Carrion Comfort (83 page)

When he returned he was filling a syringe from an upended bottle. He squirted a few drops and turned to Harod. “This is going to hurt a little bit, Mr. Harod,” he said in a small, tight voice.

Harod tried to jerk his left arm away, but the man stabbed the syringe through the gown, directly into his hip. For a second there was numbness and then it felt to Tony Harod as if someone had poured Scotch directly into his veins. Flame moved from his abdomen to his chest. He gasped as the warmth moved through his heart. “What . . . is it?” he whispered, knowing that the man in the balaclava had killed him. A lethal injection, the tabloids called it. Harod had always been in favor of capital punishment. “What
is
it?”

“Shut up,” said the man and turned his back even as the blackness swirled and whirled and tumbled Tony Harod away like a chip on a hurricane sea.

N
atalie came up out of the fog of anesthesia to the sight and soft touch of Saul cleansing her forehead with a wet cloth. She looked down, saw the straps around her arms and legs, and began to cry. “There, there,” said Saul. He bent close and kissed her hair gently. “It’s all right.”

“How . . .” Natalie paused and licked her lips. They felt remote and rubbery. “How long?”

“About thirty minutes,” said Saul. “We may have been too conservative with the mixture.”

Natalie shook her head. She remembered the horror of watching herself,
feeling
herself preparing to leap at Saul. She knew she would have killed him with her bare hands. “Had to be . . . fast,” she whispered “Harod?” She could barely bring herself to say his name.

Saul nodded. “The first interrogation went very well. The EEG recordings are extraordinary. He should be coming out of it very soon. That’s why the . . .” He gestured at the straps.

“I know,” said Natalie. She had helped set up the bed with its canvas restraints. Her pulse was still racing from the incredible adrenaline flow during Harod’s possession of her and from her fear prior to going in the room. Entering that room had been the hardest thing she had ever done.

“I think it looks very good,” said Saul. “According to the EEGs there was no attempt to use his powers on either you or me while he was under Sodium Pentothal. He’s been coming out of it for about fifteen minutes now . . . his readings are almost back to the base we established this morning . . . and he’s not tried to reestablish contact with you. I feel reasonably certain that it’s a line of sight pro cess for either initial contact or once after contact is broken. Certainly it would be different for subjects he has conditioned, but I don’t think he can reestablish contact with you now without seeing you.”

Natalie tried hard not to cry. The straps were not uncomfortable, but they gave her an overwhelming sense of claustrophobia. Wires ran from the electrodes on her scalp to the small telemetry pack taped to her waist. Saul had known about the equipment from colleagues doing dream studies and had been able to tell Cohen exactly where to purchase it. “We just don’t
know
,” she said.

“We know a lot more than we did twenty-four hours ago,” said Saul. He held up two long strips of paper from the EEG readout. The computer stylus had traced a mad scribble of peaks and valleys. “Look at this. First what appears to be this random misfiring in his hippocampus. Harod’s alpha waves peak, drop to almost nothing, and then go into what appears to be REM state. Three point two seconds later . . . look . . .” Saul showed her a second strip where the peaks and valleys perfectly matched the first. “Perfect sympathy. You lost all higher order functions, no control of voluntary reflexes, even your autonomous nervous system had become slaved to his. Less than four seconds to join him in this altered REM state or what ever it is.

“And perhaps the most interesting anomaly, here Harod generates a theta rhythm. It is unmistakable. Here your hippocampus responded with an identical theta rhythm while the neocortical EEG flattened. Natalie, this theta rhythm phenomenon is well documented in rabbits, rats, and so forth during species-specific activities— such as aggression and dominance displays— but never in a primate!”

“Are you saying I had the brain of a rat?” said Natalie. It was a weak joke and did not stop her from wanting to cry.

“Somehow Harod . . . and presumably the others . . . generates this exceptional theta rhythm activity in both his own hippocampus and that of his victim,” Saul said half to himself. He had not noticed Natalie’s attempt at humor. “The sympathetic effect on your brain was to flatten neocortical activity while generating an artificial REM state. You received sensory input but could not act on it. Harod could.
Incredible
. This . . .” He pointed to a sudden flattening of the squiggles on her chart “. . . is precisely where the nerve toxins in the tranquilizer dart take effect. Notice the lack of reciprocity on his chart. What ever he willed evidently could be transmitted to neurochemical commands in your body, but what you experienced was only vicariously transmitted to Harod. He felt no more of your pain or paralysis than one would feel in a dream. Here, forty-eight seconds later, is when I injected him with the Amatyl-Pentothal mixture.” Saul showed her where the various lines of brain wave functions fell out of their frenzied state. “God, what I would give to have him somewhere for a month with CAT-scan equipment.”

