Rebound

by PJ Adams

  “Ah... Apologies, but, no, this car’s a dead zone – no signal as it’s shielded. For my security, they tell me. It’s so easy to track and surveil people these days if you don’t take precautions.”

  Sure enough, the service indicator on her phone’s home screen was zeroed.

  Damn. She hated being that person, the one who doesn’t show for a meeting and doesn’t have the decency even to message. She hated the thought of anybody going through that sequence of waiting, wondering why she was late, starting to wonder if she was going to show at all, and then finally having to make the judgment call that she really wasn’t going to show.

  She didn’t want Alex to think badly of her.

  “Later,” she said, slipping her phone away into her bag again. And she hated being the kind of person who defaulted to polite acceptance even when she was suddenly pissed off and finally coming to realize that she was totally at Bowler’s mercy now – he could trap her in his company as long as he wanted.

  Outside, the countryside rolled past, flat farmland stretching as far as the eye could see, broken by occasional straight drainage ditches and lines of pylons or telegraph poles.

  “Apologies again. I suppose I take these things for granted,” said Bowler. “The levels of security and all that.” He hadn’t missed that she was pissed with him still.

  Something in his tone made her shrug, waggle her head from side to side as her mother sometimes did, a very Indian gesture of ambiguity.

  And guiltily, she realized, just a sliver of that earlier sense of release had eased back in – the escape from the men in suits, the constant monitoring.

  Maybe, just for a few hours, at least, she could allow herself to breathe.

  §

  Bowler’s research facility was nothing like the concrete Riverside Campus at the University.

  A long single lane road led across fields to a double gate set into a high fence. After passing through the gates the car pulled up to one side of an old red-brick farmhouse with small leaded windows and rounded Dutch-style gables. To the rear she could see more buildings, renovated barns connected by glass-walled walkways, all clustered around a cobbled courtyard with a fountain at its center.

  “There’s more,” said Bowler, waving a hand to indicate the area beyond the cluster of barns. His tone could easily be taken for bragging, but Sunita recognized it as another of those differences between them – that a man like Bowler could talk in such a way simply because he took all this for granted, normality for him, while he forgot that to others it was another world entirely.

  Or maybe he didn’t. Maybe that was just the impression he wanted to convey, a modest man not fully aware of his own success, coupled with the hint that someone like Sunita might share in at least some of this. A sales pitch.

  She couldn’t read him. Couldn’t tell how much of this was an act, Brand Bowler, and how much natural.

  The bearded security guy stood before her now as she stepped from the car.

  “Sorry,” said Bowler, “but security.”

  The guy took her bag, rummaged through it, took her phone and dropped it into a separate foil-lined envelope which he slipped into his jacket. He handed her bag back, asked her to raise her arms, and ran his hands down inside her leather jacket, over her jeans.

  She stared at Bowler throughout.

  Maybe this place wasn’t such a daydream after all.

  She understood the significance of the foil-lined envelope – keeping her phone off-grid, untrackable.

  Bowler was smiling apologetically, spreading his hands. “We have a lot of sensitive activities here,” he explained. “We apply these rules to everyone who visits.”

  Maybe she was being paranoid: perhaps they were more concerned about recording, photography, and filming, than tracking. Commercial intelligence. She shrugged, returning the smile – that polite acceptance thing again.

  “Could I just make one call?” she said. “Or send a message? I’ve just missed meeting a friend and I don’t want him to think badly of me.”

  “Alex Mitchell?”

  She shouldn’t be surprised that Bowler knew about her friendship with Alex.

  Then he went on: “Isn’t Mitchell part of all that stuff you’re so keen to leave behind? He’s one of them. He works for the men in suits. You must know you could never trust a man like him.”

  “He’s a friend.”

  “You’re a good person, Dr Chakravarti. You see the best in people.”

  She didn’t know how to answer that: the way he highlighted her virtues in a way that implied they were weaknesses, pointing out the risks of being such a good, trusting person.

  He stepped back, then, waving a hand behind him in a grand gesture to take in the cluster of buildings.

  “Indulge yourself,” he told her. “Indulge me. This place is pure research. The finest thinkers in their fields, their work resourced better than they would ever achieve elsewhere, each pursuing their interests with minimal interference. It’s not about – what was the term you used? – commodifying your work, it’s about pursuing ideas. BoTech is by far the greatest loss-maker in my portfolio, and it’s one of my proudest achievements. This place is your dream, Dr Chakravarti. And your destiny.”

  §

  He barely spoke on the tour, but then he had no need to.

  She talked with the head of the cancer group about their work on tailoring the immune response to target the body’s intrinsic abilities to detect the early stages of cellular change. She spoke to a computer scientist who was developing artificial intelligence modeling of urban traffic flows. To a psychologist whose team were developing new approaches to managing addiction.

  She saw laboratories that looked even less like traditional labs than her own did, with games controllers and touch-sensitive digital walls, and darkened mood rooms where researchers could shut themselves away and simply think. “A bit hippy-dippy for me,” Bowler commented at that point, “but if it works...”

