Younger (22 page)

Though she’d taken the name on again only for disguise, Anna realized she felt more comfortable being Lisa, even though she was a different Lisa now, a sort of Lisa Jr., the person she would have been with
YOU
NGER but without all the Tanya baggage.

Still, she went to bed feeling lonely. She was concerned about calling the next day. Much as she hated dragging David into this, she had no one else. He was the only non-BarPharm person she knew with access to the company. Her personal feelings and the memory of his passionate kiss made her wary. Still, he was the only person she could trust.

The next morning, searching for more old news on BarPharm over coffee in an Internet café, she found two things of note. From a
Financial Times
archive item—dating back to the time of the Bartons’ marriage—she learned that Barton wasn’t the private corporation’s sole stockholder and that Pierre had bought out the other partners except for his mother and sold those shares at a nominal price, to Marina.
Nice wedding gift
. No wonder Marie Héloise might not be Marina’s biggest fan. And no wonder Marina sometimes acted as if BarPharm were
her
company.

A link to a more recent pharmaceutical trade magazine provided the second nugget. About a year before the Coscom acquisition, for an amount unstated but reported to be grossly inflated, Barton had acquired a small Taiwanese manufacturer of dermatology products, absorbing the company into BarPharm. This, Anna thought, was a more likely source of the original
YOU
NGER formula than BarPharm’s own research.

She logged off. After grabbing an old-fashioned Berlin currywurst lunch, she still had time to kill before calling David, so she headed for the Europa Center piazza to see Chyna in action. In spite of her preoccupations, she was soon clapping as appreciatively as the rest of the audience.

The girl was a born mime, eschewing the corny posing-as-a-statue stuff or the mechanical-man routine for something harder: as people walked past, she quickly positioned herself behind them, mimicking their every gesture, expression, and move, creating
Doppelgängerin
that had even the surprised victims joining the laughter.
Chyna would be a good Movement teacher,
Anna thought as a young woman trudged wearily past, pushing a stroller with one hand and dragging a toddler with the other, and the mime became that mother to such a degree that Anna could almost see a stroller and tot, when in reality, of course, Chyna was pushing air with one hand and tugging it along with the other. She applauded even more enthusiastically, and her friend, spotting her, beamed before putting her head down low to copy the posture of a man striding purposefully against nonexistent gusts of wind.

She’s the one who should have been working for MI6, not me,
Anna thought as she walked to the bus stop. Then again,
had
she herself ever been working for them?

At the call center in Adenauerplatz, she asked for a computer slot and booked a call booth for a half hour later. Online, she logged into the “studiocitygirl” Hotmail account and breathed a sigh of relief when she opened the Drafts folder.

“Whatever is going on?” David wrote. “Barton dies & U disappear? I’m worried. Found pay phone & will be there as directed. Number’s below.” She carefully copied the number onto a piece of paper, then deleted the draft. That’s what made the Drafts folder secure, Rob had told her: unlike an email, once a draft was deleted, it was gone forever, leaving no traces of its existence.

She entered the booth, picked up the phone, then counted the seconds until the connection went through, and she heard David’s voice, sounding exasperated. “I don’t mean to sound like somebody’s father, but I hope you have a good explanation for this,” he said. “It’s not just strange behavior. Considering that Barton’s dead, it’s disturbing.” Then his voice softened. “Sorry, but I’ve been worried sick. Where are you? And are you all right?”

“I’m fine, but it’s better you don’t know where I am. It’s too complicated to explain now. You can say no if you want. But I can’t think of anyone else I trust and I really, really need someone to help me right now.” She wiped away the tears that had started flowing.

“Hey, c’mon, don’t cry. Of course I’ll help you.”

“It’s not that easy,” she said. “I’m in danger. Not because of anything I’ve done, but because of what I know, about BarPharm. But I don’t know enough to protect myself. Does that make any sense?”

“To be honest, no. I mean, you’re in marketing, Tanya. Since when is marketing high risk?”

“It’s not about marketing,” she said. “It’s a product, an experiment I was tricked into taking part in. Pierre lied to me about everything, so I don’t even know who all’s involved: MI6, Russia maybe, assassins—”

“Whoa, hold on. Are you kidding me?”

“Do you have any idea how vicious Big Pharma is? Industrial espionage is a game played at the highest levels—and for the highest stakes. Please believe me.”

After a thoughtful pause, he asked, “What do you want me to do?”

“A small favor. No one knows that you know me, so I thought you could find an excuse to drop by BarPharm. Stop and pay condolences to Eleanor. See Becca. Ask what happened. See if anyone mentions me. If they do, just play dumb and ask questions. Remember, you don’t know me. Can you do that?”

When he told her he would, she said, “Good. When you’ve done it, stick another message to me in the Drafts folder, and I’ll get in touch.”

“I’m in back-to-back meetings on the new series, but I can stop by BarPharm Monday.”

No!
she wanted to scream.
Monday isn’t soon enough
. But she didn’t want David deciding the situation was so urgent he might call the police. What were a few more days? So she said, “Monday’s all right. Whichever day you contact me, give me a time and a new pay phone number to call you at the following late afternoon or evening.”

“Got it. Are you sure you’re all right?”

“I’m sure. And, remember, don’t use your own computer. I’ll speak to you soon. I’m fine. Honest. And I appreciate your help more than I can say. You’re special, David.”

“So are you. Or I wouldn’t be doing this.”

She paid for the Internet and phone call, wondering how special he’d think she was if he knew the truth. She went down the stairs on the corner of the street to the U-Bahn. A little later, as she walked from the Mehringdamm station to the apartment, she channeled Chyna and tried walking like different people she passed on the street—a businesswoman hurrying home, a middle-aged woman stomping along mad at the world, an older woman with a limp. Her Movement classes at Haddon House had taught her how to move like someone younger, but they hadn’t taught her what was much more important now: how to move like someone else.

