CHAPTER 11

He slips inside the doorway. He inhales, smells something, an alien presence. Wonders if it’s gas but only momentarily. A perfume of some kind, heavy, no, a cologne. Like inhaling the Polo counter at Macy’s.

He can hear Emily’s voice inside his head and, for a second, he can clearly see the difference between the forest and the trees or, rather, tree. The tree is his desire to kill whoever was in his place, who overturned it. The forest is his safety. Call the cops, Jeremy, or the building manager. Get out of here.

He takes a few steps inside.

“I’ve called the police!” he yells. He paws his phone. He listens. Nothing, no sound. False bravery, he’s realizing; of course no one is waiting for him. It would be a tactical error of the utmost stupidity, ransacking his apartment and then waiting around to get caught.

How did someone know he wasn’t home last night?

What could someone want from him?

He feels the weight of his iPad on his back.

He takes in the condo, an open kitchen and living area with a fifty-inch Internet-connected TV hanging on the far wall. A massive window that would look onto the drizzle-shrouded bay if the curtains weren’t pulled shut. Jeremy knows that’s not his doing; he rarely remembers to shut the blinds; if people can see inside and don’t like what he’s doing, that’s their problem.

The condo is mostly empty of furniture, edging on desolate. Jeremy hasn’t had a chance to furnish the place; at least he tells himself he hasn’t been able to afford the time, but it’s more that he can’t afford the cost of the things he’d like. He takes his furniture as seriously as his haircut. He likes things just so. And now they’re ransacked.

The TV hangs askew. Someone looked behind it. The stuffing in his one couch unstuffed, jigsaw lines cut through the leather. And the knife, his own knife, lies on the throw rug. The implement of destruction, one of a set of three matching Wüsthofs, black riveted handle, razor edge. “To cut to the truth, and also for food prep,” Evan had joked about his housewarming gift, back when Evan didn’t fully grasp that Jeremy had no problem cutting to his version of the truth.

Jeremy picks it up, sees the leather-bound notebook, open to a middle page, lying beside the fireplace. Eyes ahead to the hallway and bedrooms, he kneels, glances at the notebook, flips. It’s a backup system, phone numbers, scribbling of ideas. A page is torn near the front, torn but not torn out. He glances at the phone numbers.

Evan; Andrea; the guys at Intrinsic Investors; a few old friends from grad school; a hacker Jeremy likes who started a travel price-comparison web site acquired for hundreds of millions of dollars; Nik; two women Jeremy met at cafés, identified only by their initials so Emily wouldn’t see them; Emily’s brother, in case something ever happened to Emily — written in her loopy cursive — and, of course, Harry.

He pats his iPhone, pulls it out of his pocket. He’s still holding the knife. He looks at the phone numbers. Already knows where he’s starting, knew it hours ago, actually.

He’s got to call Harry.

He’s got to swallow his pride, or appear to, and hear what’s in Harry’s voice. Were Jeremy even half honest with himself, he’d admit he doesn’t really suspect Harry; Harry might be tough and ticked off, but he’s likely not malicious. And were Jeremy fully honest with himself, he’d admit he’d like Harry’s help. But he’s not — honest. He won’t ask for help. He’s going to ask Harry what the hell is going on, and then go from there.

He fingers the number into his iPhone, hits send, stands, begins walking to the back of the condo. The phone rings. He peeks into the bathroom. It’s largely intact, but the medicine cabinet is opened and the handful of prescription medicines are uncapped.

The phone rings again.

Obviously, Jeremy thinks, an intruder left no bottle unturned. But also made, apparently, no effort to hide the intrusion. Unless the woman was somehow interrupted. Why, he wonders, does he think it was a woman?

He’ll have to ask the building manager. That guy notices anything with a vagina. Rumor has it that the cops once got called and hassled him about whether he had a weird habit of lurking around the underground parking garage when a particularly attractive young woman would come home at night, and offer to help her carry her things upstairs.

The phone rings. C’mon, you duplicitous motherfucker, Jeremy thinks, making his way to the bedroom.

Ring.

More of the same. The mattress sliced open, presumably with the same knife Jeremy’s holding. The closet tossed, and the bathroom.

The phone picks up. “You’ve reached Professor Harry Ives …” Jeremy clenches his teeth; he’ll have to try another number.

Before he can hang up, it picks up; a voice comes onto the line.

“If it isn’t James the Seventh.” Harry’s powerful lecturer voice booms over the phone. It causes Jeremy to withdraw the phone from his ear, and raises an image of the wizened professor, the sagacious codger, the scraggly gray beard and unkempt curls pasted onto his forehead with a light perspiration. He’s doubtless clad in a checkered red flannel vest over a long-sleeve blue T-shirt, baggy khakis. He always looks like he spent the night somewhere other than a bed.

