Odds Against Tomorrow (7 page)

Charnoble was seated there, facing him, not three feet away. His bent posture and mortified grin indicated that he’d been waiting there for hours. He wore the same navy pin-striped suit and yellow tie as at their first meeting. His hair was slick and tamped down, and his briefcase balanced gingerly on his pointed knees. As the door cracked open he leaped into the air.

“Welcome!”

“Thanks. I have a box upstairs—”

“We have to leave. Now, I’m afraid. Potential client. A big one. Law firm downtown. You’ll get a chance to settle in later. But first, quickly—”

Charnoble produced a camera, and before Mitchell could understand what he was doing, the flash went off.

“Brumley Sansome insists,” said Charnoble. “For their file. Security purposes.”

Over Charnoble’s shoulder Mitchell saw, side by side, beyond the foyer, an identical pair of large rooms. They did not resemble private offices so much as banquet halls. The only wall decorations were digital clocks. There appeared to be one on each wall. At first Mitchell assumed that each clock gave the time in a different international capital, but upon scrutiny he realized that they were all precisely synchronized with one another. Were they also synchronized to the watches on both of Charnoble’s wrists? It couldn’t be otherwise.

The offices were minimally furnished. At the far end of each—some thirty or forty feet from the entrance—stood a small desk approximately the size of a chopping board. It was large enough to accommodate a micro laptop and a box of tissues. Tall rectangular windows looked onto Sixth Avenue.

“Imposing, no?” said Charnoble. “Big spaces with small furniture create a mood of dread. Perfect for client meetings.”

Downstairs, a long black car was idling at the curb. Charnoble didn’t give any directions. The driver knew where to go, and he drove aggressively. He assaulted the busy midday traffic, and the traffic yielded to the expensive car. The traffic supplicated. Mitchell wiped the sweat off his forehead with his suit sleeve and tried to ignore the roaches that nibbled away at his stomach lining.

“It’s best that I do the talking,” said Charnoble. “It’s a trial meeting, in a manner of speaking. I’ve prepared a script.” He clutched a folder in his hand. The pages inside were thick with blue ink: diagrams, statistics, color-coded graphs. When Mitchell squinted to make out the text, Charnoble turned the folder over on his lap. Mitchell decided the best thing to do was close his eyes and banish any thought of Fitzsimmons Sherman.

The car glided to a rest in front of a black tower, the headquarters of a major international law firm called Nybuster, Nybuster, and Greene. Charnoble explained that Nybuster represented several small sovereign nations, as well as corporations in more than forty countries. The firm’s representative was a very young man wearing a mohair three-piece, no doubt bespoke, and a checkered tie the color of a faded dollar bill. A fatuous smirk was slapped across his face like a price tag. He had trim golden-brown hair, a manicured five o’clock shadow (though it was ten in the morning—did he shave in the middle of the night, was that what you were supposed to do?), a robotic chin, and bright, malicious eyes. The eyes had the cocky look of inherited fortune and disinherited ambition. Mitchell was not surprised to learn that the fellow’s name was Nybuster: Ned Nybuster. The three of them sat at a conference table covered by white glass. A tray of cheese, cut fruit, soy wafers, and deli sandwiches had been laid out alongside miniature water bottles, each of which contained no more than a mouthful of liquid. The young Caesar grabbed an entire bunch of grapes, lifted it above his head, and pulled off the lowest-hanging orb with his lips.

“So-o-o-o,” said Charnoble, with a thin smile. He was already in full ingratiation mode.

“How does this work?” Nybuster had an effortlessly loud voice, a well-fed voice. “You guys are like economic soothsayers?”

“In a certain sense—”

“I once went to a fortune-teller. She said the path to success would be long and difficult.” He frowned playfully.

“We are future-based consultants,” said Charnoble, trying again. He removed a digital recorder from his suitcase and pressed the record button. “We help you to build a risk-aware culture. We create scenarios to prepare your company for whatever the future might hold.”

“I’m thinking the future holds money. Lots of it. Kind of like the past and the present.”

Charnoble explained that he would record each session to comply with federal insurance briefing regulations. The recordings, along with reports that FutureWorld would issue after each meeting, would indemnify the firm should it ever be tried for castastrophe negligence in a court of law.

“What kind of catastrophe? New York doesn’t have earthquakes.”

