The Great Forgetting (23 page)

Cole caught their movement and scurried over from his perch by one of the tall, narrow windows. “Which elevator?”

“Number two.”

The Captain shook his head and tried not to laugh. “You two flakes really break my heart. Can you look any more conspicuous? You, tie your shoe or something,” he said to Cole. “You, pretend you're walking me out,” he said to Jack as he limped toward the revolving doors, feigning a bad back. Cole kneeled and untied his shoe, then worked on tying it again, slowly.

The doors opened and a woman stepped out, heels clicking on the granite. She was roughly thirty-five, with shoulder-length hair that curled in dark ringlets. Gray suit, white tights. She carried a venti Starbucks and a briefcase with a Nu-Day logo on the side. Her face was stern, focused, but gentle somehow, as if she were thinking about a proposal she'd given that morning that had gone better than expected.

She pulled ahead of them at the revolving doors. Outside, Jack stepped forward as she made to cross the street. He pushed a five-dollar flashlight into the small of the woman's back. He tried to speak, but something caught in his throat and, instead, he coughed. She pulled away from him, mistaking his nudge for a bump by another rude pedestrian, but then Jack grabbed her arm with his free hand and pushed the flashlight into her spine.

“Turn right and keep walking,” he said into her ear. “Understand?” The woman nodded and gripped her coffee tighter.

He was nearly overwhelmed by a sense of stinging guilt. He thought of the nuns at St. Joe's. If they could see him now. But he hadn't asked to be here. He hadn't asked for any of this.

“I'm not gonna rape you,” he said.

She walked where he directed her. He made to look like they were a couple, walking back to their room. Another minute and they were in the hotel elevator. When the doors shut, the woman looked to Cole and then the Captain. “What the hell do you want?” she asked them in a whisper.

Jack slipped the flashlight back into his pocket. “I want you to tell us everything you know about the Great Forgetting.”

2
    Pymatuning was bigger than Sam had expected, a colossal man-made lake meandering around glacier-cut gullies. She and Nils came into the park near Black Jack Swamp, a parcel of dead trees sticking out of a smelly lagoon. They combed through parking lots by the marina, checking the dirt drives of summer cottages for Nils's truck. By the time they reached the southern tip of the lake it was getting on past eight and they were forced to suspend the search to have breakfast at a greasy spoon in Jamestown. Sam was on her second cup of coffee when the park ranger walked through the door and took a seat at the counter next to a man in bibbed overalls.

“Morning, Hadley,” said the man in the overalls.

The ranger smiled back.

“You hear I reeled in a snapper off the Snodgrass deck yesterday?”

“Don't eat the turtles, man,” the ranger said.

“Ain't never had turtle soup?”

“I kept a pet turtle as a kid.”

“I had a fish tank. I still eat fish.”

“Fish is different.”

Bib Overalls shrugged. “Some action up at the Gate House this morning,” he said.

This piqued the ranger's interest, Sam noticed. “What did you see?” he asked.

“Couple a men come walking out at dawn, dressed to the nines. Gray suits. Ugly mothertruckers.”

“Ugly, how?”

“I don't know. Just generally ugly. You think it's really the NSA that owns it?”

“That's the story, morning glory,” the ranger quipped.

“What do you think they're doing out there?”

“It's above my pay grade. But it's been busy, I'll tell you what.”

“That so?”

The ranger nodded. “Saw some weirdo cruising the place last week. Guy from Franklin Mills everybody's after now. You seen him on the news?”

“The guy what took the boy and his old man? Get the fuck out.”

A piece of over-medium egg stuck in Sam's throat. She coughed it away and shot Nils a look.

“Yup,” said the ranger. “Got a call from a detective yesterday, telling me to keep an eye out in case they return.”

“Turn on the teevee, Linda!” Bib Overalls shouted. “Let's see if they got this fella yet.”

The waitress came around the counter and used a broom handle to switch on the small television suspended over the grill. Sam cringed, expecting to see Jack's DMV picture on the news again. Except what they got was a picture of a large fire at sea, shot from some great height above the waves. The nose of a giant ship sank into the ocean as they watched.

