What to do about Katrina, Ep. I, Act I, sc. 34-35

La Montmartre, some notes from a safehouse

As always, you are very welcome indeed if you have just joined us. You could probably jump in here, although you would have many unanswered questions (although not too many spoilers in these two scenes). In which case, feel free to start at the beginning, if you wish, with either my intro, there, or the prelude and scene one.

I should also take advantage here of a chance to use the word ‘penultimate’. Now here’s a silly thing - is there ever a penultimate chance to use the word penultimate? One of the loveliest things about humans is their ability to be silly. They understand this in Katrina’s homeworld, especially after the trauma they saw. That’s why they have the Silly Olympics, for example, which Katrina wrote all about in this journal entry, if you are in need of a little pick-me-up in this dystopia of yours.

Anyway, penultimate, yes. I say penultimate, because this is the penultimate instalment before the intermission. After the Act I turning point, which was in the previously on Katrina (which kind of concluded with a sensible decision to stick Katrina in a safehouse), antagonism and, perhaps, not a little danger, shall be mounting up stealthily on our lovely protagonist, until a sudden shock will happen. Without that shock, I would probably end Act I with the next instalment (which contains a slyly pleasing twist). As it happens, though, it does make more sense to increase the creep for a short while. However, I do find myself with a little more editing and additions to do in that regard. Up to this point, however, it’s all as it should be. Obviously you won’t really know what I’m talking about here. I’ll say a few things about it in the intermission, though.

Well, that’s the ultimate time I use the word penultimate.

In this current instalment, these two curious scenes are somewhat simple and self-explanatory. It’s just Katrina being settled in to her new safehouse in the 18th Arrondissement. Mind you, I think she has a little spell to weave first…

---

Katrina concealed the flash of recognition and offered no resistance. Why would she? It was a charming little apartment on the Montmartre, just like they said.

She had been expecting this kind of thing anyway.

She peered through the curtains. All the sounds of busy Paris. Dirty, dystopian Paris.

She took a breath and turned back. “May I have a laptop?”

Peter suddenly laughed. “What for?”

“So I can scan your Internet, why else? Learn about your world. I can’t do it on a phone. Screen too small. Besides, it’ll be easier for you.”

Peter snorted again. “How so?”

“Easier for you to monitor what I get up to on the Internet. Do you have secure mobile calls, by the way? Signal, for example?”

Peter wasn’t expecting that. He did an uncharacteristically bad job of hiding it. It was partly her pointed look. She was unnerving.

“What do you use?” she pushed, too sharply for his comfort. It almost felt like a spell, thought a later reflection.

“MI6, you mean?”

“Whatever.”

Beat.

“Signal is fine, sure. Even if it was a CIA invention. Or there’s WhatsApp. Ditto. That’s ok. If you don’t mind the CIA knowing, that is.”

“Oh?”

“Vault Seven.”

“What’s Vault Seven?”

“Do you have Wikileaks in your world?”

“Never heard of it.”

“It’s a whistleblower website. Anyone with any, classified information, can upload it there. Vault Seven was a CIA intel dump.”

“You mean like a limited hangout?”

He laughed again. He should’ve known she knew her stuff. “Something like that, sure. Most of what’s on Wikileaks is limited hangout stuff. V7 is essentially about the CIA’s hacking capability.”

“So let me guess. It doesn’t tell it all? Right?”

“Correct.”

“So WhatsApp, whatever that is, is a no go, then? But Signal works?”

“Sure. But we’re not going to let you have that. For obvious reasons.”

She grinned. “I wouldn’t have expected anything less, Peter. May I call you Peter now?”

He was feeling increasingly disarmed. And beginning to like her, if he was honest. Which he had no intention of being with her. “As you wish.”

“Seeing as we’ll be spending a lot of time together, after all. You must have questions of your own, eh?”

“Lots of questions. But that can wait. I’ll get you a laptop. But it stays here.”

“I wouldn’t have expected anything else. Honestly, Peter, I simply want to get my bearings about your world. Plus the fact that I’m a historian, believe it or not. So all this, what if shit is fascinating the fuck out of me. I’m sure you get that, right?”

He burst out laughing. Then shook his head at the absurdity of it all. Then couldn’t think of anything to do except hold out his arms in surrender. “This is going to take some getting used to.”

“No shit, Sherlock.”

“I’ll leave you to get settled in. When will you be hungry?”

“Whenever you are,” she said.

Pointedly.

He turned to leave.

“What about e-mail?”

He spun round. “Uh?”

“Secure e-mail?”

“ProtonMail.”

“That’s what you use?”

“Sure. But you won’t have an e-mail. Not yet, anyway.”

“That’s fine. I won’t need one just yet. I just wanted to get some professional advice, for future reference, you understand?”

He chuckled. “Glad to be of assistance.”

“Another question, if I may?”

This was too much cognitive dissonance for him to get annoyed. He almost felt hypnotised, if you’d asked him later. He waited for the question.

“Is this place wired for sound?”

He didn’t answer.

“I need to know. Hidden cameras too. And I want an honest answer. If you don’t tell me then I will not cooperate. I don’t mind you recording any interviews you do with me, but I want my privacy respected. Besides, it’s not as if I’ll be having anyone to talk nefarious shit to, is it?”

