A secret, which at times Leo found painful to admit even to himself: he liked California.
Oh, he knew all the bad things about the state—it was too left-wing; the state tax criminal; the men and women near depressive in their attire, marching about in their black fleece like a trail of polyester pill bugs. In his residency so far he had been both impressed and enraged by the place: yes, there was the good sushi, ripe apricots, beautiful people (at least in Los Angeles). But simultaneously it was so wasteful, of everything—talent, money, clean air, and coast—the natives ruined it with their quick talk and idle boasting and lack of follow-through, and when the sun began to drop and he could watch the stars come out in just a T-shirt in January, he thought both that he hated it here, and also that he loved it, and either way this was to be endured, because it was now his home.
He’d lived here a year already. Had kept count of his time, from the morning eighteen months earlier when he’d been called into the office of Colonel Ivan Litvin, chief of Directorate Eight.
“MINERVA will be transitioning to an active position,” Ivan had said, rising heavily to greet Leo from behind his desk. A pudgy finger to the ceiling, as if to say: Orders from the top. MINERVA was Julia’s cryptonym: only a few knew her actual identity, and her case files were kept in a closed office, firewalled physically and electronically from the rest of the bureau.
“When?” Leo asked, sounding surprised, though in reality he’d been expecting such news. The last few months there’d been an outsize amount of press on both Julia and Tangerine, the latter having surpassed Google to become the most visited site in North America. In celebration, Julia had given interview after interview in which she was both strident (“Why are there not more female CEOs?”) and artificially modest (“Tangerine’s accomplishments belong not just to me or Pierre, but to all employees”).
“Soon. I know you’ve wanted to give her room—”
“To maximize her outcome,” Leo interrupted. “For the bureau.”
“Yes, yes, for the bureau. I know you’ve always looked after our interests. But now that MINERVA is already so senior . . . what did they call her on that show, the wunderkind? And the director and the chief, they want some new goodies to wave. It’s promotion time for some.” Ivan sighed. He was a decade older than Leo, half a head shorter but heavier, with a cherub face and a vast collection of cashmere sweaters. Unlike other directorate heads, the majority of whom could be sorted in a Venn diagram between toady and sadist with broad overlap, Ivan was inherently good-natured. He floated through his days buttressed by the mere existence of his father, a former general who remained a mentor to the president. As a teenager, Ivan had spent his summers with his mother in Avignon, and his continuing admiration for France’s food, culture, and clothing had earned him the nickname “the Frog.”
“Do they know what they want?” Leo asked. “Is there a plan?” The SPB was no different from many organizations in that its edicts typically began with vague challenges and predictions of glory, only to sputter on the details, upon which the serfs who’d failed to execute were stomped and eliminated. So Leo was surprised when Ivan reached for a sheet from which he began to list the specific asks: server downloads, deep searches, potential alterations to the algorithm.
“The safety of MINERVA will need to be carefully managed,” Ivan noted. “So we’d like to send a handler to California. Someone who’s never been on a diplomatic posting, who won’t show up on watch lists. While on the ground they can also develop new sources; we’ve lacked local manpower since they closed the San Francisco consulate.”
“The focus should remain MINERVA,” Leo said. “Any handler you send must ensure that she is protected.”
“Of course.” Ivan smiled at him. “So wouldn’t it be best if that handler was you?”
On the beige business cards now in his wallet: Leonid (Leo) Guskov, President, Founder, and Chairman of Russo Import/Export Advisory. The title deliberately clunky, the sort favored by an Eastern European whose closet contained long black leather coats, still worn on occasion.
Most mornings Leo worked from a small office in a tower off of Lawrence Expressway. His building resembled a moderately priced chain hotel, with a round atrium and a waterfall spanning the bottom levels. There Leo met with various would-be entrepreneurs with dreams of importing alcohol, toys, or—as was increasingly common—claiming some new billion-dollar technology.
Though he was not in his office today.
