Zero History

40. ENIGMA ROTORS
His room here overlooked a canal. He’d only been vaguely aware of London having
canals, before. It didn’t have them to the extent that Amsterdam did, or Venice, but it did
have them. They were a sort of backdoor territory, evidently. Shops and houses didn’t
seem to have faced them. Like a system of aquatic alleys, originally for heavy transport.
Now, to judge by the view from his window, they were repurposed as civic and tourist
space. Turned into a framework for boat rides, with paths for jogging and cycling. He
thought of the boat on the Seine, with its video screen, the Dottirs and George’s band, the
Bollards. The boat he’d seen here, earlier, had been much smaller.
The room phone rang. He left the bathroom to answer it. “Hello?”
“I am Voytek,” a man said, with some accent that caused Milgrim, on the off chance, to
repeat himself in Russian.
“Russian? I am not Russian. You are?”
“Milgrim.”
“You are American.”
“I know,” said Milgrim.
“My shop,” said Voytek, whose name Milgrim now remembered from brunch in
Southwark, “is in market, near your hotel. Under, in old stables. You bring your unit
now.”
“What’s the name of your shop?”
“Biro Shack.”
“Biro Shack? Like the pen?”
“Biro Shack. And son. Goodbye.”
“Goodbye.” Milgrim returned the phone to its cradle.
He sat down at the desk and logged into his Twitter account.
“Get n touch,” Winnie had posted, an hour earlier.
“Camden Town Holiday Inn,” he typed, then added his room number and the telephone
number of the hotel. He updated. Refreshed. Nothing.
The phone rang.
“Hello?”
“Welcome back,” said Winnie. “I’m coming over there.”
“I’m just going out,” said Milgrim. “It’s work. I don’t know how long it’s going to
take.”
“How’s your evening look?”
“Nothing scheduled yet.”
“Keep it open for me.”
“I’ll try.”