Paradime

by Alan Glynn

  ‘Excuse me . . . Mr Trager?’

  But I turn around anyway. Standing there in front of me, a few feet away, is Kate.

  I feel an immediate tightness in my chest. What does she want? Doesn’t she know that coming here is dangerous? That she’s drawing attention to herself? That she’s the glitch in this whole system?

  But then, how would she know?

  ‘Uh . . . yes?’ I say, feigning confusion.

  Her skin is glowing, her hair thicker, redder, glossier than I remember, her eyes on high alert, darting everywhere, scanning me up and down.

  ‘My name is . . .’ She hesitates, and I feel she wants to say, you fucking know what my name is, but she resists. ‘I’m Kate Rozman. My colleague, Pete Kettner, met with you recently.’

  ‘Oh, yes . . .’ For a millisecond I consider extending my hand, taking hers in mine, but no good could come of that. There’s one rule here. ‘Of course, yes, I remember.’

  I remember . . .

  ‘Is there any chance that we could talk? Even for a few minutes?’

  People are walking past us, around us, in all directions, busy, focused on their own stuff, and amid the voices, the noise, the traffic, we stand there, on a concrete plaza, face to face, Kate and I.

  How can this be?

  And how can it be that I have to walk away?

  ‘Not this afternoon,’ I say, as cold as I can make it sound, as distracted, as Teddy-Trager aloof. ‘I have . . . appointments.’

  The look she gives me as I take a step backwards is bewildering in its complexity, a dense flip book of irritation, disappointment, longing and – no question about this one – determination. So I’m fairly sure that Kate Rozman won’t give up. She may not push it here today – she seems a little nervous – but I know her, and she will regroup, she will insist on talking to me again.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say, ending an encounter that has lasted barely twenty seconds, ‘I’m late.’

  I turn to move away, but something causes me to hesitate. As I glance back, I see Kate’s hand slipping automatically into position over her belly.

  *

  In the elevator, I come close to another full-blown panic attack, but I wrestle this one down too. I make it into my office and close the door behind me. I sit at my desk and take a series of deep breaths.

  Kate is pregnant?

  But . . .

  Is it scruffy hipster-guy Pete Kettner? Is it me? My hand is shaking as I click the screen awake to call up a calendar. We had sex the night I got back from Afghanistan – it wasn’t great, it was awkward, it was tense (all my fault), but it’s within the timeframe, so it counts.

  But maybe she’s not pregnant. Maybe I was seeing things. Maybe she’s just put on a little weight. If she is though, and it’s Pete Kettner’s, what is she doing chasing Danny Lynch’s ghost?

  That’s going to get her killed.

  Unless I stop her, and how do I do that without . . . getting her killed . . .

  Is it too much to hope that my coldness during those twenty seconds, my rudeness, my seeming indifference, will be enough to put her off?

  The answer – or at least an answer – appears on my screen as soon as I close the calendar page. It’s a file marked ‘LP’, and it’s where all of Leonard Perl’s reports are automatically downloaded and archived. It also contains links to the various live surveillance feeds he set up. It’s been over two weeks since I clicked on this file, but it was an open-ended arrangement, and although Karl Lessing was clearly informed about it, I have no reason to believe the account isn’t active. It turns out to be very active, and I spend the next while scrolling through reports, one after the other, in sequence, feeling increasingly as if a noose is being tightened around my neck, because over the past week, and the past three days in particular . . . Kate has more or less taken to stalking me.

  Subject left apartment at approx. 9 a.m., rode the subway to Rockefeller Center, and proceeded on foot to the Tyler Building.

  Subject left work, took a cab to 45th Street, and proceeded on foot to the Tyler Building.

  Subject walked vicinity of the Tyler Building for nearly two hours.

  Subject waited outside the Tyler Building for forty minutes.

  Subject followed client from the Tyler Building to Sakagura on East 43rd Street.

  Subject followed client from the Waldorf Astoria Hotel on Park Avenue to the Tyler Building.

  Subject followed client . . .

  Subject followed client . . .

  Subject followed client . . .

  *

  Once I’ve seen this, I know that whatever happens next has to happen really fast. I delete the entire contents of the file. I call Leonard Perl and instruct him to discontinue the surveillance immediately and to delete any relevant files he may have. I tell him I know that confidentiality has been breached, and I ask him straight out if any of the material his operatives gathered has been passed on to . . . a third party? He assures me that it hasn’t, and from the slightly chastened tone of his voice, I decide to believe him.

  Not that it’ll make any real difference. This is just damage control. It’s not the solution. That takes a little longer to emerge, but when it does I feel immense relief, and not just because it’s so obvious, so simple, it’s because I know it’s the only solution.

  I have to disappear.

  As long as I’m around, Kate is in danger. And that’s because she’s a threat, a piece of unfinished business, what Phil Coover would no doubt refer to as an unticked box. But if I think about it for ten seconds, I also have to disappear for me.

