Undetectable (Great Minds Thriller) (10 page)

It was a feast.

When he was done,
he
leaned back – with agreeable difficulty – and patted his full stomach.
“Best meal I’ve had in years,
”
Kevin called out.

From somewhere in back came the distant, gentle reply: “Thank you.”

In another moment Andrew was there, picking up plates and glasses. He moved quickly, yet without seeming to rush. He glided. Kevin might have felt uncomfortable being waited on, but he reminded himself that he had paid this man in advance. Just watching him glide around, sweeping up plates and crumbs and silverware as if he were on skates, was itself a pleasure. Andrew was unarguably good at his job. Kevin felt himself sliding down deeper into his seat as the meal both warmed and lulled him, and all at once he realized he was exhausted. It was nearly ten at night; he had been on-edge since first thing this morning.

“Can you point me toward my bedroom?”

“Right through there, then a left, all the way down. I’ll be up for a while, so do call if you need anything.”

Kevin made his way down the long hallway, barely noticing the paintings and wallpaper and furniture as he passed. He found that he no longer cared where these things had come from, or what they had cost him. He could always go back to working in hedge funds if he needed the money. The panicky voice had not bothered him for several hours now, and he suspected that Andrew’s excellent meal would help keep it quiet for a while longer. He would forget, at least for a few blissful hours, about the cleaning lady at the testing center. He would stop worrying about what had been on the 20th floor, or why someone would go to the trouble of replacing all the doormen in his building.

He would not think about what dreaded thing he was supposed to be getting
ready
for.

Those things would all come up again in the morning, but right now he was going to sleep. Long and deeply. So that he could start fresh tomorrow.

Except that he was wrong about this. He would
not
sleep.

Not even a little bit.

Second
Note
on New Techniques

Daedalus Hilton, Scrubbing R&D for Agents, July 20, 2010.

Reprinted
with permission.

Dept. of Homeland Security, U.S.A.

Sleep, on the other hand, makes no sense. After fifty years of research and study, the only thing we can say with certainty is that it happens when we grow tired. We still don’t understand it. There are animals who never sleep at all; they ‘power down’ discrete sections of their brain, but never the whole thing at once. The term for this is
unihemispheric sleep
. It is conceivable that such a state could be induced in
agents
using
Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation,
but this procedure would likely have significant side effects, not the least of which would be severe
neurosis
. Adaptation would be extremely challenging, and in any case, people like to sleep. We can’t help it. We sleep away a third – a
third!
– of our lives. It is a deeply, inexorably pleasurable activity. It calls to us.

The First Big Problem

As with the other rooms he had seen so far in the apartment, Kevin’s bedroom was flawless. There was a queen-size bed on a huge beige rug,
a
nother built-in bookshelf
,
and
a large brown cabinet that probably concealed a television. There were little wooden end
-
tables on either side of the bed, and next to the entrance to the master bath was a large dresser
.

H
e stripped to his underwear, folded himself into the bed,
closed his eyes
,
and allowed his mind to drift.

A quick self-assessment, now. A general survey of the grand scheme of things.

First: he was financially solvent, as far as he knew. Assuming he had not made some sort of disastrous deal on this apartment. Even if he had, there were other sources. He had saved his money very carefully during his time at Tanner and Trevor, and the funds he had told Ron Clemson about didn’t make up the whole pot.

As far as money went, he knew he would be fine.

Second: his parents were both gone, having died one right after the other just a year after he had graduated from UNH. His father from a heart attack, and his mother only four months later. Of pure sadness, it had seemed; she had lost her partner in life. He had no siblings. He did keep in touch occasionally with a few college friends – all of whom lived up in Boston – and it occurred to him that he should give one or all of them a call. Maybe he had talked to one of them during the last three months.

Maybe one of them could help him figure out a few things.

Third: he had a job. Not exactly the job he had been looking for, but still, a teaching job. And though he had no memory of any training for the position itself, he clearly had the necessary subject expertise, and he had apparently written up a few lesson plans for himself ahead of time.

He was ready enough.

Get ready.

