Cloud Atlas

and keeping our great nation great.” Mr. Hooks is to take up his new responsibilities next week. His successor is due to be announced later today.

“Is this a project you were working on?” asks Judith.

“Still am.”

“On whose behalf?”

“On behalf of the truth.” Her daughter’s irony is sincere. “I’m freelance.”

“Since when?”

“Since the moment KPO fired me. Firing me was a political decision, Mom. It proves I was onto something big. Mammoth.”

Judith Rey watches the young woman. Once upon a time, I had a baby daughter. I dressed her in frilly frocks, enrolled her for ballet classes, and sent her to horse-riding camp five summers in a row. But look at her. She turned into Lester anyway. She kisses Luisa’s forehead. Luisa frowns, suspiciously, like a teenager. “What?”

57

Luisa Rey drops into the Snow White Diner for the last coffee of her Spyglass days. The only free seat is adjacent to a man hidden behind the San Francisco Chronicle. Luisa thinks, A good paper, and takes the seat. Dom Grelsch says, “Morning.”

Luisa feels a flare of territorial jealousy. “What are you doing here?”

“Even editors eat. I’ve come here every morning since my wife’s .?.?. y’ know. Waffles I can make in the toaster but?.?.?.” His gesture at his platter of pork chops implies, Need I say more?

“I never saw you in here once.”

“That’s ’cause he leaves,” says Bart, performing three tasks at once, “an hour before you arrive. Usual, Luisa?”

“Please. How come you never told me, Bart?”

“I don’t talk about your comings and goings to no one else either.”

“First one into the office”—Dom Grelsch folds the newspaper—“last one out at night. Editor’s lot. I wanted a word with you, Luisa.”

“I have a distinct memory of having been fired.”

“Can it, willya? I want to say why—how—I’m not resigning over how Ogilvy crapped on you. And since my confessions are rolling out, I knew you were in for the ax since last Friday.”

“Nice of you to let me know beforehand.”

The editor lowers his voice. “You know about my wife’s leukemia. Our insurance situation?”

Luisa decides to grant him a nod.

Grelsch steels himself. “Last week, during the takeover negotiations .?.?. it was intimated, if I stayed on at Spyglass and agreed I’d never heard .?.?. of a certain report, strings could be pulled at my insurers.”

Luisa maintains her composure. “You trust these people to keep their word?”

“On Sunday morning my claims man, Arnold Frum, phones. Apologies for disturbing us, blah-blah, but he thought we’d want to know Blue Shield reversed their decision and will be handling all my wife’s medical bills. A reimbursement check for past payments is in the mail. We even get to keep our house. I’m not proud of myself, but I won’t be ashamed for putting my family ahead of the truth.”

“The truth is radiation raining on Buenas Yerbas.”

“We all make choices about levels of risk. If I can protect my wife in return for playing a bit part in the chance of an accident at Swannekke, well, I’ll have to live with that. I sure as hell wish you’d think a little more about the risk you’re exposing yourself to by taking these people on.”

Luisa’s memory of sinking under water returns to haunt her, and her heart lurches. Bart places a cup of coffee in front of her.

Grelsch slips a typewritten page over the counter. It contains two columns of seven names per column. “Guess what this list is.” Two names jump out: Lloyd Hooks and William Wiley.

“Board members of Trans Vision Inc.?”

Grelsch nods. “Almost. Board membership is a matter of public knowledge. This is a list of unlisted corporate advisers who receive money sourced in Trans Vision Inc. The circled names should interest you. Look. Hooks and Wiley. Lazy, damning, just plain greedy.”

Luisa pockets the list. “I should thank you for this.”

“Nussbaum the Foul did the digging. One last thing. Fran Peacock, at the Western Messenger, you know her?”

“Just to say hi at superficial media parties.”

“Fran and me go back a ways. I dropped by her office last night, mentioned your story’s salient points. I was noncommittal, but once you’ve got battleworthy evidence she’d like to say more than just hi.”

“Is this in the spirit of your understanding with Trans Vision Inc.?”

Grelsch stands up and folds his newspaper. “They never said I couldn’t share my contacts.”

58

Jerry Nussbaum returns the car keys to Luisa. “Dear God in Heaven, let me be reincarnated as your mother’s sports car. I don’t care which one. That’s the last of the boxes?”

“Yep,” says Luisa, “and thanks.”

Nussbaum shrugs like a modest maestro. “The place’ll sure feel empty without a real woman to crack chauvinist jokes on. Nance is actually a man after so many decades in a newsroom.”

Nancy O’Hagan thumps her jammed typewriter and gives Nussbaum the finger.

“Yeah, like”—Roland Jakes surveys Luisa’s empty desk, glumly—“I still don’t believe how, y’ know, the new guys’d give you the high jump but keep on a mollusk like Nussbaum.”

Nancy O’Hagan hisses, cobralike, “How can Grelsch”—she jabs her cigar at his office—“just roll over waving his feet in the air and let KPO stiff you like that?”

“Wish me luck.”

“Luck?” Jakes scoffs. “You don’t need luck. Don’t know why you stayed with this dead shark for so long. The seventies is gonna see satire’s dying gasp. It’s true what Lehrer said. A world that’ll award Henry Kissinger the Nobel Peace Prize throws us all out of a job.”

“Oh,” Nussbaum remembers, “I came back via the mailroom. Something for you.” He hands Luisa a padded khaki envelope. She doesn’t recognize the crabbed, looping script. She slits open the envelope. Inside is a safety- deposit key, wrapped in a short note. Luisa’s expression intensifies as her eyes move down the note. She double- checks the label on the key. “Third Bank of California, Ninth Street. Where’s that?”

“Downtown,” answers O’Hagan, “where Ninth crosses Flanders Boulevard.”

“Catch you all next time.” Luisa is going. “It’s a small world. It keeps recrossing itself.”

59

Waiting for the lights to change, Luisa glances once more at Sixsmith’s letter to triple-check she hasn’t missed anything. It was written in a hurried script.