Paradime (23 page)

‘Yep,’ Coover says, nodding solemnly, ‘I’m afraid so. I mean, the argument has been used before that conditions in the country have changed . . . in relation to the Second Amendment, for example. But this is different. This is a whole new ball game.’

I stare at him. ‘What do you want from me, Phil?’

‘I want you to stay in place, Danny. I want you to go on being Teddy Trager, but to play by the rules, and we both know there’s only
one
of those.’ He gets up from his chair and stands, towering over me. ‘Okay. We’ve had the conversation. We’re beyond that now. As for incentive, well . . . you’re already rich, far richer than I’ll ever be, so I’m obviously not going to pay you, but please – and I mean this – don’t put me in a position where I have to coerce you.’

The next few days have a strangely calm, dreamlike quality to them. I sleep better, I swim in the pool every morning, I eat properly, I’m not on edge all the time. At work, I pay attention in meetings and engage with people. I listen to their ideas. I even start to hatch some of my own. For example, if developing and launching the LudeX game console is going to tear PromTech apart, why shouldn’t Zabruzzi and a couple of those other guys out in New Jersey form a separate company with a more hardcore R&D emphasis? I get Lester to draw up a proposal, and I meet Zabruzzi for a drink at Sakagura, a Japanese place on 43rd Street. Another thing I do is sketch out some notes on how to get a political campaign off the ground – raising funds, hiring staff, shaping policies – and I attend a DNC Roundtable event at the Waldorf Astoria. Premature maybe, but I’d like to be a little more informed and coherent on the subject the next time I end up having to talk at any length about it.

It feels for a while as if a weight has been lifted from my shoulders. I know where I stand now. I know who and what I’m dealing with. I know the rules.

Or, the
rule
.

No contact, no crossover.

Except . . . I always knew that, didn’t I? And I never broke it. I came close one time, on the street that night, very close, but nothing actually happened. And the more elaborate infringement later on – Leonard Perl’s surveillance package – that was a defensive measure in response to repeated requests for contact from the other side.

And there it is, the essential problem.

How can I ever control that? The other side? I can’t really, and if that’s the case, how can I ever protect Kate? Which is what I’ve been trying to do on one level or another from the very beginning. Talk of buying Pivot is all very well, but that’s no solution either. It wouldn’t be a movement away from this, it’d be a slow, progressive, creepy entanglement
into
it – and with no guarantee of a satisfactory outcome.

But within a few days, there is, unexpectedly, an outcome of sorts. I’m on my way back from a long and fairly demanding lunch with Ray Dalio at the Four Seasons, so I’m eager to get back upstairs now to my office, to that space by the window where I can just gaze out vacantly on the geometric swirl of Midtown and flush everything out of my head. I’m crossing the plaza, heading straight for the revolving doors, when I hear it. And I’m not even sure at first that I do.

‘Excuse me . . . Mr Trager?’

But I turn around anyway. Standing there in front of me, a few feet away, is Kate.

I feel an immediate tightness in my chest. What does she want? Doesn’t she know that coming here is dangerous? That she’s drawing attention to herself? That
she’s
the glitch in this whole system?

But then, how would she know?

‘Uh . . . yes?’ I say, feigning confusion.

Her skin is glowing, her hair thicker, redder, glossier than I remember, her eyes on high alert, darting everywhere, scanning me up and down.

‘My name is . . .’ She hesitates, and I feel she wants to say,
you fucking know what my name is
, but she resists. ‘I’m Kate Rozman. My colleague, Pete Kettner, met with you recently.’

‘Oh, yes . . .’ For a millisecond I consider extending my hand, taking hers in mine, but no good could come of that. There’s
one
rule here. ‘Of course, yes, I remember.’

I remember . . .

‘Is there any chance that we could talk? Even for a few minutes?’

People are walking past us, around us, in all directions, busy, focused on their own stuff, and amid the voices, the noise, the traffic,
we
stand there, on a concrete plaza, face to face, Kate and I.

How can this be?

And how can it be that I have to walk away?

‘Not this afternoon,’ I say, as cold as I can make it sound, as distracted, as Teddy-Trager aloof. ‘I have . . . appointments.’

