“Okay,” Doyle agreed. “Trust me, he is less alert than you think. But if this will get you off my back about drugging him, then sure, I’ll do it. It can’t be more expensive than these damn nurses are. “
“Excellent,” Cillian smiled. “A quarter of my dad’s wealth is to go into a trust fund for my sister and her kids. She’s to receive a monthly check from it.”
“No way,” Doyle said.
“I’m not finished. In return for this part of our arrangement, my sister will also drop her civil suit against you.”
“I see,” Doyle said. “Very well. A quarter to your sister. I suppose that’s fair. What’s the third thing?”
“Originally I thought that I wanted to keep this house, but I don’t. A friend pointed out that I’d be much happier in a smaller place and he’s right. I would however, like to keep the gazebo.”
Doyle gave him a puzzled look. “Keep it?”
“Yes. It can be torn down and moved.”
“Why? You can build a much nicer one yourself,” Doyle said.
“I know, but this one has a certain amount of sentimental value. Do we have a deal?”
Doyle shrugged. “Medical care, a trust fund and a gazebo. Consider it done. How soon will you be moving?”
“In a week or two,” Cillian said. “Don’t worry. I won’t let the door hit me on the way out.”
******
Mikkel and Ariel scheduled another play date for the weekend of November 10 and 11 so that the two of them could show off their growing affection to anyone who was being paid to be Baldur’s eyes and ears. Mikkel had business to tend to in London anyway and Ariel was happy to take the short flight over to join him.
She had a personal agenda for the weekend, and she thought going through with it would be about the rough equivalent of a ladies exam in a doctor’s office—somewhere between awkward and downright unpleasant. But it had to be done, and the longer she waited the worse it was going to be.
She planned it so that she was waiting for Mikkel in the hotel room this time, not wanting to start this particular conversation off with the kind of kiss he had greeted her with on their last visit. He let himself in the room and he took one look at her and knew that something was up.
“Did Baldur hurt you somehow?”
“He hasn’t been near me. It was just a long day at the office and then the flight over here. I’m fine.”
“Is Eoin being unreasonable?”
“Mikkel stop it.”
“Stop what? Being concerned about you?” Mikkel asked, baffled.
“No. Stop trying to guess what is wrong and let me tell you.”
“Oh.” Mikkel seemed surprised. “Of course.”
So out came the details she had never told Mikkel about the odd encounter with the young man connecting a computer monitor at the airport in Nuuk months ago, and all the ensuing closeness, visions, sex, fighting, and finally the reconciliation of the past couple of weeks.
Mikkel didn’t say anything for a few minutes while Ariel stirred the ice in the whiskey and coke she had made for herself before Mikkel arrived.
“I’m not surprised you two got to be that close,” he finally said. “Disappointed that you didn’t level with me more about him, but not surprised.”
“You’re not angry?”
“Ariel, I’ve no right to be angry. You did most of what you did before we even knew each other. As to the recent stuff, I accept that you and I are having a fake relationship, not a real one. I‘ve no claim on you. It’s only awkward because he’s family and I’ve known him all my life. It would have been nice if you’d given me a heads up because of that. If he were a complete stranger it would be different.”
“I know. That’s why I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. I think I hurt him too and I never meant to make things uncomfortable for either of you. At what point is one supposed to give all of the details, you know?”
“Yeah, I know. I just wish I hadn’t mentioned you to my nosy mom; that didn’t help matters. Okay, so I exaggerated our relationship a little, too, but I just get tired of her always asking if I’ve met anyone special. If I’d known...”
“Yeah, problematic all around. I feel bad, Mikkel, I do. I’m, I’m very fond of both you and Siarnaq, you know.”
He shrugged. “That’s nice.”
She searched for a segue to less difficult ground, and found one. “Why did you say you weren’t surprised? It’s not like I’ve slept with every guy in Northern Europe, you know?” Her tone had become a little defensive and she knew it. He laughed.
“That is not what I was implying. However, if it matters to you then you should know that you’ve given me no reason to think that you’re unduly promiscuous…“
He saw the clouds gathering in her eyes and made a similar effort to get to safer ground. “I wasn’t surprised, Ariel, because you and Siarnaq together was the missing link. You know, put you and Baldur together and one thing happens. Put Siarnaq and Cillian together and another does. Why was nobody talking about putting Siarnaq and Ariel together to see what that would produce? So it occurred to me that it had probably already happened, and everybody else knew about it but me.”
Ariel blushed. “Not everyone. But Cillian and Brendan knew. And I told Toby just because I told Toby everything.”
“What did you see?” Mikkel asked.
“What I usually see. Everyday stuff, except it was the everyday stuff of people centuries from now, instead of my own. Just like with Baldur how I see everyday stuff but from the next few seconds. It’s kind of like, I don’t know, using a telescope on one end and using a microscope on the other. I’m still seeing with my eyes but at a different scale.”
Mikkel’s fascination with the phenomenon was taking his mind off of Ariel’s sex life, and she was happy to encourage the distraction.
