Veil

by Eliot Peper

  Then again, Aafreen’s glance might well have been about Galang, not Tommy. Without the emotional intensity of standing up and speaking in front of everyone, guilt filled the void of Zia’s grief. This wasn’t some freak accident. Galang had been killed for a reason. Odds were, Aafreen or Zia was that reason. They as good as killed him and here they both were, swapping sob stories.

  Vachan was describing how Galang had sent him twenty-seven uniquely disguised glitter bombs on his twenty-seventh birthday and how Vachan was still finding glitter in his pockets all these years later. Zia wanted to be present, to be there for her friends, to fully inhabit the shared ache, but her attention was split. She eavesdropped on nearby conversations, glanced at passersby, and mentally reviewed the layout of the space. In practice, it definitely feels like my sources and I are both using each other, Galang had said in their last conversation. Now, Zia was attending his funeral with her own ulterior motive.

  There, over by the bar.

  “I need a refill,” she said, leaving her friends and approaching the small, elegant woman with a shock of gray hair and horn-rimmed glasses who was pouring herself a neat Scotch. Zia found it all too easy to imagine her presiding over a hectic newsroom.

  “Bonnie?” she held out a hand. “I’m Zia. Galang told me a lot about you.”

  Bonnie Hillenbrand looked up and something dark and nebulous seethed behind her eyes for the briefest of moments before the older woman gave Zia a hard smile and shook her hand.

  “Not too much, I hope,” said Bonnie in a precise, clipped tone.

  “Only good things,” said Zia.

  “How uncharacteristically dishonest of him.”

  “Well, he did mention that your mentorship involved telling him to come to terms with the fact that ‘journalism is and always has been a Sisyphean task suited only for workaholic attention seekers with guilt issues.’ So I guess that tough but fair would be a more accurate descriptor than good for how he talked about you.”

  “I’ll take that,” said Bonnie.

  “Look,” said Zia. “Could I steal you away for a moment? There’s something I really think you should know.”

  Bonnie looked like she was about to decline, then reconsidered.

  “Okay,” she said flatly.

  Zia led her out onto the wide balcony. Manhattan rose up around them, a forest of glass and steel and brick. Late afternoon light angled down the avenues and the nonstop rumble of urban life enveloped them. Zia loved New York for its admixture of old and new, class and grunge. There was something overwrought and self-consuming about it, like the superheroes chronicled in the classic comics it had birthed. Maybe Superman would burst from a nearby window and rocket up, cape flapping, to tear one of Santiago’s drones from the stratosphere. Or maybe Clark Kent would studiously run the numbers and conclude that the only way to defeat his new arch nemesis, climate change, was through teamwork, not brawn, and break the story that should have been Galang’s in the Daily Planet. Perhaps it would take an alien from Krypton to bring the appropriate perspective to a plot that implicated the entire earth system.

  But Clark Kent wasn’t here. Bonnie was.

  Zia looked over the railing. People scurried like ants along the sidewalk below. Cyclists maneuvered between honking vehicles. The leaves of the street trees were turning brilliant shades of yellow, orange, and red. A vision dropped into Zia’s mind fully formed. Handing Bonnie her glass of cabernet franc and vaulting over the railing. Wind roaring, stomach rising, everything around her stretching out into a vertical blur. A scream born not of fear, but of rapturous delight. Time distending into singularity at the moment of impact, every fiber of her soul resonating at the same frequency before shattering like a crystal champagne flute under the ringing soprano of an opera singer.

  “Ms. León, you said there was something you wanted to discuss?”

  Bonnie’s cool voice swept Zia up from her imaginary leap as surely as Superman could have. She took a sip of wine to cover her fugue and tore her gaze away from the street.

  Sun glinted off Bonnie’s glasses and Zia couldn’t quite see the other woman’s eyes. Her suit was stylish but conservative. A cashmere scarf was wrapped around her neck. She held herself with the cultivated intensity of someone who’d had to fight for every centimeter.

