"I"m sure you have some examples." There was no use in trying to slow him down when he was on a roll.
"On a dig in Pompeii, they found aqueduct technology better than what we"re using today." Chuck dug into the pile of French fries and pulled out another glistening chunk of foie gras. "And how they built the pyramids is still lost tech."
"So now we"re talking ancient s.p.a.cemen?"
"I"m being serious. When Admiral Zheng pulled his fleet out of Suzhou in China in 1405, he had ships the size of modern aircraft carriers and took nearly thirty thousand troops with him."
"Really?"
"Look it up," he said. "Zheng was in contact with our West Coast Indians four hundred years before Lewis and Clark brought Pocahontas on holiday there. The Chinese were smoking reefers with the Oregon chiefs on ships bigger than modern battle cruisers a hundred years before Columbus "discovered" America. Know how big Columbus"s famous Nina was?"
I shrugged.
"Fifty feet, and he had maybe fifty guys with him."
"Didn"t he have three boats?"
"My point is that before we"d even managed to paddle out of Europe in little buckets, China was already sailing the globe with thirty thousand troops on fleets of aircraft-carrier-sized warships."
We"d stopped eating by then.
"What"s your point? I"m not following."
"Just that society goes backwards sometimes, and all this stuff with China-I get the feeling we"re fooling ourselves."
"They"re not the enemy?"
"Just the wrong perspective," he explained. "We"re squaring them up to be the enemy, but mostly because we need an enemy. They"re not trying to control the world. That was never their goal, even when they were unimaginably more powerful than us."
"So you"re saying you"re wrong about the cyber threat?"
"No, but-"
Chuck picked up another shrimp.
"But what?"
"Maybe we"re blinding ourselves to the real enemy."
"What enemy is that, my conspiracy-loving friend?" I asked, rolling my eyes, expecting some rhetoric about the CIA or NSA.
Chuck finished sh.e.l.ling his shrimp and pointed it at me.
"Fear. Fear is the real enemy," he said thoughtfully, looking toward the ceiling. After a moment he added, "Fear and ignorance."
I laughed. "With all this stuff you"re stockpiling, aren"t you the one that"s afraid?"
"Not afraid," he said deliberately, looking down from the ceiling to stare into my eyes. "Prepared."
Day 1 - December 23.
8:55 a.m.
"IT"S TWO DAYS before Christmas. Isn"t it time to give it a rest?"
Lauren looked at me and shrugged. "I have to make this meeting. Richard really went out on a limb to get this guy to talk to me."
We had the bedroom door shut, but the screech of Luke crying through the baby monitor on the kitchen counter cut her short. She reached down and shut it off, just like she"d been shutting me off for the past month.
I threw my hands in the air. "Well, if Richard set it up, then of course, abandon your family for another day."
"Don"t get started," she replied angrily, shaking her head. "At least Richard"s trying to help me."
Closing my eyes and taking a deep breath, I mentally began to count to ten. It was almost Christmas, and there was no sense in escalating. I ran a hand through my hair while Lauren stood and stared at me.
I sighed.
"I don"t think Luke"s feeling well," I said slowly. "We need to go food shopping for the holidays, and like I said, I need to finish delivering those client gifts."
My new administrative a.s.sistant had forgotten to deliver a dozen of the personalized gifts that we"d created for our clients.
She"d omitted the ones in Manhattan because they weren"t on the long-distance mailing list. When we"d discovered the error, she"d been in a rush to get off to her family for the holidays, and with FedEx and UPS down, I"d stupidly offered to my partners that I"d deliver them myself.
Of course, now it was the last minute. Yesterday Luke and I had delivered half of them, running all around Little Italy and Chinatown to some of our smaller start-up partners, but I still had a few left for our bigger clients. Luke had really enjoyed the outing. He was a social b.u.t.terfly and would step right up and start jabbering to everyone we met.
"Is delivering a couple of engraved pen holders really going to make or break your business?"
"That"s not the point."
She took a deep breath, and her expression softened. "I forgot. I"m sorry. But this is really important to me."
Obviously more important than we are, I thought, but I held my tongue and tried to strike the thought from my head. Negative thoughts had a way of festering.
Lauren looked toward the ceiling. "Can"t you get Susie-"
"They"re out all day."
"Then what about the Borodins?"
She wasn"t going to give in. A pause while I inspected the tiny plastic Christmas tree we"d stuck on a side table next to the couch. I rolled my eyes.
"Fine. I"ll figure it out." I shook my head but managed a smile. "Go on, get going."
"Thanks." She began collecting her coat and purse. "And if you do go out, don"t forget to bundle up Luke. I"ll just go and calm him down before I leave."
I nodded and returned my attention to surfing through some websites on new social media outlets. The web was incredibly slow. It was taking forever for new pages to load.
Lauren went into our room, and I heard her talking to Luke. She picked him up and began pacing back and forth with him, and quickly the crying stopped. Lauren appeared a moment later with her coat on, coming around to my side of the counter to give me a little hug and peck on the cheek. I shrugged her off. She swatted at me playfully and I smiled, and then she was off and out the door.
As soon as she left, I went to check on Luke in his crib in the bedroom. He was still whimpering, but had calmed down and was cuddled up with his blanket. Returning to my laptop, I tried doing some more research work, but the slow web connection persisted. I couldn"t be bothered to check the router or if something else was wrong, so I gave up and decided to get on with my day.
Opening the front entrance to our apartment, I walked next door to the Borodins. With our door left slightly open, I could still hear Luke.
Our apartment was the last one at the end of a narrow carpeted hallway, lit along its length by recessed lighting. Susie and Chuck lived right next door, on the left coming out of our place, with the Borodins to our right.
