Zero History

“Because of who and what they seem to be. I’ve had a more genuinely personal IT man
looking out for me, keeping track of Sleight and the various architectures he’s been
erecting, both those he’s told me about and those he hasn’t. I did say I’ve been through
this before. So in most cases, I wouldn’t be as concerned, and not in this way. But one of
these people was here, in London. He followed you and Milgrim to Paris, with Sleight’s
help.”
“Foley, Milgrim calls him.”
“We must assume that Foley, so-called, was following you as well. That overlap I
mentioned, between the actual elite and the mall ninjas. That can be a problematic
segment, in this particular Venn diagram.”
“I saw him,” Hollis said. “He followed me into the basement of the building where I’d
gone to—” She hesitated.
“Meet Meredith Overton. I had Milgrim debriefed last night, in Paris. He was
particularly unnerved to have run into Rausch.”
“So was I, though Rausch was more rattled to see me, it seemed to me. He thought you
were checking up on him. Is he with Sleight?”
“I doubt it,” said Bigend. “He’s not that fast. Do you know who designs Gabriel Hounds
yet?”
“No. But either Meredith already does, or she thinks she can find out.”
“And what do you judge it will take to induce her to tell us, or to find out and tell us?”
“She had a shoe line. It failed financially, and somehow the bulk of the final season
was misplaced.”
“Yes. We’re looking at her now. That was a good line. She prefigured the best of the
back-of-Harajuku tendencies.”
“She thinks they’re in a warehouse in Seattle. Tacoma. Somewhere. She imagines Blue
Ant might be able to locate something like that. If they’re found, she believes, she’s in a
position to legally claim them.”
“And then?”
“She’d sell them. On eBay, she said. They’re worth more now, evidently.”
“But mainly as a relaunch strategy,” said Bigend. “The eBay sales would attract
coolhunters, generate attention in the industry.”
“She didn’t mention that.”
“She wouldn’t. She needs to leverage fresh financing. Either to relaunch the line herself
or sell it to the ghostbranders.”
“The what?”
“Ghostbranders. They find brands, sometimes extinct ones, with iconic optics or a
viable narrative, buy them, then put out denatured product under the old label. Meredith’s
shoes probably have enough cult cachet to warrant that, on an interestingly small scale.”
“Is something like that why you’re after Gabriel Hounds?”
“I’m more interested in their reinvention of exclusivity. Far ahead, say, of the Burberry