“Crank it up!” said Hadley.

Linda got the broom and knocked it against a button a couple of times. A woman's urgent voice spoke in a hushed tone: “… you're seeing is the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, a floating station located in the Gulf of Mexico, forty miles off the Louisiana coast. According to Coast Guard officials, a transmission was intercepted from the cruise ship
Nautilus
at seven o'clock this morning. The message was relayed by a man with a thick accent who identified himself as Mohamed Atta, an Egyptian national. He claimed affiliation with an Islamic extremist group known as al-Qaeda. Shortly after the broadcast, the
Nautilus
veered off course and crashed into Deepwater Horizon. It is not yet known if the explosion was caused by ignited oil on the rig or if there were explosives on the cruise ship. Since the impact, there has been no contact with crew members or passengers. About five minutes ago, the
Nautilus
sank beneath the waves. Estimates put the death toll at nearly three thousand souls. In this clip, captured by New Orleans affiliate WLTV, you can see people leaping from the
Nautilus
moments before it is pulled underwater. A warning to viewers, the footage you are about to see is graphic and may be extremely disturbing to children.”

Sam watched in awe with the rest of the diner patrons as the images played out. Waves churned up the sides of the sinking ship as passengers crawled across the forward railing. She could tell that one was a child. Maybe eight years old. One by one, they jumped before the waves crested. But they could not escape the great currents that gripped the
Nautilus
, the unforgiving fingers of Davy Jones tugging it to the briny deep. The camera held the spot until the whirlpool collapsed into itself and the ocean settled.

“We're being attacked!” shouted Overalls. “This is it, amigo. I told you. I told you we never should have pulled out of Iraq. We should have taken Saddam out while we could.”

“She didn't say nothin' about Saddam,” said the ranger.

“He's behind it. You watch.”

Over and over, the footage repeated. Three thousand people eaten by the vortex, as if they had been swallowed up into some other dimension. There was also footage of President Obama being pushed into Marine One by Secret Service agents, the helicopter waiting in some high school football field.

“I can't watch this,” said Sam.

The waitress was glued to the set and didn't appear interested in handing out checks. Nils put a twenty on the table and then they left.

An attack like that changes everything, Sam thought. And yet it didn't change anything for them. She still had to find Jack.

3
    The elevator doors opened and Jack pointed the woman to their room. Once inside, he directed her to a paisley occasional across from the bed. Cole locked the door behind them.

“I'm not a bad guy,” said Jack.

“Just a little abduction now and then?” the woman said with a bitter smile.

“We're not going to hurt you. As soon as you explain everything about the Great Forgetting, we'll let you go.”

“I'm a day trader. I work for Nu-Day. I don't know anything about a Great Forgetting. Who were you hoping to kidnap?”

No
, thought Jack.
No, no.

“What were you doing on the thirteenth floor then?”

“Thirteen? I don't know what you're taking about. There is no thirteenth floor.” Her eyes widened a little. “The elevator stopped for second on the way down. It's been doing that. A short or something. They warned us about number two earlier in the week. Davis sent a memo.”

This can't all be a mistake
, Jack pleaded to himself. He looked at Cole.
Oh, Christ. Oh, holy hell.

“She's lying,” the kid said simply. “Did you think she'd just admit to everything?”

“Cole,” said Jack. “Shut up a minute.”

“Cole?” the woman said. “Wait. Oh, my God.
Cole.
What are you doing here?”

“You don't know me,” the boy said.

But the woman seemed sincere. “Cole, honey. I worked with your father. I almost didn't recognize you. You grew up!” She turned back to Jack. “His father. It was terrible. Car accident. Right out front. He died. The boy was shook up, I remember. Taken to a hospital. I heard he was in a psychiatric facility.”

The Captain sunk into the bed.

“No!” Cole shouted. “She's lying. You're lying!”

