Cloud Atlas

Luisa Rey is trapped in her car as it sinks in the water. She frees herself and swims to the surface, losing the Sixsmith report in the process. Elsewhere, Sachs scribbles in his notebook onboard a plane. He doesn’t know that a bomb has been placed under his seat with “enough C-4 to turn an airplane into a meteor” (408). The bomb explodes just as Sachs is thinking about Luisa. Everyone onboard is killed. Bill Smoke enters a room where Lloyd Hooks is telling a rude joke. He quietly signals to Hooks, indicating that Grimaldi, Sachs, and Luisa are all dead. He’s mistaken, however. Luisa is rescued from the water by Hester Van Zandt. Now, she plans to hide at her mother’s house while searching for the evidence contained in the Sixsmith report that she lost. Van Zandt asks Luisa’s friend Milton—whom she trusts “with [her] life” (412)—to drive Luisa to her apartment.

Milton calls Joe Napier and, in exchange for money, tells him that Luisa is still alive. Luisa returns home, where she finds Javier. He tells her that her Uncle Joe is visiting. Luisa doesn’t have an Uncle Joe. Napier appears and tries to assure Luisa that he didn’t try to kill her on the bridge. To convince her, he recalls how her father once saved his life. He reveals that Bill Smoke is behind the assassination attempt and encourages Luisa to get a gun. Napier leaves her apartment, and Luisa talks to Javier before she leaves. He shakes her hand, which feels “formal, final and intimate” (418).

Luisa goes to her mother’s house, where her mother is hosting a party. Bill Smoke is in attendance. The other guests quiz Luisa about her love life. She’s forced to endure racist conversation among the greedy guests, until she’s compelled to interject. She disagrees with their stance on power, wealth, and accountability. Her interjection shocks her mother. Bill Smoke introduces himself under a false name, calling himself Herman Howitt. The first instinct of Luisa’s mother is to set up her daughter with this new man. However, Luisa is distracted by a news report. She learns about the “Lear jet accident” (421) that destroyed Sachs’s plane.

At work, Luisa tries to ignore rumors that Spyglass is shutting down. William Wiley, Seaboard’s Vice CEO, offers Joe Napier early retirement due to his “exemplary record.” Napier accepts and is taken away. Luisa visits the music store, where her copy of Cloud Atlas Sextet is ready for collection. The clerk admits that he already listened to the record; the piece sounds “intimately familiar” to Luisa, who has never heard it before. She returns to her office, where she’s fired by new Spyglass owner K. P. Ogilvy. He refuses to explain her dismissal. Napier goes to his family’s remote cabin. Anxious and paranoid, he struggles to sleep, remembering when Bill Smoke beat Margo Roker close to death. Napier didn’t intervene and now feels immense guilt. He can’t allow the same thing to happen to Luisa.

Luisa is despondent. She refuses to abandon her investigation, even if she no longer has a job. Her mother worries that her daughter has become just like her father. At a diner, Luisa runs into Grelsch. He admits that he allowed the Spyglass owners to pay for the treatment for “[his] wife’s leukemia” (433) in exchange for abandoning the Sixsmith story. In the meantime, however, he has done some investigation of his own. He reveals that Seaboard’s CEO and Vice CEO are both involved with the new owners of Spyglass, a company named Trans World. He encourages Luisa to speak to a journalist named Fran Peacock, who may be able to publish Luisa’s story when she has gathered enough evidence.

Luisa clears out her desk at Spyglass. She notices an unopened letter. Inside is a key for a safe deposit box at the Third Bank of California. She drives to the bank, rereading the “scribbled note” that was also inside the envelope. The letter is signed Rufus Sixsmith. As she enters the bank, a black Chevy is parked in the lot outside. Inside, Fay Li is waiting with a group of henchmen. They wait for Luisa to approach the safe deposit box, and just as she’s about to use the key, they intervene. They threaten to hurt Javier unless Luisa gives them the contents of the safe deposit box. Luisa reluctantly agrees. As the henchmen drag her away to be executed, Fay Li opens the box. Inside is a bomb. The bomb explodes.

The “blast” kills Fa Li and causes damage to the bank. Luisa pulls herself free and is helped out of the building by a firefighter, who then reveals himself as Bill Smoke. As he tries to push Luisa into a car, someone approaches from behind and knocks him unconscious. Joe Napier steps around Smoke’s unconscious body, but he’s quickly surrounded by Fay Li’s surviving henchmen. Napier and Luisa run through a building and into a Mexican woman’s house. They manage to slip away, but as the woman pleads in Spanish, Bill Smoke and his henchmen shoot through the door. They claim that they’re the FBI, shoot her dog, and ask where Luisa and Napier went. A silent child gives them a hint. Meanwhile, Luisa and Napier run through “an underworld sweatshop” (443), but they’re cornered by one of the henchmen. Before he can shoot them, the Mexican woman knocks the henchman unconscious and then beats him with a wrench.

Luisa and Napier board a bus. Napier explains how he found her, and he believes that he can locate another copy of Sixsmith’s report. They visit a modern art museum, where they meet Megan, Sixsmith’s niece. They talk about Sixsmith’s murder, and Megan hints that Seaboard has been trying to buy “weapons-grade uranium” (447) from the government. She tells Luisa that another copy of the report may be aboard Sixsmith’s yacht. Luisa and Napier go to The Starfish, pausing briefly beside The Prophetess, where Luisa’s “birthmark throbs.” On the yacht, Smoke corners them, shooting Napier and threatening Luisa. With his dying breath, Napier shoots Smoke. Elsewhere, Hester Van Zandt reads poetry to “comatose friend” Margo Roker. Margo wakes up at the exact moment that Napier shoots Smoke. Later, Luisa is reading her article in a newspaper. The exposé of Seaboard is front-page news, but she insists that she’s just “a journalist doing [her] job” (452). When she returns home, two pieces of mail have arrived: Javier sent her a postcard from his mother’s house in San Francisco, and Sixsmith sent her Frobisher’s remaining letters.