LEFT ON MASONIC. Did you help coordinate my trips with Andrea?”
Nik goes through a yellow light, eliciting a honk from an oncoming Jeep with its top down.
“Now where?”
“Veer right at the corner.” Jeremy and Nik are cruising up a hill, passing a grocery store on their left. In the distance, to the right, downtown, the sunnier part of the city, emerges from the fog. “Then left, past the JCC for a few blocks. The trips to Washington and the Middle East?”
Nik says: “When you didn’t feel like cooperating.”
“No need to be defensive. I’m trying to understand what they wanted from me, what she wanted from me. They didn’t want the algorithm to predict the future of conflict. She said so herself. They weren’t taking the computer seriously. Did you deal with her or anyone else?”
“Her, briefly. She—”
“Left. What?”
Nik turns. “You remember a board meeting we had, a retreat, at the house by Muir Woods?”
Jeremy pictures it. Harry went on some diatribe about the coexistence of the coho and silver salmon in Redwood Creek. “What’s that have to do with Andrea?”
“I came back to the office, and she was there. Late at night.”
“So.”
“Here?” They’re across the street from the Jewish Community Center, slowing. Jeremy watches Nik stare at the large, elegant building with a private security guard standing out front.
In his mind’s eye, Jeremy pictures the Lion of Judah, the symbol for Jerusalem. What was the news report? A man dead with a tattoo of a woman, and a word in Latin: Custos. Guardian.
So what?
“No, two blocks ahead, and to the right, there’s a park. Kids and stuff. Evan says he’ll be there. But I want you to drive past it, see what we see, then decide. So Andrea is at our office, and . . . ?”
“Inside our offices. The ones where we are now. She tells me she’s been trying to get hold of you and that they’ve scheduled one of those trips. She’s there to pick you up.”
“Inside my office or inside the outer area?” The publicly accessible part.
No immediate answer. Nik turns right, pausing to let a hearty dark-skinned woman with a double stroller pass through the crosswalk. Nanny central. Nik swallows, trying to remember. “Your office. She said it was open and she was trying to leave you a note. She said the trip was imminent.”
“How did she seem?”
Nik doesn’t answer, lightly shakes his head, not getting it.
“Stressed? Calm?”
“Not like a burglar, if that’s what you mean.”
Jeremy takes it in. “You never told me.”
“She called you that night. I watched her make the call, listened to her.”
“But the trip didn’t happen.” Jeremy sees the outskirts of the hillside park on the block ahead. “There were a few of those—close scrapes with last-minute Middle East trips.” He can’t remember this particular call or another trip that didn’t materialize. “They told me I was going to be able to field-test my algorithm, first in southern Iraq, then in . . .” He can’t remember the places, all right in that region. “Right around Iran.” He pauses. “Stop, please. Let me out here.”
Nik looks at Jeremy, like he’d prefer a little more clarity. It’s a look frequently elicited by Jeremy, someone who often divulges little, speaks in fragments and clipped ideas, often in challenges or rebuttals. Even now, maybe especially now.
“I’m just saying that none of the trips happened, not to Iraq or any of the surrounding areas. Lots of head fakes. I don’t know what to make of that. I don’t know who or what to trust.” Jeremy looks down at his phone. It’s 11:48. “Peckerhead is not going to be here for a few minutes, if he’s really coming.”
Jeremy looks up, sees they’ve stopped a half block from the park, in front of a trendy Italian restaurant and a five-and-dime liquor store. Across the street, an artsy movie house and a café featuring organic pastries made by “local artisans.”
Walking up the street, some doofus in a lion mask and a sign: “The end is near.”
“Have people no shame?” Nik mutters. He looks ashen.
“You’re really taking the lion thing hard.” Jeremy puts his hand on Nik’s shoulder, causing his assistant to flinch. If Jeremy’s ever touched him with such a gesture of intimacy, it was accidental and after several pomegranate cocktails, maybe when Nik helped carry his drunken lean-to boss to the car. Nik allows himself to look at Jeremy, take in a glance filled with paternal responsibility.
“You’re remarkable, Perry.”
Nik laughs. “I knew I had a real name.”
“You never stopped believing. You have been a stalwart, PeaceNik. The only one, really.” It’s a statement containing an unspoken question: why?
“It was fate,” Nik manages, still half smiling, then clears his throat, fidgets, sees Jeremy’s powerful gaze, then manages: “I never lost my faith.”
Jeremy sees Nik absently scratch his rubbery neck. Sees the chain that holds the cross around Nik’s neck. Jeremy, in an act of subconscious mimicry, feels beneath his shirt, pats the key fob. He puts a hand on Nik’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, I’m not just buttering you up. This is a pep talk. We’re going into . . . battle, forgive the cliché, and I need to know I can count on you, completely.”
Nik stares straight ahead.
“I’m going to meet with Evan but it may well be a trap. In fact, I suspect we’re being watched now. I’ve had my phone on forever, so, at the least, Andrea’s probably somewhere around here, maybe . . . who knows who else.”
“Trap?”
“He wouldn’t meet me if he didn’t want something from me. Guy never in his life took a meeting that didn’t serve him.”
The pair falls silent. Jeremy opens the car door, pauses, looks at the liquor store they’re parked near. In the window, a large blown-up rubber bottle of tequila, a kind of kitsch you might see in Las Vegas. “It’s out of place here.”
Nik follows Jeremy’s gaze.
“But I guess even the trendiest neighborhoods have alcoholics, the real purists.” Jeremy shakes his head. “I’m a conflict-a-holic.” He smiles sadly. “And prone to the non sequitur. You’ve done a hell of a job listening to me all these years. Drive to the other side of the park. Leave your phone on. I’m going to text you and tell you where to pick me up. If you see me running—I’ll head in that direction—drive by and throw a life preserver.”
