Europe in Winter (The Fractured Europe Sequence)(66)

He was entirely shameless. Once, half-dozing in front of a film at home, a joint burning down to his knuckles, Forsyth had been jerked back to attention by the face of a ravaged old beggar in the act of hurling a dustbin through a shop window in an unexplained act of vandalism. His face. Just what you need to see at half past two in the morning when you’re stoned out of your head...

That particular masterpiece, sneaking into the flat on a pirate feed based, as far as they could establish later, in Greater Germany, had been called Taste The Blood Of Wa??esa. Leon said it was a political satire and was affronted that the Germans had aired it without paying for the rights. Forsyth took his word for it and threatened to smash his camera if Leon took any more pictures of him.

The new project, as yet unnamed, was ostensibly a life of Stanis?aw August. The rushes Forsyth had seen were heavily pornographic, and Leon’s latest victim was an aged man with long filthy grey hair. He stood on the stage at the far end of Atelier Dudek and watched the camera click from position to position around him on its computerised arm.

“Stand still, f*ck you!” Leon yelled, typing furiously behind a bank of tapboards and monitors.

The old man slowly took out a Golden American and lit it. Then he cursed Leon in an dialect so strong Forsyth could only pick out two or three words, none of them nice.

“Actors, eh?” Forsyth said.

“Some people have no gratitude,” Leon said. “I’ve given him a carton of cigarettes, a bottle of Wyborowa and a hundred euros, and he thinks he’s Laurence f*cking Olivier. Stop doing that.”

On the monitor in front of Forsyth, Bogart was doing handstands. Forsyth took his hands off the tapboard. “Sorry.”

Leon brushed his fingertips across the editing space on his desk and the camera clicked a fraction of a centimetre to a new position. An image of the old man appeared on the screen, a fully-animated composite of hundreds of images taken over what must have been several sessions. “What about the face, though? What about the face?”

Forsyth squinted down the room. The old man’s face was almost hidden by a huge untended explosion of beard. “Nice eyes.”

Leon snorted. “You just don’t look. Here.” He air-typed a couple of short strings of commands and the beard vanished from the screen. Without it, the old man seemed much younger. He had a high-cheekboned, long-nosed face that would have been almost noble if he hadn’t looked so tired.

“Nice eyes,” Forsyth said again.

“Philistine.” The camera moved to a new position. “Just a few more!” Leon called down the studio. “Did you find your missing men?”

Forsyth scratched his head, thinking about his afternoon trawl through the Line’s online presence. “It’s very odd,” he said.

Leon glanced at him. “No luck?”

Forsyth shook his head. “There’s no record of them ever going out there. You have to become a citizen to work on the Line, otherwise they won’t let you near it.”

“So what are you going to do now?”

“I suppose I’ll have to go over to Poznan and check the Consulate in person. I can’t see what else I can do.” He shrugged.

“I thought all the Consulates and Embassies had closed.”

“They reopened ages ago. Don’t you watch the news?”

“Trains.” Leon shrugged.

“Actually,” Forsyth said, trying to load his voice with just the right degree of innocent nonchalance, “I popped round to see if you had any spare cash.”

Leon sighed, stopped typing and laid his hands in his lap. “Why?” he asked with exaggerated calm.

“I’ll need the fare to Poznan.”

“Now?” Leon said in a loud voice. “Right now?” At the far end of the studio, the old man had started to shuffle off the stage. “Stay there!” Leon shouted at him. The old man swore, but he stayed where he was.

“It’s my job,” Forsyth said. “I’m supposed to look after my men.”

“Yeah. But someone else is supposed to be paying you to do it,” Leon said briskly, starting to type again. “Not me.”

“I’ll claim it as expenses when I get back,” Forsyth said amiably. “It’s just a loan.”

“Just like last time?”

Forsyth couldn’t remember the last time he’d borrowed money from Leon. Or rather, he couldn’t remember one single specific time. They all sort of ran into each other.

“Just like last time,” he agreed, not wanting to argue too much with someone he was trying to borrow money from.

Leon nodded. “Right. And last time I waited six weeks to get my money back.”

Forsyth remembered the occasion now. He smiled at the old man, who was fidgeting uncomfortably on the stage. Eventually, all the images of him would be combined into a single programmable structure, infinitely manipulable, a virtual actor. It was possible, albeit trickier, to do the same thing with old film footage, but Leon said that involved hours of nitpicking coding and lacked subtlety anyway. Forsyth couldn’t tell the difference.

Leon sighed, stopped typing, and pulled out his wallet. “Here,” he said, handing over a wad of euro notes. “How much is that?”

Forsyth counted the money. “Four hundred.”

“And I want it all back.” Leon started to type again. The robot arm suddenly clicked to life once more, making the old man jump. Leon shook his head.