The Cloud (13 page)

29

M
y first true love, Annie, was an illusion. I met her just after medical school. She professed to cherish me with abandon, to get lost in me the same way she became overcome with emotion when she saw a puppy on the street or a baby elephant at the zoo. She hooked me completely. But true connection petrified her and she made a folly of it. She left me without even saying goodbye.

Then along came Polly. Unlike Annie, her self-confidence and zeal for life were real. She could be vulnerable but she ran her relationships with the same efficiency she ran her start-ups with, things mapped out and executed. Life was an exciting enterprise, growing quarter after quarter. Until it didn’t.

“You’re going to be fine and Isaac’s going to be fine,” she told me with the utmost confidence when it became clear that things were coming to an end. I was sitting on the edge of her bed, looking not at her, but through slats in the shades as traffic passed by.

What a lie.

“You’re going to get yourself run over.”

The voice shakes me back to the present. I’m standing in the street next to the Audi. Faith studies me like I’m some bizarre creature from the deep that she’s watching on the Nature Channel. I wonder what lies she’s telling me.

“Your eyes are glazed over and you’re standing in the middle of the street.”

“I’m fine.”

“And I’m an African princess who can make you millions of dollars if you email me your social security number.”

I walk around to the passenger side and climb in.

“I need to get to an Internet café.”

“Who is that woman?”

I see Jill standing at the gate, glazed over, like me.

“She’s mysterious clue number seven.”

“What does that mean?”

“You tell me, Faith. Who is she?”

Faith punches the accelerator and the powerful Audi practically jumps twenty yards onto El Camino, the thoroughfare. Faith puts on a left blinker. “Usually I’m communicating better than this with someone when I start sleeping with him.”

I swallow my retort: So why did we spend the night together? What are your motives, Faith?

Her phone rings. It’s sitting in the cup holder between us. I pick it up. The caller ID says “Carl_L.”

“Ignore it, please,” Faith says.

I replace the phone. Faith takes a sharp right and pulls to the curb. We’re sitting in front of a cubbyhole of a café. In the window, a teenager sits at a counter, tooling away on a computer.

“I’ll wait here.” Faith picks up her phone as I step out of the car.

Behind the café counter, a man in his fifties cradles a book about quantum physics. He’s probably one of the overqualified engineers that this region can periodically thrust into low-paying jobs when the start-up economy tanks.

He looks up. “Shatter the orbital?” he asks. Diagnosis-wise, he’s quick on the draw, a rare out-flanking that makes me feel flush. I decide not to mention the hunch in his shoulder that I suspect comes from a mild case of kyphosis, an outward curvature of the spine. I order a large coffee and twenty minutes of Internet time.

I also ask to use the café fax. The man shows me an antiquated machine in a cubicle near the back where there is a stapler, hole punch, copier, and a sign: “Business Center.” From my back pocket, I pull the piece of paper I found on Alan’s desk. I make a copy of the Chinese characters. I fax them to Bullseye.

At the front of the café, I settle in next to the teenager locked in eerie focus as he shoots cartoonish birds from a slingshot at a target, the casual game
du jour
. For a moment, I imagine what his brain must look like, coursing with dopamine, the sensory cortices lit up.

I settle my hands over the smudge-stained keyboard and look at the thin screen, as if preparing to mount a horse. Into Google, I call up a Chinese-English translator. I spend a couple of minutes trying to figure out how to enter in the Chinese characters but find myself stymied. I’ll let Bullseye handle this part of the goose chase.

I return to Google. I enter “Alan Parsons” and hit return. Big shock: I get infinite hits, many for the rock band of the same name. I try “Alan Parsons” and “Computer,” and get an equal number of responses.

I need my bad guys to have very unique names, or at least not be named after popular eighties rock bands that, adding insult to injury, I always disliked.

I try “Alan Parsons” and “Andrew Leviathan.” There’s nothing of interest. I’m fishing.

“Andrew Leviathan” and “Sandy Vello” come up empty, and so does “Andrew Leviathan” and “PRISM,” the corporation where the reality-show star works.

I put in “Andrew Leviathan” and “China.” Tens of thousands of hits. I click on the first several, which are news stories from local newspapers, and one in the
New York Times
, in which the Silicon Valley icon has commented on the importance and challenges to technology entrepreneurs of breaking into the Chinese market.

“It’s the Valhalla, the ethereal empire beneath the sea,” he says of China. “It’s the promised land, but you can’t figure out how to get there, or if it’s even real.”

Andrew is a peculiar breed of source that journalists love. He is a “quote monkey,” someone who can be counted on to say things in such a pithy and accessible way that the quotes elevate a mediocre story to a compelling one.