  Was this Zia’s best opportunity or greatest mistake? Santiago had demanded they keep the program quiet until things settled down, but things might never settle down. If Zia brought in someone like Bonnie, he couldn’t very well refuse to talk. Doing so would invite scrutiny he couldn’t handle, and raise the stakes when the truth finally came out. Whether he liked it or not, Zia could force his hand. But she was painfully aware of the scale and range of unforeseen consequences. Could she trust Bonnie to approach the situation with the requisite rigor and care? Bonnie was a veteran editor, but would she cultivate the patience necessary to dissect and communicate the complexities of the science involved? Would she illuminate nuance or pass snap judgements?

  This whole geoengineering mess combined so much uncertainty with so little time. You could call for more research forever while the planet became less hospitable to humans with every passing season. And yet, without the results of that research, you wouldn’t know how to gauge your interventions. Zia had torn into her father for making such momentous unilateral decisions with imperfect information, and yet that was precisely the position she herself was in with respect to Bonnie.

  At a certain point, you just had to make a call.

  “I think I might know why Galang was killed.” Zia glanced around to make sure they were alone and lowered her voice. “He was meeting me about a story that someone doesn’t want told.”

  “And who exactly is that someone?” There was an edge to Bonnie’s voice that might or might not have been sarcasm.

  “I’m not sure,” said Zia. “But I’m trying to find out.”

  “Are you now?” asked Bonnie. “A veritable Nancy Drew. And what, pray tell, is this story that needs so badly to be hushed up?”

  Zia was put off by Bonnie’s poorly concealed antagonism. How had Zia managed to get off on the wrong foot so quickly? Should she beat a quick retreat or forge ahead?

  “It’s complicated,” she said.

  “Conspiracies always are,” said Bonnie.

  Even as Zia was trying to formulate a response, the other woman turned away and stalked back inside, leaving Zia to stare at her retreating back and wonder what had just happened, and what to do next.

  +

  25

  +

  Zia turned back to face the city. They had visited New York when she was a girl, Miranda, Santiago, and Zia, the three musketeers as her father liked to call them. They went to see Hamilton and even though she didn’t fully understand the plot, the music transported Zia to a different time, a different place, a life that made sense and fit a narrative structure that imbued it with meaning in a way that made her own story feel disjointed and flat. She had listened to the soundtrack thousands of times, memorizing all the words and driving her parents crazy. But it was the good kind of crazy, the kind where they’d exchange a glance and roll their eyes and Zia would sing even louder.

  They’d eaten greasy pizza and ridden on the crowded subway that roared like a mechanical dragon. They’d strolled atop the massive seawalls and watched the ferries chug across the bay to the Statue of Liberty. Miranda explained how Manhattan had once been a rich wetland, and Santiago described how it had been built into a rich city. Zia had made the mistake of believing that this was how life was going to be from then on. The three of them exploring a mysterious world, together.

  But then the vacation came to an end. They flew back to Costa Rica. Santiago disappeared into Interstice, Miranda retreated into her next book project, and Zia wandered the backyard alone, finding hiding places in the brush where she could look out on the garden without being seen, singing Hamilton softly to herself. There’s a million things I haven’t done, but just you wait.


  And what had she done? Excelled in school and tennis and every other activity in which her parents had enrolled her, all in a desperate attempt to earn their scarce attention, an effort that proved in vain when they announced she’d be attending boarding school in Switzerland as if it were something that should delight her. Zia had erected internal seawalls as thick as New York’s to push back the fetid tide of betrayal and smiled when they explained how big of an opportunity it was for her. She had camouflaged her true motivations so well over the years that they seemed to believe she was driven to achieve for its own sake, as they were.

