The Babel Tower Read online

  “Plank. Chaturanga.”

  She lowered into the position, her core strong.

  “Upward dog.”

  Her back arched, her gaze raised. The man in front of her held the pose well. The muscles of his back glistened under a light sheen, like the dew around them in the rising sun.

  By 6:45, Katarina’s body and mind were awake. The instructor thanked them for coming: “Namaste.”

  Katarina rolled up her yoga mat and walked off. The man who had been in front of her casually fell into pace beside her.

  “Good class,” he said, in Russian.

  “I like how the instructor pushed us,” Katarina agreed, speaking the same language and taking a brief glance back. No one was close enough to hear them. They would have a few blocks to walk, like every Friday morning.

  “How was your meeting?”

  “It went as expected. The board agreed that I could begin observing the target for potential transition into her role after the IPO. Three voted no, but only for general concerns. None of them know, or even suspect. I’ve been shadowing the target for a while now, anyway.”

  “And the target?”

  “The same.” Katarina smiled. “All she thinks about is this new project, the tower. I know her every move, and she’s happy to let me run the operations. I do it better than she would.”

  “Our friends will be pleased. They want to know how long it will be.”

  Katarina had prepared for this question. Russian spies were known for precision, but not patience. “No changes,” she said. “Construction should begin soon. The servers will be moved. But I won’t get access until after she sells.”

  “When?”

  “Next May, according to plan.”

  “Some want it done sooner. Some suggest that we…get rid of the target. It could speed things up.”

  “No, no one needs to die, yet. I’ve got it under control.”

  “Can’t it move faster?”

  “We have to deal with the company going public. Lots of laws, and we don’t want suspicions.” Katarina had earned Liz’s trust. The last thing she needed was someone else meddling with her plans or killing the CEO while stock prices were rising. “I can handle this.”

  “The prize will be divided evenly whether you use the help or not.”

  Katarina had long accepted this, but she alone would have access to the data and the power it gave. The door to her building was fifty feet ahead. “I have one request.”

  “Yes?”

  “Monitor the GC, Owen Strand.”

  “Anything to watch out for?”

  “I’m not sure. I think he knows something. He might lead us to any risks.”

  “Understood. You still have the asset who is close to the target?”

  Katarina nodded. She hadn’t needed Dylan yet, but she could make use of him whenever the timing was right. He’d hate for Liz to find out about their night together. “He has agreed in principle about the data, but he won’t go behind the target’s back. He is clueless about the depths of this. He plans to pitch some idea to her about conquering death. He’ll at least be an able distraction for now.”

  “Anyone else of concern?”

  “You know about the prince.”

  “Yes, of course. We have assets in Dubai who are handling it.”

  “Then I think our pieces are in place.”

  The man stopped in front of Katarina’s apartment building and pulled the door open. “Another good practice!” He spoke in English, with no trace of an accent.

  “One day at a time,” Katarina replied. “See you again next Friday?”

  “See you then.” The man gave her a friendly smile and waved. Just a cordial neighbor. “Have a great day!”

  14

  Liz woke up angry. Intense emotions were no stranger to her, but anger was unusual, especially on a Friday morning. She prodded at the lump of feeling while she sipped her morning coffee and looked out over San Francisco. Clouds were rolling in through the Bay with the day’s early light. The water stirred darkly. The Babel office tower across the street was dark. Only one window, Katarina’s, had the lights on. Nothing strange there—the woman was an early riser.

  Liz’s gaze dropped to the streets below. A few cars wound up and down the hills, but most of the city was brushing its teeth. She felt nothing as she watched the sun rising. She felt nothing as she looked around her home. The space was spotless. The concrete walls were bare and the bamboo floors gleamed under the ceiling lights.

  No, the source of the anger was not here.

  Liz made her way to the shower. She stepped under the water and the thought hit her.

  Jake Conrad.

  She remembered the conversation, the obstinacy. The fool of a man had turned down enough money to live like a king, just to keep his acres of flat land in the middle of nowhere. He could spend his life in the shadow of her tower. He could thumb his thick beard and watch the corn grow, dwarfed by what she would plant.

  As she stepped out of the shower, goosebumps bringing her skin and her mind to life, the anger raged only harder. She felt lost to it. She stared numbly into the mirror at her pale face and golden hair. The cool of her eyes hid the storm coursing through her. How had this man gotten to her? How could he not care about the tower, and how could he refuse that much money?

  Liz put on a yellow sweater, grabbed her bag, and headed for the elevator. She left the building, crossed the street, and rode another elevator up. One minute later she stood in her office, looking at the windows of her condo across the way. A smile came to her face. A short commute never got old.

  She began scanning the news headlines. Nothing interested her. She pulled up the news brief on Babel. The same reporters were reporting the same stories. Increasing presence in the global market. High expectations for the IPO. Questions about the CEO: Could she handle the public scrutiny? Would she stay with Babel?

  Her PR people would have another busy day.

  She started to open her email, then stopped. It would only bring questions and demands. She needed to start with her own questions. Owen’s report had found nothing online, but she couldn’t resist: she ran a search for Jacob Conrad.