And yet, for a quote monkey of such brilliant success, Andrew is relatively sparsely quoted. He’s picked his spots carefully. Perhaps not surprising, though. The biggest venture capitalists and others here follow a predictable course in their relationship with the press: they court journalists when it serves their ends in growing their first businesses, grow bored and squeamish of the relationship with media when their businesses boom and when reporters start asking tougher questions, and then, when they are so big that media can no longer harm their efforts, reestablish ties with a few reporters they trust.

It’s this last bit of the evolution that fascinates me; they establish close ties with the media again because they want, more than anything else, a legacy. The riches—the stately house in picturesque Atherton, the $140,000 electric car, the co-owned jet kept at the Palo Alto Airport—all start to feel empty and they chase instead history’s stamp of approval.

But Andrew is so infrequently quoted that I wonder if he’s the rare success story who doesn’t want or need ultimate validation from the media. Or maybe there’s some other reason he’s cautious about having intimacy with the press.

Outside the café, Faith sits in the car, talking animatedly on the phone. I’ve let her waltz into my life—rather, I’ve pulled her without reservation onto the dance floor—and aside from her beauty, she’s a blur.

Across the street from the café, two moms and their toddlers file into a bookstore. A cutout of Winnie the Pooh hangs in the window.

I glance down the list of Google hits and something catches my eye. It’s a reference to Andrew Leviathan and the China-U.S. High-Tech Alliance. It’s a press release from four years ago announcing that Andrew has taken a board seat on the alliance, which, the press release explains, is aimed at “fostering ties of mutual interest.”

The China-U.S. High-Tech Alliance—the placard on the outside of the building in Chinatown. Right before I got slugged in the face.

Back to Google. I try various other ways to connect the lines between the Chinese alliance and Andrew. I get one hit. It’s another press release—from a year ago. It’s just one paragraph that notes Andrew has resigned his board seat. The release reads: “Mr. Leviathan has been replaced by Gils Simons, a prominent angel investor who provided key early funding and counsel to eBay, Google and PayPal.”

Gils Simons. Andrew Leviathan’s early right-hand and operations man, the bland bean counter who had been at the awards ceremony. Interesting. Maybe. I wonder why the press release doesn’t mention the connection between them.

Maybe a subject I’ll ask Andrew about when we meet for coffee. I look at the clock on the computer and realize I’ve got twenty minutes to get to the nearby Peet’s to see the programmer-turned-entrepreneur-turned-billionaire-turned-mystery man.

Into Google, I try one more search: “Andrew Leviathan” and “charity” and “school.” Up pop tons of mentions about his investment in a half dozen well-regarded schools in the Bay Area that help low-income kids. It’s all part of the man’s vibrant philanthropy, hailed by educators and parents and scholars. But rarely by Andrew himself. The few stories I call up make note that the genius philanthropist prefers not to comment but, rather, to let his charity speak for itself. And, the articles note, the charity speaks loudly to a single point: Andrew, the immigrant genius, has become the champion of American children, committed to world-class education.

I’m trying to make sense of any of it. Andrew builds his school just a few months after Kathryn Gilkeson, his administrator’s daughter, walks into the street and gets killed. Sounds innocuous enough. He found a cause, became wildly acclaimed for it—big deal, right? So why the dead man from the subway, and the bizarre Chinese connection, and the weirdo reality-show contestant? Why won’t my brain work? Why can’t I piece any of this together? Does it fit together?

And Jesus, that girl, that poor, poor Kathryn, who impulsively ran into the street and turned her mother into a shell.

I look up and out the window.

Then I see it. Or, rather, him.

Across the street, on the sidewalk in front of the bookstore, stands a boy. He wears overalls and a jockey cap.

Not just any boy. It’s not possible.

He takes a step toward the street.

“No!”

I scramble to my feet. It cannot be. I’m at the doorway of the café. I’m on the sidewalk. The boy takes a tentative step off the sidewalk, into the street. Not just any boy.

“Isaac!”

A car comes screaming from the right. It’s heading toward my son.

I sprint across the street. I fly. I’m practically in midair, my feet only touching the ground, my vision narrowed to a point, head screaming. I hurl myself in the path of the car; it screeches, swerves. I lope and gasp toward Isaac. I scoop him up with one arm.

He screams.

“It’s okay. It’s okay.” I cradle him. I look into his face. I see blue eyes filled with terror, quivering lips, the round heaving nostrils filling with snot bubbles. Tender features, innocent and beautiful, but not ones I recognize.

“Henry. Henry. Come here. Come to Mamma.”

It’s a quavering voice pushing the limits of the vocal cord, a protective lioness poised to pounce.

“What’s wrong with you?” she accuses me.

“He . . .” I start, then pause, then see Faith approach, quickly, darting from across the street.

“Your son looked like he was going to walk into the street,” Faith says to the boy’s mother.

“I had him under control.”

