by Roman Klee
As he suspected, Sanchez was not an ordinary employee of the family office. He was the Wright-Bruening’s bodyguard. In a way, Nathan was surprised they only had one. Then he discovered that Sanchez always joined the family when it was traveling out of state. Dirk employed a team of full time security guards to keep watch twenty-four-seven on their numerous properties around the globe, as well as provide discreet protection.
Most of the time, Carla didn’t like to make a fuss. A large entourage of six-foot-six men dressed in black and wearing dark shades attracted attention, making them more of a target than they already were.
Well, thought Nathan, how good was her father’s protection team? Surely if he had been kidnapped as Cunningham continued to believe, they could not have amounted to very much. And since Budd Wright was an obvious target, surely his security would have been cutting edge. During the flight, Nathan found out why Carla had been acting a little more distant than normal—she’d had another run in with her daughter, this time over something that appeared on Facebook.
And now they both knew the meaning of fraped.
To Carla’s dismay her daughter had been fraped. According to Sophia’s Facebook page, she had become a lesbian and was proud to broadcast this vital piece of news to the entire world via the internet.
Carla was shocked when a friend told her to go online and poke her daughter. Why had Sophia not told her first? They could have sat down together and talked it through. Carla insisted she would not have told her daughter she was just going through a phase. She was happy with whatever life choice Sophia made.
Then the truth came out. Sophia told her mom that fraped meant updating a friend’s status on Facebook without their permission and adding something untrue with obvious shock value. Of course, none of this lesbian stuff was for real—one of Sophia’s friends had posted the rumor as a joke. And rest assured Sophia intended to get her revenge, just as soon as they got back from the weekend.
Naturally, Carla demanded that her daughter close her Facebook account. And anyway, she was not keen on total strangers using it as a way of finding out about Wright family business.
And naturally Sophia refused to comply with her mom’s request. This was the New World Order and her mom better get used to it.
But when Carla thought things over, was it really so new? She concluded it was just an example of gossip gone viral thanks to advances in technology. The whisperers at royal courts had always existed, only the distance a rumor could travel in those dark distant days, was limited by the speed of a horse or how far a courier could carry a letter.
And she knew how children were instinctively cruel, picking on the odd one out, goading the insecure adolescent to attempt suicide. Or worse.
Now it all happened at the speed of light and for what passed as fun ended up on YouTube. (Who knew kids would use cell phones to video, hazing and street muggings? And watch suicides on webcams.) It all came with consequences the emotionally immature could never foresee. Carla reluctantly acknowledged how the pace of life had quickened, the digital age compressed the time spent in childhood.
Children became more knowing at a younger age, innocence lost forever. They would spend a much greater part of their lives as adults than she had. And they were taught to believe it was a good thing. It was progress.
Nathan sat, listening patiently to Carla recount her concerns about bringing up kids.
Sophia was just out of earshot, and anyway she was not listening. Together with Kirsty and Ricco, she was wearing headphones and concentrating hard on a video game that was a mashup of Super Mario Brothers and Grand Theft Auto.
Then Carla changed the subject and asked innocently whether Nathan was ever in the lacrosse or baseball teams during his time at college. He replied that he only played a little tennis.
Then she told him about a college girl, who wrote a special thesis during her senior year. She made it into a PowerPoint presentation, complete with photos and graphs. Unfortunately, someone posted it on the internet, without telling her. In a matter of days it went viral.
Carla explained how the thesis was in fact a graphic account of all the hook-ups the girl had with guys in the college lacrosse and baseball teams. She recorded how long the sex lasted, level of emotional intensity, plus intimate details of each guy’s length, girth and a grade for the overall aesthetic appearance of his equipment.
Carla gave a little schoolgirl giggle, as if she appreciated the benefits of not being a college drop out. But Nathan did not know where to look and felt distinctly uncomfortable.
Then Carla realized she’d shared too much.
Δ = T –20,485,440
When Carla told Nathan they would be staying in the family cabin near Aspen, he immediately conjured up images of old logs roughly joined together, a leaky shingle roof and rustic stone fireplace, which blew back and smoked badly. The only running water was from a nearby stream and the toilet was a hole in the ground. Probably it came close to resembling the homestead of Grizzly Adams, or some other intrepid frontier man.
But Nathan got very few of the details correct, because the Carla Wright-Bruening cabin was not exactly an untidy collection of logs, nestling among the trees. Douglas fir, cut from the surrounding forest, was used as part of the construction, the logs stripped of their bark and left in their rough hewn state. Supporting walls were built of grey-blue Arkansas stone. But that was where the similarities with Nathan’s vision started and ended.
It turned out that the mountain hideaway was a twelve-thousand-square-foot, fully air-conditioned, six bedroom, six and a half bath property, plus a small self-contained unit for a housekeeper and cook. With sandstone floors, exposed stonework, massive solid oak beams, a state of the art kitchen with obligatory Sub-Zero refrigerators, limestone counters and two dishwashers, a wine tasting room, with a thumb print activated security door, plus a media room with the latest 3D cinema projector and Dolby 7.1 surround sound—in no way could a realtor describe the cabin as rustic.
