An Absence of Light

Chapter 65

Colin Faeber put down the telephone in his office and was immediately aware of a clammy dampness around his mouth. He knew that a condensation of perspiration was forming on his upper lip. The woman had said that Gilbert Hormann had died of a heart attack in the suite adjacent to his office sometime during the night His personal secretary had found his body herself, when she came into the office that morning. She was sorry, she said, but she couldn’t talk anymore. There was so much confusion there now. They had just taken away the body. Everyone was very upset It was tragic, so tragic.

Faeber sat immobile in his chair and counted them off: Tisler, suicide. Besom, heart attack. Burtell, probably in the explosion. He couldn’t find Sheck. Possibly in the explosion with Burtell, since that was their primary meeting location. Hormann, heart attack.

And now he could not raise Kalatis on their code line. Had something happened to him as well? What the hell was happening? He put his hands on the edge of the desk in front of him as if he were steadying himself against the gunnel of a boat, as if he were fighting the nausea of too many hours at sea. Was there something going on here that he should see, something obvious that in retrospect he would see all too clearly and wonder why he hadn’t detected it in the first place? His stomach tumbled at the thought of it But since he couldn’t “see” it, what should he do? Should he take the extreme step of contacting Strasser? He had been told never to do that Strasser was “out of the picture” except financially. He was completely removed, and it was clearly his intention to remain that way. The idea was only fleeting, for if Faeber was intimidated by Kalatis, he was petrified by Brod Strasser whom he had met on only four occasions during the three and a half years since he had bought controlling interest in DataPrint.

He looked around his office which was modern in style as befitted his profession, chrome and glass and copolymer furniture, decorated in primary colors with touches here and there of Italian moderne furnishings, the coffee server, the cocktail pitchers in the liquor cabinets. He stood up from his desk. He didn’t know why. He wasn’t going anywhere. He didn’t know what to do. But he couldn’t sit still, either. There was no contingency plan for this kind of thing, everyone dying, nobody to contact What the hell was going on? Was this thing coming to an end? Was he in danger? Christ! What would make him think he wasn’t? Why wouldn’t he be?

He started toward the door of his office, hesitated, turned back and stood at the window behind his desk. From the western edge of downtown he looked westward, over a sweep of the green canopies of trees toward the satellite commercial centers whose office towers punched up out of the carpet of thick woods like futuristic cities on a jungle-covered planet. Though he had stood at these windows and daydreamed over this view countless times, just now it seemed alien, as though he had awakened in an unfamiliar world. He felt only an unmistakable anxiety.

Turning away from the window again he walked to the door and opened it.

“Connie,” he said. That was all he had to say. She was typing at her computer screen and stopped immediately, though without hurrying, and in one or two moments she was in his office. “Close the door,” he said.

She looked at him as he turned around midway to his desk.

“What’s the matter?” she asked.

Colin Faeber, like many businessmen the world over, had fallen, if not in love, then at least into serious glandular obsession with his secretary. Connie, like secretaries the world over, had allowed him to indulge his obsession. It was an easy thing to do. Convenient. Though the sex was usually mundane to forgettable, the perks were often superb. But Faeber’s record with wives and other women was a poor one. His understanding of women in general was obtuse. It was something he never bothered to analyze, and therefore he never acquired more than an adolescent’s comprehension about the opposite sex. It was, for the most part, simply a libidinal conversance, and even that was only rudimentary.

But it was just this lack of understanding of women that made Faeber vulnerable. With Connie he had found a more indulgent patience than had been his luck before. He had never stopped to ask why this was, but he had recognized it, and as a result he had begun to unburden himself to her. She had listened, commiserated, seemed concerned, and interested. In fact, she seemed interested not only in him, but also in the astute ways he handled his business.

During the last three or four months Connie had learned more about Faeber’s business than just about anyone involved other than his senior officers. But even their knowledge was concentrated in their own areas of expertise and did not extend to the business overall. Connie’s did.

As a matter of fact, the more he talked about his business with her the more she seemed to care for him. It was almost as though she found his work to be an aphrodisiac. Sometimes it seemed even to him that he droned on endlessly, but Connie was always willing, even eager to listen. She asked questions, which it flattered him to be able to answer.

And it wasn’t too long before, as a special demonstration of his cleverness, he revealed to her what he called the “real” purpose of the business: the selling of “certain” information to persons undisclosed. He told her of the “intel” section, which employed only half a dozen data input clerks, a single coordinator, and a secretary. The operation of this section was buried in the accounting, and the billing for its services was off the books-and was quadruple the volume of the legitimate billing of the business. All cash.

He told her of intrigues, of the cells of paid informants scattered in businesses and buildings throughout the city, of low-level employees who were more than eager to tap into their employer’s computers and withdraw vital information. Money was all it took. Cash. Nobody ever had enough of it. It could buy you anything in the world, and for the right amount of it everyone could be persuaded to do something.