Faith takes my hand and leads me away. Before we reach the car, I withdraw from her, willing myself for objectivity and clarity, about her, about everything.

30

I
slip into the driver’s seat and coax the keys from Faith.

“It’s off-limits.”

“What’s off-limits?”

I don’t answer as I take a left from El Camino Real onto University, a swanky commercial strip. Here, entrepreneurs with full hearts sketch business plans to fill garages first with start-ups and then with BMWs those start-ups eventually afford. Back-of-the-napkin central.

The energy here is so vibrant and so enervating. The entrepreneurs reject propositions that aren’t “game changers” or aren’t “fundamentally disruptive,” then turn ones and zeroes into dollar signs, then, upon realizing their dreams, settle into a stifling and predictable suburban lifestyle; they raise children who can feel like failures if they don’t take full advantage of the advantages. At the main high school in Los Altos, there was a suicide and two copycats by accomplished students, all heading to the best colleges. Now I remember. When their peers were asked why, they responded: every time we accomplish something it feels mostly like a doorway to the next test.

“What’s off-limits, Nat?”

“Isaac. My family, such as it is.”

“Okay, but . . .”

“No.”

“We already talked about him.” Muttered.

I assume she is referring to the idea that we, apparently, spoke about Isaac during the blur that was last night. No more—no more blur, no more offhand or concussion-fueled personal revelations, the information exchange now goes in only one direction. I’m laser-focused, I tell myself. I’m in total control of the only thing I’ve ever been halfway decent at, pulling up rocks people don’t want unearthed. My personal rocks will remain entrenched.

“That’s him.” I gesture with a nod.

“Isaac?”

“Andrew Leviathan.”

He sits at a table in the sun at a corner café. As we pass, he sips a drink and flips newspaper pages.

I take a right on Cowper and pull into a parking spot.

“Give me fifteen minutes.”

“No.” Faith’s arms are crossed. “Do you remember hearing about Timothy and the music triangle?”

I have no idea what she’s talking about. With a locked stare, she reminds me that Timothy is her nephew and that she and I had discussed him briefly last night.

“I told you about the argument he got into with a music teacher who said Timmy wouldn’t stop hitting the triangle. He’s got Asperger’s. They know that. The teacher grabbed him by the arm and shook him.”

“I remember.” I don’t, mostly.

“To Timmy, that kind of discipline comes out of the blue. So I went to the school, to the teacher’s office and I took her by the arm to show her what it feels like to be physically handled when we don’t understand what’s going on.”

“And so you’re not willing to wait fifteen minutes?”

“I’m here to protect myself and my family, not because you’re a great lover. If you want me to keep waiting for you then you need to start telling me what’s going on in these mystery meetings.”

“You’re after information.”

“Aren’t you?”

“I’ll tell you about my meetings and you tell me more about Alan Parsons, and about whoever keeps calling you on your phone, and what is motivating you to stay so close to an investigation that seems to be making your life more dangerous, not less.”

“Fifteen minutes.”

I open the car door.

“Nathaniel.” She forces me to catch her eye. “Even with a head wound, you are, in fact, a really great lover.”

The main thing that this brunette is fucking is my head.

In the half second between the moment that I reach Andrew Leviathan and he looks up to greet me, I realize I have absolutely no plan.

“Nathaniel.” He seems unsurprised and to slightly recoil, the
Palo Alto Daily News
open on his table.

“I figured you for an iPad.”

“Too much of that stuff will burn out your brain. What happened to your eye?”

“Fell down the stairs.”

He blinks, furrows his brow, purses his lips—the pantheon of mildly disbelieving facial expressions. He wears a stark white-collared polo shirt that shows biceps I’m guessing were sculpted by a personal trainer.

“You want to grab a coffee?”

I shake my head. I pull out a chair, seeking conversational footing.

“I was mugged. Maybe someone heard I won the journalism award and figured I was carrying a bunch of cash.”

“Mugged? C’mon.”

I tell him the truth; I got slugged in Chinatown.

“Just a random attack?”

“I’m being followed.”

He looks at me, then around us. It’s a natural reaction, and I follow his gaze. Parked cars line the street. None of them a black Mercedes.

“You’re being followed now?”

I shake my head. “Earlier, last night. By someone who was at your awards luncheon.”

He takes me in.

I tell him there was a man sitting at one of the front tables at the lunch. He stuck in my memory because he had a shiny bald head and an interesting, elongated walk. I explain that I noticed him twice outside my office, and then he followed me in a black Mercedes.

“How can I help, Nathaniel?” He must be used to getting all manner of weird questions from people who work for him and think he has the power to change their lives.

I tell him that I’d like to get a list of attendees, particularly anyone whose name he doesn’t recognize.

