Джозеф Файндер - House on Fire

“You’d be surprised,” Sukie cut in flatly.

He looked at his daughter. His eyes twinkled, became playful for an instant. “So you’re no longer with... Gregg ?” he said. You could see he was toying with her and taking pleasure in her annoyance.

“That’s been over for months.”

He turned back to me. “So is there any consulting wisdom you can give me, Mr. Brown? How’s the world looking to you?”

“I don’t know about wisdom,” I said, “but if I were running Kimball Pharma, I’d shut down my Budapest operation immediately, before that Hungarian autocrat seizes it on behalf of the government. Which he’s about to do. Any day now.” I’d come prepared.

His genial smile faded. “That right?”

I gazed at the old man directly. “Maybe he’ll leave Kimball Pharma alone, but I know for a fact he’s targeting Merck.”

His eyes lasered in on mine, all fierce concentration. “You know this how?”

“I travel a lot.”

He put a hand on Sukie’s right shoulder. “You got hold of an interesting one this time, Susan,” he said.

Then he turned back to me, and I saw he wasn’t smiling. His slate-gray eyes had gone hard. In a low voice, he said, “But I don’t think you’re the man you pretend to be.”

My stomach did a flip, and I saw the color drain from Sukie’s face. I held her gaze a moment, partly to compose myself before responding to Conrad. But when I turned to face him, he’d turned away.

“Not sure I understand,” I replied blandly.

He turned back. “You’re far too interesting to be one of those stamped-from-a-mold McKinsey kids.”

A butler approached the old man.

“Oh, it takes all types,” I said, relieved.

“Will you excuse me, sir,” the butler said to Kimball, “but we’re ready to serve whenever you’d like.”

“Well, hell, let’s eat now,” Kimball announced. “To be continued,” he said to me with a wag of a finger.

The old man, steadied by the statuesque Natalya, made his way slowly into the dining room. Most of the rest of the crowd hung back, except for the kids, who ran ahead. I noticed they had their own table, for which I was grateful.

I lingered behind with the rest of them, eavesdropping while pretending to look around at the decor.

I heard one of the smaller kids say, “Is Grandpa gonna marry that lady?”

“Yes, sweetie, he is,” Megan replied. “Her name is Natalya.”

I went back to Sukie’s side. She and her sister Hayden were conversing quietly. I feigned distraction and overheard Sukie say, “I don’t like the way that woman looks at me.”

Hayden replied, “Hey, I’ve seen Gold Diggers of 1933 . I don’t need to live through it. And what’s the deal with her lips? She’s looking more and more like the Joker, don’t you think? I mean, talk about duck lips.”

The room we entered wasn’t the huge formal dining room I’d passed walking in. This one’s walls were lacquered in oxblood with marble busts in low-lit niches every few feet. A long table, covered in a pleated white tablecloth, set for close to a dozen people. Around it, gold-painted bamboo chairs. The table was next to a huge stone fireplace, but no fire was lit; it wasn’t cold enough.

The four grandkids sat at their own table next to the far end of the main one, far from where Conrad Kimball and Natalya were seated. My place card read Susan Kimball Guest in fancy script. I was seated not far from Conrad, with Megan on my right. Which was exactly who I didn’t want to be seated next to for the entirety of dinner. Megan seemed to know too much about what “Nick Brown” did. I looked to my left and saw a card that read Paul Kimball . That was the absent eldest son. Sukie was on the other side of the table from me, fairly distant. We could wave at each other, that’s all.

Then a stoop-shouldered, gray-haired guy came into the room, apologizing noisily. I recognized him as Paul, the oldest Kimball child, mid-fifties. On his arm was a tall woman I recognized as a superstar MIT professor, a Moroccan-born artist and architect and designer. It would be sexist of me to mention that she was also fashion-model-beautiful and had pouty red lips and a wild head of curly brown hair, so I won’t. She was known to be extremely smart.

“So sorry, Dad. I was stuck in revision hell.” Paul went up to Conrad and kissed him on top of the head. Conrad responded by patting his son awkwardly on the shoulder. Paul handed him a gift-wrapped book.

“I said no gifts!” the old man barked.

But he tore off the paper anyway. I was close enough to see that it was a hardcover by someone named Yuval Noah Harari, titled Habitus . It meant nothing to me.

For some reason there was an eruption of squabbling at the kids’ table, and then the two moppet-headed terrorists ran to Megan, who turned around and said something quietly that made them race out of the room.

The two of them returned a minute later, together lugging a big set of Titleist golf clubs festooned in red ribbon with a big bow on top. They brought it to the head of the table. Conrad wagged his finger at Megan and said, “I see what you’re doing here. You’re having the kiddies do it so I won’t yell!”

“Guilty as charged,” Megan said with a smile. “You know me too well.”

To the boys Conrad said, “How did you know I wanted new clubs?”

“You always want new clubs, Grandpa,” one of them said.

“Well, you got the kind I like and everything.”

A couple of servants were dishing out dinner, which looked like whole racks of barbecue pork ribs and greens and cornbread and something else. A woman was pouring iced tea. It was a Texas barbecue on Wedgwood china.

Then a man entered the room, a bland-looking man in his forties with rimless glasses and hair that was either blond or gray-white, it was hard to tell. Hard blue-gray eyes. I wondered if that was his head of security, Fritz Heston, who was said to be sort of his consigliere. He went up to Conrad and began whispering, his head bowed. Conrad’s rheumy eyes widened, and he turned his head to look directly, and unambiguously, at me.

As if they were talking about me. I caught the old man’s eyes. As he listened and nodded, he squinted and blinked a few times, staring at me the whole while.

I couldn’t suppress a little wriggle of anxiety.

Just then there came a loud, blatting noise from outside, like a car with a hole in its muffler.

“Well, let me guess,” Megan said to me, and shook her head, scowling. A little louder she said, “Nice of him to show up.”

There was muted laughter up and down the table.

“In one of his jalopies,” said her father.

I took out my phone and fired off a quick text message, then set it down on the table.

Paul Kimball sat down next to me, while his brilliant girlfriend sat across the table from us. He introduced himself. “You’re with Sukie?” he said.

I nodded, shook hands. “Nick Brown.”

He took the napkin off the table, placed it in his lap, and smiled at one of the servants who came right over with a tray of food.

“Thank you, Andrea,” he said. “I’m starved.”

After he was served his ribs and cornbread, he turned to me and leaned his head in confidingly. “Be careful with that one, please,” he said as he nodded at Sukie.

“She’s in good hands,” I reassured him.

“Not worried about her,” he said. “Worried about you. She’s a tricky one. Complicated.”

“Complicated?”

“Like no one you ever met.”

Then he turned away.

I noticed the pale-haired security chief had left the table and was now lurking in the doorway to the hall, looking in.