Triggers (23 page)

“It’s cool, Sue,” said Kadeem, lifting his hands a bit. “Big man’s fine—but he wants to see you.”

Susan nodded and spoke into her sleeve mike. “Dawson to Hudkins. I’m returning to Prospector’s room.”

“Copy,” said Darryl’s voice in her ear.

She went in and closed the door behind her. The president did indeed look no worse for wear.

“Sir?” Susan said.

“You knew Gordon Danbury, right?” asked Jerrison.

“Sure. Of course.”

“You said he was called Gordo by the other agents?”

“Yeah, most of the time.” She shrugged a little. “Off duty, we get a bit informal. The Susanator—that’s what they call me. Darryl Hudkins is sometimes called Straw; you know, after Darryl Strawberry, the baseball player. And Gordon Danbury, he was Gordo.”

Jerrison managed a slight nod. “Leon Hexley was talking on his BlackBerry on Wednesday in the Oval. He said, ‘Tell Gordo to aim…’ but I don’t remember what came after that. But if it was related to what happened—well, it means there’s a conspiracy, and it goes pretty high up.”

“But you’ve known Mr. Hexley for years,” said Susan.

Seth managed a philosophical movement of his shoulders. “What I’ve discovered today is that I don’t know
anybody
—well, anybody except Kadeem Adams. I mean, seriously: you and I work together practically every day, Susan, and I know almost nothing about you—where you live, what hobbies you have, whether you’re seeing anyone, what you were like as a little girl.” He paused and caught his breath. “I’ve long been
acquainted with
Director Hexley, but I don’t know him. And yet there are forty-four hundred sworn members of the Secret Service, and Hexley knew Danbury well enough not only to be on a first-name basis with him, but a nickname basis.”

Susan frowned; that
was
curious. “But you don’t remember what Mr. Hexley said?”

“No—because it didn’t make sense at the time, and I had other things on my mind. I’ve racked my brain, but…no. It was weird, what he said, I remember that. But I just can’t recall it. I
do
remember he shut up and turned off his phone the moment he realized I had entered. Didn’t even say good-bye.”

“Forgive me, sir, but that’s not necessarily suspicious. People are conscious of how busy you are. You don’t make the president wait while you finish a personal call.” She paused. “A thought, sir. Did you have the Oval Office set up to record conversations the way Nixon did? And were they maybe backed up off-site?”

Seth shook his head. “Didn’t work out so well for Nixon, that.”

“True enough.” Susan replied. “So now what?”

“First, I need you to get Hexley’s cell-phone records.”

“Will do—but they’re almost certainly encrypted and scrambled. After Obama insisted on getting to keep his BlackBerry, all sorts of extra security was instituted on the units issued to high-level government officials. I suspect it’ll take days to decrypt them, if it can be done at all.”

“Damn,” said Jerrison.

“Is there anything else, Mr. President?”

“Yes,” he said. “I want to send Mrs. Stilwell on a little trip in the morning.”

“IT’S
so strange,” Jan Falconi said as she sipped her second beer, “having a man’s memories.” She shook her head. “And, I gotta say, Josh Latimer is
pissed.”

“About what?” asked Eric.

“He was supposed to receive a kidney transplant this morning, and the surgery was canceled after it had begun, to make room for the president. He and his daughter—she’s the donor—were being dealt with in the corridor outside your O.R. while you were working on Jerrison; I was tending to them.”

“Good Christ,” said Eric. “I saw them there when I went in, but I didn’t know what it was about.”

“He’s thinking about suing.”

“I can’t say I blame him, but…well, most kidney transplants aren’t time-sensitive, and the president
had
to be treated immediately.”

“Still,” said Jan, shaking, “the last thing I need is someone being angry inside my head.”

“I know,” Eric said gently.

Jan clearly wanted to change the subject. “Somebody must be reading your memories, too.”

“Yeah,” Eric replied. “Her name’s Nikki Van Hausen. She’s a real-estate agent.”

Jan smiled. “That’s funny.”

“It is?”

“Sure. Her name is Van Hausen and she sells houses. It’s like a dentist named Payne or…”

“Or Larry Speakes,” said Eric—and then he realized the name didn’t mean anything to her. “He was the White House spokesman for Ronald Reagan.”

