“Guess not.”
Twelve point three billion, she thought. But even that wasn’t enough to bring down a large, diverse, robust economy like that of Chile.
Chad, maybe.
Something else was going on.
She thanked BJ for listening, paid for both meals, and took the 101 back to the valley. She worked past ten o’clock, at which point the thought of a swim in her apartment’s pool began to creep softly into her mind. Doing laps in the pool alone in the night, as she’d done in Indonesia. She began to think of the weightlessness, the water caressing her skin, the silence. The eerie glow of the underwater floodlight.
Eventually she couldn’t concentrate on work any longer and drove home.
She parked in front of the ginkgo trees in the parking lot. As she got out of the Prius, the scent of the rotting fruit stung her nostrils, a disgusting combination of vomit and semen that was like a fraternity the morning after the homecoming party, and she stepped away from the smell. She walked to the iron apartment gate and prepared to give the lock her thumbprint. A shadow moved quickly toward her from the darkness between a pair of SUVs, and Dagmar’s nerves gave a shriek.
She tried to get her heart under control and briefly considered flight-no, she realized, he’d probably catch her. If she tried to open the gate, he could pin her against the iron bars. And so-adrenaline booming in her ears like kettledrums-she hastily adjusted her car keys in her hand so the keys were protruding from between her fingers, improvised brass knuckles.
Her reactions had improved since Jakarta. If this guy tried to attack her, she was going to do her level best to fuck him up.
Unless, of course, he was a Russian assassin with a gun, in which case she would die.
The man stepped into the light, and Dagmar saw it was Siyed.
“Shit!” she said. “You scared the piss out of me!”
“I had to see you, love,” Siyed said. His pupils had shrunk to pinpricks in the floodlights. “Dagmar,” he said, “you’re all I can think about.”
“Are you stalking me now?” she demanded. “Go home!” She pointed at the street and talked to him as if he were an overaffectionate dog. “Go home!”
“I can’t!” Siyed staggered toward her. He was a tiny man, only two or three inches over five feet. Once Dagmar had enjoyed the lightness of his frame, the delicacy of his hands and wrists, but now she just wanted to throw him across the parking lot. He wore chinos and a white cotton shirt, and in the glare of the floodlights his dark eyelashes were black commas drawn above and below his eyes.
Her grip on her keys loosened. She couldn’t be afraid of a man shorter than she, even if he was barking mad.
“Dagmar, I love you!” he croaked. “I only want to be with you. You’re like night and day and moon and sun-”
She interrupted before she could become any more cosmic than he had already made her.
“Siyed,” she said, “you’re fucking married! Go back to your wife!”
“I can’t!” he said again. He blinked up at her. “Oh my God,” he said. “You’re so dazzling.”
He fumbled for her hand. She pulled away from him. The stink of the rotting ginkgo fruit lay in the back of her throat like a coating of phlegm that she couldn’t hawk out.
“Go home!” she said again. And then, more gently: “This is California. You can get arrested for this kind of behavior.”
“I can’t go home.” Siyed’s eyes suddenly filled with tears. “I told Manjari about us. I told her we were in love!”
“We’re not!” Dagmar cried. Out of sheer frustration she waved her fist, and Siyed jumped back at the glint of the keys in her hand.
“There’s no obstacle now, love!” Siyed said quickly. “We can be together. I’ve got it all arranged…”
“Did you think to ask me about these goddam arrangements first, whatever they are?” she demanded. “Did you think to ask me whether you should tell your wife anything about me?”
“I did it for you!” Siyed said. Tears spilled down his face. “It’s all for the two of us!”
Dagmar turned from him and jabbed at the gate with her thumb.
“I see you around here again, motherfucker,” she said, “I’m having you arrested!”
“But Dagmar…,” he moaned.
Dagmar swung the creaking iron gate open, then shut. Siyed stepped close to the gate, and the shadow of the bars fell across his face.
