Sekret Machines Book 1: Chasing Shadows

by Tom DeLonge

  The room was bright, all windows onto the city, white walls and chrome furniture trimmed and padded in gray leather. There were a dozen chairs all occupied by men she had seen at the reading of the will, save one.

  Hers.

  She walked to the chair with deliberate, confident strides, one hand in her pocket so no one would see it tremble, ignoring the way they rose minutely from their chairs: a minuscule show of politeness that only served to reemphasize that she was the only woman there. Just before she sat, Deacon lowered his head and, in a voice no louder than a breath, whispered, “Be polite. Listen.”

  He addressed the table in general.

  “I will await Miss Jennifer in the lobby.”

  “Thank you, Deacon,” said a white-haired man at the end of the table. “And I’m sure I speak for the board when I say how grateful we are for your work easing the transition at this difficult time.”

  There was a rumble of agreement around the room, rich Old Etonian accents murmuring “hear, hear!” For all her anxiety, Jennifer had to bite her lip to keep from grinning at the absurdity of it all.

  Deacon eased out and the door latched closed behind him. Jennifer shifted in her seat.

  The white-haired man called the meeting to order. This was Archibald St. James. She recognized that jowly countenance and the basset hound eyes from the pictures Deacon had provided the evening before to aid her preparation. He was the chairman of the board, though Jennifer did not think she had met him before. In fact, the only people she knew, beyond Deacon’s improvised gallery of mug shots, were Herman Saltzburg, the walking skeleton who had haunted her childhood dreams, and Ronald Harrington-Smythe, spilling out of his tailored suit like oil from one of the tankers by which he had made his money. Of the rest—based on their names, accents and appearances, she counted an American, two Germans, one Japanese, one who might have been Spanish or South American, and one Russian, all men. There was also the younger man with disheveled jet-black hair, whose name she did not know but who had nodded to her when she fled the reading of the will. Compared to the others, he looked vibrant, athletic even, and his eyes, when they looked at her, were bright with curiosity and amusement.

  He reached across the table and offered his hand.

  “Daniel Letrange,” he said. “Call me Dan. Everyone does.”

  Jennifer took his hand and shook it, grateful for his deliberate welcome.

  “Pleased to meet you,” she said.

  “Welcome to the lions’ den,” he whispered, grinning.

  His accent—unlike the others—was hard to pinpoint. There were northern English vowels in there, but they were laid over something else, a different, non-English rhythm. Italian, perhaps? French? Letrange sounded French.

  She looked away, busying herself with the attaché case she was having trouble opening. She scowled, trying to be inconspicuous as she fumbled with the catches.

  Deacon had locked it and forgotten to give her the bloody key.

  “Miss Quinn?” said St. James, giving her a look of labored patience. “Is there a problem?”

  She blinked, momentarily frozen. For a moment, the room was still, and she felt their mood. They were satisfied that she was what they’d expected. Some were even a little bored by how right they’d been in their private whisperings before she’d arrived. Her fingers clenched, and in that instant, the briefcase clasps snapped open. She had been pulling the wrong way.

  There was another watchful pause heavy with unspoken judgment, and then St. James continued.

  “As I was saying, if you turn to the first item on the agenda …” And the meeting began.

  It was, as Deacon had prophesied, dull stuff. Jennifer tried to keep up, but they frequently lapsed into the kind of jargon she had read in the printouts, language designed to exclude her. She quickly lost track of what was happening. When they voted on each item, she was the sole abstainer. The first time, it felt like a tiny act of honest defiance, but by the fifth time, it felt merely embarrassing.

  The sixth item on the agenda was an African investment package. Saltzburg, the cadaver, mumbled his way through its details and everyone nodded dutifully as they moved toward a vote.

  “I’m sorry,” said Jennifer. “Can I just make sure I’m clear on something?”

  The room turned to stare at her as if she were a cat who’d suddenly broken into song.

  “Is there something you do not understand?” asked St. James, the question containing a poisonous joke at her expense. The others smiled.

  “No. I think I understand completely,” she answered, stiffening. “I just want to be clear you do.”

  There was a subtle shift in the quality of the air as they all bridled and adjusted. Only the young man with the black hair still seemed amused.

  “I’m not sure I follow,” said Saltzburg in his usual death rattle.

  “You seem to be moving a sizeable investment into the extraction of crude oil from Chad despite that country’s Failed State ranking, according to the Fund for Peace. With Bangladesh, it has been consistently rated one of the most corrupt political systems in the world.”

  It was Saltzburg’s turn to blink, but he rallied quickly. “I assure you, the oil fields are extremely well-protected. I don’t think it an especially risky investment …”

  “Again,” Jennifer cut in, “you misunderstand me. I’m talking about the ethics of supporting—however indirectly—a deeply problematic regime with a record of tribalism, cronyism, and a history of abuse of presidential authority in matters of government.”

  “I think you are overstating the case,” said Saltzburg with a ghastly fake smile. “I can assure you that our shareholders have no serious reservations about …”

  “Extrajudicial killings by government forces?” Jennifer chipped in. “What about rape of civilian women by members of the army and police? How do your shareholders feel about that?”