The look she gives me as I take a step backwards is bewildering in its complexity, a dense flip book of irritation, disappointment, longing and – no question about this one – determination. So I’m fairly sure that Kate Rozman won’t give up. She may not push it here today – she seems a little nervous – but I know her, and she
will
regroup, she
will
insist on talking to me again.

‘I’m sorry,’ I say, ending an encounter that has lasted barely twenty seconds, ‘I’m late.’

I turn to move away, but something causes me to hesitate. As I glance back, I see Kate’s hand slipping automatically into position over her belly.

In the elevator, I come close to another full-blown panic attack, but I wrestle this one down too. I make it into my office and close the door behind me. I sit at my desk and take a series of deep breaths.

Kate is pregnant?

But . . .

Is it scruffy hipster-guy Pete Kettner? Is it
me
? My hand is shaking as I click the screen awake to call up a calendar. We had sex the night I got back from Afghanistan – it wasn’t great, it was awkward, it was tense (all my fault), but it’s within the timeframe, so it
counts
.

But maybe she’s not pregnant. Maybe I was seeing things. Maybe she’s just put on a little weight. If she is though, and it’s Pete Kettner’s, what is she doing chasing Danny Lynch’s
ghost
?

That’s going to get her killed.

Unless I stop her, and how do I do that without . . . getting her killed . . .

Is it too much to hope that my coldness during those twenty seconds, my rudeness, my seeming indifference, will be enough to put her off?

The answer – or at least
an
answer – appears on my screen as soon as I close the calendar page. It’s a file marked ‘LP’, and it’s where all of Leonard Perl’s reports are automatically downloaded and archived. It also contains links to the various live surveillance feeds he set up. It’s been over two weeks since I clicked on this file, but it
was
an open-ended arrangement, and although Karl Lessing was clearly informed about it, I have no reason to believe the account isn’t active. It turns out to be
very
active, and I spend the next while scrolling through reports, one after the other, in sequence, feeling increasingly as if a noose is being tightened around my neck, because over the past week, and the past three days in particular . . . Kate has more or less taken to stalking me.

Once I’ve seen this, I know that whatever happens next has to happen really fast. I delete the entire contents of the file. I call Leonard Perl and instruct him to discontinue the surveillance immediately and to delete any relevant files he may have. I tell him I know that confidentiality has been breached, and I ask him straight out if any of the material his operatives gathered has been passed on to . . . a third party? He assures me that it hasn’t, and from the slightly chastened tone of his voice, I decide to believe him.

Not that it’ll make any real difference. This is just damage control. It’s not the solution.
That
takes a little longer to emerge, but when it does I feel immense relief, and not just because it’s so obvious, so simple, it’s because I know it’s the
only
solution.

I have to disappear.

As long as I’m around, Kate is in danger. And that’s because she’s a threat, a piece of unfinished business, what Phil Coover would no doubt refer to as an unticked box. But if I think about it for ten seconds, I also have to disappear for
me
.

I finally have to wake up from this.

Though in practical terms, who do I wake up
as
? It can’t be Danny Lynch, and it can’t be Teddy Trager.

The mechanics of this seem complicated, but once I set it all in motion, things happen with almost blinding speed. I hit the deep web again, and, within a couple of hours, I have set up a Bitcoin wallet, purchased what amounts to a new identity and reserved an out-of-state PO box. My new documents – passport, SSN, driver’s licence – will all be delivered to this PO box within, apparently, two to three days.

And addressed to one Tom Copeland.

I call Nicole in and tell her I need five thousand dollars in cash ASAP. I know I’ve pushed her hard recently, with my moodiness and unpredictable behaviour, but this doesn’t seem like the thing that’s going to push her over the edge. Twenty minutes later, she reappears in my office and silently places a thick brown envelope on my desk.

That evening, back in the apartment, I have a long, slow swim in the pool. Then I spend a couple of hours in the kitchen. I cook an elaborate miso, shitake, lemongrass and pork belly ramen. After that, I go around the apartment and gather up a few items – a couple of high-end wristwatches, some gold cufflinks, a platinum fountain pen, a silver money clip, and a Leica S2-P camera. I eye up the small Picasso again, but that still seems like more trouble than I need.

