End of Secrets (24 page)

THIRTY

When the young man slid unnoticed into the black waters of the Hudson, it was twilight, still cocktail hour up on deck. He had excused himself from a conversation, descended to the lower cabin, and walked out onto the aft viewing deck. Without hesitation, he had swung one leg at a time over the railing and had taken a long step away from the vessel.

The water was many levels more uncomfortable than h
e’d
expected. Not just the cold, seeping temperature, but the foul taste and smell. The boa
t’s
propellers churned the surface of this soup into a white froth.

Soon the wake settled, and the raucous atmosphere of the boat died away. The darkness stretched deep below him, clasping tightly around his neck, compressing his chest and weighing his clothes like blocks of ice. He had not anticipated such a moment of humility: he had not thought he would actually
feel
death in this way, its isolation, its irrevocability. He shed all but the closest layer of clothing and tested a few strokes in the direction of Manhattan.

His fear dulled gradually. A spectacular view of the city rose before him. The lights of the west side seemed to have been tilted forward and dipped in the water, leaving blurred imprints of color dancing on the surface. He thought he could hear laughter from the distant boat. He liked the sound of that. It meant they were not coming back for him. He would
n’t
be missed until the group took their seats for dinner. And by then it would be too late.

He started swimming.

THIRTY-ONE

The next day was a busy news day, even by New York City standards. A bomb scare shut down the 1 train, a major airline declared bankruptcy, and the UN was hosting a special session on global trade that was being protested enthusiastically by PETA and Greenpeace, both of whom had sent activists scaling the sides of Midtown buildings to unfurl billboard-sized slogans. The headline that caught Ker
a’s
eye, though, in the business section of the
New York Times
, was a short article about an unnamed ONE employee who had gone overboard on a dinner cruise the previous evening. The compan
y’s
top executives and their staffs, including Ford Dillingham, ON
E’s
president of Media and Entertainment, and Gray Heller, the music ar
m’s
VP of Marketing, had been on board. The occasion, apparently, was a welcome celebration for new executives who had been corralled under the ONE umbrella in recent acquisitions.

Kera was reading this on her commute to work when a conversation between two girls near her on the train suddenly got her attention.

“The Internet is fucking genius.”

“What?”

“You know that actor, Daryl Walker?”

“What was he in?”

“Nothing major. But yo
u’d
recognize him. Look.” The girl passed her tablet over to share a series of photographs.

“Oh, him. H
e’s
hot.”

“Right?”

“What about him?”

“Gawker just posted this. It says that if people make donations that reach a million dollars, Daryl Walker will make a naked video and post it online.”

“
I’m
in. Wha
t’s
he raising the money for?”

“For himself, I guess.”

“Tha
t’s
genius.”

“Right?”

“I ca
n’t
believe no one else has thought of this.”

“He says the video will be five minutes, and i
t’s
not porn. I
t’s
just a nudie vid of him—oh, yeah, get this. Everyone who contributes five bucks or more has voting rights.”

“Voting rights?”

“Yeah. You can vote on what h
e’l
l do in the video.”

“What h
e’l
l
do
?”

“Not like that! The options are showering, performing household chores, and lifting weights.”

“Definitely household chores. Is there a way to pitch other suggestions?”

“Vacuuming.”

“Changing the oil in his car.”

“Cleaning toilets.”

Nearby eavesdroppers cracked smiles.

“How many people would it take to reach a million dollars if everyone pays five bucks?”

There was a brief silence during the computation.

“Two hundred thousand.”

“Wow. Tha
t’s
a lot.”

“Ther
e’s
no way h
e’l
l get to a million, right? Otherwise, everyone would be doing this.”

“I do
n’t
know. I
t’s
possible.”

Kera put her earphones in. Over the last week sh
e’d
listened to
JW
, Jalen Wes
t’s
new album, so many times that certain phrases looped continuously in her head. She listened now with her eyes shut, opening them only to watch for her stop. Aboveground in Times Square, a pedestrian backup on the sidewalk brought her march toward work to a halt, and her eyes drew upward. In the spot where the
America
billboard had once been, there was now a new advertisement for the action movie
Apocalypse
. She put her head down and waited for the foot traffic to flow again.

When she got to her workstation, she read through the da
y’s
alerts, which included mentions of the ONE employee who had fallen into the Hudson while on the company cruise. There were also more and more articles, she noticed, dwelling on the fact that both Rowena Pete and the members of Background Noise Pollution—both ONE Music artists—had gone missing. Kera felt a flutter of urgency course through her. It would complicate her investigation if the disappearing artists became a media obsession.

She reached for her cell phone to call Canyon. She wanted to apply a little pressure on him, to see what information he was willing to give up in exchange for her attending the event h
e’d
told her not to miss on Tuesday.

“May I ask wh
o’s
calling?” An unfamiliar secretary answered the phone.

Kera said she was a friend. Her policy was to reveal as little as possible to secretaries. Canyon always seemed to know it was her.

“
I’m
afraid I ca
n’t
give you any information,” the secretary said.

“Tha
t’s
all right,
I’l
l call back later.”

