End of Secrets (33 page)

They went over the remainder of the evidence they would need to collect on Gabby, Branagh, and ONE, and how they would collect it without being detected. It was not a long conversation. What they needed to do was remarkably simple, given the consequences. When they had covered everything, Jones looked at her.

“Kera, why are you doing this?”

“I
t’s
like you said. The other option is to keep working for them.” She got up and, in a tone softer than she was accustomed to using, she said, “Jones?
I’m
sorry about your brother.”

FORTY-FIVE

Kera had not been to Parke
r’s
new office, and she looked around when she entered. It was nicer than she might have imagined. The furniture was attractive, if cold. Film posters for several ONE-produced movies hung on the walls, which seemed like a quaint touch for someone so dedicated to digital media. But Parker was sentimental; that was
n’t
a revelation. His desk showcased framed pictures of the two of them and, amusingly, of his parents. There was not a single photograph of his parents at Kera and Parke
r’s
apartment. If h
e’d
perceived that she did
n’t
care for his parents, well, he would have been right, but she would
n’t
have objected to his hanging a picture of them. None of this, of course, mattered. It only confirmed for her how little of her own attention sh
e’d
devoted to her fiancé.

“What are you doing here?” Parker said, standing. He seemed anxious as he watched her take in the room.

“I figured you would still be here,” she said.

“You should
n’t
be here. Not after—”

“I know.
I’l
l only be a minute.” She heard the quiver in her own voice. Parker must have heard it too because he stopped midsentence with his mouth agape. “Parker,” she said. The room swayed. She felt outside her body, as if she were hearing herself speak.
Just a little while longer,
she thought,
and the worst will be over for both of us.
“I ca
n’t
marry you.”

All he said was, “What?”

“
I’m
sorry I did
n’t
know it sooner.” Strangely, it was not Hawk or ONE or the agency that had pushed Kera to this point. They were factors, of course, along with the lying that was required just to avoid losing her job. But the real shift had occurred in the basement of that auto body shop when sh
e’d
first seen Rafael Bolívar. Even if she had never seen him again, his existence had shown her that Parker was not enough. It was a brutal realization, coming out of the blue like that, but there was no denying it. There would be no kind way to explain that to Parker, even if sh
e’d
wanted to. Nor was there any way to explain what she and Jones intended to do to Hawk and that, whether they succeeded or not, her life as she knew it was about to flip upside down.

She could
n’t
just walk out on Parker, though. She owed him this conversation. Whether she owed him more than that was not something she could consider right now.

“I do
n’t
understand,” he said.

She did
n’t
say anything.

“Can we talk about it?” he said.

“Sure.”

“I mean, if yo
u’r
e questioning things—”

“
I’m
not.”

“What I meant was i
t’s
OK to have doubts. About the wedding, I mean. We do
n’t
even have to set a date right now. We can wait until it makes sense.”

“No, Parker.
I’m
sure.”

Parker sat down and was silent for a full minute. Kera imagined that he was thinking, beginning to understand that perhaps they both should have seen this coming. But then he said, “This has to do with what I brought up the other night, does
n’t
it? I knew I should
n’t
have said anything.”

“No, not really.”

“They have no right coming between us like this.”

“Please, Parker. I
t’s
not that simple.
I’m
sorry I did
n’t
know any sooner.
I’m
telling you now because now I know. I
t’s
over.”

A horrible sadness came into his eyes then, and she knew that his powerlessness had finally sunk in. It was the worst moment of the conversation for her, seeing that. She felt sorry for him. She felt sorry that something h
e’d
wanted so badly had come within sight and then slipped away, out of his control.

“What will you do?” he said.

“
I’m
going to the apartment to pack things.
I’l
l find a hotel tonight.”

“No. I mean after that. What will you
do
? What do you want to do with your life, without me?”

She wanted to tell him not to do that to himself. But what was the use? He would do it, sentimental Parker. Instead, she told him the truth. “
I’m
probably going to have to go away for a while.”

And then, within a few seconds, she was gone.

Later, at their apartment, Kera was in the bedroom gathering the last of her things. She had tackled the chore systematically, like a one-woman evidence-collection team, beginning in the kitchen and working through the living area to the bedroom and bathroom. She had not meant for the packing to be so thorough, but with each drawer opened, with each new item she touched, she became more powerfully drawn into the task. It was now eleven and Parker, to her relief, had still not come home. She pulled her large suitcase from the closet, the oversize kind she had used only once or twice, for moving, never for travel. She had believed it was the last of her stored possessions in the closet, but as she freed it, she saw a file box pushed back into the farthest dark corner. Seeing it was enough to remind her of what it contained. She had to get on one knee and duck under the thick, soft row of Parke
r’s
work shirts in order to slide it out.

