by Hammond, Ray
She watched Tye take the blow and she saw that it hurt. But he was holding himself in tight control.
She ventured further. ‘Where’s his mother? Every boy needs a mother and I never hear him talk about her.’
Tye looked at her with a long steady gaze. ‘His mother left when he was a baby, Doctor. I’m sure HR must have explained that when you joined us. It is one of the main reasons I want your help in keeping him as, well, ordinary as possible.’ He paused. ‘Given the circumstances.’
The butler and maid returned with a choice of tea or coffee. Calypso chose to have some more wine as she thought about what she had been told. She took another hot towel that was offered. When the servants had gone, Tye moved the conversation forward.
‘What would you suggest we do, Calypso? How can we help Tommy?’
She made a decision about her own future and about Tommy’s. ‘I’ll stay and help if he is allowed more freedom, Tom. That’s my condition.’
Tye raised his eyebrows.
‘I want him to go to Hope School full time,’ she said. ‘He has too much private tutoring. He must mix with other children. If you remember what I said earlier about the whole population on this island, you should apply it to him also. As far as I can see he’s not picking up any of the normal childhood illnesses: no measles, no mumps, no chicken pox, no coughs or colds. He’s not developing any resistance to them and if he catches them later they could be serious.’
Calypso looked to see if her arguments were hitting home but Tye had put his sunglasses back on and she couldn’t read him. She wondered if she could venture a discussion about his own personal phobias.
‘I’ll think about it.’
‘Do you mind . . .’ She hesitated, then she plunged, as was her way. ‘Why do you wear face masks? What’s all this with the antiseptic towels? Airborne bacteria are good for us, Tom. It’s that resistance thing again.’
He smiled, broadly this time, flashing perfect teeth. ‘It’s about money, Calypso,’ he explained with a small shake of his head. ‘If you get a cold and you can’t work, what does it cost you – a few days’ pay. Perhaps a few thousand dollars. I’m not bragging here, but if I miss a day, well . . .’
He didn’t need to continue and Calypso saw his point. Over ninety per cent of common illnesses – colds, fevers, viruses – are transmitted by airborne infective agents. He was right: what would cause ordinary people merely annoyance would cost him – or his corporation – tens of millions of dollars, just through the business delays caused by his absence. But still it seemed to her more likely that he was simply a phobic pangermic hiding behind this plausible excuse. How sad to be such a prisoner, she thought.
‘Any other questions, Calypso?’
She uncrossed her legs. From the angle of his head she wondered if he was staring at her body.
‘I want Tommy to come to Mayaguana with me – to visit my mother . . . and my nieces and nephews.’
Tye shook his head.
‘That’s out of the question, Doctor,’ he said. ‘He can’t leave the island.’
*
Joe Tinkler added the usual half-and-half to his fibre and banana flakes and ate breakfast standing beside his kitchen window. Far below, the Manhattan rush hour was getting under way.
But what was he doing up? He’d got out of his bed simply from habit. After fifteen years with Rakusen-Webber, his life had become a firmly fixed routine. He realized he was still in a state of shock. By the time he had got back to his own office the word had already spread and his assistant wasn’t at her desk. All the other staff on the fund-management floor seemed heavily preoccupied with their screens or with voice calls. Two burly security men had been waiting outside his office door, their faces impassive.
It hadn’t taken Joe long to remove the traces of his years with the firm and in ten minutes he had packed all the physical objects he owned into a small plastic crate that Security had thoughtfully provided. He turned to his screens to send some internal ‘goodbye’ e-mails and discovered that he was already locked out of the bank’s network. He shrugged and lifted the crate.
The security men walked beside him to the elevator and rode with him to the ground floor in silence. At the security checkpoint Norbert Jones, the man who had checked Joe in and out of the building every working day for over a decade, held out his hand.
‘I’ve got to have your bank ident, Mr Tinkler,’ he said sadly.