  I finally have to wake up from this.

  Though in practical terms, who do I wake up as? It can’t be Danny Lynch, and it can’t be Teddy Trager.

  The mechanics of this seem complicated, but once I set it all in motion, things happen with almost blinding speed. I hit the deep web again, and, within a couple of hours, I have set up a Bitcoin wallet, purchased what amounts to a new identity and reserved an out-of-state PO box. My new documents – passport, SSN, driver’s licence – will all be delivered to this PO box within, apparently, two to three days.

  And addressed to one Tom Copeland.

  I call Nicole in and tell her I need five thousand dollars in cash ASAP. I know I’ve pushed her hard recently, with my moodiness and unpredictable behaviour, but this doesn’t seem like the thing that’s going to push her over the edge. Twenty minutes later, she reappears in my office and silently places a thick brown envelope on my desk.

  That evening, back in the apartment, I have a long, slow swim in the pool. Then I spend a couple of hours in the kitchen. I cook an elaborate miso, shitake, lemongrass and pork belly ramen. After that, I go around the apartment and gather up a few items – a couple of high-end wristwatches, some gold cufflinks, a platinum fountain pen, a silver money clip, and a Leica S2-P camera. I eye up the small Picasso again, but that still seems like more trouble than I need.

  I get a few hours’ sleep, and, at around 4 a.m., with bulging pockets and a wallet stuffed with cash, I leave the apartment. Walking out of the building, I nod at the doorman. A block down, I hail a cab, which I take to Chinatown. I walk around here for a while, through quiet streets, then take another cab, and another one after that. I’m probably not being followed, but by the time I find myself walking into the Port Authority Bus Terminal on Eighth Avenue just after 7 a.m., the city coming to life again all around me, I’m fairly sure that no one knows who I am, or where I’ve been, or where I’m going.

  *

  I think it takes about a month for Leon to show up. I’m not paying close attention, but I do check in online every once in a while, when I can. It depends on where I am, it depends on what Internet access I have. I’m moving around a lot, uncertain of everything and everyone, wary of my new identity. I manage to stretch the five grand, plus what I make on the stolen items, which is actually quite a lot, but I know it’s finite, so I end up doing whatever work I can get along the way as well, us
ually in kitchens, dishwashing, prep if I’m lucky. It’s at one of these places, a Tex-Mex smokehouse in Kansas, in the manager’s office at the back, that I spot a reference on the computer to Trager. I click on the article, and when it pops up there’s no doubt in my mind that the accompanying image is of Leon. Much earlier, I’d seen a mention on Forbes that Trager was possibly missing, and then that he was on an extended trip to Africa. Now this article is saying that he has embarked on raising a new VC fund.

  Even from this distance I don’t believe it.

  Next time I check in, it’s as if Trager has transformed into Doug Shaw. I come across a video clip on Fox News of an interview he does, and it’s painful to watch. Phil Coover must agree and obviously decides to cut his losses, because inside of a year the experiment is over, aborted – at least this phase of it is. In a copy of the Austin Chronicle I find lying around a place I’m working at, I see a report that Teddy Trager has died suddenly of an aneurysm.

  I feel weird reading this. First I’m killed in a car crash, then I drown in the Hudson river, and now a blood vessel in my brain explodes.

  What’s it going to be for Tom Copeland?

  Now and again, I also check in on Pivot. When Leon first appeared, I was worried that Kate would simply pick up where she’d left off, but I sort of knew it wouldn’t happen – she was pregnant and would be increasingly occupied with that. And, besides, it wouldn’t have mattered, because Leon wasn’t me, and the threat no longer made sense.

  Kate posts regular blog pieces on Pivot, which I don’t read, but at least it’s a way of keeping track. These stop at around the time I reckon she’s having the baby. Which is when I lose track of her, or when I stop looking.

  Some of the time I convince myself that she wasn’t pregnant at all, and when that doesn’t work, I convince myself that the baby is Pete Kettner’s, and I wish them both a good life. But as a sequence of thoughts, as a recurring preoccupation, as dream fodder, it never goes away – and never far behind it, though easier to suppress, is a shadow sequence featuring Nina Schlossmeier and her kid.

  As time goes by, though, and I run out of money, and find it harder to get work, and harder to make the effort to even look for work, I feel my life fragmenting, losing definition, and these thoughts, these notions, these versions of what might be true, of what might really be out there in the world, also fragment and lose their definition.

  *

  Later on, when I need it, I’m unable to seek help as a veteran, because Tom Copeland isn’t one; nor can I seek treatment for what – on certain days, I’ll admit, after all – may be some creeping form of PTSD . . . because Tom Copeland can’t claim to have it and therefore can’t get a diagnosis for it. And later still, when I end up homeless on the streets of a city I’m not sure I remember the name of, well . . . I’m not surprised.

