Buying Time Read online

  “More interesting than ‘Hoboken,’” Alenka said. “Maybe it was the TV show.”

  “No, I was over thirty when that came on.” She nodded and lapsed into that familiar counting-back-and-subtracting look. “A hundred and thirty-some?”

  “One of the oldest,” Randolph said.

  “As far as I know, there’re only four older. Not counting clinic doctors, of course.” Most of the hundred-odd doctors had to be among the oldest, but they all were supposed to be anonymous. I’d met several through the years, who ostensibly came to me for confidential advice. Actually, I think they just had to tell someone that they were immortal.

  (I used to wonder about these doctors. They have to stay near the clinics in Sydney or London, but they must have to move every ten years or so, or their neighbors would notice they weren’t getting older. Surely they must sometimes run into an old chum who recognizes them from fifty years before.)

  “So this meeting,” I said to Randolph. “We’re going to—”

  He held a finger to his lips. “Not everyone here knows.” Alenka nodded slightly. “Not even all the immortals.”

  “Do we have a secret handshake?”

  “We just … know each other,” Alenka said with an ambiguous smile. While I was absorbing that, wondering to what extent it was an invitation (and an invitation to what?), she hurriedly excused herself, looking off to the right.

  A tall man approached from that direction, watching her go. He looked vaguely familiar.

  Randolph greeted him. “Briskin.”

  The name clicked as I shook his hand. “Sir Charles. You were, uh, secretary of the exchequer.”

  “More than forty years ago. One does drag one’s past around.” He looked in Alenka Zor’s direction and shook his head slightly. “A pity we can’t truly start over each time.”

  There was an awkward silence. “You would be Dallas Barr.” I nodded. “And Lamont Randolph.” To me: “We talked for a while, where was it? … Grenoble.”

  “You have a good memory.”

  “Oh yes. Quite.” He looked around, a little nervous, and lowered his voice. “Forgive me for being mysterious. I have to talk to both of you. But not at the same time.”

  Randolph nodded, perhaps knowingly, and walked off. We headed in the opposite direction, away from the crowd. “This is your first meeting,” Briskin said.

  “Yes.”

  “What do you think?”

  “Reminds me of the old annual get-togethers, before Singapore. Some of them were no larger than this. Before your time.”

  “Yes. Same sorts of things went on?”

  “Wheeling and dealing. Old friends. Maybe a little more. I take it there’s some of that here, too.”

  He smiled. “Now you’re the one who’s being mysterious. Some of what?”

  “You know. Political stuff, power stuff. I think Randolph believes we should be running the world. It’s a shared delusion, I’m sure.”

  “They talk a lot about politics.” He was staring at me in an odd way. “But it’s all kaffeeklatsch noise. They’re mainly concerned with making their million and keeping it safe until it’s needed.”

  “Can’t criticize anyone for that.”

  “But you don’t do it.”

  “Yes, I do. In a way.”

  “What you don’t do is make your million the same way each time. Almost everyone else does—contacts, special knowledge, and so forth. It makes sense.” I shrugged. I’d heard this before. “You’ve made nine fortunes nine different ways.”

  It was more than nine fortunes, and only seven actually different ways, but I didn’t correct him. “A lot of people have died of overspecialization. All the oil fortunes back in the twenties. People who bankroll fashion and entertainment enterprises. So I diversify.”

  “What you do is gamble. Every time you leave the clinic, you go off in a new direction.” I just smiled at that. Actually, I’ll often have spent several years setting up the next decade’s fortune, using various identities. Learning things and making contacts. Sometimes it’s just like setting up dominoes to fall. Other times … there can be accidents.

  He was right, though, in that most people continually repeat the same basic patterns. They turn over all their assets to Stileman and then, when they walk out of the clinic, just return to the board positions or vice-chairmanships they’d vacated four weeks before. The boards would always be tickled pink to have them back—since the alternative would be their defecting to a competitor, with all those decades of inside knowledge and expertise.