Joe nodded and put the crate down on the man’s desk. He opened his shirt and slipped his neck chain around until he found the fastener. He felt no anger or sorrow: he was in shock, functioning automatically. After slipping the laminated digital ident card from its chain, he handed it to Norbert. Then he had picked up his crate and left the building without saying a word.
Joe finished his cereal and went back to his bedroom, where he pulled on shorts and a sweatshirt. Whatever was going to happen in the future, he would make good use of his enforced leisure now, he decided. Getting back in shape was the first priority. He clipped his VideoMate to his running belt, inserted his earpieces, pulled the cord of his Ray Ban Electros over his neck and set off.
It was too early for the day to be hot and Joe headed for the embankment, under the elevated highway. The river sparkled in the early-morning sunlight and he took it easy, aware that his infrequent Sunday jogs had not prepared his body for really strenuous exercise. There were few others out running this weekday morning. Most people in the city were getting to work.
He got down to the Battery just as a ferry from Staten Island arrived. He ran on past the ferry terminal and stopped by the low wall surrounding the isolated little green which surrounded one of the memorials to those who had died in the World Trade Center terrorist atrocity at the beginning of the century. He checked his pulse and blood pressure and stretched out his calf muscles, resting his feet, in turn, on the wall.
He straightened to watch the stream of workers flooding off the ferry, out through the terminal building and into the subway. The clock on the small terminal tower told him it was still only 7.30 a.m.
Joe jogged over to a snack stand near the bus stops. He ordered a large black Colombian coffee and transferred payment from his LifeWatch.
He went back to the low wall and swung his feet over to sit and watch as the ferry began its return journey. He sipped at his coffee as it was too hot to drink quickly.
‘Hey, man, mind if I join you?’
Joe looked up and saw a bulky young black man in a dark business suit. He too was holding a plastic cup of coffee.
Joe shrugged. There was plenty of wall.
The stranger sat down a few feet to Joe’s right. He sipped his coffee and blew on it.
‘Beautiful morning.’
Joe nodded and looked away.
‘It’s OK, Mr Tinkler,’ the man said quietly, moving closer. ‘Here.’ He produced an old-fashioned leather wallet from inside his jacket, opened it and proffered the badge to Joe.
‘I’m with the United Nations,’ explained Chevannes. ‘Their Security Agency.’
Joe took the badge and studied it. The laminated card appeared genuine and the photo matched its bearer’s face. ‘Do you mind?’ asked Joe as he unclipped his VideoMate.
‘It won’t be working, I’m afraid,’ Chevannes pointed out. ‘We’re blocking all communications at the moment.’
Joe stared at the unit. A blinking red LED confirmed there was no signal.
‘If I can’t check your ident you can’t expect me to talk to you,’ reasoned Joe, rising to his feet and holding out the badge to its owner.
Chevannes rose and took it from him. ‘We’d like to have a meeting with you, Mr Tinkler, over at the UN building. You might be able to help us with something.’
Joe looked around him. The street was now quiet. Then he noticed an illegally parked black sedan at the ferry terminal entrance.
‘What about?’ asked Joe.
‘It’s about someone who was very important to you – un
til yesterday. Thomas Tye.’
Joe laughed out loud. ‘You’ve got the wrong guy.’ He smiled. ‘I’ve never met him.’
‘But he knows all about you,’ insisted Chevannes. ‘You were a subject of major discussion for him only a couple of days ago.’
Joe stared blankly at the intelligence officer.
‘When he was a house guest of Richard Rakusen – out in the Hamptons.’
*
The journey had been long, difficult and, as far as he could tell, without point. Marsello Furtrado had struggled to overcome his resentment at his boss’s imperious commands but the heat and gritty friction of travel in West Africa had worn him down.
‘Just get there,’ Tye had insisted. ‘It’s for the Russian deal.’
When Furtrado had started to enquire about the precise purpose of his mission he had found himself watching the white noise of an empty carrier signal. The holo-conference was over. He didn’t even know where Cape Verde was. He would have to look it up. Then Connie had provided a few more details, but these were almost as scant.