  I am surprised one time when I stumble to recall, in my own mind, Kate’s name.

  That girl I knew . . .

  And also struggle to remember her face.

  Shit.

  Is it all gone? My past, my present, my future? Is there nothing left to cling to?

  It seems not, which is confirmed one day in a homeless shelter I’m staying at. This guy in the office is helping people out – filling in forms, getting information on various work and rehab programmes – and he offers to let me use one of the computers. I mess around on it for a while, looking at job and employment websites, but pretty soon I get demoralised. I’m about to walk away, when I think of something. I go to Google Images and type in Kate’s name . . . and there she is . . .

  I remember now.

  There’s only one photo, though – it’s of her, and Pete Kettner, and a small boy, standing between them. He’s about four years old.

  Is it that long?

  I print out the photo. I keep it on me and look at it often. The little boy is cute. And I’m happy for them. I really am.

  But the truth is I wanted him to be mine. I wanted me and Kate to make a kid together, to make a future together, or at least to give something of ourselves to the future – to restore the level of justice.

  A secret retribution . . .

  I‘m closed off from that now, though – my identity erased, atomised, and my time limited. I’m aware that Nina Schlossmeier may have been lying to me in her apartment that night, but she may well have been telling the truth, and I may actually have a kid out there – but I don’t want to know, I don’t want to find out. Because it’d be the wrong kid, from the wrong me, and once again I’d be looking through the wrong side of the mirror . . .

  *

  I have this recurring dream. It’s set in what could be North Carolina but equally could be Iraq or Afghanistan. There’s this dark, windowless building, it’s gigantic, the size of a whole city block, like a toppled monolith, but in a sunbaked, suburban landscape, or a desert. It’s some kind of data farm, I guess. I’m in front of it, but also inside it, and I’m staring at these enormous servers, row after row of them stretching back as far as the eye can see . . . every machine clicking, whirring, terabytes spinning within petabytes. I turn at one point to see the flicker of graphics on a monitor, neural imaging, faces, one giving way to the next, slowly at first, then faster, then rapidly, hundreds of them, thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions, until the screen flashes, and an alert sounds.

  And I wake up.

  *

  But at least I do that. I keep waking up. I keep going, too. I keep moving. I even keep looking in the mirror.

  And a couple of months after my time in that homeless shelter, I find myself gazing into a particularly grimy mirror in the restroom of a bus station. I’m gaunt, I have a scraggly beard, my eyes look tired – and I may have a fake identity that I bought with someone else’s money – but it’s still me in there, that’s still my face. And I’m the one who decides what I do, and where I go.

  And which bus I’m going to get.

  With this little micro-dose of self-motivation sluicing through my limbic system, I head out to the main hall to have a look at the timetables. I glance up at the departures board and pick a destination, the decision quick and fairly random. But then something happens that makes me reconsider.

  My eye gets distracted by a wall-mounted TV over in the corner. It’s showing a news report, and on the screen a tall glamorous woman is being interviewed – doorstepped, it looks like – outside a Manhattan apartment building. She’s smiling, and talking. The sound isn’t good, and I can’t hear what she’s saying, but there’s a caption.

  Nina Schlossmeier, CEO, Treadsoftly.com

  Holding her hand, tugging at it slightly as she talks, is a small boy. He’s maybe four years old, and he’s looking directly into the camera.

  Without taking my eyes off the screen, I reach into my back pocket and retrieve the photo I printed out at the homeless shelter. It’s torn and a little faded, but I hold it up and look at it closely. After a moment, and with my head – and the world – now starting to spin, I look at the screen again.

  The two small boys are identical.

  About the Author

  Alan Glynn is a graduate of Trinity College Dublin. He has worked in magazine publishing in New York and as an EFL teacher in Italy. His debut novel, The Dark Fields, was released in 2011 as the hit movie Limitless, which went to no. 1 on both sides of the Atlantic, and which is now a hit CBS network show. His most recent novel, Graveland, concluded his highly acclaimed trilogy of thrillers which included Bloodland, the Irish Crime Fiction Book of the Year in 2011, which was also Edgar-nominated in the US.

  By the Same Author

  THE DARK FIELDS/LIMITLESS

  WINTERLAND

  BLOODLAND

  GRAVELAND

  Copyright

  First published in 2016

  by Faber & Faber Ltd

  Bloomsbury House

  74–77 Great Russell Street

  London WC1B 3DA

  This ebook edition first published in 2016

&
nbsp; All rights reserved

  © Alan Glynn, 2016

  Cover design by Faber

  Cover images © Istvan Kadar/Getty; Chris Tefme/Shutterstock

  The right of Alan Glynn to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, incidents, and historical events either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly

  ISBN 978–0–571–31624–3