  “Interference in the social infrastructure is not the matter at hand,” Saltzburg began, but Jennifer cut him off.

  “To invest in a country that severely limits free speech and freedom of assembly, which imprisons gays and lesbians, and which permits its security forces to arrest political activists without cause, to operate with total immunity on matters of …”

  “Call the question.”

  It was St. James.

  “I beg your pardon?” Jennifer said, turning to face the chairman.

  “I’m moving that we proceed to a vote on the item,” he said.

  “I understand that,” Jennifer returned. “But I haven’t said my peace.”

  “Seconded,” said Saltzburg, ignoring her.

  “All in favor?” St. James asked, levelly.

  Jennifer’s mouth dropped open.

  “Aye,” said the room.

  “No!” Jennifer gasped.

  “Eleven in favor, one opposed,” said St. James. “Motion carries.”

  “Ten,” Letrange corrected. “I abstain.”

  “Are you sure?” St. James asked pointedly. “That would force us to table the motion.”

  “Yes, I’m sure,” said Letrange.

  St. James’ eyes lingered on him for a half second, then returned to his papers on which he made a note, and, without looking up, said, “Very well. Motion tabled. Item seven, on the matter of the Greek currency.”

  Jennifer avoided Letrange’s eyes. To show gratitude might make her look weak, so she focused her attention on Saltzburg whose skeletal face looked satisfied in ways she wanted to punch. He caught her eye and smiled, papery skin stretching wide around the thin mouth, eyes twinkling with pleasure at her defeat. For a moment she was ten years old again, hating him, wanting to run from any room that had him in it.

  For the next few minutes, as the burble of conversation went on around her, she sat rigid, hearing nothing, feeling only an old rage at everything the room represented and toward the man whose death had put her there. Again she thought it, first as an outraged exclamation and then, after a pause and a br
eath, as a real question: What had he been thinking?

  Was one of the men in this room involved in her father’s death? It seemed impossible. In terms of what they did, they were, she was sure, global bullies, but if people died because of their decisions, it was indirectly, at a remote, untraceable distance. That was what made them so maddeningly respectable.

  “Item eight,” said St. James, in that same monotonous drawl, “continuation of the special aerospace initiative package at current funding levels. Discussion?”

  “Yes,” said a man two seats down from her. His name was Justin Hadley-Jones, though she knew little else about him. “I’d like to propose a friendly amendment to raise funding by twenty-eight percent to counter currency exchange fluctuations. I have figures, if anyone would like to see them.”

  “I think we trust your judgment, Justin,” said St. James. “All in favor of the proposal as amended?”

  Another rumble of ayes.

  St. James hesitated a second and his eyes fell on Jennifer.

  “Miss Quinn?”

  “What?” she said, irritably pulling hairpins from her French twist. “Oh. Abstain.”

  “Motion carries. May I suggest a coffee break? We have rather a lot still to get through.”

  As they filed out, Jennifer’s heart sank. This was undermining the dominant world order? Investigating her father’s death?

  “How is it going?” asked Deacon, when he found her cradling a cup of rapidly cooling tea.

  “Awful. Ghastly. It’s only the tedium that’s keeping me from killing them all,” she added with a bleak smile.

  “Well, we can be grateful for that,” said Deacon. “By the way, we found your father’s laptop. It was in the Jaguar.”

  “Did he often leave it there?”

  “Never, to my knowledge,” said Deacon, his face carefully blank.

  “And he was planning to come to London by helicopter the day he died.”

  “That is correct,” said Deacon.

  Jennifer nodded thoughtfully, realizing, just in time, that Letrange—Dan—had materialized at her elbow.

  “How are you holding up?” he asked.

  “Let’s just say it’s not what I’m used to,” she replied.

  “Indeed. And can I say that I sympathize with your vote against the African deal. It must be harder for you, having been on the ground as it were, seeing the conditions there …”

  “I wasn’t in Chad or Nigeria,” she said quickly, her irritation returning. “And I didn’t see you voting against it.”

  Her obvious hostility gave him pause, but he gave a sideways nod of understanding and said, “I said I sympathized with your perspective. But there are others that sometimes take priority in a place like this.”

  “I don’t agree.”

  “And I respect that. Perhaps at some point we can meet less formally to discuss it.”

  “You’re asking me out?” she said, staring at him.

  “Not at all,” he said, still smiling genially. “I just thought you might like the opportunity to discuss ways in which you might strengthen your position. Or express yourself in ways men like this are more likely to listen to you.”

  “Aren’t you one of them?” she said, voice hard with defiance.

  “I think if you got to know me, you’d see that it’s rather more complex than that.”

  “You know, Mr. Letrange, I think I have all the complexity I can handle right now.”

  She said it with a stiff and final politeness. His nod of acceptance was also somehow a shrug of defeat, though he produced a business card from a silver case.

  “Should you change your mind,” he said.

  She pocketed the card without looking at it, and he left her. She found herself under Deacon’s watchful gaze. She closed her eyes for a second and felt a little of the tension leech from her shoulders.

  “That was rude of me, wasn’t it?” she said.

  “That is not for me to say, Miss,” said Deacon. “But I would say that in this world, allies are to be nurtured.”

