Slow River

“Would they notice if you uploaded Meisener’s records to me at home?”

“I could find a way to disguise it. What do you have in mind?”

“A records search. Between your official status and the things I’ve picked up in the last couple of years, we can learn a lot about Nathan Meisener.”

The flat was cold when I got home, but I opened a link to Magyar before I even turned on the heat so that she could start uploading Meisener’s information. I asked her to also call each of the previous employers he had listed, and get from them several things: a picture, a DNA scan if available, biographical data—age, height, family and so on—and the references and employers he had listed.

I turned on the heat and lights and made some tea while she started on that. It was going to be a long night.

When the information began to come through, I kept Magyar’s link in the top left corner while I scrolled through the data.

The preliminary data from his last listed employer, EnSyTec, checked out. “It says he worked for these people nearly eleven years,” Magyar said as I sipped and read. “It looks kosher to me.”

“How about the resume he gave them—does it match the one he gave when he applied for this job?”

“I don’t know. All I could get immediately without bumping up a level was his performance records, which match what he gave us when he arrived.”

“See if you can get the rest.”

“It’s three in the morning.”

“Not in Sarajevo.”

Her picture box at the top of my screen went blank. I scrolled through the resume that had got Meisener the Hedon Road job: EnSyTec, eleven years; Work, Inc, a placement agency, for three; Piplex, a manufacturing plant, for six years before that. It just didn’t feel right. Meisener did not strike me as the kind of man to stay in one place for eleven years. For all his competence and outward cheer, he struck me as a person who would one day simply not show up for work. Rootless. But he said he was married, with children.

I went back to the biographical information: Sarah Meisener, a chemist with a local government lab. Number listed. I called Magyar at Hedon Road and left a message. “When you get off the phone to Sarajevo, try calling Sarah Meisener.” I gave her the number, and went back to the list.

I finished my tea and was debating between soup and toast when Magyar came back. “I wasn’t talking to Sarajevo,” she said. She looked pleased with herself. “It was Athens. Meisener’s ex-supervisor. ‘I didn’t think he would be working anymore,’ he said when I told him we were thinking of promoting Meisener to shift supervisor. ‘Is his heart better now, then?’ ‘Heart?’ I said, ‘are we talking about the same Meisener?’ ‘I know,’ he said, ‘built like a bull, doesn’t look like there’s anything wrong with him.’ ‘A bull,’ I said, ‘yes, indeed.’ Apparently he was retired early.

“Planned to go to Israel. The supervisor in Athens is making sure I get the full record. ‘Old Nathan deserves every chance.’ Best buddies, it seems.” She grinned. “Would you call that bandy-legged little man a bull?”

“No.”

“No. I think we’ve got him.”

I wasn’t so sure. He could have just assumed an ID, the way I had. But I had been aiming for the long term, for something that would stand up for years, forever, if necessary. It could have happened. If I hadn’t met Magyar, if she hadn’t made me take a good look at myself, I could have been trapped at Hedon Road, as a drudge, for the rest of my life. My bones felt as though they were shrinking; the thought was appalling. Meisener, though, would only have been working for the short term. Four or five weeks. You got paid? Kinnis had asked. Nah. Timed it all wrong. But he had timed it perfectly: employers often did not check too rigorously until money had changed hands. Which meant that maybe Meisener, or whoever he was, had taken a shortcut. “Did you try his wife?”

Magyar snorted. “At four in the morning? What would I say: Did Nathan get home all right?”

“Just call, and hang up. Tell me what you get.”

I decided on toast. Easier to eat at the screen. The smell of scorching bread reminded me of being five, the sun hot on the courtyard stones in Amsterdam, Tok shouting, How do you know it’s clean? How did anyone ever know anything was clean? I was no longer hungry, but I forced myself to eat one of the slices, with a thin spread of baba ghanouj. I wondered what Lucas Chen was doing, if he felt clean.

The screen signaled that Magyar was calling. Her face was smooth; she was not happy. “She answered on the first ring. A cool blonde. Young. And the video pickup was fuzzed around the edges.”

“Did you say anything?”

Names on the Platinum list—people who gave more than seventy thousand a year, There, near the end of the list was G. van de Oest.

Wind whistling along the sand outside the tent. Marley nodding seriously. “Greta is a much more powerful force in this company than most people realize. Your future might be smoother if you bore that in mind. ”