by Chris Knopf
"It's not like that," I said.
"When you asked me what I thought was going on at the Swan, I almost told you that Anika was trying to seduce you, but thought better of it. You might realize it, or you might not. You can be pretty oblivious about that sort of thing."
She was right about that, having little experience with the romantic dance. But this time, Anika had left little room for ambiguity. None, actually, which I shared with Amanda.
"I've never asked you to be faithful," said Amanda, her voice stripped of inflection, "and I won't now. I just don't want to feel like a fool."
"I have no intention," I started to say, but she stopped me by putting her fingertips on my lips.
"Don't say it. I know your intentions are good. But things happen. Let's leave it there."
I didn't want to, but she stuck the backpack in my hands and hustled me up the companionway. I knew her well enough to leave without further protest.
I tied the dinghy off under the dock with a mixture of confidence and dread. There were no guarantees Amanda could drift off unnoticed, or that I hadn't been seen separating the dinghy, or that either of us wouldn't be followed, but since I had no reason to think any of these things would happen, it felt reasonable to ignore unsubstantiated fears, which I almost did.
Christian Fey was pulling his Mercedes station wagon into the hotel parking area as we reached the end of the dock. The car jerked to a stop, a small cloud rising around the wheels where they dug into the sandy gravel. His normally placid face was alight with angry worry. I hung back when Anika approached him so I didn't hear what they said to each other, but it was clear she was pushing him hard and he was fighting back. When he saw me standing there, he walked over.
"I don't know why my daughter involved you in this," he said. "I appreciate your concern, but it's a simple family matter."
"I sure get a lot of appreciation on this island and not much else," I said. "Has your son done this before?"
Fey shook his head, then stopped himself.
"Really, Mr. Acquillo," he said. "We don't need your help."
"It's Sam, and yes you do. Where're the boys and girls from Subversive Technologies?"
"They said they were going sightseeing."
"That's a short morning's work. I don't suppose you'll tell me what's really going on," I said.
Fey's quizzical look was almost convincing.
"What do you mean?" he asked.
"Quit the bullshit. Hammon and 't Hooft aren't here to go bird watching. Something's going on with Subversive that caused them to make a surprise visit. Something big enough to drag in Sanderfreud. They want something from you, but so far the trip hasn't paid off too well."
Fey struck an imperious pose of a type only a European can achieve. Chin up, lips pursed, hauteur leaking out of every pore.
"You seem to know an awful lot for a boat deliveryman," he said.
"I watched you guys in the bar last night. My dog could have figured that one out."
"Sam used to be senior vice president for R&D at Consolidated Global Energies. The third largest hydrocarbon processor in the world," said Anika, "before they imploded. Not his fault. He was long gone."
To his credit, Fey shook that off, though the tenor of the conversation took a different turn.
"Buyouts are always messy things," he said. "We're still haggling over silly details."
"I don't believe you," I said. I could feel Anika stiffen, the reaction communicated across three feet of breezy Long Island Sound air. "Not that it's any of my business. But I might be able to help you out if you let me in on it."
He glowered at me, his hands on his hips, his broad shoulders squared off. Anika reached out and took his forearm.
"If you don't," she said to him, in a soft, firm voice, "I will."
Suddenly distracted, Fey looked over my shoulder toward the Inner Harbor.
"Isn't that your boat?" he asked.
I didn't bother to turn around.
"Amanda has to get back to Southampton. She's leaving Carpe in New London. I'll take the ferry over and pick up the boat when I can. Your daughter said I could have a room."
Anika nodded, even though this was news to her.
Fey did his best to maintain a manly resistance, but something about seeing Amanda float away undermined his resolve.
"Come inside," he said to me. "I need a cup of tea."
We went into the woody darkness of the Swan's lobby, then through the sitting room and out to the dining area that overlooked the docks, the brightest part of the building. Fey went into the kitchen to get the tea while Anika and I waited at a round table. I started to ask her a question, but she cut me off and pointed toward the kitchen.
"Let him tell you," she said. "It'll be good for him."
So I kept quiet until we each had our teacups and saucers in front of us. Of all the beverages I might pick to drink at any moment, regular tea would barely make the list.
"So how does this work?" I asked.
Anika helped me through the mechanics, which I found ridiculously more complicated than building a simple cup of coffee, though I kept my criticism at a minimum.
"Didn't drinking tea cause the fall of the British Empire?"
Despite the aspersions, the first sip seemed to calm Anika and Christian alike. The elder Fey leaned his head back and closed his eyes.
"Children are the best and worst thing that can happen to a person," he said, opening his eyes.
"Not sure how to take that one," said Anika.
"There's no better example than Axel. A mind like a Formula One race car with the maturity of a go cart."
"Interesting metaphor," I said.
"Thank you. I've used it before. With the therapists who've tried to help me cope with this delectable dichotomy. With the constant joy and sorrow."
"That's great, Dad. How're we going to find him?" said Anika.
"Maybe we're not," he said, his voice rising several decibels above appropriate.
Anika sat back in her seat, both hands turning her teacup, her eyes frustrated and patient, fixed on her father.