  Over one million hits came up. Nothing on the first page had anything to do with a farmer in Nebraska. Nor on the second page, the third, or the fourth. Apparently a Canadian hockey player named Jacob Conrad was a big deal. She tried searching for Jacob Conrad in Nebraska. Again there was nothing about him.

  Every way Liz tried to search, she got zero. Apparently the man didn’t exist for purposes of the digital world. She even felt tempted to breach protocol and check the Babel data, but she didn’t expect to find much there either. Liz hadn’t seen a trace of a Babel near the Conrad farm. She figured the family spoke only English, King James Version.

  Liz had failed to learn anything about the farmer when Katarina showed up at her door. She wore a slim black suit and a white silk shirt with one button too many unbuttoned. To each her own, Liz thought, as long as Katarina kept doing such a phenomenal job.

  “Good morning, Liz.” Katarina fiddled with the pen behind her left ear. Liz had never seen her do that before. Maybe she was nervous. “The board meeting is scheduled for this morning, you know.”

  “Right. Is there a problem?”

  “Owen and I have been talking to the directors. Off the record, of course. We don’t think you’ll have enough votes.”

  Liz leaned back in her chair, hands folded behind her head. When they’d decided to take Babel public, she’d agreed to let the board have more oversight leading up to the IPO. She’d come to regret that decision a hundred times over. Now she needed nine of the twelve board members to approve either Babel paying for the tower or moving the company to the tower. She couldn’t raise enough cash to fund all the construction without selling most of her stake in Babel. Nothing like a multi-billion-dollar project to make a billionaire feel poor. “Who’s against me?” she asked.

  Katarina named five n
ames, her poker face hinting at a smile. “I have an idea that might get two of them to change their minds.”

  “Fire away.”

  “You could try using the tower for Babel’s publicity. Let people follow builders from every country working together. It’s free marketing. We could put on quite a show. The board would like that.”

  Katarina had a point. The construction teams from around the world would showcase Babel’s technology. The thought made Liz’s gut swirl. She’d already been in a tail-spin this morning. It wasn’t like her. She needed some time and space to get grounded again. “I’ll think about it.”

  “Of course, we have time. Just think of it as an experiment. Perfect advertising leading up to the IPO. I think this could convince the board to approve company funding for the tower. It is an impressive design.”

  Liz nodded. She reached for the blueprint, the original draft that Katarina had delivered from Dubai. She unrolled it again, spread it over the desk, and gazed down at the drawing. Her eyes read over the same scribbled words for the tenth time. This is the last of my vault. Behind the veil, the girl, and the hope—lost and gone forever.

  The vault. The veil, the girl, and the hope.

  The same memory came to her: her dad standing in his study, and behind him was a large framed picture of Liz as a girl, with a veil. She rubbed her temples, trying to understand what the message could mean. She felt like she had to see that picture again, even if it meant a trip to Chicago. She wasn’t up for another normal day at work anyway. “So do you suggest that we reschedule the board meeting?”

  “Yes,” Katarina said. “I recommend it. If we’re going to pitch this marketing idea, I need a little more time to prepare. Maybe one week?”

  “Okay, move the board meeting to next week. I’m going to make a quick visit to Chicago.”

  15

  Liz pulled up in front of her family’s old home in the Chicago suburbs. The house matched every other sprawling brick rambler on the block. Daddy had insisted, keep the façade. A building must fit in its place. He had been like the house—everything tidy and normal until you looked inside.

  She climbed out of the car and moved up the stone path to the front door. It was a fine September day. Blue clouds and a cool breeze rustling the first fluorescent yellow leaves of the two oaks lining the path. But a tunnel of memories enclosed her vision with each step.

  She could still see Mom’s body lying peacefully in the bed, a year after they’d lost Daddy. After that Liz had sealed up the house and hadn’t been back. She could feel the old wound pulsing, the scab ripped off again.

  But now she was here, even when Babel expected her to be a million other places. She wanted to figure out Daddy’s message about the girl with the veil. Maybe there were more detailed plans, more sketches.

  She took a deep breath and turned the handle. Locked, of course. She pulled out her key—the key she’d never managed to take off her key ring—and unlocked the door.

  The entry was stale as a tomb, but it wasn’t dark. Nothing Daddy designed would ever be dark. The entire back of the little house was glass, and it offered a sweeping view of the city skyline and Lake Michigan. A little bump of a hill, a little trick of design would do that in Chicago. The sun shone into the house like a crystal kaleidoscope around the steel support beams. Each shaft is like a sunbeam, Daddy had said. Not even the layer of dust over the furniture or the kitchen counters could dampen the glow of the place.

  She slid open the glass sliding doors to her left, walked down the hall, and entered the studio. She went to the desk and glanced over the dusty blueprints still stacked there. They were untouched and unfinished, as if waiting for someone to return.

  One design was a university building. Another a museum. None of them a tower. Daddy prized his towers above all. She rifled through the desk drawers, flipping drawings of houses, of schools, of clubhouses and sheds. He’d done so much of this for free, never able to say no. Except to her. Too busy. Design’s due tomorrow. I’ll make the next game.

