A Calculated Risk Read online

  “Don’t guzzle that down like a horse at the trough,” he chastened me. “Champagne is meant to be sipped slowly.” He replenished the glass.

  “It tickles my nose.”

  “Well then, take your nose out of it. Now, tell me about your success this afternoon. Then I’ll take you home to change into something more presentable—if that is possible.”

  So I told Tor that Alfie, as expected, had used the meeting to try to humiliate me in front of the client. He’d introduced me as an expert in everything, then turned over the entire meeting to me, to let me prove it. And Louis—who hadn’t been aware of this plan—had started chewing stomach pills and throwing black glances at Alfie. He was a wimp who was about to lose the account, and had trusted Alfie to bail him out, not to sabotage him. But things had not turned out as either of them had planned.

  Thanks to Tor’s tutorials, I knew enough about the transportation industry, and our role in it, to knock their socks off. Before we left the boardroom, the client—who’d been about to bid our firm farewell—had decided to place a big equipment order instead. The chairman of the board, Ben Jackson, even complimented Louis and Alfie for bringing me to his account.

  “While you were achieving star status,” said Tor, “what were Louis and Alfie doing—picking their noses?” He was pouring me some more wine, though my toes were already tingling.

  “I’m getting drunk,” I told him.

  “I’ll be the judge of that,” he said, nodding for me to proceed.

  “They interrogated me all the way back in the cab,” I said, “to learn how it was I’d learned all this stuff so fast. I hope you don’t mind—I told them I’d been working with you. At first they didn’t believe me, but when they did, they spent an hour discussing how they might use this to their own advantage.”

  “And how was that?” Tor asked, smiling at me.

  “It seems that you failed to inform me what you really do around here,” I told him. “You’re our firm’s secret weapon—the one-man think tank of Monolith Corp.” Tor winced, but I went on. “Louis thinks that if you could be induced to spend a few hours here and there with selected clients, the way you have with me, it would be worth millions to his division alone.”

  “Quite true,” Tor agreed, “but it’s more fun to spend them with you. That’s the sort of thing Louis could never comprehend; he’s got a soul made of cardboard.”

  He leaned over and turned the empty bottle upside down in the icer, then stood up.

  “They actually believed they could use me as a ‘lever,’” I went on. “That you’d be willing to go on spending your time with me like that forever. I’ve risen considerably in Louis’s esteem—and Alfie pretends to feel the same—though neither of them can figure out why you did it.”

  “They’re perfectly right,” Tor said, offering me his hand and escorting me to the door. “I am going to—and I can’t figure out why, either. But while we ponder this weighty question I suggest we go to dinner.”

  Tor had a dark green Stingray, and he drove it very fast. He dropped me at my apartment house near the East River, and waited in the lobby.

  I changed into a dress: black velvet, and very short. When I returned to the lobby, I found him seated in a large chair, looking gloomily at the ceiling. When he saw me, he squinted his eyes as I crossed the space between us, then stood up and took my arm.

  “What a lovely spot you’ve chosen,” he said, motioning to the lobby. “Replica of Bluebeard’s castle, isn’t it? Good location, though.”

  He didn’t speak again till we were ensconced in the car and pulling away from the curb.

  “I compliment you,” he said then, studying the road as if I weren’t there. “It seems you do have legs, after all. I applaud your decision not to show them often; Manhattan has enough traffic congestion as it is. Tell me—do you like to eat at Lutece?”

  “I’ve never been there—but I know it’s horribly expensive,” I told him. “I can’t understand French menus, and I’m not a big eater, so it seems—”

  “Never fear. The portions are small, and I’ll order for you. Children shouldn’t be permitted to select their own meals.”

  Tor was well known at Lutece; everyone kept calling him “doctor” and making quite a fuss until we were settled. After he’d ordered, I broached the subject I’d been wondering about.

  “You greeted me with uncorked champagne. How is it you knew—before you saw me—that there would be something to celebrate?” I wanted to know.