  The other kids at the chateau had their own stories. Some curled up in their bunks and cried for hours on end without explanation. Some despised their families and were thrilled to escape them. Some were excited at the prospect of a new adventure. All were terrified the first time they set foot in that mountain redoubt fashioned from ancient stones, though most refused to admit it. In the midst of the subsequent studies and squabbles and teenage folly, Zia had realized that Vachan and Aafreen and Selai and the rest had become a new kind of outcast family, a little gang of adolescents abandoned by their parents in the most luxurious possible way, who were also socially excluded from their primly exclusive classmates who came from families that had enjoyed generations of wealth and power down which they’d sent all of their progeny to this remote corner of the Alps as a rite of passage. There were few bonds as strange or as strong as a shared inability to fit in.

  Someone had shattered that bond by murdering Galang. And now… what? Conspiracies always are. Why had Bonnie reacted the way she did? Could she somehow already know about Santiago’s stratospheric aerosol injection program? Did she suspect that Zia was responsible for Galang’s death? Or was Bonnie understandably in shock at the death of a friend and colleague, temper shortened by grief? Maybe it would have been better for Zia to have set up an appointment with her later this week, rather than get straight to it. But Galang had always said that Bonnie didn’t suffer fools lightly and was ruthless about not burying the lede.

  Zia pushed away all the could haves and should haves. You could drown in the past while the future passed you by. Next steps were the only thing that mattered. Bonnie’s hostility changed nothing. But if she wasn’t the person to break the story, who was? Zia could take it to President Kim, who had been reelected for a nonconsecutive second term, but Kim would be obliged to notify the UN, and the situation would immediately escalate to a game of chicken between the great powers. No. This kind of story needed to come from an independent source so that people could try to make sense of the implications without immediately attributing everything to self-reinforcing geopolitical power plays. That was the only way to provide an opening that wouldn’t lead to retrenchment, that might turn what would otherwise be a divisive threat into an opportunity to come together. All of which meant that Zia was back to square one.

  “There you are.” Tommy leaned against the railing, an updraft from the street scattering his blond hair. “You begged off for a refill and disappeared.”

  Zia sighed. “I needed some fresh air.”

  Tommy inhaled deeply and exhaled slowly. “It tastes good,” he said. “Fresh air. Even Manhattan’s version of it. In Riyadh, everything is indoors and underground, sumptuous but enclosed.” He didn’t have to explain that frequently fatal daytime temperatures made outdoor living impossible in most of the Gulf. “Filtered air just isn’t the same. You get used to it, until being outside somewhere else reminds you how artificial it all is.”

  “Not quite the Alps?”

  He chuckled. “Not quite the Alps.”

  There was a moment of silence as they both grappled with time-weathered memories. Tommy had been anything but a social outcast in boarding school, his slot guaranteed from birth as a member of the corporoyal court. Perhaps that was why his affections had so enticed Zia at the time, they gave her a taste of the acceptance she so craved. Until, of course, she realized how membership in a club defined by inbred superiority wasn’t the golden ticket she’d imagined it to be. Even so, she couldn’t deny the good times they’d shared. Being with you makes me feel invincible, he’d told her once, his words—ardent and earnest enough to be contagious—sparking the same of sense of burgeoning immortality in Zia.

  “How is it, over there?” she asked.

  “At SaudExxon, you mean?” Although he smiled easily, his eyes hardened in a way that reminded Zia of Aafreen. “It’s… Well, it’s probably what you expect, only more so. When you control assets worth trillions of dollars, competition at the top is fierce.”

  “Sounds like an environment where you’d thrive,” said Zia, trying not to sound passive aggressive.

  He snorted. “I’m doing alright,” he said. “Irons in the fire and all that.”

  “Was there going to be a ‘but’?”

  “Oh, there are many ‘buts,’” he said. “But the old timers still hold the reins decades past their prime. But the idiots trying to seize power have no vision for what to do with it. But the accelerating growth of solar and nuclear threatens our powerbase. But SaudExxon is a ship navigating treacherous waters with an obsolete chart. But. But. But. But. But.”

  “And you know better?”