She opened the box on the bed, ignoring the dust that smeared on the comforter. Inside were some effects from college, a diploma and a few essays she thought at the time were worth saving but that now embarrassed her to reread. She had no intention of going through the entire box now. This was
n’t
that kind of cleansing, reflective move. She already knew that this box would be packed into storage with her other belongings and she could sort through it later, or perhaps never see it again. But there was one thing in this box she wanted. She found it quickly, pressed between manila file folders that contained tax returns and bills from a time when such things were printed on paper.

The adoption file contained detailed information about Ker
a’s
adoptive parents and the date they had taken her into their possession. There was very little documentation of her journey into existence. An agency form listed the name of a coastal town in El Salvador. A crude birth certificate bore a docto
r’s
illegible signature and a date she had taken as her birthday, though the agency paperwork stated clearly that they could not independently verify the precise day she had come into the world.

What she was after was the photo. And there it was, almost to her surprise. It seemed remarkable to her that so much about her origins were unknowable, including the most basic details about her birth mother. And yet here was this photo, a fading four-by-six, the only copy in existence. Paperwork seemed natural; the existence of the photo, though, seemed miraculous. A single photo of an infant in a faceless woma
n’s
arms. So much could have gone wrong. The film could have been exposed or never developed. The print could have been left on a table or shelf in her mothe
r’s
small house. Everyone who had touched it might have had a conceivable reason to throw it away. Except her. Except now. It had survived, and it had found her.

She got her phone and took a picture of it, rescuing the photo from its precarious physical existence and committing it to digital permanence. Then she grabbed what of her belongings she could carry with her and left Parke
r’s
apartment.

FORTY-SIX

Parker did not move for several minutes after Ker
a’s
visit. When he did, it was with the foolish idea of returning to what h
e’d
been doing before sh
e’d
arrived. He looked at his computer screen and brought his hands to the keys. But he could
n’t
will himself to soldier on any further than that.

H
e’d
been enjoying something like peace before she appeared. Lately he worked past nine nearly every night. His days filled up quickly with meetings, and he found he enjoyed the quiet evening hours when he could sit at his desk alone with the windows darkening behind him. Almost as bizarre as the incident with Lawson and Information Security was how ever since, Lawson had treated him as if it had never happened. H
e’d
given Parker lead roles in two new projects and had
n’t
seemed at all hesitant to invite him to high-level meetings where sensitive information was discussed. Parker wanted to believe that this was because Lawson trusted him, though he could
n’t
help but feel that he was being tested.

But at a quarter to nine, in the nighttime office quiet, such thoughts had seemed more like standard workplace paranoia than anything darker. H
e’d
been reading through the da
y’s
freight of e-mails when the evening lobby attendant rang to tell him that a woman named Kera was there to see him.

Now work was unpalatable. No, impossible. He needed a drink.

He walked to the elevators and stood there, feeling numb, while he waited for the soft chime. The numbness, he knew, was his mind’s way of coping. It was denial, an unwillingness to put Kera’s decision in the context of reality. And also a buoy to salvage him from the deepening comprehension of his utter helplessness. It seemed unjust that anyone would be expected to face this without a second chance to make it better again, but there was nothing—nothing—he
could do.

The elevator doors parted. He blinked at the panel of buttons, forgetting for a moment what he was doing. And then everything came into focus and the numbness drifted away. He stared for a long second at the bottommost button. B7.

Finally, he reached out and pressed it.

FORTY-SEVEN

Kera woke up in a Midtown hotel room, disoriented for an uncomfortable moment until she remembered how sh
e’d
ended up there. Not that those circumstances were very comforting. Sh
e’d
slept past eight, late for her. Most of the night she had sat at the window, looking out at the city and thinking, planning. The hotel was within walking distance of the office. As she left, she stopped by the front desk and paid cash for an additional two nights. She had
n’t
worked out yet where she would stay after that, but for now it was convenient and clean enough.

The night had delivered another name to the list of the vanished. Lazlo Timms, a novelist/bartender, had left his shift at closing time two nights before and had not been heard from since. According to the police report Kera accessed from her workstation, a handwritten note had been found in Timm
s’s
small Brooklyn apartment. The words were scrawled on the back of a ONE Books contract, which the novelist had not signed. The note said:
Have you figured it out yet?

