They couldn't use the Athens airport. That was the obvious place for Papadropolis's men to look. The only other international airports were Salonica, several hundred kilometers to the north, and Corfu, equally far to the northwest. No doubt, those sites would be watched as well. Papadropolis-chronically impatient-would automatically consider the most rapid form of travel, even if reaching the latter two airports was time-consuming.
The subsequent option was to drive from Greece, but that would be an ordeal. To reach safety, Savage, Akira, and Rachel would first have to drive north to Yugoslavia, a country four times as large as Greece, then west through the extensive mountains of northern Italy, and finally south through France to the island principality, controlled by Rachel's sister, off the Côte d'Azur.
The best way seemed by boat. Even someone with Papadropolis's wealth couldn't arrange to put every Grecian port under surveillance, though he would have his men check those near Athens, of course, as well as the motorrail terminals in the area. So Savage, Akira, and Rachel drove toward Patrai, four hours away, on the western coast of Greece. There, they briefly considered bribing a fisherman to smuggle them across to Italy. But could the fisherman be trusted to violate international boundaries rather than report them to the authorities? Legal transportation seemed safest.
“All the same, I'm skeptical,” Akira said. It was nine o'clock at night. He stood with Savage and Rachel in a murky alley, scanning traffic and pedestrians outside a ticket office next to a ferry on a brightly lit pier. “Granted it's faster than driving, but it's not as fast as flying.”
“Which we've agreed isn't smart,” Savage said.
“That ticket office could be as risky as an airline terminal.”
“No question. I'll check it out. They know I'm Caucasian and possibly guess I'm American, but I can pass for a European. A Japanese, though. They'd spot you at once.”
Ten minutes later, Savage came back. “I didn't see any surveillance.”
“That doesn't mean there isn't any.”
Savage shrugged in agreement, handing Akira and Rachel their tickets. “My assumption is they'd watch the ferry as well as the ticket office.”
“Or watch on the ferry,” Akira said. “A limited area. A captive group.”
“That works the other way around. We'd have a better chance of spotting them.”
Akira thought about it. “Yes.”
“How long till we reach Italy?” Rachel asked.
“Nineteen hours.”
“What?”
“The ferry makes two stops up the coast before it cuts across the Adriatic,” Savage said. “The fact that it's slow appeals to me. Papadropolis won't expect us to choose a method that takes us so long to escape. We leave in fifty minutes. We'd better get back to the car.”
Savage and Rachel drove to the pier, joining a line of cars and small trucks waiting to pass through customs and onto the ferry. In Italy, there'd be customs officials as well, but the Greeks inspected luggage leaving the country to insure that ancient artifacts weren't being smuggled out. Though a customs station wasn't as stringent as immigration, passports would have to be shown.
Passports. Savage had retrieved his from a safe-deposit box in Athens. Akira never went anywhere without his own, in a water-proof pouch.
But Rachel's passport had been kept by Papadropolis, another way for him to exert control.
The usual solution to the problem would have been for Rachel to go to the U.S. embassy, explain that she'd lost her passport, and apply for a new one. But the process might take days, and Rachel didn't have other documents to prove she was a U.S. citizen. More to the point, Papadropolis would assume that she'd need a passport and order the U.S. embassy watched.
An alternative solution was for Savage to arrange to get Rachel a bogus passport. The trouble was that Rachel's face had a multitude of bruises; even cosmetics couldn't disguise them. When an official compared the photograph on the passport to the woman standing before him, her bruises would so nearly match those in the picture it would be obvious that the photograph had been taken less than a day ago, that the passport was forged.
Savage hadn't known about Rachel's bruises before he went in to rescue her. But his professional habits had prompted him to establish a contingency plan, in case she couldn't get her hands on her passport. Joyce Stone had shown him photographs of her sister. Savage had been struck by the eerie resemblance between the two women, as if they weren't just sisters but twins, though Rachel was ten years younger.
So he'd told Joyce Stone to return to her island empire and to use her authority to insist that her passport not be stamped when she arrived. A messenger had then brought Joyce Stone's passport back to Savage in Athens. As a consequence, there wasn't any evidence that Joyce Stone had ever left Greece.
Comparing the photograph in the passport to the younger sister's face, Savage had once again been struck by the eerie resemblance. With two exceptions. Joyce Stone was blond whereas Rachel's hair was auburn. And Joyce Stone continued to look like a movie star whereas Rachel looked like a battered wife.
I can take advantage of those contrasts, Savage had thought. At the farmhouse near Athens, he'd given Rachel dye to change her hair from auburn to blond. And now that he drove the car toward the customs official in the ferry depot, he glanced toward Rachel, shaking his head in wonder. The blond hair made Rachel look amazingly like her sister, and paradoxically the bruises contributed to the illusion, making her look older.
The customs official searched the car. “No suitcases?”
“Just these handbags,” Rachel said in keeping with Savage's instructions.
“Passports, please.”
Savage and Rachel handed them over. Akira would soon board the ferry separately on foot, so the three of them wouldn't be conspicuous together.
“Joyce Stone?” The official glanced up from the passport, staring at Rachel, surprised. “I apologize. I didn't recognize… I'm a fan of your movies, but…”
“My bruises, you mean?”
“They look so painful. They've ruined perfection. What terrible…?”
“A traffic accident near Athens.”
“My deep regrets. My countrymen are clumsy drivers.”
“No, it was my fault. Thank heaven, neither he nor I was seriously hurt. I reimbursed the man for repairs to his car and paid his medical bills.”
The official straightened. “Your Majesty is extremely kind. Even with your injuries, you're as beautiful as in your movies. And as noble.”
“May I ask a favor?”
“I'm your humble fan.”
She reached for his hand. “Don't tell anyone I'm aboard. Normally I appreciate the attention of admirers. I've retired, but I haven't forgotten my responsibilities to those with memories long enough to recall my career.”
“Your magnificence will always be remembered.”
“But not when I look like this. People will say I'm ugly.”
“Beautiful.”
“You're very kind.” Rachel continued to grasp his hand. “But there might be photographers on board. If you enjoyed my films…”
“I worshiped them.”
“Then please don't destroy their memory.” Rachel gave his hand a squeeze and released it.
