“Hello! Hello! Who is this?” Robert yells at the phone. He jumps to his feet and grabs his jacket.
Robert drifts like a ghost through the lobby of the Gstaad Palace. It’s a three-ring circus of wealth. One waiter is caught between two warring parties, each demanding a magnum of Dom Pérignon Rosé, the 1996 vintage.
“We do not have the 1996. We almost certainly have 1998! It was a very nice year. Let me bring you 1998!” says the waiter.
“No! 1996!” they cry.
Robert’s phone rings. “Hello?” he asks.
“Robert, it’s Greta. The USB drive, the one you found in Eugenio’s mouth? It was a fake.”
“Greta, you’ve got to bring the drive to me.”
“Why?”
“I must have it.”
“Robert, it’s evidence. I cannot give it to…”
“Then tell me, who is Yøta?”
“Yøta? How do you know about Yøta? Tell me, Robert, I must know, are you CIA?”
Suddenly Robert realizes that if he says the wrong thing, it could cost Ali her life. He presses the red button to end the call.
“Professor Monroe?” A British man in a suit stands before him. What now?
“Do I know you?” Robert asks warily. He hasn’t seen a mirror and doesn’t want to know what his face looks like right now.
“It’s time for your evening lecture. It starts in three minutes. We’ve been looking all over for you.”
“I can’t—”
“But you must.”
“Can you tell them…?”
“Come along.” The man takes Robert by the arm and leads him into a conference room, straight to the podium.
Behind him, sitting on stands, are a Cézanne, a Modigliani, and a Toulouse-Lautrec. Robert leans into the microphone. What am I doing? The words spill out automatically. “It all began with Paul Cézanne. He was not the first to realize that you could look at something from two, three, four different angles, but he was the first to try to incorporate that into his paintings. It was the end of the single-point perspective…”
As Robert speaks at length of changing perspectives, the interpreters echo his words in foreign, indiscernible sounds—Mandarin, Arabic, Russian. His head begins to spin, but he’s done this lecture for years. Just let it out.
“Pneumonia, consumption, and syphilis. Cézanne, pneumonia…Modigliani, consumption…Lautrec, syphilis…Now, of course, we know that all three of these are bacterial infections. They were all killed by something so small that they hardly knew it existed. Small, but powerful. And numerous. Fungi, bacteria, they outnumber the cells in our bodies ten to one. They are us. It’s these little things,” he says, and gets stuck in a train of thought. “The little things we do or don’t do. It’s flowers. It’s kind words. It’s cleaning up after dinner. It’s asking, How was your day?” Through the lights shining into his eyes, Robert spots someone waving to him from the back of the room, maybe trying to get his attention. He focuses and squints. Yes, he knows the man in tattered clothes—it’s Ken!
“So at this point I’m going to take a little break, and then we can continue and have questions.”
Robert motions for Ken to come around to the side door. He slips out to meet him in a service hallway, which is thankfully empty.
“Hey, buddy,” Ken says, “that was some interesting shit.”
“Cut the crap, Ken. Just tell me who you work for,” says Robert, forcefully.
“Whoa, Professor Monroe, no need to be a hard-ass.”
“Are you CIA?”
“CIA? Is that what you think? Then tell me, who did this to me?” Ken lifts up his shirt and shows Robert his charred skin. “That’s got CIA written all over it.”
“How did you get free?” asks Robert.
“He killed the Italian. He’s probably got Ali. You’ve got to give me the drive. It’s the only chance we have.”
“It’s gone. The Italian stole it.”
“C’mon, Robert, don’t jerk my chain. Everyone knows that one was a fake.”
“Look, I’m not stupid. If you’re CIA? Interpol? Whatever. If I give you the drive, Ali’s gone forever. Tell me, who’s Yøta?”
“Yøta? How do you know about her?”
“Is she CIA, too? Is she the mole?”
“Listen, buddy, you’re in way over your head. Just give me the USB and walk away.”
“No. My only chance is to trade the drive for Ali. In person.”
“You’re pretty smart.”
“I’m a professor.”
Ken pulls a gun and holds it under Robert’s chin. “Oh, yeah? Did you expect this, Professor Monroe?”
Robert’s head is finally clear. He stares into Ken’s brown eyes. “Go ahead. Kill me. Then you’ll never get the drive.”