Seated across from Leo on a stained hotel couch was Ned Daly, senior vice president of architecture at one of the world’s largest semiconductor companies, a PhD from Illinois who specialized in circuit design. Ned was the first semiconductor engineer Leo had ever encountered in person, though Leo felt as if they’d met before; the man was one of those people whose physical appearance perfectly matched his job, like a fat pastry chef. Thin silver glasses, curly hair, his heaviness clustered around his middle, as if he wore a pool inflatable underneath his clothes. He’d been silent since Leo entered, and Leo guessed the man had read someplace that whoever spoke first in a negotiation was the loser.
You’re going to need a lot better than some internet articles, Leo thought. You’re going to need something nuclear, given what I have.
They’d picked Ned up through one of Leo’s local assets, a woman referred to as Trisha who regularly advertised herself on a popular escort site. Originally brought over as a programmer, Trisha had quickly discovered that she preferred going on dates and talking dirty to supply chain executives over troubleshooting production issues. By her third month at Google she’d begun moonlighting on CanBuyLove, until her poor attendance was noticed and she was placed on a “performance improvement plan.” Now Trisha didn’t work at all in tech, and Leo had no quarrel with this as she was furnishing far better intelligence than when she’d been a Grade 5 on AdWords. When she received Ned’s initial request, Trisha had done a search, as she did on all her prospective clients—she noted his job title and company (LinkedIn being a wonderful tool for espionage) and messaged Leo. Was he interested? The next day, he replied: Yes.
And so arrangements were made, between Trisha and Ned and Trisha and Leo. Trisha met Ned a few times alone—it was important to establish rapport, an independent relationship.
One hour earlier Leo had sat in the adjoining room of the Crowne Plaza Suites in Milpitas as Trisha and Ned began their latest assignation—the Crowne was where Ned always made his reservations, Trisha said, as it was near LinkTel’s headquarters. Next to Leo was Alexey Kaverine, a low-level operative whom Leo often used as a second man on jobs. Alexey had chosen his American name himself—the ridiculous Chester—but was otherwise reliable. He was six foot four, with a blocky muscular physique and a refined face; he resembled an intellectual wrestler, the sort who might pen simple poetry in his free time. His primary employment was as a waiter at the Madera restaurant in the Rosewood Hotel off of Sand Hill, where he eavesdropped on venture capitalists. He had also discovered a secondary talent, not so dissimilar to Trisha’s: at the end of the night, when there were still some cougars left alone at the bar, Chester was often welcome consolation. “The crumbs that ex-wives drop,” he’d once commented, “when they are angry.”
Each month, when Julia had data to pass, she sent a single icon to a FreeTalk account, which she knew only as HELPER; HELPER was managed and checked twice daily by Chester. Depending on the icon, of which there were twenty-four predetermined options, Chester would then make his way to the specified drop point, retrieving the USB drive and sending it on in the diplomatic pouch. Leo had repeatedly requested that Julia use a physical marker rather than electronic messaging to signal pickups, but she’d refused, citing her schedule: “I’m not going to Philz to be stared at by a bunch of nobodies to shove a pin on a bulletin board.”
“What if the network is compromised?” he’d asked. Meaning FreeTalk.
“You forget,” Julia had said, “that I own the network.”
Because the air-conditioning was either broken or rigged at a high temperature, Leo had sent Chester out earlier for ice; now it sat on the table, heavily sweating, as Chester flicked pieces of it back into the white plastic bucket. “This place is disgusting,” he said, no doubt recalling the service standards of the Rosewood. “The machine, I don’t think it’s ever been cleaned.”
“At least your head is cool,” Leo remarked. While Chester was disguised only by a cap pulled low over his face, Leo wore a combination of dentures, puffy cheeks (achieved with cotton balls), and a sand-colored wig—which, in spite of its cotton liner, still tickled the side of his head. All this, plus his hunched posture, was aligned with the passport photo of one Henk Van Tiel, a chubby Dutchman ostensibly working in London as a sports equipment distributor, whose documents Leo used when needing to travel discreetly abroad. He rarely directly involved himself in such operations anymore, the risk being too great, but Ned was considered a significant enough get that he’d wanted to manage the initial contact.
