The Anonymous Source

by A. C. Fuller

  “Is it possible for you to stop being cynical for a minute? We’re not in the city anymore—you don’t get points for being an elitist smart ass here.”

  She smiled. “It’s two a.m. in the city and I’m too tired not to be a smart ass.”

  They settled into dinner at a small café on a side street. Alex ate oysters on the half shell and a tuna steak with sesame slaw. Camila had macadamia-crusted tilapia with lobster mashed potatoes and lime beurre blanc. Camila sipped a French 75 as Alex drank glass after glass of sparkling water.

  When they had finished eating, Camila ordered another drink. As the waiter left, she reached out and took Alex’s hand. “I feel . . .”

  “Feel what?” he asked.

  “I feel better around you.”

  “That’s nice to hear.”

  “You’re better than you think you are.”

  “That’s nice to hear, too.”

  She leaned across the table, her face lit by a low candle. “I feel, I don’t know. Like I want to kiss you.” She leaned in more and Alex leaned toward her. They both closed their eyes.

  “You here for the triathlon?” The waiter was beside their table, delivering Camila’s drink.

  Alex flushed red and sipped his water.

  “Yes, he came in second last year,” Camila said, laughing. “He’s been training hard and is definitely gonna take it this time.”

  Alex rubbed his cheeks with both hands and glanced down at the table, then looked back up and smiled.

  After dinner, Camila reserved a room at the King Kamehameha Inn.

  Within minutes of checking in, they were asleep in separate beds.

  MEDILOGUE TWO

  CHAMBERS STREET, NEW YORK, NEW YORK

  Ten Weeks After 9/11

  SONIA HOLLINGER was in the back of her limo when the office of the chief medical examiner called to tell her that a team sifting through the rubble of the Marriott had found her husband’s desiccated body. After she hung up, she told her driver to head downtown to the morgue. She slumped down in the seat, but she didn’t cry. She hadn’t cried once since her husband had disappeared.

  In the days after the attacks, Sonia had plastered pictures of Mac all over the city. She had questioned hundreds of people and had even found a few who thought they might have recognized him. One firefighter thought he remembered seeing Mac leave the south tower. But he had seen hundreds of people coming and going and couldn’t be sure.

  Each morning since the attacks she had risen early, done her hair and makeup, and gone from hospital to hospital, shelter to shelter. “Maybe he forgot his name,” she’d told herself, “or was injured and can’t speak and is lying in a room somewhere.” Some days she’d wanted to quit her search, collapse onto the bed, and cry for hours. But each time she’d felt like this she’d forced herself to be strong, sit up straighter, and fix her makeup.

  Sonia held her face tight as she walked into the white tent serving as a makeshift coroner’s office. She had never seen a body so withered, a face so deformed. She only recognized Mac by the gold band on his left ring finger, which gleamed on his decaying hand. She stared at the ring, fighting tears, and pressed her hands into her thighs as hard as she could.

  “Why was he in the rubble of the Marriott?” she asked the assistant, a young man with bright red acne on his pale cheeks.

  “Well, since he was on a high floor, he could have fallen out in that direction—or, I’m sorry to say this, he could have jumped. We’ll probably never know.”

  “So you don’t think he made it out alive?”

  “It’s possible, but if he did, he would have been exhausted, disoriented. His lungs were badly damaged before he died. That we know for sure. The only unusual thing we found was a bit of black fuzz lodged in his throat. Velvet, or some similar material.”

  Sonia looked up and the young man met her eyes.

  “But, honestly,” he continued, “and I don’t know how to say this without being insensitive, so I’ll just say it. We found detached limbs and bone fragments everywhere. We found steel beams through skulls, keyboards lodged in ribcages. I’ve looked at over a thousand bodies and parts of bodies in the last forty-five days. This attack was a horror on a scale I didn’t think possible. Nothing surprises me anymore.”

  * * *

  Sonia was home by noon and slept hard for three hours.