  “Of course I do,” he said. “It’s obvious. We need to bridge our oil wealth into something new. The present can’t operate without us. We need to ensure the future won’t be able to either.”

  “What a heartwarming thought,” she said.

  “Reality isn’t heartwarming.”

  “And certainly won’t become so if people assume it can’t be.”

  “Maybe once I’m in charge, I’ll be able to afford to update my assumptions.”

  “Doesn’t being at the top mean you’ll have the most to lose?”

  Tommy golf clapped. “See?” he said. “I miss this. If there’s one thing that court life lacks, it’s spirited banter. Everyone’s so dour all the time.”

  “Not like at a funeral.”

  His grin faded and Zia couldn’t help but feel a little guilty. Tommy was here after all, that was more than could be said for Galang’s parents.

  “Sorry,” she said.

  He held up a hand. “No, you’re right,” he said. “I’m the one who should be apologizing.”

  They stared out at the city. The last rays of sun illuminated the low hanging ceiling of clouds from below, painting their underbellies orange and yellow to match the autumn leaves. Birds darted through the skyscraper canyons. A trumpet player busked at the nearest subway entrance. Everything felt alive in a way that highlighted Galang’s absence. This was a world in which he would never again set foot.

  “Don’t take this the wrong way,” said Zia. “But I hope you’re not here to pitch me again. I said I would consider your offer, and I am.” She’d had much, much more urgent things to think about lately. Jason might get antsy, but this could wait.

  “Of course not,” said Tommy. “As I said in Zürich, I wouldn’t consider making a grant without your blessing.”

  “Why, then? You and Galang were never close.”

  “Not like us, once,” said Tommy.

  If this was bait, Zia wouldn’t take it.

  “Honestly,” said Tommy, his voice dropping an octave, “I was hoping to see you.”

  “Grief isn’t the aphrodisiac you seem to think it is.”

  “Not like that,” said Tommy. “It’s just… Look, back in school I was a jerk and you dumped me. But I always liked you, and I really do miss the banter. So I just wanted to ask you, as a friend, whether your dad could be convinced to sell Interstice.”

  Because the casual inflection in Tommy’s voice didn’t change, it took a moment for his non sequitur to register. Could Santiago be convinced to sell Interstice? Had Tommy flown halfway around the world to attend Galang’s funeral just to ask her that question? Was that any less believable than his flying halfway around the world to mourn a high school acquaintance? Rage, curiosity, recrimination, sadn
ess, and disgust flared in quick succession like oncoming headlights on a highway, but Zia reined them in. Whatever Tommy’s intentions, she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of provoking her.

  “That sounds like a question you should ask him,” said Zia evenly. The funding offer must have been a way to butter her up for this question. That it was so predictable made it even more sad.

  “Of course,” said Tommy. “It’s just that we’ve been hearing rumors for a while now that he’s ignoring his duties as CEO and that shareholders and even some senior executives don’t know what he’s really spending his time on. The board is up in arms.”

  “I can’t speak to any of that,” said Zia, remembering her father’s shouting match with Ben, his admission that the board was giving him trouble. If Tommy was hearing rumors, Santiago wasn’t being nearly as careful with his skunkworks as Zia had assumed. That made it even more urgent that she break the story before someone else did. On the other hand, Tommy might just be fishing. By gauging her reactions, he might be hoping to sniff out intel his army of analysts couldn’t. “But what does it have to do with you anyway?”

  “Like I said,” said Tommy. “SaudExxon needs to evolve. Right now, it powers the world. I think it should connect the world to itself.”

  “This is your big move? Acquire the satellite network that stitches the internet together? Use it to climb to the top of the pile of princelings?”

  Tommy raised his hands. “Oil isn’t going to last forever. We need to start thinking like Huian Li and Rachel Liebovitz. Do you think he’d be open to it?”

  “My father and I aren’t close,” said Zia, shrugging. “I have no idea.”