She said she didn’t believe him, about the “intel section.” So one night after a fog of vodka tonics, after she had stripteased him to a pitch of silliness, they left his office in their underwear and, carrying the bottle of gin with them-and her purse, she laughingly insisted she would need it for “after”-wove their way through ghostly pools of isolated fluorescent lights until they came to a door where she watched him punch his code into the security panel above the doorknob. And he took her in. She was amazed. And gratified, so she let him have what he wanted. During this unseemly business, she repeated the security code over and over to herself so she wouldn’t forget it Afterward, he passed out on the scratchy, synthetic fiber carpet, amid the white noise of the humming microprocessors and the smell of heated plastic.

Quickly she wrote down the security code for the door and then set to work with the micro camera she had brought in her purse along with numerous rolls of film. Nearly an hour and a half later she snapped closed the camera, put it back in her purse, and began the back-breaking work of waking him and helping him back to his office.

After that night Colin Faeber had no more secrets, though he didn’t know it.

So now, as he began to explain his fears to her, she had to remember to make him stop from time to time and explain himself, to clarify a point or two here and there. When he finally finished, though still pacing back and forth across his office, Connie, who thought she had known so much, had heard more than she had bargained for. She had known nothing, of course, of the “coincidental” deaths, and now Faeber, having rashly regurgitated everything in an effort to help her appreciate his fears, had caused her to wonder if she really wanted to go any further with this. She already had done things she had never dreamed she would do, or could do, emboldened by the prospect of enormous sums of money that Rayner said they would be able to extort with the information she was getting. But now, if she understood him rightly, Faeber was worried about being killed. This was clearly another kind of game altogether.

“I just don’t know what to do,” he said.

“You don’t have any idea of what’s going on here?” she asked.

“No. Kalatis, I don’t know, that guy could be capable of anything.”

“I thought you were afraid he’d been… killed.” She couldn’t believe she was having this conversation.

“I don’t know, maybe, or maybe he’s just… not answering.”

“Which would mean…?” She wished to God he would stop pacing. He was a goddamned caricature, a comic book character being “nervous,” taking long strides with little U-turn marks behind his heels.

“I don’t… know.”

Connie wanted to scream. He had said “I don’t know” four times in the last three minutes. She looked at him. The man was falling apart. He actually was pale, and perspiring on his upper lip. That was something she particularly disliked, but upon seeing it now it was not dislike she felt. It was fear. His fear was infectious, and she felt its warm hand creeping up her throat and contaminating her own imagination. But even in the midst of her growing anxiety, she had the clear, rational realization that she could use his panic as an opportunity to gain an advantage. Despite her alarm, she resolved to appear calm, to be calm. She resolved to present a composed and rational demeanor. She would become a point of stability that he could cling to. It was an opportunity she could hardly afford to pass up.

“Look,” she said, not knowing what she would say next, “nobody knows where I live, do they? I mean, any of those people?”

He stared at her from across the room. He shook his head.

“Okay, go to my place, then, and stay there. I’ll try to get some idea of what’s going on.”

“How are you going to do that?”

“Give me your contact numbers.”

He stared at her, but she could see him thinking. What was his alternative? He clearly thought things had fallen apart. But was he misreading the situation? If he was, it would be a mistake to betray such numbers. Kalatis would have him strangled. But if he wasn’t, if his suspicions were right and he was being hung out to dry… or if he was going to be killed… then he had nothing to lose, and might even save his life. But what could she possibly find out…?

“What are you going to do with them?” he asked.

“You said you couldn’t get an answer from Bur tell or Sheck. You said you thought they were in the explosion at the marina. What if you’re wrong? What if they’re hiding too, or not yet aware that something’s gone wrong?”

Faeber stood still and tried to moisten his lips with his tongue. It didn’t work. His mouth was like sand.

“Then I ought to call them myself,” he said.

“You’re not thinking straight,” she said. “You need to drop out of sight Keep quiet. Wait” She couldn’t believe she was saying these things. It didn’t seem very real, helping an emotionally debilitated Colin Faeber elude an assassin.

Faeber’s dry tongue came out of his mouth again, just a little, and retreated. He walked over to the coat closet, opened the door and took out his suit coat that was hanging there. Retrieving his wallet from the inside pocket, he took out a small plastic card and handed it to her. “The instructions are on there,” he said. “It’s a series of digits, and you calculate them differently depending on the date and who you’re trying to call. It’s all explained. It’s kind of like one of those perpetual calendars. It says on there.”

She took the card from him.

“Just stay at my place,” she said. “Just let me look into this a little.”

He nodded, but he seemed preoccupied. All the failure that Rayner had predicted would come to him-because of his scheming with Kalatis-had arrived. They were through with him. He had served his purpose, and he wasn’t even sure what it had been. Still holding his coat, he walked out of the office.

Connie watched him leave. Through the open door of his office, she saw him walk through her office and into the reception room. She heard the receptionist speak to him, but he didn’t answer. She heard the soft ping of the door as he pushed it open and walked out into the hallway.

She stepped over to his desk, picked up the telephone, and called Rayner Faeber.