by George Lazăr
“Read it first. The contract requires an immediate payment of $100 million dollars to cover our previous expenses, plus to begin our preparations for your protection at the next level – which, given recent events, is likely to be wildly expensive.”
“I can handle that,” Bolden said.
“After that, there are weekly payments of $10 million. Payment is due at the end of each week. For each level you advance based on your survival of fatal events, the price increases.
“Finally, there’s your inheritance: You assign 95 percent of your estate to The Guardian Angel and we file a copy of your will. The rest is yours to distribute as you please.”
Bolden leafed through the contract casually.
“What’s this about a thousand dollars for an ounce of gold?”
“It is an exchange-rate clause that protects us from inflation,” Folder said, shrugging his shoulders. “We have lawyers too.”
“Inflation is the least of my worries. At $10 million a week, I’ll run out of cash pretty damn soon,” Bolden protested.
“Money isn’t going to be an issue,” Folder said. “We’ve reviewed your finances and run our own projections against them, and there’s essentially no risk of you running out of money.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“Here’s why it does. Someone in the company noticed a trend several years ago: as our clients advanced in threat level, their income and quality of life seemed to increase proportionally. We can’t explain the correlation, but we can absolutely prove its existence. It’s as if the same force that increases the threat against your life also turns up the dial that governs how much success you can experience.”
“So the more cosmic attempts on my life I survive, the more profitable I become?”
“Something like that. Have you checked your portfolio lately? Stock in Green Clean is at a historical high. Space Elevator administrators now say they’ll reach lift projected capacity well before deadline.”
Bolden put the thin stack of papers on the edge of the couch.
“So I become increasingly richer as I get closer to getting killed. It is not a fair trade, at least not for me. But so long as I pay you the weekly fee, you’ll guarantee I stay alive?”
The colonel flashed a discreet smile. He took the contract, turned a few pages until he found what he was searching for, and pointed to the passage he wanted Bolden to read.
“It is provided for here. We guarantee that we will do everything in our power, with experts and resources, to keep you alive. Nothing more. Nothing more would be possible. Like I said earlier. We’re not God.”
Bolden read the passage several times.
“You mean you take my money anyway, whether I live or die. I don’t think so.”
“Read carefully. You only pay at the end of the week. Never in advance. Don’t like the service we gave you? Terminate the contract. At any time.”
Bolden had the feeling he was missing something.
“Every day, many people face close encounters with death and survive. A freak wave sweeps them out to sea, but a life guard pulls them out of the water. A distracted jaywalker steps in front of a moving car, only to be saved by the driver’s alert reaction. And after that they live happily ever after without any incidents. What about them? Who saves them?”
Folder sat back, rubbing his chin with his forefinger. “This is a subtle point, but listen carefully, because it’s important now that you understand.
“I’m all ears,” Bolden replied.
“We all live with chance, and what you’ve described are encounters with chance. The important thing is, the people in your example didn’t die, and that’s because they were never in actual danger of losing their lives, not even for a moment. The proof of that is their survival, even if they were seriously injured in the event.”
“So you’re telling me that your machine, this Device, separates the events that lead to someone’s death from those that, in the end, turn out to be nothing more than false alarms?”
Folder reached over to pick up a glass from the adjoining table, then slowly poured himself some water. He waited until he was done drinking before answering.
“Correct. The Device perceives chance, but given enough data it can clearly distinguish between random events and events that are intended deliberately to kill you.”
“So the Calvinists were right. There is such a thing as predestination. Out of pure curiosity, how do you distinguish between the trivial, non-dangerous accidents and the truly lethal ones?”
The colonel sighed.
“The patterns seem identical to my eye. Only the Device is able to separate the two, and I can’t explain how or why because I just don’t know the answer. I just see that the correlation between what the Device says and what happens is astounding. As for predestination, I suggest you consult a theologian.”
“All right,” Bolden said, defeated. “Got a pen?”
“It’s a formality more than anything else,” Folder said, handing him a golden one. “The beauty of our business is that both parties are so powerfully motivated to uphold this contract.”
Bolden scribbled his name and initials on the blocks indicated and then handed back both pen and contract to the colonel, who signed and dated the necessary witness statements. When he was done he blew lightly on the ink to dry it and then slipped the document back into his briefcase.
“You’re not an easy man to convince,” he said. “I feel like I should be buying you a drink, now that we’re finally official.”
Bolden shrugged his shoulders slightly, betraying a certain sense of defeat.
“You’re shrewd, you know,” the colonel said. “You were right about our opportunity to prevent the attack on that airplane. We spotted the implications, although that’s a rare occurrence. But I have to tell you, I don’t know what we could have done, exactly, that would have prevented that attack. And more importantly, I don’t know whether stopping it would have been a good thing for anyone.”
“All those dead passengers wouldn’t be dead,” Bolden said.
