Teddy Trager steps forward from the car. Within seconds we’re in front of each other – three feet apart, right there on the sidewalk. At first, all I can do is stare at him. I’m aware of traffic sounds, of people passing by in either direction, of the suit he’s got on, but mostly I’m aware of his face, its familiarity, its growing strangeness, its sudden unreadability.
‘So, tell me,’ he says, breaking the silence. ‘What’s your next move?’
I don’t know what to say here. I don’t have a next move. All along, this has been an extended trance, a fever dream. I shake my head slightly but don’t say anything.
‘Well?’
A part of me wants to reach out and touch his face, check if it’s real – to check if he’s real.
‘There is no move,’ I say eventually.
‘Come on.’ His voice is soft and measured. ‘You must have something in mind.’ He makes a gesture with his hand. ‘I mean . . . all of this?’
What does he mean? Is he referring to my suit? I’m not getting into that with him. I’m self-conscious enough as it is. Besides, I have more immediate concerns. Like how he knows who I am and where I live. Like what his next move is. But my mind is tripping over itself now, and the question I manage to ask, in a whisper, is as basic as it gets.
‘What is this? What’s going on?’
Trager shrugs. ‘Nothing really. It’s just that . . . I know a lot of people, as I’m sure you’re aware, and I thought . . .’
‘Yeah?’
‘I thought I might be able to help you in some way.’
‘Help me? Look, Mr Trager, where did you—’
He holds a hand up to stop me, and then nods at his car. ‘Come on, let’s go for a drive, cruise around for a bit, talk.’ He pauses. ‘And by the way, it’s Teddy.’
I feel sick. Is this happening?
Leaning back slightly, I look to the left and up at our building. I look at our fourth-floor window. Where Kate is waiting for me, right now.
I’m assuming.
I turn back and look at Trager, barely able to focus. What if I’d come home, I wonder, walked up the stairs, opened the door, and peered in to see him there, with Kate reassembling herself in the corner . . . a muffled bass thumping through from the next apartment and the kitchen table swept clear, everything strewn on the floor . . .
‘How about it, Danny?’
‘Okay,’ I say.
I’m nervous, but as I follow him over to the car, I feel an unexpected rush of excitement. I’ve read about how he likes to drive around at night, how that’s when he does his best thinking, so there’s no reason why this shouldn’t at least be interesting. I settle into the passenger seat and Trager starts the car. It hums softly to life, takes off, and soon we’re on First Avenue, heading uptown.
Trager does most of the talking and seems to know a lot about me. When he mentions Gideon and Afghanistan I must act surprised, because he picks up on it.
‘Don’t you realise,’ he says, ‘how easy it is to accumulate data about someone, once you get a line on them?’
‘But how did you get a line on me?’
‘A simple tail at first, a bit of surveillance, a background check. You didn’t exactly make it hard.’
I swallow.
They’re watching you like you’re a video game, Danny.
I look at Trager. ‘Yeah, but when did you—’
‘Does it matter?’
‘Was it your driver? That day outside the Tyler?’
‘Yes. But I could have spotted you just as easily.’
And he’s right, I suppose. I was there a lot. ‘So, what did . . .’ I’m not sure how to frame the question.
‘What did I think?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, I . . .’
But then he goes silent for a while, seems to be giving the question serious consideration. We pass 23rd Street and get a run on the lights. Then, after he turns west onto 34th, he starts talking again, riffing on the idea of doubles, the doppelgänger. ‘So what exactly is it, a ghostly replica? An evil twin? A foreshadow of something awful? A foreshadow of death?’ He shakes his head. ‘No, that’s all bullshit, because you know what, Danny? It’s a coincidence, pure and simple, I’m your lookalike, you’re mine, and there’s no mystery to it. We weren’t separated at birth. We’re not clones. Okay, we’re pretty much identical, but the one thing we don’t have in common is the same genes.’ He pauses. ‘Now what are the odds of that?’
I don’t think he’s expecting an actual answer.
‘Well, let me tell you. Given the component parts of the human face, and the possible variations in their structure and arrangement – distance between the eyes, for example, width of the nose, shape of the cheekbones, skin texture – given all of that, the figure, apparently, is one in a billion, or a little under.’
I want to say holy shit, but I just nod.