“Saul, what if I . . . what if he does reestablish control over me?”

Saul adjusted his glasses. “I’ll know it at once, even if I’m not watching the readouts. I’ve reprogrammed the computer alarm to go off at first sign of that erratic activity of his hippocampus, the sudden drop in either of your alpha wave patterns, or at the appearance of the theta rhythm.”

“Yes,” said Natalie and took a breath, “but what will you
do
then?”

“We’ll run the time-distance studies as planned,” said Saul. “All of the data channels should be clear at twenty-five miles if we use the transmitter Jack bought.”

“But what if he can do it at a hundred miles, a thousand?” Natalie strained to keep her voice calm. She wanted to scream,
what if he never lets me go
? She felt as if he had agreed to a medical experiment where some loathsome parasite had been allowed to grow inside her body.

Saul took her hand. “Twenty-five miles is all we need to know at this time. If it comes to that, we’ll just return and I’ll put him under again. We know that he cannot control you when he is unconscious.”

“He never could again if he was dead,” said Natalie.

Saul nodded and squeezed her hand. “He’s awake now. We’ll wait forty-five minutes and if he makes no attempt at seizing you, you can get up. I personally do not believe our Mr. Harod can do it. What ever the source of our monsters’ powers, all preliminary indications suggest that Anthony Harod is a very minor monster indeed.” He went to the sink, brought back a cup of water, and held Natalie’s head up while she drank it.

“Saul . . . after you release me, you’re still going to have the computer alarm hooked up and you’ll keep the dart gun, won’t you?”

“Yes,” said Saul. “As long as we have this viper in the house, we will keep him in his cage.”

“Second interrogation of Anthony Harod. Friday, April twenty-fourth, 1981 . . . seven twenty-three
P.M.
Subject currently injected with Sodium Pentothal and Meliritin-C. Data also available on videotape, EEG readout, polygraph, and bio-sensor channels.

“Tony, can you hear me?”

“Yeah.”

“How do you feel?”

“OK Funny.”

“Tony, when were you born?”

“Huh?”

“When were you born?”

“October seventeenth.”

“What year, Tony?”

“Uh . . . 1944.”

“And how old are you now?”

“Thirty-six.”

“Where did you grow up, Tony?”

“Chicago.”

“When was the first time you knew you had the power, Tony?”

“What power?”

“Your ability to control people’s actions.”

“Oh.”

“When was the first time, Tony?”

“Uh . . . when my aunt told me I had to go to bed. I didn’t want to. I made her say it was all right for me to stay up.”

“How old were you?”

“I don’t know.”

“How old do you think you were, Tony?”

“Six.”

“Where were your parents?”

“My daddy was dead. He killed himself when I was four.”

“Where was your mother?”

“She didn’t want me. She was mad at me. She gave me to Auntie.”

“Why didn’t she want you?”

“She said it was my fault.”

“What was your fault?”

“Daddy dying.”

“Why did she think that?”

“Because Daddy hit me . . . he hurt me . . . he hurt me right before he jumped.”

“Jumped? From a window?”

“Yeah. We lived way high up on the third floor. Daddy hit one of those fences with the spikes on it.”

“Did your father hit you often, Tony?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you remember it?”

“Now I do.”

“Do you remember why he hit you on the night he killed himself?”

“Yeah.”

“Tell me about it, Tony.”

“I got scared. I was sleeping in the front room where the big closet was and the closet was dark. I woke up and I was scared. I went into Mommy’s room like I always did, only Daddy was there. He wasn’t usually there because he sold things and had to be gone all the time. Only he was there this time and he was hurting Mommy.”

“How was he hurting her?”

“He was on top of her and he didn’t have any clothes on and he was hurting her.”

“And what did you do, Tony?”

“I cried and yelled at him to stop.”

“Did you do anything else?”

“Uh-uh.”

“What happened next, Tony?”

“Daddy . . . stopped. He looked funny. He took me in the living room and hit me with his belt. He hit me real hard. Mommy told him to stop but he kept hitting me. It hurt bad.”

“And did you make him stop?”

“No!”

“What happened next, Tony?”

