David Mitchell - Cloud Atlas

Luisa flings a slipper at the boy.

17

In his hotel room at the Bon Voyage, Dr. Rufus Sixsmith reads a sheaf of letters written to him nearly half a century ago by his friend Robert Frobisher. Sixsmith knows them by heart, but their texture, rustle, and his friend’s faded handwriting calm his nerves. These letters are what he would save from a burning building. At seven o’clock precisely, he washes, changes his shirt, and sandwiches the nine read letters in the Gideon’s Bible—this he replaces in the bedside cabinet. Sixsmith slips the unread letters into his jacket pocket for the restaurant.

Dinner is a minute steak and strips of fried eggplant, with a poorly washed salad. It deadens rather than satisfies Sixsmith’s appetite. He leaves half on his plate and sips carbonated water as he reads Frobisher’s last letters. He witnesses himself through Robert’s words searching Bruges for his unstable friend, first love, and if I’m honest, my last .

In the hotel elevator Sixsmith considers the responsibility he put on Luisa Rey’s shoulders, wondering if he’s done the right thing. The curtains of his room blow in as he opens the door. He calls out, “Who’s in here?”

No one. No one knows where you are . His imagination has been playing tricks on him for weeks now. Sleep deprivation. “Look,” he tells himself, “in forty-eight hours you’ll be back in Cambridge on your rainy, safe , narrow island. You’ll have your facilities, your allies, your contacts, and you can plan your broadside on Seaboard from there.”

18

Bill Smoke watches Rufus Sixsmith leave his hotel room, waits five minutes, then lets himself in. He sits on the rim of the bathtub and flexes his gloved fists. No drug, no religious experience touches you like turning a man into a corpse. You need a brain, though. Without discipline and expertise, you’ll soon find yourself strapped into an electric chair . The assassin strokes a lucky Krugerrand in his pocket. Smoke is wary of being a slave to superstition, but he isn’t about to mess with the amulet just to prove a point. A tragedy for loved ones, a big fat nothing to everyone else, and a problem solved for my clients. I’m just the instrument of my clients’ will. If it wasn’t me it’d be the next fixer in the Yellow Pages. Blame its user, blame its maker, but don’t blame the gun . Bill Smoke hears the lock. Breathe . The pills he took earlier clarify his perception, terribly, and when Sixsmith shuffles into the bedroom, humming “Leaving on a Jet Plane,” the hit man could swear he can feel his victim’s pulse, slower than his own. Smoke sights his prey through the door crack. Sixsmith flumps onto the bed. The assassin visualizes the required motions: Three steps out, fire from the side, through the temple, up close . Smoke darts from the doorway; Sixsmith utters a guttural syllable and tries to rise, but the silenced bullet is already boring through the scientist’s skull and into the mattress. The body of Rufus Sixsmith falls back, as if he has curled up for a postprandial nap.

Blood soaks into the thirsty eiderdown.

Fulfillment throbs in Bill Smoke’s brain. Look what I did .

19

Wednesday morning is smog-scorched and heat-hammered, like the last hundred mornings and the next fifty. Luisa Rey drinks black coffee in the steamy cool of the Snow White Diner on the corner of Second Avenue and Sixteenth Street, a two-minute walk from the Spyglass offices, reading about a Baptist ex–naval nuclear engineer from Atlanta called James Carter, who plans to run for the Democratic nomination. Sixteenth Street traffic moves in frustrated inches and headlong stampedes. The sidewalks blur with hurrying people and skateboarders. “Nothin’ for breakfast this mornin’, Luisa?” asks Bart, the fry cook.

“Only news,” replies his very regular customer.

Roland Jakes trips over the doorway and makes his way to Luisa. “Uh, this seat free? Didn’t eat a bite this morning. Shirl’s left me. Again.”

“Features meeting in fifteen minutes.”

“Bags of time.” Jakes sits down and orders eggs over easy. “Page nine,” he says to Luisa. “Right-hand bottom corner. Something you should see.”

Luisa turns to page nine and reaches for her coffee. Her hand freezes.

SCIENTIST SUICIDE AT B.Y. INT’L. AIRPORT HOTEL

Eminent British scientist Dr. Rufus Sixsmith was found dead Tuesday morning in his room at Buenas Yerbas International Airport’s Hotel Bon Voyage, having taken his own life. Dr. Sixsmith, former head of the Global Atomic Commission, had been employed as a consultant for Seaboard Corporation at the blue-chip utility’s Swannekke Island installation outside Buenas Yerbas City for ten months. He was known to have had a lifelong battle with clinical depression, and for the week prior to his death had been incommunicado. Ms. Fay Li, spokeswoman for Seaboard, said, “Dr. Sixsmith’s untimely death is a tragedy for the entire international scientific community. We at Seaboard Village on Swannekke Island feel we’ve lost not just a greatly respected colleague but a very dear friend. Our heartfelt condolences go to his own family and his many friends. He shall be greatly missed.” Dr. Sixsmith’s body, discovered with a single gunshot wound to the head by hotel maids, is being flown home for burial in his native England. A medical examiner at BYPD confirmed there are no suspicious circumstances surrounding the incident.

“So”—Jakes grins—”is your exposé of the century screwed up now?”

Luisa’s skin prickles and her eardrums hurt.

“Whoops.” Jakes lights up a cigarette. “Were you close?”

“He couldn’t”—Luisa fumbles her words—”wouldn’t have done it.”

Jakes approximates gentleness. “Kinda looks like he did, Luisa.”

“You don’t kill yourself if you have a mission.”

“You might if your mission makes you crazy.”

“He was murdered, Jakes.”

Jakes represses a here-we-go-again face. “Who by?”

“Seaboard Corporation. Of course.”

“Ah. His employer. Of course. Motive?”

Luisa forces herself to speak calmly and ignore Jakes’s mock conviction. “He’d written a report on a reactor type developed at Swannekke B, the HYDRA. Plans for Site C are waiting for Federal Power Commission approval. When it’s approved, Seaboard can license the design for the domestic and overseas market—the government contracts alone would mean a stream of revenue in the high tens of millions, annually. Sixsmith’s role was to give the project his imprimatur, but he hadn’t read the script and identified lethal design flaws. In response, Seaboard buried the report and denied its existence.”

“And your Dr. Sixsmith did what?”

“He was getting ready to go public.” Luisa slaps the newspaper. “This is what the truth cost him.”

Jakes pierces a wobbly dome of yolk with a toast soldier. “You, uh, know what Grelsch is going to say?”

“ ‘Hard evidence,’ ” says Luisa, like a doctor making a diagnosis. “Look, Jakes, will you tell Grelsch … just tell him I had to go somewhere.”

20

The manager at the Hotel Bon Voyage is having a bad day. “No, you may not see his room! The specialized carpet cleaner has removed all traces of the incident. Who, I add, we had to pay from our own pocket! What kind of ghoul are you, anyway? A reporter? A ghost hunter? A novelist?”

“I’m”—Luisa Rey buckles with sobs from nowhere—”his niece, Megan Sixsmith.”

A stony matriarch enfolds the weeping Luisa in her mountainous bust. Random bystanders shoot the manager foul looks. The manager goes pale and attempts damage control. “Please, come through to the back, I’ll get you a—”