  There was no hard sell. No more mention of the men in suits.

  He didn’t have to, now that she could see the place itself, and talk with the people who pursued their work at BoTech.

  It was impossible for Sunita not to picture herself here. Imagine a time when she might have her own BoTech team, maybe bring in Tasha and Libbie from the University, and Uwe Müller from Imperial, and... Impossible not to think through the possibilities.

  Such a strange world, to have a complete stranger offering her something like this. Not merely offering it, but dragging her here to see what she would be missing if she opted to stay in her familiar world.

  By way of the gym and pool – “Now this is thinking space I understand,” said Bowler – they came to a social area at the far end of the complex. A wide open area that included a coffee shop, a bar, a couple of buffet-style eating areas, and lots of space to sit and talk – Bowler called it ‘the Galleria’.

  Groups sat around at tables, or on benches braving the chill spring air outside on the wooden decking that extended across the top of a white beach. At one table outside, a man and a woman talked animatedly, hands and arms stabbing the air, virtual reality headsets mostly covering their faces. It was like something out of a sci-fi movie.

  Bowler led Sunita outside, and they came to stand by the metal railings that marked the edge of the decking area.

  The air was cold, the breeze off the sea biting, exhilarating. A narrow strip of clay drew a boundary between sand and sea, a few small birds scampering along at the edge of the waves like clockwork toys.

  Sunita’s heart was pounding, and not merely from the sudden blast of fresh air.

  “You can walk for fifteen miles in that direction and probably not meet another person,” said Bowler, waving a hand to the north. “Creeks, saltmarshes, an internationally important conservation area.”

  Did they know how much of her time she spent staring out of the office window at the wildlife along the river? That was her thinking space – she didn’t
need darkened rooms with mood music, or high-tech gyms, or specially designed brainstorming areas. Just... the sky, the natural world around her, the elements.

  “You should come here soon,” Bowler went on. “Because before too long all this will be gone. Global warming. Sea levels, and all that. In a few decades this will all be under water.”

  She looked at him. Wondered what game he was playing now. He never said anything without it being part of a strategy.

  “I thought you didn’t believe in any of that,” she said.

  He laughed. “Again,” he said, “you confuse me with my followers. Or a few of them. I’m not a flat-earther or a denier of the obvious. I’m not a stupid man.”

  She could see that. He was intelligent and perceptive, and he surrounded himself with people who were decidedly not stupid, too. There were worse traits in a man than the desire to celebrate and promote intelligence.

  She looked away, out across the sea to where a few gulls bobbed in the waves.

  “Stay.”

  Blunt. To the point. Was he expecting some kind of decision on the spot? Did he really think she would commit her future to this place right now?

  She was surprised at the sudden change in approach, then she saw his smile, realized he was toying with her again, and couldn’t work out if that playfulness was part of his charm or irritating as hell, or maybe somewhere in between.

  “Tonight,” he clarified. “Stay here tonight. Have another look around in the morning. We can talk some more, and then I’ll have a car take you to your aunt’s party in the afternoon.”

  Had she mentioned what she was doing tomorrow afternoon? It didn’t matter: of course they knew her plans, her schedule. This was just Bowler manipulating her again, and they both knew it: a way of him telling her, We know you. We know you better than you do.

  Still...

  “I haven’t come prepared for an overnight stay. I don’t have any things with me.”

  He laughed. Said, “Oh, Dr Chakravarti, please don’t worry. We have things. We have all the things. All you could need.”

  §

  And they did. All the things.

  A short time later she was in a suite on the level above the Galleria, the view from her floor to ceiling windows even more dramatic than it was from the decking below.

  Alone for the first time in what felt like days. That onslaught... she hadn’t realized how swamped she felt by Bowler’s relentless drip-drip-drip approach until now, when she was finally alone again, could stand there before that view, hugging herself as she warmed up.

  The view... the windows. Glass along one entire side of every room of the suite. A discreet sticker on one window told her the glass was mirrored on the outside for modesty.

  ‘For modesty’. She liked that. There was not a single thing about Bowler or his research facility that hinted at modesty.

  Certainly not ‘all the things’.

  When she said she hadn’t come prepared for an overnight stay, she meant toothbrush, fresh underwear, and probably not much more than that – she could cope for one night without makeup removal wipes and a complete change of clothing. Okay, maybe shoes. She’d rarely come away for a night without a spare pair of shoes for the evening.

  She needn’t have worried.

  There were several changes of clothes in her size, and all the toiletries she could wish for including, somewhat creepily, the brands she used. She understood that they would know her schedule, and that they had profiled her so they would know exactly how to pitch Bowler’s seduction – for seduction it clearly was: she’d never been so thoroughly wooed before. But Pantene and Clinique? That was no lucky choice. They could have tried to wow her with up-market, but instead they’d opted for exactly what she used at home. Had they gone through her bins or her shopping receipts? Her online orders? Or even through her house?

  The thought that someone might have gone through her house when she was away was just too freaky.

  There came a point where attentive wooing tipped over into stalking.

