Napier, shouting for him to stop.
Bill Smoke turned around, huffing. Wassup, Joe?
You said she was out tonight!
No, no, you heard wrong. I said my contact said the old woman was out tonight. Reliable staff, hard to find.
Christ, Christ, Christ, is she dead?
Better safe than sorry, Joe.
A neat little setup, Joe Napier admits in his sleepless cabin. A shackle of compliance. Party to the clubbing of a defenseless, elderly activist? Any dropout law student with a speech impediment could send him to prison for the rest of his life. A blackbird sings. I did a great wrong by Margo Roker, but I’ve left that life. Four small shrapnel scars, two in each buttock, ache. I went out on a limb to get Luisa Rey wised up. The window is light enough to discern Milly in her frame. I’m only one man, he protests. I’m not a platoon. All I want out of life is life. And a little fishing.
Joe Napier sighs, dresses, and begins reloading the Jeep.
Milly always won by saying nothing.
56
Judith Rey, barefoot, fastens her kimono-style dressing gown and crosses a vast Byzantine rug to her marble-floored kitchen. She takes out three ruby grapefruits from a cavernous refrigerator, halves them, then feeds the snow-cold dripping hemispheres into a juicer. The machine buzzes like trapped wasps, and a jug fills with pulpy, pearly, candy-colored juice. She pours herself a heavy blue glass and slooshes the liquid around every nook of her mouth.
On the striped veranda sofa, Luisa scans the paper and chews a croissant. The magnificent view—over Ewingsville’s moneyed roofs and velveteen lawns to downtown Buenas Yerbas, where skyscrapers rear from sea mist and commuter smog—has an especial otherworldliness at this hour.
“Not sleeping in, Cookie?”
“Morning. No, I’m going to collect my stuff from the office, if you don’t mind me borrowing one of the cars again.”
“Sure.” Judith Rey reads her daughter. “You were wasting your talents at Spyglass, Cookie. It was a squalid little magazine.”
“True, Mom, but it was my squalid little magazine.”
Judith Rey settles on the arm of the sofa and shoos an impertinent fly from her glass. She examines a circled article in the business section.
“ENERGY GURU” LLOYD HOOKS TO HEAD SEABOARD INC.
In a joint statement, the White House and electricity giant Seaboard Power Inc. have announced Federal Power Commissioner Lloyd Hooks is to fill the CEO’s seat left vacant by Alberto Grimaldi’s tragic death in an airplane accident two days ago. Seaboard’s share price on Wall Street leaped 40 points in response to the news. “We’re delighted Lloyd has accepted our offer to come onboard,” said Seaboard vice CEO William Wiley, “and while the circumstances behind the appointment couldn’t be sadder, the board feels Alberto in heaven joins with us today as we extend the warmest welcome to a visionary new chief executive.” Menzies Graham, Power Commission spokesman, said, “Lloyd Hooks’s expertise will obviously be missed here in Washington, but President Ford respects his wishes and looks forward to an ongoing liaison with one of the finest minds tackling today’s energy challenges and keeping our great nation great.” Mr. Hooks is to take up his new responsibilities next week. His successor is due to be announced later today.
“Is this a project you were working on?” asks Judith.
“Still am.”
“On whose behalf?”
“On behalf of the truth.” Her daughter’s irony is sincere. “I’m freelance.”
“Since when?”
“Since the moment KPO fired me. Firing me was a political decision, Mom. It proves I was onto something big. Mammoth.”
Judith Rey watches the young woman. Once upon a time, I had a baby daughter. I dressed her in frilly frocks, enrolled her for ballet classes, and sent her to horse-riding camp five summers in a row. But look at her. She turned into Lester anyway. She kisses Luisa’s forehead. Luisa frowns, suspiciously, like a teenager. “What?”
57
Luisa Rey drops into the Snow White Diner for the last coffee of her Spyglass days. The only free seat is adjacent to a man hidden behind the San Francisco Chronicle. Luisa thinks, A good paper, and takes the seat. Dom Grelsch says, “Morning.”
Luisa feels a flare of territorial jealousy. “What are you doing here?”
“Even editors eat. I’ve come here every morning since my wife’s … y’ know. Waffles I can make in the toaster but …” His gesture at his platter of pork chops implies, Need I say more?
