Slow River

“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.

“Pla

“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? Ki

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. ”

And Tok, years earlier, telling me: “It was just getting interesting when Greta came on the net and kicked me out… she cut me out of those files clean as a whistle.”

I waited outside the conservatory in Pearson Park. It was eleven in the morning. I had not slept at all. My face, drawn and gray as the clouds scudding overhead, was reflected in wavy lines by the slightly flawed glass. Magyar, when she finally arrived, did not look much better.

It was warm in the conservatory, bright with bird noise. We were the only people there.

“She must know as much about rival business families as she knows about the van de Oest operation,” I told Magyar. “Information is power.” Something Greta had learned from Katerine early on, no doubt. “And Greta would need to feel powerful.” Poor Greta, who always looked as though she was expecting something or someone to swoop upon her from around the corner.

“You have to go to your family and tell them this.”

I stared at a mynah bird, grooming its wing. Purple highlights reflected from the black feathers. “No.”

“Yes. Greta has to be stopped.”

“She knew,” I said, “all that time ago.” The bird’s beak was very orange. “She helped me.”

“All she did was give you a lock!” Magyar, I realized, was protective of that seven-year-old child who had not been able to look after herself. I loved her for it.

“But the lock stopped it. Greta stopped it.”

“She didn’t help Stella.”

The bird looked at me, cocking its head this way, then that. “Maybe she thought, I don’t know, that Katerine was unstoppable. If it happened to her early enough, and often enough-

“Who knows what she thought? Who cares! You were hurt! She had you kidnapped, humiliated!”

The bird, disturbed by the noise, flew up to the roof of its aviary. Greta had given me the lock that had saved me. “Maybe she didn’t know I was the one they’d take, maybe…” Of course she would have known. But they weren’t supposed to try and kill me. What had gone wrong?

“And what about poor Lucas Chen?” I said nothing. “Lore.” She took me by both arms, above the elbow, tight. “Stop looking at the birds. Listen to yourself. Just listen. You’re making excuses for her. Abuse is never an excuse for tormenting others. Especially a sister. She has to be stopped. You have to talk to your family.”

“I can’t.”

Magyar let go of my arms, laid her hand along my cheek. “Lore, love, you can’t hide forever.”

Why not? The mynah bird was flying this way and that, trying to And a way out. “I can’t go back. They’re too strong.” Katerine’s Lore, Oster’s Lore… They would break me to pieces again. “I’ll be the youngest again, the baby, the pawn…” I trailed off. She was looking at me oddly.

“It wouldn’t be the same,” she said gently. “It couldn’t. Katerine would go to jail. Greta would go to jail.”

I stared at her. They were my family.

“Lore, you’ve had your life stolen away. You have a scar more than a foot long on your back. You think you killed someone—you suffered night after night of believing you took away a man’s life. Lucas Chen is probably scared for his life, right now. Stella is dead. You can’t go back.”

It was a terrible litany. “No,” I said, and I didn’t know whether I meant No, I can’t go back or No, you’re wrong. I didn’t want to go back, but knowing that it was not there to return to was terrifying.

“Tok. I could call Tok.” And then it would all be over. I could get rid of the false PIDA, get rid of poor, dead Sal Bird, let her finally rest in peace. I could reclaim my identity. Be Lore again. No more hiding, no more lying; no more dealing with Spa

“What would you want to happen?”

“I wouldn’t see you every day at the plant. I’d be living…” I floundered.

“Where? Where would you be living that I couldn’t see you if I wanted, or you couldn’t see me?”