‘My father was Austrian. He was on holiday in the south, met my mother halfway up a mountain. She invited him to stay with her. They’d been together for over three years when—’ He stopped and looked down. He wouldn’t say any more. But I guessed it also explained the blond hair.
As he listened in turn to my memories of growing up in New Hampshire with Dad, and the not so happy time living with his cousins later, it struck me he really was interested, asking me questions and drawing out detail from me. How often did any man pay attention like that? At the end of early dinner by the harbour, he brushed the back of my hand with his fingertips. My fingers fell away from the stem of the glass and he took my hand in his.
‘I’ve enjoyed every minute of today,’ he said, his hazel eyes warm at last.
I invited him back to my apartment.
Nothing happened. He drank his coffee and, as he went out of the apartment door, he kissed my cheek with a light touch. Maybe he was being a gentleman, or just plain clever.
I watched him from my window as he moved down the street, graceful as a big cat. As he passed the third building down, two men emerged from the doorway opposite. One in a black fleece hoodie and jeans set off after Conrad. The second made a call on his cell phone. After he finished, he pocketed it, then swung his head upwards toward my apartment. He locked his gaze on to my face.
I flicked the drape across to shield myself and took a step back from the window. Who were they? And why were they following Conrad? Was this what the email meant when they said I’d been put on a security watch list? Maybe I should call the cops. Or maybe they were the cops. I reached for the phone. When I turned back to look out of the window, the watcher had vanished.
VI
I played the incident outside my apartment over and over in my head. Even my favourite songs blasting from my headphones as I got ready for bed couldn’t stop the nagging. I should have made the call. What could I have said? It was too late.
Back at my desk the next morning, I made myself focus on putting Sextilius’s campaign together. Bornes & Black was small but niche to the scientific sector, so provided the full service from strategic planning and production through to promotion and branding. I was loving planning the strategy side, like a general matching wits against the world. I only looked up at the ping from an email arriving or when Amanda plunked a coffee down on my desk.
After three days, I stopped watching for a flashing light on my answering machine when I got home. Over bagel, lox and cream cheese I’d brought in for us – partly to kill the guilt I felt toward Amanda for ignoring her and partly for comfort eating – Amanda told me to write it off; he wasn’t going to show. She had four brothers and God knows how many male cousins, so I guessed she knew all there was to know about how men behaved. And was it as important as my job now?
Sunday evening, I was in my pyjamas in front of the TV and on the point of going to bed, when the door phone rang. I glanced at the clock on the display screen – only nine thirty.
‘Yes?’
‘It’s Conrad. I want to explain.’
‘Make an appointment,’ I said and pressed the off button.
Inevitably, it rang again.
‘What?’
‘Give me ten minutes. Please.’
‘Why?’
‘It’s about blood, survival and money. Mostly yours.’
That was original, at least. I hesitated for a few moments, caught between curiosity and peevishness. In the end, I pressed the release button. I grabbed my robe and pulled a comb through my hair.
‘I didn’t mean to interrupt you like this,’ he said as I ushered him in, ‘but I wanted to talk to you as soon as I could. I’ve been in Washington for a few days.’
‘There’s an invention called the telephone, you know.’
‘Don’t be angry. Please.’ He came over to me, took both my hands in his and pulled me down onto the couch.
‘I’ve got something I must ask you. It’s why I was in Washington. What do you know about your family? I mean your mother’s family.’
‘What’s that to you? Do you know them?’
‘Bear with me. It’s important.’
‘No, you explain first.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I don’t mean to be rude, but I need to know.’
I looked at him, searching for clues in his face, but his expression was bland and, despite the eye colours seeming to shift, his gaze was steady but not cold. I shrugged. ‘Mom came from Roma Nova, like you. My father told me they met when he was in Europe on business. She came here to the EUS, they married, she had me and then drove herself off a cliff when I was three.’ I heard the bitterness in my voice. ‘I never knew what made her leave like that, and Dad never discussed it.’