The official stepped back. “Obviously you're not smuggling ancient artifacts. By all means, instruct your driver to proceed aboard.”
“Thank you.” Rachel rewarded him with a gracious smile.
Savage drove toward the ferry. “You're a better actress than your sister,” he murmured. “Very very good.”
“Hey, I always envied my sister,” she said, her lips barely moving. “She always did better. But now when I'm scared, I've got the guts to prove I'm better.”
“You'll get no argument.” Savage parked the car on the ferry. “Now we wait for Akira.”
But twenty minutes later, Akira still hadn't joined them as the ferry left the dock.
“Stay in the car,” Savage told Rachel.
Shoulders tensing, he got out and scanned the shadowy spaces between the rows of cars. The hold stank of oil and exhaust fumes. The other vehicles were deserted, their passengers having climbed to the upper decks to sleep or to buy refreshments and admire the moonlit water and the lights along the coast. The hold's metal floor vibrated from the muted rumble of the ferry's engines.
Still no sign of Akira.
“I've changed my mind,” Savage said. “Get out. Stand next to me. If anything happens, run. There'll be security guards upstairs. Stay close to them.”
Rachel hurried toward him. “Is something wrong?”
“I'm not sure yet.” Savage kept scanning the hold. “But Akira should have joined us by now.”
“Unless he's being extra-cautious checking the passengers.”
“Maybe… Or else he found trouble.”
Despite the surrounding cars, Savage's spine tensed from feeling exposed.
He made it a rule never to try to cross an international border with a firearm. True, the checkpoints in many countries had lax procedures, and handguns made mostly from plastic didn't register on an X-ray machine, especially when disassembled. But Savage's weapon had been an all-metal.357 Magnum revolver, and it couldn't be taken apart, except for its cylinder. More, though Greece and Italy had attempted a conciliatory attitude toward terrorists, the fanatics had taken advantage of their hosts’ goodwill and committed further atrocities. Greece and Italy had strengthened security at their borders. Accordingly, Savage and Akira had dropped their handguns down a sewer before they reached the ferry depot.
But now Savage dearly wished he hadn't done so. Footsteps echoed on metal. A man emerged down a stairway. Savage hoped it would be Akira.
No! The man was Caucasian!
Savage felt as if arms crushed his chest. Abruptly he exhaled.
The man wore a uniform. A member of the ferry's crew, he studied the cars in the hold, then focused on Savage and Rachel. “I'm sorry, sir. No passengers are permitted down here.”
“Right. My wife forgot her purse. We had to come back for it.”
The crewman waited until Savage and Rachel passed him. As the man walked across the hold, Savage concentrated on the top of the stairs.
“There's supposed to be safety in numbers, isn't there?” Rachel said, trying to sound confident, not succeeding. “So let's join the crowd.”
“And find Akira. Just remember,” Savage said, “your husband's men don't know what I look like. And they're searching for a woman whose hair is auburn, not blond.”
“But I can't disguise these bruises.”
“If you lean on the railing, prop your chin in your hands, and study the water, in the dark no one will notice your face. Ready?”
She trembled for a second, then nodded. “Just hold my hand.”
The ferry was large, capable of transporting six hundred passengers. Above the hold, a B and an A deck contained cabins and rows of reclining seats. Savage had rented one of the cabins, but until he discovered what had happened to Akira, he couldn't risk using it and being trapped.
Continuing to climb the stairs, approaching the main deck, he heard numerous voices, a babble of accents and languages. A sea breeze cooled his clammy forehead. He squeezed Rachel's shaky hand and stepped through a hatch. At once a swarm of passengers passed him, bumping, jostling.
Rachel flinched.
Savage put an arm around her, guiding her away from lights toward the night-shrouded railing. The moment she leaned on her elbows, resting her face in her hands, he pivoted toward the crowd.
Where was Akira?
The ferry had a promenade area that rimmed a mid-deck restaurant and a bar. Through windows, Savage saw passengers clustered at tables.
Akira.
Where the hell was Akira?
Five minutes. Ten. Savage's stomach writhed. But though desperate to search, he didn't dare abandon Rachel, not even in the cabin he'd rented.
From the mass of Caucasians, an Oriental proceeded along the deck.
Akira!
“Two of them,” he whispered, approaching.
Savage glanced toward the restaurant, then turned toward the sea, apparently oblivious to the Japanese who passed him.
“Lead them around once again,” Savage murmured.
When he turned from the railing, Akira had disappeared into the crowd.
Two men followed, their suitcoats too small for their muscular chests, their expressions grim.
Savage wondered if they were decoys intended to make their quarry realize he was being followed while other members of the surveillance team watched Akira's reaction. That was possible. But the two men weren't clumsy, and Akira wasn't the target. Rachel was, and as long as Akira ignored the men behind him, they couldn't be sure they'd found the Japanese they were looking for. So unless they captured Akira and questioned him, they'd have to wait to see if Akira rendezvoused with a Caucasian man and woman. Then, regardless of Rachel's change in hair color, they'd know they'd found their targets.
So what do we do? Savage wondered. Play hide-and-seek all over the ferry?
Pulse speeding, he scanned the crowd, alert for anyone who showed interest in Rachel and him. When Akira strolled past the second time and the same two men followed at a careful distance, Savage concluded that they were alone.
But that still didn't solve the problem.
Jesus, how do we deal with them?
The simplest method would be to let Akira keep leading them around until the promenade was deserted, the passengers asleep. Then Savage could try to stalk the stalkers, incapacitate them, and throw them over the side.
But was the surveillance pair under orders to use the ferry's sea-to-shore telephones to call their superiors and make reports at regular intervals, even if they'd found nothing? In the SEALs, that was basic strategy. If a team failed to check in at its scheduled time, their commander would first conclude that the team had logistical problems and been forced to rash toward a safe location. If the team persisted in not reporting, the commander would then conclude that the team had been captured or else been killed.
Maybe preventing these men from checking in would tell Papadropolis where to focus his search.
As Savage analyzed the problem, a corollary disturbed him. Suppose they'd already made their report? What if they'd told their superiors that they'd spotted a Japanese who might be Akira? In that case, Papadropolis would order additional men to board the ferry tomorrow morning when it made its first stop farther up the Greek coast at Igoumenitsa.
