The Cassandra Complex - Brian Stableford [43]
Lisa was still busy eating and didn’t particularly want to reply, but there were questions she had to ask. “Has Chan turned up?” she said.
“He’s alive and well,” Smith assured her. “He was in Birmingham last night, but he called in as soon as he picked up his messages. He said he’d be here as soon as possible.”
Lisa was surprised by the shock of relief that coursed through her. She hadn’t been consciously aware of the level of her anxiety. She wasn’t in the least reconciled to the possibility of losing Morgan Miller, but even if worse came to worst, there was some small solace in the fact that Chan was alive and well.
“He’ll help,” she said. “If anyone knows what Morgan’s been up to lately, it’s Chan.”
“I have someone waiting to talk to him as soon as he arrives,” Smith confirmed.
Lisa realized that she hadn’t the faintest idea of where the local office of the Ahasuerus Foundation was, but the fact that the Jaguar was powering up the access road to the westbound artery suggested that it was in the Bristolian sector of the cityplex. There didn’t seem to be any urgent need to inquire further.
Smith hesitated slightly before introducing the next topic of conversation, but only for show. “You and Miller,” he said abruptly. “More than colleagues? More than friends?”
Lisa nodded, unable to do more until she had washed down the last of the pastry. Handling the cup was awkward because the holder was at the right-hand side of the tray and she didn’t want to test the wounded skin on that hand again.
“What about Burdillon and Chan?”
Lisa blinked slightly at that one. “Ed and I have been friends for a long time,” she said. “Nothing more. My department occasionally puts some work his way, but not recently, so I guess our friendship has become a trifle dormant. I still see Chan once in a while—just as friends. It’s difficult to describe in conventional terms the relationship Morgan and I have nowadays. I haven’t seen him more than half a dozen times in the last three years—maybe less frequently than I’ve seen Chan.”
“But you were very close at one time?”
“We still are, even if it doesn’t look like it—as close as we ever were. Neither of us ever wanted to get married, and neither of us ever thought of the other as the great love of our life, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t care deeply about getting him out of this in one piece, or that I wouldn’t take this business personally even if they hadn’t paid a call on me too.”
“I’ve listened to the tape now,” Smith said. “That part you drew my attention to—what do you make of the insistence that Miller never cared about you, and that any promises he made were false?”
“Exactly what I wondered then,” she said. “That the idiot with the gun doesn’t know the first thing about Morgan Miller. Morgan doesn’t make promises he can’t keep—and he always cared about me as deeply as I always cared about him.”
“But he didn’t tell you what he was taking to Ahasuerus?”
“No, he didn’t,” Lisa said, becoming tired of having to repeat it. She had been waiting for an opportunity to turn the conversation around, and she didn’t give him time to slip another fquestion in. “So what, exactly, is Ahasuerus? Why are we going there first?”
“It’s nearer,” he said, answering the second question. “That may be why Miller went there first. Ready accessibility might have been the primary motive for him selecting both institutions from a longer list of candidates, given that he obviously didn’t want to discuss what he had over the phone. Unfortunately, our background check hasn’t turned up much more than the information that’s freely available on the Ahasuerus website. The Foundation was set up by a man named Adam Zimmerman, who made billions out of the financial crisis of 2025.