  I had done variations of that safe process a few times, to speed the transition from poverty to a reasonable state of wealth. But I didn’t want to become an actual millionaire the same way over and over. There’s real power in knowing different ways to go about it, and besides, it’s diverting. I’ve met a number of immortals who were worse drudges than any ’phem punching a time clock, endlessly repeating the same ten-year cycle—until something goes wrong. Several hundred immortals died in the decade after cheap inertial confinement fusion was demonstrated. The world didn’t immediately shut down all the fossil fuel and fission power plants, but there was rapid “negative growth.” You can’t make a million pounds without something to sell.

  So I knew about twenty ways to climb up the ladder, and had actually made the million in seven of them. As it turned out, though, that wasn’t the only reason Briskin had sought me out. He was a “power” bedbug, too, even worse than Lamont Randolph. But he had a more solid base for his delusions: an underground within this underground.

  “I know some people who admire your spirit very much. They would like you to join them.”

  “No, thanks. This bunch uses up my ‘joining’ quota for the decade.”

  “This,” he said with a gesture of dismissal, “is just a way to get together with other people who aren’t going to die tomorrow. It also serves as a sort of examination area. That’s why we set it up originally.”

  “This gets confusing. Randolph used that mysterious ‘we,’ too. Your ‘we’ is a subset of his?”

  “No. Many of us are not known to other immortals.” Quietly: “Some of us work for Stileman.”

  “Interesting.” Stileman employees are given immortality on a different basis from ours. They don’t have to make a million, but their rules include a prohibition against knowingly making contact with any of us clients. That’s supposed to minimize corruption.

  “How would you like to be independent of the necessity to make a million pounds every decade? Receive the Stileman Treatment free and clear?”

  “And legally, of course,” I said. He shrugged. “I don’t know. I enjoy the challenge. What would I do with my time if I wasn’t busy making a million pounds? More to the point, what would I have to do for your nameless bunch?”

  “We have a name, the Steering Committee. It’s hard to say exactly what you’d be asked—”

  “What do they make you do? Steer?”

  “Recruit, primarily. English-speaking people.”

  “And I would recruit Americans.”

  He didn’t get the joke. “I don’t think so. Perhaps financial policy. All they told me was that they thought the time had come to approach you.”

  We had walked off the lawn, onto the rocks that tumbled down to the water’s edge. I dusted off a boulder and sat down. Briskin stood over me.

  “They thought my time had come?” The water lapping on the rocks was a soothing sound, just louder than the party murmur.

  “That’s right.”

  “So where does Fatso fit into the equation? Lamont Randolph? He seems to think my being here was all his doing.”

  “He agreed to be our agent, our ‘blind,’ if you will. He’s telling anyone who will listen how clever he was.”

  “He’s one of your Steering Committee, too?”

  “Under consideration. He knows about as much as you do.”

  “Getting me here was a test for him?”

  “In a way. We
could have acted directly.”

  “Sure. Just give me a call.”

  “You told one of our members about Marconi some years ago. We found her through some … Italian, shall we say, connection. Lamont Randolph had done business with her last year, without actually knowing her identity, and he was on our ‘possibles’ list. So we used him to approach her, knowing that you’d be going into the clinic soon.” He put his hands in his pockets and looked up.

  “And frankly, we’d hoped you would need a little help with your million, because of the accident.”

  People who say “frankly” make me glow with trust. I skimmed a stone out over the water. “I don’t understand why you went to all this trouble.”

  “If we’d simply asked, you would have refused. As you say, you’re not a joiner.”

  “Yeah, maybe. Nothing you’ve said makes me real hot to make an exception.”

  “Well, I haven’t explained—”

  “Let me explain something,” I said, standing up. “My life is already at the mercy of one secret outfit, the Stileman Foundation. So Fatso grabs me as soon as I get out of the clinic, and shoves me into the middle of another secret organization … the one that’s out there drinking Claudia’s booze.