“No, sweetie. I'm sorry.” She looked at Jack, pleading with her large brown eyes. “Whatever he's told you, it isn't true. I don't know how he got the both of you so worked up. Worked up enough to kidnap a woman in broad daylight. But this kid is sick. He needs help. I know that much. We all pitched in to help the mother some. Davis passed around a collection hat. I gave her two hundred dollars.”

Cole was seething. The kid stepped into the bathroom. Jack figured he needed to throw up or something, that his nerves had gotten the better of him. But then he returned with a glass of water. He set it calmly on the end table next to the woman.

“Drink it,” he said.

She laughed. “I don't think so,” she said. “You put something in it.”

Jack understood. There was fluoride in the water here, as in every other city in the country. Only the Collectors really knew it was a poison capable of bending the mind.

“Watch me,” said Jack. He picked up the glass, emptied it into the sink, then moved so the woman could see him fill it from the spigot. He returned it to the table a moment later.

“Drink, please.”

“I'm not going to drink it.”

“You saw me fill it.”

“You're crazy. Both of you.” She turned to the Captain, who watched with interest. “Help me,” she said. She started to cry.

“Miss,” said the Captain. “Maybe the boy's crazy. But what seems crazier to me is that you won't simply drink the goddamn water to get it over with.”

She sobbed into her hands.

“I've been to a few interrogations,” the Captain continued. “I haven't felt my middle finger since 1973 because some slant-eyed dink pushed bamboo under my nail. He didn't get what he wanted, either. Got to where I can tell a liar from a saint better than any machine. You're good, lady. Real good. You're not just a liar, you're a
trained
liar.”

She stopped crying. When she brought her hands down, Jack thought, for an instant, that he was staring at a different woman. Gone was the gentleness he'd seen inside her. Gone were the tears. Her cold eyes regarded them, in turn, with something close to pity. It was Jack, now, who was afraid.

In a flash, Cole was at her side, the slim blade of a pocketknife pushed into her neck hard enough to dimple the skin. The woman didn't flinch. “I borrowed twenty bucks to buy a Swiss Army knife while I was out looking for pizza last night,” he said to Jack. “I'll pay you back.”

“As I recall, you won a bet,” Jack said. His voice sounded like it was coming down a long tube.

“Empty her pockets,” said Cole.

Jack reached, expecting the woman to pounce, but she remained still. Her breathing had slowed and he thought that was probably a bad sign. There was something in the pocket of her suit, cold to the touch. He brought it out. It was a stainless-steel object shaped like a bat's wing, with a red button on top.

“What's this?”

“A lighter,” she said.

Jack pushed the button. Something shot out of the device. It looked like the wavy air you see around a jet engine when it revs up on the tarmac, that shimmer you catch on the horizon on hot days. And then the lamp on the other side of the room turned to dust. There was no sound, just that wave shooting from the gun, and then the lamp was atomized. He'd missed the Captain by a foot.

He turned the gun on the woman and nodded for Cole to step back.

“Now,” he said. “Let's start with your name. And then you can tell me what the hell this thing is and what it just did to that lamp.”

4
    “My name is Christina Ferris,” she said, that murderous look gradually dissolving from her eyes. “And that thing you're holding like a toy is a particle agitator. It uses compressed sound waves to pick apart objects at the molecular level. I was his father's partner. One of the Twelve Angry Men, as they're called. I was the first woman, so, you know … bit of a misnomer.”

“My father's partner?” said Cole. “Why didn't he ever talk about you?”

“Everything we do is secret. I imagine your father was protecting you. Or me.” She shrugged. “You know what they'll do to me when they find out I talked to you? They'll erase my mind. They'll put a microchip in my tooth, a little thing that broadcasts new memories just for me. They'll make me believe I'm a beautician in Iowa or something and I'll think that was me for the rest of my life.”

“Christina,” said Jack. “All we need is a little information and you can go. We won't tell anyone we ever spoke.”

She laughed and sat back in the seat, regarding the kid. “How do you remember? Why didn't you forget?”

Cole knocked on the titanium plate behind his left ear. “I don't know how, but this thing dampens the signal.”