“I’m not sure I’m comfortable with that.” Before I can respond, he adds that he’ll look into it. I doubt he’ll be much help, but it’s not really, or exclusively, what I’m looking for in this meeting. I’m here to look into his eyes.

“Andrew, to your knowledge was there anyone at the lunch associated with ties to the Chinese government or any Chinese investor groups?”

He tilts his head.

“I ran into a guy the other day named Alan Parsons. He wanted me to look into a story about some interesting technology coming out of China. I wonder if it’s connected to the guy who is following me.”

I’m mostly making this up or experimenting with logic. Andrew’s pupils constrict slightly, indecipherable.

“So some guy that wants to see what reporting you’re up to follows you into an awards banquet? Why not wait outside?”

“Maybe he heard they were serving salmon.”

“What?”

“Never mind.” I’m not sure why I stepped on my own interrogation with a bad joke. Maybe I’m not asking a fair question, about how someone with ill intent could get into the lunch. After all, it was essentially open. It even served as easy hunting grounds for the rotund process server who chased me down to let me know I somehow owe back taxes.

Andrew shrugs. “Can you tell me more about the story you’re doing?”

“I wish.” I laugh, mostly genuinely. “This is one of those backward stories.”

“How do you mean?”

“Someone seems really upset at the idea of me learning something. I’m working backward from that point. The theory being that the more someone doesn’t want you to know something, the potentially more interesting it is.”

“But you don’t know what something you’re looking for?”

I let his question linger, then hear a buzzing. From a pocket, Andrew extracts a BlackBerry, looks at the screen, pauses, gives his device the thousand-yard stare. Is he thinking how to respond or using the opportunity to strategize about our conversation? He taps something back.

I have a sudden visceral reaction that I don’t want to overplay my hand, not yet. I’m deciding not to broach the issue of the dead girl and his charitable work with the schools, or Sandy Vello. I need some cards for future conversations with Andrew, and I’m feeling at this point there will be more. I’ve got him engaged, curious, even if he’s playing me too.

“Are you feeling okay?”

I realize I’ve been floating, mind wandering, my gaze resting on a newspaper rack.

“Dandy.”

He nods, lips pursed. “Off the record. Okay?”

I nod.

“You ever have your arms lifted behind your back?”

I shake my head.

“The first night when I was in prison, in Romania, two beefcakes spent the night pulling my arms over my head, proving their mettle by trying to tear off the scrawny arms of a computer geek.”

“That’s off the record?”

“I pissed myself. I was delirious with pain.” He clears his throat. “I had this plan to break out by getting help from one of the guards by promising I’d hack into a bank and wire his family a hundred thousand dollars. But the problem was that I got so delirious I couldn’t tell which guard was most likely to go for it. The question was, Which guard would show pity on me and which would more likely turn me in for a slightly larger apartment with a river view?”

“How’d you figure it out?”

“You know how computers make decisions?”

I shake my head.

“Simple math. Probabilities. Sure, the fancy ones, like Deep Blue, mix in some algorithms that calculate, if you will, the unpredictability of a human behavior. They factor for chaos. But it’s still ultimately about the numbers. What is the best probability of effecting a certain outcome?”

“Okay.”

“Do you know how children make decisions?”

I feel suddenly warm. Don’t talk, Nat, let him ramble.

“Their frontal lobes aren’t developed yet. So they can’t make long-term calculations. They don’t think in terms of goals or priorities, certainly not numbers. They react to primitive emotions, like what interests them on a sensory level, or what seems like a safe or trustworthy situation.” He pauses. “Or person. So as I’m sitting in my own piss, I tried to set aside a lifetime trying to think like a supercomputer and tried to think like a baby. I asked myself, which man feels to me like he’d be the best dad? Which would feel most comfortable for me to turn to were I his child?”

“And?”

“And I chose the other guy. I figured the guy most likely to care for his family would take the apartment with the river view. The other guy would see the situation more coldly.”

He doesn’t finish the story. History has shown he chose the right guy.

He stands. “Sometimes it’s hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys.”

I let his allegory wash over me.

“Especially if you’re delirious.” I give voice to his apparent lesson. “You think I’m delirious?”

He smiles, all white teeth and trust, charisma incarnate, the friendly genius, the omnipotent, warning me that things don’t seem right with me.

“You’re an investigative journalist. Isn’t delirium an occupational hazard?”

He extends his hand. We shake, firm, but he avoids eye contact.

“I’ll be in touch,” he says.

B
ack at the car, I find a parking ticket on the windshield and Faith asleep in the passenger seat. A ribbon of brown hair cascades across her face, moving slightly with each exhale.

I gently open the driver’s seat door; she stirs but doesn’t wake up. In the cup holder, I spy her cell phone. At this point, all’s fair; with one eye on sleeping beauty, I lift her phone to explore her recent communications.