Chester fanned himself again. “Jesus,” he said. “Shit.”
Leo put a finger to his lips and pointed to the laptop playing the feed from next door. The video was high-definition: you could see even the birthmark on Trisha’s cheek. She wasn’t truly beautiful, or even particularly kempt—sometimes when they met, Leo wondered when she’d last bathed—yet she had a certain appeal, arising from the combination of her low voice and delicate waist, that made her seem both sweet and bawdy. She had already changed into the requested outfit, a navy pleated skirt and white shirt, her hair in a high ponytail. The skirt and shirt were not revealing but rather oversize, as if she’d inherited them from an older sibling.
“Oh gosh,” Trisha was saying in an American accent. “Oh gosh . . . I really don’t know . . .”
Ned walked to the bed, where he removed from his laptop bag a green chopping board. He set it down and then, carefully unzipping a small plastic pouch, laid the powder in neat lines.
“Snort it,” he said.
“Mr. Daly, I can’t, I’m only thirteen, I wouldn’t know how . . .”
“Do you want me to show you?”
“Now, Mr. Daly, they always tell us in school to say no to drugs . . .”
Ned stroked her hair. “I think we should stop the ‘mister’ stuff, don’t you? Next week I’m going to be marrying your mother. But you understand”—breathing—“that soon I’ll be calling in my special privileges . . . We’re going to be one close, very”—heavy breathing—“very, very”—breathing—“happy family . . .”
“That’s enough,” Leo said.
Chester went in first, standard protocol—two meaty hands and a Slavic accent were miraculous for setting a mood. Leo was next: We have photos, we have videos, you have a family, etc. etc. etc. Half the time the subject started to cry. Occasionally you could tell they hadn’t cried for a long time, and as they sobbed they would look to Leo: I am crying, there are tears, don’t you see? Where is my kindness, my attention?
The other half didn’t cry. Ned wasn’t a crier.
“What would you like our relationship to look like?” Leo began. They were alone, Trisha and Chester having left through the connecting door. Trisha likely already on her way home to eat pancakes, as was her routine after client appointments.
Ned didn’t respond. From the articles he’d read, Leo knew Ned was a ballroom dancer, that he went to tango class every Saturday and often brought along his nine-year-old daughter. He was the sort of man women could easily imagine falling in love with them, writing letters, sending flowers. And then gracefully retreating back into friendship when they were inevitably rejected, eventually settling for someone homely.
Though this had not been his behavior with Trisha.
“I want to be clear,” Ned said at last, pushing up his glasses. “I don’t intend to have any kind of relationship with you.”
“That is possible,” Leo said mildly.
A hesitation. “Yes?”
“At this stage, anything is possible.”
Ned eyed him, almost sniffing the air, as if attempting to detect the shitty part of this hand. And of course there was one. “What do you want?”
“Why don’t you tell me first what it is that you’d like. Please. Be thorough.”
“Obviously it’s simple. I would like the videos and photographs and whatever else you have of me destroyed. They could do great damage . . . they could ruin a lot of innocent lives.”
“Okay,” Leo said, and then directed toward Ned a look of such genuine fondness that out of reflex the man actually smiled back before catching himself. “I’m glad you say this. It means you have an understanding of what is important in this situation.” Upon which Leo explained the situation. LinkTel had a product line named Tigertail, comprising microchips and motherboards; the line was hugely successful, shipped in everything from servers to refrigerators to planes. The chips and boards were difficult to infiltrate, nearly impossible to insert back doors into, unless you owned the supply chain. Which LinkTel did. The next generation of Tigertail was set to launch in two years; Ned would work, as he had been doing, to ensure its success. But going forward he would also report to the SPB.
“This isn’t okay,” Ned said, shaking his head. “This isn’t fair.”
Ah, Leo thought. Fairness. That old song.
That afternoon, Leo drove to Julia’s.