Kera spent the morning studying up on Timms, who, unlike the other missing, was almost completely unknown. He had no prior novels, no literary reputation. She had heard his name only once before, from Charlie Canyon, who had been reading a bound manuscript of Timm
s’s
novel in the restaurant where the
y’d
last met. Kera stared at the police photo of Timm
s’s
note. It fit neatly—almost too neatly—with the pattern that had been established by the others. There were still two things that every single one of the missing artists had in common: their disappearance amounted to a rejection of ONE, in some form or another, and that phrase had been found written among the belongings the
y’d
left behind.

Later that afternoon Kera was at her workstation scanning through headlines on Gnos.is when she came across a report about Daryl Walker. Pledges for contributions to his million-dollar exhibition video had reached $750,000. She did
n’t
know why she desperately wanted the actor not to raise the million dollars, nor why she felt certain that he would. It made her think of something Charlie Canyon had said during her last conversation with him. Kera had asked him whether Daryl Walker would be the next to disappear, and Canyo
n’s
response had been a short, “No. He would
n’t
do that,” and a dismissive laugh. And maybe he was right. There was a difference between Daryl Walker and the other artists who had vanished. A qualitative difference, a seriousness, maybe, about their creative pursuits. Something like what Rafael Bolívar had spoken of in his apartment.

Kera glanced at the HawkEye maps she had running on three of her monitors. The private
America
screening and the encounter that had followed in Bolíva
r’s
apartment had occurred the previous Thursday. It was now Tuesday. In the days since sh
e’d
seen him, Bolívar had maintained his usual daily routine with prompt predictability. Just that morning, Kera had watched him enter the Alegría headquarters building at nine fifteen and then go out for a scheduled lunch. H
e’d
returned at two, and she had expected him to remain there until the end of the business day. HawkEye, though, told her that he was now somewhere else. She leaned forward in her seat, at first thinking she was looking at the wrong map.

“Hey, Jones. What do you make of this?”

Jones glanced up. It was the first they had spoken to each other all day. A few seconds later he came over, and Kera slid her chair to one side so that he could get a better look at the screen. But when she looked up at him to gauge his reaction, he was eyeing her instead.

“You OK?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said, a little too quickly. “
I’m
fine. Please, look at this.”

He studied the screen for few moments, long enough to orient himself to what he was looking at. “Rafael Bolívar is at the ONE building?” he asked. Kera nodded. “Wha
t’s
he doing there?”

“I do
n’t
know.”

Jones shrugged. “It could be anything. He could be meeting a friend or just making a courtesy call. What makes you think i
t’s
not a business meeting?”

“H
e’s
never been there before. The two companies do
n’t
have business together.”

Jones lifted his eyebrows. “You mean, they do
n’t
have business together
yet
.”

“Rafa would
n’t
do that,” she said, staring at the blinking dot on the map. She realized her mistake only after it was too late.

“Rafa?” Jones said. Kera tried to ignore this, but she could
n’t
stop her face from flushing. “Think about it. Alegría is a major player now. Why would
n’t
ONE be interested in them?”

“
I’m
telling you, Bolívar would never let that happen.”

“All right. You know him better than I do,” Jones said, his implication heavy.

This made Kera self-conscious, and that made her doubt herself. She thought again of the small painting hanging in Bolíva
r’s
apartment near the metal door with the keypad lock on it. Had she been fooling herself thinking she knew who Bolívar was?

She picked up the phone. If ONE and Alegría were truly contemplating a merger, as Jones was suggesting, there was only one place Bolívar could be in that building. She asked the ONE operator to please connect her to the office of Keith Grassley, CEO of the ONE Corporation.

“Oh, hi. This is Audrey over in Mr. Bolíva
r’s
office at Alegría,” Kera said, using the name of one of his secretaries.

“Yes?”

Kera could
n’t
tell if the man sounded guarded or just suspicious. She had
n’t
done much research into this Audrey character. For all she knew, the girl had a Southern accent or was British.

“Mr. Bolívar was running a few minutes late,” Kera said. “I just wanted to warn you in case he had
n’t
made it there on time.”

“Thank you. And no need to worry. I showed him in a few minutes ago,” the man said, though he sounded a little hesitant, like the wary victim of a prank call.

“Oh, wonderful,” Kera said.

There was a strange pause on the line. When the young man spoke again, it was in a different tone, more personal, almost as if in confidence. “You OK?” he said.

“Yeah, of course.” Kera had to get off the phone.