Too many unknowns.
But the present situation couldn't be allowed to continue.
Something had to be done.
Through a window, Savage saw Akira in the restaurant, sitting at a table, dipping a tea bag into a cup. The two men watched unobtrusively from a distant table. One of the men said something. The other nodded. The first man got up, leaving the restaurant through a door on the opposite side of the ferry.
Savage straightened. “Rachel, let's go.”
“But where are…?”
“I don't have time to explain.” He led her through the crowded smoke-filled bar beside the restaurant, peered out toward the promenade on the opposite side of the ferry, and saw the man standing at a row of phones. The man inserted a credit card into one of them and pressed a sequence of numbers.
“Rachel, lean against this railing, the same as before.”
Savage quickly walked toward the man, stopped next to him, and picked up a phone.
“We don't know yet,” the man was saying. He sensed Savage beside him, turned, and scowled.
Savage pretended not to notice, going through the motions of making a call.
“Yes, Japanese,” the man said. “He fits the description, but we weren't given many specifics. Age, height, and build aren't enough to be sure.”
“Hi, dear,” Savage said to the phone he held. He'd pressed numbers at random and was getting a busy signal. “I just wanted to let you know I managed to catch the ferry out of Patrai.”
“Then make sure?” the man asked. “How the-?”
“Yeah, we dock in Italy tomorrow afternoon at five,” Savage said.
“Question him?” The man scowled again at Savage, unable to speak as freely as he wanted. “But if it is him, I thought the point was to see if he contacted his associates. From what I've heard about this man, the two of us won't be enough to persuade him to cooperate.”
“I'm looking forward to seeing you, dear,” Savage said to the phone.
“Yeah, that idea's a whole lot better. Send more negotiators.”
“No, everything went fine. I saw every client on my list,” Savage said to the phone. “They gave me some very large orders.”
“ Corfu?” The man sounded baffled. “But that's the second stop. Why can't they board at Igoumenitsa? Yeah, okay, I see that. If the team's already at Corfu 's dock and the airport, they might as well stay in place. Besides, there's no way for them to get off the island at this hour. They'd never be able to cross the channel from Corfu to Igoumenitsa in time to meet the ferry.”
“I love you, too, dear,” Savage said to the phone.
“Right. I'll see you at nine tomorrow morning,” the man said. “If anything develops in the meantime, I'll let you know.”
The man hung up and returned to the restaurant.
Savage replaced his phone and walked toward Rachel in the darkness along the railing.
“Change of plans,” he said.
“I don't understand,” she said.
“I'm not sure I do either.” Savage frowned. “I'm still working out the details.”
At one A.M., the promenade was almost deserted. Most of the passengers had gone to the sleeping areas on the lower decks, though a few still remained in the bar and the restaurant.
One of those in the restaurant was Akira. He'd ordered a meal and taken so long to savor every mouthful that his two watchdogs, still sitting at a corner table, had begun to look conspicuous-and looked as if they knew they looked conspicuous.
Any moment, they might decide to find a less exposed vantage point from which to study their prey.
“It's time,” Savage told Rachel. While she'd been standing out of sight from the restaurant window, he'd periodically glanced inside. For all he knew, he had begun to look conspicuous. Yes, he thought. Definitely time.
“You're sure this'll work?” Rachel's voice shook.
“No. But it's the only plan I can think of.”
“That doesn't exactly fill me with confidence.”
“You'll do fine. Keep telling yourself, it's another chance to prove you're a better actress than your sister.”
“I'm too terrified to care.”
“Hey, impress me. Get in there.”
Savage smiled and nudged her.
She studied him, returned his smile, breathed deeply, and entered the restaurant.
From the darkness at the railing, Savage watched the two men. They glanced toward Rachel and almost dropped their coffee cups. In contrast, Akira kept eating with deliberate calm.
Rachel sat beside him. Akira put down his knife and fork as if she was exactly the person he'd expected to see. He said something, then said something else, leaning toward her. She responded, elaborated, and gestured toward the lower decks. He shrugged and nodded.
In the background, the man who'd made the earlier phone call stood and left the restaurant.
Savage was waiting in shadows when the man, his eyes bright with victory, veered toward the row of phones.
A quick glance right and left showed Savage that there weren't other passengers on the promenade. He grabbed the man's left arm, thrust his right leg upward, and threw him overboard.
The fall was five stories. The water would have felt like concrete. The man was too surprised to scream.
Savage spun toward the window, remaining in darkness. In the restaurant, Akira stood, paid his bill, and left with Rachel on the opposite side of the ferry.
The watchdog hesitated, seeming to wonder how soon his partner would return from making the phone call. But the watchdog couldn't allow Akira and Rachel to get out of his sight. Savage knew. As expected, the man rose hurriedly, threw money on the table, and followed.
Savage proceeded along the deserted promenade. It wasn't necessary for him to get to the other side of the ferry and track the stalker. After all, he knew where the man was going.
Taking his time, he descended the stairs to the A deck. Had to take his time. It was imperative that Akira and Rachel reach the cabin Savage had rented, imperative that the watchdog see them go in, hear the lock shut, and realize he had to rush to tell his partner where their master's wife was hiding.
As Savage pretended to stumble drunkenly toward the bottom of the stairs, he groped in his pockets, apparently unable to find the key to his cabin. The watchdog darted toward him, frantic to return to the main deck and locate his partner. Savage punched him in the stomach, chopped the side of his callused hand across the man's jaw, and lugged the unconscious (to all appearances intoxicated) man along the deserted corridor, knocking three times on the door of the cabin.
The door inched open.
“Room service,” Savage said.
The cabin was small, starkly furnished with a bureau, a top and bottom bunk, a tiny closet, and a washroom. Designed for two occupants, it provided little room for the four of them to move around. While Rachel locked the door, Akira helped Savage set the unconscious man on the bottom bunk. Working quickly, they used the man's belt to secure his hands behind his back and bound his ankles together with his tie. They searched him and satisfied themselves that he hadn't risked bringing a weapon through customs.
“He's awfully pale,” Rachel said. “His jaw… it's so swollen.”
The stress in her voice made Savage turn. He suddenly realized that this was the first time she'd seen the effects of violence on someone other than herself.
