VIABLE (20 page)

Mainly she let him talk, content to scribble an occasional note in a pad she had dug from her bag. When he spoke about his time in Vietnam she found it difficult to resist steering the conversation towards her father. As he told her about the last day he had flown with him she listened with rapt attention, eager for any detail he could give her that she hadn’t already heard. The story of his life was fascinating to her, and she had to force herself to focus on those aspects that were relevant to her research. As she had suspected he had aged as normal up to about the age of nineteen or twenty, and then it seemed to have stopped. It had taken him a long time to notice, and so he couldn’t be certain when exactly he had stopped growing older, but most people thought he seemed about that age.

He told her about the abilities he had recognized, and when he had first realized he might have them. He had always been coordinated; learning new physical skills had always come easily. It required little effort to maintain physical fitness or stamina. He had what he thought was almost perfect recall, but his memory had only developed in this way after he had started school. He remembered as a child the first few weeks of lessons being particularly stressful. Other faculties had developed later as well. His distance vision had improved dramatically shortly after he had been sent to Korea. He had learned to fake eye tests to conceal the extent of his ability to see objects at extreme distances, explaining why his service records showed it as only slightly better than average. He thought his night vision had always been good but he had noticed a significant improvement during his first few months in Vietnam. He could now see perfectly well in the dark without the equipment the military supplied, but to avoid drawing attention to himself he typically used it, at least in training, notwithstanding the limits he found it placed on his distance and peripheral vision. While in Thailand he had learned to control many of his basic bodily functions – heart rate, respiration, even body temperature – through meditation, although he suspected this was something that most people could achieve, at least to a degree. For a while he had wondered whether he might be able to improve any of his faculties simply by willing it to happen or by focusing his mind, but after experimenting for years without any success he had given up. It seemed his body sensed when it needed to improve itself and just went ahead by itself and did it.  

He knew much less about his ability to recuperate. He had been unaware of the Lancet article that Bryant had written. He didn’t elaborate on how he had come to be injured, and Alison had seen something in his eyes that made her think that there was more than he was telling her, but she didn’t press him on it. He had no memory of the months he had spent in hospital, only of waking up in a strange place, not knowing what had happened to him. He remembered a little more about the injuries he had sustained on Omaha on D-day, but not much. Again it seemed that his body had healed itself without any conscious direction, or even awareness, on his part. Apart from those episodes, and the gunshot wound he had sustained in the back of the van on the way to Mount Grant, he had suffered remarkably little in the way of physical injury. Cuts and bruises were commonplace given the career he had chosen, but they always healed quickly and without scarring. He had never been ill, not even during his time in the camps in Laos.

When she finally checked her watch it was after eleven and the restaurant owner was looking over at them, clearing hoping that they would finish so that she could close up. Reluctantly Alison suggested that they get the bill and call it a night. She would have loved to hear more about his life, to continue asking questions, but she would have to wait until the morning. He left money on the table for the meal, thanking the woman again for the food, which seemed to go some way to restoring them to her good graces. Then they were back at her car. As she fumbled in her bag for keys she asked him where he was staying. He gave her the name of a motel. When she offered to drive him there he seemed reluctant but it was a mile or so away and she insisted, finally convincing him to get in. On the way she asked him whether he would stop by the lab the following morning. He would only agree to think about it and they drove for a short while in awkward silence. She was desperate to find something to say that might convince him, anything that might extract a promise from him to continue to help her with her research. But then they were at the motel and he was climbing out, and all she could do was give him her cell phone number. He made no attempt to write it down, promising that he would remember. She sat and watched, the engine running, as he walked away. She waited for a few minutes after he had disappeared around the corner. Finally she turned the little Honda around and headed back to her apartment.

When she arrived home it was after midnight and the apartment was dark and cold. She turned on the lights. She had been up since early morning but she knew she wouldn’t sleep. She hadn’t felt this exhilarated, this apprehensive, since she could remember. She had just left him but already she was desperate for their next meeting, excited at the prospect of seeing him again, of what she might learn. But also frightened that he might simply choose to disappear and that she would never see him again. She dug out her notes, skimming through what she had written. His capacity to develop was fascinating, as were his powers of recuperation. To think he had been shot only a week before.

It suddenly occurred to her that she hadn’t even asked whether the wound was healing, whether there was anything he might need. Instead she had run over and hugged him, and then proceeded to spend the evening quizzing him. He hadn’t seemed to be in any discomfort, and it was clear he had some medical training, probably far more practical experience of emergency medicine than she did for that matter. But what kind of doctor must he think she was? She grabbed a telephone book, feeling the need to explain her behavior to him immediately. She remembered the name of the motel he had been staying in – the Shangri-La. She dialed the number. The reception clerk picked up after a few rings. She didn’t know what name he was using – she knew it wouldn’t be one that she would recognize - but she gave the clerk his description, adding that he had checked in during the last week. There had only been a handful of cars in the parking lot when she had dropped him off. At this time of year they couldn’t be busy.

But the clerk was adamant that there was no-one staying with them that fitted the description she had given. Most of the motel had been closed for refurbishment since before Christmas and they had only a couple of guests, none of whom resembled the man she had described.

Alison slowly replaced the receiver.

So that was why he had seemed reluctant to have her drive him to the motel. He never had any intention of letting her know where he was staying. He must have waited until she had left before making his way back to wherever he had actually been staying. What did that mean? He had avoided agreeing to meet her at the lab the following morning, saying only that he would think about it. Her heart sank with the realization that he had probably never intended to show.