Another pause. “Drinks at seven still, right?” he said.

“You got it. See you then.” She hung up and exhaled. “I think I just confirmed drinks on behalf of a total stranger.”

Jones nodded. “So their secretaries are fucking.
I’d
say ther
e’s
a good chance ONE and Alegría are about to be in business.”

Kera waited at her workstation until she saw Bolívar emerge from ON
E’s
headquarters and slide into the waiting town car. She expected the car to cut across Midtown and return to Alegrí
a’s
headquarters, but instead it turned north and let him off at his apartment building. It was only 4:45
PM
, early for him to be home on a weekday. A live surveillance feed provided a view of him exiting his car and walking into the lobby. She watched him closely, aching a little at the familiar spring in his step. He had not contacted her since she had left his apartment five nights earlier.

When h
e’d
disappeared inside, she switched over from the HawkEye map tracing his movements to the digital dossier on his background. After seeing the contrast between Bolíva
r’s
public persona and the person sh
e’d
witnessed in private, she was curious to review his file more closely.

She spent an hour reading what was available about Bolíva
r’s
childhood in Caracas—his early school records, information on the members of his large family, and articles about his fathe
r’s
ties to key Venezuelan politicians, connections that no doubt had aided in the spectacular growth of his media empire, securing the famil
y’s
wealth.

It was
n’t
until she got to Bolíva
r’s
college years that Kera began to read with interest. At NYU Bolívar had been working toward a double major in computer science and philosophy. That was news to her. Sh
e’d
assumed h
e’d
studied business, though she had
n’t
really thought much about it before. Computer science seemed too technical and specialized to interest someone bent on scaling the corporate ladder as swiftly as Bolívar had; philosophy seemed too abstract and impractical. Kera wondered what it meant that Bolíva
r’s
college studies did
n’t
fit the man he had become.

Scrolling through Bolíva
r’s
NYU transcripts, Kera noted the As h
e’d
been awarded for each course.
Epistemology 342
0
. . .
The Future of Computin
g
. . .
Value Theory
. At the bottom of the list, she stopped, puzzling over the dates of the final courses h
e’d
taken. She scrolled up and down a few times, thinking she must have missed something. But she had
n’t
. His academic records stopped midway through his senior year, as if h
e’d
simply walked away from his formal education a semester shy of graduation.

Searching for an explanation, Kera turned to other records that were contemporaneous to the incomplete portion of the transcript. As usual, HawkEye was a prolific source of information. The dossier included parking tickets, travel documents, credit card statements, academic calendars, and electronic library transactions. She scanned through most of these quickly, performing a swift triage. One area she lingered over was the library data, which was voluminous. Bolíva
r’s
literary interests had ranged from highbrow novels to books on philosophy and economics by authors sh
e’d
never heard of. In his senior year, he had added to these a dozen or so titles related to journalism. Nothing, though, that seemed to foreshadow his eventual turn toward pop culture and mass media.

A few minutes later, she came across a change-of-address request Bolívar had filed with the Post Office. She scrolled through it, looking to understand the chronology of where h
e’d
lived when. For his first two years of college, h
e’d
resided in a brownstone in the Village, and then h
e’d
moved to—her breath caught when she saw the SoHo address. It was familiar. Switching to a new screen, she pulled up Charlie Canyo
n’s
dossier to confirm it, though her memory was clear. The address was for a large flat in SoHo and, a week earlier when sh
e’d
done a similar review of Canyo
n’s
dossier, the apartment had stuck out in her mind because it did
n’t
seem like the sort of thing Canyon would have been able to afford. Bolívar, however, could have afforded something twice as lavish.

She leaned back in her chair, thinking. Sh
e’d
been aware that Bolívar and Canyon had attended NYU at the same time and that they were at the very least acquaintances, but neither of them had mentioned living together. Bolívar had, in fact, brushed aside the implication that they were friends. For a few moments, she wondered whether their being roommates a decade earlier was significant, and then, even though she could
n’t
think of a particular reason why it was, she scolded herself for not drawing this link between them sooner.

How had she not seen it?
Grew up in Caraca
s . . .
studied at NY
U . . .
moved up the ranks at Alegría.
She realized that before today, she had only familiarized herself with a broad sketch of Bolíva
r’s
biography, and her mind had lazily filled in details that, while far from unlikely, happened to be wrong. People dropped out of college all the time, did
n’t
they? Maybe, but not people pursuing double majors, not people who go on to climb the corporate ladder in the most calculated of ways.