She smiled. “Exactly. There’s a name for that. It’s called—” and as she said it, it came to Eric, but not from his memory—he’d never heard the term before—but from hers: “nominative determinism.”

“Cool,” he said, making an impressed face.

“They talk about it in
New Scientist
all the time,” she said.

“You read
New Scientist?”
And then: “Oh, so you do. You subscribe.”

“I adore it,” she said. “Great magazine.”

He looked at her in the dim light of the bar. She was absolutely lovely, but she was eighteen years younger than him. Which was crazy. Which was
nuts.

The waitress appeared. “Another round?”

Eric gestured at Jan; it was up to her.

“Sure,” she said. “Why not?”

“HI
, Darryl,” Susan said as she entered the conference room on the first floor, just down the corridor from Trauma.

Darryl Hudkins was sipping a coffee. His shaved head was showing a faint stubble, and his face was showing even more. “Hey, Sue.”

“The president wants me to send you on a trip tomorrow morning.”

“Somewhere warm and exotic, I hope.”

“Well, it’ll be warm, anyway. And he wants you to take Bessie Stilwell with you.”

“Oh,” said Darryl, sounding not at all enthusiastic now. “Does it have to be me?”

Susan looked at him. “You’re the one linked to her so, yeah. There’s no one who knows her mind better than you do. After all, she’s still a security risk.”

“Lucky me,” said Darryl.

“Look, I think I have an inkling of what’s eating you,” Susan said, “but there’d be no respite for you in just staying here if we sent her somewhere else. You’d still be linked. Singh says—well, okay, he didn’t
say
it, but he
knows
it: quantum entanglement works even across light-years of separation.” She tried to lighten his mood. “All those geeks at the Pentagon who have been working on remote communication are going to love this.”

But Darryl shook his head. “The problem is that when I see the way she looks at me, it triggers
me
to remember
her
past—and her feelings.”

Susan smiled sympathetically. “I’m sorry, Darryl, but it’s got to be you.”

Saturday

TONY
Falconi came home drunk. Again.

Janis sat on the couch, afraid to say a word. Anything could trigger his anger, and—

And he was looking around the living room. Janis’s pulse quickened. She knew what he was doing: seeking something—anything—to find fault with. Something that she hadn’t cleaned properly, something that hadn’t been put away, something that hadn’t been done to his satisfaction. It didn’t matter that she’d been locked up at the hospital until late, it didn’t matter how much she’d done right; he’d find the one thing she’d done wrong, and—

“I thought I told you to get rid of that chair,” he said, pointing.

Janis’s stomach was churning. What he’d actually said was he was thinking they should get rid of that chair—it was an old kitchen-table-style chair and had a rip in the vinyl upholstery; it wasn’t worth repairing. But she knew contradicting him would be a mistake.

But so, apparently, was silence. “Didn’t I?” he snapped. And then, without waiting for her answer, he said, “So why the fuck is it still here?”

“I’m sorry,” Janis said softly.

“You’re always sorry,” Tony said. He surged forward, grabbed her arm—the one with the tiger tattoo—and roughly pulled her to her feet. “You stupid bitch,” he said, shoving her now toward the chair, and—

—and Eric Redekop shook his head violently, trying to fling the memory away.

But he couldn’t. This one or ones like it kept coming back to him.

Eric was lying on his bed, staring at the ceiling, as the morning sun poured in around his blinds. Janis had headed home around 10:00
P.M.
—he’d paid for a cab to take her from the pub—and Tony had staggered in an hour later.

He rolled onto his side, drawing in a deep breath, then letting it out slowly.

He couldn’t take this. And
she
shouldn’t have to.

The old memories of events like this would always be there. But he could at least make sure that no similar new ones were ever laid down.

It wasn’t his place. It wasn’t his responsibility. It wasn’t his duty.

But he’d saved the president of the United States. Surely, he could save this woman, too.

And suddenly it came to him. A memory from a month ago, forcing itself into his awareness, and…

No. Not
one
memory; a series of memories. Memories of…of
every
month—the…yes: the fourth Saturday morning of every month. Jan went to play Dungeons & Dragons at…

He’d never heard of it, but apparently the Bronze Shield was the largest gaming store in the capital district. It was her one day out a month; Tony almost never came—he preferred to stay home and watch TV. But Jan’s brother Rudy was usually there; in fact—ah, yes—that’s why she was allowed to go at all: keeping up the appearance of freedom in front of her family, lest eyebrows be raised.