Today, as he entered her home (Atherton, surprisingly ornate given what he’d assumed were her personal aesthetics), he found her in an especially foul mood. Leo thought a sign that Julia had truly assimilated as an American was that she seemed to consider herself the first woman to ever become pregnant, complaining endlessly of the weight gain, the backaches, the cramps. Her public face was of course far different: she’d revealed her pregnancy in the manner of a rock star, wearing loose sweaters and coats for months, until the afternoon of Tangerine’s developer conference, when she’d strolled onstage in a clingy black dress, hands cradling her bump. “I’m just thankful to be employed at Tangerine, which so values working mothers,” she said, before making a little frown, presumably thinking of all the unvalued mothers at lesser companies.
Leo was surprised to find Charlie’s parents also present. “A last-minute visit,” Julia explained, with a slight grimace. The Lerners, who were from somewhere in Texas, were polite and assumed, like most Americans, that Leo was interested in the backstory of every Russian and Eastern European in their social circle. They were informing him of a Slovak translator they’d met on the plane—“Did you know they call it Central Europe”—when Julia yanked him away.
“Charlie’s mother especially, I have dreams of strangling her,” she said to him now. They were in her office, where they usually spoke. It was the most isolated room in the house, situated at the end of a hall and nearly impossible to approach without the floor creaking.
“What’s wrong with Betsy?” Leo rather liked Charlie’s mother, whom he’d identified at first meet as one of those older women conducting a synchronized assault against aging on multiple fronts. Her forehead was smooth plaster, her wardrobe tight and colorful, and this afternoon when she greeted him she’d already been wielding a cocktail, explaining that she was “no fun” without one.
“She talks too much. And when she sees me she is always trying to have, what do you call it, girl chat. It’s been worse since the pregnancy. She says I’ll be a different person once the baby comes. That I won’t want to work, that I’ll spend all day staring at the children, as she did.”
“Obviously you won’t.”
“No, never.” She exhaled. “But she’d like that. I know what she thinks. That each time I order takeout I’m insulting Charlie. As if I’ve never cooked or washed a dish in my life.”
Interesting. Though from what Leo had observed, neither Julia nor her husband did much in the domestic sphere, their home instead maintained by a small army of cleaners, gardeners, chefs, and housekeepers. He knew Charlie had not been raised in such splendor; the Lerners hovered a fraction above middle class, the sort of Americans who saved for their anniversary cruise to Spain and upon their return loudly ordered the Rioja at restaurants.
“Be gentle with Betsy,” he advised. “It can be difficult, this stage in a woman’s life.”
“Like I care.”
“Does Charlie know you feel this way?”
Julia wriggled and pressed her hands against her stomach. “I tell him she annoys me. But he is a nonconfrontational person.”
Which you’d have to be, Leo thought, to be successfully married to Julia. “How does Betsy think you can pay for all this without Tangerine?”
Julia snorted and threw her feet onto the ottoman. She was chewing gum—one of her newly acquired pregnancy habits, along with orange soda—and blew a bubble. Leo watched with fascination as the balloon grew larger and more sheer. The gum of his childhood was hard, nonpliable, as if it had come premixed with ice water; the chocolate crumbly and chalklike, white flakes marring its surface.
The bubble popped, and Julia began to chew again. “She thinks Charlie makes enough. He’s a doctor, she says. It is Betsy’s favorite topic, how Charlie is a doctor. How many junior cardiologists are living in this neighborhood, I want to ask. Chartering planes? But women like her have no idea of money.”
“Really.” Leo had a natural interest in this topic, given what so many of his targets wept: I’m in debt, I want a good life for my family, my wife has no idea.
Julia sagged in her chair. “She also talks about her dreams.”
“Americans love to discuss their dreams. They assume everyone is interested in them. You told me about your dream, remember? The one of strangling her.”
“That was only for a few seconds. She’ll go for an hour if you allow her. Her theories on symbolism, yammering on—” Her fist opened and closed, as if independently imagining Betsy’s neck. “She speaks as if Charlie’s the most wonderful person on earth. The greatest son, the best husband.”
“She’s his mother. You’re the one who married him, remember?”
Silence.