  “Now you tell me that they are just a front for the real secret organization, your Steering Committee. So now you’re going to tell me there’s a secret cabal in the middle of the Steering Committee?”

  “No. The committee is the last of the Chinese boxes.”

  “How can you be sure? Anyhow, there’s this Russian guy who’s been blackballing me—”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Randolph.” He nodded slowly. “So this Russian had to change his mind or die, and once he did one or the other, you were able to give Fatso the word and have him dangle Maria Marconi in front of me. And have it all timed so that I’m just out of the clinic and theoretically vulnerable to wealth.”

  “No one thinks you can be bought.”

  “I see. You did all this to get my attention. So you can present a carefully reasoned argument that I will find irresistible.”

  He looked uncomfortable. “Not just to get your attention, no … but I suppose we did want to demonstrate to you that we were more than an elitist debating society. That we could make things happen in the real world—like finding the woman you had lost for more than half a century.”

  “Okay. Let’s assume Maria does show up and, therefore, you have impressed me and earned my undying gratitude. Then what? You tell me the secret password?”

  “You’re not making this easy, Mr. Barr.”

  “Sorry. I don’t have much practice at it.”

  He took out a cigarette and blew on its end. It sparkled into life, but he just looked at it for a moment, not smoking.

  “All I can really say is that we are profoundly dissatisfied with the state of the world, we feel we have the capacity to change it, and we are currently engaged in carefully developing a consensus as to what must be done and how we should go about it. We’ll work covertly within governments and transnational corporations to precipitate slowly—I emphasize, slowly—the changes we feel are necessary.” He flipped the cigarette down toward the water, unsmoked. “We will do it with you or without you.”

  “When do you start?”

  “We’ve begun. Asking you and a few others is part of this stage of the plan.”

  “How many are you?”

  “I’m not sure. Perhaps a hundred actual members, and half that number under consideration for membership.”

  “Doesn’t sound like very many people, to rule the world.”

  “We only want to guide it. Forget the Star Chamber power fantasy the ephemeral papers are always dragging out. We don’t have to do anything sinister. Just work collectively with our wealth and knowledge of the world.”

  “The knowledge better be worth a lot,” I said, doing some mental arithmetic. “Because you’re not talking about a great deal of wealth. Less than half a billion pounds, even if all hundred-fifty are unusually well off. You couldn’t buy off the legislature of Rhode Island with that.”

  “You’re right and wrong. We couldn’t buy much with five hundred million, and we have a great deal more.” He stared at me, letting that sink in. An annoying mannerism. “Do you understand? We aren’t accountable to the Stileman Foundation. I’m far from being the wealthiest among us, but I personally control nearly fifty million pounds.”

  “Congratulations.” I kicked at a rock and failed to dislodge it. “I don’t know. Your outfit offers wealth, immortality, and a chance to save the world. But I already have wealth and immortality, and I never agreed with anyone’s agenda for saving the world.

  “You’re right, though, that I had a close one last time. Being independent of the foundation’s rules would be worth a lot. Maybe worth helping out with this scheme, if it’s not too outrageous.”

  “There are other things I could tell you that would make you more enthusiastic. But the committee was quite specific as to what I was not to tell you. Until we know that you’re committed.”

  “Fair enough. What’s the next step?”

  “Someone will contact you. Meanwhile, of course, you will keep this to yourself.” He started back up the path. “Oh, one thing. There will be some disturbing news tonight. If you join us, it need not affect you.”

  I followed him. “The business about premature brain death?”

  He looked startled. “Randolph told you that?”

  “He said something. Then backed off on it.”

  “I’ll speak to him.” We attempted small talk on the way back to the party without too much success. Nice weather we’re having. Want to live forever?

  From the edge of the lawn I scanned the crowd. There, over by the pool: a shyly raised hand, a smile breaking into a grin. “Excuse me.” Maria.

