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 are 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?”