Ah, all this tireless conversation, and now he understood: the old familiar story and apparently it was no different in America than any other place. Two young people, who believe that since they are both intelligent, both beautiful, together they might form an even more exceptional union—only to get married and sink into the same tedium as everyone else. But no, Leo reminded himself, Julia and Charlie had been wed for less than a year; they should still be enjoying their choice.
Leo cast an uneasy eye at Julia’s stomach. “It is,” he ventured, “it is going well with Charlie, is it not?”
She glared. “Of course. It’s nothing. Women’s stuff.”
Women’s stuff. Which Leo didn’t wish to hear anything about, but unfortunately he’d long learned that the problems of women usually became the problems of all. “Such as?”
Julia sighed. “I feel unattractive, for one.” She absentmindedly picked at her dress. “I know, the miracle of life, growing a human, but my feet are turning into fat little boats while I’m at it. I can’t sleep. And Charlie, he can’t understand why I’m having such a hard time. Billions of women have given birth before, he keeps saying.”
“I’m sure he cares.”
Julia paused. “Yes. And anyway, all the suffering will be over once I give birth.” She perked up at this thought. “I’ve told Charlie he has to do half the work when the baby arrives. Though truly it’ll be more. I have two launches the week I’m due, and it’s going to be war with the other executives swooping for crumbs. Do you understand what the women are like now, how vicious they are? If I were a man, for sure I’d have already been accused of harassment. The first time in my career I’ve been glad to have a vagina.”
“And what does Charlie say? About his expected participation. He has concerns?”
She regarded Leo with pity. “No. He’s fine. It’s his child, too. He is a modern man.”
“Well, good for you.” Julia was even more naive about men than he’d assumed, Leo thought, if she truly believed Charlie would do half. Likely Charlie even thought this, but really in such matters it was less about the man himself and more about his parents. Was his mother independent, did she control her retirement; when she made dinner, did his father clean up after? Even when a man thought himself a certain way, it was a different matter to circumvent a young lifetime of convenience. At the wedding, Charlie’s father had given a toast: “May your wife bake as well as mine. May your wife shop less than mine.” Betsy laughing the loudest.
Though Leo stayed quiet. It was never a good idea to let assets speak of their emotions too long. Then they would expect it always, and you would never have any peace.
In the evening, they gathered in the dining room. The Lerners were departing Friday—were combining their stay with a weekend in Napa, though Leo had not inquired too closely about their itinerary, not wishing to bear the conversational tax of being mistaken for an oenophile. At one point during the wedding he’d told Betsy and Paul he enjoyed steak, and Paul in particular had latched on to this: “How’s the steak business going?” he chortled when they met again. “You all eating a lot of BEEF?” Julia had either decided to further this farce or forgotten it was made up altogether, and had arranged for a traditional prime rib dinner. The housekeeper, Magda, brought out salad, loaves of warm sourdough, Yorkshire pudding, Brussels sprouts. The chef rolled out the meat to carve tableside, recommending medium rare, and then rolled it back to the kitchen, like a spring-loaded toy.
“In my day it just wasn’t done, having a cook,” Betsy observed as she served herself salad. She wore large hoop earrings and a blouse with slits along the sleeves, the sort of garment that technically showed none of the important parts yet seemed all the more provocative for it.
“Jesús isn’t our regular chef,” Julia said pleasantly. “Usually it’s Tyler, but he said Jesús was better with prime rib. They’re with the same management concierge. Most families in our position use a chef.”
“I’ve never heard of somebody with one.”
“Perhaps it’s a regional thing.”
“Oh, Houston is extremely metropolitan. Maybe a little too much, for my taste. All our friends have cleaners. And housekeepers. Do you know Colt Granville, the CEO of Oiler’s Bank? His wife Doreen is in my book club. She roasts her own chickens.”
Leo looked at Charlie. Even if he was a particularly insensitive sort, which Leo found most physicians were, he should still be attuned to major shifts in mood: already in choppy conversational waters, an iceberg now loomed ahead. But Charlie said nothing, only raised his beer and licked its foam.
Betsy was also imbibing. For dinner she had mixed a new cocktail, something with rum and lemon juice that had come out the color of amber. “I thought you enjoyed cooking,” she said, stirring. “I read it in one of those interviews you like to do.”
