The Woman Who Stopped Traffic Read online

  Vogel’s sagging rear vanished up the ladder with the agility of a twenty six year old: an impressive, if not exactly pretty, sight. Next Mysty’s perfectly rounded cheeks bounced up the rungs, trying to fight their way out of her safari shorts.

  Silverman turned to Natalie. “After you?”

  “No, please,” she rolled her eyes. “After you.”

  “D’you guys wanna drink?” Mysty asked. “Coffee? Beer? Some absinthe? A little pot perhaps?”

  “I’m good,” Natalie said.

  Ben: “Maybe some bottled water.”

  The tree house had window openings so large it was more a case of four poles supporting a vine-thatched roof. A bird darted straight through. On Vogel’s desk stood twin iMac screens the size of large solar panels. One showed stock market updates. Stock and index tickers flew across, flashing green and red as they went. Vogel stood in front, his face crossed with incomprehension at this summary of the world.

  “What’s that smell?” Natalie asked, noticing the foreign scent again. Food? Carrion?

  “Yeeahhhssss...” Vogel groaned. An inset frame of the screen featured a talking head on CNN Financial News taking very seriously some issue or other. Vogel’s face reddened, seeming to bubble and subside. Finally he gestured at the screen as though giving it one last chance, before flicking over to a screen saver. Lurid-colored fish glugged underwater...

  “That’s better,” he sighed. He turned to his iPlayer and put on some sort of surfadelic music involving reedy organs, jazz flutes and rumbling bass lines.

  “OK,” he collapsed onto a beanbag. “I am he / as you are he / as you are me / and we are all together…” His pupils were massively dilated. “I am the Walrus.

  “Which reminds me, has anyone seen George’s guitar?”

  He turned to Mysty. “They haven’t had it up by the campfire again, have they? Oh Chrisst!” And he clambered back down the ladder with amazing alacrity.

  “Mister Vogel just bought George Harrison’s first acoustic guitar at auction in London,” Mysty explained to Natalie and Ben. “Unfortunately, the DV8 people have been using it to sing songs round the campfire with. Here’s your water,” and she handed Ben a moist-cool bottle.

  – “Guys!” Vogel’s voice could be heard echoing round the back bowl of the canyon, along with the noise of him crashing through undergrowth;“guys” –

  “What’s DV8?” Natalie asked Mysty.

  “Oh, it’s a group of students attempting a self-sufficiency program up the canyon. Mister Vogel is trying to perfect off-grid living. This rotation has sixty-two days to go. Ends on the summer solstice. Exciting!” and her eyes spiralled out at them again.

  They made very small talk till Vogel eventually returned, guitar over one shoulder and a censer swinging from the other hand, looping smoke behind him. “Hey,” he said, squinting up into the uncertain sun. “They’re chanting 108 Trayambakams up there if anyone’s interested. Natalie! Why don’t you go see? Leave the nonsense of business to Spiderman and I. That’s what I would do, if I were – me.” His eyes narrowed, trying to make sense of his words. “Unfortunately my individual ‘I’ is still separate from the oneness that is me – but don’t let that stop you!” The facial trauma was returning. “Well at least my witness-consciousness should be happy with the distinction. Then again, what’s witnessing my witness-consciousness?”

  “D’you know, I may just take you up on that – the offer of taking a look round,” Natalie called out to Vogel, before turning to Ben: “I’m going to take a walk on the beach. Come find me when you’re done.”

  She made her way among the trees, pine needles crunching underfoot. By any standards, this was an extraordinary piece of property. The sound of crashing surf came from a neighboring bay; Vogel’s was perfectly calm and protected.

  She pulled out her phone. The signal was in-and-out, but she managed to access email. There were reassuring messages from Melinda, Stacey, other friends and – mercifully – Ray Ott. She’d emailed them all about her fake Clamor profile earlier that day. Brie DuBois, the raven-haired reporter from the Friday IPO presentation, had posted an article about Malovich’s death in the Trumpington Bugle, stating the cause as ‘unknown’ – “although Sunnyvale Police Department’s veteran detective Bill Pulver, who handled numerous homicide cases for the SFPD before reassigning to the Valley, leads the investigation…”

  There was also an email from Nguyen:

  From: [email protected]

  To: [email protected]

  Date: Tuesday, 11:38

  Subject: meeting just now

  Natalie,

  Sincere apologies for my behavior at our meeting just now. Frayed nerves I’m afraid. What a day.

  In any case, we really need a security professional now. Still hoping you’ll accept. Wisnold approved the $250K fee. You know the challenges we face. Would you like to propose what you could do for that and I’ll get it signed off?

  Humbly,

  Tom.

  She made her way across the damp sand to a far headland lined with cypress trees. There, she found a rocky ledge to sit. Water sucked and gurgled among the rock pools. The sea was limpid and glassy, glistening through the lingering remnants of fog. From somewhere, a seal croaked. Reluctantly she returned to the matter at hand:

  What to do?

  Certainly she could return to the Bahamas. Her hacked profile and the Malovich murder were reasons enough to insist on not going back to this madness. But what about Detective Pulver’s admonition? And Silverman? The jury was still out on Ben, but she was getting to know the guy well enough to trust him at least. To like him even… in a professional capacity. But she would be working for Tom, and Nguyen didn’t seem to know what he wanted from her. Or would that be to her advantage? She bit down on her lower lip.

  The truth was that yoga in the Bahamas hadn’t really solved anything. She’d sampled it all. She’d even done a twelve-day silent meditation. Twelve long days, cross-legged! Sure, some of it had helped. But no, she’d not found God. God had eluded her. Or had she been the avoidant one? Had she somehow missed her calling, someplace along the way? Most of the permanent residents of the yoga center seemed to be in denial about something or other.

  She inhaled deeply, the smell of kelp filling her nostrils.

  For the reality was that her last relationship and the departure from her old job had dealt a massive blow to her self-esteem. Her soul had somehow retreated inside, away from the world. But this introspection – perhaps healthy at first, now seemed to be feeding off itself.

  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 insecure 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 voic
e 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?”