  “Let’s say that a little bird told me,” he replied, studying the wine list as if committing it to memory. Finally, he looked up. “A friend of mine phoned—name of Marcus.”

  “Marcus? Marcus Sellars?”

  Marcus Sellars was the chairman of the board of Monolith Corp. I’d known Tor was important—but not that he was that important.

  “Marcus had received a call from Ben Jackson—your new client—asking whether Ben could get on the waiting list for some of this new equipment he’d heard we were about to release. Since he was talking about hardware that hadn’t been announced yet—even internally—Marcus felt he should inquire about how you had gotten that information. A trace of my style showed through, it seems—and Marcus is nobody’s fool.”

  “You mean, you had me present a lot of equipment that hasn’t even been built yet?” I said in alarm. “What did Marcus do?”

  “Presumably, he pulled out his pen and took the order. Then he picked up the phone and called me. He was pleased to see I was taking an active interest in the business again. Marcus thinks I need some stimulation. I’ve not visited many of our paying customers lately. He says they miss me.”

  “And what do you think?”

  “I think I’d rather discuss wine,” said Tor. “Which one do you prefer?”

  “I’ve heard of one called Lancers.…”

  “I’ll order the wine,” he said, motioning slightly.

  A wine steward materialized beside the table, and after brief consultation, Tor picked a wine with a long, complicated name. When the steward had brought it and Tor had tasted and poured, he turned to me.

  “You know, it’s amusing—what you said about Louis and Alfie planning to use you as their instrument. I should think we might turn this situation to your advantage—don’t you think?”

  “To my advantage? I’m actually in a predicament because of this,” I pointed out. “They’ll expect me to get all the information from you that they might want, or ever dream up. Alfie will use it as a weapon against me if I refuse.”

  Tor pressed his fingertips together and rested his chin on them.

  “And what do you need Alfie for?” he asked.

  “What do you mean? He’s my boss!”

  “Aha—but why is he your boss? Because you let him be!”

  “He pays my salary,” I said. It was entirely unclear to me what Tor was talking about.

  “The firm pays your salary—never forget that,” he pointed out. “And they’ll stop paying it the moment you stop making money for them. Now I repeat: what do you need Alfie for?”

  I thought about that, and felt a cloud clearing from my mind. In perspective, I had to admit that Alfie had never done anything but thwart my attempts to do a decent job. This morning, through his shenanigans, he might have lost a client altogether.

  “I guess I might do a lot better without him,” I admitted; perhaps it was the champagne talking. But I chose not to dwell on that possibility, and took a sip of the new wine, too.

  “Well then, it’s settled. Get rid of him,” said Tor, leaning back as if the rest were obvious. “Simply tell Louis that you no longer need Alfie; he’ll get the picture.”

  I couldn’t believe it was all as easy as that. Just then, the waiter appeared with our first course.

  “Here are your oysters,” Tor said, “widely regarded as the food of love. Don’t munch them; they’re supposed to be eaten from the shell at a gulp. That’s it—let it slide down your—What in heaven�
�s name is that wretched sound you’re making?”

  “They’re raw!” I told him.

  “Of course they’re raw. What on earth am I going to do with you?”

  “Don’t worry—I’m going to eat them all,” I announced. “My mother told me that people who were afraid to try new foods shouldn’t be permitted into restaurants.”

  “A wise woman, your mother. Would that she were here now; I’ve no experience at wet-nursing children.”

  “I’m not a child,” I said.

  “Oh, yes you are, my dear. You’ve the emotions of a three-year-old and the brains of a sage of ninety, the grace of an adolescent boy, and the body of a prepubescent nymph—ah yes, don’t look at me like that. Eat your oysters. I’d like to be there one day, when all those parts come together into a grown woman. It might be quite a treat.”

  “I’d rather be a man,” I said, suddenly realizing that was true.

  “I’m well aware of that,” he told me with a smile, “but you’re not—and you never will be. Accept that you’re a woman, and I assure you it’ll work tremendously to your advantage. It already has.”