“Baldur’s trained himself to see stocks and events that affect them, and to get and receive much of his information over a computer,” she went on. “I’m a telescope for him. He sees the same thing but much further out. Siarnaq focused on whole life stories of people, like seeing if they were healthy and if they had kids and how they died. With me, he saw those kind of life events, but up close, from now.”
“So why can’t you and Cillian combine, or whatever you want to call it?”
Ariel shrugged. “I don’t know. At some point I guess the two ways of seeing are so out of synch that they can’t meld together. When I touch him, it’s painful, like getting shocked.”
Mikkel was thoughtful. “Do you think there is anyone out there who is sort of between you and Baldur? There should be. Kind of a magnifying glass instead of microscope? I mean, like they see a few hours ahead, or a few days? You can’t do that, can you?”
“No, and there are times when it would be damn useful, too. There could be such a person, or even several of them, and we just don’t know about them. Cillian thinks that it would be hard to stay sane getting that kind of information, especially the weird outlying possibilities. Anyway the best I get is something that is maybe a week away. Never closer. Almost always there are so many options for something that far away that it isn’t all that useful, but it also isn’t that distressing.”
“Almost always,” he repeated. “That’s too bad. The almost part, that is. What about someone between you and Siarnaq? A pair of binoculars? Seeing years or decades ahead?”
“I’m glad that’s not me,” Ariel said. The vehemence in her voice surprised Mikkel until he considered the consequences of such vision. People only lived decades more.
“Of course,” Mikkel said. “No one really wants to know when and how they die, do they?”
“Cillian assumes there are zero people with that gift too, at least zero sane ones. But who knows. He could be wrong and maybe we just haven’t met any of these binocular psychics either.”
Mikkel smiled at her. “It sounds to me like you’re Goldilocks. The woman with the just right vision of the future, not too close, not too far.
”
“I guess,” she said, stirring her ice around some more. Mikkel reached out and gently took the drink out of her hand.
“Come on, let me take my fake girlfriend out for a marvelous dinner at The Delaunay. It’s one of the best new restaurants in London and I think that this girl needs to let go of all of her guilt and worry for one night.”
“I’d like that.” She picked up her coat and purse and realized that she was looking forward to all the pretending that she and Mikkel were going to have to do for the rest of the evening.
25. Autumn at the Beach
Hulda would never know why she said it. Maybe she had listened while one too many insults passed through Baldur’s lips, or maybe she had already begun to be too bold in her responses to him. Maybe too many new, odd things had come at her over the last few months and her judgment was addled by all the strangeness she had been forced to make sense of. Maybe for once she wanted Baldur to know that he wasn’t the most important thing in the world. Whatever the recipe was, the critical ingredients all came together that Thursday morning.
It started when Baldur strode into the office, actually whistling. He was in fine spirits while Hulda was tired and her head hurt, and, now that she thought about it, she had always found men whistling to be mildly annoying.
“How does it feel to be working for the most important man on Earth?” he asked as he walked by.
“I wouldn’t know,” she said. “Who is he?”
A flash of annoyance crossed Baldur’s face before he smiled.
“I see. You’re trying to make a joke. Not funny in this case. I spent last night going over everything. Even I had no idea how quickly this could snowball. Hulda, by this time next month, I will have doubled my wealth. Doubled it. Do you have any idea how hard it is to do that when you’re worth as much as I am?”
“Why does having a lot more money make you important?” she asked.
“Oh you are so cute when you pretend to be naïve.” He chucked her under the chin like one would a child, and she thought that might have been what did it.
“Being important means doing something to help humanity, like Mikkel or Cillian,” she shot back at him. “They make boatloads of money too, you know, but you don’t see them hoarding it and bragging. They’re taking their money, sending people to Mars so we don’t all get wiped ou…ut.” She froze before she could say any more, but Baldur was staring at her with all the admiration she could have hoped for.
“You are not nearly as dumb as you pretend to be, are you?” he said, as he started to finally get it. “You know some of the people over at Ullow, don’t you?”
“I’ve visited with them once or twice, yes,” she said while her knees turned to water once again. “Talked with the support staff, while arranging things for you. I’ve gotten snippets about what else goes on there.”
“Did it ever occur to you that those snippets might have been useful to me?” he asked. “No, of course not. You know things you are not supposed to know, don’t you? I want to know how you learned about them and I want to know that now.”
Hulda’s instincts with Baldur were good, and she went on the offense without giving it any thought. “I ask people questions about themselves instead of only talking about me. You should try it sometime. You can learn a lot that way.”
“This makes so much sense.” Baldur’s mind was sharp, and it was moving on from Hulda to the much bigger picture “Why does a guy like Mikkel decide out of the blue to become rich and go to Mars? Yes, sure, he could have a wild hair up his ass, but doesn’t it make more sense if he thinks he is doing something significant? Becoming the most important man that ever lived? Ah yes, Hulda, that is what we are all after, isn’t it? Us men, I mean. You women, you all want to be beautiful.”
Hulda thought of several replies, but she kept quiet. She had already said way too much.
“So Cillian is in on this too, is he? And Ariel, of course. Is she the one who has predicted that we need to vacate the planet? Or maybe, maybe she is in cahoots with the doom and gloom Inuit I met. Are there more of them? Maybe a whole collection of people wailing about the end of the world? All trying to do something about it?”