‘They’ve made huge advances in this recently,’ he goes on, ‘in face-recognition technology, retinal scanning, biometrics. I think Paradime even owns a company that does this, but the point is, with seven billion people walking round the planet, what do you know?’ He waves a hand back and forth between us. ‘It’s like we have a winning lottery ticket here . . .’ He seems excited, energised, as if this is a game or a puzzle to be solved. He keeps talking, getting into the science of it, the math, probability theory, even briefly sketching a couple of what I assume are supposed to be equations in the air directly in front of him. Then he gets into psychology, the nature of identity, of repression and alienation, he mentions Freud and Lacan, he talks about virtual avatars and the influence of video-game technology. I get fairly engrossed in what he’s saying, and when I sort of snap out of it for a second to look around, I’m alarmed to see that we’re on the Hudson Parkway, moving north, and moving pretty fast too.
I want to ask him where we’re going, but I don’t want to interrupt his flow either. He’s the same charismatic Teddy Trager I’ve seen in multiple YouTube clips, but up close like this the experience is different. It’s more immediate, and a lot more compelling.
‘So that’s what we have here, Danny, it’s just one of those things in nature, a weird anomaly – and don’t get me wrong, I think it’s truly amazing – but it can be explained. It doesn’t have to be magic, or a metaphor for something else. I mean, we have science. We understand now that a clap of thunder isn’t the roar of an angry god. We don’t worship the sun any more.’ He pauses. ‘We’re rational beings, right?’
Weirdly, I think he is expecting an answer to this one.
‘Yeah, sure. Of course.’
After another silence, he says, ‘I researched all of this, after you popped up on my radar. I got curious. But I guess what I’m wondering now is, how do you feel about it? Because it seems to me like you’re maybe a little confused, or . . . thrown off balance by what’s happening.’
I look at him. ‘What do you mean?’
‘That suit you’re wearing, for instance. Quitting your job. The fact that you’ve been more or less stalking me.’ He clears his throat. ‘My guess is that—’
‘Sounds like you’ve been stalking me.’
‘No, no,’ Trager says, shaking his head, ‘that was in reaction to what you were doing. Look, my guess here is that you’ve been under a tremendous amount of pressure lately, still are, in fact, and that this . . . this thing, whatever it is, has sent you – and understandably – into something of a tailspin.’
‘What? That’s . . . ridiculous.’
‘Oh, you’re not under pressure? Is that what you’re telling me?’
‘No . . . I mean, okay, I am, but . . .’
‘Afghanistan, right?’ He turns to me for a second, then looks back at the road. ‘There was a situation at the base, people got killed, there’s legal fallout, Gideon are screwing with you, the banks won’t leave you alone, you’ve got debts, you can’t find work, whatever . . . look, I get it.’
Am I hearing this right? He gets it?
‘Okay, Danny, that probably sounds a bit rich coming from someone like me . . . but I mean it. And when I said I might be able to help? I meant that too.’
I consider this for a moment. ‘Help how?’
‘There are various ways.’ He taps his fingers on the steering wheel. ‘And believe me, Danny, I know how to do it. I run a couple of foundations. I gave away four hundred million dollars last year.’
I’ve read about his charity work all right, but none of it really sank in. It didn’t seem that interesting at the time.
‘Why would you help me?’
He shrugs. ‘Isn’t it obvious? Look at us. The thing is . . . I feel . . .’
‘What?’
He waves a hand in front of him, as though trying to summon an answer from thin air. ‘Well, I feel a sense of responsibility. Is that insane? And despite what I said earlier about being rational . . . I have to confess something.’ He laughs. ‘I’m finding this incredibly weird. Aren’t you? Not only do I feel like I’m talking to myself, I look at you and realise that I actually am.’ He laughs again. ‘And you are too, right? I mean, like it or not, we have something here, we’re connected in some way. So of course I’m going to try and help.’
I’m confused. My initial resistance to Trager is quickly breaking down. He’s charismatic and forceful, there’s no denying that, but he seems sincere too. Is that possible? Or is it just that he mentioned money a moment ago and I want to believe he’s sincere? I look around again. We’ve left the city well behind us now and the Hudson has become the Saw Mill. Where are we going? Someplace upstate?
