Forty Leap (19 page)

His first question to me was, “Are you really
from the past?”

I was, of course, but I didn’t answer him
right away. The truth is that I had never really considered it from
that perspective. When thrust out of the normal sequence as I have
been, there is so little opportunity for reflection. My journey was
beyond my capacity to control so I spent all my effort in just
surviving. But the lack of control did not belie the fact that I
was a time traveler. Even though this particular time period was
within the bounds of my natural existence, I was still from the
past, being catapulted into the future at an unknowable rate. Being
from the past made me wonder if I could return to it somehow.

“I’ll be damned,” he cried ecstatically when
I finally did give him my answer.

He wanted to know all about it and all about
my life. I was very general in my description, afraid to give away
details which might land me into trouble. My experience was making
a cautious man out of me. He did ask me when it had all started and
I remembered back to that first spilled cup of coffee. That had
been in April of 2007.

“I’ll be damned!” he cried again. And by this
time we were entering an empty diner on the corner of
82
^nd
street.

Our conversation over breakfast was light and
pleasant and he kept checking his watch. I supposed there was an
appointment we had to keep and I was right. Here now, I will write
what I learned from him at that meeting. I find myself once again
in the position of having to annotate years of history in just a
few paragraphs but so much of it is relevant to me and my situation
that it would be neglectful to leave it absent.

The day of our escape from New York and the
United Arab Nation marked the beginning of the end of their
occupation. And there was a direct correlation between the two
events. The name of Jesse Cataldo had become one known in every
household. She had led four people on foot across the states of New
Jersey and Pennsylvania in a desperate attempt to be liberated from
the terrible clutches of the evil Arab Empire. Or so it was told. I
have since been able to look up some of the periodicals of the time
and, yes, the tortures endured by the prisoners were described in
frighteningly inaccurate detail. So it was to be a lie. As was the
fate of Carlos Castillo, who did not arrive with his party.
Apparently, it was under his brave leadership that the escape had
been planned, but he had not lived to see its execution.

In the months that followed, the United
States government began making queries and accusations. There were
demands for the release of thousands of prisoners. Here there was a
drastic contradiction between what I had learned from Samud and
what was recorded as history. Samud had told me that the work
details were maintained by people awaiting acceptance of their
manifests. His contention was that the United States was
responsible for the delays. The United States government claimed
not to have knowledge of just exactly how many of its citizens were
being held. Officials produced records of manifests and the dates
of issue and dates of acceptance were very close together despite
the interminable wait we’d had to endure at the time. I can’t say
who had fabricated the bigger lie, but it didn’t matter at this
point. The government trotted out its martyrs and managed to regain
the sympathies of the United Nations and the world at large.

Over the intervening years, the government
began to make efforts to regain lost territories. These efforts
came in the form of reparations for displaced citizens. The U.N.
was as weak a power then as it had been before the war so little
could be done from a legal standpoint. But the president at the
time was a shrewd lady and she began to draw military support from
South America and some East Asian countries. The way Wil described
it, there was a looming threat but no overt action. That was when
GEI stepped in. A fledgling company at the time (2018), it began
pouring money into borderline property and reconstruction. Its
shareholders became very rich and negotiations between the
corporate offices and the United Arab government went into motion.
Before long, the officers of GEI had negotiated an accord between
the American and Arab governments whereby the United Arab Nation
would abandon the property it had gained in the invasion. This
property would once again become U.S. territory, a substantial
amount of which would fall under the ownership of GEI. This fast
growing company would then pay cash settlements to the Arab
government over the course of twelve years and numerous government
officials would be granted shares of the company. Over the course
of the last five years, the payments had been made and those shares
had found their way back into U.S. citizen hands.

Wil spoke of this with immense pride, as if
he himself had been a party to it all and it was then that I
finally recognized the symbol on the badge he had worn the night
before.

“You work for GEI?”

“Yes, sir,” he declared.

“And you knew exactly where I was going to
be? And when?”

“Well, we knew the where but I don’t think
anyone was sure of the when. Hell, most of us didn’t think you’d
ever show up.”

“How long were you there?”

“You mean yesterday?”

“I mean when did they start guarding the
spot?”

“Two years, give or take.”

Two years. That was a long time to pay people
to wait around for me to show up. “Why?”

Wil looked at his watch again and smiled.
“It’s almost eight. Do you want to go to corporate headquarters
now?”

The question was so out of place that I
didn’t know how to respond. Why would I want to go to corporate
headquarters? But Wil was already paying the bill and gesturing
that I should move along. So I did. What else could I do?

Corporate headquarters wasn’t far from the
diner. We walked it. On the way, Wil told me about Alexis
Asosvskiy. She was the CEO of GEI. Any operation run by the company
passed over her desk in the form of a digital document. Nothing got
started without her seal of approval and nothing continued if she
grew tired of it. Wil tried his best to cast her in a favorable
light, but I could read between the lines. He did not like her. No
one liked her. I wasn’t surprised.

I was led into a tall glass building and
ushered into an elevator. Somewhere along the way, we were joined
by security officers. I was either very dangerous or very important
and I have never in my life felt very dangerous. The elevator took
us to the 52
^nd
floor without stopping. The doors
whooshed open and I stepped out into the lobby of what could have
been any office from any era. I’d barely had time to gather my wits
when a large door on the left opened up and admitted Alexis
Asosvskiy.

Ms. Asosvskiy was a tall woman with a slender
frame. She wore a ladies business suit with a skirt and sharply
buttoned white blouse. Her hair was cut unevenly but even I could
tell that it was a style of some sort. I didn’t care for it, but I
chose not to say anything. As if that was a choice. She came
forward with a gleaming smile and took hold of my limp hand,
vigorously shaking it. Then she thanked Wil, calling him Mr.
Lowenburg, and we were in her office alone with the door closed
behind us.