“For the moment, no. Look, I’ve heard about other Guardian Angel cases where case officers like me made the decision to intervene beyond the parameters of simply protecting their client. And they were wrong.
“You understand how a lighting rod works? You’ve got this potential energy, this electrical imbalance that exists between the charge in the cloud and the ground. An imbalance like that can’t continue forever in nature, so the energy must be discharged, which means there has to be a lightning strike.
“A lightning rod doesn’t prevent lightning strikes, or keep them away from your house. It just gives lightning – that incredibly violent re-balancing of natural equilibrium – a path of least resistance. Electricity follows the rod directly to the ground, where it is absorbed.
“Take away the rod, and you don’t know where the house will be hit. And a house offers resistance. It gets blown to pieces or burned to the ground because it stands in the way of that natural discharge.
“If I had prevented that plane from taking off yesterday, it would have been as if I’d removed a lightning rod from a house right before an enormous thunderstorm. The natural imbalance would still exist. The disequilibrium would still need to be violently discharged. But my ability to channel it harmlessly away from you would be eliminated. People would still die, but the difference is, you would almost certainly be one of them.”
“So yes, an airplane full of people, your girlfriend among, crashed. And theoretically, I might have been able to prevent it. Because I did not, they are dead and you are still alive.
“The question is, do you have a problem with that?”
Folder looked him straight in the eye. Bolden held his gaze for a while, then sighed and turned away. He shook his head, conceding the truth.
“No,” he said. “No problem.”
The colonel breathed a sigh of relief and resumed.
“Now that we’ve dispe
nsed with the formalities, let’s get to work. We have prepared a Calming Zone for you. You’ll see what that means right away, but it’s easier for me to show you. We’ll need to perform a complete set of medical tests,” he raised his hand to stifle Bolden’s protests. “Yes, I know you go for regular medical examinations. Trust me, those are a joke compared to what we’ve got in store for you. You’ll bet fitted for several devices, giving us the ability to monitor all your biometrics: heart, urine, blood, stool, your tone of your voice, everything. By the way, those cigars you like …”
“What about them?”
“Forget about it. Smoking is out of the question.”
Bolden attempted a protest, but Folder waved it off.
“From here on out, we’re a daily part of your life, like the Secret Service agents who protect the President. We become your security staff. We run your medical care, your calendar, you name it. If you plan to meet someone for coffee, one of my agents checks out the route and the venue in advance. And so on.”
Bolden stopped him, covering his ears. He realized that his safe and comfortable universe, filled with luxury items and rich people who, like him, were traveling in private jets and leisure yachts, who never got into cars cheaper than half a million dollars, was on the verge of breaking into a thousand pieces. He could see the outline of his future, and it was a grim perspective – the perspective of a life in which he would be permanently hounded by guards, obsessed with paranoid fears for his safety, most of them imaginary.
Bolden looked at the colonel and saw him clearly with new eyes. He was still the same crisp, fit and elderly man, but he didn’t look like a superhero anymore. He wanted to tell him that, but instead something utterly different came out of his mouth.
“So you’re going to search through my shit and I have to ask you for permission every time I want to flush? Everything I do is subject to your approval and permission? And for this privilege I’m to pay you piles of money? What kind of a life is that?”
The colonel stopped smiling. He looked at him gravely.
“It’s life. As opposed to death.”
Chapter 11
Whatever else The Guardian Angel might turn out to be, it was certainly thorough, Bolden thought.
His life since signing his contract had been a whirlwind. The moment he had completed his $100 million initial payment, he was whisked out of town. “It’s just something temporary while we prepare the other house,” the colonel said as they drove there in an armored limo, flanked by a security escort: armed guards in suits and sunglasses who manned the vehicles directly fore and aft of the limo. These were followed closely by a medical unit the size of a shipping container, pulled by a truck. Above it all, a helicopter buzzed above them, clearing the way ahead and alerting Folder to any potential threats.
They arrived at a clinic located in a deciduous forest. The architect who designed it had framed the building beautifully in its gorgeous surroundings.
Doctors and staff dressed for surgery greeted him, then directed him to strip. Bolden went through a disinfecting procedure similar to the ones used at bio-hazard facilities, and when he was clean we put on disposable blue clothes and followed a member of the staff to a white, barely furnished room, with upholstered walls. He sat on a low bed and noticed that it, like everything else in the room, had been upholstered with the same material found on the wall.
He lost track of time in the days that followed, moving from the care of one anonymous doctor to another. The meals were boring because he ate alone and the food was tasteless. He protested, but the colonel informed him that that food was the safest he could receive, at least until they got the results to his medical tests.
He received a plan to cover his retreat from his old social and business life and he was asked to hold to it. He called his acquaintances to tell them he was going to be absent for some time, implying that he wanted to mourn Danielle’s death in seclusion. He asked the secretaries from his companies to redirect his correspondence to an email address. This was easier because his employees were used to their boss being absent. He asked Folder to go to his house and pack some clothes and personal items, but the latter didn’t agree.