Trager shakes his head, and shrugs. ‘Sorry to talk about money like that, by the way. You must have thought I was trying to impress you or something. I wasn’t.’
‘I know.’ Now I actually am warming to him. ‘I’ve read about your foundations,’ I say. ‘I’ve read quite a bit about you, in fact.’ I pause. ‘I’m a good stalker. Attentive.’
‘I wouldn’t expect anything less.’
We let this little icebreaker work its thing for a while. Trager focuses on the road, and I focus on the car’s interior, on the rich, creamy leather upholstery and the polished mahogany trim.
Then he says, ‘You know, the thing is, I more or less made my money by accident. It was all about timing, all about being one of those special-ed übergeeks who comes along with a really cool idea at just the right moment. In my case, I’m talking ten, twelve years ago . . . I was young, I was naive, the markets had a hard-on for anything tech-related, investors were circling. What could go wrong?’
‘But you did well.’
‘Yeah, I did well, by any standard, but man, when that spigot opens up and starts gushing out money, there’s no way of stopping it, and it changes everything.’
‘How so?’
‘You end up playing the game, whether you want to or not. You end up sitting across boardroom tables from people who spend every day of their professional lives behaving like cornered rats.’ He turns to look at me for a second. ‘What, you think if you put on an expensive suit it’ll all be nice and civilised? Like that’s some form of protection? This is a war zone. Forget Afghanistan. Forget Iraq. Forget Vietnam. You want the real Apocalypse Now, watch Bloomberg News, read the Wall Street Journal.’ He exhales loudly in exasperation. ‘I gave this talk at a university once, a few years ago, you can see it on YouTube, it was meant to be a kind of mission statement where I tried to lay out an alternative vision for all of this stuff. But you know what? No one took any notice, because the ironic thing is, the richer you get, the less people actually listen to your words, all they can hear is the sweet fucking ker-ching of your money . . .’
‘But isn’t that what you do? Invest in companies? Aren’t you a money guy?’
‘Yeah, I am now, but that’s because I have so fucking much of the stuff. It becomes its own self-replicating system. It takes you over. It’s a trap.’ He makes a snorting sound and bangs his hand on the steering wheel. ‘I know, I know, you should have my problems, right? Jesus. Tell me to shut up.’
‘No, no, I’m . . . I’m . . .’ Enthralled, is what. But I’m not going to say that. ‘It’s okay, go on.’
And he does. ‘So lately I’m doing some work with this company called Prometheus Technologies, right? PromTech. And it’s incredibly exciting, the ideas that are spinning around that place, you’d love it, it’s like DARPA on steroids, or CERN, big data, adaptive systems, the singularity, AI, longevity, biometrics, remote DNA tracking – that’s a revolution right there – but you know, take your pick, it’s all long-view stuff. I mean, these guys are essentially redrawing the map, or it’s like they come from the future or something. But you know what their problem is? They haven’t got enough money. It’s insane, almost hilarious. And they want us to fund them, and officially we, as in me and my partner, want to fund them, but you know what? I’m not going to fucking allow it, because we’ll just end up infecting them with our own special brand of toxic shit.’
Staring at the road ahead, I feel as if my heart is being slowly dipped in liquid nitrogen.
‘You see, here’s the thing,’ Trager goes on, ‘one of the products they have in the pipeline is a new type of VR game console, they’re calling it the LudeX, and it’s pretty amazing, but still, it’s just a fucking game console, it’s a toy.’ He waves a dismissive hand in the air. ‘With money behind it, though, it’ll burn through the hype cycle and dominate the market, I know it will. I also know from experience that that kind of success will destroy PromTech, it’ll sideline all their other ideas and distract them from the bigger picture.’
‘Your partner,’ I say, almost in a whisper, ‘that’s . . . Doug Shaw?’
‘Correct. Now, he’s really anxious to get his hands on the LudeX, because he sees the potential in it. He had the contracts drawn up weeks ago and has been bugging me to sign them, but I’m not going to do it. I’m not. I made that mistake once before in my life, and it’s not going to happen again. I don’t care. I mean, how rich can you be? It’s absurd.’
‘But . . .’ I close my eyes. ‘Won’t someone else just give them the money?’
