The Woman Who Stopped Traffic (9 page)

She only knew two things. First, she had to get back on the horse. Second, she needed to do something about this trafficking.

Suddenly finding a signal, she replied “OK” to Nguyen’s email. Before she had chance to change her mind, she scrolled down to her draft folder, found the email she’d composed up in Seattle – the three point plan to deal with the trafficking, and hit SEND. “There,” she said out loud, burying the phone in her bag. She breathed deeply, sitting up straight.

The fog was gauzy again. A skein covered the opposite end of the cove and the path back to Vogel’s. The fog seemed to have a shape-shifting quality all of its own. She shivered, wishing she’d brought a sweater.

It
was
a supreme irony, she had to acknowledge, that she’d chosen security by way of profession – given how
in
secure she’d so often felt growing up. Almost like a doctor who smoked, or a bank manager who bet on the horses, she chastised herself. Dimly she was aware that the events and choices made earlier in life would pretty much dictate what the rest of her years looked like.

Or
did
she still have a choice in the matter?

Not for the first time, she searched for a sign.
Any
sign. But the fog had rolled in again, much thicker now. Ghostly wisps of the stuff attached themselves to the thick bank already blanketing the beach: it was fast turning into a white out.

CHAPTER 11

Natalie Chevalier heard the keening whistle first, then a woman’s voice calling out: “
Fes-ti-val
!”

Pebbles lifted and rolled with the waves more loudly, somehow amplified by the fog. Still the woman called out the strange name, coaxingly: “Fes-ti-
vaal
!”

From around the shrouded headland came a horse, its hooves crunching shale. It came to a halt not ten paces away from Natalie, breathing very deeply, eyeing her sideways, nostrils flaring then softening. The horse was white, its haunches and forward outline blurring into the swirling mist. Impatiently it jingled its lead rein.

Natalie went over to the animal and rested her palm on its crinkling neck, feeling its hot blood thrumming through her fingertips. Suddenly the animal clattered back, splashing, neighing from its deep chest like wind-bells resounding.

“There you are Festival!” A silvery haired woman
appeared, snatching up the lead rein. Suddenly she stared at Natalie: “
Who are you
?”

“Um, I was just walking on the beach
–”

“This is private land!” the older woman said. “Are you lost?”

“I was here to see Jon Vogel,” Natalie said. “Sorry, the fog came in much faster than I expected.” The whole situation was starting to feel slightly surreal.

“It can do that.” The woman’s dark, lively eyes bored into her. “I’m Star. Stop it, Festival!” And she jolted the lead rope hard. “He never normally approaches strangers. My cottage is right here: why don’t you come in for a while. Then we’ll get you back to Jon’s as soon as the fog clears. Likely just another twenty minutes. You look cold.”

“Thanks,” Natalie said. And she followed Star, and Festival, keeping well out of the horse’s kicking range.

A smell of wood smoke greeted them. Star’s house was a grey-shingled affair on a grassy bank above the beach. The cottage seemed to occupy a clearing in the fog
– a strange pool of liquid sunlight. Rainbow colored prayer flags and peace signs fluttered. “OUT OF IRAQ” exclaimed one, “HANDS OFF OUR LAND!” warned another. Star tethered Festival and led Natalie inside, into a room full of blond woods and over-filled bookshelves. She sat down in front of the open fire while Star went into an adjoining kitchen. “Put some more logs on if you’d like,” she called out. “You’re here to see Jon, you say?”

“Yes,” Natalie said, following Star’s suggestion and reaching into a wood basket. “We’re involved in a piece of business together up in Sunnyvale.”

“That’s a relief. I thought at first you were with the government land people. If those bastards had their way, we’d be standing right here on a giant parking lot.

“It’s an ongoing struggle,” she continued, bringing in two mugs of steaming coffee. “Always has been. Since the sixties, at least. Which is as far back as I know.”

It figured. Star looked smooth-skinned and handsome in her linen shirt and pants – but on closer inspection, she had to be a contemporary of Vogel’s.

“This
is
an extraordinary place,” Natalie said, looking around. “Have you always lived here?”

“Tried to. Jon’s been good about that.”

“He owns all this?”