  But then there were the shoes. Call her shallow, but those Fendi high-heeled sandals were gorgeous. And the Moda Sanskriti juttis – simple and understated, and so her.

  She would never be swayed by it, of course. By all the things. But she did smile when she saw those shoes.

  She stripped off, letting her clothes fall where they landed. Went, naked, to the glass wall and stood with her palms flat against it, gazing out over the sea, the waves whipping up now, lined with white tops that repeatedly flared and vanished.

  She knew she was stupid to trust Bowler, this place. Let herself be lulled by notes about mirrored glass ‘for modesty’ when for all she knew every space might be monitored 24-7 by CCTV. Who was watching her right now? Recording her in all her naked glory? Analyzing her behavior for ways to refine their seduction?

  A bit late for her to worry about that now.

  She strolled into the bathroom, set the shower going. Again, one entire wall was sheer glass, so that when she stepped under the hot jets it was almost as if she were standing outside in a tropical storm.

  She wasn’t as easily swayed as Bowler seemed to assume.

  She wasn’t shallow.

  She believed that.

  She had values.

  Standards.

  She wouldn’t be won over by material things, or even by promises of the intellectual riches of working in an environment like this.

  She tipped her head back, let the hot water soak away the day.

  She wasn’t shallow at all.

  17. Alex

  Shoes. It was the shoes that told him what he needed to know.

  Sunita was low maintenance in most things.

  She wore just the amount of carefully applied make-up that did its job but, ask anyone, and they’d probably say she didn’t wear any.

  She had her hair cut at one of the most expensive places in town – he remembered his surprise at discovering that – but was just as likely to tie it up into a top-knot, or pull it back in a harsh ponytail.

  Her clothes were not cheap, but she would just as happily spend the day in jeans and a sweatshirt.

  But her shoes... Even on jeans and sweatshirt days, she might wear designer heels, if the mood took her. She’d been surprised one day when he’d commented on Karen Millen ankle boots not being normal lab wear.

  “Mine isn’t a normal lab,” she’d said, before pausing, narrowing her eyes, and saying, “I’m impressed you noticed.”

  Noticing things was part of his training, but he could hardly say that, so he had just shrugged and looked down at his coffee. He liked that she didn’t seem to mind him being evasive occasionally. She let his darkness and gaps lie. Only now did he realize she had probably done so because she had known he had good reason for that darkness, those gaps in his life and in what he could say about it.

  Now: “She hasn’t taken shoes,” he said.

  Laura nodded, accepting the significance. For Mitchell to make this observation implied the importance of the shoes, and that implicit in this was the point that Sunita was the kind of person who would pack a change of shoes if she was going away, even overnight.

  He might not notice if she’d packed a couple of spare pairs of panties or not, but all her favorite shoes were still here, save for the Karen Millen boots, which she would probably have been wearing yesterday, as she wore them most of the time.

  If she’d planned to be away at the kind of event or place Bernard Bowler would take her, she would have taken the right shoes.

  She hadn’t planned to be away.

  They continued the search.

  He hadn’t been into the spare bedroom before. Now he saw that one corner was office space, with a desk, a closed laptop, a stack of printouts. A yoga mat was spread out on an area of open floor. The team who’d carried out the initial search would have taken an image of the laptop’s hard-drive, and Mitchell knew they had far better chance of finding anything than he would right now. I
nstead, he flicked through the printouts – lots of numbers in spreadsheets, some written reports full of scientific terms – while Laura took each book from a set of shelves, held it by the spine and flicked the pages to see if anything fell out.

  A meeting of eyes, a slight shake of the head. Nothing.

  He hated that it was so easy to fall into old ways. To forget why it was they had reached this point.

  “Nobody?” The guy. The man she’d had in his bed.

  That thing, resuming a conversation after a break, another thing he found himself hating now, the old married coupleness of it.

  “Just a guy,” she said, as if that would suffice. “From the hospital. Part of the security team. You know how I like a bit of rough.”

  Neither of them laughed. So if trying to joke it away wasn’t going to work either, how about the sucker punch?

  “Actually, he reminded me of you. How you used to be.”

  She didn’t have to add the killer line: When things were still good.

  At least she was admitting that things had been good between them at one time, that there was an Alex Mitchell she had – liked? loved? wanted to fuck, at least? Before things had gone bad.

  Maybe that was the true test. If she’d really loved him she would have stood by him when things got tough for him, not drifted away.

  “Is that right?” he said, still flicking through the printouts. “Was there actually something there once? The whole thing between us wasn’t just a front, a professional convenience?”

  §

  “You saved my arse in Istanbul,” she said after a few more minutes had passed.

  That little shy smile she had perfected; the brief, sidelong glance.

  “You saved mine, too, in Adana. That guy with the pistol.”

  “So we’re quits.”

  He nodded. Quits.

  Istanbul. That was where the line had drawn itself, when the Alex Mitchell that had been had started to become the Alex Mitchell of today. When Laura had started to lose the version of him she could bring herself to love, or whatever tainted form of affection it was she had felt for him.