“And his breathing sounds…”
“Don't worry,” Savage said. “I didn't hit him hard enough to really hurt him. He ought to wake up soon.”
“Let's see if we can encourage him.” Akira brought a glass of water from the bathroom and dribbled it onto the man's face.
The man's eyes flickered and slowly focused. When he saw Savage, Akira, and Rachel staring down at him, he struggled to stand, only to realize in panic that his hands and feet were tied.
“Lie still,” Savage said. “Don't be stupid and shout for help. Your friend isn't able to hear you.”
“Where's…?”
“He fell overboard,” Savage said.
“You son of a bitch,” the man said.
“We have a proposition,” Akira said. “We'd like you to enjoy a good night's sleep and in the morning make a phone call for us.”
“You're not going to kill me?”
“That's always a possibility.” Akira's eyes expressed greater melancholy. “We'd appreciate your cooperation so you don't join your ancestors needlessly.”
“Ancestors? Is that some kind of Japanese thing?”
“If you wish to call it that. Yes.” Akira's lips formed a thin, bitter smile. “A Japanese thing.”
“What kind of phone call?”
“The ferry reaches Igoumenitsa at seven tomorrow morning. After it continues to Corfu, you'll call your superiors and tell them we spotted you and your partner. You'll tell them we panicked and drove from the ferry at Igoumenitsa. We're escaping eastward, inland, toward Ioannina, on route nineteen.”
“But all of us will really be on the ferry on its way to Corfu?” the man asked.
“Precisely. The reinforcements that would have boarded the ferry at Corfu will then be diverted.”
The man became suspicious. “And then what? What happens when we get to Corfu? We continue toward Italy?”
“Our plans aren't your concern.”
“I mean what the hell happens to me? Why should I make the call? You killed my partner. What stops you from killing me?”
“You have our word you won't be harmed,” Akira said.
The man laughed. “Your word? Hey, give me a break. Your word means shit. As soon as I'm no use to you, I'm dead. You can't afford to let me live to tell Papadropolis where you've really gone.”
Akira's eyes blazed. “My word does not, as you put it, mean shit.”
The man swung his head toward Savage. “Look, you and I are both Americans. That ought to count for something. Damn it, don't you understand my problem?”
Savage sat beside him on the bunk. “Of course. On the one hand, you're worried that we'll kill you after you make the phone call and we don't have further use for you. On the other hand, you're worried that Papadropolis will kill you if he discovers you helped us escape. He won't care if you acted practically in order to save your life. From his point of view, you betrayed him. He'll punish you. Severely. So you've got a problem. I agree. But the issue you have to face is whether you prefer to die now instead of later.”
“And have no doubt, if you refuse, you'll join your partner in the sea,” Akira said. “We do have other ways to escape the trap.”
“Then for Christ's sake, use them.”
“But what would we do with you?” Savage asked. “Right now, Papadropolis isn't our worry. You are. So what are you going to do about that?”
The man darted his frightened eyes from Savage toward Akira, back toward Savage, and finally stared at Rachel.
“Mrs. Papadropolis, don't let them-”
“I hate that name,” she said. “Don't call me that. I'll never use it. I never want to hear it again. My last name is Stone.”
“Miss Stone, please, don't let them kill me. You turned pale when you found out this man”-a nod toward Savage -”killed my partner. You'll feel worse if you let him kill me. You've seen me up close. You've talked to me. My name's Paul Farris. I'm thirty-four. I'm a security specialist, not an assassin. I've got a wife and daughter. We live in Switzerland. If you let these men murder me, even if you don't see them do it, you'll feel guilty for the rest of your life.”
Rachel's brow furrowed. She swallowed.
“Nice try, but we searched you before you woke up,” Savage said. “We went through your wallet. Your name's not Paul Farris. It's Harold Trask. The only true thing in what you said is your age. Rachel, don't get sentimental about him.”
“You think I'm dumb enough to carry real ID when I'm working?” the man asked. “The people I investigate, if they knew who was after them, they might hunt down my wife and kid to get even. It's a sure bet the two of you don't use real ID either.”
“Convincing,” Akira said. “But beside the point. You still didn't solve your problem. Even if Rachel told us not to kill you, it wouldn't matter. Her life isn't at risk. If Papadropolis found her or she decided to return to him-”
“Never!” Rachel said. “I'd never go back to him.”
“-her husband would beat her, no doubt with increased viciousness, but he wouldn't kill her. He would kill us if we knew who we were and managed to catch us. So to silence you would be self-defense.”
“Make up your mind,” Savage said. “Will you cooperate?”
“I call my superiors? Then you let me walk away?”
“We already promised that.”
The man debated. “Apparently I'm forced to.”
“A reasonable man,” Akira said.
The man's eyes became calculating. “Even so…”
“I'm getting impatient.”
“I'll need an extra incentive.”
“Money? Don't press your luck,” Savage said.
Rachel interrupted. “Pay him.”
Savage turned to her, frowning.
“He's taking a risk,” she said. “My husband will be furious if he thinks this man lied.”
“That's right, Miss Stone. I'll have to take my wife and daughter and disappear for a while. It'll be expensive.”
“If you even have a wife and daughter,” Savage said. “How much?”
“A quarter million.”
“You're dreaming.”
“Then make it two hundred thousand,” the man said.
“I'll make it fifty thousand, and you'll be grateful.”
“But how do I know you have it?”
Savage shook his head in disgust. “Do you have a choice?”
The man paled.
“Don't make me impatient,” Savage said.
“All right.” The man swallowed. “You've got a deal. There's just one other matter.”
“You're impossible,” Akira said.
“No, listen. I need you to help me think of a way to stop Papadropolis from coming for me.”
“We'll sleep on it,” Savage said.
“The least you can do is untie my feet and hands.”
“No, what I'd like to do is gag your mouth,” Akira said.
“I have to go to the bathroom.”
Akira raised his hands in exasperation. “I don't think I can tolerate this man till tomorrow morning.”
“The look on your face.” Rachel started laughing.
It was ten after seven the following morning. As the ferry left the small town of Igoumenitsa, heading west toward the island of Corfu, Savage, Akira, and Rachel stood tensely beside the man while he made the phone call. Savage kept a tight grip on his arm, listening to what he told his superiors.