“I never saw you in here once.”
“That’s ‘cause he leaves,” says Bart, performing three tasks at once, “an hour before you arrive. Usual, Luisa?”
“Please. How come you never told me, Bart?”
“I don’t talk about your comings and goings to no one else either.”
“First one into the office”—Dom Grelsch folds the newspaper—”last one out at night. Editor’s lot. I wanted a word with you, Luisa.”
“I have a distinct memory of having been fired.”
“Can it, willya? I want to say why—how—I’m not resigning over how Ogilvy crapped on you. And since my confessions are rolling out, I knew you were in for the ax since last Friday.”
“Nice of you to let me know beforehand.”
The editor lowers his voice. “You know about my wife’s leukemia. Our insurance situation?”
Luisa decides to grant him a nod.
Grelsch steels himself. “Last week, during the takeover negotiations … it was intimated, if I stayed on at Spyglass and agreed I’d never heard … of a certain report, strings could be pulled at my insurers.”
Luisa maintains her composure. “You trust these people to keep their word?”
“On Sunday morning my claims man, Arnold Frum, phones. Apologies for disturbing us, blah-blah, but he thought we’d want to know Blue Shield reversed their decision and will be handling all my wife’s medical bills. A reimbursement check for past payments is in the mail. We even get to keep our house. I’m not proud of myself, but I won’t be ashamed for putting my family ahead of the truth.”
“The truth is radiation raining on Buenas Yerbas.”
“We all make choices about levels of risk. If I can protect my wife in return for playing a bit part in the chance of an accident at Swannekke, well, I’ll have to live with that. I sure as hell wish you’d think a little more about the risk you’re exposing yourself to by taking these people on.”
Luisa’s memory of sinking under water returns to haunt her, and her heart lurches. Bart places a cup of coffee in front of her.
Grelsch slips a typewritten page over the counter. It contains two columns of seven names per column. “Guess what this list is.” Two names jump out: Lloyd Hooks and William Wiley.
“Board members of Trans Vision Inc.?”
Grelsch nods. “Almost. Board membership is a matter of public knowledge. This is a list of unlisted corporate advisers who receive money sourced in Trans Vision Inc. The circled names should interest you. Look. Hooks and Wiley. Lazy, damning, just plain greedy.”
Luisa pockets the list. “I should thank you for this.”
“Nussbaum the Foul did the digging. One last thing. Fran Peacock, at the Western Messenger, you know her?”
“Just to say hi at superficial media parties.”
“Fran and me go back a ways. I dropped by her office last night, mentioned your story’s salient points. I was noncommittal, but once you’ve got battleworthy evidence she’d like to say more than just hi.”
“Is this in the spirit of your understanding with Trans Vision Inc.?”
Grelsch stands up and folds his newspaper. “They never said I couldn’t share my contacts.”
58
Jerry Nussbaum returns the car keys to Luisa. “Dear God in Heaven, let me be reincarnated as your mother’s sports car. I don’t care which one. That’s the last of the boxes?”
“Yep,” says Luisa, “and thanks.”
Nussbau
m shrugs like a modest maestro. “The place’ll sure feel empty without a real woman to crack chauvinist jokes on. Nance is actually a man after so many decades in a newsroom.”
Nancy O’Hagan thumps her jammed typewriter and gives Nussbaum the finger.
“Yeah, like”—Roland Jakes surveys Luisa’s empty desk, glumly—”I still don’t believe how, y’ know, the new guys’d give you the high jump but keep on a mollusk like Nussbaum.”
Nancy O’Hagan hisses, cobralike, “How can Grelsch”—she jabs her cigar at his office—”just roll over waving his feet in the air and let KPO stiff you like that?”
“Wish me luck.”
“Luck?” Jakes scoffs. “You don’t need luck. Don’t know why you stayed with this dead shark for so long. The seventies is gonna see satire’s dying gasp. It’s true what Lehrer said. A world that’ll award Henry Kissinger the Nobel Peace Prize throws us all out of a job.”
“Oh,” Nussbaum remembers, “I came back via the mailroom. Something for you.” He hands Luisa a padded khaki envelope. She doesn’t recognize the crabbed, looping script. She slits open the envelope. Inside is a safety-deposit key, wrapped in a short note. Luisa’s expression intensifies as her eyes move down the note. She double-checks the label on the key. “Third Bank of California, Ninth Street. Where’s that?”