“Dagmar!” he cried.
“Go away!”
She stalked toward the stairs, then up and to her apartment, where she had to restrain herself from slamming the door behind her and waking any of the neighbors who hadn’t already been roused by all the shouting.
She didn’t turn on the lights. Instead she went to the window over the sink and looked out to see if Siyed was still in the parking lot.
He was gone, at least from the patch of asphalt she could see through the gate.
He could still be skulking outside her view, though. For a moment she fantasized about calling the cops, and then decided she was too tired to wrangle with Siyed and the police.
Dagmar’s gaze shifted to the pool, glowing Cherenkov blue down in the courtyard, and she felt her energy level subside, swirling into emptiness like the pool draining away.
She wanted to use the pool, but she didn’t want to give Siyed the pleasure of watching her swim, assuming that he was still lurking around.
Goddam it.
Instead of swimming, she opened the refrigerator, and in its light she ate half an eggroll that was left over from a take-out Chinese meal two nights before. The cold grease was rancid on her tongue.
Then, still creeping like a bewildered ninja around her own apartment, she brushed her teeth, washed her face, and went to bed.
In the middle of the night she woke up with a sudden understanding of everything that had happened.
BJ was wrong, she thought. And Charlie is riding a tiger.
Poor man, she thought. He can’t get off.
And then: None of us can.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE This Is Not a Refuge
Dagmar knew what was going on, but she couldn’t do anything about it. Not now, perhaps not ever.
And furthermore, she was trapped in her ordinary life. The next day was Saturday-for Great Big Idea a workday, with Briana Hall scheduled for another update, complete with a live event in London that would begin at 8 A.M. California time. Dagmar was in her office by seven, gulping coffee and digging through Siyed’s employment records from Curse of the Golden Nagi.
She found that she wanted to clear herself with Manjari. She didn’t want to come clean, exactly-if she could manage this without having to admit that she’d actually been to bed with Siyed, that would be fine with her-but she wanted Manjari to know that, despite what Siyed had told her over the phone, she wanted no part of him now, that whatever romantic fantasies Siyed was spinning were entirely a product of his own unhinged imagination.
It occurred to Dagmar that Manjari might well be skeptical of whatever claims her husband’s lover might make.
I don’t want him. Please take him back.
Was that convincing or not? But why wouldn’t it be convincing?
She didn’t want Manjari’s husband, right? Why wouldn’t Manjari believe that?
Dagmar decided she was getting paranoid.
None too soon, whispered an internal voice.
But if she didn’t have some way to get ahold of Manjari, Dagmar wouldn’t have a chance to say anything. And Siyed’s file was not very forthcoming where his London family was concerned.
The file had Siyed’s email address. His cell phone number. The different number that he’d been assigned when he was in the States and given one of Great Big Idea’s cell phones. His street address in London. And the name and phone number of his London agent. But Dagmar didn’t want to talk to Siyed or his agent; she wanted to talk to Manjari, and the file didn’t offer Siyed’s home phone number, where Manjari might reasonably be expe
cted to pick up.
Dagmar cursed under her breath and then remembered that she lived in the twenty-first century. Within seconds, her computer displayed a London telephone directory, with the Prasads’ phone number.
She looked at the number, took a swig of coffee, and wished the coffee was something stronger.
Call now, she thought. Before you lose your nerve.
She reached for her handheld; then-hearing voices in the hall outside-she closed her office door and locked it.
Dagmar returned to her office chair, began to punch in Manjari’s number, then stopped to wonder just what the hell she was going to say.
She had no damn idea.
Dagmar erased the number from the display, stared at the phone’s screen for a moment, then reached for a pen and paper and began to jot down talking points. She was happiest when following a script, preferably of her own devising.
Not my fault! she wrote, and underlined the words. Which was stretching the truth a bit, but Dagmar felt it was a positive start.
She stared at the paper for a long moment, then underlined Not my fault! a second time.