She was logging in to HawkEye to see what sh
e’d
missed in the life of Rafael Bolívar when the secretar
y’s
words struck her.
I ca
n’t
give you any information?
Kera dialed the number again.

“May I ask wh
o’s
calling?”

“My name is Kera Mersal.
I’m
a reporter—”

“Hold, please.”

Kera exhaled, relieved to be getting somewhere. She half expected Canyo
n’s
would be the next voice on the line.

“Are you there, m
a’a
m?”

“Yes.”

“
I’m
going to read you the official statement.
‘T
he disappearance of Mr. Canyon is currently under investigation, and all employees of the ONE Corporation are cooperating fully with the NYPD. No further statement will be made until the investigation has reached its conclusion
.’
Do you have an e-mail address yo
u’d
like me to send this to?”

“Wait.” The only other thing Kera could say was, “H
e’s
gone?” It was unthinkable. Sh
e’d
been sitting across from him just a few nights before. After a moment, though, she began to see that it was entirely thinkable. Perhaps even inevitable.

“You all right?” Jones said through the monitors between them when sh
e’d
hung up. His responsibilities on the Gnos.is task force had kept him busy over the past few days, and she had not had much interaction with him. Ignoring his question for a moment, she brought up Canyo
n’s
HawkEye map. Sh
e’d
last glanced at the map around 1800 hours the previous evening. She started the playback there to see what sh
e’d
missed. Canyon had boarded the corporate cruise around 1830. Over the next ninety minutes, h
e’d
used his phone three times to make routine business calls while the yacht looped down around the tip of Manhattan before making its way back up the Hudson. At 2014 the dot vanished. It had not reappeared since.

“We have number nine. I
t’s
Canyon.”

THIRTY-TWO

The Annual Celebration of Media Industry Pioneers was held in a ballroom on the sixty-third floor of a Midtown skyscraper. Kera gave her name at a podium in the ground-floor lobby and was ushered onto a dedicated elevator. She rode up with a man dressed in a suit and tie who never took his eyes off his BlackBerry, a paparazzo, an underdressed but stylish man who tapped his foot to the elevator music, and two couples gossiping about a colleague who edited a pop culture and entertainment blog.

When Kera entered the ballroom, the first thing she saw was the view: the dark green carpet of Central Park stretched north, framed by neighboring skyscrapers. At this dizzying height, it was easy to imagine the slow roll of the earth, forcing the distant New Jersey horizon up to block out the sun, which was reddening more and more by the second, like cooling steel. Because she did
n’t
yet know why she was here, and also to position herself to get a good read on the crowd, she crossed the room and stood before a large window, silhouetted against the city. She wore a blue dress and a silver necklace and bracelet that matched her heels. The outfit had raised Parke
r’s
eyebrows, first because he said she looked beautiful and then because the only explanation she gave him for where she was going was, “I
t’s
a work thing, babe.”

The room swelled from half to three-quarters full. She got a glass of champagne and circled the floor slowly, then strolled through the adjacent hallways and anterooms. Canyon must have known all along that h
e’d
be gone by this point and that she would be here alone. The question was, what did he want her to see?
She listened closely to the chatter of guests as she weaved back through the ballroom.

In one circle the topic of conversation was Daryl Walker.

“Wo
n’t
it ruin his acting career if he makes this video?”

“Are you kidding? Before a week ago, half of us had never heard of him. Now his career will take off.”

“And if it does
n’t
, so what? H
e’s
a millionaire.”

“There are already hundreds of people promising copycat videos,” said a young man with meticulously crafted hair. “And some are willing to set the bar way lower than a million dollars.” His peers laughed.

“I think h
e’s
going to do it. H
e’s
already a third of the way there.”

Flashbulb bursts exploded suddenly behind Kera. She turned in time to see the proud figure of Rafael Bolívar stride into the room and be swallowed immediately by a circle of gawkers, some of them his media-industry peers, others reporters and photographers.

“Rafa, can you comment on the rumors that Alegría plans to launch a cable network dedicated to reality television?”

His reply was, “Stay tuned.”

“Rafa, look this way.”

He did.

“Rafa, do you have a comment about Daryl Walker?”

“H
e’s
a pioneer,” Bolívar said with a smooth smile. This generated a round of laughs and raised glasses.

He spotted her then. Their eye contact was a small moment, at least as measured in the arbitrary units of time, but in that moment the mind that lay behind those eyes had distinguished her from everyone else in the room.

“Rafa, are you concerned about the growing number of artists who are disappearing? Just an hour ago it was announced that a painter named Marybelle Pickett has vanished.”

This was news to Kera, and her reaction was as it had been with Canyo
n’s
disappearance—first surprise, almost disbelief, followed after a moment of thought by the understanding that it had been inevitable.

“You know what
I’l
l say about that?” Rafa began. He spoke easily and confidently. “I think the future of our culture has never been brighter. We live in an age where the average perso
n’s
contributions online can be far more influential to the culture than the contributions of the greatest painters or writers of previous centuries.”

The crowd gulped his words thirstily. At least most of them did. Someone thought to point out, “Those paintings, the ones by Marybelle Pickett that had been recovered, they were just auctioned for more than one hundred thousand dollars.”