“Downtown,” answers O’Hagan, “where Ninth crosses Flanders Boulevard.”
“Catch you all next time.” Luisa is going. “It’s a small world. It keeps recrossing itself.”
59
Waiting for the lights to change, Luisa glances once more at Sixsmith’s letter to triple-check she hasn’t missed anything. It was written in a hurried script.
B.Y. International Airport,
3rd—ix—1975
Dear Miss Rey,
Forgive this scribbled note. I have been warned by a well-wisher at Seaboard I am in imminent danger of my life. Exposing the HYDRA-Zero’s defects calls for excellent health, so I will act on this tip-off. I will be in touch with you as soon as I can from Cambridge or via the IAEA. In the meantime, I have taken the liberty of depositing my report on Swannekke B in a strongbox at the Third Bank of California on Ninth Street. You will need it should anything happen to me.
Be careful.
In haste,
R.S.
Angry horns blast as Luisa fumbles with the unfamiliar transmission. After Thirteenth Street the city loses its moneyed Pacific character. Carob trees, watered by the city, give way to buckled streetlights. Joggers do not pant down these side streets. The neighborhood could be from any manufacturing zone in any industrial belt. Bums doze on benches, weeds crack the sidewalk, skins get darker block by block, flyers cover barricaded doors, graffiti spreads across every surface below the height of a teenager holding a spray can. The garbage collectors are on strike, again, and mounds of rubbish putrefy in the sun. Pawnshops, nameless laundromats, and grocers scratch a lean living from threadbare pockets. After more blocks and streetlights, the shops give way to anonymous manufacturing firms and housing projects. Luisa has never even driven through this district and feels unsettled by the unknowability of cities. Was Sixsmith’s logic to hide his report and then hide the hiding place? She comes to Flanders Boulevard and sees the Third Bank of California dead ahead, with a customers’ parking lot around the side. Luisa doesn’t notice the battered black Chevy parked across the street.
60
Fay Li, in visor sunglasses and a sunhat, checks her watch against the bank’s clock. The air-conditioning is losing its battle against the midmorning heat. She dabs perspiration from her face and forearms with a handkerchief, fans herself, and assesses recent developments. Joe Napier, you look dumb but you’re deep-down smart, smart enough to know when to bow out. Luisa Rey should be here any time now, if Bill Smoke was on the money. Bill Smoke, you look smart but you’re deep-down dumb, and your men aren’t as loyal as you think. Because you don’t do it for the money, you forgot how easily lesser mortals can be bought.
Two well-dressed Chinese men walk in. A look from one tells her Luisa Rey is coming. The three converge at a desk guarding a side corridor: SAFETY DEPOSIT BOXES. This facility has had very little traffic all morning. Fay Li considered getting a plant in place, but a minimum-wage rent-a-guard’s natural laxness is safer than giving Triad men a sniff of the prize.
“Hi”—Fay Li fires off her most intolerable Chinese accent at the guard—”brothers and I want get from strongbox.” She dangles a deposit-box key. “Looky, we got key.”
The bored youth has a bad skin problem. “ID?”
“ID here, you looky, ID you looky.”
The Chinese ideograms repel white scrutiny with their ancient tribal magic. The guard nods down the corridor and returns to his Aliens! magazine. “Door’s not locked.” I’d fire your ass on the spot, kid, thinks Fay Li.
The corridor ends at a reinforced door, left ajar. Beyond is the deposit-box room, shaped like a three-pronged fork. One associate joins her up the left prong, and she orders the other down the right. About six hundred boxes in here. One of them hides a five-million-dollar, ten-thousand-bucks-per-page report.
Footsteps approach down the corridor. Clipping, female heels.
The vault door swings open. “Anyone here?” calls Luisa Rey.
Silence.
