Limitless

by Alan Glynn

  ‘That’s a New Jersey number, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yeah. I checked. The calls were to a place called United Labtech, which is somewhere near Trenton.’

  ‘United Labtech?’

  He nodded, and said, ‘Yeah. You want to take a drive out there?’

  *

  His car was parked just up the street, so within a few minutes we were heading down the Henry Hudson Parkway. We took the Lincoln Tunnel to New Jersey and then got on to the Turnpike. Kenny Sanchez had given me the envelope to hold when we got into the car, and after a few minutes on the road I’d taken the pages out and had started examining them. It was obvious that Sanchez was a little uncomfortable about this, but he didn’t say anything. I managed to keep things ticking over by talking, and asking him questions – about cases he’d worked, about anomalies in the law, about his family, whatever. Then, suddenly, I was asking him questions about the list. Who were these people? Had he tracked all of the calls? How did that work?

  ‘Most of the numbers,’ he said, ‘are connected to the business end of Dekedelia – publishers, distributors, lawyers. We can account for them, and for that reason have eliminated them. But we’ve also isolated a list of about twenty-five other names that don’t check out, that we can’t account for.’

  ‘Who are they to? Or from?’

  ‘To and from – and fairly regularly, as well. They’re all individuals living in major cities throughout the country. They hold executive positions in a wide range of companies, but none of them seems to have any connection to Dekedelia.’

  ‘Like … er,’ I said, homing in on one of the few out-of-state numbers I could find, ‘this … Libby Driscoll? In Philadelphia?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Hmm.’

  I looked out of the window, and as the gas stations, factories, Pizza Huts and Burger Kings flitted past, I wondered who these people could be. I tried a few theories out for size. But I soon became distracted by the fact that Kenny Sanchez now seemed to be looking in his rearview mirror every couple of seconds. For no apparent reason, he also changed lanes – once, twice, and then a third time.

  ‘Anything wrong?’ I said eventually.

  ‘I think we’re being followed,’ he said, switching lanes again and then accelerating.

  ‘Followed?’ I said. ‘By who?’

  ‘I don’t know. And maybe we’re not. I’m just being … cautious.’

  I craned my neck around. The traffic coming from behind was flowing across three lanes, the whole busy highway winding back serpent-like over a hilly, industrial landscape. I found it hard to imagine how Sanchez could have isolated one car from all of these and thought it was following us.

  I didn’t say anything.

  A few minutes later, we took the exit for Trenton and after driving around for what seemed like ages finally arrived at an anonymous single-storey building. It was low and long, and looked like a warehouse. There was a large parking area in front of it that was about half-full. The only identifying mark in the whole place was a small sign at the main entrance to the car park. It had the name ‘United Labtech’ on it, and underneath a logo that strained for scientific effect – a kind of multiple helix set against a curving blue grid. We drove in and parked.

  It suddenly occurred to me how close I might be to meeting Vernon Gant’s partner, and I felt a rush of adrenalin.

  I went to open the door, but Sanchez put a hand on my arm and said, ‘Whoa there – where are you going?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You can’t just walk in there. You need some kind of a cover.’ He reached across me and opened his glove compartment. ‘Let me do it.’ He took out a handful of business cards, flicked through them and selected one. ‘Insurance is always good for this type of thing.’

  Undecided about what to do, I chewed for a moment on my lower lip.

  ‘Look, I’m just going to establish that he’s in there,’ Sanchez said, ‘It’s the first step.’

  I hesitated.

  ‘OK.’

  I watched Sanchez get out of the car, walk over to the entrance of the building and disappear inside.

  He was right, of course. I would have to approach Todd Ellis very carefully indeed, because if I blurted out something inappropriate as soon as I met him – especially if this was where he worked – I might easily scare him off, or blow his cover.

  As I sat there waiting in the car, my cellphone rang.

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘Eddie, Carl.’

  ‘What’s up.’