I get a few hours’ sleep, and, at around 4 a.m., with bulging pockets and a wallet stuffed with cash, I leave the apartment. Walking out of the building, I nod at the doorman. A block down, I hail a cab, which I take to Chinatown. I walk around here for a while, through quiet streets, then take another cab, and another one after that. I’m probably not being followed, but by the time I find myself walking into the Port Authority Bus Terminal on Eighth Avenue just after 7 a.m., the city coming to life again all around me, I’m fairly sure that no one knows who I am, or where I’ve been, or where I’m going.

I think it takes about a month for Leon to show up. I’m not paying close attention, but I do check in online every once in a while, when I can. It depends on where I am, it depends on what Internet access I have. I’m moving around a lot, uncertain of everything and everyone, wary of my new identity. I manage to stretch the five grand, plus what I make on the stolen items, which is actually quite a lot, but I know it’s finite, so I end up doing whatever work I can get along the way as well, usually in kitchens, dishwashing, prep if I’m lucky. It’s at one of these places, a Tex-Mex smokehouse in Kansas, in the manager’s office at the back, that I spot a reference on the computer to Trager. I click on the article, and when it pops up there’s no doubt in my mind that the accompanying image is of Leon. Much earlier, I’d seen a mention on Forbes that Trager was possibly missing, and then that he was on an extended trip to Africa. Now this article is saying that he has embarked on raising a new VC fund.

Even from this distance I don’t believe it.

Next time I check in, it’s as if Trager has transformed into Doug Shaw. I come across a video clip on Fox News of an interview he does, and it’s painful to watch. Phil Coover must agree and obviously decides to cut his losses, because inside of a year the experiment is over, aborted – at least this phase of it is. In a copy of the
Austin Chronicle
I find lying around a place I’m working at, I see a report that Teddy Trager has died suddenly of an aneurysm.

I feel weird reading this. First I’m killed in a car crash, then I drown in the Hudson river, and now a blood vessel in my brain explodes.

What’s it going to be for Tom Copeland?

Now and again, I also check in on Pivot. When Leon first appeared, I was worried that Kate would simply pick up where she’d left off, but I sort of knew it wouldn’t happen – she was pregnant and would be increasingly occupied with that. And, besides, it wouldn’t have mattered, because Leon wasn’t me, and the threat no longer made sense.

Kate posts regular blog pieces on Pivot, which I don’t read, but at least it’s a way of keeping track. These stop at around the time I reckon she’s having the baby. Which is when I lose track of her, or when I stop looking.

Some of the time I convince myself that she wasn’t pregnant at all, and when that doesn’t work, I convince myself that the baby is Pete Kettner’s, and I wish them both a good life. But as a sequence of thoughts, as a recurring preoccupation, as dream fodder, it never goes away – and never far behind it, though easier to suppress, is a shadow sequence featuring Nina Schlossmeier and
her
kid.

As time goes by, though, and I run out of money, and find it harder to get work, and harder to make the effort to even look for work, I feel my life fragmenting, losing definition, and these thoughts, these notions, these versions of what might be true, of what might really be out there in the world, also fragment and lose their definition.

Later on, when I need it, I’m unable to seek help as a veteran, because Tom Copeland isn’t one; nor can I seek treatment for what – on certain days, I’ll admit, after all – may be some creeping form of PTSD . . . because Tom Copeland can’t claim to have it and therefore can’t get a diagnosis for it. And later still, when I end up homeless on the streets of a city I’m not sure I remember the name of, well . . . I’m not surprised.

I
am
surprised one time when I stumble to recall, in my own mind, Kate’s name.

That girl I knew . . .

And also struggle to remember her face.

Shit.

Is it all gone? My past, my present, my future? Is there nothing left to cling to?

It seems not, which is confirmed one day in a homeless shelter I’m staying at. This guy in the office is helping people out – filling in forms, getting information on various work and rehab programmes – and he offers to let me use one of the computers. I mess around on it for a while, looking at job and employment websites, but pretty soon I get demoralised. I’m about to walk away, when I think of something. I go to Google Images and type in Kate’s name . . . and there she is . . .