Baldur had gone from angry and suspicious to something else Hulda did not understand. At least it didn’t make any sense to her until he did the very last thing she would ever have expected. He walked up to her desk and kissed her squarely on the mouth.
“Thank you my silly smart secretary. You, you have just given me the greatest gift of all time. Do you know what it is?”
Hulda didn’t want to guess.
“It’s called leverage. Really. Great. Leverage. It’s one thing to say to a girl, ‘You better help me out here or I’ll hurt your boyfriend.’ That’s all well and good and it’s worked well enough at the start. But it’s something entirely different to be able to say to her, ‘Help me out here or I’ll totally mess up your boyfriend’s plans to save the world.’ Now that is leverage, isn’t it?”
The cold water in Hulda’s knees had turned to ice and the chill was making its way up her thighs and into her stomach.
“Would you actually prevent somebody from saving the human race?” she asked Baldur.
“Oh come on. I’m sure these people have no real idea of what the future holds and no possible way of altering the outcome of any disaster if they did. All that matters to me is that they believe in what they are doing, believe in it enough so that they will do what I want.
“But what if they’re right?” Hulda asked.
“Then they’re right,” Baldur laughed. “So what. We’ll never know.”
That was the moment that Hulda knew that she had to get as far away from Baldur as she possibly could. She had ceased to be effective as an inside spy. He wouldn’t trust her a bit going forward, and she had lost all ability to humor him and he knew it. They were at a philosophical impasse as large as the Milky Way, and they both knew it even as they pretended otherwise.
She meekly promised to be a good employee and tell him anything else she could think of that was useful, and then she finished her day at work as calmly as she could. He mostly ignored her, and asked her for very little help for the rest of the day.
Hulda knew that Baldur would not keep an assistant for very long that he thought that he could not trust. She also knew that he would never let such an assistant leave and go where she might be able to cause him harm. That didn’t leave a whole lot of pleasant alternatives. So Hulda went home in as normal a fashion as was possible, and packed everything she could cram into two suitcases. Then she drove over to her cousin’s house and begged for help.
Once her cousin was convinced that Hulda wasn’t running from bill collectors or the law, he agreed to take her out to a cabin of his in the country and let her hide there for a while. It was close to winter and the place wasn’t exactly posh and she had to understand that. However, it was hard to find and probably safe for anyone who needed to stay hidden. Was this creep at work really so frightening that getting away from him was worth it?
“Yes,” Hulda assured her cousin, “yes.”
Early the next morning Hulda and her cousin left his house hours before the sun would make its brief appearance in the southern sky.
******
On Monday, November 19, Baldur contacted Ariel to let her know that this time he had purchased a ticket for her to fly commercial. It was for the following Sunday afternoon. He expected her in his office Monday morning, November 26, well before the London Stock Exchange opened. This time she was free to arrange her own lodging, and she should bring appropriate clothes that she was comfortable wearing for the session. He suggested that she plan on making herself available all day Tuesday as well, as the approaching end of the year offered more possibilities to be explored, and he wished to avail himself of all relevant investment opportunities. Monday might not provide enough time.
She had expected as much. The two of them had exchanged a few curt emails with each other as Nove
mber wore on, and this had been pretty much the plan. The coming week was Thanksgiving back home, and the rest of her family would be getting together without her. Luckily, she’d bought a ticket back to the U.S. for Christmas months ago, before the prices shot up, and she made a mental note to let Baldur know that her trip to see her family for the holidays was non-negotiable.
Tuesday Nell called her, worried about Hulda.
“I got the oddest email from her cousin last night,” Nell said. “He said that she is hiding at his cabin. Something happened late last week at work and she asked him to contact me. He told me that she said she’ll tell me about it when she sees me. She also wanted to make sure that you knew that she won’t be there Monday when you arrive.”
“Running away like that sounds pretty extreme,” Ariel said. “She does know how important it is to have her in that office, doesn’t she?”
“She absolutely does,” Nell said. “This can’t be good. Maybe you shouldn’t go.”
“I have to go,” Ariel said. “Whatever Baldur is up to, whatever happened, he is now more suspicious already.” Ariel stopped, took a breath, tried to precall anything from only a week ahead. “If I don’t show, that could set all kinds of worse things in motion.” Ariel shuddered as the images flickered. “I’ve got to be there. There is some ugly stuff in store if Baldur tries to chase me down. Not to mention that Toby has got the entire Dublin office set up to capitalize on every penny they can possibly make off of what Baldur sees once I do get there Monday. Brendan has gone nuts tapping into the hardware. Eoin has been working with everybody in the office on handling the money, and Mikkel swears that odds are at least fair that he can get to where he needs to be after just this one session, especially if Baldur goes for two full days of trading. So it has got to happen.”
“Damn, I wish I spoke Icelandic better,” Nell said. “Never mind. I’m going to find a way to get somebody on the ground to help you. I’ll call as soon as I know anything more. Try to keep Baldur from figuring out that we know that anything has changed, okay?”
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