"Did you say something to him? Do something to him?" she asked, her voice low, but firm.
Fey looked down and shook his head.
"I've barely spoken to him since Hammon and his minions arrived. And even if I had, he's not that sensitive. Lord knows," he said, looking over at Anika for confirmation. She nodded her head.
"Another blessing and a curse," she said to me.
"How much did Axel contribute to N-Spock 5.0?" I asked.
The Feys looked at each other.
"He helped around the edges," said Fey.
"So what's the problem?" I asked. "Why the delay?"
The two Feys sat back in their chairs as if pulled by invisible strings. Anika crossed her legs and Christian folded his hands in his lap. They looked at each other, then back at me, then back at each other.
"We don't know," said Christian, finally.
"Yes we do," said Anika. "They can't transfer essential data from the existing version into 5.0. What they don't know is why."
Fey was unhappy, but couldn't resist further explanation.
"Let's pretend you're still running your lab and you're on N-Spock 4.0," he said. "You have a vast-too small a word-a galactic amount of data that you'll need to transfer when you upgrade to 5.0. For some reason, when they try to do this in beta test, it gets three quarters of the way through and then suddenly turns chaotic and the whole program crashes. This doesn't happen with fresh data, only during the mass conversion of an existing database. Therefore, they can prove the program is light-years ahead of anything they developed in the past, or any competitor could conceive of today, but when they try to make a legitimate conversion, the application blows itself up. And it's not a virus, or a glitch you can isolate and reverse. It's in the body of the code itself. Inextricably intertwined."
"Who wrote the code?" I said.
After a long pause, Anika n
odded toward Fey.
"My father owns the heart of N-Spock. The other developers, Axel included, just played around with the fingers and toes."
"And it can't be reverse engineered," I said.
"No. Impossible. They don't call it code for nothing," said Fey. He turned to me. "You didn't tell us you had experience with N-Spock. I probably sounded quite haughty."
"I'm a private person, Mr. Fey," I told him. "What you might have said to me is my problem, not yours."
It was my turn to sit back in my chair and take a sip of tea, but I could barely get the stuff down my throat.
"What's the Swan's policy on coffee?" I asked Anika.
She smirked at me, and left for the kitchen.
"Is that why they were all here, Hammon and 't Hooft, and Sanderfreud? To pressure you to solve the problem?" I asked.
Fey sat in the chair with his elbows resting on his knees, his eyes staring down at the carpet.
"Hammon and I had a fundamental disagreement on how to migrate to 5.0. He had this notion we could fasttrack the development process, his terms, leaving out crucial testing and documentation phases. He based this foolishness on our prior transitions from 1.0 to 4.0, not appreciating that these were refinements of our base code, not the ground-up creation of a new application, which needed all new underlying systems, hardware, servers and networksthe technological superstructure people like Hammon disdain, not understanding the challenge in coordinating such vast complexity and still making it look preordained."
"I thought he helped create the original N-Spock."
Fey huffed.
"He had the good sense or good luck to support my ideas, which were unproven in those days. And the chutzpah to convince people like Myron to come aboard and help sell investors. His reputation for technical prowess was a creation of the media, which Hammon never disavowed. I didn't care, as long as I was given the resources needed to establish proof of concept. Which I did with C-Scale, our first commercially viable program. That paved the way for N-Spock."
"So are they blaming problems with 5.0 on you?" I asked.
His smile held little humor.
"Who else can they blame? It's my program at the core. Except that they didn't let me design it the way I wanted to. Now they think I can wave a magic wand and make the problem go away. Can't be done."
As I listened to him, a certain perverse pleasure competed with an anxious twist in my guts, a genuine reaction to phantoms of my past. I knew exactly what he meant and its significance. I'd lived the experience daily, battling people with power over me who had no grasp of the sensitive interdependence of millions of variables, the most important of which was the arch of time. Certain things have to be done thoroughly and in the right order. I knew now what Fey had been arguing, and why his position was anathema to Hammon. The only solution to curing N-Spock was to start at the beginning and essentially rewrite the code, this time applying the proper testing protocols at each stage before moving on to the next. Not going to happen in the next three months.
I shared with Fey what I was thinking, including a few examples from my own experience. He nodded, his posture softening, aware now that I was part of the brotherhood.
"So you know. Speaking truth to power is child's play compared to speaking common sense to the willfully ignorant " he said.
Anika came out of the kitchen with a mug and a small carafe of coffee, her face creased with worry. I was reminded of how I came to be sitting there.
"Had Axel been acting strangely in any way in the last few days?" I asked her.
She shook her head.
"No, but he might have been thinking strangely. Thinking and acting are two different things with Axel. I also hadn't spoken with him very much since our guests showed up. There was so much going on, I was distracted."
I'd never been a cop myself, but I knew a few of them, for better or worse. One of them was even a friend, of sorts, a guy named Joe Sullivan of the Southampton Town police. I knew what he would do when he had to find someone without a single clue as to where they were. He'd get off his ass and start looking.
"Do you folks have a VHF radio?" I asked.
"Of course," said Fey.
"Monitor channel sixteen, if you can," I said. "Can I borrow your car?"
