Cloud Atlas (17 page)

“Dr. Sixsmith? Are you totally sure?”

“ ‘Totally sure’? No. ‘Pretty damn sure’? Yes.”

Van Zandt looks edgy. “My God, if GreenFront could get its hands on a copy …” Her face clouds over.
“
If
the
Dr. Rufus Sixsmith wrote a hatchet job on the HYDRA-Zero, and
if
he threatened to go public, well, I no longer believe he shot himself.”

Luisa notices they are both whispering. She asks the question she imagines Grelsch asking: “Doesn’t it smack of paranoia to believe Seaboard would assassinate a man of Sixsmith’s stature, just to avoid negative publicity?”

Van Zandt removes a photograph of a woman in her seventies from a corkboard. “A name for you. Margo Roker.”

“I saw her name on a placard the other day.”

“Margo’s been a GreenFront activist since Seaboard bought Swannekke Island. She owns this land and lets us operate here as a thorn in Seaboard’s side. Six weeks ago her bungalow—two miles up the coast—was burgled. Margo has no money, just a few scraps of land, land she’s refused to part with, whatever inducements Seaboard dangled. Well. The burglars beat her senseless, left her for dead, but took nothing. It’s not actually a murder case, because Margo’s still in a coma, so the police line is that it was a poorly planned heist with an unfortunate end.”

“Unfortunate for Margo.”

“And pretty damn fortunate for Seaboard. The medical bills are burying her family. A few days after the assault, an L.A. real estate company, Open Vista, steps up and makes an offer to Margo’s cousin for these acres of coastland scrub at quadruple its market value. To make a private nature reserve. So I ask GreenFront to do some research on Open Vista. It was registered just eight weeks ago, and guess whose name heads the list of corporate donors?” Van Zandt nods in the direction of Swannekke Island.

Luisa weighs all this. “You’ll be hearing from me, Hester.”

“I hope I will.”

27

Alberto Grimaldi enjoys his Extracurricular Security Briefings with Bill Smoke and Joe Napier in his Swannekke office. He likes the no-nonsense demeanor of both men, in contrast to the retinue of courtiers and petitioners. He likes sending his secretary into the reception area where company heads, union leaders, and government men are made to wait, ideally for hours, and hear her say, “Bill, Joe, Mr. Grimaldi has a slot for you now.” Smoke and Napier let Grimaldi indulge the J. Edgar Hoover side of his character. He thinks of Napier as a steadfast bulldog whose New Jersey childhood is unsoftened by thirty-five years of Californian living; Bill Smoke is his familiar, who passes through walls, ethics, and legality to execute his master’s will.

Today’s meeting is enhanced by Fay Li, summoned by Napier for the last item on their unwritten agenda: a journalist visiting Swannekke this weekend, Luisa Rey, who may or may not pose a security risk. “So, Fay,” asks Grimaldi, balancing on the edge of his desk, “what do we know about her?”

Fay Li speaks as if from a mental checklist. “Reporter at
Spyglass
—I presume we all know it? Twenty-six, ambitious, more liberal than radical. Daughter of
the
Lester Rey, foreign correspondent, recently died. Mother remarried an architect after an
amicable
divorce seven years ago, lives in uptown Ewingsville, B.Y. No siblings. History and economics at Berkeley, summa cum laude. Started on the
L.A. Recorder
, political pieces in the
Tribune
and
Herald
. Single, lives alone, pays her bills on time.”

“Dull as ditch water,” comments Napier.

“Then remind me why we’re discussing her,” says Smoke.

Fay Li addresses Grimaldi: “We caught her wandering around Research on Tuesday, during the launch. She claimed to have an appointment with Dr. Sixsmith.”

“About?”

“A commissioned piece for
Spyglass
, but I think she was fishing.”

The CEO looks at Napier, who shrugs. “Difficult to read, Mr. Grimaldi. If she was fishing, we should assume she knows what sort of fish she was after.”

Grimaldi has a weakness for spelling out the obvious. “The report.”

“Journalists have feverish imaginations,” says Li, “especially hungry young ones looking for their first big scoop. I suppose she
might
think Dr. Sixsmith’s death could be … How can I put this?”

Alberto Grimaldi makes a puzzled face.

“Mr. Grimaldi,” fills in Smoke, “what I believe Fay has too much tact to spit out is this: the Rey woman might be imagining we rubbed out Dr. Sixsmith.”

“ ‘Rubbed out’? Good God. Really? Joe? What do you think?”

Napier spreads his palms. “Fay might be right, Mr. Grimaldi.
Spyglass
isn’t known for keeping its feet firmly rooted in fact.”