“Hey, I know it's a mess. You don't need to tell me. But damn it, it's not my fault. My partner followed too close. The Japanese spotted him. Just before we docked at Igoumenitsa. The Japanese ran. It took us a while to find him. By then, the American and Mrs. Papadropolis were with him. They must have been sleeping in one of the cabins. Hey, what was I going to do, knock on every door and say, ‘Mrs. Papadropolis, are you in there?’ The Japanese was obviously the decoy-to check if the ferry was being watched. If everything looked safe, they'd have continued to Corfu.”
The man stopped talking. Savage heard someone shouting from the other end of the phone.
“No, we couldn't stop them before they drove off the ferry,” the man continued.
More shouting from the other end.
“Hey, I'm telling you it's not my fault. My partner's so scared about fucking up he ran. He figures Papadropolis will kill him.”
The man winced, the shouts so loud he held the phone away from his ear.
“Well, it's his ass, not mine. I'm still on the job, but it's damned hard chasing them on my own. I barely caught up to them before they left Igoumenitsa. Heading east on route nineteen. Why didn't I phone you sooner? How was I going to do that and not lose sight of them? I wouldn't even be calling now if they hadn't stopped for gas. I'm in a restaurant down the street. I can see them through the window. They don't realize I'm… Wait a minute. Shit, they're about to leave. Look, I think they're headed for loannina. The Yugoslavian border's less than an hour's drive north from there. Tell everybody to watch the border crossings. Christ, they're driving away! Can't talk anymore! I'll check in later!”
Sounding breathless, the man slammed down the phone.
Savage released his arm.
The prisoner wiped his sweaty brow. He leaned against the phone and trembled. “Okay?”
“Extremely believable,” Akira said.
“And now?” The man looked apprehensive, as if Savage and Akira might kill him after all.
“We relax and enjoy the cruise,” Akira said.
“You mean it?”
“You fulfilled your part of the bargain.”
The man exhaled and straightened. “I think I got Papadropolis off my back. They'll be looking for my partner.”
“Whom they'll never find,” Akira said. “Yes, it seems your worries are over.”
“And ours,” Rachel said. “No one will be waiting for us at Corfu. They'll try to intercept us on the way to Yugoslavia.”
“Where we have no intention of going.” Savage turned to the man. “Just make sure you get back to the mainland as soon as possible. You'll have to pretend you're chasing us. Phone in. Keep giving them false reports.”
“You bet I will. If I don't rendezvous with a team at one of the border crossings, they won't believe my story. But by then I'll have lost you.”
“Exactly.”
“There's just one thing,” the man said.
“Oh? What's that?”
“You forgot to give me my money.”
Ninety minutes later, when the ferry reached Corfu, they watched the man drive onto the dock and disappear among traffic.
“He might still betray us,” Akira said.
“I don't think so,” Savage said. “Rachel's instincts were right about paying him. He knows if he tells them where we really are, we'll implicate him. Papadropolis would kill him for taking a bribe.”
“So now we cross to Italy?” Rachel asked.
“Why bother?” Savage smiled. “The Corfu airport won't be under surveillance now. Let's catch the next plane to France. By tonight, you'll be with your sister.”
But Rachel looked troubled.
Why? Savage wondered.
“Then you and I catch another plane to New York,” Akira told Savage, the sadness in his eyes intensified with anger. “To force answers from Graham. To make him tell us why we saw each other die.”
“Excited? Of course, I am. Why wouldn't I be?” Rachel said.
They'd left their car at Corfu's airport, then taken an Alitalia flight to Rome, where they transfered to an Air France jet bound for Nice.
Midafternoon. The weather was magnificent. Rachel had the window seat, and as she spoke, she peered toward Corsica to the west, then down toward sunlight glinting off the Mediterranean.
But Savage sensed she was motivated less by attraction to the scenery than by the need to hide her expression when she answered his question.
“Because back at the ferry you weren't overjoyed when I mentioned you'd be with your sister tonight,” Savage said.
Rachel kept her face turned toward the window. “You expected me to jump up and down? After everything that's happened, I'm drained. Shell-shocked. Numb. I still can't believe I escaped.”
Savage glanced at her hand in her lap. Its fingers were clenched, their knuckles white.
“Rachel…”
Her fist became tighter.
“I want you to look at me.”
She peered closer to the window. “Eager to see my sister? Naturally. She's more than my sister. She's my closest friend. If it weren't for her… and you… I'd never have gotten off Mykonos. My husband would have kept beating me.”
She trembled.
“Rachel, please, I'm asking you to look at me.”
She stiffened, then slowly turned in Savage's direction. Her bruises emphasized her somber expression.
Savage reached for her fist, unclasped its fingers, and encircled them with his own. “What's wrong?”
“I keep trying to imagine what's ahead of me. My sister. A happy reunion. A chance to rest and heal. Oh, for sure, I'll be pampered. The best of everything. But then what? A cage is a cage, gilded or not. I'll still be a prisoner.”
Savage waited for Rachel to continue, all the while conscious of Akira, who sat at the rear of the plane, assessing the other passengers.
“My husband won't be satisfied until he gets me back. When he learns where I am, he'll put my sister's estate under constant watch. I'll never be able to leave.”
“Yes and no. There are ways to sneak out.”
“‘Sneak.’ Exactly. But away from my sister's estate, I'd never feel safe. Wherever I went, I'd have to use another name, disguise my appearance, try not to be conspicuous. Sneak. For the rest of my life.”
“It's not as bad as that.”
“It is.” Rachel jerked her head toward the passengers across the aisle and behind her, embarrassed for having raised her voice. She whispered, her words intense, “I'm terrified. What happens to other people you've rescued?”
Savage was forced to lie. Anytime someone needed a protector with Savage's expertise, he knew that their problems were only temporarily solved. He didn't cancel danger; he merely postponed it. “They get on with their lives.”
“Bullshit. Predators don't give up.”
Savage didn't respond.
“I'm right?”
Savage glanced toward the aisle.
“Hey, damn it, I looked at you. Now you look at me,” Rachel said.
“Okay. If you want my opinion, your husband's too arrogant to admit defeat. Yes, you'll have to be careful.”