And—yes,
today
was the fourth Saturday. Still, he asked himself if the event had been canceled in light of what had happened yesterday, but it hadn’t been as far as she knew—which meant she would indeed be at the Bronze Shield this morning.

All right then. All right.

•   •   •

SUSAN
Dawson had grabbed some sleep in the conference room downstairs; she figured she got maybe five hours. When she woke up, she went to check with Ranjip Singh, who also hadn’t gone home.

It was odd not having to ask him for an update; she
knew
what he’d been doing. Before he’d gone to bed, he’d contacted his colleagues back in Toronto, as well as those at the Montreal Neurological Institute, the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at Penn, and the Center for Consciousness Studies at the University of Arizona, providing copies of his data to them, hoping someone somewhere might have an idea how to break the linkages.

And this morning, the weird happenings here at LT had finally merited some time on the news, after almost continuous coverage of the assassination attempt and the bomb explosion at the White House; Singh and a few of the affected people had been interviewed here in Singh’s lab.

But the TV crew was gone now, and Singh was plugging away at his computer.

“Good morning, Agent Dawson,” he said as Susan entered.

“Ranjip.”

At that moment, a uniformed hospital security guard entered. He had two holsters, one holding a walkie-talkie and the other a gun.

“Professor Singh?” the man said.

“Yes?”

“I’m Ivan Tarasov.” Susan remembered him from yesterday; he had been affected by Singh’s equipment, and had found David January for Susan, and, later on, she’d interviewed him. She glanced at the whiteboard: Tarasov could read Dora Hennessey, the kidney donor, and in turn was read by Orrin Gillett, the lawyer.

“You have to do something about these links,” Tarasov continued. He must be addressing Singh, Susan thought, but he wasn’t actually looking at him, or at her.

Singh gestured at his computer screen. “I am trying.”

“You have to do more than try. This is driving me crazy.”

“How do you mean?” asked Singh.

Tarasov did glance briefly in Susan’s direction, but, again, didn’t actually meet her gaze.

“Every time I look at my daughter, I see images of a little girl being molested.”

“My…God,” said Singh. “You’re linked to Dora Hennessey, right?”

“Yes.”

“So it’s her memories of being molested?”

“I guess.”

Singh’s mouth fell open. “That’s…horrible.”

“It’s disgusting. That poor little girl.”

“How old was Dora when this happened to her?”

“I think she was the same age my daughter is now. Three.”

Singh consulted a document on his computer. “Miss Hennessey is thirty-seven.” He looked up. “The person abusing her—do you know who it was?”

“I’d never have recognized him today, but yes. It was her father, Josh Latimer.”

“The fellow she’s giving the kidney to?” Singh said, surprised.

“I don’t think she remembers the abuse,” said Tarasov, still not actually looking at Singh. “I can’t recall her ever discussing it with anyone.”

Susan saw Singh’s eyebrows go up. “That’s…fascinating.”

“What is?”

“You remember something from her past that she doesn’t. I wonder why.”

Tarasov frowned. “Maybe the memories are so traumatic, she’s blocked them out.”

“That’s
one
possibility,” said Singh, “but…”

“Yes?”

“You said you thought she was three when this happened.”

“It had to be,” said Tarasov. “Three, or earlier. Dora’s mother and father split when she was three. She didn’t see him again until this past year, when he tracked her down, hoping she’d be a good tissue match—and that she might agree to the donation.”

“Three…or younger,” said Singh.

“Yes.”

“Most adults remember almost nothing from before they were three and a half or even four. But…”

“Yes?”

Singh said, “I’ve seen you around the hospital—before all this, I mean. You are…a bit of a loner.”

“So?”

“And you tend not to meet people’s gaze. In fact, you avert your eyes.”

“Are you accusing me of something, Mr. Singh?”

“No, no. Not at all. But if I may ask: are you on the autism spectrum?”

“I’m an Aspie,” said Tarasov.

“Asperger’s syndrome,” said Singh, nodding. “Do you think in pictures?”