He pressed my hand and gave me a smile. After a few moments, he said, ‘I can’t answer that, but I can fill in some other gaps for you. Do you have any family documents or old photos?’
‘Why?’
‘Do you always challenge everything?’
‘Yes, especially when I’m not told the reason.’
‘I will tell you, but can you get the papers first?’
Why would I? He was a stranger. An exciting, beautiful one that I found deeply attractive. But he was a foreigner who looked like he was under surveillance. Maybe I needed to check with the cops or the FBI first. I hesitated. I could imagine how stupid it would sound to them – I’d file a complaint and he’d turn out to be an old family friend. Would they take any notice of me anyway? I was already on their security watch list.
The hell with it.
I decided to show him the photographs to start with. In my bedroom, I pulled out the box stashed on the top shelf of my closet: my parents’ wedding; them with me as a toddler; my father alone; my foster parents, the Browns; high school friends. In the end, it was easier to hand him the whole box. He picked out the ones of my mother looking like any other American housewife and mom, and discarded the rest. I had to dig around in my file box for the certificates and passports. I kept them bundled on my lap, but showed him her old passport, the corner clipped off.
‘Have you ever been in contact with any of your mother’s relations?’
‘I had a letter now and again from my mother’s mother, but nothing since I came to New York. When he was alive, my father insisted that I wrote back. I remember going to see her once when I was a kid. After my father died, I went to live in Nebraska with his cousins. This grandmother kept inviting me for a visit, but they wouldn’t let me go. It was too expensive, they said, and Uncle Brown didn’t like foreigners.’
‘What? There was plenty of money for that sort of expense. Were they that narrow-minded?’
‘Hey! They gave me a home when my father passed on.’ I defended them, instinctively, out of duty. I always had sufficient to eat and was adequately clothed. I hadn’t been Cinderella, but I was firmly outside the core family circle. Maybe, despite all his efforts, they’d never forgiven my father his Englishness. Although the withdrawal by the British in the 1860s had been amicable on the surface, resentment endured, especially in the rural areas where they’d been big landowners, and still were.
I came back to the present with a jolt.
‘What do you mean – “plenty of money”?’
‘Your mother left you her personal portfolio, and your father’s electronics business will be yours when you’re twenty-five. You’ve got income from both held in trust.’
‘You have to be kidding.’
‘Haven’t you had any of it?’ His eyes widened in surprise. ‘At all?’
‘Since I’ve been in New York, Brown Industries has sent me three thousand dollars every quarter from New Hampshire. I try to save most of it, but I have to use some of it for my rent.’
‘Your grandmother, Aurelia, set up a portfolio for her daughter when she went to live in America. Naturally, it came to you on her death. Your father and your grandmother formed a trust for you so you could be comfortable, go to college
, do whatever you wanted.’
I heard the words. I saw his lips forming them. I ran them through my head again. I sat completely still, numbed. The only sound in the apartment was the refrigerator humming in the kitchen.
Uncle and Aunt Brown must have known about the money. I’d wept angry tears of frustration when Uncle Brown forbade to me have any thoughts of going to college. I knew Ivy League had been way out of my reach, but the state university should have been possible. How could they have done that to me?
‘And just how do you know all this?’ I had recovered speech, but couldn’t keep the steel out of my voice.
‘From your grandmother. Your father wanted you to grow up like any other American girl, but left instructions in his testament that you should be told everything at eighteen. That obviously didn’t happen.’ Conrad handed the photographs and passport back to me, his face grave. ‘He probably never imagined these cousins would keep this from you.’
My fingers fretted and tumbled over each other as I busied my hands, squaring the pile of photos so they would fit back in the pressed paper box.
I looked up at him. ‘So what’s your part in this?’
‘I’m the messenger. I’d already promised to help Sextilius. I spent some time in England when I was younger, so my English is reasonably fluent.’
It was beyond fluent; he sounded like the real thing.