“Oh, that's just fucking swell.” She yanked her hand from his.
“You wanted the truth.”
“And I sure got it.”
“The usual option is to negotiate.”
“Don't talk to me like a lawyer.”
“So what do you want?”
“For the past couple days, as horrible as they've been, I've never felt safer-better-than being with you. You made me feel… important, comforted, respected. You treated me like I meant everything to you.”
“You did.”
“As a client,” Rachel said. “And if you deliver me to my sister, you'll be paid.”
“You don't know anything about me,” Savage said. “I don't risk my life just for the money. I do this because people need me. But I can't stay forever with…”
“Everyone who needs you?”
“Sooner or later, I have to let go. Your sister's waiting for you.”
“And then you forget me?”
“Never,” Savage said.
“Then take me with you.”
“What? To New York?”
“I won't feel safe without you.”
“Rachel, three weeks from now, sipping champagne at the pool on your sister's estate, you won't remember me.”
“For the right kind of man, I'm stubbornly loyal.”
“I've had this conversation before,” Savage said. “Many times. The man who taught me…”
“Graham.”
“Yes. He always insisted, ‘Never involve yourself with a client.’ And he was right. Because emotion causes mistakes. And mistakes are fatal.”
“I'd do anything for you.”
“Like follow me to hell?”
“I promised that.”
“And you survived. But Akira and I have our own kind of hell, and we need to understand why it happened. Believe me, you'd interfere. Enjoy your sister's pool… And think of two men trying to solve a nightmare.”
“Hold still for a minute.”
“Why?”
Rachel leaned toward him, gripping the sides of his face.
Savage squirmed.
“No,” Rachel said, “hold still.”
“But…”
“Quiet.” Rachel kissed him. Her lips barely touched his, making them tingle. She gradually increased pressure, her mouth fully on him. Her tongue probed, sliding, darting. “
Savage didn't resist, but despite his erection, he didn't encourage her, either.
She slowly pulled away.
“Rachel, you're beautiful.”
Rachel looked proud.
Savage traced a finger along her cheek.
She shivered.
“I can't,” Savage said, “betray the rules. I'll take you to your sister. Then Akira and I will go to New York.”
She jerked away from him. “I can't wait to see my sister.”
They landed outside Nice shortly after four P.M. Savage had phoned Joyce Stone before he, Akira, and Rachel had flown from Corfu. Now, as they entered the airport's customs-immigration area, a slender man wearing an impeccably tailored gray suit stepped past other arriving passengers toward them. He had an identification pin in his lapel, though Savage didn't know what the pin's striped colors signified. A uniformed guard walked behind him.
“Monsieur Savage?” the distinguished-looking man asked.
“Yes.”
“Would the three of you come with us, please?”
Akira showed no sign of tension, except for a brief frown toward Savage, who nodded reassuringly and held Rachel's hand.
They entered a room to the side. The guard shut the door. The distinguished-looking man sat behind a desk.
“Monsieur, as you're aware, visitors to France are required to present not only a passport but an immigration visa.”
“Yes. I'm sure you'll find these in order.” Savage placed his passport and visa on the table. Before the assignment, knowing he'd have to take Rachel to France, he'd instructed Joyce Stone to obtain visas for the two of them.
The official glanced through the documents.
“And this is Miss Stone's passport,” Savage said. Because Rachel had been forced to use her sister's passport instead of her own, and because her sister had become a French citizen, it wasn't necessary to present her immigration visa.
The official examined the passport. “Excellent.” He didn't seem at all impressed that he was theoretically talking to a woman of fame and power.
Savage gestured toward Akira. “My friend has his passport, but I'm afraid he neglected to obtain a visa.”
“Yes, so an influential acquaintance of yours has explained to me. However, while you were en route, that oversight was corrected.” The official placed a visa on the table and held out his hand for Akira's passport.
After flipping through it, he stamped all the documents and returned them. “Have you anything to declare to customs?”
“Nothing.”
“Please come with me.”
They left the office, passed crowded immigration and customs checkpoints, and reached an exit from the airport.
“Enjoy your stay,” the man said.
“We appreciate your cooperation,” Savage said.
The official shrugged. “Your influential acquaintance was most insistent. Charmingly so, of course. When possible, I'm pleased to accommodate her wishes. She instructed me to tell you she's arranged for your transportation. Through that door.”
Curious, Savage stepped outside, followed by Rachel and Akira. In brilliant sunshine, on a street with a grass divider, a parking lot, and a background of palm trees, what he saw at the curb appalled him.
Joyce Stone-ignoring Savage's advice in Athens to use an inconspicuous car-had sent a Rolls-Royce. And behind the steering wheel sat one of the burly escorts that Savage had met at Joyce Stone's hotel suite near the Acropolis.
“I don't like this,” Akira said.
Rachel tensed. “Why?”
“This isn't the way it's done,” Savage said. “All that's missing is a sign on the side of the car. ‘Important people inside.’ We might as well put up a target.”
The burly driver got out of the car, squared his shoulders, and grinned at Savage. “So you actually made it. Hey, when I heard, I was sure impressed.”
Savage felt more dismayed. “You were told? You knew we'd be your passengers?”
“The boss has been biting her nails for the last three days. She couldn't wait to tell me.” The man kept grinning.
“Shit.”
“Hey, everything's cool,” the man said.
“No,” Akira said, “it isn't.”
The man stopped grinning. “Who the hell are you?”
Akira ignored him, turning to Savage. “Should we get another car?”
“What's wrong with this one?” the burly man said.
“You wouldn't understand.”
“Come on, it's fully loaded.”
“At the moment, stereo and air-conditioning aren't our priorities,” Akira said.
“No, I mean fully loaded.”
The stream of passing cars and pedestrians leaving the airport made Savage uneasy. It took him a moment to register what the man had said. “Loaded?”
“A shotgun under each front fender. Automatic. Double-ought buck. Flash-bang ejectors under each side. Smoke canisters in the rear. Bulletproof. Armored fuel tank. But just in case, if the fuel tank gets hit by a rocket grenade, a steel plate flips up in the trunk and keeps the flames from spreading inside. Just what I said. Fucking loaded. With all this terrorist stuff, the boss believes in precautions.”
Akira frowned at Savage. “It's possible.”
