Jeremy tried her mobile as he looked at a print on the wall, Leviathan. His financial advisor had told him it was a non-volatile asset, but it was horrifying, an enormous, smiling sea thing beneath a small boy’s fishing canoe, miles of ocean with no other human in sight.
Seven digits to four syllables. Alexandra.
For too long he had not trusted luck.
Until Alexandra, his life had been mostly noise, a few false signals, and even now, he did not know who had recommended him into secrecy. He had not at the time asked questions. It was simply one phone call and he’d adhered to another agency after the Wall fell. The Intelligence Corps recruiter had been calm, meditative almost, musing, or maybe mirthlessly amused: “Executive power is limited to reaction politically, and reacting is a little late when we’re past insurgency into car bombs, Armalites, cordite sunup to -set. Corpses don’t react, if you see what I’m saying.” Jeremy had not quite seen what he was saying, had seen only someone telling him, remarkably, he was needed.
He was supposed only to get answers.
He had not always gotten the right ones.
And so that day, the day, the day he met Alexandra, he had wanted to hear nothing for a few hours once more. He’d taken the aisles of the library slowly. Numbers on spines announced boundaries. The subject is not that, they said, delineation in digits. Probably, he had appeared lost because he was searching, and this woman, then a stranger, offered to help him find what he needed. Jeremy removed his gaze from the codes. She came into his eyes sudden and permanent as a photograph. It was an accidental smile, his. He had forgotten happy accidents.
He would trust happy accidents, he decided now.
“You’ve reached Alexandra,” the recording said when she did not respond to his call.