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“Yes. Sorry to be coarse. You burped in office before coming to meet me.”

“Wow.” She adjusted some things on her desk, lining them up. “That is an amazing gift.”

“Is curse.”

“Yes, I can see how it could be. Let’s start with that, something that we can agree on.”

Golubkhov shifted in the chair. “Imagine you were color blind and woke up one day able to view all colors. Is how it was for me but with smells. Every other sense—sight, sound, touch—is like nothing compared to sense of smell. Each person’s ‘smell face’ is much more … distinct … than sight face. Put twenty people I have met in room, I tell you who is there from smell alone. But is much more. I can tell emotional states in way that is impossible through vision.”

“Yes, I’ve seen videos of you demonstrating that.”

“It goes with ability to influence emotion. Smell and emotion. Closely related.”

“Do you think you could make someone sneeze?” Charli asked.

“No. Since event I have tried. No success.”

“Could I ask you to influence my emotion right now?” Charli stared at her to see if the request would elicit a hesitant response.

“I am not carnival performer.”

“Something simple. Make me laugh, cry, feel scared, anything. I would like to be convinced. It could help our investigation.”

“Very well.” Golubkhov raised her arms toward Charli and waggled her fingers, exaggerating her accent. “You are under my power, Dahlink. You vill be hungry, like bear.”

Charli laughed in spite of herself. “Please be serious.”

Ms. Golubkhov became still and stared at Charli.

“Wait,” Charli said. “Which emotion are you going for?”

“Tell me what you feel.”

Charli smiled. “No, most people are aware of some emotion at any time, perhaps you could write it down, and then we can check it.” She came out of her chair and handed a pad and pencil over the desk. After writing, Golubkhov became still again and stared for sixty seconds.

At the end of the minute, Golubkhov asked “What did you feel?”

“Absolutely nothing. Frankly, I’m getting irritated and annoyed with how this is going. We are not getting anywhere, and I’m afraid I’m wasting my time. You are charismatic and funny, and I like you, but this all seems silly.”

Golubkhov held out the paper, and Charli reached over the desk to get it. Written on it: “Annoyance, impatience.”

Charli let out a whoop of laughter. Her guest was smiling. Charli said, “Oh, that’s rich. Are you serious? Of course anyone would have predicted those emotions. Anyone could see that’s how I was feeling.” She went over to the wall and tacked the piece of paper to the bulletin board and returned to her desk. “I’ll get a laugh out of that every time I look at it.”

“Turn paper over.”

“What?”

“Turn paper over. Look what I wrote on other side.”

Charli got up again, went to the board, and turned the paper over. She read “Laughter.” She laughed again. “Well, that’s a little better, but anyone with a sense of humor could also have predicted that. Ms. Golubkhov, I’m sure you play chess?”

“I do. Please call me Adina.”

“Well I think you always see several moves ahead.” They were both laughing now, and Charli wasn’t sure whether Golubkhov had been serious or joking. “But Adina, we have a serious problem to resolve. Do you know anything about the sneeze?”

“I can tell you only two things.” She paused. “First. Wasn’t caused by human.”

“Okay. And the other thing?”

“Came from …” she boosted her crippled body up on the chair, leaned over the side, and pointed almost straight down. “From there.”

“From Hell?”

“From that direction.”

“That’s it?”

“Yes. Is all I know.”

Charli buzzed her assistant. “Well, thank you for your time, Adina. I sincerely enjoyed meeting you. Please let me know if you have any other thoughts on this matter.”

“Ms. Keller?”

Charli raised her eyebrows.

“Man you love will be isolated.”

“Isolated?” Charli frowned.

“I see him in bubble.”

“That’s interesting, but there’s one small problem.” She came around the desk as Golubkhov struggled into her crutches. “You see, I don’t have a man I love.”

“You love no one?”

Charli shook her head.

“Is sad. For creature like me, maybe not so sad, but for intelligent, beautiful woman like you? Is sad.”

After her guest left, and after a moment of feeling sorry for herself, Charli asked her assistant to call McGraw.

“Hi Seth,” she said when he came on the line, “Anything new?”

“That object, DJ1, is fascinating. We think it may be significant. What did you call about?”

“By coincidence I’m calling about DJ1. Can you tell me where it is?”

“It’s outside the orbit of Jupiter.”

“No. What I mean is, if you were to point to it, which way would you point?”

“Right now?”

“Yes,” she said, feeling a little silly.

“I actually have one of the astrophysicists here right now,” McGraw said. “Why? Is it important?”

“Oh, it’s probably nothing. I’ll tell you about it later.”

McGraw put her on hold for two minutes. He came back and said, “Pretty much straight down.”

CHAPTER FOUR

May 28, 2018

In his jazz club, Jake played “Lullaby of Birdland,” achieving his favorite feeling of “flow” as he moved into the bridge.
Nice!
He played best when he wasn’t trying to make it sound good—when he was simply listening. The club was eight steps below street level with an atmosphere suited to alcoholics and die-hard jazz fans. It was shabby-chic, with a faint odor of cigarette smoke left over from a more permissive time. Like an old woman hiding her wrinkles with makeup, Jake kept the lights low but put a spotlight on the Steinway grand. Six regulars watched him play.

Jake liked to escape into the persona of a 1940s jazz musician. He wore a dark suit with a narrow tie. His clothes were usually rumpled, as if he’d been to an all-night jam session. His salt-and-pepper hair and rough face suggested a life of tough gigs in dark bars. Had he been a smoker, the image would have been complete.

Out of the corner of his eye, Jake caught Stephanie rushing over.
Uh-oh, here comes trouble.
Stephanie reached him and poked him in the thigh with the cordless phone. He shook his head.