  ‘I think we’re there. Vision lock. Hank and Dan. I’ve asked them both to dinner in my place this evening, and it looks like we could be getting a final handshake.’

  ‘Great. What time?’

  ‘Eight-thirty. I’ve cancelled your meetings for this afternoon, so … where are you, by the way?’

  ‘New Jersey.’

  ‘What the—’

  ‘Don’t ask.’

  ‘Well haul your ass back in here as quick as you can. We’ve a lot to go over before this evening.’

  I looked at my watch.

  ‘Give me an hour.’

  ‘OK. See you then.’

  My head was reeling as I put the phone away. Too many things were happening at once now – locating Todd Ellis, the deal, the new apartment …

  Just then Kenny Sanchez re-appeared. He walked briskly over to the car and got in.

  I looked at him, silently screaming well?

  ‘They say he doesn’t work there any more.’

  He turned to face me.

  ‘Left a couple of weeks ago. And they don’t have any forwarding address, or number where he can be reached.’

  [ 24 ]

  WE DROVE BACK TO THE CITY in almost total silence. I had a jumpy, nauseous feeling in my stomach at the thought that Todd Ellis had just disappeared into thin air. I also didn’t like the fact that he no longer worked at United Labtech, because if that’s where they produced MDT, what chance would I stand of getting any more without an inside connection? When we were about half-way through the Lincoln Tunnel, I said to Sanchez, ‘So, do you think you’ll be able to trace him?’

  ‘I’ll try.’

  I sensed from his tone that he was a little fed up. But I didn’t want to leave him like that. I needed him on my side.

  ‘You’ll try?’

  ‘Yes, but I wish …’

  He stopped and sighed impatiently. He didn’t want to say it, so I said it for him.

  ‘You wish you had more to go on than just my frankly implausible story.’

  He hesitated, but then said, ‘Yes.’

  I thought about this for a moment, and when we were coming out of the tunnel, I said to him, ‘These people on the list, the twenty-five or so names you can’t account for? Have you spoken to any of them?’

  ‘A few of them, when we first started tracking his calls.’

  ‘When was that?’

  ‘About three months ago. But it was a dead end.’

  I took out my cellphone and started dialling a number.

  ‘Who are you calling?’

  ‘Libby Driscoll.’

  ‘But, how did—’

  ‘I have a good memory … Libby Driscoll, please.’

  A couple of moments later, I put the phone down in my lap.

  ‘She’s out sick. Has been for a week.’

  ‘So?’

  I took the pages out of the envelope and went through them. I found another of the out-of-state numbers, checked it with Sanchez and then called it.

  It was the same story.

  We were on Forty-second Street now and I asked Sanchez if he could drop me off at Fifth Avenue.

  ‘It’s just a guess,’ I said, ‘but if you call every name on that shortlist, I think you’ll find that they’re all sick. Furthermore, you’ll also probably find that the three people you’re looking for – the missing cult members – are, in fact, people on that list—’

  ‘What?’

  ‘—living
out successful new identities, fuelled up on MDT-48 supplied by Deke Tauber.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘But the supply has run out and that’s why they’re getting sick.’

  Sanchez pulled up just before Fifth Avenue.

  ‘My guess,’ I went on, ‘is that everyone on the list is really someone else. Like you said, they re-create themselves in an alternative environment.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘They probably don’t even know they’re taking it. He gives it to them – I don’t know, somehow – but the most likely pay-off is that he gets a percentage of their fat executive salaries.’

  Kenny Sanchez was staring straight ahead now and I could almost hear his mind working.

  ‘Look, I’ll get on this straightaway,’ he said, ‘and I’ll call you as soon as I have anything.’

  I got out of the car, still feeling mildly nauseous. But as I walked up Fifth Avenue towards Forty-eighth Street, I also felt vaguely satisfied at how deftly I’d managed to keep Kenny Sanchez onboard.