  When she awoke, she felt only a dull sadness. She got out of bed and locked the door to her bedroom, then lay back down, covered herself in a thick comforter, and wept quietly for two hours. At 5 p.m., she walked into the bathroom and splashed cold water on her face. “That’s enough of that,” she said, critiquing herself in the mirror. She brushed her hair, put on makeup, and walked downstairs to her husband’s home office off the kitchen.

  On his desk lay a list of names handwritten in her neat script. She rubbed her eyes and looked down at the list, then called Mayor Giuliani and told his secretary that Mac’s body had been found. She knew it would spread through the city quickly now. She called her husband’s two children, both in California, and made them promise to call his ex-wife, grandchildren, and cousins. Then she called his former business partners and a few personal friends. She put a neat check mark next to each name.

  At 8 p.m., she walked to the kitchen. Juan sat on a stool, his head resting on his arms on the vast, granite island. “I’m ready for dinner,” she said.

  Juan sat up. “Es verdad?”

  She nodded. “How did you hear?”

  “I thought something was going on when I arrived and you were sleeping.”

  She smacked the counter with an open hand. “I was sleeping, Juan. I have the right to do that!”

  “I know. I mean . . . I looked around the computer. The New York Times had it up a few hours ago.”

  She stood up straighter, dreading the wave of phone calls she was about to receive. “What’s for dinner?” she asked.

  Juan stood, walked to her, and placed his hand on her chest above her breasts. “Lo siento. Sonia, are you okay? Is there anything I can do?”

  “I need to eat.”

  Half an hour later she was back at the desk, full of oysters. She emptied the last drops of a bottle of Dom Pérignon into a paper-thin champagne flute. She studied the names on the list that remained unchecked—mostly friends, clients, and vague acquaintances. She did not want to make the calls, but knew that she would.

  Just as she was about to pick it up, the phone on the desk rang. She sipped the champagne and answered with the sweetest voice she could muster. “Hello?”

  “Sonia, it’s Denver Bice. I’ve just heard about Mac and I’m calling to offer my deepest condolences. I am so sorry.”

  “Thank you,” she managed.

  “Just know,” he continued, “we’re gonna get these guys. We’re only two weeks into the bombing and we’ve taken out half of Afghanistan. I’m in touch with people in the White House—people Mac knew as well—and they assure me that we’re not going to stop until we get them all.”

  She ran her finger around the top of the champagne flute and tried to speak, but nothing came out.

  “Sonia, listen,” he continued, “we’ll be executing Bin Laden at this year’s Super Bowl Halftime Show. I promise.”

  She laughed softly. “Thank you, Mr. Bice. I hope you are right.”

  “Call me Denver, or Den. Mac used to call me Den.”

  “Thank you, Denver.” She emptied the glass and slumped down in her chair, then caught herself and sat up straight.

  “You know,” Bice said, “your husband taught the last class I took at Tulane.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “I owe him a lot.”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  “Well I, I just wanted to let you know how sorry I am.”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  She hung up, looked down at the list, and put a check mark next to “Denver Bice.” She walked to her bedroom, took a sleeping pill, and read a romance novel for fifteen minutes
before falling into a dreamless sleep.

  * * *

  Bice hung up and walked to the conference room on the thirty-third floor of the Standard Media building in midtown. The twelve men and two women of the board of directors sat around a giant oval table, bathed in gray, early-winter light.

  After the secretary called the meeting to order, Bice stood up. “Before we get started,” he said, “I’d like to acknowledge what some of you have already heard. Macintosh Hollinger’s body was found today. It is as we thought.” He lowered his head. “Besides being a mentor and friend, he was this company’s largest investor, one of its earliest investors. We owe him a debt of gratitude.”

  After a few seconds of silence, he said, “On the topic of the merger, a few rumors have leaked out, but we will make the official announcement on Monday, after the Thanksgiving holiday.”

  A small woman in a blue two-piece skirt suit said, “And how long do we expect it to take for the merger to go final. A year?”