‘Aurelia asked me to find you while I was here. You’ve changed job a few times, and Karen Brown isn’t an uncommon name,’ he continued. ‘I tracked you down to Bornes & Black. But I didn’t know it would be you handling Sextilius’s account until we walked into your meeting room.’
His matter-of-fact voice and the hint of calculation in his eyes proved he’d only been pleasant and flirty so he could deliver his message. And I’d fallen for it. For months, years, I didn’t meet anybody interesting, let alone compelling. When I did, he turned out to be a messenger boy from my foreign relations. And another thing: how did he find out where I worked? It was too much of a coincidence that his inventor cousin came to Bornes & Black rather than another agency. And he was being followed by somebody with resources: cops, FBI, who knew?
I stood up and pulled the belt of my robe tight around me. ‘Look, Conrad, I’m really tired and I have to get some sleep.’
‘Did I say something wrong?’
‘No…not really.’ I stalled. ‘It’s getting late.’ I couldn’t look at him; I didn’t want him to see my disappointment. ‘You’ll have to let me have the practical details for the bank.’ I smiled and held my hand out in dismissal.
‘Are you trying to get rid of me?’
I said nothing.
‘Very well. Get some rest. I’ll be in contact very soon.’
As I shut the door behind him, I was determined to make a few enquiries of my own.
VII
Hand clamped on bag against purse snatchers, I wound my way through the mass of people hurrying to work next morning. I was still processing everything Conrad had said. If any of it was true, how could all that have been hidden from me for so long?
About a hundred yards before my station, I sensed something was wrong. Out on the edges of my consciousness, I knew somebody was watching me. Acting like James Bond, but feeling ten times more foolish, I stopped to look in a shop window, so I could glimpse back. Thankfully, it was full of shoes, so it was a reasonable thing to do. Up the street was the same man with the cell phone whose stare had pierced the glass of my window the previous Sunday.
When I looked again, he’d vanished; I didn’t see him for the rest of my journey. At the office, I shut my mind, pushing it away. I settled down to my work, talking through a couple of points with Hayden. Now I had caught the attention of the boss, I was determined to stay in his sights.
After putting it off a few times, I eventually grasped the telephone and called the commercial section at the Roma Nova legation on the pretext of getting biographical details for Sextilius Gavro. When I slipped in some questions about Conrad, I knew I sounded ditzy, but he checked out as Gavro’s interpreter. As I replaced the handset, it struck me that the commercial officer had stonewalled me, giving me nothing else about Conrad but that one fact.
I buckled down and produced outlines, plans and graphs, irritating a bored Amanda by grunting in reply to her needling. But, by late afternoon, I’d finished most of it and sat back, sipping a well-earned coffee. My browser was still open and I couldn’t resist searching the Internet about Roma Nova; meeting Conrad had thrown some type of switch inside me.
The images showed mountains and forests, a lot like the Helvetian Confederation, and a big river, cute stone buildings with curled tile roofs, and old monuments. On one site, the writer conceded Roma Nova’s high-tech and financial services economy gave them a standard of living exceeding most Western economies, but criticised them as ‘hidden and discreet’. He didn’t think much of them staying neutral during the Great War.
I leaned back in my chair. Who wouldn’t have sat out that ten-year savagery if they could have? Although it ended in 1935, it had taken most countries until the sixties to recover. But the writer admitted the civil war twenty-three years ago in Roma Nova had torn the country apart. I counted that through in my head: that horror happened after my mom had come to the States.
I scrolled down, fascinated, not sensing the time sneak up on me. Interpedia gave the usual historical stuff: the Western Roman Empire had fallen, and Roma Novans had retreated to cold, fortified villages in the mountains north of Italy. Protected by political truces and economic links with their Byzantine cousins, they had fought to recover the lower-lying parts of Roma Nova, holding against all comers, even after the Eastern Empire was overcome by the Ottomans. The key had been knowing more secrets, having more money and striking back hard when attacked. Now they sat on the precarious frontier between the eastern Reds and the free West.