  *

  I spent the afternoon with Carl Van Loon going over stuff we’d gone over a hundred times before, especially our public relations strategy for dealing with the announcement. He was very excited about finalizing the deal, and didn’t want to leave anything to chance. He was also excited about having it happen at his apartment on Park Avenue, which – although he’d forgotten it now – had been my idea. In all the hectic activity of the past few weeks, Hank Atwood and Dan Bloom had only met face to face twice – fairly briefly and in formal business settings. I had suggested, therefore, that a casual dinner in Van Loon’s apartment might be a better setting for this next and most crucial meeting, on the basis that a congenial, clubby atmosphere with brandy and cigars would more easily facilitate the one thing that remained to be done in this whole affair – which was the two principals eyeballing each other across a table and saying, Fuck it, let’s merge.

  I left the office at around 4 p.m. and went to Tenth Street, where I’d arranged to meet my landlord. I handed over the keys and took away the remainder of my things – including the envelope of MDT pills. It was strange closing the door for the last time and walking out of the building, because it wasn’t just that I was leaving an apartment behind, a place I’d been in for six years – I felt at some level that I was leaving myself behind. Over the past few weeks, I had shed much of who I was, and even though I’d done this with considerable abandon, I think I’d unconsciously felt that as long as I was still living in the apartment on Tenth Street I would always have the option, if it became necessary, to reverse the process – as though the place contained a part of me that was ineradicable, some form of genetic sequencing embedded in the floorboards and the walls that could be used to reconstitute my movements, my daily habits, all of who I was. But now, climbing into the back seat of a cab on First Avenue – with the last few items from the apartment stuffed in a holdall – I knew for sure, finally, that I was cutting myself adrift.

  A little over an hour later I was gazing out at the city from the sixty-eighth floor of the Celestial Building. Surrounded by unpacked boxes and wooden crates, I was standing in the main living area, wearing only a bathrobe and sipping a glass of champagne. The view was spectacular and the evening that lay ahead promised, in its own way, to be equally spectacular. And I remember thinking at the time that, well, if this was what being adrift was like, then I reckoned I could probably get used to it …

  *

  I got to Van Loon’s place on Park Avenue for eight o’clock and was shown into a large, chintzy reception room. Van Loon himself appeared after a few minutes and offered me a drink. He seemed a little agitated. He told me that his wife was away and that he wasn’t very comfortable entertaining without her. I reminded him that apart from ourselves, the dinner was just going to be Hank Atwood, Dan Bloom and one adviser apiece from their respective negotiating teams. It wasn’t some extravagant society bash he was throwing. It would be simple, casual, and at the same time we’d get a little business done. It would be discreet, but with far-reaching implications.

  Van Loon slapped me gently on the back ‘“Discreet, but with far-reaching implications.” I like that.’

  The others arrived in two shifts, about five minutes apart, and soon we were all standing around, glasses in hand, pointedly not discussing the MCL–Abraxas merger. In line with the casual dress-code for the evening, I was wearing a black cashmere sweater and black wool trousers, but everyone else, including Van Loon, was in chinos and Polo shirts. This made me feel slightly different – and in a way it reinforced the notion that I was taking part in some super-sophisticated computer game. I was identified as the hero by being dressed differently, in black. The enemy, in chinos and Polo shirts, were all around me and I had to schmooze them to death before they realized that I was a phony and froze me out.

  This mild feeling of alienation lingered through the early part of the evening, but it wasn’t actually unpleasant, and it occurred to me after a while just what was going on. I’d done this. I’d done the merger negotiations thing. I’d helped to structure a huge corporate deal – but now it was over. This dinner was only a formality. I wanted to move on to something else.

  As if they somehow sensed this in me, both Hank Atwood and Dan Bloom, separately, discreetly, intimated that if I was interested – down the line, of course – there might be some … role I could play in their newly formed media behemoth. I was circumspect in how I responded to these overtures, making out that loyalty to Van Loon was my first priority, but naturally I was flattered to be asked. I didn’t know what I would want from such an arrangement in any case – except that it would have to be different from what I’d been doing up to that point. Maybe I could run a movie studio, or plot some new global corporate strategy for the company.

