by Camilla Monk
“March, I think Alex is right. I won’t be of any use to you in Vaduz, and maybe Premfield can tell us more about what happened during Thom’s trip.”
That one earned me a Tomato glare as he produced his precious tube of mints from one of his pockets. The only answer I received was the ominous sound of the candy being ground in his mouth as March got up and left the room.
TWENTY-TWO
The Beacon of Tomorrow’s Science
“I can’t reveal anything yet, but we’re working on something you’ll find under all Christmas trees next year!”
—Kerri Lavalle, EMG Mag, March 2014 issue
By the time Alex and I reached the small municipality of Tuggen, at the other end of Lake Zürich, it was past ten, and I was seriously considering asking for a transfer to EMT Switzerland. The headquarters of this local division exclusively dedicated to R&D had been built on the outskirts of the town in a postcard setting, nestled between the lake’s shore and the mountains and surrounded by lush greenery where a few cows grazed lazily. There was even a golf course and a steakhouse nearby, dammit!
Alex took a right turn to enter the enclosed facility, and the curve of the building’s roof appeared, like a smooth, white shell protecting a low structure made of wood and glass. After we had identified ourselves and parked, we made our way toward some sort of futuristic banana-shaped awning that guarded the building’s entrance. A wave of hot air hit me when we entered the lobby, which carried a whiff of pinewood, no doubt from the tangle of curved beams supporting the ceiling.
Alex approached the desk behind which two receptionists chatted in German. He good-cop-smiled at them and they exchanged a few words. “Professor Premfield will be here in a moment,” one of the girls announced, batting her eyelashes at him under her colleague’s amused gaze.
“You’re making friends,” I said with a chuckle, leafing through an issue of EMG Mag featuring Ellingham on its cover.
Alex cocked his head. “I didn’t picture you as the jealous type.”
I was about to jump on this opportunity and tell him that I actually didn’t mind at all if he turned to new horizons, but I never had the time to. A croaky laugh echoed through the lobby, and an elderly voice greeted us with a British accent. “Hey, hey, hey, welcome to the Matrix, my friends!”
We turned at the same time to see a fricking metalhead walking toward us. I had never seen any pictures of Prentis Premfield, and nothing in his scientific papers hinted at this sort of commitment. Or maybe those frequent references to Norse mythology and Nietzsche should have tipped me. Anyway, his gray hair was gathered in a long ponytail, a fierce beard covered most of his face, and the guy wore a Black Sabbath T-shirt over worn jeans. And spiked wristbands. And green flip-flops. So, a metalhead, indeed. Except for the shoes, but maybe it was because they heated the building so much—I didn’t dare ask.
Alex introduced himself with a firm handshake, and it seemed an immediate understanding passed between the two men when they took in their mutual state of careful disarray.
Premfield extended his hand to me as well. “Ah, nice bird you brought, brother,” he said, addressing Alex while he crushed my fingers in his wrinkled ones.
“Not like them tarts over there.” He shot a slanted look in the direction of the receptionists’ desk; the blonde one returned the favor, burying her head in her shoulders and narrowing her blue eyes at him. He grabbed Alex’s arm, his voice dropping to a low hiss. “Don’t waste your time with them. You’re gonna buy ’em chocolate, flowers and shit, and you’ll never see a tit!”
“Thanks for the heads-up, man,” Alex whispered. “Can we talk somewhere private?”
“Yeah, come with me.”
I rolled my eyes at their antics and followed Premfield’s lead through quiet hallways and open spaces in which dozens of nerds worked hunched over their keyboards. The sound of a Star Wars ringtone or Techno Chicken video occasionally tore through the silence, punctuated by adolescent snickers. As we progressed into the facility, security door after security door, the atmosphere turned colder. There were no longer any wooden inserts on the white walls, and behind the windows, most of the employees wore lab coats, or even white coveralls sometimes.
Premfield noticed the direction of my gaze. “Nanoprocessors. One grain of dust and you’re bloody fucked.”
“I see.”