“Perhaps not,” said Charnoble, and Mitchell had to bite his cheek to restrain himself from correcting his new boss. “Plenty of catastrophes are possible, however.”

Nybuster flung a pin-striped leg on the seat of a swivel chair. “So what are we talking about here? Is it total bullshit or just credible bullshit? Entertaining bullshit, actually—that would be ideal.”

“Right.” Charnoble took a deep breath. He had a pained expression that Mitchell had not seen on his face before. Was it anxiety? Could this be Charnoble’s first consulting session too? “Scenario one,” said Charnoble. “China declares war.”

“The yellow claw,” said Nybuster, winking at Mitchell. He leaned back in his chair as if expecting to be fanned by palm fronds.

Charnoble began by listing the number of ways in which the American markets were dependent on Chinese monetary policy. Then he reviewed Nybuster, Nybuster, and Greene’s specific Chinese accounts, explaining how each would be affected by an outbreak of war. Charnoble’s script wasn’t bad, but the delivery was tedious. He might have been reading his tax statements. Mitchell’s eyes watered. His hair was still damp and frizzled, his skin dry. He had shaved poorly and had barely seen the sun in weeks, except through tinted glare-resistant office windows. His eyes didn’t open all the way. And after a single restful night, the cockroaches had returned. But they weren’t alone. They had brought with them a new friend: a kindly bald Spanish gentleman named Pedro Brugada.

Pedro and his brother Josep, Spaniards who practiced in Belgium, were the first Westerners to identify a condition they first described as
tristeza del corazón
, “heart sadness.” In 1987 they observed a three-year-old Polish boy, Lech, who experienced fainting spells with a terrifying frequency. The boy’s sister had already died from the same mysterious disorder. The Brugadas found additional examples of this condition and, in 1992, the Brugada syndrome entered the diagnostic lexicon. But Easterners had known about it for centuries. In Japan it was called
Pokkuri
(“unexpected death at night”), and in the Phillipines it was known as
bangungut
(“scream followed by sudden death”). In the northeast of Thailand, where it struck young men disproportionately, it was known as
lai tai
, or “death during sleep.”
Lai tai
was believed to be caused by the ghosts of dead women who kidnapped young men to serve as their husbands in the underworld. The Thai men of this region, in a desperate effort to trick the succubi—or at least to turn them off—went to bed every night dressed in drag.

In his second letter to Elsa, Mitchell had asked whether she was certain that she had this condition. The first indication, she wrote, came when her father dropped dead on a public bus when she was seven years old. His last checkup had revealed an unusual ditch in his electrocardiogram reading, but he was a healthy, fit man and no one suspected heart problems. Elsa had several fainting spells in high school, however, and her doctor noticed the same peculiarity in her EKG. After excluding everything else, a cardiologist tested for Brugada. It wasn’t an easy test. To test a patient for Brugada, you have to kill her.

At the hospital they inserted a catheter into her groin, feeding the tube through the femoral vein into the heart. A pacemaker was attached to the end of the catheter. It sent an electronic signal, forcing the heart to skip a beat. The heart of a patient with Brugada syndrome cannot handle this stress. If the heart stops beating, it means Brugada is present. Elsa’s heart stopped. Less than two seconds later they defibrillated her.

“What was it like to be dead?”

“It was the most excruciating sensation I’ve ever experienced,” she wrote. “Defibrillation contracts every muscle, so your body leaps from the operating table. The constriction is so painful that it momentarily jars you from sedation and you awake, with a shock, in the middle of the air.”

The memory of this image made Mitchell’s fingers shake, beating erratic rhythms into Nybuster’s conference table like a frustrated drummer. He squeezed the rim of his chair.

But Nybuster hadn’t noticed. His face was a portrait of abject boredom, a child forced to sit with a tutor while his friends play at recess. He had finished the grapes and was now using the branches to pick the fruit out of his teeth. In the last ten minutes, as Charnoble had gone on about the state of China’s ballistic technology, Nybuster hadn’t once glanced in their direction. Finally he swung around in his seat, put his feet back on the ground, and turned to Charnoble.

“Would you please arrive at your point?” he said. “I don’t understand how any of this is useful to Nybuster, Nybuster, and Greene. We’re comfortable with our client base, our risk exposure. Our firm has been in this business for more than four decades. Our formula has not let us down yet.”