Jeremy feels an instant of pity and a filial affection for this combination of father figure and an outdated, slightly crazed Santa Claus, a mythical figure that isn’t nearly as mythical as his legend would tell it. At least not to Jeremy.

“I know,” Jeremy spills.

“I doubt it. Or you wouldn’t make the same mistake over and over.”

“I know, Harry. Cut the shit.”

“So let’s hear it. Who is James the Seventh?”

Jeremy looks around the splattered room, feels the knife clenched in his hand. He’s hit by a realization: the fact that Jeremy’s house was attacked suggests that he and his computer are being punked. This is about him, somehow. Not about a computer, or the apocalypse. Someone is definitely coming after Jeremy.

“Battle of Auldearn,” Jeremy says. “Why, Harry? Why in the hell …”

Harry interrupts. “That was 1645. Not bad. Almost the right decade. But I’m referring to the Battle of the Boyne, which took place fifty years later. James the Seventh, flush with cash and arms supplied by Louis the Fourteenth, aimed to regain his crown.”

Jeremy laughs bitterly. Typical haughty Harry, condescendingly making his point through a conflict metaphor. Fine, old man, you want to play it that way. “He landed in Ireland where he had Catholic supporters.”

“But not the element of surprise. King William of Orange sussed out his plan and met him with thirty thousand men. And sent James and his invaders packing.”

Just like that, Jeremy’s found his opening, the admission. “You knew I was going to call you. I’m under surveillance. I know. I know, Harry. Do you really want to spend your last days teaching peace studies in prison?”

“What? No, Jeremy. I’m just saying: in the end, preparation and superior know-how will win out against your ill-conceived venture-backed capital dreams and your supercomputer. So I accept.”

Jeremy, fuming, still knows goddamn well better than to ask what Harry accepts, mostly because, despite how furious Jeremy is, he’s not so out of control as to miss Harry’s request for an apology. They’ve not talked since the picnic at the log cabin when Jeremy went nuclear after Harry had the audacity to say that the algorithm could “use a little tinkering.” Jeremy threatened to publicly expose Harry’s “academic fraud,” whatever that meant.

In the silence in which Jeremy calculates a response, Harry says: “What the fuck do you want?”

Both the tone and substance catch Jeremy off guard. He knows that Harry, as disheveled as his appearance tends to be, has a reputation for civility. A graceful lion. Jeremy can’t ever remember hearing him use a curse word. He feels himself being manhandled when he’s the one with the axe. And he’s in an odd spot to begin with; he’s called to confront Harry with circumstances he’s not fully prepared to explain, not yet, and he’s called a man Jeremy recently threatened to ruin with public disgrace.

Is Harry taunting Jeremy? Did he hack into Jeremy’s computer and plant the idea that an attack is imminent, and is he now making vague references to it, baiting Jeremy, by mentioning his failed venture-capital backing?

Is the old codger toying with Jeremy? Is he capable? Maybe not on his own? How?

“I’m not closing up shop, Harry. You won’t shut me down.”

“Oh, I thought this was the Missouri. I shouldn’t have bothered to iron my vest.” Sarcastic; of course Jeremy’s not shutting down; the USS Missouri, where the Japanese signed an unconditional surrender on September 2, 1945. “Jeremy, the market has spoken. First the marketplace of ideas, and then the actual marketplace. Besides, the government experiment didn’t work. Look at the bright side: without funding from France, James the Seventh wouldn’t have even been able to be in a position to get his ass kicked.”

A clean shot, bare-knuckle, jaw, smack.

“Yeah, that worked out beautifully for Ireland in the end.”

Harry chuckles. Then a pause, and “Listen, I’ve got to go.”

“You set me up with the government, Harry, right? You hooked me up with them, then watched them humiliate me. This is all about making sure no one challenges your wisdom.”

Silence from Harry.

“You’re up to your ears in this. What’s the game?”

“Goodbye,” Harry says.

“Wait!” Then Jeremy lets himself say: “I need to talk to you.”

“Need,” a big word for Jeremy. Even if Jeremy means it in a threatening way. Harry knows it.

“Are we through, Jeremy?”

“Harry, something’s gone wrong.”

There’s no response.

“Tell me, Harry. You owe me that.”

Silence.

“Harry, goddamn it. Someone broke into my house. They broke into my …” He doesn’t want to say about the computer, his digital brain. It’s too incendiary, vulnerable. “Someone is following me.”

Harry says: “Statis pugna.”

“What?”

Silence.

“C’mon, Harry.”

“Not over the phone.” Practically whispered.

“What can’t you tell me over the phone? Harry?”

Click.

“What? Harry? Fuck.”

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