  “If things go well, six to eight months,” Bice said. “It depends on how much of a show the FTC, FCC, and the anti-trust people want to put on. And that depends on how much pressure they get from the administration.”

  “How much pressure do you expect them to get?” she asked.

  Bice smiled. “Not much. People I’m talking to say approval should be easy.”

  The woman nodded and took notes, then looked up. “Did you solve the issue of how to present the acquisition?”

  Bice walked around the table. “Technically, Nation Corp. will be acquiring us because they have the larger market cap, but we are going to sell it to the public as an even merger creating a new entity: Standard Media/Nation Corp.”

  The woman nodded her approval. “What about Europe? Will there be regulatory issues over there?”

  “They’ll just follow the wind over here,” Bice said. “It won’t be a problem.” He stopped pacing and looked around the room. “Well then, if there aren’t any further—”

  “Just a second.” Laurence Stevens, a stocky black man in a brown suit raised his hand. “Are we sure that the Nation Corp. board will approve you as CEO of the joint entity?”

  “We’re confident, Laurence,” Bice said, sitting down. “But I’ll defer to Chairman Gathert on this.”

  At the far end of the table, Chairman Gathert put on his round glasses and stood up. “I met with Nation Corp. last week and presented our case for Denver. They know he has spearheaded our growth over the last eight years, and—”

  Laurence held up his hand. “If I may, Chairman Gathert. I’m sorry, but is now really the time to announce? Since the attacks we’ve seen a seven percent drop in the Dow, then an eight percent rise. We’re ten weeks removed from the most devastating attack ever on American soil. We’re at war already and who knows where that will lead us? I want to go on record and say that I think we need to put more consideration into how this will appear.”

  Gathert and Bice exchanged glances. Bice looked down and jotted notes on a yellow legal pad as Gathert spoke slowly, with warmth. “Laurence, we’ve been over this. We’re not going to derail this deal because of nineteen terrorists or a dip in the market. Our stock is already up one percent from September tenth. This deal is meant to happen. This new company is meant to happen. And we’re going to make everyone in this room a lot of money.”

  Laurence looked across the table at Bice. “What about the dot coms? Those of us who deal with finances actually have to face the fact that they’re pariahs right now. Forget 9/11, this deal could backfire for a lot of reasons.”

  Bice capped his pen, then held it in his fist and squeezed hard as he looked around the table. “It’s a blip,” he said. “The Internet is not going away. And Nation Corp. is more than just an Internet company. They’re our access to every mode of distribution.” Bice’s hand was turning red. He loosened his grip on the pen. “This is the deal, people. It’s going to be hard. There will be some bumps in the road. But in the end, we’ll be in charge of the information and entertainment that half the people in the world consume, and we’ll be in charge of how they consume it.”

  Laurence stood up and glared across the table at Bice. “And you’ll be king of the media?”

  Bice put the pen down and took a few breaths. “Someone has to do it,” he said quietly.

  Gathert put his hands out over the table. “Gentlemen, please. This is a stressful time. The city is on edge. A lot is at stake. Let’s all calm down.”

  “Fine, fine,” Laurence said, sitting down. “But one last thing. We all know this deal is precarious. If the market falters, or our stock drops and theirs doesn’t, the whole deal shifts. Down in finance, we’ve heard grumblings that Mac Hollinger intended to divest before he died. Have you heard anything about that?”

  Bice swept his hand through the air. “I’ve heard the rumors. They are absolutely untrue.”

  “We don’t need to tell you what a blow that would be, do we?” Laurence asked. “One big loss like that and we’ll be buying tickets to the Nation Corp. board meetings.”

  A young woman next to Stevens said, “I’ve heard the rumors too, Denver. I guess it’s a moot point—no offense to Mr. Hollinger’s memory. But now’s not the time to have people thinking our single biggest investor was going to pull out. Just the rumor could hit our stock hard.”