“Do we have any leverage with the magazine?” asks Grimaldi.

Napier shakes his head. “I’ll get on it.”

“She phoned,” continues Li, “asking if she could interview a few of our people for a day-in-the-life-of-a-scientist piece. So I invited her to the hotel for tonight’s banquet and promised to make a few introductions over the weekend. In fact”—she glances at her watch—”I’m meeting her there in an hour.”

“I okayed it, Mr. Grimaldi,” says Napier. “I’d rather have her snooping under our noses, where we can watch her.”

“Quite right, Joe. Quite right. Assess how much of a threat she poses. And lay to rest any morbid suspicions about poor Rufus at the same time.” Tight smiles all around. “Well, Fay, Joe, that’s a wrap, thanks for your time. Bill, a word on some matters in Toronto.”

The CEO and his fixer are left alone.

“Our friend,” begins Grimaldi, “Lloyd Hooks. He worries me.”

Bill Smoke considers this. “Any angles?”

“He’s got a spring like he’s holding four aces. I don’t like it. Watch him.”

Bill Smoke inclines his head.

“And you’d better have an accident up your sleeve for Luisa Rey. Your work at the airport was exemplary, but Sixsmith was a distinguished foreign national, and we don’t want this woman to dig out any rumors of foul play.” He nods after Napier and Li. “Do those two suspect anything about Sixsmith?”

“Li isn’t thinking anything. She’s a PR woman, period. Napier’s not looking. There’s the blind, Mr. Grimaldi, there’s the willfully blind, and then there’s the soon to be retired.”

28

Isaac Sachs sits hunched in the bay window of the Swannekke Hotel bar and watches yachts in the creamy evening blues. A beer stands untouched on the table. The scientist’s thoughts run from Rufus Sixsmith’s death to the fear that his secreted-away copy of the Sixsmith Report might be found, to Napier’s warning about confidentiality.
The deal is, Dr. Sachs, your ideas are the property of Seaboard Corporation. You don’t want to welch on a deal with a man like Mr. Grimaldi, do you?
Clumsy but effective.

Sachs tries to remember how it felt not to walk around with this knot in his gut. He longs for his old lab in Connecticut, where the world was made of mathematics, energy, and atomic cascades, and he was its explorer. He has no business in these political orders of magnitude, where erroneous loyalties can get your brain spattered over hotel bedrooms.
You’ll shred that report, Sachs, page by goddamn page
.

Then his thoughts slide to a hydrogen buildup, an explosion, packed hospitals, the first deaths by radiation poisoning. The official inquiry. The scapegoats. Sachs bangs his knuckles together. So far, his betrayal of Seaboard is a thought-crime, not one of action.
Dare I cross that line?
The hotel manager leads a bevy of florists into the banquet hall. A woman saunters downstairs, looks for someone who hasn’t yet arrived, and drifts into the lively bar. Sachs admires her well-chosen suede suit, her svelte figure, her quiet pearls. The barman pours her a glass of white wine and makes a joke that earns an acknowledgment but not a smile. She turns his way, and he recognizes the woman he mistook for Megan Sixsmith five days ago: the knot of fear yanks tight, and Sachs hurries out via the veranda, keeping his face averted.

Luisa wanders over to the bay window. An untouched beer sits on the table, but there’s no sign of its owner, so she sits down on the warmed seat. It’s the best seat in the house. She watches yachts in the creamy evening blues.

29

Alberto Grimaldi’s gaze wanders the candlelit banquet hall. The room bubbles with sentences more spoken than listened to. His own speech got more and longer laughs than that of Lloyd Hooks, who now sits in sober consultation with Grimaldi’s vice CEO, William Wiley.
Now, what is that pair discussing so intently?
Grimaldi jots another mental memo for Bill Smoke. The head of the Environmental Protection Agency is telling him an interminable story about Henry Kissinger’s schooldays, so Grimaldi addresses an imaginary audience on the subject of power.

