Below, read the final excerpt.
He’d lived here a year already.
Leo asked, sounding surprised, though in reality he’d been expecting such news.
I know you’ve wanted to give her room"
“To maximize her outcome,” Leo interrupted.
“For the bureau.”
“Yes, yes, for the bureau.
I know you’ve always looked after our interests.
But now that MINERVA is already so senior .
what did they call her on that show, the wunderkind?
And the director and the chief, they want some new goodies to wave.
It’s promotion time for some.”
“Do they know what they want?”
“Is there a plan?”
“The safety of MINERVA will need to be carefully managed,” Ivan noted.
“So we’d like to send a handler to California.
Someone who’s never been on a diplomatic posting, who won’t show up on watch lists.
“The focus should remain MINERVA,” Leo said.
“Any handler you send must ensure that she is protected.”
“Of course.”
Ivan smiled at him.
“So wouldn’t it be best if that handler was you?”
Most mornings Leo worked from a small office in a tower off of Lawrence Expressway.
Though he was not in his office today.
You’re going to need a lot better than some internet articles, Leo thought.
You’re going to need something nuclear, given what I have.
The next day, he replied: Yes.
And so arrangements were made, between Trisha and Ned and Trisha and Leo.
Trisha met Ned a few times aloneit was important to establish rapport, an independent relationship.
Alexey had chosen his American name himselfthe ridiculous Chesterbut was otherwise reliable.
“The crumbs that ex-wives drop,” he’d once commented, “when they are angry.”
“What if the web connection is compromised?”
“You forget,” Julia had said, “that Iownthe connection.”
“This place is disgusting,” he said, no doubt recalling the service standards of the Rosewood.
“The machine, I don’t think it’s ever been cleaned.”
“At least your head is cool,” Leo remarked.
Chester fanned himself again.
“Jesus,” he said.
Leo put a finger to his lips and pointed to the laptop playing the feed from next door.
The video was high-definition: you could see even the birthmark on Trisha’s cheek.
“Oh gosh,” Trisha was saying in an American accent.
I really don’t know .
Ned walked to the bed, where he removed from his laptop bag a green chopping board.
“Snort it,” he said.
“Mr. Daly, I can’t, I’m only thirteen, I wouldn’t know how .
“Do you want me to show you?”
“Now, Mr. Daly, they always tell us in school to saynoto drugs .
Ned stroked her hair.
“I think we should stop the ‘mister’ stuff, don’t you?
Next week I’m going to be marrying your mother.
But you understand"breathing"that soon I’ll be calling in my special privileges .
“That’s enough,” Leo said.
Chester went in first, standard protocoltwo meaty hands and a Slavic accent were miraculous for setting a mood.
Leo was next: We have photos, we have videos, you have a family, etc.
Half the time the subject started to cry.
Where is my kindness, my attention?
The other half didn’t cry.
Ned wasn’t a crier.
“What would you like our relationship to look like?”
They were alone, Trisha and Chester having left through the connecting door.
Trisha likely already on her way home to eat pancakes, as was her routine after client appointments.
Ned didn’t respond.
And then gracefully retreating back into friendship when they were inevitably rejected, eventually settling for someone homely.
Though this had not been his behavior with Trisha.
“I want to be clear,” Ned said at last, pushing up his glasses.
“I don’t intend to haveanykind of relationship with you.”
“That is possible,” Leo said mildly.
“At this stage, anything is possible.”
And of course there was one.
“What do you want?”
“Why don’t you tell me first what it is that you’d like.
“Obviously it’s simple.
I would like the videos and photographs and whatever else you have of me destroyed.
They could do great damage .
they could ruin a lot of innocent lives.”
“I’m glad you say this.
It means you have an understanding of what is important in this situation.”
Upon which Leo explained the situation.
But going forward he would also report to the SPB.
“This isn’t okay,” Ned said, shaking his head.
“This isn’t fair.”
Ah, Leo thought.
That afternoon, Leo drove to Julia’s.
Leo was surprised to find Charlie’s parents also present.
“A last-minute visit,” Julia explained, with a slight grimace.
“Charlie’s mother especially, I have dreams of strangling her,” she said to him now.
They were in her office, where they usually spoke.
“What’s wrong with Betsy?”
“She talks too much.
It’s been worse since the pregnancy.
She says I’ll be a different person once the baby comes.
“Obviously you won’t.”
“No, never.”
“But she’d like that.
I know what she thinks.
That each time I order takeout I’m insulting Charlie.
As if I’ve never cooked or washed a dish in my life.”
“Be gentle with Betsy,” he advised.
“It can be difficult, this stage in a woman’s life.”
“Like I care.”
“Does Charlie know you feel this way?”
Julia wriggled and pressed her hands against her stomach.
“I tell him she annoys me.
But he is a nonconfrontational person.”