She put her hand on his forearm and leaned over to his ear. “This sounds really, really important. She says it’s an emergency.”

He nodded, improvised a quick ending, and took the phone.

“Jake, Sophia has been kidnapped.”

“Renata?” Jake froze and frowned as he switched gears between his new life and the old. Images of working with Renata at his security firm ran through his head. He closed the keyboard cover on the piano and talked quietly for several minutes.

When he hung up, Stephanie was still standing by the low stage.“What is it? What happened?”

“An old friend of mine needs my help.”

“Did she say someone was kidnapped? And did she call you ‘Jake’?”

“Do you remember the four-year-old I took care of for three months last summer?” Jake stepped off the stage and walked over to the coat rack.

“Of course. Sophia. Your goddaughter.”

“She’s been …” He cleared his throat. “She’s been kidnapped in Mexico City, and I have to go help rescue her.”

“But how can you …” She became silent and looked straight ahead.

“It’s a long story, Steph.”

“You were some kind of black-ops person, right? I knew it.” Stephanie followed him out the door to his car.

“Not exactly. I’ll fill you in someday, I promise.” He kissed her on the forehead. “I have to go. Please have Darius fill in for me. And take care of Cat Stevens?”

Jake drove home to pack his things. How could he think, even for a split second, about how this episode would disrupt his quiet, isolated life—his year of not trying?
What’s wrong with me?
Perhaps his hermit tendencies were indeed getting too strong. He’d expected the threat to his new reality to come from the sneeze thing, but it came from a totally different direction.
Life’s full of surprises.

* * *

May 29, 2018

A week after the sneeze, Charli removed her heels and tucked her legs beneath her. Because of her daily stretching routine she could be comfortable in almost any position. When Chandra Bark entered the office, Charli uncoiled and put down her tablet.

“We’ve located Jake Corby.” Bark sat down in the chair in front of Charli’s desk. “He’s in a small town in far Northern California.”

Charli made a fist.
Finally.
This was the moment she had been waiting for. “What is he doing there?”

“He owns a club called ‘The Take Five,’ and he plays piano there under the name William Evans.”

Charli laughed. “Bill Evans?”

“Well, William.” Bark looked confused.

Charli said, “I’m laughing because Bill Evans was the name of a famous jazz piano player. Jake chose that name as a joke. How did you find him? Wiretap?”

Bark looked around with shifty eyes as if checking that no one who could overhear. “We put a tap on the phone of a Ms. Renata Perez in Mexico City.”

“Mexico City?”

“Right. She used to be his partner.”

“Significant-other-type partner?” She frowned.
Why did I ask that?

“No. Business. Perez now heads up the counter-kidnapping company, Corby Solutions. We also tapped the phones of others in the company.”

“Well, good job, Ms. Bark. It’s a relief to have resolved this. The president was eager to locate him.”

“I’m afraid there’s a complication.”

Charli frowned and tilted her head. “How could there be a complication? We found him, now we go get him.”

“His friend’s daughter, Corby’s goddaughter, was kidnapped and he’s helping to get her back.”

Charli was speechless for a second then recovered. “Oh man!” She pulled on her ear and looked down. “Tough situation. Poor guy.”

Bark handed Charli the transcripts from the phone conversations. Charli whistled as she read them. “If there’s any scenario that can compete with a world-wide emergency, this is it.”

When Charli finished reading, she closed her eyes and squeezed the bridge of her nose, as if she had a headache. “Okay, here’s what we do. The president may not go along with this, but that’s tough.” She opened her eyes and looked at Bark. “Don’t tell anyone I said that. We’ll just have to do without Jake a little longer. We’ll help him out with the kidnapping. That way we can free him up sooner. Sorry, that sounds heartless. Chandra, think about how we can help him recover Perez’s daughter. Don’t do anything without my approval, but put together some ideas.”

CHAPTER FIVE

May 29, 2018

Charli was on her hands and knees on the rug in the Oval Office while President Hallstrom looked over the latest changes that she’d made to his speech. She lunged forward and pushed Boondoggle, Hallstrom’s huge German Shepherd, with her head. She tried to knock him over. The dog loved it. He’d give a little bark and jump back for more, wagging his tail. The dog weighed almost as much as she did.

President Hallstrom sat with the speech in his lap and the stockinged foot of his bad leg up on the desk. He was the country’s first bachelor president since James Buchanan.

He had the body of a former runner, with an emphasis on “former.” He’d be impeached if a paparazzo caught him in a Speedo, but clever tailoring of his clothes was enough to keep him on all the world’s eligible bachelor lists. According to the tabloids, he had a politically incorrect woman hidden away in the White House, but in reality, he was simply married to the job.

He put his finger on a word and looked over at Charli. “‘Economic mosh-pit’? I’m not sure that’s going to work for the over-thirties. I’m not even sure what it means.”

“They might not know exactly what it means, but they’ll have a general feeling. Mish-mosh, chaos, etc. It has a hip sound, and you need that right now. By the way, this has got to be the best dog in the world.” Charli’s voice was muffled because she was hugging Boondoggle’s neck, with her face buried in the German Shepherd’s thick fur, enjoying the moment. Nice that nothing further had happened related to the sneeze and pain thing—no incidents of mass farting or world-wide episodes of acid reflux. Of course, most interpreted this as Charli having overblown the whole thing. So be it.

Gordon Guccio knocked and entered the Oval Office. He looked over at Charli and the dog. “Hey, get a room, guys.”

Charli looked up with the perfect retort on her lips but stopped.
Whoa
. Gordon looks serious. Big frown. Something’s up. She stood and joined him by the desk. As usual, when Guccio entered a room, the smell of second-hand cigarette smoke wasn’t far behind.