The Fourth Perimeter Read online

  A mischievous smile crossed her lips. Still, for all the pleasant and comfortable memories, the homey feeling of the place had gone stale. Most of her time lately had been spent with Kurt, in his grand flat on Central Park West, or in Greenwich, or at the lake. More than anything, her apartment had become a reminder that they weren’t a married couple, and a place she might occasionally spend the night if he were out of town and she found herself for some reason on the east side of Manhattan. So it was with nothing more than a vague sense of nostalgia that she taped up the last of the boxes she had marked to be shipped up to Skaneateles, descended the elevator, and waved a pleasant good-bye to the liveried doorman. His bluff good humor proved that he had no idea it was the last time that he would ever see her, and that made Jill feel somewhat deceitful.

  It was a pleasant day and Talia’s office was no more than six blocks up Madison Avenue and halfway down 72nd Street in the direction of Central Park. The shop windows along the way were filled with extravagance: jewels, gold, rare ornate wood, and small women’s clothes cut from rainbows of silk. Even the grating smell of the rancid subway below that would waft up occasionally from beneath the street couldn’t seem to taint the brilliant scene. Jill enjoyed the walk despite being profoundly aware of all the little things she would miss about New York. She passed her favorite patisserie, an Italian restaurant that had the best take-out veal in the city, and a coffee shop where they still knew what she wanted without her having to ask. She still wore a short Donna Karan business suit from the office that morning, and as she walked, male shopkeepers and pedestrians stole surreptitious glances at her figure.

  It wasn’t long before she left the brilliant sunshine and turned into the shade of 72nd Street, where she came to the heavy bronze door of Talia’s office. She mounted the steps and rang the bell. The prim receptionist let her in and offered her a glass of Evian while she waited in the cool opulence of the marble-walled sitting room. Soon, a man in his mid-fifties dressed in a dark suit and brilliant cobalt blue tie walked quietly out of the office and in low tones made another appointment for the same time next week. When he’d gone, Talia appeared in an elegant short-sleeved cashmere sweater and tailored slacks, topped off with a heavy necklace of black pearls. She was a tall woman with short hair, heavy features, and thick bones that would have given her a nearly androgynous appearance but for her masterful work with her hair, makeup, and clothes.

  “Jill!” she exclaimed, hugging her friend closely and leading her into the office. She asked the receptionist to bring them tea, then shut the tall doors. Jill sat down in an arrangement of thick overstuffed furniture opposite the space where Talia worked.

  “I feel like I should be sitting over there,” Jill said, nodding toward the comfortable leather chaise that was still warm from the man with the cobalt tie.

  “You’re welcome to,” Talia said, eyeing her carefully. “What’s wrong?”

  Talia had been away to Europe with her husband or else she would certainly have known about everything that had happened. Jill sighed heavily and paused while the receptionist placed a tray of tea and delicate cookies down on the low table between them. When she was gone, Jill related everything, pausing only to allow Talia a brief look at her diamond ring and accept joyous congratulations. As her story grew more and more grim, Jill’s voice sank lower and lower.

  When she was finished, Talia’s face was a mixture of pity and disbelief. “Oh, that sweet boy . . . You should have called me,” she said with concern.

  “You were away,” Jill replied. “I didn’t want to bother you and Henry.”

  “Nonsense,” Talia said with an emphatic wave of her hand.

  “Do you think he really means it? To sell Safe Tech? To leave?” Jill asked.

  Talia’s dark eyes narrowed and she seemed to consider the pattern on the oriental rug before looking up and saying gently, “Grief is like a pocket of magma that has to erupt. The resulting volcano can take on many forms, all of which are based on the geology that already exists at the earth’s surface. Sometimes an eruption will smoke for years and that’s it. Others disgorge lava and ash like fireworks, and no one can predict either one . . .

  “You’re doing the right thing,” she went on after a pause. “Your instincts were correct. Let him say and do what he will. Be there for him.”

  Talia rose and crossed the room. After briefly searching the bookshelf on the opposite wall, she removed a book and brought it to Jill.

