The Stars’ Tennis Balls (30 page)

‘It’s hard to imagine that
he
has a family, anyway, observed an intense young girl standing by their table and looking up at the screen with distaste.

‘Actually,’ said Albert sheepishly, ‘he’s an old friend of
my
family.’

‘Really?’ Simon was intrigued. ‘We should be polite about him then.’

‘Christ no, I never
liked
him. He always spoke to me like a schoolmaster, even when I was young.

‘And you’re so old now, of course,’ said the girl, who was one of the best programmers in the country, but barely twenty herself.

‘Sh!’ hissed someone from another table. ‘There’s Brad Messiter.’

Barson-Garland was standing in front of a guest known to everyone at Cotters. Brad Messiter had founded the fastest growing free Internet Service Provider in the country and Ashley was preparing to roast him whole.

‘You advertise during children’s television programmes and in children’s magazines. Your give-away CDs are available on sweetshop counters, packaged with cartoons and the faces of football stars. Yet your service offers no filters and no parental lock-outs …‘

‘Parents can buy fully functional gatekeeper packages which…’ the hapless Messiter began, but Ashley swept on regardless.

‘You’ll get your chance to speak later. For the moment let’s just set out what you do. You offer a full internet package, including unrestricted access to newsgroups of the most revolting kind. We’re all familiar with commercial web sites, many of which, it’s true, are guarded by some kind of credit card security. But newsgroups offer pictures and movies to anyone.
Anyone.
Let me run by some of the groups a child on your service might come across without the need for anything other than a personal computer and infant curiosity. Alt.binary.pictures.bestiality, alt.binary.pictures.lolita, alt.binary.pictures.foreskins … and there are literally hundreds of others here that are too grotesque, too bizarre and too horrifying for me to mention on air. This is the nature of the business that has made you a millionaire many times over. True or not true, Mr Messiter?’

‘There are thousands of magazines and photographs currently in the postal system.

‘True or not true, Mr Messiter?’

‘Currently being processed by the Royal Mail, technically the property of the Queen, which you would find just as offensive and which…’

‘True or not true, Mr Messiter?’

‘True or not true!’ chorused the studio audience. ‘True or not true?’

‘Yes, it’s true, but as I say …

‘It’s true!’ Ashley whipped the microphone away and walked towards the camera. ‘Mr Messiter’s twisted logic would have us believe that Her Majesty the Queen is somehow a pornographer, which tells us all we need to know about Mr Messiter, I think. We’ll be returning to him later, but meanwhile, let’s follow our researcher, Jamie Ross. For six months now, in the guise of twelve-year-old Lucy, Jamie has been conducting a romantic relationship with a boy of thirteen called Tom. Innocent, charming, perfectly acceptable. Nothing more than a pen friendship. Tom has now suggested they meet. Our language experts have analysed the emails and messages that Tom has been sending Lucy and they have determined that they were composed by an educated adult. Jamie.’

The Cotter Atrium watched with barely suppressed giggles as an earnest reporter stood on the corner of Argyll Street and Marlborough Street talking in a hushed whisper. A small girl stood nervously beside him.

‘Any moment now, I will be going into Wisenheimer’s, a hamburger restaurant popular with young people, just fifty yards from London’s famous Oxford Circus, for an assignation with “Tom”. He will be expecting a small girl, so I have brought along my daughter, Zoл. In my rucksack I have a hidden camera and sound recorder. The police are standing by to make an arrest if it turns out, as we strongly suspect, that “Tom” is an adult, masquerading as a child. Here goes.

A grainy but acceptable picture came on screen as the reporter, Jamie Ross, entered the restaurant and sat at a table, pointing his wide angled briefcase at the door. His daughter Zoл came in a second or two later and sat at another table.

‘So far,’ breathed Jamie into his radio mike. ‘Nothing. Mostly young people here, tourists by the look of them, a few adults spread out at different tables. The ideal spot for this kind of rendezvous perhaps. Ah, what’s this?’

A small nervous looking boy of twelve or thirteen had entered the restaurant, taken one look at Zoл, another at the table where Jamie sat with his camera bag and then sat down at an empty table.

‘Well, perhaps, our experts were wrong,’ the disappointment in Jamie’s voice was palpable.

‘Experts? Wrong?’ The crowd gathered in the Cotter Atrium were enjoying themselves hugely. ‘Surely not?’

