Jim helped Marta stand to address the assembly. Her skin was fever flushed, her pain obvious. “Colleen was different from anyone I know. I believe that everyone has seeds of anger and of grace—human weaknesses and God-given strengths. The way we balance these forces determines our good days and our bad days. Colleen had her faults but she was without guile. She was unpretentious—just look at how she mingled with corporate executives, runway models, and backroom maintenance staff. The years that she spent pursuing her dream testify to her confidence. She was my friend and I miss her terribly.”
Marta led the small assembly along a two-mile procession from the chapel to Mount Auburn Cemetery. They drove in silence. The funerary convoy would process past Cambridge Common, grey and muddy in the late winter gloom. The mourners would be escorted along Memorial Drive, a broad roadway that hugged the Charles River. Elm, linden, hawthorne, and lilac trees stood barren in the winter chill, rigid sentinels honoring Colleen’s passage.
Not one of the trees at the cemetery, nor the gardens, nor the ponds, nor the dells salved the bitter ache in Marta’s heart, neither did they soothe the fever that burned in her face. She summoned the last of her strength to stand alone over the yawning grave and to watch Colleen’s casket feed the hungry earth. When the coffin was in place, Marta took a lilac-hued aster to place on the coffin. Ancients believed that the perfume from an aster drove off evil spirits. “It’s too late for that now,” Marta said, and dropped the useless flower on Colleen’s casket and then turn to accept her husband’s arm and comfort.
It was unlikely that there was a more uncomfortable person anywhere in New England, perhaps the entire eastern seaboard, than the woman who stood behind Marta Cruz, waiting to speak with the grief-stricken scientist.
She was a bookkeeper at NMech with neither managerial authority nor seniority in the company, having joined the accounting staff only months earlier. She recognized Marta—Dr. Cruz—but had never spoken with her. She knew Colleen Lowell from news vids. She had met Eva Rozen once, and then managed to avoid the CEO. That was an easy task. Denise Warren was, after all, just a bookkeeper.
But I’ve been a conscientious bookkeeper, she thought. I like it when things balance. She believed that she’d been given a gift, a sixth sense that prompted her to dig a bit here and there. Sometimes, when she dug a bit here and there, she found something that Didn’t Fit. Not so much a gift, Warren thought, but a curse that’s cost me two jobs, and now maybe three.
Her first disaster came two years ago when she uncovered something that Didn’t Fit—a scheme to inflate her employer’s sales figures. My luck, I bring this to my boss and find out he’s the one who rigged the charade. He gets promoted. I get fired. Nine months later her intuition led her to discover an innocent error, but the company’s restated financial report forced the business into bankruptcy. Warren’s position fell to a cost-cutting program prompted by her findings.
So it was with understandable trepidation that Denise Warren approached Marta Cruz to offer condolences, and to bring her Jeremiah-like intuition to bear on an inexplicable series of entries in the NMech accounts receivable department. The funeral of Dr. Cruz’s friend was neither the time nor place to discuss a business matter, but the discrepancies had aroused her curiosity, which led to more discoveries. The irregularities would be a serious issue for the annual audit. But what prompted a now-hypothermic Denise Warren to linger at the funeral of a stranger was a bothersome detail that looked, well, criminal.
But what do I know? I’m just a bookkeeper.
Denise blew on her hands and shifted from one numbed foot to the other. Despite the warmth-preserving fibers in her gloves and socks, her hands and feet seemed about as warm as meat in a butcher’s refrigerator. When the rest of the mourners had departed, she approached a weary and equally cold Marta Cruz.
“Dr. Cruz, I’m so sorry for your loss, and, urn…” Warren stammered and hesitated. Would this cost her job?
“Thank you,” Cruz murmured.
“I’m Denise Warren from accounting. I’m sorry to trouble you at Dr. Lowell’s funeral, but I need to tell you something. I know this is a bad time, but—”
Jim Ecco stood and placed himself between the two shivering women. “This is a bad time. Why are you here, anyway? Did you know Dr. Lowell?”
Warren’s eyes turned down and she felt them well with tears. She had visions of losing yet another job. “I’m sorry. I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t urgent and I don’t know who else to turn to. My boss won’t listen to me, but there’s a problem that will hurt NMech.”
“There’s going to be another problem if you don’t leave my wife alone.”
Marta placed her arm on Jim’s and looked at the distraught woman.
“I know that I’m nobody.” Warren drew in a breath and then pressed on, “I’m an ant.”
Marta started. She looked more carefully at the accountant. “What did you say?”
“I, uh, I said, no, it’s not important.”
“Yes, it is. You said, ‘I’m an ant…”’ Marta’s voice trailed off. “Bibijagua…”
Denise looked confused. “N-no. Bookkeeper. I, uh, I’ve only worked at NMech a little while. But I found a problem and it can’t wait.” She faltered. It was useless. Why would a scientist care about a bookkeeping problem?
Marta looked at the woman. She was pale with cold, fatigue, and fear. Marta took her arm. “Ms. Warren? Are you as cold as I am? Would you like to join me for a cup of coffee? In fact, I could use something stronger. Maybe a lot stronger. Let’s find someplace warm, shall we, dear?”
Twenty-five hundred miles southeast, on a small island off the coast of the Mexican resort town of Puerto Vallarta, two guards herded prisoner 14162C from his cell at the Isla Maria Madre Federal Penitentiary. The prisoner coughed and reached for a cigarette. One guard told him to get his things together. He was being released.
Prisoner 14162C did not comprehend the news. He had years left on his sentence, assuming he’d survive that long. He’d managed to make a place for himself in the minimum security facility. But he’d aged, and was weaker than a 56-year-old who had not spent most of his adult years in prison. Still, Isla Maria Madre was warm and blessed with fresh air. In another environment, 14162C would have perished from infectious disease or unrestrained violence.
The guards marched him past the prison’s encampments, construction sites, and farming areas. They stopped at the prison commissary where he was allowed to purchase two loaves of bread for his journey. The guards could not or would not tell him where he was going, or why. They herded him into a jeep and travelled to a small airfield. Prisoner 14162C was to be flown to the Mexican mainland, and from there he would be taken into custody by someone else. The guards were expressionless. The prisoner was confused, but excited.
When the small prison plane landed at the Puerto Vallarta International Airport, three security agents met 14162C. The prison guards unlocked the man’s shackles. The security agents gave him a change of clothing and slapped a narrow strip of nanofabric on his neck. It looked like a priest’s collar. They warned him that if he tried to escape he would be subdued quite painfully. One of the agents touched his datasleeve and the prisoner winced and clutched his neck, where the nanofabric had been placed. “That is just a taste of what you’ll get if you even look cross-eyed. Understand?” The prisoner nodded and was herded to a small plane bearing an NMech logo.