A few minutes later, the list read as follows.
I’m not involved with S.
S. has invented this fantasy about me
Please call S. and tell him to come home
Not my fault!
She looked at the list for a moment, then decided the four points pretty much covered everything she intended to say. She punched in Manjari’s number, then hit Send.
Her heart rapped a quick rhythm as she raised the phone to her ear.
“Hello?”
The voice seemed strangely normal. Dagmar had expected an angry voice, or a tearful voice, or a snappish voice. Anything but this sunny-afternoon-in-London voice.
“Is this Manjari?” Dagmar asked.
“Yes. Who is this?”
Dagmar cast a desperate look at her list and spoke. “This is Dagmar.”
There was a moment’s pause, one that lasted a beat longer than the satellite lag, and then: “I’m sorry?”
“Dagmar Sh-shaw,” she said, annoyed at her sudden nervous stammer. “From Los Angeles.”
“Oh,” Manjari said. “Dagmar, of course.”
Of course, Dagmar thought in fury. The woman who slept with your husband.
There was an expectant pause. Dagmar gave another glance at her list and spoke.
“I wanted to say,” she said, “that whatever Siyed told you about me, it isn’t true.”
Dagmar’s heart beat four times in the ensuing pause.
“I’m sorry. What did he say, exactly?”
The tone of Manjari’s reply, the genuine puzzlement, clued Dagmar to the actual situation. Which was that Siyed-already a proven liar-had lied again.
He hadn’t told Manjari he was involved with Dagmar. He hadn’t told his wife that he was leaving her. He had just told Dagmar that as a ploy to win her over.
It was Dagmar, just now, who had told Manjari that something was badly wrong.
Dagmar’s mind thrashed for an escape route.
“All right,” she said quickly. “Obviously we’ve had a miscommunication.”
“Yes?” Manjari said. “Are you in London?”
“No,” Dagmar said. “I’m in L.A. But I need to tell you…” Her mind spun like a broken clutch. “I think Siyed is having some kind of breakdown out here. I think it’s…” Imagination failed her. “It’s just Hollywood,” she finished lamely. “It happens.”
“Is he in hospital?” Manjari asked. For the first time there was urgency in her voice.
“No. But he turned up last night, and he said some things-he was irrational.”
“What sort of things did he say?”
“I… I don’t remember, really. It doesn’t matter.” She tried to put as much kindness into her words as possible. “You should call Siyed and tell him to come home. All right?”
“Tell him to come home,” Manjari repeated.
“Yes,” Dagmar said, and then a piece of maliciousness entered her mind.
“Tell him that I told you to call,” she said.
“I…” Manjari seemed bewildered. “I’ll call him.”
Dagmar reached for the piece of paper with her talking points, crumpled it, and tossed it in the wastebasket.
“I’m sorry to bother you,” she said. “But I think it’s best.”
Dagmar unlocked her office door and propped it open. The suspense and panic and determination that had filled her during the phone call had drained away, and she felt strangely hollow.
She thought about Siyed flying away on a big silver plane. Crossing paths with Charlie, flying in.
Charlie. How could she tell Charlie that she knew what he was up to?
Members of the Great Big Idea technical staff passed by, ready for the game update. Soon-four o’clock in London-players would be assembling beneath the shadow of the old Gothic pile of Lincoln’s Inn. Streaming video, taken by a freelance crew frequently employed by Great Big Idea, already showed several dozen people gathered in an expectant crowd. Each held a silver DVD in a transparent jewel case, a sign that they were part of the game.
The barristers of Lincoln’s Inn, who might normally resent a crowd on their doorstep, were presumably spending their Saturday afternoon at home.
Dagmar moved into the big conference room for the update and found it full of laptops and cables. Siyed’s flowers drooped and sagged everywhere. Her mantra glowed on one wall monitor.