I should mention that while the horned skull on the front of his T-shirt might have been misleading, Premfield was in fact a world-class authority on a variety of computer-engineering-related areas, and the mastermind behind EMT Switzerland’s research facility. The giant lab was his love child, an incubator for the best and worst promises of digital hardware, and he had been overseeing its futuristic projects for more than three decades. From actually useful projects like nanomachines capable of destroying cancerous cells, to perhaps supererogatory ones, such as the fridge that tells you you’re too fat and shocks you if you grab ice cream, Prentis Premfield was shaping our future.
He led us to a cluttered office with an extraordinary view of the lake and Swiss Alps. His desk reminded me of Thom’s; it was covered with papers and computer parts, as were the floor and chairs. Premfield made room on two metal armchairs, stopped to blow his nose with a large tartan handkerchief, and eventually sat across from us.
“So,” Alex began. “Do you know why we’re here?”
“Because Thom jumped headfirst into a shit pool without a life jacket?”
Alex cocked an eyebrow but said nothing otherwise, allowing him to go on.
“Listen, brother, I don’t put my nose in Hadrian’s business, but I know shit when I smell it, and that shit with Thom stinks real bad. He was a good chap, brilliant one too. Didn’t deserve to bite the dust—not with a wife and kid.”
I nodded, my chest tight, fighting the pain I could feel reawaken as Premfield talked about Emma and little Tobias. Two details stood out from his tirade: First, the man liked to say shit. A lot. Second, he called Ellingham by his first name. I had never known the two were this close.
“Did you speak to Thom during his stay in Zürich? Did he come to you?” Alex inquired.
“Yeah, of course. We both had a speech slot at MT, so we talked about work, life . . . went to grab a bite. He was still fine, at the time.”
“Still? What about after the conference?”
“He called. About a week after that. That’s when I knew something was wrong. He wouldn’t say, but he kept saying shit like ‘Maybe I won’t stay with EMT for that long.’ I thought he meant he had gotten an offer somewhere else, that maybe he didn’t know what to do with his life.” Premfield bowed his head, and in his tired gray eyes, I read that all the metal bravado was probably an act to some extent. Like me, he blamed himself for what had happened, for having failed to understand the kind of hell Thom had been trapped into.
“Did he say anything else?” Alex insisted.
“Well, we talked about work. He was interested in one of our nanotechnology projects,” Premfield said with an evasive gesture.
I leaned on his desk. “What kind of stuff, exactly?”
“Hot stuff. I’ll show you.”
Alex and I exchanged looks and followed him out of the office and down the hallway. Security appeared to be reinforced in this area of the facility. We passed through two thick steel double doors with fingerprint authentication.
Premfield beckoned us with a wave of his arm. “You’re gonna love this little asshole.”
This . . . what?
He brought us into an empty lab that seemed a little different from the other ones. On the long metal tables lay some tubes and syringes still wrapped in plastic, what looked like meds, but also half-chewed dog toys—the damage had been considerable. I looked around. There was a fridge filled with colorful tubes, but also chicories and carrots.
I heard a rustling sound behind me. The noise had come from a long cage lined with straw, inside which stood a pink rodent house.
Premfield opened
the fridge and took out a few leaves of chicory. A series of increasingly loud wheeks rising from the little house answered this initiative.
“Come out. Come out, you little piece of shit!”
I imitated Alex as he bent toward the cage with a childish grin. “It’s a cavy?”
A tiny, quivering pink nose darted out, confirming his diagnostic.
“Yeah. Careful, fucker’s been biting lately. He’s depressed or some shit.”
“He’s in a cage, and you’re experimenting on him—of course he’s depressed,” I huffed, taking one of the chicory leaves to bait the creature.
Soon, a ball of golden and white fur waddled out of its shelter, calling me—or the chicory—with enthusiastic squeaks. He looked almost normal. Almost. Save for the fact his eyes were glowing blue.
Premfield opened the cage and lifted the struggling cavy with a level of care that belied the many expletives he used against the animal. “This,” he said, rubbing the rodent’s back while I fed it one of the leaves, “is the beacon of tomorrow’s science. It’s the fucking future.”