‘Perhaps I should ask him what he’s doing there…’ Jamie picked up his camera bag and moved towards the young boy. ‘Hello, there,’ he said, placing the bag on the table between them. ‘Your name isn’t Tom by any chance?’

The boy made no verbal reply but stood up and pointed. Instantly, from different tables, half a dozen men and women sprang forward and surrounded the astonished Jamie.

‘You are under arrest,’ said one, attaching handcuffs, ‘on suspicion of luring a minor…’

‘Wait a minute, I’m Jamie Ross from the BBC…’

‘You do not have to say anything in your defence, but I must warn you that silence may be interpreted…’

The screen went blank for a second before cutting back to the studio and a rather flustered Ashley Barson-Garland.

‘Well,’ he said. ‘It looks as though… that is to say…’ In the CDC Atrium, Albert and the female coder were rolling around honking with laughter like seals.

‘Sh!’ said Cotter. ‘Let’s not miss the rest of it.’

‘It seems that perhaps this was a case of two minds with but a single thought,’ Ashley continued, drawing on all his reserves of aplomb, ‘two hearts, ah, beating each to each.’

‘What?’
roared Albert, writhing with delight. ‘Has he gone completely
tonto?’

‘Robert Browning,’ said Simon. ‘When the mind goes, reflex literary quotation takes over.

‘But none the less, a lesson to be drawn there. The world of the chat room clearly arouses enough parental concern to cause a great deal of worry. We will bring you, of course, news of Jamie Ross’s release as soon as it comes.

‘Who’s looking after Zoл?’

‘Ah, well no doubt…’ Ashley looked up at the bank of studio audience to identify the heckler. ‘I’m sure she’s …

‘Someone has just left a twelve-year-old girl alone in a West End burger joint. I can see it on the monitor above. She’s just sitting there on her own.

‘I’m sure Jamie will inform the police right away…’

‘Call that responsible?’

‘Ah, Mr Messiter. It’s you.’

‘Too right it’s me. Hoist with your own petard there, weren’t you?’

‘Mr Messiter seems very interested in the fate of unprotected children, ladies and gentlemen.’ Ashley swiftly regained his composure. ‘Yet his company continues to open the porn portals of the internet to all, without accepting responsibility. He even manages to blame the parents. It’s their fault. If they only bought expensive and complex software to guard their children’s access, then all would be well.’

‘It isn’t expensive, it’s available free on…'

‘Well, let me now introduce you to an expert in the field of internet security. From CotterDotCom, Cosima Kretschmer!’

The Atrium fell silent and all eyes turned from the screen to Simon. He shrugged lightly. ‘You’re all free,’ he said. ‘If Cosima wants to speak and share her expertise on television, how could I possibly stand in her way?’

All heads turned back to the screen. It was rumoured that Cosima, whom Simon had brought back from the Geneva office, was more than just the head of the Secure Server Research Division. She and Simon had recently been photographed together coming out of the Ivy Restaurant. It seemed doubtful that she would consent to appear as a witness for Ashley Barson-Garland without Simon’s express wish. Albert frowned as he watched her take the microphone. He could not believe that his mentor, his hero, his god, would lend support to anything that threatened the sanctity and autonomy of the net.

Simon was watching the screen with a look of bland benevolence.

‘Fräulein Kretschmer, I’m sure only those who’ve holidayed on Mars for the last two years have failed to hear of CotterDotCom. You specialise in internet security, is that right?’

‘That is quite correct.’

‘I believe service providers can choose to make available all or only some newsgroups on their news servers, is that also correct?’

‘Certainly.’

‘So Mr Messiter’s company, the largest free provider in the United Kingdom, isn’t
obliged
to offer the full range of newsgroups. He could choose to filter out those which carry illegal child pornography, for example.’

‘For sure.

‘Now, as you may know, I proposed a bill which would have allowed the monitoring of such obscene transactions and I was told by the so-called “internet community” that such a course was “impractical”. Were they right?’

‘Not at all. People may use proxy servers and firewalls, but it is usually possible to detect those who upload and download illegal materials.’

‘It
is
possible? Do you think the government should take steps to implement the tracking of this kind of traffic?’

‘No, I do not.’