  The stewardess was asking us to check our seat belts for the descent into Kennedy. Idly, I wondered how much richer than I was today I’d be if I’d invented the seat belt and earned a dollar for every one that had been checked by every passenger since the dawn of commercial flight. I liked doing such calculations in my head—but this one was depressing.

  Despite all those advantages Tor had assured me I had just by being a woman, he’d overlooked one or two drawbacks. In fact, only a few months after he’d pitted me against Alfie, my boss, Tor himself had left Monolith Corp. to start his own company—abandoning me in the lurch.

  “You know what to do,” he’d told me, patting me on the back. “Just tie up the loose ends.”

  I’d finally succeeded in giving Alfie the coup de grace, though it wasn’t easy. And little good it did me: I was never promoted to management at Monolith Corp. According to senior management, male technicians would never be able to bring themselves to work for a female boss; I suppose they’d all have quit the firm, or drunk hemlock or something, first. But when I pointed out things like that to Tor—that the payoff was hardly worth the pain—he only laughed.

  “In order for women to have equal rights, they have to give up a few,” he said.

  But no one seemed to grasp that “rights” weren’t what I wanted. It seemed my special curse to care for people who tried to hand me life on a silver platter—a platter with plenty of strings attached. Ten years ago, my decision to break with Tor and make it on my own had cost me plenty—and I don’t mean financially.

  Now, as my plane circled in the famous Kennedy holding pattern, I wondered just how much this next rendezvous with Tor was going to cost me.

  THE CONTRACT

  If a man gives to another silver, gold, or anything else to safeguard, whatsoever he gives he shall show to witnesses, and he shall arrange the contracts before he makes the deposits.

  —The Code of Hammurabi

  Most Americans loathe New York City at first encounter. The filth and squalor, the graffiti and noise, the hysteria and violence, the decadence and outrageous expense—these impressions smite the sensibilities of visitors from the more orderly and well-tended cities of the west. But it’s all clever camouflage—designed to keep out the fainthearted—as any New Yorker knows. If you must live in a city, New York is the only city in the world.

  “You from New York, lady?” my taxi driver asked through the speaker box in the bullet-proof partition that separated us.

  “I’ve been gone a long time,” I told him.

  “You ain’t missed nuttin’—it’s old, it’s new, it’s all the same. The more they change, the less they change; same old dump, but I call it home, ya know?”

  I knew … plus ça change. That very quality of permanent change—that constant, violent, atom-splitting atmosphere of upheaval—produced an energy I really thrived on. Long before we reached the hotel, my biorhythms were in synch with the heart-pumping beat of the Big Apple.

  I checked into the Sherry, saw my luggage to the suite, and went down to the restaurant for a late-night snack and cocktail. Sipping sherry at the Sherry Netherland was my own private tradition—it reminded me of Christmas in New York.

  Sitting there alone, gazing through the frosty windows overlooking Fifth Avenue, I could see people laden with stacks of holiday packages, promenading through the snow. As I sat, warm and cozy, sipping the light, nut-flavored wine, I wondered again about Tor.

  New York might be timeless, but people change. Since I’d last seen Tor, he’d become rich, famous, and exponentially more reclusive—while I had become a bankette. I wondered how he had changed, whether he’d gained a midriff bulge or lost his hair. And what would I seem like to him after all those years—years when I’d thought of Tor, oddly, more often as his calls slowly trickled off …

  I looked at my reflection in the window—tall and skinny, all eyes and mouth and cheekbones. I still looked, as he’d said, like a fourteen-year-old boy playing hooky to go fishing.

  I finished my snack and drink and then, about ten o’clock, went out to the front desk and picked up my room key. The clerk handed me a note with the key:

  Your favorite restaurant. Noon.

  There was no name, but I recognized the style. I folded the note, slipped it into my pocket, and went upstairs to bed.

  My favorite restaurant in New York is Café des Artistes—across the park from the Sherry.