“Power.
What do we mean? ‘The ability to determine another man’s luck.’ You men of science, building tycoons, and opinion formers: my jet could take off from LaGuardia, and before I touched down in B.Y. you’d be a nobody. You Wall Street moguls, elected officials, judges, I might need more time to knock you off your perches, but your eventual downfall would be just as total.”
Grimaldi checks with the EPA man to ensure his attention isn’t being missed—it isn’t.
“Yet how is it some men attain mastery over others while the vast majority live and die as minions, as livestock? The answer is a holy trinity. First: God-given gifts of charisma. Second: the discipline to nurture these gifts to maturity, for though humanity’s topsoil is fertile with talent, only one seed in ten thousand will ever flower—for want of discipline.”
Grimaldi glimpses Fay Li steer the troublesome Luisa Rey to a circle where Spiro Agnew holds court. The reporter is prettier in the flesh than her photograph:
So that’s how she noosed Sixsmith
. He catches Bill Smoke’s eye.
“Third: the
will
to power. This is the enigma at the core of the various destinies of men. What drives some to accrue power where the majority of their compatriots lose, mishandle, or eschew power? Is it addiction? Wealth? Survival? Natural selection? I propose these are all pretexts and results, not the root cause. The only answer can be ‘There is no “Why.” This is our nature.’ ‘Who’ and ‘What’ run deeper than ‘Why.’ ”

The head of the Environmental Protection Agency quakes with mirth at his own punch line. Grimaldi chuckles through his teeth. “A killer, Tom, an absolute
killer.”

30

Luisa Rey plays the ditzy reporter on her best behavior to assure Fay Li she poses no threat. Only then might she be given a free enough rein to sniff out Sixsmith’s fellow dissidents. Joe Napier, head of Security, reminds Luisa of her father—quiet, sober, similar age and hair loss. Once or twice during the sumptuous ten-course meal she caught him watching her thoughtfully. “And, Fay, you never feel confined on Swannekke Island, at all?”

“Swannekke? It’s paradise!” enthuses the publicist. “Buenas Yerbas only an hour away, L.A. down the coast, my family up in San Francisco, it’s ideal. Subsidized stores and utilities, free clinic, clean air, zero crime, sea views. Even the men,” she confides, sotto voce, “come ready-vetted—in fact I can access their personnel files—so you know there won’t be any total freaks in the dating pool. Speaking of which—Isaac! Isaac! You’re being conscripted.” Fay Li grabs Isaac Sachs’s elbow. “You’ll remember bumping into Luisa Rey the other day?”

“I’m one lucky conscript. Hi, Luisa, again.”

Luisa feels an edginess in his handshake.

“Miss Rey is here,” says Fay Li, “to write an article on Swannekke anthropology.”

“Oh? We’re a dull tribe. I hope you’ll meet your word count.”

Fay Li turns her beam on full. “I’m sure Isaac could find a little time to answer any of your questions, Luisa. Right, Isaac?”

“I’m the very dullest of the dull.”

“Don’t believe him, Luisa,” Fay Li warns her. “It’s just a part of Isaac’s strategy. Once your defenses are down, he pounces.”

The alleged lady-killer rocks on his heels, smiling at his toes uncomfortably.

31

“Isaac Sachs’s tragic flaw,” analyzes Isaac Sachs, slumped in the bay window across from Luisa Rey two hours later, “is this. Too cowardly to be a warrior, but not
enough
of a coward to lie down and roll over like a good doggy.” His words slip like Bambi on ice. A mostly empty wine bottle stands on the table. The bar is deserted. Sachs can’t remember when he was last this drunk, or this tense and relaxed at the same time: relaxed, because an intelligent young woman is enjoying his company; tense, because he is ready to lance the boil on his conscience. To Sachs’s wry surprise, he is attracted to Luisa Rey, and he sorely regrets they met in these circumstances. The woman and the reporter keep blurring into one another. “Let’s change the subject,” Sachs says. “Your car, your”—he does a Hollywood SS officer accent—”
‘Volkswagen.’
What’s its name?”

“How do you know my Beetle has a name?”

“All Beetle owners give their cars names. But please don’t tell me it’s John, George, Paul, or Ringo.”
God, Luisa Rey, you’re beautiful
.

She says, “You’ll laugh.”

“I won’t.”

“You will.”

“I, Isaac Caspar Sachs, solemnly vow not to laugh.”

“You’d better not with a middle name like Caspar. It’s Garcia.”

They both shake, noiselessly, until they burst into laughter.
Maybe she likes me too, maybe she’s not just doing her job
.

Luisa lassos her laughter in. “Is that all your vows are worth?”

Sachs makes a mea culpa gesture and dabs his eyes. “They normally last longer. I don’t know why it’s so funny, I mean, Garcia”— he snorts—”isn’t such a funny name. I once dated a girl who called her car Rosinante, for Chrissakes.”

“An ex-Berserkeley Beatnik boyfriend named it. After Jerry Garcia, y’ know, the Grateful Dead man. He abandoned it at my dorm when its engine sent a gasket through the back around the time he dumped me for a cheerleader. Cheesy, but true.”