  “Read this,” she said. “There are some very good ideas in here and it will give you a more complete idea of what you’re dealing with.”

  “Thank you, Talia. What about . . . revenge?” Jill asked after she flipped through the book’s table of contents and placed it down on the floor beside her purse.

  “Revenge?” Talia said, raising a single eyebrow. “Yes, sometimes. Sometimes very strong. Although I’ve seen people who’ve lost a child that you might think would be murderous turn docile. Others . . . One time I had to call the police to intervene. It could be worse,” she continued. “People in his situation are often suicidal, sometimes irrationally violent. That’s the lava. Under normal circumstances, it will pass. It’s almost never easy though. In a case like this, he will probably find a way to blame himself. He might even blame you . . .”

  Jill frowned. He had certainly blamed himself already. She wondered if the second part might be true as well. If he blamed her somehow, it might explain some of the tension between them.

  “I’m just telling you this so you can be prepared,” Talia said, reaching across the table and taking Jill’s hand in her own. “My point is, we can’t sit here and predict all the forms his grief might take. Everyone is different. All we can be sure of is that most likely the worst of it will be temporary. It’s not that it won’t change him. Grief like that changes a person like a volcanic eruption changes a landscape, but that doesn’t mean when it’s over that things can’t go back to normal.”

  Jill’s eyes softened and she said, “I’m glad you think I’m doing the right thing.”

  “You make it sound like . . . I don’t know . . .” Talia said.

  “You know you always said I was brilliant in everything but men,” Jill reminded her.

  Talia smiled wryly and said, “Please, dear. Do you remember Michael Stokes?”

  “Michael Stokes was nice,” Jill protested.

  “Michael Stokes was nice,” Talia conceded with a nod. “He was brilliant too. But he wasn’t for you. He was a skinny, tousle-headed genius who couldn’t match his socks or talk about anything that didn’t have to do with physical chemistry. Even Henry had a hard time understanding him.”

  “Do you remember when we went to Treeman Park?” Jill giggled, referring to the state park near Cornell.

  “Oh my God! Remember that?” Talia howled.

  The four of them—Talia, Henry, Jill, and Michael Stokes—had taken a picnic to the waterfalls in the park. It was a torrid day and Michael Stokes wore the oddest hat any of them had ever seen. It was a baseball-like cap, only the crown was high and round, and off the back hung a swatch of cloth reminiscent of the French Foreign Legion. Unable to laugh at himself, Michael Stokes had given them all a stern lecture on the principles of kinetic energy and aerodynamics. It seemed everyone else in the park was a fool and only he, Michael Stokes, was properly prepared to enjoy the day.

  Out of sheer loyalty, Jill had valiantly agreed with her nominal boyfriend. Some frat brothers at the adjacent picnic table, however, didn’t agree. And as the hot afternoon depleted their keg of beer, the ribald comments grew louder and more obnoxious. Finally, the muscle-bound ringleader of the group staggered over, toe-to-toe, to a quivering Michael Stokes. When Michael balled his hopeless fists to defend himself, Jill intervened, pushing the shirtless frat guy with a shove powerful enough for him to break his arm against the seat of the picnic table on his way down.

  The two women howled with delight reminiscing about the ensuing ambulance and the park cop wh
o didn’t arrest anyone, but tried desperately for the next several weeks to get Jill to go on a date.

  “My God,” Talia exclaimed, wiping the corners of her eyes, “then you went to the opposite extreme! A basketball player.”

  “Oh, yes,” Jill said, and suddenly both of them were sober.

  “I’m sorry,” said Talia, who knew better than anyone what a disaster that turned out to be. “But I guess what I want to say is that, in Michael Stokes’s terms, you always exhibited magnetic polarity. You gravitated to the extremes. A genius, but a nerd. A handsome jock, but a self-centered brute. Kurt, though, he’s different.”

  “Do you really think?” Jill said brightly.

  “Of course,” Talia responded tersely. “I’ve said so before.”