Which you’d have to be, Leo thought, to be successfully married to Julia.
“How does Betsy think it’s possible for you to pay for all this without Tangerine?”
Julia snorted and threw her feet onto the ottoman.
She was chewing gumone of her newly acquired pregnancy habits, along with orange sodaand blew a bubble.
Leo watched with fascination as the balloon grew larger and more sheer.
The bubble popped, and Julia began to chew again.
“She thinks Charlie makes enough.
He’s adoctor, she says.
It is Betsy’s favorite topic, how Charlie is a doctor.
How many junior cardiologists are living in this neighborhood, I want to ask.
But women like her have no idea of money.”
Julia sagged in her chair.
“She also talks about her dreams.”
“Americans love to discuss their dreams.
They assume everyone is interested in them.
You told me about your dream, remember?
The one of strangling her.”
“That was only for a few seconds.
She’ll go for an hour if you allow her.
“She speaks as if Charlie’s the most wonderful person on earth.
The greatest son, the best husband.”
“She’s hismother.
You’re the one who married him, remember?”
Leo cast an uneasy eye at Julia’s stomach.
Women’s stuff.”
“Such as?”
“I feel unattractive, for one.”
She absentmindedly picked at her dress.
I can’t sleep.
And Charlie, he can’t understand why I’m having such a hard time.
Billions of women have given birth before, he keeps saying.”
“I’m sure he cares.”
And anyway, all the suffering will be over once I give birth.”
She perked up at this thought.
“I’ve told Charlie he has to do half the work when the baby arrives.
Though truly it’ll be more.
Do you understand what the women are like now, how vicious they are?
If I were a man, for sure I’d have already been accused of harassment.
The first time in my career I’ve been glad to have a vagina.”
“And what does Charlie say?
About his expected participation.
He has concerns?”
She regarded Leo with pity.
It’s his child, too.
He is a modern man.”
“Well, good for you.”
May your wife shop less than mine.”
Betsy laughing the loudest.
Though Leo stayed quiet.
It was never a good idea to let assets speak of their emotions too long.
Then they would expect it always, and you would never have any peace.
In the evening, they gathered in the dining room.
he chortled when they met again.
“You all eating a lot of BEEF?”
The housekeeper, Magda, brought out salad, loaves of warm sourdough, Yorkshire pudding, Brussels sprouts.
“Jesus isn’t our regular chef,” Julia said pleasantly.
“Usually it’s Tyler, but he said Jesus was better with prime rib.
They’re with the same management concierge.
Most families in our position use a chef.”
“I’ve never heard of somebody with one.”
“Perhaps it’s a regional thing.”
“Oh, Houston is extremely metropolitan.
Maybe a little too much, for my taste.
All our friends have cleaners.
Do you know Colt Granville, the CEO of Oiler’s Bank?
His wife Doreen is in my book club.
She roasts her own chickens.”
Leo looked at Charlie.
But Charlie said nothing, only raised his beer and licked its foam.
Betsy was also imbibing.
“I thought you enjoyed cooking,” she said, stirring.
“I read it in one of those interviews you like to do.”
“I don’tliketo do those interviews.
I’m asked to do them and I participate because it’s my job.”
“My goodness, you do so many things for that company.”
Betsy took a long sip.
“As soon as you’re off a plane, it seems like you’re on another.
I’m not sure I could manage it all.”
“Yes,” said Julia evenly.
“It’s not for everyone.”
“Coming through,” Paul said.
He spooned a mass of Yorkshire pudding onto his plate, making appreciative noises while keeping his head low.
Charlie had finally set down his beer and was observing his mother.
“I know that when Charlie was young, he just loved my lemon chicken.
Wouldn’t take anything else, was the pickiest eater, but that chicken kept him healthy.
No special seasoning, either.
He barely got sick when he was little.
You’ll see what I’m talking about after you snag your own.
Some kids get sick all the time.
It isn’t natural.”
“Mom,” Charlie said, “Julia’s too busy to spend time cooking.”
If Betsy had hurt feelings, she hid them well.
“I just remember reading in so many of those articles how Julia loved cooking and baking .
I swore I read it was one of her favorite hobbies.”
“I don’t actually like to cook,” Julia cut in.
Chef Jesus and Magda, perhaps sensing danger, had not reentered the room.
“I just recalled I had some family photos to show Julia.”
“What did I tell you about being careful?”
Leo hissed once they were back inside the office.
Julia waddled through and closed the door.
“Do you really have pictures of my mother?”
Was she losing her mind?
So you are not in contact with her?”
He clamped his palms against his forehead.
“I only wanted to remove you from the table.
The talk was going in the entirely wrong direction.”
“I wouldn’t be pleased if my wife spoke to my mother like that.”
“You have to keep Charlie happy.
A good marriage is important.