‘Yes, he insists you go personally,’ she had confirmed. ‘He’ll tell you more once you’re there. Just make sure you’re on the island before the thirteenth.’
Which hadn’t been so easy. Most of Furtrado’s work was concerned with making international acquisitions and overseeing the patent-protection team and he ran a forty-person office out of Washington DC while also maintaining his office within the corporate headquarters on Hope Island. Because he could begin his journey from either location he had expected flight arrangements to be straightforward.
As senior counsel for the Tye Corporation and keeper of Thomas Tye’s greatest commercial secrets he had the right to use a jet from the Tye corporate flight but, after his assistant had filed his requisition, Logistics informed his office that no aircraft would be available on those dates. Furtrado had never known all six supersonic jets belonging to the company flight to be busy ten days in advance. He then ordered his assistant to charter a corporate jet but his request was turned down by Logistics without explanation. The attorney next turned to Connie.
‘We don’t want a trail, Marsello,’ she had explained with one of her best smiles. ‘Charter people talk – about their passengers and their destinations. Take scheduled flights, if you don’t mind.’
He had minded, very much. Reluctantly he had taken a Delta 797 subsonic red-eye to Paris and had worked all the way, conducting meetings in six different Tye regional subsidiaries from his private ‘discretion-shielded’ office on the commercial deck. Once there, he endured a three-hour wait before catching an Air-France connection to Lisbon in Portugal. He had also worked on this trip but Tye’s European APU had been unable to verify the electronic security of his workspace so he had been forced to deal only with non-sensitive administration matters. Once in Lisbon he had found it necessary to check into a Holiday Inn at the airport to await a TAP flight that would take him on to Dakar in Senegal.
During his several flights he had reviewed the scant amount of material his assistant had been able to collect about these islands. The remote archipelago was stuck in the middle of the equatorial Atlantic, and the inhabitants spoke Portuguese, which, Furtrado assumed, was one of the reasons he himself had been dispatched. But this wasn’t a good enough reason on its own. These days everybody used VideoMates and the language-translation modules were so cheap and so efficient that people could buy or rent the software they needed for any particular occasion. Neither could he see any connection with the forthcoming Russian deal that had been occupying so much of his time and he couldn’t imagine that his legendary negotiating skills would be needed in such a remote location.
In Dakar he had had to make yet another overnight stay before catching a tiny propeller-driven plane of Air Cabo Verde to cover the 400-mile trip due west into the Atlantic. After a three-hour buffeting by the Trade Winds, which made working impossible, he had landed at a tiny airstrip on São Tiago, the main island of the Cape Verde group. He followed the directions he had been given and, as no alternative was available, carried his own suit bag and briefcase down the long dusty access road to a small wooden quay. He was due to catch the noon ferry to Fogo, the most westerly of the larger islands in the group. As always, Furtrado was immaculately dressed, today wearing a shot-silk grey business suit and burgundy loafers. But, despite his lightweight outfit, he was bathed in perspiration and unavoidably maculate by the time the ferry arrived.
The sea breeze cooled him off quickly, however, and he was soon wishing for the lengthy journey to be over. Though still conducting meetings at different locations around the globe, he was feeling a sense of personal dislocation: increasingly, he couldn’t shut out his physical surroundings to concentrate on the issues at hand. The immense emptiness of the mid-Atlantic Ocean thoroughly distracted him.
It was early evening by the time the craft arrived at the tiny harbour of São Fillipe and Furtrado picked up his bag, walked down the rough-hewn gangplank and, following a seaman’s directions, turned away from the small township and set off along the dirt road beside the beach. After half a mile he saw what he hoped was the end of his quest. It was a small house that stood inside a low drystone wall built out of rough basalt rock – solidified lava that had once spewed from the flat peak of the volcano two thousand feet above. Outside the two-storey house was an ancient, weather-beaten wooden sign. Furtrado stopped to make out the lettering: Pensão Hollywood. Despite its improbable name, this was the place.