  “I know, but I didn’t know if you really meant it,” Jill said. She had seen Talia so regularly during her divorce that she might as well have been a patient, and she suspected that Talia’s praise for Kurt was born from sympathy.

  “Have I ever said what I didn’t mean?” Talia said, raising both eyebrows. “He’s smart but not odd, successful but not conceited, strong but gentle, handsome but not obnoxious. He’s perfect for you, Jill. I really think that—”

  “And I need to give him time,” Jill muttered.

  “Time, and space, and love,” Talia added.

  Jill nodded. She couldn’t have been more pleased by what she was hearing. Then her brow grew dark and she said, “Do you think he really means to leave the country and never come back?”

  “Maybe not,” Talia said. “But if he did, what would be so bad? You’ve already told me that nothing in your life is as important as him.”

  “I was thinking about us,” Jill said quietly.

  Talia burst out in mirthful laughter. “Nothing can separate us, my dear. You should know that. Even if you’re off someplace on the other side of the world, you’ll get ahold of me and I’ll come to you. You and I? No . . . Only death could separate us. Only death.”

  CHAPTER 17

  The riddle remained unsolved. Kurt still had no idea how he could penetrate the fourth perimeter and get out alive. Nevertheless, he was proceeding with every other aspect of his personal mission as if the problem were already well under control. He knew he could extricate himself from Safe Tech; it was only a matter of time and money, money spent on lawyers. Kurt had some of the best, and because of the magnitude of the transaction, they were working overtime for him. Funneling his fortune into an offshore account in the Cayman Islands was a separate matter and something that required discretion. That was another benefit of having the biggest and the best lawyers in New York City. They’d seen this kind of thing before and they knew how it was done.

  Kurt wanted to remove any possible link between him and the money. After he did what he was about to do, only an impenetrable legal veil would protect him from being hunted down by anyone simply tracing the path of his funds. But Kurt was being assured that that was exactly how the Cayman banks did business. They had surpassed even the Swiss when it came to discretion.

  Between the conference calls and meetings with lawyers who flew in from New York at his insistence, Kurt was pressed for time to plan out and orchestrate not only an assassination but also his escape. Things were made more difficult because he didn’t want to rely on anyone but himself. However, there were some things he needed that he couldn’t easily get. False identities for him and Jill, for example. He also needed the appropriate equipment programmed to enable him to commandeer the Secret Service’s communications.

  If he could get his hands on that, then he would have the passwords he needed to infiltrate the president’s protection. Only a former agent would have the knowledge to pull it off. With the ability to intercept and interrupt the Service’s communications, Kurt, knowing the protocols, the jargon, and the typical behavior of an agent, could penetrate the first three perimeters of protection almost with ease. But, while he had a working knowledge that the technology for such equipment existed, there were only a few men in the world with the capability to actually bring all the different elements together to create a simple working machine.

  Fortunately, there was a man whom Kurt trusted that he could go to for both. Cheng Yu had been with Kurt since the inception of Safe Tech. Kurt had hired him as a Ph.D. student out of MIT. A Chinese national, Cheng had come to the States with his family when he was just four. While Cheng had great affinity for the country that had provided his family with a safe haven and himself with a fortune, he had an even greater love and devotion toward Kurt. Kurt was the man who not only had made him a multimillionaire, but had repeatedly used his political contacts and influence to help to bring many of Cheng’s family and friends over from China through the years. All of them, including Cheng himself, who could afford to live anywhere he wanted, resided in Chinatown in lower Manhattan. Cheng was Safe Tech’s chief scientist, Jill’s boss, and a man of unparalleled genius. He was also streetwise, the perfect person to help Kurt with discreet issues like fake passports and classified electronic equipment.

  Kurt flew Cheng up from New York on his own jet so the two of them could spend the day together in Kurt’s office, going over the details of everything Kurt needed. By three in the afternoon, neither of them had yet mentioned the reason for Kurt’s requests. But Kurt knew that was Cheng’s way. In fact, he counted on it. Part of that characteristic came from Cheng’s upbringing, but part of it Kurt also knew was simply his friend’s nature. Cheng wasn’t one to ask questions, especially of his patron.