  I remembered holding her seventy years before, a lifetime before. Delicate, almost awkward, like a large soft bird. She was the same. I tasted salt on her cheek.

  “I thought you were dead.” She nodded wordlessly, her face buried in my shirt. “What happened?”

  She wiped her eyes and looked up, face glowing. “This and that. What happened when?”

  “You could start with after Singapore.”

  “Tell me what you think happened.”

  I took her hand and walked her over to a stone bench. I wasn’t going to let go. “All I knew … well, I knew you had either gone underground or been … blown to smithereens. I looked at all the bodies and parts of bodies they found.”

  She grimaced. “Parts.”

  “Yes. There were nearly four hundred people unaccounted for. Most of them had probably been so near the blast they were simply vaporized. Some undoubtedly used the confusion as an opportunity to fade into the woodwork. I hoped that’s what you had done.”

  “As you did, of course. ‘Harlan Fitzgerald’ was listed among the dead.”

  “Of course.” She didn’t continue. “You mean … you thought …”

  “How could I think otherwise? The police said you were dead. They showed me—”

  “The body. I’m sorry.” It had been some hotel employee about my size, decapitated and burned beyond recognition. “I left you messages. I tried to get in touch with you everywhere.”

  “Two days after the explosion I was in a convent outside Rome. They’re the ones who took me in after my father died, when I was eleven. For ten years I counted beads and made investments for the order.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. It was not a bad time; I needed the quiet.” She picked up a twig off the bench and broke it in two, then four. “I didn’t want to recycle. I just played with the money because it absorbed me, and it was a way I could do good for the order.” She arranged the four sticks in a cross, or an X, on her bare knee. “I expected to grow old and die there.”

  “But you made a million and recycled.”

  She laughed. “The sisters gave it to me. The
y said they appreciated all I’d done for them and so forth—but what it finally came down to was that I was too ‘worldly.’”

  “Contaminating all the virgins.”

  “Oh, I could tell you about virgins. Anyhow, I cared for my mother the next twenty years. She wouldn’t take the Stileman Treatment. Finally she gave in, at eighty, and it killed her.”

  I nodded. “I’ve heard that story before.”

  “The forties were difficult in Italy. A bad time for an old person, bedridden, to be on public assistance … if I were to die.” The Stileman contract was ruthless when it came to leaving money to relatives and friends. The foundation got it all, or you got to die wealthy. But until about thirty years ago, if you had two million and wanted to buy two treatments, that was okay. Just so long as they got it all. Now you can’t even do that. It’s all your money for one treatment, period.

  “I’ve done business in Italy a hundred times since Singapore,” I said. “Citrus, mercury, textiles. It’s surprising we never crossed each other’s paths.”

  “Not surprising. I’ve always worked through agents, and always behind a man’s name. Italy is Italy.”

  “No worse than here.”

  “Better than here.” She stood up and pulled on my hand, surprisingly strong. “I’m thirsty.” We walked toward the bar. “I remember you talking about ‘high profile’ and ‘low profile.’”

  “Old Americanism.”

  “Yes. Well, for sixty-five years I had the profile of a mouse. An ant.” We each picked up glasses of white wine and watched the swimmers. “I also had some Family protection at first.”

  I could hear the capital F. “Mafia.”

  She shrugged. “It’s more complicated than that, in Italy. My uncle had connections, and of course I had money and some friends. They helped me disappear. A couple of times.”

  “You were afraid of the ’phems? Terrorists?”

  “That was part of it. Afraid of immortals, too. And my own shadow, sometimes.

  “When I came out of the clinic in ’50 and found out my Mama hadn’t survived the treatment—”

  “That you had forced on her.”

  “Yes. I went into a ‘descending spiral of depression.’ That’s what a therapist called it. Lived on favors. Went from drug therapy to commercial drugs, and wound up addicted to grief.”