  Bice walked around the table and stood behind the young woman. He placed a hand on her shoulder and another on Stevens’s shoulder. “Laurence, Sarah. It’s just one girl spreading a rumor because she’s pissed about the deal—Sadie Green from the Media Protection Organization.” He took his hands off their shoulders and began pacing. “She’s some radical media nut. I spoke with Hollinger’s widow just today. I know her personally. If he even considered selling his stock, she didn’t know about it and she has no plans to do so now. His will does not call for any change in his holdings. Plus, the rumor is already out there and our stock is fine.”

  Bice stopped pacing just behind Stevens, who looked up at him and asked, “Can you guarantee that nothing is going to come of this?”

  “Absolutely,” Bice said, smiling.

  PART THREE

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  ALEX AWOKE AT 3 A.M. and looked around the hotel room. There were two double beds and a small desk. Above the desk, a window looked out on the stairway and courtyard. Brown curtains framed French doors that led onto a small balcony facing the ocean, now illuminated by silver moonlight. Along the wall, a long dresser held an old TV.

  “Crap,” Alex whispered. There was no coffee maker.

  Camila was asleep on the bed in the corner. Alex found the safe in the closet and locked up the recordings of his conversation with Downton and the USB drive James had given Camila. Next, he quietly dressed and left the room, then took the stairs down to the courtyard. The hotel lobby was open and the concierge on duty gave him a cup of coffee and directions to the business center, a ten by ten beige room with a row of old PCs.

  First, he sent an e-mail to Baxton, telling him that he needed to take a leave of absence for at least a week. He tried to sound professional, despite the fact that he filled with rage every time he thought about his boss. Then he did a web search for Macintosh Hollinger and spent two hours reading everything he could find.

  By 6 a.m., Alex was on the beach wearing a pair of Hawaiian shorts the concierge had lent him from the lost and found. The first streaks of pink were appearing in the sky and the day was warming. He left his clothes and shoes in the sand and started at a slow jog past cabanas and palm trees, picking up speed as he passed the last hotel and entered a long stretch of empty beach.

  He tried to think about Hollinger and Bice, but instead thought about Camila. What was it about her? And why did he feel like he was being erased? As the dread pooled in his stomach, he laughed out loud at the fact that the dread was not related to the man who had rummaged through his apartment twenty-four hours earlier, but to his feelings for Camila.

  Every eight
minutes or so he stopped to do pushups in the sand. After an hour, he had completed a seven-mile loop and 150 pushups.

  * * *

  Camila sat on a plastic chair on the shady balcony and looked out at the ocean. She watched a giant turtle crawl off a rock into the water, then rise and fall with the waves. She felt the cool, wet air move through her nostrils and fill her belly. She looked down at her phone, balanced on the arm of the chair. Her mother would call again soon.

  She closed her eyes and pictured Alex—stretching at the airport, making fun of himself. She imagined the crunchy bits of macadamia nut from the night before, the tiny bubbles from the champagne, and saw Alex smiling as she’d leaned in to kiss him. Then her father appeared, sitting in his old recliner, watching football as her mother shuffled from room to room. She remembered the way he spoke to her mother. His cruel words. His cold, bitter tone.

  She felt the wind on her face and the cold plastic chair through her pants. She saw her father and felt a sting on her face, then an aching. Her whole body stiffened, contracted. Her head was warm and relaxed, her mind clear, but in her body she felt a creeping sickness, an unspeakable sadness. Like something was fundamentally wrong with her, without cause.

  She was no longer aware of the wind or the sea. She wanted to get up, but instead focused on the sensation. In it she felt all her father’s bitterness and anger. She adjusted her legs, but the awareness stayed. “Cam, what are you doing?” Her father’s voice echoed in her, stabbed at her chest. His tone seemed to carry with it generations of cruelty.

  She heard the door of the hotel room open. Alex’s voice came softly through the room. “Honey, I’m home.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  WHEN ALEX SAW HER sitting on the balcony, he walked through the room and out the sliding door. Her body was still, which made him feel uncomfortable. “Is everything okay?”

  “Fine,” she said, turning toward him. She burst out laughing when she saw him. He still wore the borrowed shorts and was covered in sand-speckled sweat.