“Strictly speaking, it belongs to the trust. The Protectorate of the Eternal Now. You probably saw the clock coming up the driveway. Jon set it up during that summer of sixty seven.” Star sipped her coffee. “That would be a while before you were even a sparkle in your father’s eye, I’m guessing.”

The coffee had a slightly bitter, singed taste to it, but it was pleasant enough for her to wrap her fingers round the mug and stare away into the flames. “He seems to be a rather extraordinary man, Mister Vogel.”

“Oh he is,” Star said. “Or was. Still is, I guess. He’s hit it hard over the years. The substances have taken their toll. He used to be
the
most charismatic man when we were younger. He could have been Jim Morrison, had Hoppy or Fonda’s role in
Easy Rider
– he was
that
kind of man: a furnace of energy.”

“The end of that era must have hit him hard?”

“After Altamont, yeah. Jon indulged a lot of psychedelic substances. It became like this eternally frustrated quest, he’d freely admit, in his more lucid moments. I don’t know if he ever fully recovered, but he seems to be doing OK now.”

“Sure does, with all this,” and Natalie looked round the windows of the cottage. Outside it was still white like snow, albeit sunlit.

“It’s been a long haul, sister. A
long
haul. We had to get him out of here for a while. You have to understand: this whole stretch of coastline is very strong, energetically. It’s all old Indian land. And a lot of spiritual work happened back then, in sixty-seven and sixty-eight, to concentrate that energy. Vogel,” and she whistled. “The aperture was opened, man. I tell ya, his doors of perception were fully cleansed!”

“And so what happened? Where did he go?”

“’Nam.”

“
Vietnam?”

“As a photographer. He wanted to record it all, show the full extent of the horror. That pretty much did him in. Even he doesn’t seem to know what happened for the eighteen months or so he was there. He never talked about it.”

“To anyone?”

Star was silent. She said: “It was the Protectorate that leveled him out.”

“What exactly
is
the Protectorate?”

“In essence, just a truth: that there’s no yesterday, or tomorrow. That we may only be specks on the infinite timeline of the universe, but that the one eternal is we’re all living in the Now. No point in reflecting or reminiscing – like you and I are now doing, damn! And I’m supposed to be a trustee of this thing. Certainly there’s no point in planning, ’cause the future don’t exist either. Apart from in our minds.”

Natalie thought about that, and Vogel’s potentially de-railing speech at the investor presentation five days before. He
had
seemed far less concerned with IPO wealth or the sort of sinister product planning seen at that Sunday strategy session than with what Clamor.us could do
right now
to connect people in new and interesting ways.

Natalie: “I guess life’s what happens while you’re out making plans.”

Star smiled at the John Lennon quote.

“A lot’s been written about the ‘Now’ in recent times,” Natalie said.

“Oh, don’t get me started,” and Star gave a snort. “A lot’s been written about ‘self improvement’ by lots of people least equipped to do so. It’s just like yoga. In the sixties, we had serious yogis here.
Very
deep people. This area was all so different, you can’t imagine. Back then, the land was practically free. Now it’s all billionaires from God knows where trying to kick everyone else out and smother it all over in nouvelle Californian wine and cuisine. And the government’s the worst of all!”

She paused, fighting like a cat to catch her thread back: “Yoga!
Now it’s just an
industry
. A threefer, for the time stressed commuter!”

“Threefer?”

“A three-for-the-price of one: workout, therapy and religion, all in 90 short minutes!”

“I’m a yoga instructor,” Natalie said.

Star shot her a look, which soon softened. “Then you’ll
know
what it is to be a true yogi: to be in a very serious state of inquiry, and a state of service to other people.”

Natalie looked round the room again, wondering what all these books were about. Evidently not self improvement! Adjusting to the light, her eyes settled on a framed photo on a higher shelf. It looked like Vogel – only a younger, hotter Jon Vogel, standing next to a young child.
His
child? – Had Star and Vogel been lovers in years gone by? They must have been close if Vogel had made her a trustee of this Protectorate organization.

She brought her mind back to the present. It wasn’t so easy, this business of the Now!

“You don’t find
horses
fretting about the past or future,” Star was saying.