“I don’t like to do those interviews. I’m asked to do them and I participate because it’s my job.”
“My goodness, you do so many things for that company.” Betsy took a long sip. “As soon as you’re off a plane, it seems like you’re on another. I’m not sure I could manage it all.”
“Yes,” said Julia evenly. “It’s not for everyone.”
“Coming through,” Paul said. He spooned a mass of Yorkshire pudding onto his plate, making appreciative noises while keeping his head low. Charlie had finally set down his beer and was observing his mother.
“Once you’re on maternity leave, you might have some time to experiment in the kitchen,” Betsy said as she extended a pearly-painted finger to snag a brown tear of gravy from Paul’s plate before it fell. “I know that when Charlie was young, he just loved my lemon chicken. Wouldn’t take anything else, was the pickiest eater, but that chicken kept him healthy. No special seasoning, either. He barely got sick when he was little. You’ll see what I’m talking about once you have your own. Some kids get sick all the time. It isn’t natural.”
“Mom,” Charlie said, “Julia’s too busy to spend time cooking.”
If Betsy had hurt feelings, she hid them well. “I just remember reading in so many of those articles how Julia loved cooking and baking . . . I swore I read it was one of her favorite hobbies.”
“I don’t actually like to cook,” Julia cut in. Chef Jesús and Magda, perhaps sensing danger, had not reentered the room. “It’s just one of the things I say, because otherwise I would be unpalatable to women, even though were a man to be asked if he cooked and cleaned it’d absolutely be considered an idiotic question, and since we’re discussing this I might add that Charlie is an extremely unenthusiastic tidier, and I have often wondered what kind of household he grew up in, that he believes he can simply drop his boxers on the floor—”
“Excuse me.” Leo stood. “I just recalled I had some family photos to show Julia.”
The three original Lerners stared after them as they left: Charlie and Paul with the same flat confusion, Betsy with relieved pleasure, as if she’d just peeled loose a scab.
“What did I tell you about being careful?” Leo hissed once they were back inside the office.
Julia waddled through and closed the door. “Do you really have pictures of my mother?”
“No!” Was she losing her mind? He’d been told pregnancy messed with the female brain, but had always assumed it one of those made-up American concepts, like being “unable to manage stress” or “bad at test taking.”
“Oh. So you are not in contact with her?”
“No!” Leo said again. He clamped his palms against his forehead. “I only wanted to remove you from the table. The talk was going in the entirely wrong direction.” He crossed his arms and then, even though he preferred to stand, sat across from her on the sofa. “I wouldn’t be pleased if my wife spoke to my mother like that.”
“Oh? So you think your theoretical wife would be pleased if your mother came to her home and ate her food and guzzled her liquor and then interrogated her about her housekeeping?”
“You have to keep Charlie happy. A good marriage is important. Americans don’t like it when women have relationship problems. Especially with a new baby.” Leo recalled Julia’s file, the history of Karl and Nina. Julia had likely never even seen any kind of functional marriage, he reminded himself.
Julia harrumphed. “Charlie has to keep me happy.” Then, in response to his look: “Oh, I’m an excellent wife. And I told you, Charlie is on my side.”
For now, Leo thought. You are newly wed and rich; you don’t yet know what it is like to be together longer, to watch each other become heavier, angrier, tired. He’d always known Julia didn’t understand men, but had hoped it wouldn’t pose a major problem, as long as she held her position.
Her job. Her job, and all of its access, was key.
Leo removed from his pocket a sheet of lined paper. He’d been procrastinating, hoping for a better mood, but the opportunity hadn’t come. “For you.”
She made him wait before she reached. “What’s this?”
“A list. If there’s no mark next to the name, then all I need is a basic search. What you’ve already been doing—messages, sites visited, any unusual activity.”
She scanned the paper. “Ned Daly? The LinkTel exec? Pierre tried to hire him once. And Dmitri Marin, I thought he was anti-Kremlin, that he’d gone all rogue.”