“Except the car's so damned ostentatious,” Savage said.
“But perhaps not here in southern France. I saw five equally vulgar cars drive past while we talked.”
“You've got a point. I'm tempted,” Savage said.
“Vulgar?” the burly man said. “This car isn't vulgar. It's a dream.”
“That depends on what kind of dreams you have,” Savage said.
Rachel fidgeted. “I don't like standing out here.”
“Okay,” Savage said. “We use it.” He shielded Rachel while he opened the rear door and she quickly got in. “Akira, sit beside her.” He pivoted toward the burly escort. “I drive.”
“But…”
“Sit in the passenger seat, or walk.”
The man's feelings looked hurt. “You'll have to promise I'm not responsible.”
“That's a given.”
“What?”
“You're not responsible. Get in the car.” As Savage scrambled behind the steering wheel, the man scurried next to him, slamming his door.
“Controls,” Savage said. “Where are they?”
“It's just an automatic.”
“I mean the flash-bangs, the smoke, the shotguns.”
“Lift the console to the right of the gearshift.”
Savage saw clearly marked buttons. He twisted the ignition key and hurried from the airport.
Despite the airport's name, Savage's destination wasn't eastward toward Nice. Instead he drove west on N 98, a coastal road that curved along the Côte d'Azur and would lead him toward Antibes, Cap d'Antibes, and a few kilometers later, Cannes. Among the islands off that glamorous city was Joyce Stone's equally glamorous principality, which she ruled in the name of her infirm husband.
“Yeah,” the burly man said, “just stay on this road until-”
“I've been in southern France before.”
A year and a half ago, Savage had escorted an American film producer to the festival at Cannes. At that time, terrorists had threatened to attack what they called “the purveyors of imperialistic racist oppression.” Given the tense political climate, Savage had approved of his principal's choice to use a hotel in one of the nearby villages instead of Cannes. While the principal slept, he'd be safely away from the site of the threatened violence. Preparing for that assignment, Savage had arrived a few days early and scouted both Cannes and the surrounding area, learning traffic patterns, major and minor streets, in case he had to rush his principal away from an incident.
“Yes, I've been in southern France before,” Savage said. “I'm sure I can find the way to your boss.”
The farther he drove from the airport at Nice, the more traffic dwindled, most of it having turned onto a superhighway to the north. That superhighway ran parallel to this road and would have taken Savage to Cannes sooner, but he didn't intend to enter the city. His instructions to Joyce Stone had been to have a powerboat waiting at a beach along this road a half-kilometer before he reached the city. The powerboat would take them to a yacht, which in turn would take them to Joyce Stone's island-an efficient, surreptitious way to deliver Rachel to her sister.
“I hate to tell you this,” Akira said. “I think we've got company.”
Savage glanced toward his rearview mirror. “The van?”
“It's been following us since we left the airport.”
“Maybe it's headed toward one of the resorts along this road.”
“But it keeps passing cars to stay behind us. If it's in a hurry, it ought to pass us as well.”
“Let's find out.”
Savage slowed. The van reduced speed.
A Porsche veered around both of them.
Savage sped up. So did the van.
Savage glared toward the burly man beside him. “Is it too much to hope you brought handguns?”
“It didn't seem necessary.”
“If we survive this, I'm going to beat the shit out of you.”
Rachel looked terrified. “How did they find us?”
“Your husband must have guessed your sister arranged for the rescue.”
“But he thinks we drove into Yugoslavia.”
“Right. Most of his men are searching there,” Savage said, increasing speed. “But he must have kept a team in southern France in case we managed to get this far. The airport was being watched.”
“I didn't notice surveillance,” Akira said.
“Not in the airport. Outside. And when this idiot showed up in the Rolls-”
“Hey, watch who you're calling an idiot,” the burly man said.
“-they activated the trap. They won't be alone. Somewhere ahead, there'll be another vehicle in radio contact with them. And” – Savage glared at the burly man – “if you don't shut your mouth, I'll tell Akira to strangle you.”
Savage swerved past a slowly moving truck filled with chickens. The van did the same.
To the left, down a slope, Savage saw Antibes stretched along the sea. The resort had extensive flower gardens, an impressive Romanesque cathedral, and ancient narrow streets. To the right, picturesque villas dotted a hillside.
Savage reached a curve and halfway around it pressed the accelerator. The transmission changed gears sluggishly, finally responding.
“An automatic,” Savage said. “I can't believe this.” Again he glared at the burly man. “Don't you know a standard's more efficient if you're being chased?”
“Yeah, but an automatic's smoother in stop-and-go traffic, and the streets in these towns are an obstacle course. With a standard, it's a pain to keep using the gearshift.”
Savage cursed and rounded another curve. Now opposite the rising slope of villas, a descending slope was cluttered with hotels that almost obscured the sea.
The pursuing van sped closer.
“There might be another explanation,” Akira said.
“For their spotting us?” Savage urged the Rolls from the curve.
“Your phone call. Before we left Corfu. The incompetent man beside you admitted that your employer talked openly about the rescue.”
“Hey, what do you mean ‘incompetent’?”
“If you persist in speaking,” Akira told the man, “perhaps I will indeed strangle you.”
Savage frowned at another curve.
“I suspect your employer's phones have been tapped,” Akira said. “And I also suspect there are spies in the household.”
“I warned her,” Savage said. “Before I went in, I told her Rachel's safety depended on absolute secrecy.”
“Before you went. Afterward, she felt free to reveal her concerns.”
Savage scowled toward the rearview mirror. The van was closer. “I think you're right. Someone on Joyce Stone's staff is a spy for Papadropolis. That's why his team was ready.”
“So what are we going to do?” the burly man asked.
“What I'd like to do,” Savage said, “is throw you out.”
“Ahead,” Akira barked.
Savage's chest constricted as a van appeared.
The interceptor skidded, turning, blocking the narrow road.
“Rachel, make sure your seat belt's tight.”
The pursuing van loomed closer.
Savage eased his left foot onto the brake, kept his other foot on the accelerator, and spun the steering wheel. The maneuver was difficult. If he pressed too hard on the brake, he'd lock the rear wheels. He had to balance the pressure between braking and accelerating so the car's rear wheels spun while skidding. The consequent tension of forces gave the car torque. As Savage twisted the steering wheel, the car snapped around. The 180-degree pivot made the tires squeal, rubber smoking. Savage's seat belt gripped him.