The entrance hall ceiling was over twenty-feet high and it led through to a double-height living room, with a blue sandstone fireplace and mantle carved from white oak. There were few things Carla liked better than to sit in front of the reassuring glow of a wood fire, secretly drinking Southern Comfort on long dark winter afternoons.
For her, the highlight of the room was undoubtedly the picture window. Skillfully positioned, it perfectly framed Mount Sopris in the distance—all thirteen thousand feet of it. The view not only captured the changing seasons, it captured the changing light throughout the day.
It was also spectacular at night, especially with a clear sky and full moon. The silvery light cast a mysterious sheen over the Roaring Fork River on the south side of the Wright-Bruening family’s lot.
It was a truly special place to sit and contemplate the world, looking across to the Elk Mountains on one side and then to the Jack Nicklaus designed golf course on the other and the sixteenth hole directly in front of the house. On too many occasions, Carla had seen her husband and his business buddies mistime their swings and hit clean into the river—another Titleist Pro lost for good. And as for watching their short games, it was like experiencing a form of eastern water torture.
After a few pre-dinner drinks on the south terrace, the group moved inside to the dining room. The main window was curved along one side, with a view over the river. The long cherry wood table could easily seat twice their number. Everything was set out for them, thanks to the efforts of the family’s housekeeper and cook, who were sent ahead to prepare the meal in advance.
Carla was not a great lover of complicated food. She would often go to the same restaurant time and time again. She saw no point in risking a negative experience by eating in a place she’d never tried before, simply for the sake of change.
The first course was stuffed jalapeño peppers, followed by mostaccioli and meat balls, accompanied w
ith a few bottles of Shiraz, root beers and cranberry juice.
Nathan said how impressed he was with the cabin. And then he added without thinking, “We bought a place up in Maine, on Peaks Island. It was a real fixer-upper when we saw it. I was not so sure about the place. But you know, my wife insisted. She said it would help showcase her interior design consultancy.”
“And did it?” asked Carla sounding genuinely interested.
“Well, I guess so, I mean she was pretty successful with it.”
Nathan realized he should quickly change the subject. The less said about his ex-wife the better. He asked about the large artwork in the entrance lobby called Forever Lasting Love and the smaller canvas of White Cat, Black Cat, above the fireplace.
“I know,” said Carla, “they are unusual. Actually it was Dirk, he discovered … what was the name of the first guy you found honey?”
“Zang Xiaogang,” replied Dirk, without a trace of hesitation.
“And the second guy, I always forget his name?”
“Yu Youhan.”
“Dirk spotted both these guys at the annual art fair in Hong Kong. They’re trying to push a younger set of Asian creatives.”
Nathan was impressed with Dirk’s knowledge of the latest Chinese art, though he detected that Dirk was annoyed by his wife’s inability to remember the artists’ names without prompting. Still, it was a subject Nathan knew next to nothing about either.
“When Dirk was in Hong Kong one day, he combined a business visit with an auction at Christie’s. And that’s how we got the paintings. The Xiaogang was the most expensive. Do you have any special interest in art, Nathan?”
“Just a passing one,” he replied making sure he mentioned nothing about his therapist and her suggestion to use art therapy as a way of releasing built-up anger and hostility; qualities she said needed to move from the inside out, but only in a non-violent way.
Undeterred by Nathan’s answer, Carla continued, “The dealer told Dirk that both artists are being collected now, so they should soon be worth even more than we paid for them.”
Well, that was an encouraging sign. Carla had lost none of her family’s instinct for making money, even though she had no need to and certainly didn’t have to impress anyone simply for the sake of it.
“Do you travel much to the Far East, then Dirk?”
Nathan felt he was forgetting the reason why he had agreed to the weekend at Aspen. So far, information about Liz was thin on the ground. Carla hadn’t even given any hints yet about where she suspected her sister might be.
The idea the family was somehow conducting secret negotiations with a professional gang of kidnappers was growing more absurd by the minute.
“We go several times a year, Carla loves the Seychelles. Have you been?”
“No, I never had the chance.” Nathan was dying to ask about Thailand, but before he could, Carla took the conversation off to the Indian Ocean paradise.
“It really is true, the sands are whiter than white and the sea is a crystal clear, azure blue. I usually stay on Desroches. They have these amazing villas—you sleep in luxury next to the sea and in the morning you get up and plunge straight in. It’s a great way to start the day.”
“Did you ever make it across to Thailand,” asked Nathan finally—realizing his question sounded as if Thailand was somehow automatically on Dirk’s itinerary, in the same way as Reno was on the way to Vegas.
Carla hesitated before replying. She looked across the table at her husband. Thailand seemed to be a bad conversation subject. Maybe in the past it had triggered an argument between them or formed part of a negative experience.
“I think, we did make it to Ban Pong, right honey?”
“Yes, it was a few years ago now. Killer humidity!”
“Do you want to tell Nathan what else we did or shall I?”