  Or maybe I could branch out altogether, and diversify. Go into politics. Run for the Senate.

  We drifted into an adjoining room and took our places at a large, round dining table, and as I elaborated mentally on the notion of going into politics, I simultaneously engaged with Dan Bloom in a conversation about single malt Scotch whiskies. This dreamy, distracted state of mind persisted throughout the meal (tagliatelle with jugged hare and English peas, followed by venison sautéed in chestnuts), and must have made me seem quite aloof. Once or twice, I even saw Van Loon looking over at me, a puzzled, worried expression on his face.

  When we were about half-way through the main course – not to mention all the way through two bottles of 1947 Château Calon-Ségur – the conversation turned to the business at hand. This didn’t take long, however, because once the subject had been raised, it quickly became clear that the details and the fevered number-crunching of recent weeks were largely cosmetic and that what counted more than anything else right now was agreement in principle. Van Loon & Associates had facilitated this, and that was where the real brokering skill lay – in orchestrating events, in making it happen. But now that the thing was virtually on auto-pilot, I felt as if I were watching the scene from a distant height, or through a pane of tinted glass.

  When the plates had been cleared away, there was a tense pause in the room. The conversation had been manoeuvring itself into position for some time, and it seemed now that the moment was right. I cleared my throat, and then – almost on cue – Hank Atwood and Dan Bloom reached across the table and shook hands.

  There was a brief flurry of clapping and air-punching, after which a bottle of Veuve Clicquot and six glasses appeared on the table. Van Loon stood up and made a show of opening the bottle, and then there was a toast. In fact, there were several toasts – and at the end there was even one to me. Choosing his words carefully, Dan Bloom held up his glass and thanked me for my keen focus and unstinting dedication. Hank Atwood added that I had been the lifeblood of the negotiations. Van Loon himself said he hoped that he and I – having together helped to broker the biggest merger in the history of corporate America – would not feel that our horizons had in
any way been limited by the experience.

  This got a hearty laugh. It also eased us out of the main order of business and moved us safely on to the next stage of the evening – dessert (glazed almond brittle), cigars and an hour or two of untrammelled bonhomie. I contributed fully to the conversation, which was wide-ranging and slightly giddy, but just below the surface, thrumming steadily, my fantasy of representing New York in the US Senate had taken on a life of its own – even to the extent of my seeing it as inevitable that at some future date I would seek the Democratic Party’s nomination for the presidency.

  This was a fantasy, of course, but the more I thought about it, the more the fundamental notion of entering politics actually made sense to me – because getting people on my side, getting them energized and doing things for me, was precisely what I seemed to be good at. After all, I had these guys – billionaires in Polo shirts – competing with each other for my attention, so how hard could it be to woo the attention of the American public? How hard could it be to woo the attention of whatever percentage of registered voters would be required to get me elected? Following a carefully worked-out plan I could be sitting on sub-committees and select committees within five years, and after that, who knew?

  In any case, a good five-year-plan was probably just what I needed – something to burn up the incredible energy and breath of ambition that MDT so easily engendered.

  I was fully aware of the fact, however, that I didn’t have a constant supply of MDT, and that the supply I did have was alarmingly finite, but I was nevertheless confident that one way or another, and sooner rather than later, I would be overcoming this problem. Kenny Sanchez would locate Todd Ellis. He would have a constant supply of the stuff. I would somehow gain permanent access to this supply. It would all – somehow – work out …

  *

  At around 11 p.m., there was a general movement to break up the proceedings. It had been agreed earlier that there would be a press conference the following day to announce the proposed merger. The story would be strategically leaked in the morning, and the press conference would take place in the late afternoon. The glare of media coverage would be intense, but at the same time everyone was looking forward to it.