Americans don’t like it when women have relationship problems.
Especially with a new baby.”
Leo recalled Julia’s file, the history of Karl and Nina.
Julia had likely never even seen any kind of functional marriage, he reminded himself.
“Charlie has to keepmehappy.”
Then, in response to his look: “Oh, I’m an excellent wife.
And I told you, Charlie is on my side.”
For now, Leo thought.
Her job, and all of its access, was key.
Leo removed from his pocket a sheet of lined paper.
He’d been procrastinating, hoping for a better mood, but the opportunity hadn’t come.
“For you.”
She made him wait before she reached.
“What’s this?”
If there’s no mark next to the name, then all I need is a basic search.
What you’ve already been doingmessages, sites visited, any unusual activity.”
She scanned the paper.
Pierre tried to hire him once.
And Dmitri Marin, I thought he was anti-Kremlin, that he’d gone all rogue."
“We run searches for a variety of reasons.
How have you been managing those, by the way?”
he asked, changing the topic.
“You never told me.”
She studied him and exhaled, as if smoking an invisible cigarette.
“I use an internal tool called God Mode.
Pierre was supposed to have disabled it, but he never did.
Kicked all the executives off, though, except me and him.”
“Does Pierre know you’re using it?”
But either way my login is anonymous.
The same as for my FreeTalk account.
She looked again at the list.
“Why’s this one highlighted?”
“For that one we’ll need location data.”
He spoke casually, easily.
As if it were only a small task, of passing concern.
Who’s that?"
“How am I to know?
I receive the list from above, same as you.”
“And this Jefferson, the SPB wants to know where he is?”
Then: “You may have to transmit his location real-time, using FreeTalk.
Do you have access yet?”
The second founder looks to be on his way out.
I’ve been pushing to
finalize the data merge; after that’s done, I can access location.
I’m targeting for after I give birth."
“It can’t be done before?”
“Why not?”
She looked amused at his persistence.
“Because it’s actually an incredible violation of user privacy.
“Then how do you know you’ll succeed in merging the data?”
“I’ll make the final argument right before I go to the hospital.
Americans, they have a thing for new mothers.
I’ll be untouchable then.”
“All right.”
Leo knew he couldn’t push further.
“You’ve been doing good work,” he added.
“Like with the source code for Tangerine Mail.”
Which Julia had passed days earlier.
He’d anticipated a bigger fuss, but in the end she’d delivered without complaint.
“You are welcome,” she said lightly.
To succeed was to have confidence: it was the underpinning of all achievement, both fraudulent and earned.
Yet the ease with which she now took his praise brought forth a wave of melancholy.
“Are you taking a long leave?”
Leo eyed Julia’s feet, which she’d tossed up next to him on the couch.
They were indeed bloated and pained-looking, and the toes were bright red.
I’ll have to find a way to keep track of Pierre while not returning too early.
I’ve been told working mothers are paying close attention to the length of my maternity leave.”
“Do you care?”
“No, as long as you are not replaced while you’re away.”
“Don’t worry about my job.
Worry about yours.”
Your job is my job, Leo thought.
But he didn’t continue.
He wanted to leave; suddenly he found himself disliking her, for no specific reason.
By the next morning the feeling had mostly subsided.
Still, he took a day trip by himself to Half Moon Bay as a distraction.
February 2019
Julia
Giving birth was terrible.
Terrible, really, wasn’t enough to describe it.
And then he’d given it.
Oh, she’d thought.
After, there were difficulties.
She sobbed for hours.
Why not, he argued.
Why not, when they were both important people and possessed the resources?
And by resources she knew he meant:hers.
Yesterday, Charlie had entered the bathroom while she was in the shower.
After a second, he said: “You’re always beautiful.”
But it wasn’t convincing.
Julia rose from her chair in the nursery and went to the crib.
Picked up Emily, who had been awake but quiet, staring at the shadows.
Brought her to the rocker, cradling the soft body against her own.
How in the end it might have been necessary for Nina to draw a border around herself.
To say, I can only love you so much.As Nina had so little as it was.
From atop the dresser, Julia’s phone began to ring.
She shut her eyes, willing the rig to stop.
Opened her notebook, removing from the inner flap Leo’s sheet of names.
And searched for Jefferson Caine.
His credit cards were paid online, and the required address listed a PO box in South Dakota.
She stewed and slept and then called Leo the next morning.
“What you’re asking isn’t possible,” she said.
She knew he was thinking, calculating.
“I was speaking purely of the technology.”
She scratched at the paper with her nail.
“It’s reckless, what you want.
You’re asking for real-time data.
I’d have to be on the platform, tracking this man’s position.
It could be traced back to me.”
“Then check that it isn’t,” he said, calm as always.
“It is your product, isn’t it?”
“The company is forty thousand employees, and I’m not the CEO.