Standing stupidly in the lavish office, I
looked behind me once and then around me once. I took in the office
without taking it in at all. It was a business office, not meant to
be a second home. There was no sofa and there was no bar or
refrigerator. But there was a desk, the likes of which I have never
seen before. Digital picture frames sat on the desk and hung on the
walls, their images changing from scenes of nature to scenes of
family to scenes I could not describe. Ms. Asosvskiy offered me a
seat so I took a comfortable leather chair as my own and tried to
relax.

“I have thought several times about shutting
down the Mathew Cristian project,” she said to me. “I’m glad it’s
over.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, because I could think of
nothing else.

She waved me away. “Certainly not your fault,
Mr. Cristian. How could you have known that this company was
pouring tens of millions of dollars into your existence every
year.”

“Why didn’t you just shut it down, then?”

I noticed that she did not sit, not even on
the corner of the desk. It was a power play and she was a powerful
woman. I was intimidated in spite of myself.

“I don’t have that authority. This project
was of a special interest to our founder and primary shareholder.
He is a very stubborn man.”

“What’s his interest in me?”

“He knows you. I daresay he knows all about
you?”

I sat silently then, waiting for her to
dispense with the drama. She was goading me, I could see it. There
would really be no harm in me asking who this person was, but I had
developed something of a stubborn streak and managed to hold my
tongue.

“He would like to meet with you.” When it was
apparent that I would continue to maintain my silence, she
continued. “He’s concerned that you might not want to meet with
him.”

“Who is he?” I finally blurted, feeling as if
I had lost a staring contest.

It was Igor Grundel and I was surprised by
it. I’m not sure who I expected if I even expected anyone. A lot of
names, though, wouldn’t have surprised me and as I reflect upon it
now, I think some of the more likely options would have been Samud
or one of the Tiris or even Jonah Jones. But Igor… The initial
shock passed quickly leaving me enraged.

Ms. Asosvskiy looked uncharacteristically
sheepish. “He said you might not be glad to hear his name.”

“He tried to kill me!” I shouted.

“He didn’t really discuss the details of what
happened between you nine years ago…”

“It was
yesterday!
”

She quieted and I sensed all background
activity outside the office door to have stopped as well. There was
a long and uncomfortable pause as everyone tried to regain his and
her composure. I was trembling with rage. I felt violated. I still
didn’t understand why Igor had done it, but the fact that he had
poured time and money into saving my life nine years later
cheapened it somehow. What was the point? Had he saved me so that
he could have his opportunity to murder me once again?

“What does he want?” I asked.

“He wants to see you.”

“No.”

“He thought you might feel that way.”

I didn’t say anything. What could I say? My
anger was dissipating but not dissipated. I wished never to see him
again.

Ms. Asosvskiy said, “It’s Thursday, Mr.
Cristian, and your room is paid for through Sunday. Mr. Grundel has
instructed that you may enjoy its comforts through that time and
then you’re free to go off on your own.”

“Thank you,” I said quietly. When there was
nothing more, I stood up and went for the door of the office. She
didn’t try to stop me.

I spent the remainder of the afternoon
watching television and trying to figure out what I was going to do
next. I had already decided that I wouldn’t be staying at the Cento
Towers through the end of the week. I would have much preferred to
leave the hotel immediately but I needed a plan first.

When evening came, I was still without one.
Of course I thought of my family and of Jennie. I thought of my
strange affliction. I thought of Igor Grundel. Nothing gave me a
direction. I was more lost now than ever I had been. The world into
which I had been born no longer existed. Declared dead years ago, I
had no identity. The money I had carefully planted into a growing
bank account had long since been gobbled up by bureaucracy. I was
homeless, penniless, and alone.

As I expected he would, Igor Grundel came to
visit me that night. I had hoped he would wait a day, but he must
have anticipated my intention to leave. In truth, if I had really
wanted to avoid seeing him I should have never returned to the
hotel. But apparently I am human and found the comforts of that
room irresistible.

“Hello, Mat,” he said.

I looked behind him and around him. Just
seeing him brought about an embarrassing fear. But he was no
danger. He looked much older now. His rounded posture had grown
hunched and there were grey spots throughout his thinning hair.
Though he would never be a pretty man, he was dressed well, very
well fed, and smelled expensive. He was carrying a briefcase. In
the intervening time he had made a lot of money and chosen to
flaunt it. I stepped aside to allow him entry.

“Alexis was upset by your meeting. She said
that you were not what she expected.”

There was no response to this so I went to
the television and turned it off.

“Are you going to talk to me?”

“Why should I talk to you?”

“I saved your life.”

“No you didn’t.” I wouldn’t look at him.

“Nine years have gone by,” he said quietly.
“And I still remember the look on your face. I can still see you
struggling to break free, certain that you were going to drown. I
can feel your neck in my hand.”

These images chilled me. It was as if I was
living my own murder as the murderer.

“And then you were gone.”

I still don’t know whether or not he expected
me to respond, but I didn’t. I wanted to walk away from him, even
shrink away from him. He was nothing, just this small old man and
he made me feel scared and weak. It was the confidence in the money
he possessed and the power he commanded. It was the fact that he
had virtually succeeded in murdering me, thwarted only by a
happenstance that no one could ever have foreseen.

“I wondered about it for a long time. I
obsessed over it…”

“What happened to Samud?”

There was a look on his face that passed away
briefly. But I had seen it even if I cannot even now interpret
it.