‘Sure, probably, I can’t stop that from happening. It won’t have been me, though. That’s the point. That’s what matters.’
I open my eyes. ‘What about Shaw?’
‘What about him? Everyone knows we have our issues, I’ve talked about it, so has he, in interviews, it’s common knowledge, but really, the stuff that’s going on now, it feels like a line in the sand for me . . .’
It’s the weirdest thing. This is the Teddy Trager I know from what I’ve been reading (and whose positions, as a result, I was able to parrot earlier to Doug Shaw), but this is the first time I’ve actually listened to him, this is the first time that what he’s saying seems real to me. In fact, the only thing that doesn’t seem real to me at all – or true – is what I did about an hour ago up in Trager’s office.
In the silence that follows, I look around me. Wherever we are, the roads seem quieter, less busy. I don’t remember us leaving the Saw Mill, but we’re on a back road now for sure, trees and hedgerows on either side, the moon ahead of us periodically visible through a busy rush of passing clouds. I run various scenarios through my head, but it doesn’t take me long to conclude that those documents I signed will have no legal standing whatsoever. And of course once Trager realises what I’ve done, any talk of being rational will almost certainly evaporate. As it probably should . . . because if there are now going to be two Teddy Tragers in this world, in whatever form, I’ll be the one who signed the contracts, I’ll be the version that sold out, I’ll be the one who crossed that line in the sand . . .
That’s what’s in my head when Trager suddenly starts talking again, when he asks me about Kate and whether or not we want to have kids. I’m taken aback, but I say, ‘Yeah, sure, some day. I mean, we’ve talked about it.’
‘Man, do you know how lucky you are? Even to have the possibility of a child, of a family? There’s no form of wealth that can compare to that.’
I’m not sure what’s going on here. The obvious thing would be to turn the question back on him. What about you and Nina? Didn’t I read somewhere that . . . ?
But I can’t bring myself to do it.
‘Yeah,’ I say, ‘you’re probably right.’
‘No, Danny, really. I envy you.’
Envy? It sounds as if he means it, but at the same time, under the circumstances, isn’t that a little over the top?
‘So let me get this straight. You’d step into my shoes, is that it?’ I just blurt it out.
‘No, Danny, no, that’s not what I meant. It’s just that . . .’ He pauses. ‘My girlfriend and I have been trying, and, you know, when it doesn’t work out . . . it’s not easy.’
I stare straight ahead and say nothing.
‘There are other options, sure, but . . . it’s a big adjustment to make.’
There is silence for a while. Then he says, ‘Do you know her? My girlfriend? Nina?’
‘Uh, no, I don’t think so.’
‘Nina Schlossmeier? If you’ve read about me, you’ve definitely read about her.’
I swallow. So it is a game. Trager knows. He has to know. He’s had me under surveillance, hasn’t he? That’s what he more or less said.
We’re on a fairly quiet road now.
Holy fuck.
This is his move.
I nod my head. ‘Well, yeah, I . . . I’ve come across the name.’
‘Sure you have.’
It’s obvious what Trager is up to here, leading me on, being my friend, offering up confidential information. He’s playing a game of cat and mouse. But who’d blame him after the shit I’ve pulled?
And especially tonight.
I’m too tired for this. I lean back in the seat and groan. ‘Okay, okay.’
‘What?’
‘I swear, Teddy, I didn’t mean for it to happen.’
‘Didn’t mean for what to happen?’
My heart is thumping so hard I can actually hear it. ‘You have to believe me—’
‘Didn’t mean for what to happen?’
‘Tonight, me and Nina, we just—’
‘What are you saying? We? I don’t . . . what?’
Trager swerves the car and turns sharply onto an even quieter side road. There’s an open field to our right, trees to our left.
‘Teddy, please—’
‘You and Nina? Where?’
What have I done?
‘At the . . . gallery, at . . .’
‘At the Carmine? At Polly Labelle’s thing? You can’t be fucking serious.’
He’s driving really fast now.
‘I’m sorry.’
He bangs his hands on the steering wheel. ‘You’re sorry? This is unbelievable.’
‘I didn’t set out—’
‘Don’t.’
‘I mean, look, she was—’
‘Don’t say another fucking word.’
I take in – and hold – a very deep breath.
