm curl through my stomach.
I close the screen.
Immediately reopen it.
Pathetic.
Maybe Marc was right.
Maybe there is someone else.
Except Ghost could be anyone.
That is the part my apparently suicidal romantic imagination keeps ignoring.
For all I know, Vesper has spent several years flirting with a fifty-seven-year-old Russian cryptographer named Igor who owns seven goats.
Or perhaps he's some thin married man living in Bangkok with a pencil mustache, three children, and a wife who believes he spends his nights doing international accounting.
Maybe he's a twelve-year-old genius who started talking to me at six and has been lying about his age ever since.
That would be unpleasant.
Maybe he's some scammer running phishing networks from a basement, stealing credit-card numbers between conversations about Renaissance philosophy.
Possible.
Maybe he isn't remotely wealthy.
I don't think he is.
Comfortable, perhaps.
Ghost understands expensive things, but differently from men like Marc.
He knows wine because he appreciates it, not because someone gave him a cellar.
He knows tailoring.
Cars.
Art.
Old books.
Italian coffee.
But there has always been something self-made in the way he talks about money.
Or perhaps I invented that too.
I've invented quite a lot.
In my head, Ghost grew up somewhere in Italy.
Not Rome.
Too obvious.
Maybe farther north.
A village where his mother still makes pasta on Sundays and complains that he works too much.
His father fixes his own car.
They didn't have much when he was young.
Not poor enough for tragedy.
Just enough that a brilliant boy learned early that if he wanted a better computer, he had to build it.
I picture him taking apart discarded machines at twelve.
Writing code at fourteen.
Getting caught inside some university server he wasn't supposed to access and impressing the professor enough to avoid prosecution.
Maybe someone gave him a scholarship.
Old European boarding school.
Stone walls.
Uniforms.
Boys with surnames older than some nations.
Ghost arriving with one suitcase and more intelligence than everybody whose family paid full tuition.
I smile into my coffee.
Complete fiction.
Every bit of it.
I know that.
Still, it fits.
He mocks inherited wealth too easily to have been born inside it.