The Last Equation of Isaac Severy(69)
“You think yourself clever showing up in your own car?”
He turned, searching for her, but the room was empty. Her voice issued from a hidden speaker somewhere: “You think this gives you some control over the situation, Mr. Severy?” There was the usual smile in her voice, betraying some secret delight.
“No, no,” he answered. “You have all the control, Nellie. You’ve made that very clear.”
The speaker sighed. “Why don’t you come to me?”
“And where’s that?”
“Go into my study.”
He crossed the room and pushed open the double doors onto the faint smell of cigarette smoke. All the animal trophies were dim, except for the lioness, which cast a glow on the case containing the taser rifles. Nellie’s voice leapt to a speaker at the desk: “The door in the corner, walk through it. Turn right.”
He was soon in a bright, functional hallway with a door at the far end. Her voice floated above him: “The door leads to a stairwell. Wait at the bottom.”
He descended two flights of stairs—How deep does this place go?—until he was confronted with a pair of earmuffs and goggles hanging beside a metal door.
“You’ll want to put those on,” she instructed.
He did as he was told, and on the other side of the door was a second door. He pushed it open and found Nellie standing with her back to him, head-to-foot in khaki, staring down the scope of a hunting rifle. She took aim at a rapidly moving target: a black cutout of an antelope. She fired into the antelope’s flank—with what looked to be real bullets—and removed her earmuffs. He did the same.
“Good of you to come,” she said. Her secretarial glasses had returned.
“I’m guessing you’re zoned for this.”
“Of course. I do have some influence.”
“Influence or money?”
“So I’m just some rich eccentric, is that it? Throwing money around on private firing ranges?”
“It’s what I thought when I assumed you were a man. Is there any reason to change my mind now?”
She smiled, so wide that her irises nearly disappeared. Then she clicked on the rifle’s safety and held out the gun to him. “Care to perforate some cardboard?”
He shook his head. “What happened to your taser rifle?”
“It doesn’t give the same kick. Heads up.”
They shielded their ears, and she fired at the leaping silhouette, creating a blossom-shaped wound in its side. When it was gone, she tore off her muffs and dismantled the rifle. As she removed the magazine, she exhaled heavily, clearing the air for a new topic.
“I won’t make you guess my age,” she began, opening a gun cabinet behind her, “but my company has been an unofficial contractor of the US government for nearly thirty years.”
“Christ, you really are off the radar.”
“Some may question the legality of it, but no one ever questions the great deal of good we’ve done for this country. GSR makes a profit, of course—the Lyons estate could afford to subsidize this operation for only so long. But considering the enormous benefit we’re offering our customers, the US government being one, well, you can’t put a proper price on that. Besides, Lyons is an American above all. Even his cars, as you may have noticed, are domestic.”
She caught herself and laughed. “Listen to me, boasting about myself in the third-person-male again.”
“Must get awfully confusing for you.”
“You can’t imagine.” She locked the cabinet and led him farther down the hall. “It took years of work to get to the point where I could even think about recruiting someone like you. You can guess how, as a twentysomething—a girl, really—having just come into my inheritance and trying to build my own business, how few would look at me as anything other than a prospective intern or date. Even after I’d managed to get meetings with a few scientists at this or that university, they would take one look at me and have to smother a laugh. I had one guy, a very brilliant economist whom I’d admired for years, offer me a job as his secretary. He liked my ‘attention to detail.’ I was furious, of course, but as soon as my head cleared, I decided to give these guys what they wanted. And for my next meeting, I went not as myself but as my own assistant. I discovered that a few were willing to take me seriously if they believed I was working for a man. Same applied to all my meetings in DC.”
They entered a small break room, outfitted with various appliances, including an espresso machine. “Cappuccino?” she asked.
“No thank you.”
“I spent a salt mine on this contraption. You’re having cappuccino.”
She switched on the machine and rummaged for grounds and milk. “And so Nellie Stone was born—Mr. P. Booth Lyons’s indispensable right hand. I assumed that I would shed the deception, of course, as soon as I got a solid foothold or no longer looked like I was nineteen. But as I discovered, once I had created this persona, it was hard to put her back in the box.”
“And you could sustain all this for thirty years, on a lie?”
“Oh, it’s a harmless lie, isn’t it? And few ever questioned my story because I appeared so well informed that I simply must have been sent by someone important. As you pointed out, secrecy is part of my business model, so if anyone came at me with too many questions, I would plead confidentiality and trade secrets. Of course, my boss was always far too busy traveling to actually meet anyone in person—though when ‘he’ was absolutely required, I would send Cavet or some other equally distinguished-looking person in my place. For some reason, I always imagined my fictional Lyons as this patriot, yet vaguely European in bearing and style.”