Read the Schedule
Know the Schedule
Love the Schedule
BJ wandered in, holding a twenty-four-ounce foam cup of coffee, and hugged Dagmar hello. Dagmar realized that BJ had shaved off his muttonchops, leaving only the modest mustache he’d worn as long as she’d known him. The change, she thought, made him look younger.
“Congratulate me,” he said. “I think I’ve got a new job.”
Dagmar looked at him in surprise. Hesitation tripped her tongue before she could offer congratulations.
“Don’t worry,” he said, anticipating her. “I won’t start the new job till we finish Briana Hall.”
Dagmar brightened. “Good news, then,” she said. “Where will you be working?”
BJ grinned, then hesitated. “I don’t think I should actually say.”
“Can you tell me,” Dagmar asked, “if it’s a crap job or a shit job?”
BJ laughed. “Neither. It’s a real job. A total, stone opportunity.”
“Well.” Dagmar reached up a hand and touched his newly shaven cheek. “I’m guessing that whoever they are, they have a hair policy.”
He laughed again.
“No,” he said. “I just figured I should try to blend in with the other tycoons.”
She looked at him. “Tycoons, huh?”
He gave a lazy shrug.
“We’ll see,” he said. “Yeah.”
“All right,” she said. “Be mysterious if you want to.”
Dagmar and the others watched the live feed. At four o’clock London time, a car drew up to Lincoln’s Inn, and Anne stepped out, followed by jerking camera crews. Anne was a sweet-voiced, petite English Rose who headed Great Big Idea’s small office in London and from there ran all European live events.
To anyone who flashed her a DVD, Anne handed a sheet of xeroxed paper containing clues. The first of these, when properly decoded, sent players southwest across the pleasant green of Lincoln’s Inn Fields, where they would encounter a man with a sign that said “Free Time Travel.”
When a player approached this man, she would be given a headset that was cabled to a high-powered laptop computer. The headset featured a screen that would drop down over the right eye. When the player moved her head in the correct direction, her left eye would show her the sights of a Holborn Saturday afternoon while the screen would show a different image, a scene from the “past”-the fictional past of The Long Night of Briana Hall.
The scene showed Vlatko, th
e amoral mercenary who was assisting the terrorists, meeting one of his contacts in London.
Cameras wandered along with the crowd, broadcasting the event live to anyone who cared to watch.
When a player had seen Vlatko and had a chance to identify the contact, the player would follow the next clue north to Red Lion Square, where another vendor would offer another headset and another free trip into the past, a trip that would reveal another of Vlatko’s contacts.
And from thence to Gray’s Inn Gardens, and from there to New Square, again under the shadow of Lincoln’s Inn, on each occasion learning the identity of one of Vlatko’s associates. At the end of the journey, the players would know all of Vlatko’s London network and begin to follow their tracks and dissect the attackers’ plot.
Which would culminate next Saturday, when the players would deploy the Tapping the Source scanners in fifty cities across the world.
So far, Great Big Idea had spent more than two and a half million dollars of Charlie’s money shipping nearly sixty-five thousand scanners to players all over the world. Several thousand more dollars had been spent paying for extra warehouse help to make sure that the scanners were shipped on time, an act of generosity that had left the management reeling at Tapping the Source.
The Long Night of Briana Hall was probably going to be the least profitable online game in history. Not that Dagmar much cared-if it ran overbudget, that was all the fault of her boss.
Who, it had to be admitted, seemed to have plenty of extra money anyway.
Dagmar waited for the update that followed the live event-new pages going online with the information that the players had discovered in London, each page loaded with new puzzles that would keep the players busy for, at least, hours.
Or, if they were slipping, days.
Helmuth and his staff were focused on their displays, hands tapping. BJ and Dagmar looked over their shoulders.
“Harlem Nocturne” floated from her handset. Dagmar looked at the screen, saw Charlie’s name, and answered.
“How’s the update going?” Charlie asked.
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