Charnoble glanced between Nybuster and Mitchell, his finger twisting in his palm. For all his reptilian maneuvering, his conniving ratiocination, he was obviously not adept at selling fear. The problem was that he didn’t truly
believe
it. Charnoble was right. He needed someone like Mitchell.

Nybuster stood.

“Sorry, chums. I’m going to have to ask you to tell the rest of your report to the tape recorder. I have business.” He started for the door. Charnoble’s widening eyes and whitish blond hair made him look like a scared little boy. Mitchell rose from his chair.

“Mr. Nybuster.”

Nybuster turned. He appeared surprised to learn that Mitchell could speak. In fact he appeared surprised to see that a third person was present in the room.

“I’d like to tell you what’s going happen in about ten years, once Beijing attacks. Before the first missile lands in Times Square, Nybuster, Nybuster, and Greene will be ruined. And I don’t just mean the firm. I mean your private wealth, your legacy, your next of kin.”

Nybuster squinted uncertainly.

“Come again?”

“It’s going to be ugly,” said Mitchell. In his mind he saw a body levitating above an operating table in a paroxysm of infinite agony. He allowed his fear to radiate out of his eyes. He would use the fear.

“Go on.” Nybuster seemed, for the first time all meeting, to be listening. He scooted back to his seat. “I want to hear the ugly.”

“OK,” said Mitchell. “Right. Well, for instance, China blockades Taiwan.” Mitchell hesitated, glancing at Charnoble. Charnoble was nodding eagerly, grateful.

“China has threatened it before,” Mitchell continued. “It’s just a matter of time before it happens. The Taiwan Relations Act mandates that any act of aggression against Taiwan be considered a threat to the security of the United States and will trigger the use of military force.”

Nybuster nodded, taking this in.

“The U.S. sends missile carriers to the Taiwan Strait. China bombs Taipei. The U.S. bombs Beijing. China starts firing intercontinental ballistic missiles at San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Seattle. Jin-class submarines surface off the Atlantic coast, launching warheads at Boston, Miami, Washington, D.C., and New York.”

“Mm.”

“Nybuster, Nybuster, and Greene’s employees will all have fled the city for the heartland, or Canada, or Mexico. Or they’ll have died. Either way, it’s irrelevant. The country as we know it will be gone. Where the major cities once stood, there will now be only radioactive wasteland. The economy as we know it will cease to exist, and every equity—except some of those listed on the Hong Kong and Shanghai exchanges—will plunge close to zero. The dollar will be inflated beyond all possible utility, and those unlucky enough to survive the initial blast will be forced to employ a highly volatile bartering system, with water and food the most expensive commodities.”

“Good God,” said Nybuster. “But you’re not exactly telling me anything new, are you? Or particularly useful. Listen, I’m out of time.”

“But there’s a more likely scenario,” said Mitchell. He felt something powerful moving through him now, a dark energy. “China blockades Taiwan; the U.S. sends missile carriers to the Taiwan Strait. China threatens to bomb Taipei—but they
don’t
act. They’re not stupid. Sure, they’ve threatened a first-strike nuclear attack at the first sign of U.S. aggression, but they don’t want to bring on the apocalypse. Taiwan isn’t worth the loss of every major Chinese city, the massive destabilization of the yuan, the collapse of the economy.”

“Right, but—”

“Imagine, instead, a low-grade attack. Chinese sleeper agents are activated in every major U.S. city. Cyberattacks strain the electrical grid, checkerboarding it. Kidnappings, corruption, political murders begin to occur. Slowly at first, then more frequently. Why? No one knows. Policemen are assassinated by the dozen. Prominent journalists begin to vanish. The managing partner of your own firm is going out for his early-morning swim at his home on Long Island when a band of Chinese agents stun him with a taser and throw him into the back of an armored truck. Your managing partner wakes up in a dungeon, four levels below Canal Street, his wrists cinched to his ankles, an apple in his mouth.”

“Are you aware,” said Nybuster, in an uncharacteristically quiet voice, “are you aware that the managing partner of Nybuster is my father?”

“Certainly he didn’t mean to suggest,” said Charnoble, “in a manner of speaking—”

“That will be fine,” said Nybuster. “Zukor, you have my attention. Please, continue. By all means—continue. What happens to my father in the dungeon? Begin with the part about the apple.”