The next door down from Chuck"s was Pam and Rory"s place, directly across from another hallway that led off at right angles to the elevators. The emergency exit was right next to Rory"s, with the stairwell leading down six floors from there. Five more apartments lined the rest of the hallway, ending in the entrance to Richard"s three-story condo on the opposite side of the building from ours.
Irena opened the door on my first quiet knock. They were always home, and she must have been standing just beside the door, cooking as usual. The smell of roasting potatoes and meats and yeasty bread wafted out as the door slid open.
"Mi-kay-yal, pryvet," greeted Irena, her warm smile creasing the deep wrinkles in her face.
At nearly ninety years of age, she was stooped and shuffled when she walked, but always had a bright twinkle in her eye. As old as she was, I"d still think twice before messing with her-she"d been a part of the Red Army that had defeated the n.a.z.is in the frozen wastelands of northern Russia. As she liked to tell me, "Troy fell, Rome fell, but Leningrad did not fall."
She was wearing a green-checked ap.r.o.n, slightly stained, and held a tea towel bunched up in one hand. With the other she motioned for me to enter.
"Come, come."
I glanced at their doorframe and the mezuzah affixed there, a tiny but beautifully carved, ornate mahogany box. At one time I thought these were like Jewish "good luck" charms, but I"d come to understand this wasn"t their purpose. They were more about keeping evil away.
Hanging back, I resisted entering.
It wasn"t that I didn"t want to, but going in there always ended with a plate of sausages and recriminations that I was too thin. That being said, I loved her food, and I enjoyed even more the simple pleasure of being doted on. It made me feel like a kid, protected and indulged, and no self-respecting Russian grandmother would have it any other way.
"Sorry, I"m in a bit of a hurry."
Whatever she was cooking smelled amazing, and I realized that dropping off Luke would give me the perfect opportunity to come back later and be spoiled.
"I don"t mean to impose, but would you be able to watch Luke for a few hours?"
She shrugged and nodded. "Of course, Mi-kay-yal, you know you don"t need to ask, da?"
"Thanks. I need to go out and make some deliveries," I replied without needing to explain. Glancing inside, I could see her husband, Aleksandr, asleep in his La-Z-Boy recliner in front of a Russian soap opera playing on the TV. Gorbachev was curled up asleep beside him.
Mrs. Borodin nodded again. "You bring Luke?"
I nodded back.
"And you wrap yourself up. It is much below zero today."
I laughed. Two women had already told me to wrap up and I hadn"t even been outside yet. Maybe I am still a kid. "We use Fahrenheit here, Irena-it"s cold but not below zero yet. Still about ten degrees, I think."
"Ack, you know what I mean." Flicking her chin to tell me to get going, she turned to get back to her cooking, leaving the door ajar.
Going back to my apartment, I rummaged around in the closet, looking for winter coats and gloves and scarves. With s.p.a.ce at such a premium, we"d rented a storage locker across town to hold all nonessential seasonal household stuff like skis and mitts and such.
The weather had been so warm that I"d only just gone to get out one of my winter jackets, and I remembered that Lauren had dropped it off at the dry cleaner yesterday. Sighing, I pulled a thin, black jacket off a hanger, picked up my backpack with the gifts in it, and went into the bedroom to put a sweater on.
Luke was wide awake, and he watched me enter. His cheeks were a bright, ruddy red.
"Not feeling well, buddy?" I said, reaching down to pick him up. His forehead was definitely hot, and the little guy was sweating. He"d also wet his diaper, so I quickly changed him, switching him into some dungarees and thick socks with a cotton shirt, and then took him next door.
Even if he wasn"t feeling well, Luke managed a toothy grin upon seeing Irena.
"Ah, dorogaya!" she gushed, taking the still-sleepy Luke from my arms. "He not feeling well, nyet?"
I brushed Luke"s head, feeling the sweat in his matted-down hair.
"Yeah, I don"t think so."
She pulled Luke into her bosom. "No worry, I take care. You go."
"Thanks. I"ll be back about lunch." I smiled and raised my eyebrows, and by the way she smiled back, I just knew there would be a feast awaiting my return.
She laughed and closed the door.
A child was such an amazing thing. I"d gone through life before we had Luke, wondering what it was all about, trying to sort out my hopes and dreams and fears. Then all of a sudden, there was a little version of me staring back at me, and everything had become clear. The meaning of my life was to protect and raise this new life, to love and teach him everything that I knew.
"Forget something?"
"Huh?"
Pam was standing in the hallway, outside her door, staring at me. She was a nurse, and she was dressed in scrubs, on her way to work. We"d become quite good friends with her and her husband, Rory, but we hadn"t quite developed the kind of bond and easy relationship we had with Susie and Chuck.
The thing was, Pam and Rory were strict vegans, and while I didn"t have a problem with it, somehow it created a gap. It made me feel guilty when I ate meat around them, or even just the fact that I ate meat seemed to make things a bit weird, no matter how many times they made it clear it didn"t bother them and it was a personal choice.
I liked Pam a lot. She was a very attractive blonde, and hard not to like. Where Lauren was what you might call a cla.s.sic beauty, Pam was of the more voluptuous sort.
"No, I was just dropping Luke off."
"I saw that," she laughed. "Deep thoughts, huh?"
"Not really," I replied, shaking my head and walking toward her. She worked for the Red Cross and was currently stationed at a blood bank just a few blocks away. "Still draining veins, even before Christmas?"
"It"s the season to give, right? Are you finally going to come down?"
The elevator pinged our floor, and the doors opened. I was trapped.
"Ah, you know," I hemmed and hawed, "I"ve got a lot to do."
"Everyone"s always got a lot to do, but the holidays are when we need the most."
I let her enter the elevator ahead of me. Now I felt doubly guilty. Before I could stop myself- "You know what? I"ll come down right now." Hey, it"s Christmas, I thought. What the heck.