As the door clangs shut, the two men rush the woman. Luisa is gripped with a hand over her mouth. “Thank you.” Fay Li prizes the key from the reporter’s fingers. Its engraved number is 36/64. She wastes no words. “Bad news. This room is soundproof, unmonitored, and my friends and I are armed. The Sixsmith Report isn’t destined for your hands. Good news. I’m acting for clients who want the HYDRA strangled at birth and Seaboard discredited. Sixsmith’s findings will hit the news networks within two or three days. Whether they want to pursue the corporate executions is their business. Don’t look at me like that, Luisa. Truth doesn’t care who discovers it, so why should you? Even better news. Nothing bad will happen to you. My associate will escort you to a holding location in B.Y. By evening, you’ll be a free woman. You won’t cause us any trouble”—Fay Li produces a photo of Javier from Luisa’s bulletin board and waves it an inch from her face—”because we’d reciprocate in kind.”
Submission replaces defiance in Luisa’s eyes.
“I knew you had a fine head on your shoulders.” Fay Li addresses the man holding Luisa in Cantonese. “Take her to the lockup. Nothing dirty before you shoot her. She may be a reporter, but that doesn’t make her a total whore. Dispose of the body in the usual way.”
They leave. The second associate remains by the door, holding it ajar.
Fay Li locates strongbox 36/64 at neck height, at the tip of the middle prong.
The key turns, and the door swings open.
Fay Li pulls out a vanilla binder. The HYDRA-Zero Reactor—An Operational Assessment Model—Project Head Dr. Rufus Sixsmith—Unauthorized Possession Is a Federal Crime Under the Military & Industrial Espionage Act 1971. Fay Li permits herself a jubilant smile. The land of opportunity. Then she sees two wires trailing from inside the binder to the back of the strongbox. She peers in. A red diode blinks on a neat four-by-two bundle of taped cylinders, wires, components.
Bill Smoke, you goddamn—
61
The blast picks Luisa Rey up and throws her forward, irresistibly, like a Pacific breaker. The corridor rotates through ninety degrees—several times—and pounds into Luisa’s ribs and head. Petals of pain unfold across her vision. Masonry groans. Chunks of plaster, tile, and glass shower, drizzle, stop.
An ominous peace. What am I living through? Calls for help spring up in the dust and smoke, screams from the street, alarm bells drill the burnt air. Luisa’s mind reactivates. A bomb. The rent-a-guard croaks and moans. Blood from his ear trickles into a delta flooding his shirt collar. Luisa tries to pull herself away, but her right leg has been blown off.
The shock dies; her leg is just jammed under her unconscious Chinese escort. She
pulls free and crawls, stiff and hurting, across the lobby, now transformed into a movie set. Luisa finds the vault door, blown off its hinges. Must have missed me by inches. Broken glass, upended chairs, chunks of wall, cut and shocked people. Oily black smoke belches from the ducts, and a sprinkler system kicks in—Luisa is drenched and choked, slips on the wet floor and stumbles, dazed, bent double, into others.
A friendly hand takes Luisa’s wrist. “I got you, ma’am, I got you, let me help you outside, there may be another explosion.”
Luisa allows herself to be led into congested sunlight, where a wall of faces looks on, hungry for horror. The fireman guides her across a road blocked with gridlocked cars, and she is reminded of April’s war footage from Saigon. Smoke still spills in senseless quantities. “Get away! Over here! Get back! Over there!” Luisa the journalist is trying to tell Luisa the victim something. She has grit in her mouth. Something urgent. She asks her rescuer, “How did you get on the scene so soon?”
“It’s okay,” he insists, “you have a concussion.”
A fireman? “I can make my own way now—”
“No, you’ll be safe this way—”
The door of a dusty black Chevy swings open.
“Let go of me!”
His grip is iron. “In the car now,” he mutters, “or I’ll blow your fucking brains out.”
The bomb was supposed to get me, and now—
Luisa’s abductor grunts and falls forward.
62
Joe Napier grabs Luisa Rey’s arm and swings her away from the Chevy. Christ, that was close! A baseball bat is in his other hand. “If you want to live to see the day out, you’d better come with me.”
Okay, thinks Luisa. “Okay,” she says.
Napier pulls her back into the jockeying crowd to block Bill Smoke’s line of fire, hands the baseball bat to a bewildered boy, and marches toward Eighty-first Avenue, away from the Chevy. Walk discreetly; or run for it and break your cover?
“My car’s next to the bank,” says Luisa.
“We’ll be sitting ducks in this traffic,” says Napier. “Bill Smoke’s got two more ape-men, they’ll just fire through the window. Can you walk?”
Cloud Atlas: A Novel Page 43