‘Let’s be honest,’ Trager says after a moment, ‘you’re the one who wants my life. You want all the shit I have, the money, the status. And you know what? Fine. You think I care? But Jesus Christ, my girlfriend?’
I’m torn here between the horror of remorse and a nagging confusion. ‘But you saw everything happen, Teddy, you were watching, why didn’t you stop—’
‘I saw it happen? What are you, insane? How did I see it happen?’
‘You said it yourself, surveillance—’
‘Surveillance? Not twenty-four-seven. Jesus, don’t flatter yourself. That was just to get some background on you . . .’ He bangs the steering wheel again. ‘I came to you, Danny, because I wanted to see if I could help. I mean . . . look at us . . .’
I turn and see that he’s got tears in his eyes.
‘We’ve been given this incredible opportunity, this once-in-a-billion chance to . . . no . . . oh shit—’
‘What?’
‘I can’t . . . Jesus . . . I can’t . . .’
I look straight ahead, at the dark, open countryside plunging towards us.
What the fuck?
Trager is pounding the steering wheel now, going crazy, dancing on the pedals, it seems like – then – ‘Get out, Danny! Get out of the car! Get out of the car now!’
‘WHAT?’
In one rapid movement, he reaches across me, clicks my seatbelt loose and flicks the door open.
‘Get out! Now!’
Then he’s pushing me out. It’s like he’s gone completely insane. But at some point my reflexes kick in and I simultaneously reach up and grab onto the sun visor with one hand and lash back at Trager with the other, striking him hard across the side of the face, drawing a spurt of blood. There’s a renewed effort on his part, and soon he’s edging me off the leather seat. My hand has slipped from the visor, and I’m hanging out of the car, precariously lodged between the side skirt and the open door. I pull my knees up to my chest and just let go. I roll on impact, hitting the ground with my bunched forearm and then with my shoulder. I keep rolling and end up on a grass bank by the side of the road.
The car speeds on.
A moment later I’m dimly aware of a second car speeding past, and then I hear a sound – it’s quick, loud, very intense.
With great effort, I manage to stand up. I move off the verge and back onto the road. I’m able to walk along the side of it for a few yards, fuelled by adrenalin – but I’m limping, and groaning, various pains announcing themselves as I move. My jacket and pants are torn, and I can taste blood in my mouth.
It’s sort of dark, but there’s a reddish glow in the sky, reflected light from a nearby town probably, and the moon, when it appears, is extremely bright. Up ahead, there’s a slight curve in the road, and, when I reach it, I see something in the dimness a little further on. I have a fair idea of what it is, what it must be. I keep going and eventually get to Trager’s car, which is rammed up against a tree, the front of it crushed like a beer can.
No sign of the second car.
But . . .
There was a second car, wasn’t there? I glance around. It’s very quiet. It’s late. I’m not sure of anything any more.
I move closer to the car and look inside it. Trager is slumped in the driver’s seat, his neck twisted, a streak of blood on the side of his face.
He’s clearly dead.
Holy fuck.
Teddy Trager is dead.
A single, clear question forms in my head. What just happened? What just happened? What just happened? Trager was really angry – and, okay, with justification, I can’t argue with that – but he pushes me out of a speeding car? That’s the kind of shit you get to pull when you’re a billionaire? I switch my gaze from Trager’s face to my own clenched fist, to the corresponding streak of blood on it, and I almost throw up. I was acting in self-defence, that’s obvious – that’s obvious – but did my punch to his face make him dizzy, cause him to lose control and crash the car?
Fuck.
Then something occurs to me. There’s no airbag. Why is there no airbag?
I look around and try to focus. I do a quick, panicky rundown of my options. One, get the hell out of here right now, run and keep running until I’m far away. Two, wait for the cops to arrive, come clean, explain everything – it’ll sound weird, sure . . . but it was just an accident, this last part, the crash part, Trager was out of his mind, out of control . . .
‘But sir, if that’s the case, why do you have traces of Mr Trager’s blood on your fist?’
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
A cellphone goes off, fracturing the stillness, and I freeze. It has to be Trager’s. Because it isn’t mine. I let it ring out, but once silence is restored, I stand there paralysed. Almost immediately the phone starts to ring again.