  “Assuming you can trust them.”

  “Trust has to be earned,” Deacon agreed, “but it sometimes begins with, as you might say, a leap of faith.”

  Jennifer sighed. The board members were drifting back into the meeting room.

  “Once more unto the breach,” said Deacon, taking her untouched tea from her. “And please stop fussing with your hair.”

  “It’s annoying.”

  “It’s professional.”

  “Same thing.”

  She followed the others, closing the door behind her and taking her seat before she noticed that on her copy of the agenda, someone had underlined the last item they had approved in heavy black pen.

  Special aerospace initiative package.

  She stared at it, then glanced around the room in the hope that someone would give her a nod or a look that would acknowledge the curious message, if indeed that was what it was.

  But everyone was looking at St. James as he began to work his way through the rest of the scheduled items. It was as if they had forgotten she was there.

  Except that one of them hadn’t, she was sure of it. Though what it meant, she had no idea.

  17

  TIMIKA

  New Jersey

  JUST OUTSIDE SPRINGFIELD, NEW JERSEY, TIMIKA pulled off the exit ramp and into a McDonald’s parking lot, signed into their Wi-Fi on the burner phone, and typed “Jerzy Aaron Stern + New York” into a series of search engines—zabasearch, pipl, wink and zoominfo—her usual snooping starters. She got no one in the right age group, which meant that either the name was false or he was new to the area. She widened the search from New York to the Northeastern states, then the whole East Coast and eventually to the whole country. Nothing.

  False name, then. No one could have that small a data footprint. The police would have other tools, of course, but she had only given them the name. She called Officer Brown, but hung up when the call went to voice mail, then tried reaching the other burner phone, hoping the cabbie had been as good as his word. If he hadn’t, she had his license plate, though she doubted that would help.

  Marvin answered. “What’s going on?” he whispered.

  “Can you talk? Without being overheard, I mean?” she asked.

  “Sure. Where are you? How are you?”

  “Okay. I’m fine, but I’m moving and I don’t want anyone to know where, so keep this number to yourself and don’t call anyone but me on that burner, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “I want you to see what you can find on a Jerzy Aaron Stern. Jerzy with a ‘Z’. He’d be in his eighties, I think.”

  “And the nature of this search?” asked Marvin.

  “Discreet but rigorous,” said Timika. That meant he’d be hacking, but covering his tracks as he went. He was good at that.

  “On it,” he said.

  “Thanks, Marvin,” she said. “I appreciate it.”

  “Look after yourself, boss,” he said.

  “Planning to.”

  She paid cash at the drive-through and began working on a quarter-pounder with cheese like she was twelve, taking a large bite and wondering, vaguely, when she’d last permitted herself such an indulgence.

  Yeah, well, she thought. Get shot at, win a burger.

  She forced herself to chew slowly, deliberately putting the wrapped sandwich down when she was halfway through. She reached for Stern’s ancient journal on the passenger seat and flipped the front cover. Under his name was an address in Pottsville, Pennsylvania. She considered it, picked up her phone, then opted to go old school, dragging a dog-eared atlas from the glove box and onto her lap. Pottsville was not far off 78, west of Allentown.

  She pushed a french fry into her mouth and wondered what the hell she was doing or what she hoped to find.

  “Sixty miles, give or take,” she said aloud. It didn’t sound too far, assuming the Corolla was up to it.

  She turned the engine over and pull
ed back onto the interstate heading west. The day was warming as she left the city behind. Some of the trees showed the buds of new leaves.

  Spring at last, she thought, deciding to take that as a good sign.

  She came off the highway at the Pottsville exit and, wary of turning her phone back on, stopped at a Mobil station for directions. They led her through the center of town and into the surrounding hills. As she drove, she saw no black people and few cars significantly fancier than Dion’s. The gated community at the top of the hill was therefore a surprise.

  It was called The Hollows, set back from the road, surrounded by trees next to a golf course, but the wrought iron fence edging the property looked more than ornamental. Timika drove slowly past the security gate, then parked just beyond a row of closely planted Leyland Cypress, carefully manicured and dense as a wall. She got out and walked back. She considered pressing the buzzer by the electric gate. There was something strange about the place, its remoteness and its unexpected opulence, that gave her pause.

  As she looked, a man emerged from a sentry box inside the gate. He was uniformed in black, and was younger and more athletic than she expected.

  “Can I help you?” he asked. The words held no welcome.

  “I’m here to see Mr. Stern,” she answered. “Mr. Jerzy Stern.”

  The guard’s face remained expressionless.

  “I think you have the wrong development,” he said. “There’s no Stern here.”

  “You know all your residents’ names?” asked Timika, trying to sound playful rather than confrontational.

  “I do,” he answered, unsmiling. The bulge under his sweater pulled down over his waistband suggested he was armed. “Is there anything else?”

  “If this is the wrong place, perhaps you can point me in the right direction,” she said, still trying to sound sweet. “1094 Poplar Road.”

  “That’s here,” said the guard, still giving nothing away. “You must have gotten it wrong. Where did you get the address?”

  And now she knew she was in the right place. He was probing.