“I was hoping you could tell me what’s happened.”
Fay Li strides in with the unimpressed security man. “Luisa. Still looking for the ladies’ room?”
Act stupid. “No. I’m all finished with the ladies’ room—it was spotlessly clean—but I’m late for my appointment with Dr. Sixsmith. Only . . . well, it seems he’s moved out.”
Isaac Sachs makes a “hah?” noise. “You’re not Sixsmith’s niece?”
“Excuse me, but I never said I was.” Luisa produces a pre-prepared gray lie for Fay Li. “I met Dr. Sixsmith on Nantucket last spring. We found we were both based in Buenas Yerbas, so he gave me his card. I dug it out three weeks ago, called him up, and we arranged to meet today to discuss a science feature for Spyglass.” She consults her watch. “Ten minutes ago. The launch speeches went on longer than I’d expected, so I slipped quietly away. I hope I haven’t caused any trouble?”
Fay Li acts convinced. “We can’t have unauthorized people wandering around a sensitive research institute like ours.”
Luisa acts contrite. “I thought signing in and having my bag checked was the security procedure, but I guess that was naïve. Dr. Sixsmith will vouch for me, though. Just ask him.”
Sachs and the guard both glance at Fay Li, who does not miss a beat. “That isn’t going to be possible. One of our Canadian projects needed Dr. Sixsmith’s attention. I can only imagine his secretary didn’t have your contact details when she cleared his appointments diary.”
Luisa looks at the boxes. “Looks like he’s going to be away for a while.”
“Yes, so we’re shipping him his resources. His consultancy here at Swannekke was winding up. Dr. Sachs here has done a gallant job of tying up the loose ends.”
“So much for my first interview with a great scientist.”
Fay Li holds the door open. “Maybe we can find you another.”
13
“Operator?” Rufus Sixsmith cradles the receiver in an anonymous suburban motel outside Buenas Yerbas. “I’m having trouble placing a call to Hawaii . . . yes. I’m trying to call . . .” He reads out Megan’s telephone number. “Yes, I’ll stay by the phone.”
On a TV with no yellow or green, Lloyd Hooks backslaps Alberto Grimaldi at the inauguration of the new HYDRA reactor at Swannekke Island. They salute the lecture theater like conquering sportsmen, and silver confetti falls from the roof. “No stranger to controversy,” says a reporter, “Seaboard CEO Alberto Grimaldi today announced the go-ahead of Swannekke C. Fifty million federal dollars will be poured into the second HYDRA-Zero reactor, and thousands of new jobs will be created. Fears that the mass arrests seen earlier this summer at Three Mile Island would be repeated in the Golden State did not materialize.”
Frustrated and weary, Rufus Sixsmith addresses the TV. “And when the hydrogen buildup blows the roof off the containment chamber? When prevailing winds shower radiation over California?” He turns the set off and squeezes the bridge of his nose. I proved it. I proved it. You couldn’t buy me, so you tried intimidation. I let you, Lord forgive me, but no longer. I’m not sitting on my conscience any longer.
The telephone rings. Sixsmith snatches it up. “Megan?”
A brusque male voice. “They’re coming.”
“Who is this?”
“They traced your last call to the Talbot Motel, 1046 Olympia Boulevard. Get to the airport now, get on the next flight for England, and conduct your exposé from over there, if you must. But go.”
“Why should I believe—”
“Use logic. If I’m lying, you’re still back in England safe and sound—with your report. If I’m not lying, you’re dead.”
“I demand to know—”
“You’ve got twenty minutes to get away, max. Go!”
Dial tone, a droning eternity.
14
Jerry Nussbaum rotates his office chair, straddles it, places his folded arms on its back, and rests his chin on them. “Picture the scene, me and six dreadlocked freaks of the negroid persuasion, a handgun tickling my tonsils. Not talking dead-of-night Harlem here, I’m talking Greenwich goddamn Village in broad goddamn daylight after a sixteen-pound steak with Norman goddamn Mailer. So there we were, this black bro’ frisks me down with his bitonal paw and relieves me of my wallet. ‘Wassis? Alligator skin?’ ” Nussbaum does a Richard Pryor accent. “ ‘No fuckin’ class, Whitey!’ Class? Those bums made me turn out my pockets for my every last cent—literally. But Nussbaum had the last laugh, you bet he did. In the cab back to Times Square, I wrote my now-classic ‘New Tribes’ editorial—no point in false modesty—and got it syndicated thirty times by the end of the week! My muggers turned me into a household name. So, Luey-Luey, what say you take me to dinner and I teach you how to extract a little gold from the Fangs of Fate?”
Luisa’s typewriter pings. “If the muggers took your every last cent—literally—what were you doing in a cab from Greenwich Village to Times Square? Sell your body for the fare?”
“You”—Nussbaum shifts his mass—“have a genius for missing the point.”
Roland Jakes drips candle wax onto a photograph. “Definition of the Week. What’s a conservative?”
The joke is old by summer 1975. “A mugged liberal.”
Jakes, stung, goes back to his picture-doctoring.
Luisa crosses the office to Dom Grelsch’s door. Her boss is speaking on the phone in a low, irate voice. Luisa waits outside but overhears. “No—no, no, Mr. Frum, it is black-and-white, tell me—hey, I’m talking now—tell me a more black-and-white ‘condition’ than leukemia? Know what I think? I think my wife is just one piece of paperwork between you and your three o’clock golf slot, isn’t she? Then prove it to me. Do you have a wife, Mr. Frum? Do you? You do. Can you imagine your wife lying in a hospital ward with her hair falling out? . . . What? What did you say? ‘Getting emotional won’t help’? Is that all you can offer, Mr. Frum? Yeah, buddy, you’re damn right I’ll be seeking legal counsel!” Grelsch slams the receiver down, lays into his punching bag gasping “Frum!” with each blow, collapses into his chair, lights a cigarette, and catches sight of Luisa hesitating in his doorway. “Life. A Force Ten shitstorm. You hear any of that?”
“The gist. I can come back later.”
“No. Come in, sit down. Are you young, healthy, and strong, Luisa?”
“Yes.” Luisa sits on boxes. “Why?”
“Because what I gotta say about your article on this unsubstantiated cover-up at Seaboard will, frankly, leave you old, sick, and weak.”
15
At Buenas Yerbas International Airport, Dr. Rufus Sixsmith places a vanilla binder into locker number 909, glances around the crowded concourse, feeds the slot with coins, turns the key, and slips this into a padded khaki envelope addressed to Luisa Rey at Spyglass, Klugh Bldg. 12F, 3rd Avenue, BY. Sixsmith’s pulse rises as he nears the postal desk. What if they get me before I reach it? His pulse rockets. Businessmen, families with luggage carts, snakes of elderly tourists all seem intent on thwarting his progress. The mailbox slot looms closer. Just yards away now, just inches.