Ashley flickered for a moment. ‘Forgive me, Fräulein Kretschmer…’

‘Cosima, please.’

‘You told me earlier that you
did
believe in such monitoring.’

‘Did I?’

‘You know you did.’

‘It is a complex matter. The question of civil liberties is important. I have been thinking more deeply on this subject lately.’

‘Civil liberties? What about the rights of families to live free of fear and contamination. Do those count for nothing?’

A hearty round of applause interrupted the first part of Cosima’s reply.

‘Well, let us suppose,’ she said, ‘that in my research I came upon evidence of a person who had regularly used the internet for his own personal sexual gratification. Downloading illegal pornography and so forth. Do I have the right to expose such a person?’

‘Of course you do. If their computer drives contain illegal material it’s the same as possessing it in photographic form on paper. We all know that.’

‘Ah but this person is clever. He looks at the pictures on screen, but does not store them. He deletes the memory cache once he has … once he has satisfied himself, you understand?’

Ashley’s stern voice cut through a bubble of titters emanating from the back row of the audience. ‘All this hypothetical speculation seems to me to miss the main point of our discussion,’ he said. ‘We are addressing …

‘It is at the absolute heart of our discussion,’ Brad Messiter shouted from the back, unmiked, but loud enough to be heard. ‘Tell us more about this hypothetical case, Cosima.’

‘As a matter of fact,’ said Cosima, who unlike Messiter had a radio microphone clipped to the lapel of her jacket, ‘it is not hypothetical. I am talking about you, Mr Barson-Garland.
You.
You have logged up an average of sixteen hours a week accessing sites devoted to photographs of young teenage boys.’

A gasp ran round the studio as Ashley whipped round, his face white, to face Cosima. ‘I should warn you that I am a lawyer,’ he snarled. ‘Such unsubstantiated accusations are highly actionable. You cannot have a shred of evidence to support such outrageous…’

‘But I have,’ said Cosima, pointing to a briefcase. ‘I have tracked your internet use for many months now and watched you accessing web-cam sites, newsgroups and youth chatrooms.’

‘I have… I have …’ beads of sweat were beginning to appear on Ashley’s brow. ‘I have naturally researched all areas of the internet during the course of my campaign. It would be absurd to attempt to legislate against pornography without investigating it first.’

‘But why only teenage boys? Why only sites with titles like “Studmuffins For You”, “Twink Heaven”, “Smooth Buns R Us” and “First Cum First Served” – why only those?’

Ashley felt he was drowning in a sea of laughter.

‘It is perfectly clear to anyone of sense,’ he hissed into his microphone, ‘that I have been made the victim of a very clever conspiracy to besmirch my name and belittle the national campaign I have set up on behalf of the family. You cannot possibly prove any one of these revolting allegations. You have only recorded the internet use on my part that suits you and deliberately chosen to ignore the thousands of other visits I may or may not have legitimately made in the name of research. These vicious and repulsive smears show how far the internet establishment is prepared to go…’

‘I note,’ Cosima continued remorselessly, ‘that you always delete your client-side disk and internet cache. There will be no evidence at your home whatsoever.’

‘Of course there won’t be!’ Ashley shrieked. ‘There will be no evidence at my home because everything you have said is a farrago of lies, innuendo and twisted half truths. I don’t know if your employer is aware of what you have been doing – ‘

‘Your employer too, don’t forget. You write a column for his newspaper – ‘Never mind that! If I discover that you have been snooping around me on Cotter company time, the legal consequences will be such as you cannot imagine. Let me assure you of that, Fräulein!’

In the Atrium, two dozen mouths had dropped open and two dozen pairs of rounded eyes were staring at the giant plasma television. A scene, Simon supposed, that was reproduced in different numbers and configurations up and down the land. Albert peeked shyly once more at the face of his hero but could read nothing behind the mirrored lenses. Mild astonishment showed in the gentle uplift of one of his eyebrows, that was all.

Albert’s mother and father had watched the moon landing as children, Gordon in New York and Portia in London. Albert himself retained vague memories of 0. J.’s white Bronco being followed by news helicopters as it wound along the freeways of Los Angeles, but
this…,
this was a memory by which his generation would judge themselves forever. Where were you when Cosima Kretschmer humiliated Ashley Barson-Garland on live television? I was watching television, derr-brain, the smart arses would reply, where were you?