“You’ll get everything you need. Only it will be after we have verified it.”
Then as suddenly as it had begun, the whirl of activity around him ended. At breakfast one morning Folder told him they would be leaving the clinic for his new home immediately. He had been successfully processed into the care of The Guardian Angel.
Folder had chosen an isolated property in Texas for Bolden’s new home. The Guardian Angel transformed it, in record time, into “the safest place on Earth,” as the colonel liked to say. Bolden had only three rooms for his personal use, all of them located downstairs. The building featured a completely staffed and equipped medical wing, and the basement was devoted to the monitoring teams and their equipment. At any moment, the residence was occupied by at least thirty people, and Bolden began to suspect that the $10 million he paid each week might be something of a bargain.
Days and nights flowed into weeks and months. Ian Bolden monitored his surging business interests from afar, but his life soon became quite boring.
There were times he rebelled inside himself without daring to complain or protest outwardly in any way. His doubts about The Guardian Angel had transformed into certainties and he routinely made plans to escape, but lacked the courage to put them into practice. At times he contemplated refusing to pay the weekly fee, yet each week he conscientiously signed the check that paid the most expensive accommodation he had ever experience. It didn’t prevent him from feeling lonely and abandoned.
Even though he was never alone.
Mornings were invariable. A rotating staff of doctors examined him, speaking no more than was necessary and only then with a certain reluctance, as if he were a terminal patient – which was, in fact, essentially what the colonel had told him from the start.
The medical staff always tested everything, even though the doctors had already implanted permanent biometric transmitters that sent a steady stream of data to the monitoring hardware. The morning medical ritual always ended with a set of shots and pills intended to boost his immune system and eliminate toxins.
Next, breakfast. It was a personalized diet featuring ideal quantities of minerals, lipids, carbohydrates and proteins, and he found it boring beyond belief.
After breakfast they made him relax for two hours, even though he had just woken up, and he had to lie still, looking at the ceiling, for digestion to take place properly. Then came the gym, which meant two fitness trainers, one of whom monitored the various wireless sensors he wore. Despite permanent surveillance, the physical exercises broke the daily monotony and, even if he hadn’t liked the effort from the very beginning, after a few weeks he was eager for every session. Bolden regained his youthful shape and reveled in the feeling of a body that responded to physical challenge like a well-oiled machine. His belly fat disappeared and his muscles took on hard edges.
Before his lunch there was another hour of relaxation, and the staff would allow him a movie, usually a light comedy, carefully selected so as not to make him nervous. Lunch never filled his stomach, though, and there was a time when he craved his old regimen of whiskey and cigars. The colonel was having none of that nonsense.
Lunch was followed by an hour-long stroll across the estate. The route was chosen and searched in advance by security teams that removed every little pebble or trace of vegetation he could possibly slip on and hurt himself. Most of the times he walked alone, which only meant that his guardians were unseen. In the distance, herds of cattle grazed peacefully. They had come with the place, and served as little more than props.
Colonel Folder typically accompanied him on his after-lunch walk at least twice a week. These were walks were always an opportunity for long talks. Conversation had become a rarity in Bolden’s life.
“Why don’t you come more often?” he asked Folder once.
>
“I have to stay in touch with The Guardian Angel,” he answered. “That’s where the resources are allotted. I’m your representative on the board, and there’s politics there just like anyplace else. Besides, approaching you is complicated. Medical tests. Protocols.”
Bolden had already seen the ordeal required of the colonel because he’d watched it on the monitor in his room. The whole thing lasted more than an hour. Ian Bolden suspected he had been permitted to watch the colonel’s preparation for their meeting on purpose.
“Are there many clients like me?” he asked him once.
“I can’t answer by giving you figures, let alone names. You know that. It’s in our contract. But I can confirm to you that many people have employed our services.”
“How did you convince them?” he asked. “In fact, no, I already know that. What I don’t get is why you haven’t enlisted my father, for instance. Or others; I know many rich and gullible people who would pay anything if they were convinced they could live longer.”
The colonel looked at him seriously and stopped, with his hands behind his back. It was his favorite position – or, perhaps, it was simply a habit developed from the discipline of not touching the client.
“We have our limits. Look, if the Device indicates that a person is going to die of old age, there’s not much of value we can do for them. That’s how your father died. Not much we can do for incurable diseases, either. Hence all those medical tests: we want to spot anything before it has a chance to take hold or spread.
“What we’re best at is saving our clients from accidental deaths. We are good at that because we have experience. But, no matter what we do for our clients, we only manage to fool death for a limited time.”
Their talks rarely strayed from this topic. Folder answered him at length and with great pleasure, giving him all sorts of details, except for those regarding the intimacy of other clients. He did that with the kindness and detachment typical of the specialist who shares some of his knowledge with an amateur without expecting the latter to understand too much.