  Like a fool, I decided to walk through the bitterly cold snow; I regretted the decision long before I’d reached the middle of Central Park South. Bracing myself against the cruel wind, I shoved my fists in my pockets and occupied myself for the rest of the miserable hike by recalling the glittering sunlight on San Francisco Bay, my winter orchids, those little white sailboats gliding across blue-green waters—and I soon found myself getting cold feet about everything to do with the luncheon I was about to attend.

  Somewhere deep in my subconscious, I knew the problem wasn’t only concern over jeopardizing my already dead-end career, breaking the rules or the law by perpetrating what was essentially an honorable crime, or dragging my colleagues along with me into a scheme that might blow up in our faces. What made me nervous was being here in New York again—with Tor—though I couldn’t imagine why.

  But one step inside the door of Café des Artistes brought me back to reality—what New York was all about. The café was built in the twenties, and it still resembled something from Paris during the expatriation of the literati. It was originally a watering hole for painters, whose upstairs ateliers were later converted into expensive private apartments. The restaurant walls were plastered with murals of jungles filled with parrots, paintings of Spanish conquistadors stepping from galleons, monkeys, wild flora, and nude coquettes with golden limbs, unexpectedly peeping from the dense foliage—all done in a mishmash style combining Watteau, Gibson Girl, and Douanier Rousseau—real Big Apple kitsch.

  Today, a brass cart stood at center, groaning with fruits, floral bouquets, patisserie, and baskets of freshly baked breads. The rabbit pâté and decorated salmon mousse were also on display.

  A few steps up to the left, where the bar angled off like a hallway, I found Tor in a private booth along the walls. If he hadn’t flagged me down first, I mightn’t have recognized him, he’d changed so much. His coppery hair now tumbled in ringlets to his collar, his skin seemed paler, his eyes more intense. Instead of the elegant three-piece suits that had been his trademark, he wore a casual fringed leather shirt with beadwork, and thin chamois trousers that revealed the taut muscles of his legs. He looked virile and healthy and ten years younger—but his wry smile remained the same.

  “Did you walk here from San Francisco?” he asked sarcastically as he rose to greet me. “You’re thirty minutes late, and your nose looks like a maraschino cherry.”

  “Gee, that’s a nice thing to s
ay after ten years,” I replied, sliding into the booth opposite him. “I was just about to remark that you looked wonderful in that outrageous getup.”

  I reached out and flipped the beaded fringes, and he smiled his dazzling smile—the one that set off warning signals in my brain.

  “Thank you,” he said with no small amount of charm. “You’re not looking bad yourself—at least, if you’d stop dripping all over the tablecloth. Here, take my handkerchief, and try to make appropriate use of it.”

  I took it, and blew my nose.

  “The sound of a nightingale, the manners of a queen,” he told me.

  “Why don’t we get down to business?” I suggested. “I haven’t come all this way to chat about my table manners.”

  “You’ve been gone a long time,” he told me. “You’ve forgotten, we don’t do things that way here. First, the aperitif—the fish, the fowl, the salad, the sweets, perhaps the cheese—but business is discussed over the demitasse. Not before.”

  “I’ll be happy to watch you stuff your face, if that’s the custom. But I can’t pack away food like that.”

  “Fine—then leave it all to me,” he said, and at a slight flick of his hand, the waiter materialized beside the table, with a bucket of wine already on ice.

  “I’ve meant to ask—how do you do that?” I said, gesturing toward the disappearing waiter.

  “Restaurant ESP—mind control,” he said blithely. “It works every time. With two powerful transmission devices, a copper wire is unnecessary to complete a successful link. How do you think I found your friend Charles Babbage—or got in touch with you?”

  I stared at him across the table as he filled my glass.

  “So you tapped into our wavelengths. Terrific—I’m having lunch with Nostradamus. You can’t control my mind, and you never could. I can’t believe I’m sitting in a restaurant at the heart of Manhattan, seriously discussing mental telepathy.”

  “Fine. If you’d prefer, we’ll discuss robbing banks—since that seems more sensible to you.”