Jeremy looks down at the countdown clock. It’s just under eight hours.
“Should we pick a place to meet?”
“Good plan, Nik. If we get disconnected, let’s meet at CPMC.”
“The hospital?”
“Right down at Cherry and California. Close enough for me to walk. There’s a lot of chaos at hospitals, which could come in handy. I’ll come bearing answers, the kind that you can rely on only a human to get, not a computer.”
Nik takes in his boss; he’s unable to put a finger on what is strange about the man he’s shadowed for years. “You sure you don’t want me to stay with you?”
“No one knows me better than you do . . .” Jeremy opens the door, pulls out the bag, slings it over his shoulder, leaves his thought unfinished. “Off with you, Nik.” He shuts the door, watches Nik drive off.
He peers at the park, suspecting Evan’s not there yet, if he’s planning to be there. Knowing that Evan, while he’s generally punctual, is also cautious. He’ll wait until he knows Jeremy’s arrived, or maybe someone is scouting the area.
Jeremy, like a computer juggling if-then statements and what-if scenarios, settles on an idea and sprints across the street to the café advertising itself as an organic haven. Lost in thought, he pulls open the door, perhaps a little abruptly, causing heads to pop up to see the zealous interloper. Gazes drop again. Jeremy makes for the back of the café, bypassing the counter, sees a sign for restrooms and stairs leading to a handful of tables in a loft, being mounted by a woman toting a steaming mug and a laptop bag.
He falls in line behind her, climbs the stairs and, seconds later, finds himself in the restroom. To Evan’s number, he texts: “Running 15 minutes late.”
He washes his face, starts to look in the mirror, looks away, stung by a momentary fear that he’ll look up and see the bony, ruined outline of his mother’s face, her judgmental, knowing eyes.
He pokes his head out of the restroom door, seeing nothing particularly suspicious. To his right, an emergency exit, a heavy door, evidently leading to stairs or a fire escape, some waste of money required by the overly bureaucratic building codes.
Jeremy looks back onto the loft, sees that the woman he’d followed up the stairs has her face buried in her work. She’s bundled around the shoulders in a fluffy black coat. He starts for the stairs, nearing the woman, sees her, animal-like, stiffen. She’s using her own fob to log into her computer, settling in.
“I’m very sorry for interrupting,” Jeremy says. “I made a huge mistake.”
The woman looks up with a round face and eyes, mid-thirties, no wedding ring, a jogger’s tan, still keeping in shape, fighting age.
Jeremy half smiles. “I only put seven hundred dollars in my parking meter.”
“Seven hundred dollars?”
“Gives me six minutes. If I don’t add another seven hundred in quarters, I’ll get a ticket, then probably arrested. It’s getting draconian. You don’t by chance have quarters for a seven-hundred-dollar bill.”
She laughs. “Been there. You want me to see if I have quarters?”
“I got ’em.” He widens his smile. “I just want to put my stuff down and establish squatter’s rights on this excellent table. Would you mind watching it while I feed the meter? I promise, when I come back, I’ll not interrupt your work again.” A flirtation that suggests just the opposite.
“Are you okay?” the woman asks.
“The idea of a ticket fills me with dread.”
She laughs. “Feed the meter. I’m not going anywhere.”
Jeremy puts down the leather bag.
He jogs down the stairs, pausing at the door to look back at the woman in the balcony loft, lost in her work. He feels the iPad tucked into the front of his shirt, still with him, the bag empty but maybe serving a purpose that Jeremy’s percolating. He looks left at the park, sitting on a hillside, sloping downward in the opposite direction. He takes a right, heading away from the park, considering his two assumptions: that Evan will be late, or cautious, having received Jeremy’s text; and that Evan will approach the park from the high side, the peak of the park, not the bottom of it. A basic tenet of war, seek the higher ground.
He looks up to discover that he’s right. A block away, on the other side of the street, head down in his device, Evan turns the corner. Jeremy starts running. A plan coming together. He wants to reach Evan before his old Peckerhead partner gets near the park, out of its view, or maybe Evan’s reinforcements. Jeremy passes the movie theater on his right, watching Evan still facing down over his gadget, sees him passing in front of the liquor store, then crosses the street so that he’s now behind Evan.
He hustles behind his ex–business partner and takes him by the elbow.
“What the . . .”
“I need a cold one.”
“A cold . . .”
Jeremy tries to guide Evan into the liquor store. Evan pulls away, then, after several rapid eyeblinks, follows Jeremy inside. Behind the counter, a man looks up, his head wrapped in a red and white kaffiyeh. Jeremy keeps walking to the back of the store, Evan a few steps behind. Then stops. “Jeremy.”
Without looking back, Jeremy reaches under his shirt and pulls out the iPad, holds it over his head, keeps walking. He hears Evan’s loafers click on the cheap liquor store flooring, following.
Seconds later, Jeremy pushes through the doorway marked “Emergency Exit” and finds himself in an alley.
He turns around. Takes in Evan, that smooth skin, the face of commitment, part of the crop of entrepreneurs who believe it when they say their technology companies make money incidentally but are really aimed at changing the world.
Jeremy shoves Evan against the wall.
“Where is she?!”
“Stop!”
Jeremy holds his hands against Evan, the pair looking at the iPad lying on the ground.
“We’re going to do it,” Evan says. “Just like we said.”
“What?”
“Change the world.”
Jeremy swallows, loosens his grip.
“What I’m going to tell you must remain between us.”
Jeremy laughs. But he’s listening.