The next day, she shopped.

It dawned on her that anyone looking for Tanya Avery might be familiar with her extremely limited current wardrobe. Plus, she knew her supply of
YOU
NGER would one day run out and she’d need more “Lisa” clothes. On Kirsten’s advice, she hit the mall at Alexanderplatz.

Not only were the clothes she ended up with more “her,” they were even more her than clothes in her closet back in Studio City, in that they were more fun, less dressed-to-impress. It was as if being Tanya had led her to who she really wanted to be. In the mall’s chain shops, she bought a lightweight long black duffel coat with a drawstring hood, high black boots with flat lug soles, and some stylishly hip yet unobtrusive black jodhpur-style pants that laced all the way up the sides. She bought mix-and-match clothes that could add up to ten outfits. No little black dresses, either—she wasn’t dressing to kill but to avoid
being
killed.

A plain black canvas messenger bag would replace the flashy Desigual bag she had habitually carried as Tanya, and, remembering how a darker lipstick had made Tanya look too hard, she picked up some dark, unflattering cosmetics. With her black wig, she could become a whole new person if she had to. And maybe she could feel as tough as she looked.

Her goal was to convince David to meet her so she could give him a flash drive containing the report on which she was now working, her diary pages, and the files she’d copied from Barton to give to Nelson Dwyer should anything happen to her. But she needed to hand it to him in person to know the information was safe. Was she fooling herself in the hopes of seeing David again? No, she decided. As much as she yearned to be with him, this was about life and death and not romance.

As to whom David might be meeting, she looked less like Tanya every day, and everything she’d been doing since she fled London had been leading up to ditching that identity completely. Ruefully, she admitted that the end of Tanya Avery would also eliminate the romance aspect. His kiss that last night meant he was physically attracted to twentysomething Tanya and not fiftysomething Anna. Now if she could just accept that!

She had enough
YOU
NGER left for just a few weeks. Tomorrow, she would start cutting back to every two or three days. Eventually, Anna would look more like her old self, a younger-looking old self until the fillers and Botox wore off, but no one anybody would mistake for a twenty-five-year-old. In the meantime, the changes should be subtle enough not to be noticed by her roommates. At a drugstore, she bought skin products to use on the “off” days.

While still continuing to go out by day to scour the Internet for anything about Barton and hurrying to pick up her electronics from the Südkreuz locker and return them charged the next day, she did what she could to act normal. Chyna was glad to take off a half day from busking to visit the Checkpoint Charlie Museum, with Anna pretending that, like Chyna, she’d been too young to remember the Wall coming down. With Paola and Kirsten, she saw a moving, if stark, production of
La Traviata
at the Staatsoper (“So very German, so very un-Italian the bare stage,” murmured Paola when the curtain went up), mascara running down their faces by the end. She cried as much from emotional exhaustion as from Verdi’s music.

Berlin had plenty of Internet cafés, so she went to different ones to check for a draft from David. She didn’t get one until a week after they’d spoken; it had been sent the night before. He’d said he’d dropped by BarPharm that day, asking Chas if he could scout up a copy of the commercial reel he had returned.

When I mentioned my shock at Pierre’s death, he murmured all was hush-hush, but think that was to keep me from thinking him a gossip. Also eager to show me he was in the loop. He asked if I knew U; when I said, ‘Who’s Tanya?’ he explained—praised U, btw—and told me a private det. working for Marina B. kept asking about U because U’d supposedly been on the way to hospital where they took Pierre but U never showed. He said this guy asked if U’d ever mentioned friends in Amsterdam.

Uh-oh,
Anna thought,
more mysterious detectives looking for me
. Hurriedly, she read on. Eleanor, David said, looked terrible.

Venomous about Marina. Says Mrs. Barton took off for Moscow at earliest possible convenience after memorial service. Implied it was just to dump the boys at her mother’s.

Why didn’t U tell me your predecessor killed herself? Eleanor said people whispering that Ur office is jinxed. Figured I could throw in 1 more bit of nosiness so said I heard Marina had hired a private eye. It was odd, Eleanor said, because U’d been asking for the same guy’s phone # not long ago. some1 named Kelm.

I hope this helps U. It certainly worries me. I’ll wait for Ur call 2moro. Hope U can do 1 pm London time again cuz it’s hard for me to get away. If not, I’ll go back again at 8 pm. New phone booth, # below. Hope U’re all right & that everything will soon be cleared up. D.

Anna deleted the draft and then logged off, her mind racing. If Kelm had managed to trace her to Holland—through her BarPharm BlackBerry, obviously—he, or someone else, might soon know she was here. She almost groaned out loud. Once again, she needed to be prepared to leave at a moment’s notice. Back at the flat, she packed up most of her things, just in case. Then she got dressed and headed off to Adenauerplatz to make her phone call to London. She put the too-recognizable Desigual bag into a supermarket tote as she left and stuffed it into a collection box for the needy down the street.

She and David spoke only briefly. She thanked him for playing detective, then asked him to do one more thing. “Could you find out when Marina’s coming back from Moscow if she’s not back already, then call to express condolences and casually ask what her plans are for the company? You can say you’re interested in doing more work for them, whatever. Put a new phone number in the Drafts folder, and I’ll call you after that and try to explain more, I promise.”

“Are you sure all this is really necessary? Is there no chance Pierre died of a heart attack, end of story?” He sounded more as if he wanted reassurance than that he believed his own words, but Anna wouldn’t lie.

She sighed in exasperation, then realized David didn’t know Scotland Yard was supposedly involved, so he could be forgiven for thinking she was overreacting. “I can promise it isn’t the end of the story. Even if you think it is, it would mean a lot if you’d humor me.”