I reach into the car through the open door and extract the phone from Trager’s jacket pocket. The small screen swims before my eyes. It’s a blur. But I can just make out the name on it: Doug Shaw. Again, I let it ring to the end. Then I put the phone away – this time into my own pocket.
As I stand there, pain throbbing faintly beneath icy sheets of adrenalin, a third option forms in my mind. But without allowing it any time to unravel or choke on its own absurdity, I dive right in. I lean forward and start going through Trager’s other pockets, taking out his wallet and keys. I then go around to the other side of the car. The door is buckled and I have to force it open, which is difficult, because as my adrenalin ebbs it’s becoming increasingly evident to me that I have sustained serious injuries. Nevertheless, drawing on some sort of override mechanism, I proceed to pull Trager’s body out of the car. When I have him on the grass, I look behind me.
There are more trees, lots of them, and I think I can hear the sound of a river or a stream somewhere in the background. I lean down, take a hold of the body and drag it – wheezing, grunting, struggling, swearing – until I get it maybe twenty yards off the road. There’s a steep incline here that ends at the edge of what is indeed a small river. I roll the body part of the way down, as far as it’ll go, and then do my best in the near darkness to cover it up with loose branches and leaves.
At one point, as I’m standing there, out of breath, there’s a break in the clouds, and moonlight briefly illuminates the misshapen heap in front of me. It looks like something else at first, I don’t know what, I’m confused, and then it looks like what it is . . . a partially covered dead body. And in the fraction of a second it takes me to turn away, I catch a glimpse of my own face, a greyish, bluish version of it, streaked with something darker, blood or mud, probably both, its eyes open and staring vacantly back up at me . . .
Feeling dizzy, I move a few steps away. Then, as I limp up the little hill again, I take out my phone. It’s on silent, but there are four missed calls from Kate, as well as a single, all-caps text from her that says, ‘WHAT’S HAPPENING?’ Seeing this message on the tiny display is like a severe punch in the gut. It yanks me back to the reality of what is happening, and of what I’ve just done. I want to hit Reply, but I can’t bring myself to do it, because how do I explain this? And apart from anything else, this body here behind me will be pretty much visible in daylight, it’s not as if I’ve buried it or anything, nor is there any prospect, in these circumstances, of me being able to . . . so once tomorrow morning comes, what are we looking at? What’s the window? How long before someone takes a walk by this river?
I’d say a few hours, at best.
And then what? All hell breaks loose? The initial, queasy confusion pulls into the tight focus of an OMG news story? I’m hunted down, arrested, end up in prison, or the psych ward?
But . . .
Backing up a little here, what did I think was going to happen? That I’d finally become Teddy Trager? That I’d take his place? That I’d get to live his life? That I’d get to spend his money? That if there weren’t going to be two Teddy Tragers in the world, couldn’t there at least be one? Even if only for a short while? The level of this delusion is breathtaking and certainly not anything I can subject Kate to – not any more, she’s already put up with enough shit from me as it is. But at the same time, there’s really no reversing this. It’s not as if I can decide to go for option two instead and drag the body back up to the car. I wouldn’t be able to. I’m in too much pain. And, let’s face it, I wouldn’t want to. I’ve set this little exchange programme in motion, so whatever the fallout from that turns out to be – and however fast and relentlessly that rains down on me – I’m going to have to take responsibility . . . for everything.
Which I guess means I’m on my own.
After a moment, I turn around and toss the phone – my phone – back in the direction of Trager’s partially covered body. I do the same with my wallet and my keys. It’s a vain gesture, I know, an impotent protest, little more than a cheap piece of misdirection that won’t fool anyone for very long.
But I don’t care. I limp back towards the mangled car. I take a deep breath and climb in – this time into the driver’s seat. I look at my face in the rear-view mirror, at the smears of blood and the bruising. I lean back in the seat and exhale, trembling – first a bit, then a lot, then shuddering. Soon this will be uncontrollable, and as the pain intensifies, as the general trauma overwhelms my stress response, pummels it and then smothers it, I may go all the way and lose consciousness. In fact, I can already feel this beginning to happen, but before it does, I reach into my jacket pocket and take out Trager’s cellphone.
I fumble with it for a few seconds, then lift it to my ear. I wait, but not for long.
‘911, what is your emergency?’