Fey put the keys to the Mercedes in my palm. Anika took my bag and gave me a key to one of the rooms. I went out into the wind, which might have calmed, but it didn't feel like it. The sky was a deep blue, with the only clouds a few puffballs racing overhead.
I walked over to the gas station on the other side of the yacht club. Track was in the grimy office, his feet up on the desk and his nose stuck in a soft-core men's magazine. The walls surrounding him were covered in calendars, notices, self-made ads for local services, ferry schedules going back to the prior century, and posters supporting products that were once new, but now largely forgotten.
"Ever clean this place up?" I asked. "It stinks in here."
He looked up from the magazine, but kept his feet on the desk.
"Maybe I could use your face as a mop."
"When was the last time you saw Axel Fey?"
"Who wants to know?"
"He's missing. His family is worried. It wouldn't kill you to do a favor."
"Wouldn't help me, neither. They'll be gone by next season," he said.
"Okay, why not pretend you're a regular human being and help them find an innocent kid."
"A whack-job kid. I haven't seen him since that guy was hanging in the shower. The kid don't come outside much. Afraid of the sun. Not like his sister, who's out all the time, which is the only good thing about having those foreigners around."
"Who owns this gas station?" I asked. "Can't be you."
This disturbed him.
"None of your business."
"I can find out in five minutes once the power comes back on. Why not just tell me?"
"Fuck you," he said, almost cheerfully.
I thanked him for his valuable time, and went across the street to where a pair of houses sharing a common driveway were built into a hill. One had a car in the driveway, so I picked that one to knock on the door. A tall, thin, stately looking guy answered. This impression was enhanced by where he stood on his screened-in front porch, a tall riserheight above me.
"Yes?" he said.
"Do you know Axel Fey, the teenaged kid who lives in the Swan?" I asked, jerking my head in the direction of the hotel.
"Not personally," he said, "but I know who the people are."
"He's gone missing. You didn't happen to see him last night or this morning outside the hotel, maybe walking down the street?"
"I did," the guy said, "early this morning, about six, walking down the street. I was eating breakfast here on the porch."
"No kidding. Which way did he go?"
He pointed toward the east, away from the public end of the island toward the private country club.
"As you can see, the road curves right after the Black Swan, so I have no idea where he went from there."
Ah, I thought. This is why Sullivan keeps harping on the value of routine police work. All you have to do is ask and people will just give you the information.
"What was he wearing? Was he carrying anything?"
The guy thought about it.
"He wore a backpack, I think, though I may be wrong since all young people wear backpacks. You're the one with the dog and the custom sloop. Has a lovely sheer. I race little boats myself. Hereshoff Bullseyes. Too lazy to cruise. Where have you put her?" he added, looking out across the Inner Harbor, much of which you could see from his elevated location, though not past the breakwater to my secret lagoon, much to my relief.
"My girlfriend took her back to the mainland. Had to get home and the ferry's not running."
"Must have been a rather raucous voyage."
"Not for her. She loves that stuff."
I was about to leave him, when I had another thought.
"Do you know who own
s the gas station across the street?"
"That would be Desi Arness. Of course, there isn't much on the island he doesn't own."
"Really. Does Lucy know about this?"
He spelled Desi's name.
"The Arness family has had an estate here since the mid-1800's. With a first name like Luther, the nickname was inevitable. Damn fine sailor. He bought the fuel dock to prevent development next to the yacht club. Would have bought the Swan if the prior owners hadn't detested him, unfairly I might add. That donnybrook in the bar was not his fault, inebriated though he was. I told them that myself, though my own condition during the occasion might not have served my credibility."
"Do you think Desi might be around?" I asked.
"He's never not around. He's lived on the island his whole life. Third generation to do so. Though you won't get to see him unless he wants to see you. Very friendly chap, but keen on his privacy."
He used the British pronunciation of the word 'privacy'a pretension so effortlessly delivered that it felt entirely sincere.
"So you, too?" I asked. "Year-'rounder?"
"Since retirement. Wharton, professor of economics. This was my parents' home. I don't go as far back as Desi, so as you can see, my privacy is of less concern."
I got the feeling the professor was actually a little lonely, comfortable as he seemed standing there in the doorway being interrogated by a complete stranger. He had wavy, dark-grey hair that spread from a hairline starting about mid-scalp, and a weather-beaten face. It wasn't hard to see him bending to the pull of a long-handled tiller, or standing in front of a classroom full of Ober-capitalists.
"Sam Acquillo," I said, sticking out my hand.
"John Featherstone," he said, accepting the hand-shake. "If I see the young chap again, I'll let you know. You're a friend of the Feys?"
"I'd like to think so."
After leaving Featherstone, I drove down the road to the next house and knocked on the door. No answer. The same was true of the next three houses. At the fourth house, a young mother said through a crack in the door and over screeching children that she hadn't seen anyone go by her house that morning.
I realized I hadn't thought to bring along a photograph of Axel Fey. Some cop I'd make. I thought about going back to the Swan to get one, but decided to press on. Despite my reverence for disciplined methodology, backtracking was something I was never any good at.