She had lost him.

23

HE
LAY
ON the bed in the darkness. The motel where he was staying had been in the opposite direction from the one where Alison had dropped him, and it had taken him half an hour to walk back, but it was important for her sake as well as for his that she didn’t know where he was. He had asked her not to mention to either Fitzpatrick or the sheriff that he had contacted her. Since Fitzpatrick’s message she remained the most likely target for whoever was looking for him, but the commander and Henrikssen were also in danger. It would be better for everyone if he just left.

He checked his watch. Twelve-thirty.  It would take him less than a minute to stuff the few clothes he had bought in a duffel bag and be gone. There was a ticket in his pocket for a Greyhound leaving San Francisco at one-thirty that morning. By the morning after he had intended to be in Denver, fourteen hundred miles to the east. From there he could figure out where to go next. He had considered leaving the country immediately, but had decided against it. Attempting a border crossing would be too risky until he had established a new identity for himself.

Alison had said she might need months, possibly longer. From what he had seen of the men that had picked him up at Salt Wells he had to assume he had hours, a day or two at the outside. It would be suicide to wait around for them to find him.

But it had felt good, after so very long, to finally be able to talk to someone about his life. It had been a strange experience, having this woman expose the details of his past, secrets he had spent most of his life trying to protect. The various identities he had used had often been crudely assumed, the covers he had constructed far from perfect. He had always known that spending so long in each place, with the same unit, the same people, even returning again and again to a branch of the military, were all mistakes that some day would catch him out. He had even imagined how he might eventually be exposed. The military had for some time tested for his blood type, and more recently genetic dog-tagging had been applied to all service personnel, both of which made it unlikely that his identity could remain a secret much longer. It was why he had decided to leave the States. But he had never imagined that when the time came it would be like this. It had been almost surreal; sitting in a restaurant as a young woman he hardly knew laid out the history of his life as if she were describing the plot of a movie they had just seen together.

The mention of Pete Stone’s name had made it seem real again however. They had only served together for six months and Pete hadn’t been much of a talker. But they had been close, as close perhaps as he had been with Dylan or Jock. For a moment he had wondered whether he might at last have the opportunity to meet one of the friends he had been forced to leave behind. Then he had seen the look on her face as he had asked about her father. He had known at that moment that he could trust her. Her determination to find a cure for the disease that had taken him away from her was clear.

And with time she might even be able to help him learn more about why he was the way he was, how he might have come to be. For a long time he had tried to convince himself that it did not matter, but now he realized how badly he needed that information. Understanding the reasons behind the choices he has made with his life wasn’t the same thing. He kept returning to the military because it was the closest thing to a family that he could hope for. Simply being a soldier was not what appealed to him. He had become good at it, but the occasional need to take a life was an unwanted by-product of that choice. He had loved flying jets, even the combat. But not the kill – that ultimate thrill that other fighter pilots seemed to experience so keenly had always eluded him. He had been happier flying slicks in Vietnam, his job simply to deliver men safely from the battlefield, a similar role to the one that he had performed with the Nightstalkers. Despite the regiment’s fearsome name their task had been no different. CSAR had been the final distillation of that role. No longer merely ferrying soldiers off the battlefield but personally intervening to rescue those of his extended family who found themselves in trouble in a combat zone.

But how many lives had he really saved? Through CSAR not that many, at least not directly. Several dozen at most. More if you included the men he had over the years delivered from the battlefield in either a Huey or a ’Hawk. But now this woman was telling him that within him lay the potential to cure diseases that afflicted thousands, maybe even millions of people. People like Pete Stone.

He had simply never thought of his abilities in that way. He had attempted to study them as best he could, particularly in recent years, reading whatever research he could get his hands on. Nevertheless to him the fact that he didn’t age, that his body seemed to have particular abilities to heal itself, had always been something peculiar to him, not transferable. Something to be concealed from others, not shared with them. Now that he thought of it that way the choices that he had made, the things that he had done, it all seemed limited, even futile, by comparison.

But it would be crazy to simply stay here at the university, waiting for whoever was looking for him to find them. He looked over at the duffel bag sitting by the door, and then at his watch.

Twelve forty-five.

He could still make the bus.

24

FRIEDRICHS
SAT
IN the back of the Lynx with the other men, his face impassive. They had just flown over the Bay Bridge, the water grey and choppy beneath the huge twin spans, the red towers of Golden Gate Bridge to their left and then briefly behind them as the pilot banked the helicopter sharply, turning inland. The Lynx was one of the fastest helicopters commercially available but it had still taken them over two hours. For most of the flight they had maintained formation, the second Lynx to their right and slightly behind. It had only finally turned away a few minutes before, heading for the woman’s apartment. 

It had taken longer than he had expected but he had finally managed to access the phone records from the sheriff’s office in Hawthorne, together with details of the calls made to or from Lars Henrikssen’s home and cell phone numbers. He’d had a team working on the records through the night. They had cross-referenced each number listed for every Alison Berkeley in the United States, but no matches had been found among the sheriff’s calls. Every so often one of the screens would flicker as it refreshed itself, another annotation appearing beside one of the telephone numbers to identify the caller as his men painstakingly worked through the list of numbers. She had to be in there somewhere. It would only be a matter of time before they located her. But hours later, as the sun had been rising on the final day of the year, the last of the telephone numbers identified, they had failed to find any record of an Alison Berkeley having spoken with Henrikssen in the last month. Friedrichs knew it wasn’t possible. They had to have communicated. Something must have been missed.