There are limits to what is safe.”
“It’s not even a phone call,” Leo said reassuringly.
“You just have to send a few messages with his location.”
She’d known what Leo wanted when he first asked for access to FreeTalk, Julia realized.
Had understood in her heart what the end point would be.
“I haven’t done anything like this.”
She was surprised to find her voice shaking.
“Before, all I gave you was information, things that were already true.”
Which was how she’d justified matters.
“I haven’t done this before.
Actively helped target someone, an innocent person.”
“How do you know he is innocent?”
The ringtone was “Another Day in Paradise” by Phil Collins.
It was his fifth attempt todayshe was supposed to have transmitted Jefferson’s location in the morning.
On the wall, the clock read ten p.m.
It was more a negotiation than outright defiance, Julia consoled herself.
And hadn’t she earned the right to some flexibility?
To calm herself, she paced the hall until Emily fell asleep.
His willingness to converse with strangers, his extreme fondness for cats.
It was normal to feel out of sorts after having a baby, wasn’t it?
She swept his hair from his face.
The summer he’d spent in Italy before junior year.
All of this, his veryAmericanness, brought her a wide feeling of security.
That she was safe, that here in this house she was untouchable and could do as she wanted.
With the certainty of this thought Julia sank into bed.
She wrapped herself in her blanket and quickly dropped off to sleep.
The next morning, Julia woke up refreshed.
The feeling of satiation, of being almost fully rested (with one nursing interruption), was unusual.
In reality she rarely slept more than four or five hourshow else did people think she got everything done?
Charlie emerged from the bathroom.
He glanced at her, still under the duvet, in amusement.
“Slept late.”
“You never do that.”
He bent and powdered his feet.
She watched the powder spilling onto the floor, determined to ignore it.
You willnot be ordinary; you will not nag and bitch.
Charlie stood and pulled on a clean pair of shorts.
“I’m going for a run, and then over to meet Connors.”
Tim Connors was an old college friend of Charlie’s who lived three miles away.
“We’ll get some lunch and he can give me a ride back.
You want anything?”
“No, I’m fine.”
Then, even though she knew she shouldn’t: “Have you played with Emily today?”
He paused in his dressing.
“You know she’s two weeks old, right?
We can’t exactly shoot hoops.”
“I meant reading to her, talking, the books say singing .
“She’s not thinking about anything except that she’s hungry or tired.”
“Okay,” Julia said brightly.
“Have fun.”
She went down for a bowl of oatmeal and then returned to her bed to monitor emails.
Irritated, she retrieved a cutter from her desk.
Finally, Julia reached the last package.
It was the size of a shoebox, with a handwritten label, no postage.
Slightly breathless, she cut the tape.
Inside there were delicate folds of yellow tissue, which she tore away.
She lifted them to the light.
A set of soft woolen baby slippers, the color of flax.
A thin leather sole, little bobbles of wool circling the ankle.
She’d told Leo about the slippers, once.
“You’ll have the opportunity for much more than that.”
Leo had laughed as they sat in the training room.
“In America, you’re free to purchase a thousand slippers.”
“Those areadorable,” Luna cooed from the doorway, Emily in her arms.
Julia scrambled, shoved her hands between her knees to stop their shaking.
But Luna was already rapt with praise: “Good baby!
She knows what she likes!”
“These from a friend?”
Luna asked, her fingers stroking the wool.
“A good friend?”
“Yes,” Julia said.
“you’re able to tell, when something is made with this.”
Luna tapped a hand against her heart.
Julia watched her retreat with Emily, the oversize shoes dangling on her daughter’s feet.
After Luna left, Julia crept into the nursery.
She dropped into her chair with a groan.
Dig, pull, flick.
Dig, pull, roll, roll, flick.
The slippers were a message, that much Julia understood.
That she could not be this Julia now, this Julia after, and leave behind the Julia before.
But when had Leo come?
Though Julia would pay any amount, any price, to ensure Emily’s safety.
The house was quiet, and the office seemed smaller, eerie and devoid of air.
Julia opened a window and then reached into her desk for her notebook.
She removed the sheet from Leo, pressing flat the paper.
With her other hand, she opened her laptop and navigated to God Mode.
And entered the name Jefferson Caine.
A green dot appeared: Jefferson’s location.
Incredible that on a tool designed years earlier, they’d thought to put in location tracking.
This was the power of Tangerine, Julia thought.
All those brilliant minds, working as a hive, obeying the commands from above.
And her, seated at the top like a queen.
Julia watched the dot as it moved.
They were changing lives.
Before her on the screen, a light.
A person, a life.
From IMPOSTOR SYNDROME by Kathy Wang, published by Custom House.
Copyright 2021 by Kathy Wang.
Reprinted courtesy of HarperCollins Publishers
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