Kevin’s eyes popped open, and he cursed silently.

You’re forgetting something.

“I’m forgetting all kinds of stuff,” he whispered to the empty room
. “Three month
s
’
worth.”

You’re forgetting something important. Something you’re supposed to do.

He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to change the subject in his head.
To
a song
,
s
omething repetitive, something that could drown out everything else. But the feeling of anxiety was too strong, and now he could feel his heart starting to beat faster. That pleasant fog in his head, the one that had been so deliciously created by Andrew’s dinner and salad and dessert, was leaving him.

Sleep was receding into the ether. Getting away.

He took a breath and allowed his eyes to open again. It was all right. It was still early, probably only 10:15
or 10:30. He would wait it out.
Dim light peaked through his curtains from the city streets below, and he counted the ridges in the finely detailed crown moldings that ran along the ceiling and around the doors. The panic voice continued pestering him, but it had been reduced to a background drone. He lay there for an hour.

Then two.

He stayed nearly motionless, waiting in that bed. The silence was complete.

Finally he lifted his head. He climbed out of bed and walked back down the hall leading to the living room. He would find his own kitchen –
about time
, he thought – and make himself a small snack. His stomach still felt strangely full, but that was probably just the stress.
He’d have
some toast and butter, and
t
hen he’d be –

“Did you need something else?”

Andrew was there in the living room. All the lights were still on. He didn’t look as though he’d gone to bed yet. In fact, he still seemed to be cleaning up. He had a paper towel in one hand and a small plastic bottle of wood polish in the other.

Kevin was at a loss. “What… don’t you ever sleep? What are still doing up?”

Andrew turned to face him slowly, a strange expression on his face. A
cautious
expression. “Are you all right?”

Kevin looked at him silently. He closed his eyes and put a hand to his head.

Get ready.

“Shut up.”

“Sir?”

“Not you,” Kevin said quickly, waving a hand. He opened his eyes and looked at Andrew again. When he next spoke, his voice was halting. “Andrew,” he said carefully, as though the name were difficult to say. Then he waited a full beat. “What time is it?”

“A bit past ten.”

That’s impossible.

Kevin lowered his head. “Andrew,” he said again.

“Sir?”

“I’m only going to ask you this once.”

Andrew waited silently, impassively, and Kevin took an extra breath before speaking. “Are you fucking with me?”

Andrew’s eyes may have grown slightly larger, but he allowed himself no other reaction. “Absolutely not.” He waited a moment, and then added, in a voice just as gentle as always, “I never fuck around, Sir.”

Kevin nodded. He made his hands into fists, tightened them, and let them relax. Then he turned on his heels and went walking back toward his bedroom. In another minute he had reappeared. Dressed again. “I’m going out,” he announced.

“Excellent,” Andrew said, visibly pleased that he had passed whatever strange test of credibility his employer had just administered. He seemed eager to return to his wood-polishing labors. “Should I expect you?”

“In about eight minutes,” Kevin said. He headed out the door without another word.

It Was Incredible

He was walking with purpose as he left the
building
. He broke into a jog as he headed for Lexington, and he was pleased, somewhere in the back of his mind, at how spry he felt.

Going crazy, but still quick on my feet. Small favors.

When he reached Lexington he saw exactly what he was looking for: a little delicatessen with a wide yellow awning.
There were large boxes of fruit
and vegetables on display outside the window, and all the lights were on outside. It was the kind of deli that would be open at nine at night or three in the morning. Sundays, holidays, it didn’t matter. Kevin knew that he could come to this place at 5 AM on Christmas looking for a bottle of milk, and there would be a shopkeeper there, reading a paper and having a cup of coffee as if it were a Tuesday afternoon. He walked into the store
and
began scanning the items
on the wall behind the counter.

There was a wiry Latino man standing beside the register. He was reading a paper, but he was not drinking coffee. Instead he was shifting back and forth on the balls of his feet, shimmying his arms around as though preparing to step onto a dance floor. He was moving to the steady background rhythm of barely-audible Samba music piping through the store’s speakers. He seemed to be having a good time.