So at last, thought Nathan he was getting somewhere. Now he would start to fill in the gaps Ted Faulkner had conveniently left out following his own aborted trip to Bangkok.
“Oh, I’m sure Nathan won’t mind if I tell him.”
Dirk told the full story. They were on a four week break, visiting the scenic parts of Thailand. Then Dirk took Carla on the second part of the vacation; a journey from Ban Pong to Namtok by train, traveling along the route of the Death Railway. It was something he really wanted to do, because his father had been aboard the USS Pampanito during the war.
One night in September 1944, the sub torpedoed a Japanese convoy. Some hours later, look-outs spotted an emaciated group of men, covered in oil, paddling aimlessly on makeshift rafts. They were British and Australian POWs who had been onboard one of the convoy’s ships, heading for Japan.
Dirk’s dad never forgot the day they took the men aboard, the new arrangements they had to make below in the sleeping quarters, the reduction in the food ration. But above all else they were only too happy to share whatever they had with the survivors, especially when the men recounted what they had endured at the hands of the Japanese Emperor’s soldiers.
They talked of extreme bullying and systematic torture, rampant disease; beriberi, dysentery, malaria and cholera. Open body sores oozing pus, infected limbs lost after crude amputations. Hook worm larvae burrowed into men’s flesh at night. Their only food; steamed white rice and watery vegetable soup made of tree leaves.
How could anyone have survived?
Dirk’s dad asked the survivors that very question and their reply surprised him—it was all down to mental attitude, controlling anger, hatred, fear and the lust for revenge. Keeping hope alive and above all else, preserving deep within, the will to love.
And when Dirk finished Nathan could only say, “Oh … I see.”
His intention was not to dredge up ghosts from the past, much less create a negative atmosphere around the dining table. And he realized any discussion of the last war was not one that lent itself to lighthearted jokes. Nathan also suspected this was not the first time that Sophia had been forced to sit and listen to her father reminisce.
Nathan began to wonder when the bonding would begin. As far as he could make out, not a great deal had happened yet. Neither of the two girls appeared very interested in what Dirk had been talking about, which in the circumstances was probably understandable. Their attention seemed to pick up whenever he mentioned any of the gory details, even if they had heard the story many times before.
Nathan wondered what exactly did girls of their age now discuss? If he tried talking to them about the latest rap song, they were likely to think he was trying too hard to be cool.
Despite the catastrophe of the birthday party, the aftermath was not as bad as Carla imagined it might be. In fact, Sophia’s tantrum over the car became the main talking point. Realizing she was in the wrong, she donated the shiny new vehicle to a local charity that helped abused children. And it intended to offer the Mercedes as a first prize in a summer raffle.
Sophia was just about acknowledging her stepmother’s existence. Fortunately, Carla saw the wisdom of letting her bring Kirsty along. And whenever Sanchez was around, they liked to share a few jokes. (Sophia’s nickname for him was Dirty Sanchez. She was more than pleased her mom could not work out why that was funny.)
The final course was either cheesecake with cherries or chocolate brownie sundaes (or a combination both). The girls were now talking about the latest hot boyband from England, the people they had poked on Facebook and the coolest shopping apps. Then Sanchez joined in and told the girls about a new slasher film. He seemed to relish going into excruciating detail about how a manic serial killer slowly tortured and murdered a sixteen-year-old prom queen.
And once again, Nathan was left wondering about the guy. There was nothing he could actually pin down, but Sanchez left Nathan feeling distinctly uneasy.
Especially when the guy grinned, and exposed a ruby studded gold front tooth.
Δ = T –20,481,840
Carla’s housekeeper had already lit the fire and selected the mood lighting in the living room. She seemed to go everywhere in the house and do everything, long before Carla and her husband knew something needed to be done. She was expert at anticipating their needs, lifting the burden of running multiple homes.
A cluster of thick pale cream candles in glass hurricanes topped off in gold, cast a welcoming glow. A crescent moon was breaking through the clouds, and the money shot picture of the snow capped Mount Sopris and the flowing water of the Roaring Fork, created a perfect setting for an evening of relaxation.
And more gentle probing about Liz Wright’s whereabouts.
Nathan figured they could have sat around the fire and talked well into the small hours and not achieved a great deal. So he made his excuses and went to bed early.
The bedrooms on the upper cabin levels all had their own terraces, and looked over a small section of well tended lawn, which sloped sharply down to the fast flowing river. Nathan stood outside for a while taking in the stunning scenery, and listening to the sound of the water, before going back inside.
The next day would be a test of physical strength as well as endurance and he wanted to be rested, considering he hadn’t visited the gym in a month.
He just finished in the bathroom, when he heard a quiet knock on the door. He wondered who it was, surely it couldn’t be Carla. He looked for a bathrobe, but there wasn’t one to hand, so he quickly wrapped the lower half of his body in a towel and opened the door.
It was Carla.
“Sorry, I know you wanted an early night, but I brought you these,” and she gave him a wetsuit, a tube of sunscreen and the missing bathrobe. Nathan wrongly assumed they would get kitted out at the water rafting center.