David Mitchell - Cloud Atlas

Luisa rubs her red eyes. “Can the somebody give us a copy of the Sixsmith Report? Because that dossier is my only way out.”

“I don’t know yet.”

66

Megan Sixsmith sits on a low bench in the Buenas Yerbas Museum of Modern Art and stares back at a giant portrait of an old lady’s ursine face, rendered in interlacing gray and black lines on a canvas otherwise blank. The only figurative in a room of Pollocks, de Koonings and Mirós, the portrait quietly startles. “Look,” she says , thinks Megan, “at your future. Your face, too, will one day be mine.” Time has knitted her skin into webs of wrinkles. Muscles sag here, tauten there, her eyelids droop. Her pearls are of inferior quality most likely, and her hair is mussed from an afternoon of rounding up grandchildren. But she sees things I don’t .

A woman about her own age sits next to her. She could use a wash and a change of clothes. “Megan Sixsmith?”

Megan glances sidelong. “Luisa Rey?”

She nods toward the portrait. “I’ve always liked her. My dad met her, the real lady, I mean. She was a Holocaust survivor who settled in B.Y. Ran a boardinghouse over in Little Lisbon. She was the artist’s landlady.”

Courage grows anywhere , thinks Megan Sixsmith, like weeds .

“Joe Napier said you flew in today from Honolulu.”

“Is he here?”

“The guy behind me, in the denim shirt pretending to look at the Warhol. He’s watching out for us. I’m afraid his paranoia is justified.”

“Yes. I need to know you are who you say you are.”

“I’m happy to hear it. Any ideas?”

“What was my uncle’s favorite Hitchcock movie?”

The woman claiming to be Luisa Rey thinks for a while and smiles. “We talked about Hitchcock in the elevator—I’m guessing he wrote you about that—but I don’t remember him naming a favorite. He admired that wordless passage in Vertigo , where Jimmy Stewart trails the mysterious woman to the waterfront with the San Francisco backdrop. He enjoyed Charade —I know that’s not Hitchcock, but it tickled him, you calling Audrey Hepburn a bubblehead.”

Megan reclines into the seat. “Yes, my uncle referred to you in a card he wrote from the airport hotel. It was agitated, and worrying, and dotted with phrases like ‘If anything should happen to me’—but it wasn’t suicidal. Nothing could make Rufus do what the police claimed. I’m certain.” Ask her, and control your trembling, for God’s sake . “Miss Rey—do you think my uncle was murdered?”

Luisa Rey replies, “I’m afraid I know he was. I’m sorry.”

The journalist’s conviction is cathartic. Megan takes a deep breath. “I know about his work for Seaboard and the Defense Department. I never saw the whole report, but I checked its mathematics when I visited Rufus back in June. We vetted each other’s work.”

“The Defense Department? You don’t mean Energy?”

“Defense. A by-product of the HYDRA-Zero reactor is weapons-grade uranium. Highest quality, lots of it.” Megan lets Luisa Rey digest the new implications. “What do you need?”

“The report, only the report, will bring Seaboard crashing down in public and legal arenas. And, incidentally, save my own skin.”

Trust this stranger or get up and walk away?

A crocodile of schoolchildren clusters around the portrait of the old woman. Megan murmurs, under the curator’s short speech, “Rufus kept academic papers, data, notes, early drafts, et cetera on Starfish —his yacht—for future reference. His funeral isn’t until next week, probate won’t begin until then, so this cache should still be untouched. I would bet a lot he had a copy of his report aboard. Seaboard’s people may have already combed the boat, but he had a thing about not mentioning Starfish at work …”

“Where’s Starfish moored now?”

67

CAPE YERBAS MARINA ROYALE PROUD HOME OF THE PROPHETESS BEST-PRESERVED SCHOONER IN THE WORLD!

Napier parks the rented Ford by the clubhouse, a weatherboarded former boathouse. Its bright windows boast an inviting bar, and nautical flags ruffle stiff in the evening wind. Sounds of laughter and dogs are carried from the dunes as Luisa and Napier cross the clubhouse garden and descend the steps to the sizable marina. A three-masted wooden ship is silhouetted against the dying east, towering over the sleek fiberglass yachts around it. Some people move on the jetties and yachts, but not many. “Starfish is moored on the furthest jetty away from the clubhouse”—Luisa consults Megan Sixsmith’s map—”past the Prophetess.”

The nineteenth-century ship is indeed restored beautifully. Despite their mission, Luisa is distracted by a strange gravity that makes her pause for a moment and look at its rigging, listen to its wooden bones creaking.

“What’s wrong?” whispers Napier.

What is wrong? Luisa’s birthmark throbs. She grasps for the ends of this elastic moment, but they disappear into the past and the future. “Nothing.”

“It’s okay to be spooked. I’m spooked myself.”

“Yeah.”

“We’re almost there.”

Starfish is where Megan’s map says. They clamber aboard. Napier inserts a clip into the cabin door and slides a Popsicle stick into the gap. Luisa watches for watchers. “Bet you didn’t learn that in the army.”

“You lose your bet. Cat burglars make resourceful soldiers, and the draft board wasn’t choosy …” A click. “Got it.” The tidy cabin is devoid of books. An inset digital clock blinks from 21:55 to 21:56. Napier’s flashlight’s pencil beam rests on a navigation table fitted atop a mini–filing cabinet. “How about in there?”

Luisa opens a drawer. “This is it. Shine here.” A mass of folders and binders. One, vanilla in color, catches her eye. The HYDRA-Zero Reactor—An Operational Assessment Model—Project Head Dr. Rufus Sixsmith . “Got it. This is it. Joe? You okay?”

“Yeah. It’s just … about time something went well, so simply.”

So Joe Napier can smile .

A motion in the cabin doorway; a man blocks out the stars. Napier reads Luisa’s alarm and whirls around. In the flashlight Luisa sees a tendon in the gunman’s wrist twitch, twice, but no gunfire sounds. Jammed safety catch?

Joe Napier makes a hiccuping sound, slumps to his knees, and cracks his head on the steel foot of the navigation table.

He lies inert.

Luisa loses all but the dimmest sense of being herself. Napier’s flashlight rolls in the gentle swell, and its beam rotates to show his shredded torso. His lifeblood spreads obscenely quickly, obscenely scarlet, obscenely shiny. Rigging whistles and twangs in the wind.

The killer closes the cabin door behind him. “Put the report on the table, Luisa.” His voice is kindly. “I don’t want blood on it.” She obeys. His face is hidden. “Well, you get to make peace with your maker.”

Luisa grips the table. “You’re Bill Smoke. You killed Sixsmith.”

The darkness answers, “Bigger forces than me. I just dispatched the bullet.”

Focus . “You followed us, from the bank, in the subway, to the art museum …”

“Does death always make you so verbose?”

Luisa’s voice trembles. “What do you mean ‘always’?”

68

Joe Napier drifts in a torrential silence.

The ghost of Bill Smoke hovers over his dark vision.

More than half of himself has gone already.

Words come bruising the silence again. He’s going to kill her .

That .38 in your pocket .