Leo shifted uneasily. Julia would sometimes do this, ask him about the names, even though he never answered any of her queries. Dmitri—the former CFO of Gazprom, now known in the West as the “rogue oligarch,” who posted tabloid-style videos detailing the Kremlin’s corruptions—was in reality executing a long-range plan with the SPB, though Dmitri had wrangled himself a plum deal in the process. Two billion he’d been allowed to keep, from that great stew of privatization into which decades earlier he’d thrust his hands, and with these funds he’d now reinvented himself as a venture capitalist in Silicon Valley. The legend of a reformed oligarch, one who’d fled Russia and all its nefarious influences, had been enough for a good handful of established unicorns to not only accept Dmitri’s money, but name him to their boards.
“We run searches for a variety of reasons. How have you been managing those, by the way?” he asked, changing the topic. “You never told me.” Because she was always careful to reveal as little as possible—as if I don’t know your game, Julia.
She studied him and exhaled, as if smoking an invisible cigarette. “I use an internal tool called God Mode. Pierre was supposed to have disabled it, but he never did. Kicked all the executives off, though, except me and him.”
“Does Pierre know you’re using it?”
“No. But either way my login is anonymous. The same as for my FreeTalk account. User 555.” She looked again at the list. “Why’s this one highlighted?”
He leaned forward. “For that one we’ll need location data.” He spoke casually, easily. As if it were only a small task, of passing concern.
“Jefferson Caine. Who’s that?”
“How am I to know? I receive the list from above, same as you.”
“And this Jefferson, the SPB wants to know where he is?”
“Yes.” Then: “You may have to transmit his location real-time, using FreeTalk. Do you have access yet?”
“I should,” she said, still studying the paper, but now one hand was on her stomach and he knew her attention was fading. “Soon. The second founder looks to be on his way out. I’ve been pushing to finalize the data merge; after that’s done, I can access location. I’m targeting for after I give birth.”
“It can’t be done before?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
She looked amused at his persistence. “Because it’s actually an incredible violation of user privacy. What Pierre and I make speeches about, promising the public and Congress we would never, ever do.”
“Then how do you know you’ll succeed in merging the data?”
“I’ll make the final argument right before I go to the hospital. Americans, they have a thing for new mothers. I’ll be untouchable then.”
“All right.” Leo knew he couldn’t push further. “You’ve been doing good work,” he added. “Like with the source code for Tangerine Mail.” Which Julia had passed days earlier. He’d anticipated a bigger fuss, but in the end she’d delivered without complaint.
“You are welcome,” she said lightly. Years earlier, whenever Leo had issued Julia a compliment, she would redden and stammer, which he’d informed her was unacceptable. To succeed was to have confidence: it was the underpinning of all achievement, both fraudulent and earned. Yet the ease with which she now took his praise brought forth a wave of melancholy.
“Are you taking a long leave?” Leo eyed Julia’s feet, which she’d tossed up next to him on the couch. They were indeed bloated and pained-looking, and the toes were bright red.
“Likely not. I’ll have to find a way to keep track of Pierre while not returning too early. I’ve been told working mothers are paying close attention to the length of my maternity leave.” She smiled silkily. “Do you care?”
“No, as long as you are not replaced while you’re away.”
“Don’t worry about my job. Worry about yours.”
Your job is my job, Leo thought. But he didn’t continue. He wanted to leave; suddenly he found himself disliking her, for no specific reason.
By the next morning the feeling had mostly subsided. Still, he took a day trip by himself to Half Moon Bay as a distraction. The roads curving and twisting, the expanse of the Pacific just on the other side; no barriers between the road and the cliff’s drop to the water, and it amazed him that in a society as litigious as America’s, such dangerous beauty could still exist.
The following week he received notice that Julia had gone into labor. It’s a girl, Charlie shouted over the phone. Leo made all the right noises, said all the necessary words, but they felt muffled in his head, as if he were speaking into a tin can. After they hung up, as he sat in his office in Santa Clara, he was struck with the urge to cry—it just seemed so sad, a new soul coming into this dirty world.