“What’s up with his eyes?” I asked.
“MicroLEDs. That way the owner knows if he’s connected or his batteries are low.”
Alex poked the cavy’s forehead gingerly. “His batteries?”
Our host looked jubilant as he presented his creation. “We call him Ricardo3000. He’s fifty percent wireless server and fifty percent guinea pig. This is the most advanced nanotechnology in the world as I’m speaking. And it’s happening here, at EMT Switz! Right, little twat?” He patted Ricardo’s butt affectionately.
I fed the rodent another leaf. “But what’s the point?”
“You’re asking me that? When all the good families in the world only want two things: to store entertainment shit on portable devices and to have a pet to love! Well, I give you a user-friendly custom Linux distribution with a two-terabyte server and a best friend for your kids!”
Next to me, Alex’s mouth hung open in horrified awe. “How does it work? Do you . . . don’t you need to plug it in to something?”
Premfield made room on one of the tables to lay down Ricardo. “Watch this.” He started fiddling with the cavy, who remained surprisingly impassive. “You tug on the left ear to turn the Wi-Fi on and detect devices; right ear to turn it off. Scratch his butt to scroll, like that, you see?”
Alex and I watched in fascinated horror as Ricardo’s eyes flashed successively red, green, and purple.
“What about the server’s batteries?” I murmured.
Premfield held the small furry butt with a firm hand. “I’ll show you. You just plug it in here—”
Alex lunged to pull Ricardo away from the alimentation cable just in time. “It’s okay! We get the general idea!”
I helped him put the poor thing back in his cage. “So it’s still at the experimental stage, right?”
“Yeah. EMT pulled the plug on the project. Got cold feet.”
I cleared my throat. “Wow . . . it’s . . . super unfortunate.”
“Right, huh? They whined about ‘concerns regarding animal cruelty and marketability,’” Premfield said in a grating falsetto voice, complete with air quotes. “They don’t know shit. Thom found him great, and Ricardo liked him.”
He let out a weary sigh and looked at Alex. “Sometimes I don’t get this world, brother.”
I smiled. “So you’re not really experimenting on him anymore—you’re just keeping him?”
A gruff tenderness filled Premfield’s eyes as showed us out of the lab. “Yeah, you could say that.”
Once we reached the lobby, Premfield exchanged a virile handshake with Alex, and his hand landed on my shoulder. “Sorry I couldn’t help you catch Hadrian’s dough.”
I stared at him, my eyes wide. “Oh my God, you know about this?”
He just blinked. “Did you two really think I didn’t know? Nana always tells me everything she hears.”
“Who’s that?” I asked.
Behind me, Alex was scratching his chin until I feared it would fall off. The situation had to be critical. “I’m sorry, Island, I should have briefed you—”
I held my hands up in the air. “Hold on a second. Who’s Nana? And what did you forget to tell me?”
“Nana is Hadrian’s mom. She’s my little sister.” Premfield shrugged.
I’d have been less surprised if they had told me that N = NP, after all. I gaped at Premfield, at the ponytail, the Black Sabbath T-shirt, the green flip-flops. “You’re Hadrian Ellingham’s uncle? On his mother’s side?”
He drummed his palms on his stomach proudly. “In person!”
“Wow, I would have never guessed.” I winced as soon as the words left my mouth.
He just laughed it off before his lips pursed in apparent respect. “Yeah, his old man and me, we had a hard time getting on. But he had a good vision for this place, and that brought us together. The man knew his beer too.”
I responded with an awkward smile. Indeed, it was difficult to imagine the late Marcus Ellingham III—ten times the iceberg his son would ever be, according to the rumors—sharing a beer with Premfield.
Oh well. I’d have to text Prince as soon I had a moment for that.
TWENTY-THREE
The Toblerone
“And remember that in a couple’s darkest hour, there’s always a light at the end of the tunnel: divorce.”
—Aurelia Nichols & Jillie Bean, 101 Tips to Catch Mr. Right
“That was weird,” I announced as we exited the building.
Alex shrugged. “I think he’s a pretty nice guy.”
“It’s the bromance talking.”