He walked up the worn cobbled path and knocked on the door. He was greeted by an elderly but neatly dressed white man in cardigan and carpet slippers who was clearly expecting him. Once he heard Furtrado’s native Portuguese, the man became all smiles and, despite the younger man’s resistance, insisted on carrying his luggage as he led the way to an upstairs room at the front of the house.
‘Just one or two nights your secretary said, Senhor?’ enquired the owner. ‘A very short break.’
Furtrado agreed. He was becoming increasingly puzzled. There could be nothing here worthy of acquisition by the Tye Group and, in particular, nothing worthy of the attentions of Marsello Furtrado, the maestro of such activities. He knew that in the office they called him ‘Must-Sell-O!’ behind his back but, like all over-dressed, over-mannered rastaquouères, he missed the irony.
As soon as he was alone he opened his VideoMate and found it lacked a signal. He assumed that there was no local wireless network on these islands, so he moved to the window, watched the satellite icon appear and called Connie.
‘Well, I’ve made it here,’ he confirmed, ‘but God only knows why. What now?’
‘Tom says well done,’ relayed Connie, with a smile. ‘What time do you normally wake up?’
Furtrado was too tired to wonder why she wanted to know. ‘Usually around six, but I’m completely disorientated.’
‘We’ll call you at five your time,’ she told him. ‘Have a good evening.’
He was cheered up by an excellent swordfish steak in piripiri sauce. Furtrado was the only guest in the tiny dining room and his host lingered to see if conversation would be forthcoming.
‘This is excellent,’ complimented the lawyer, as he savoured the tender flesh of the fish and added oil and vinegar to his tomato, onion and chickpea salad.
The man nodded appreciatively. ‘Thank you. I enjoy cooking.’
As Furtrado still had no idea what was expected of him in this remote location he decided to make an ally.
‘Will you join me?’ he asked. ‘At least for a glass of this vinho – is it Portuguese?’
‘It’s from Bucellas,’ the chef-hotelier confirmed as he pulled out a chair on the other side of the oval table. ‘Near Lisboa. We have to import everything. Little grows here in this godforsaken place,’ he grumbled, plunging unhesitatingly into saudade – the Portuguese delight in melancholy. ‘Why they called this Cape Verde, I don’t know.’
The white wine was poured and, as he conti
nued eating, the lawyer assumed that his own language skills might indeed have been the reason for his presence here. The local dialect, Furtrado learned, was a combination of Portuguese and Crioulo, a blend of West African words with a few Tupi and Guarani paronymies thrown in for good measure. He had never heard of a ‘Cape Verde’ language-translation module being available for a VideoMate and it certainly added to his own lexicon.
Furtrado also discovered that the semi-barren islands of Cape Verde had formed on the tips of huge volcanoes that reached upwards from the Atlantic seabed 2,000 metres below. He learned that the people of this former Portuguese colony survived by providing fuel, provisions and other services to the world’s shipping as it passed by and, the hotel owner assured him, by servicing a growing tourist industry. Furtrado wondered who would seek out such arid isolation voluntarily.
Twice during the evening, the hotelier probed his solitary guest about the reason for his visit and the counsellor fobbed him off with a story about needing some time alone for reading and research. In turn, Furtrado had asked him about Russian connections with the islands, but the owner’s blank stare confirmed the truth of his denials. They sealed their new, somewhat uncertain, friendship with a fiery Portuguese aguardiente.
Despite his disorientation and bewilderment, the brandy helped Furtrado sleep soundly and he was aware of enjoying a deep and vivid dream about his estranged twin brother when he was woken by his VideoMate trilling on the bedside table under the window. He switched on the table lamp and answered.
‘Morning, Marsello. Sleep well?’
Tom was circling inside his Holo-Theater.
‘Morning,’ managed Furtrado, looking at the time display. The local time was 4.50 a.m. On Hope Island, the same time zone as New York, it was now ten minutes before one a.m.
‘What’s the weather like in Cape Verde?’ asked Tom.
‘Fine,’ responded Furtrado absently. He shook his head in an attempt to wake up fully. He was obviously missing something here.