“Daddy quit hitting me all of a sudden. He held his head and sort of walked funny. He looked at Mommy. She wasn’t crying anymore. She was wearing Daddy’s flannel robe. She used to wear that when he was gone because it was warmer than hers. Then Daddy went to the window and fell through it.”

“The window was closed?”

“Yeah. It was real cold out. The fence was new. The landlord had just put it up right before Thanksgiving.”

“And how soon after that did you go to live with your aunt, Tony?”

“Two weeks.”

“And why did you think your mother was angry at you?”

“She told me.”

“That she was angry?”

“That I’d hurt Daddy.”

“By making him jump?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you make him jump, Tony?”

“No!”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes!”

“Then how did your mother know you could make people do things?”

“I don’t know!”

“Yes, you do, Tony. Think back. Are you sure the time you made your aunt let you stay up late was the first time you ever controlled someone?”

“Yes!”

“Are you certain, Tony?”

“Yes!”

“Then why did your mother think you could do such a thing, Tony?”

“Because
she
could!”

“Your mother could control people?”

“Mommy did. She always did. She made me sit on the potty when I was too little. She made me not cry when I wanted to. She made Daddy do things for her when he was there so he kept going away. She did it!”

“She made him jump that night?”

“No. She made
me
make him jump.”

“Third interrogation of Anthony Harod. Eight-oh-seven
P.M.
, Friday, April twenty-fourth. Tony, who killed Aaron Eshkol and his family?”

“Who?”

“The Israeli.”

“Israeli?”

“Mr. Colben must have told you about it.”

“Colben? Oh, no, Kepler told me about it. That’s right. The kid from the embassy.”

“Yes, the kid from the embassy. Who killed him?”

“Haines had a team go talk to him.”

“Richard Haines?”

“Yeah.”

“The FBI agent Haines?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Did Haines personally kill the Eshkol family?”

“I guess so. Kepler said he led the team.”

“Who authorized this operation?”

“Uh . . . Colben . . . Barent.”

“Which one, Tony?”

“Doesn’t matter. Colben was just Barent’s finger puppet. Can I close my eyes? I’m very tired.”

“Yes, Tony. Close your eyes. Sleep until we talk again.”

“Fourth interrogation of Anthony Harod. Friday, April twenty-fourth, 1981. Ten-sixteen
P.M.
Sodium Pentothal intravenously administered. Amo-barbital sodium reintroduced at ten-oh-four
P.M.
Data available on videotape, polygraph, EEG, and bio-sensor.

“Tony?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know where the Oberst is?”

“Who?”

“William Borden.”

“Oh, Willi.”

“Where is he?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you have any idea where he is?”

“No.”

“Is there any way you can find out where he is?”

“Uh-uh. Maybe. I don’t know.”

“Why don’t you know? Is there someone else who knows where he is?”

“Kepler. Maybe.”

“Joseph Kepler?”

“Yeah.”

“Kepler knows where Willi Borden is?”

“Kepler says he’s gotten letters from Willi.”

“How recent were these letters?”

“I don’t know. Last few weeks.”

“Do you believe Kepler?”

“Yeah.”

“Where do the letters come from?”

“France. New York. Kepler didn’t tell me everything.”

“Did Willi initiate the correspondence?”

“I don’t get what you mean.”

“Who wrote first— Willi or Kepler?”

“Kepler did.”

“How did he get in touch with Willi?”

“Mailed it to the guys who guard his house in Germany.”

“Waldheim?”

“Yeah.”

“Kepler sent a letter to Willi care of the caretakers at Waldheim and Willi has written back?”

“Yes.”

“Why did Kepler write him and what did Willi say in return?”

“Kepler’s playing both ends against the middle. He wants to get on Willi’s good side if Willi steps into the Island Club.”

“The Island Club.”

“Yeah. What’s left of it. Trask is dead. Colben’s dead. I guess Kepler figures Barent’ll have to negotiate if Willi keeps the pressure on.”

“Tell me about the Island Club, Tony . . .”

It was after two
A.M.
when Saul joined Natalie in the kitchen. The psychiatrist looked tired and very pale. Natalie poured a fresh cup of coffee for him and they sat looking at a large road atlas. “This is the best I could do,” said Natalie. “I found it at an all-night truck stop on 1-5.”

“We need a real atlas or some sort of satellite data. Perhaps Jack Cohen can help us.” Saul ran his finger down the South Carolina coast. “It’s not even on here.”