He laughed. “Maybe. What do you say we call Mr. November to see if he’s found anything interesting?” As he said this, he pulled out his phone and started dialing. March picked up.
There were no pleasantries exchanged; Alex went to the point immediately. “Anything new?”
I scooted closer to listen as, on the other end of the line, March spoke. “Based on Mr. Hendry’s map, I played tourist on the mountain roads surrounding Vaduz. I’m almost certain that they took Roth to Gaflei, a charming hamlet northeast of the city. There’s a closed trail leading to a manor higher in the woods. It’s a private property owned by Platt Paradise Limited, a Bahamas holding, and quite obviously a shell company.”
“Good, I’ll have my colleagues do a search to find out who’s hiding behind it,” Alex replied.
I performed a fist pump. Now we were getting somewhere! One thing nagged at me, though: March didn’t like his partner much, that I knew already, but there was an edge to his voice that I didn’t think had anything to do with their feud. “March? Is there anything else? You sound a little preoccupied.”
He remained silent for a couple of seconds before answering. “I believe I’ve seen faces I know, guarding the access to that trail.”
Alex’s jaw tensed. “Can you elaborate?”
“No. Not until I’ve figured what it means myself. I’ll see you in Vaduz, Mr. Morgan,” March concluded in a cutting tone.
I grabbed the phone. “Wait a second!”
All I got in response was a beeping sound. He had hung up on us, reminding me of just how frustrating he could get when he switched to his secretive douche mode.
I sighed and looked at Alex. “Sorry about that.”
“I’m getting used to it. He’ll tell us when we get there.” Alex pulled out his car keys. “Looks like we’ll be spending the night in Liechtenstein after all. Let’s go get our bags.”
My shoulders slumped. “That hotel had such a nice breakfast, though.”
“Be careful, there’s a speed limit.”
I thought Alex was exaggerating. We had already covered more than thirty miles on the freeway in the direction of Vaduz, I was in the driver’s seat, and we were still alive. So, did his hand really need to hover around the steering wheel like that?
“Oh, come on! This car is magic! It’s even following
the white lines—I don’t even have to do anything!”
I pulled my hands off the Tesla’s wheel to demonstrate; Alex’s immediately moved to replace them. “I should have never let you drive. You’re a road hazard, Island.”
I rolled my eyes. “You can’t be serious. I never raced with anyone the way you did with March. I haven’t driven since I got my license!”
His breath caught in his throat. “You what?”
“Well, not exactly. My dad has this old Plymouth he keeps at his Hamptons house, and sometimes, when we go there for the weekend, he lets me drive it in the alley.”
Alex performed a slow facepalm with his right hand; the left one never left the wheel. “You told me you knew exactly what you were doing!”
“Theoretically.”
“You said—and I quote you—‘Electric cars have no secrets for me.’”
“I read Wikipedia a lot.” I hit the blinker as I said this, watching with an ecstatic grin as the car did a lane change on its own.
“Well, enjoy it while it lasts,” Alex announced in an ominous voice. “Because you are never touching this wheel again after today.”
“You’re sounding like March.”
“It’s because you need discipline.” He sighed.
On my right, the large touch screen serving as a dashboard started beeping. “You have an incoming call.”
Alex tapped the screen. “It’s Murrell.”
Indeed, as soon as he had accepted the call, Agent Murrell’s face appeared on screen. He was sitting at a desk, and I could see computers and people behind him. I realized it was the first time I was seeing him without his trench coat.
Possibly even more exciting, the hint of a smile danced on his lips. “Good morning, Morgan. How’s the weather in Switzerland?”
“Lovely. Do you have anything for me?”
“Don’t I always?” Murrell smirked as a secondary window appeared on screen, displaying several pictures of a middle-aged guy with short sandy-blond hair and deep bags under his eyes. “Our analysts traced Platt Paradise back to an Austrian investment advisor named Niklas Van Kreft. Born in 1967 in Vienna, graduated from the London School of Economics in 1981, joined J. P. Morgan and married Nancy Lyles, a British dermatologist, that same year. Divorced three years later, no children.