“No. Though I’m not sure we really know
what
enters horse consciousness.”

“D’you ride?”

“When I can. My mom’s family had a place with horses – where I’m from, in South Carolina. The Lowcountry, near Charleston. Used to go riding there when I was younger. I had this Warmblood, just like Festival.”

“Hmm.” Star smiled approvingly. The calm was broken by a male voice, yelling something in the fog.
“What’s that?” she started.

“Shoot!” Natalie stood up. “That’s my ride. I need to get going. Ben!” and she opened the cottage door. Silverman appeared, silhouetted against the dissipating mist.

“Natalie! Holy crap. I was worried about you!”

For some time, Natalie and Ben sat immersed in their separate thoughts as the road from Sunnyvale rewound itself.

“How did your meeting go?” she eventually asked.

“When I finally caught up with Vogel, he seemed to be good with the Multiworld resolution, so just Wisnold to convince now. But, he
freaked
when I suggested he wasn’t needed at the upcoming New York presentations.  – We’re trying to get Towse as spokesperson instead. More so than ever, after seeing Vogel in his natural habitat!”

“Who’s Towse?”

“Paul Towse. He runs the other big investment firm. Holds around five per cent of Clamor. Has the third board seat.” Ben arched an eyebrow knowingly at Natalie: “He is also, according to Jon Vogel, “a vortex of darkness”.”

“Happy families all the way.” Natalie tapped her teeth thoughtfully. “I was wondering about something, while on the beach. D’you think the trafficking exposed at the presentation last Friday could’ve had something to do with Malovich’s death?”

“I just don’t know. As I understand it, Malovich wasn’t exactly standing in the way of that stuff, if that’s what you mean. After all, that’s why we needed
you
.” He glanced at her. “You’re just full of cheery scenarios, aren’t you?”

She sighed. “Goes with the security territory.”

“Yeah? I’d love to learn more about that at some point.” He overtook a weaving SUV.

“It’s really not all that riveting, Ben. My job is basically to study what can go wrong. The engineers get to spend all day thinking up ways to makes things work;
my
focus is on understanding how things can be made to fail.”

“Like worms, viruses? That sorta thing?”

“Not really. I mean yes, there were people on my team who looked at those things. But security can only really be understood as a system. Sure, attacks and specific defences matter, but they’re usually part of some system, which is invariably more complex than the individual pieces.”

“Huh.”

“And ultimately, systems come down to people. D’you see? If you can understand which people are trying to do what, to whom – and why, then you may have a promising future in the security profession.”

“I dunnow. Sounds pretty interesting to me. Your phone’s bleeping by the way.”

Nguyen had sent her an SMS text:  ‘Cool, sounds like a plan’.

“So you’ve always had this interest?
– In security, I mean?” he continued.

“I just sort of fell into it, really. Sorry I don’t have a better answer for you.”

Silverman: “You know, I have this theory, about women and security.”

“Oh really,” Natalie rolled her eyes good-naturedly. “This could be interesting.”

He laughed awkwardly. “Well, dating in San Fran: a lot of women there are looking for the salary, the car, all that stuff. We’ve chatted it through – my buddies and I, and decided it’s this sorta age-old search, for resource sufficiency. That’s what we reckon women are on about when they talk about security.”

“I see.”

“And yet, I don’t think that’s what a lot of women are really looking for at all. I mean sure, it’s kind of this precondition, like not going hungry.”

“Really.”

“OK, at the risk of making a complete fool of myself here: it almost feels like the exact opposite, when you see how they react in different situations, in unguarded moments.”

“How so?”

“In that they want an
adventure
! Into some glamorous, foreign land! They want to be swept away! Or perhaps more accurately, they want to be brought fully alive… But like I said, what do I know?”

Perhaps he hoped she’d enlighten him. She felt a slight tingle inside. Not because of Ben per se, but because of this sudden distinction forming in her mind: between meaning
less
and meaning
ful
adventure...

Ben filled the silence that ensued: “Back in Sunnyvale already. I have a one-on-one with Dwayne Wisnold about the financial forecasts. Should I drop you back at your car?”

“I’ll come to the Clamor office with you. I want to start looking at those databases.