Cloud Atlas

Fay Li addresses Grimaldi: “We caught her wandering around Research on Tuesday, during the launch. She claimed to have an appointment with Dr. Sixsmith.”

“About?”

“A commissioned piece for Spyglass, but I think she was fishing.”

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,