  Liz stepped back from the desk. Her gaze lifted and found the three pictures on the charcoal-painted wall, the only wall of the room that wasn’t glass. The picture on the right grabbed her—it was Mom, blonde and beautiful and newly married. It swept Liz back to when her dad died.

  Liz still felt the anger. She’d fled from despair and poured herself into work, more intense and unyielding than ever. Her grades improved. A’s became A+’s. Her track times were faster. She ran her fastest mile ever.

  Harder, harder, harder, she’d thought. I can overcome this. It’s what Daddy would have wanted. Move on. Do something great.

  Liz couldn’t bear the sight of Mom then, wearing only black, staying in the house, drinking herself to sleep. Liz had tried to ignore her. She stopped going into the house. She stuck to the garage. She showered in the high school gym.

  School, track, garage.

  School, track, garage.

  Days became weeks. Weeks became months. Fall became winter. Every house on the street but hers had Christmas lights out. It was dark when she returned one Thursday night. She hadn’t seen Mom waiting by the garage door until the motion-sensor lights blazed over them, mother and daughter, outside together in the cold. They hadn’t spoken in weeks.

  “Hey Mom. You okay?”

  She wore a faded pink bath robe with little black flowers. She nodded and blinked her puffy eyes. “I’m sorry I’ve been so out of it.”

  For once, Liz did not smell liquor on her breath. “We deal with loss in our own way.”

  “Can we talk?”

  “Sure.”

  The two of them had walked into the garage, Liz’s makeshift bedroom and laboratory. Her twin bed sat on the floor in the corner closest to the house—the warmest corner. A table filled the center of the room, with three computers sitting on top of it. Their screens beside each other looked like a battle station. But when they were off and dark, they looked like black holes ready to suck in everything in the room.

  Mom sat on the end of the bed and rubbed her bare arms. “It’s cold in here. Will you come and sleep in your room tonight?”

  Liz sat on the purple beanbag across from her. “I like it here.”

  Mom scanned the posters and computers and books scattered around. She eyed Liz and opened her mouth in a familiar I’m-your-mother way, but paused. “I saw that piece in the paper about you.”

  Jax had insisted on making the news with their software. “Which one?” Liz asked.

  Mom reached into the pocket on the front of her robe and pulled out a clipping. “It says your translating software could be the next big thing.”

  “It is.”

  Her mom smiled weakly. “I’m proud of you…”

  Liz had heard that before. It was her mother’s wind up to do real parenting. “But?”

  “I heard you won the mile race at the county meet. Your coach called. He said some college teams have noticed. Your teachers have been calling, too. They’re concerned.”

  “About perfect grades?”

  Her mom laughed a little at that. The first time Liz had heard the sound since her dad died. “You’ve always done well at school.”

  “So what’s up?”

  “People think you’re working too hard. Not dealing with… You know, it’s not normal for a girl who just lost her father.”

  Normal. The word made Liz’s blood boil. “What’s normal, Mom? Staying in the house and drinking myself to death?”

  Mom did not wince. “I haven’t touched anything in two days.”

  “That’s a start.”

  “This isn’t about me.”

  “Right. This is about making sure you have a normal daughter.”

  “I’ve never had that. Your father made sure of it.” Jealousy tinged her Mom’s voice. “Not everyone has a mind like yours. Your coach, your teachers…we all want to make sure you use it well.”

  “I know what I’m doing.”

  “They say you haven’t ev
en signed up for the SAT, that you haven’t registered for classes for the spring.”

  “I’m dropping out.”

  A heavy silence fell over the room. Maybe her mom had not expected such honesty. She knew only the well-worn paths, had only ever wanted those paths. Her father knew better. He forged his own way, and Liz would do the same.

  Tears had filled Mom’s eyes. “You know,” she whispered, “your father always hoped you’d go to Stanford, like he did. He regretted quitting grad school. Part of him regretted it, anyway.”

  “He told me he never would have had artistic freedom if he’d stayed.”

  “Maybe in his career, but there was more to it than that.” She sighed and gazed up at the ceiling, at the posters of the moon and stars. “You might as well know now.”

  Liz sat up on the beanbag, leaning forward. “What?”

  “It was during a summer internship, his first year of grad school at Stanford. He landed at the top architectural firm in Chicago. I was the receptionist.”

  “I know all that. You fell in love, and he dropped out, right?”

  Her mom’s gaze drifted to meet Liz’s eyes. “Why would he have to drop out of school just because of me?”

  “He was in California, a long way from Chicago, from you.”

  Her mom shook her head. “No, that was the summer his father had a stroke. He moved back to Nebraska to care for him. He said he would go back to school. It was seventeen years ago…”

  Liz’s throat tightened. Seventeen years ago meant the year Liz was born. “So…you got pregnant? Are you trying to say he dropped out because of me?”

  “No. I never blamed you. It’s just how it was. Between his father and you, your dad decided not to go back.”

  Liz shook her head. “But he became an architect. He didn’t need more school.”

  “He was always behind, chasing some grand design he could never reach. You know how he struggled to get work.”