  Cheng was the only person in the entire world whom Kurt knew he could trust so completely. He could put his life in Cheng’s hands. In fact, he was doing exactly that. After he and Jill disappeared, he presumed that Cheng Yu would be the only man on earth who could possibly find them.

  Kurt supposed he trusted Cheng even more than he did Jill. It wasn’t that he questioned her love. He didn’t. He truly believed deep down that after he’d done what he had to do, Jill would still willingly go away with him and spend the rest of her life with him. He felt he knew that much about her. But he couldn’t help also being afraid that if she knew what he was planning she might try to stop him. She might even do something foolish. Cheng, on the other hand, would never do that. Cheng would fully understand avenging the death of an only and beloved son.

  This was why the two of them were poring over Kurt’s plans in the cool leather aroma of the library one afternoon not long after Collin’s funeral. Kurt was explaining the importance of having passports that would be completely untraceable. He also wanted an additional set, preferably Canadian, with indistinct photos of both him and Jill that could be used to establish new identities in a foreign land.

  Cheng nodded and, looking through the thick lenses of his plastic-rimmed glasses, said, “I know the people that can do this. There are some bad people in Chinatown. Very bad, but very good for this kind of thing. But I don’t trust any of them. No. I only trust myself. My idea is this. I’ll get them to fix these passports, two sets. They do wonderful things, these people. They can get into Customs computers and not just make a phony passport. They create the backup data. They create a person, Social Security number, everything.”

  Cheng blinked his large dark eyes before going on. “But this is what I plan to do: I will be the one to insert the photos and stamp them and laminate the passports. To these people, they’ve just made one more fake ID. That way, they’ll never see your photo—then no one will make a connection to you.”

  After a satisfied nod, he continued in a low voice, “I don’t know what it is you’re planning, Kurt. I don’t want to know. But I think maybe your picture is going to be all over the TV and the news after you do it . . .”

  Kurt gave his old friend an intelligent look. The seamless skin of Cheng’s face topped by his dark thatch of straight hair made him look as young as the day Kurt had first met him. He certainly still dressed the same: slacks and a short-sleeved, awkward-fitting dress shirt with no tie, his
pocket overburdened with pens. He was thin to the point of emaciation, but Kurt had witnessed his training at a martial arts dojo in the city so he knew not to be deceived by the mild appearance. Cheng was a deadly character with the quickness and sting of a whip. Kurt was smiling at him fondly when the door to the library suddenly burst open and Jill strode in with her arms open wide.

  “Cheng!” she cried with delight, clasping his hands in her own. “I didn’t know you were here! Cheng, it’s so good to see you. Kurt, you didn’t tell me Cheng was here. I had to hear it from the driver,” she said, scolding them both. “Cheng, you look wonderful—what would you like for dinner?”

  Cheng had stood to greet her with a subtle bow and now he shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot, blinking at Kurt.

  “I’m so glad to see you,” Jill continued excitedly. “You’re just what Kurt needs. They say there’s nothing like an old friend to pick you up! Don’t they say that, Kurt?”

  In her excitement, Jill failed to notice that Kurt’s expression was nothing but somber. “Cheng can’t stay for dinner, honey,” he said quietly.

  She looked at him as if anticipating some kind of punch line. Cheng always stayed for dinner. “No?” she asked. “Why not?”

  Cheng looked down at his feet in obvious embarrassment. It was a rather awkward moment. As a rule, Cheng never refused an invitation. It was one of their shared pleasures in life, sitting together over a meal, splitting their conversation between business and a myriad of other topics.

  “Well,” Kurt said, “we just have a lot of work to do and then he’s got to get back to the city.”

  “You’re kidding,” Jill said, still holding on to a scrap of good humor. “What are you two doing?”

  An embarrassing silence ensued.

  “Cheng is just . . .” Kurt began. “He’s just helping me with some things on the transfer of the company. We’re working out my succession plan, that’s all.”