Cloud Atlas

  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 ar
e 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.”

  “And you didn’t take a blowtorch to it?”

  “It’s not Garcia’s fault his ex-owner was a swindling sperm gun.”

  “The guy must have been mad.” Sachs didn’t plan to say so, but he’s not ashamed he did.

  Luisa Rey nods in gracious acknowledgment. “Anyway, Garcia suits the car. Never stays tuned, prone to flashes of speed, falling to bits, its trunk won’t lock, it leaks oil, but never seems to give up the ghost.”

  Invite her back, Sachs thinks. Don’t be stupid, you’re not a pair of kids.

  They watch the breakers crash in the moonlight.

  Say it. “The other day”—his voice is a murmur and he feels sick—”you were looking for something in Sixsmith’s room.” The shadows seem to prick up their ears. “Weren’t you?”

  Luisa checks for eavesdroppers and speaks very quietly. “I understand Dr. Sixsmith wrote a certain report.”

  “Rufus had to work closely with the team who designed and built the thing. That meant me.”

  “Then you know what his conclusions were? About the HYDRA reactor?”

  “We all do! Jessops, Moses, Keene … they all know.”

  “About a design flaw?”

  “Yes.” Nothing has changed, except everything.

  “How bad would an accident be?”

  “If Dr. Sixsmith is right, it’ll be much, much worse than bad.”

  “Why isn’t Swannekke B just shut down pending further inquiry?”

  “Money, power, usual suspects.”

  “Do you agree with Sixsmith’s findings?”

  Carefully. “I agree a substantial theoretical risk is present.”

  “Were you pressured to keep your doubts to yourselves?”

  “Every scientist was. Every scientist agreed to. Except for Sixsmith.”

  “Who, Isaac? Alberto Grimaldi? Does it go up to the top?”

  “Luisa, what would you do with a copy of the report, if one found its way into your hands?”

  “Go public as fast as I possibly could.”

  “Are you aware of …” I can’t say it.

  “Aware that people in the upper echelons would rather see me dead than see HYDRA discredited? Right now it’s all I’m aware of.”

  “I can’t make any promises.” Christ, how feeble. “I became a scientist because … it’s like panning for gold in a muddy torrent. Truth is the gold. I—I don’t know what I want to do …”

  “Journalists work in torrents just as muddy.”

  The moon is over the water.

  “Do,” says Luisa finally, “whatever you can’t not do.”

  32

  In blustery early sunshine Luisa Rey watches golfers traverse the lush course, wondering what might have happened last night if she’d invited Isaac Sachs up. He’s due to meet her for breakfast.

  She wonders if she should have phoned Javier. You’re not his mother, you’re not his guardian, you’re just a neighbor. She’s not convinced, but just as she didn’t know how to ignore the boy she found sobbing by the garbage chute, just as she couldn’t not go down to the super’s, borrow his keys, and pick through a garbage can for his precious stamp albums, now she doesn’t know how to extricate herself. He hasn’t got anyone else, and eleven-year-olds don’t do subtlety. Anyway, who else have you got?

  “You look like you got the weight of the world,” says Joe Napier.

  “Joe. Have a seat.”

  “Don’t mind if I do. I’m the bearer of bad news. Isaac Sachs sends his sincere apologies, but he’s got to stand you up.”

  “Oh?”

  “Alberto Grimaldi flew out to our Three Mile Island site this morning—wooing a group of Germans. Sidney Jessops was going along as the technical support, but Sid’s father had a heart attack, and Isaac was the next choice.”

  “Oh. Has he left already?”

  “Afraid so. He’s”—Napier checks his watch—”over the Colorado Rockies. Breast-feeding a hangover, shouldn’t wonder.”

  Don’t let your disappointment show. “When’s he due back?”

  “Tomorrow morning.”

  “Oh.” Damn, damn, damn.

  “I’m twice Isaac’s age and three times uglier, but Fay’s asked me to show you around the site. She’s scheduled a few interviews with some people she thinks’ll interest you.”

  “Joe, it’s too kind of you all to give me such generous slices of your weekends,” says Luisa. Did you know Sachs was on the verge of defection? How? Unless Sachs was a plant? I’m out of my depth here.

  “I’m a lonely old man with too much time on my hands.”

  33

  “So R & D is called the Chicken Coop because the eggheads live there.” Luisa jots in her notebook, smiling, as Joe Napier holds open the control-room door two hours later. “What do you call the reactor building?”

  A gum-chewing technician calls out: “Home of the Brave.”

  Joe’s expression says funny. “That’s definitely off the record.”

  “Has Joe told you what we call the security wing?” The controller grins.

  Luisa shakes her head.

  “Planet of the Apes.” He turns to Napier. “Introduce your guest, Joe.”

  “Carlo Böhn, Luisa Rey. Luisa’s a reporter, Carlo’s a chief technician. Stick around and you’ll hear plenty of other names for him.”

  “Let me show you around my little empire, if Joe’ll give you up for five minutes.”

  Napier watches Luisa as Böhn explains the fluorescent-lit chamber of panels and gauges. Underlings check printouts, frown at dials, tick clipboards. Böhn flirts with her, catches Napier’s eye, when Luisa’s back is turned, and mimes melon-breasts; Napier shakes his sober head. Milly would have clucked over you, he thinks. Had you over for dinner, fed you way too much, and nagged you on what you need to be nagged about. He recalls Luisa as a precocious little six-year-old. Must be two decades since I saw you at the last Tenth Pr
ecinct Station reunion. Of all the professions that lippy little girl could have entered, of all the reporters who could have caught the scent of Sixsmith’s death, why Lester Rey’s daughter? Why so soon before I retire? Who dreamed up this sick joke? The city?

  Napier could cry.

  34

  Fay Li searches Luisa Rey’s room swiftly and adeptly as the sun sets. She checks inside the toilet cistern; under the mattress for slits; the carpets, for loose flaps; inside the minibar; in the closet. The original might have been Xeroxed down to a quarter of its bulk. Li’s tame receptionist reported Sachs and Luisa talking until the early hours. Sachs was removed this morning, but he’s no idiot, he could have deposited it for her. She unscrews the telephone mouthpiece and finds Napier’s favored transmitter, one disguised as a resistor. She probes the recesses of Luisa’s overnight bag but finds no printed matter except Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. She flicks through the reporter’s notepad on the desk, but Luisa’s encrypted shorthand doesn’t reveal much.

  Fay Li wonders if she’s wasting her time. Wasting your time? Mexxon Oil upped their offer to one hundred thousand dollars for the Sixsmith Report. And if they’re serious about a hundred thousand, they’ll be serious about a million. For discrediting the entire atomic energy program into an adolescent grave, a million is a snip. So keep searching.

  The phone buzzes four times: a warning that Luisa Rey is in the lobby, waiting for the elevator. Li ensures nothing is amiss and leaves, taking the stairs down. After ten minutes she rings up to Luisa from the front desk. “Hi, Luisa, it’s Fay. Been back long?”

  “Just long enough for a quick shower.”

  “Productive afternoon, I hope?”

  “Very much so. I’ve got enough material for two or three pieces.”

  “Terrific. Listen, unless you’ve got other plans, how about dinner at the golf club? Swannekke lobster is the best this side of anywhere.”