I sat back and stared at the screen. Who were these tough people? Could I really be related to them?
As they traded their silver, financial acumen and knowledge across Europe and the rest of the world, they spread their philosophy of female leadership. I knew foreign countries like Louisiane and Québec had elected female presidents and, I thought, some European ones. Our own president was on her second term; now she was supporting her husband’s campaign to get into the Presidential Mansion. Would it have been any different, then, without Roma Nova?
A little before six, I stepped out of the elevator into the lobby and found Conrad waiting for me. Before I could stop him, he’d bent down and kissed my cheek casually, like a friend. He took my arm and pulled me out into the noise of Connaught Avenue. I looked both ways to gauge the traffic. I couldn’t believe it but twenty yards to my left was the same man as this morning, seeming to get a paper. This was becoming creepy.
‘You’ve spotted yours, have you?’ Conrad said. ‘I know it’s very tempting, but please don’t turn round again and look at him.’
In movies, the character who turned around when told not to instantly regretted it. But we weren’t in a movie. Surely they weren’t spending that many tax dollars tailing me? We found a booth in a bar peopled by suits of both sexes. It was noisy but clean, and the food smelled good.
‘Okay, explain, please. Just what the hell is going on?’
‘Irritating, aren’t they? Ignore them.’
‘I can’t ignore being stalked. There’s a law against it.’
‘Yes, but what if it’s the law that’s stalking you?’ He fixed me with those strange copper-green eyes. ‘It’s me they’re targeting. They think I’m up to something. Now I’ve contacted you, they’re sure I am.’
My head whirled, and not with the din. I raised an eyebrow and looked straight at Conrad, challenging him to come up with something logical.
‘I work for the Roma Nova government,’ he said, his face bare of any emotion. ‘But I’m on leave, and my visit is for private reasons: to help Sextilius and to find you. I have a diplomatic pass
port – it makes things easier.’ He flicked some crumbs off the table. ‘Unfortunately, Americans get a bit paranoid about Roma Nova. They don’t understand who and what we are. They’re frightened of our technology, but they can’t buy us and we don’t toe their line. The politicos on both sides smile at each other but conceal their bared teeth behind closed lips.’ He shrugged. ‘That’s what my uncle says, anyway.’
The waitress approached. Conrad touched my hand and narrowed his eyes. After getting some beers, I ordered a salad and, like a tourist, he went for the cardiac-arrest-inducing house special burger and fries. He saw my look of disapproval and laughed.
Half-slouching in his seat and relaxed as if we were discussing the latest gossip, he explained. ‘Your father’s company is of immense strategic importance to America. A lot of their specialist technology is designed and manufactured at Brown Industries. All the time it’s owned by a loyal American, even a naturalised one like your father, they only keep a watching brief. But the smallest whiff of “foreign influence” would set alarms ringing. I’d refuse the bet that didn’t say you were in the diary for a security interview in the next few weeks.’
The normal clinking of crockery and cutlery, the swish of drinks filling glasses, and the laughter and talking in the busy bar acted like a reality barrier. Listening to Conrad, I wondered if I’d crossed into a parallel dimension. This was getting worse by the day. I was too embarrassed to tell him I was already under scrutiny.
‘Why…why would I be interviewed?’
‘Your twenty-fifth birthday is in a few weeks’ time. You’ll get complete control of BI on that day. They’ll want to press on you the necessity of keeping the company one hundred per cent American. Basically, they’re going to put the frighteners on you.’ His smile was so cynical, I was repelled.
Fortunately, the waitress brought our food at that point.
‘They can’t do that!’ I hissed at him. He might come from some tinpot little country, but this was the land of the free. I was a good American; Uncle Brown had insisted we took part in every national event, Franklin Day, Memorial Day, everything.
INCEPTIO (Roma Nova) Page 3