“Wha
t’s
a hundred thousand dollars?” Rafael Bolívar said. “I
t’s
nothing. Painting is irrelevant. It has no more value to pop culture. And pop culture is the only culture that has value anymore.”

If this was what Canyon wanted her to see, sh
e’d
seen enough. Bolívar had not looked again in Ker
a’s
direction. When he began to move about the room, she backed out of the crowd and made a cut for the exit. A man in a suit stopped her before she could get to the elevator. She noted the clear wire that curled behind his ear and disappeared down the back of his jacket.

“Will you come this way, m
a’a
m? Mr. Bolívar would like a word.”

The bodyguard led her to a small conference room and then disappeared. Kera walked to the window. The room faced east, but the vista stretched south as far as the Brooklyn Bridge, which looked as delicate as two strings of lights draped across the void of the East River. She turned when she heard the door. Bolívar entered. It was, to her knowledge, the first time he had looked at her openly, without averting his eyes.

“Would you like to sit?” he said. His voice was different from how it had been with the reporters in the ballroom, only minutes earlier. The contrast caught her off guard.

“
I’l
l stand.”

“What are you doing here?” he said.

“I was invited here. By Charlie Canyon.” She let him register what sh
e’d
said and decided from his expression that he had not known or expected this. “What happened to him?”

“He drowned. Is
n’t
that what the police are suggesting?”

“Do you believe that?” she asked.

“I have no reason to form a belief on that matter one way or the other.”

“You and Canyon were friends?”

“No. He—” Bolívar hesitated, tacking mentally in a different direction. “Canyon wanted to work for me. I was
n’t
hiring people like him.”

Without thinking, she said, “Why do you say those things? About mindless culture? About web videos?”

“
I’v
e made a fortune off those things.”

“You already had a fortune.”

“You seem to know a great deal about me.”

“Yo
u’r
e a public figure.”

“Ms. Mersal, I do
n’t
want to waste your time, and I do
n’t
intend to waste my own. Le
t’s
cut to the chase. Why are you here?”

“I told you, Canyon asked me to come here. I did
n’t
even know that yo
u’d
—”

“Drop the act.” His words interrupted her, but it was the look in his eyes that had stopped her midsentence. “What was Hawk hired to do to me?”

The room tilted. She put a hand on the back of a nearby chair. “Did Charlie tell you that?” she whispered.

Bolívar looked confused. “No. I told Charlie about Hawk. In your defense, he seemed to think you were
n’t
in on it. But the fact that yo
u’r
e here seems to suggest otherwise.”

“In on what?”

“Ms. Mersal, given the amount of money Hawk has at stake here, I do
n’t
believe they sent an incompetent agent into the field. W
e’r
e both here now. Ca
n’t
we be straight with one another?”

“I do
n’t
know how else to say that I do
n’t
know what yo
u’r
e talking about.”

“Very well. If you refuse to engage with me, perhaps you can at least deliver a message. Tell your client that the
y’r
e wasting their money. Whatever the
y’r
e after, they ca
n’t
have it. I will never let them touch me.”

“My client?”

“ONE.”

Kera shook her head. “Ther
e’s
been a misunderstanding.”

“I do
n’t
think so.” Bolívar looked at her. “But
I’m
beginning to think yo
u’r
e being played worse than anyone. In your field, I ca
n’t
imagine tha
t’s
an enviable position to be in.”

“You do
n’t
know a thing about me or what I do.”

“Oh? Kera Mersal. Born, like me, outside of this country. Adopted. Shall I skip ahead to the relevant part? You had a promising but brief career at the CIA before you jumped to the private sector, apparently at the first chance you got. Now yo
u’r
e a hired spy.”

She started to tremble. To hide it, she gripped tightly the back of the chair where her hand was resting. “You have some gall, suggesting that
I’m
some sort of a sellout. Have you listened to yourself? Ten minutes ago you were standing out there spewing a bunch of mindless crap to the press about pop culture being the only culture that matters. I do
n’t
know why Charlie thought you were better than that.”

“The difference between you and me is that in my career
I’v
e never claimed to be better than that. I do
n’t
have a security clearance and a badge to wave around that tells everyone
I’m
serving my country. When I want to improve the world, I set out to do it.”

He was making it easy for her to leave. “While this lecture from you on my patriotism has been quite an unexpected diversion, I do actually have better things to do. Good night, Mr. Bolívar.”

“Very well. Please pass along my message to your friends back at Hawk. Whatever they want with me, the
y’r
e wasting their time. I would personally destroy everything
I’v
e built rather than allow ONE to get their hands on it.”

“Hard as it is for you to imagine, none of this has anything to do with you.” She studied his face for as long as she thought she could get away with it. He was beautiful. She understood him less now than she had after watching his every move for two weeks, but she knew this: he was beautiful and extraordinary. “
I’m
sorry about your friend,” she said. And then she felt her legs carry her to the door. She did not wait for him to open it for her. She let herself out and devoted all of her concentration to not looking back until the elevator doors closed and she was dropping out of the sky in a
cherry wood-appointed
aluminum cage that would deliver her to the streets of the city and back to her life.