He sighed. “That’s true enough.” He paused before continuing. “Yes, the safehouse is wired for sound. And vision. But most of the time it’s turned off. We only activate it if we have a guest requiring continuous surveillance. I’m getting the impression you would understand that protocol?”

“Nicely put. But I will make sure to remember at all times that, it’s not safe to talk.”

Then she shot him another pointed glare. And that unnerved him. He swallowed.

“I will also say this, Peter. And you can verify it with Malcolm. I need to feel safe. I will be forthcoming and honest in these interviews, but if you even think about torturing me, or even just threatening me with torture, then I will reserve my right to use proportional self-defence. And that means that if you’re in the room at the time then you will die. Do I make myself clear?”

“You really are being honest,” was all he could think of saying.

“I’m not sure you are, though. About the listening devices being turned off, I mean.”

“I’m not surprised you don’t trust me.”

“Of course I don’t trust you. You work for MI6.”

That made him laugh. He turned back to leave. “Dinner in an hour, then?”

“I’d be delighted, Sir. As long as it’s healthy.”

“I’ll send up the butler, milady.”

And then he did leave. She watched him exit, with a sly smile slowly emerging on her lovely, serious face.

---

Katrina decided to amuse herself during the pre-dinner hour by wandering around the apartment and wondering where all the bugs were. Espionage is no different from game theory – always think from the other person’s point of view. It requires empathy. And obviously, a little cunning.

If she were fixing bugs about the place, where would she put them?

The apartment itself made her smile, paean as it was to La Belle Époque. She found the idea of MI6 dressing up a kind of museum to Art Nouveau the most humorously ironic idea she’d seen since she arrived. And that was saying something. Maybe it was their way of hiding themselves. No one would ever guess.

Unless they were just lazy and hadn’t bothered redecorating.

Either that, or their stash of stolen loot.

But it was her kind of style. Thus it was with a fond smile on her face that she examined the elegance. Any of those little places would’ve been fine for eavesdropping. The cracks in the wood panelling, the chinks in the ornate mirror frame, behind any one of those reproduction prints. Certainly in and around the oak cabinets with, it seemed, clothes befitting the wide variety of guests her hosts must’ve entertained through the decades (and certainly enough size twelves for her to be getting on with for the time being). The clothes themselves, for that matter. There would certainly be something behind the bathroom mirror, another something within the bronze-finished bed knobs and bars at the end of the bedframe, other wires lurking in the embroidery of those deep armchairs and in the curled paws of the chaise longue, and definitely up there in the coils of the candelabra.

Probably something outside in the woodshed too, had there been one.

She laughed to herself. This wasn’t Stasi-era stuff they used anymore. Not like in the fun old days when sweeping a room would be a battle of wits as much as a test of patience. No, nowadays it was all digitized and pinhole and embedded deep within the pores in the cornicing. Boring, in other words. Designed to be inaccessible.

No, no fun anymore. It was all serious now.

And deadly.

She peered through the curtains again at the outside world. Still the same. Grey and November and after dark in a different, dirty Paris. But it was, at the very least, La Montmartre. Perhaps she would have an opportunity to wander round the place over the next, however many days it would take to tell her story. One thousand and one, possibly.

The sash window opened upwards easily and without too much of a scrape. She stuck her head out and surveilled the scene. Three storeys up, down on to a backstreet below, stretching to her right and her left. There was a handy and sturdy metal drainpipe within a short leap to the left, she noted. If it held all the way down, then that was her most obvious escape route if the last resort came to pass. She wondered if it was as obvious to them, too.

She dined with her chaperones, who would be staying in the apartment below hers for the duration. So it was in her interests to be on her best diplomatic behaviour.

She quickly discovered they weren’t really authorised to ask her any questions of an inquisitional nature, for which she was relieved. Instead they talked about her sports, and this Paris. The Games would be coming here in 2024, they told her. Same as in her world. Niki might be going, she told them.

Perhaps she could go, too. Two and half years of training and improvement and she’d beat even today’s world records, she decided. Well, maybe. We shall see. That would be something she’d have to check on their Internet.

She found it effortlessly simple to method act herself back into Ambassadorial mode. She offered to cook for them some of these nights, so long as they could get the ingredients for her. Truth is, she knew she would miss cooking. It was one of her little homely pleasures. Making the most of that precious time with her family before they all departed the nest.

Then she, and Anna, would retire gracefully to their dacha in the Cambridgeshire countryside, perched on a little rise overlooking their organic farm and sheltered by fruit trees and oakleaf, and slowly fade away from the world.

It had been another long day. They gave her the laptop Peter had promised, but she found herself far too tired, and a little too morose, to go surfing this dystopia.

She scanned the bookshelves. She didn’t care which ones might have once been used for ciphers, or which ones might slip out to reveal hidden gems they didn’t want her to know about.

She slid out a timeworn copy of Le Mythe de Sisyphe, sat herself down in one of the plush armchairs, and read herself to sleep.

Tomorrow, she will be here again.

---

Next episode next week…