The van that blocked the road was now behind him, the pursuing van ahead. Savage jerked his foot off the brake and stomped the accelerator. The Rolls surged toward the approaching van. Its driver veered. Savage rocketed past. In his rearview mirror, he saw the van skid to a stop. Farther back, the van that had blocked the road was in motion again, passing the van that had stopped, resuming the chase.
“At least they're both behind us,” Savage said. “If we can get back to-into-Antibes, we might be able to lose them.”
His stomach turned cold when a third van emerged from a curve ahead.
“Jesus,” the burly man said. “The team had backup.”
The van turned sideways, blocking the road. In his rearview mirror, Savage saw one of the other vans block the road behind him while the remaining van sped toward him.
“We're boxed,” Savage said.
The road was too narrow for Savage to veer around the obstructing vehicle. Now the steep upward slope was on his left, the steeper downward slope on his right.
He tensely reached toward the buttons on the console. “These weapons better work.”
The system had been invented by drug lords in South America. He pressed a button. A section of metal rose from above each headlight. He pressed another button and felt the Roils tremble from the concussion of shotguns firing. Mounted beneath each fender, the guns sprayed double-ought buckshot through a vent above each headlight.
Ahead, the van that blocked the road jolted from the fusillade's repeated impacts. As the shotguns kept firing, the van's windows imploded. Pellets punched metal, causing clusters of holes, three-foot circular patterns that narrowed as the Rolls sped nearer. The continuous shotgun blasts chewed the van to pieces.
Savage released the button and stomped on the brake. The Rolls fishtailed, skidding, barely stopping in time to avoid smashing against the wrecked vehicle.
He swung to stare behind him. While one of the remaining vans continued to block the road, the other rushed nearer and braked. Men scrambled out, weapons drawn.
“Rachel, close your eyes. Cover your ears.”
Savage pressed two more buttons on the console and instantly obeyed his own directive, scrunching his eyes shut, squeezing his palms against his ears. Despite these precautions, he winced. Chaos assaulted him.
The buttons he'd pressed had caused flash-bang devices to catapult from each side of the Rolls and detonate when they hit the ground. The devices were deceptively named. “Flash-bang” suggested a firecracker. But the blaze and the blast produced by these matchbox-shaped metal objects were extreme enough to temporarily blind and deafen. Even one could be powerfully disorienting. Several dozen had awesome results.
In the Rolls, Savage saw sudden fierce glares through his tightly closed eyes. Peristent staccato roars forced their way past the hands he pressed to his ears. He heard muffled screams, the hunters collapsing outside the car. Or perhaps the screams were inside the car. Possibly from himself. The Rolls shook. His ears rang.
And suddenly the chaos ended.
“Out of the car!” Savage shouted.
He scrambled from the driver's side and found himself enveloped by dense swirling smoke. Not from the flash-bangs, instead from pressurized canisters beneath the car's rear bumper. One of the buttons he'd pressed had triggered the release of their contents.
Both the flash-bangs and the smoke were designed to confuse assailants and allow potential victims to escape amid the confusion, though the flash-bangs could be lethal if they detonated directly beside an enemy. In the smoke, Savage had no way to tell if any of Papadropolis's men had accidentally been killed. But he was sure that for the next half-minute they'd be lying on the road, squirming in pain.
His sight impaired, he felt his way hurriedly around the Rolls, bumped into the burly man, pushed him aside, and found Akira guarding Rachel. No conversation was necessary. Both he and Akira knew the only practical escape was down the slope toward the hotels that rimmed the sea.
Concealed by the smoke, they scurried from the road, each holding Rachel between them. Over rocks and grass, they felt their way down the slope. At once they emerged into eye-stabbing sunlight.
“Run,” Savage said.
Rachel didn't need encouragement. She darted ahead of them, jumped from a ledge, and landed on the continuation of the slope four feet below. The impact threw her off balance. She rolled, slid on her back, and pushed herself upright, continuing to run.
Savage and Akira lunged after her. Any moment, their hunters would recover from the stunning barrage to their senses. They'd struggle to orient themselves, emerge from the smoke, see their quarry, and continue pursuing.
Rachel's pace faltered. Savage and Akira caught up to her. Charging lower, they passed tennis courts perched on the slope. Players had stopped their games, staring toward the smoke on the road above them. Several noticed Savage, Akira, and Rachel race past, then redirected their attention toward the smoke.
As the slope leveled off, the hotels seemed larger, taller. Savage paused with Akira and Rachel behind a maintenance building near palm trees and a swimming pool. No hunters scurried down the slope.
But Savage was dismayed to see the burly man, breathing heavily, stumble toward them.
“Jesus, I almost lost you. Thanks for waiting till I caught up.”
“We didn't wait so you could join us,” Akira said. “We're trying to decide what to do. But one choice is very clear.”
The man wiped his sweaty face. “Yeah? Quick, tell me. What is it?”
“We don't want you with us. Whichever way we go, you take the opposite direction.”
“Come on, quit joking. We're in this together.”
“No,” Akira said.
“The top of the slope,” Savage said.
Akira followed Savage's gaze toward the hunters scurrying downward.
“No, we're not in this together.” Akira grabbed the man's neck and pressed a finger behind his left ear.
In pain, the man sagged. He groaned and squirmed, struggling to release Akira's grip.
Akira pressed harder. “You will not follow us.”
The man's face turned pale from the power of Akira's grip. “Okay, I'm out of here.”
“Go.” Akira pushed him.
The man took a last frightened look at Akira and stumbled toward the opposite hotel.
In the distance, sirens wailed.
“And we'd better go,” Savage said. He pointed toward the hunters a quarter way down the slope, then grabbed Rachel's arm and ran with her.
“Where?” Rachel gasped.
They passed between two hotels and reached a noisy street that flanked the sea. Savage waved his arms toward a taxi. It pulled to a stop. They hurried inside.
Savage echoed Rachel's question. “Where? I worked in this area a year and a half ago. A man I met owes me a favor.”
He turned to the driver and gave him directions in French. “We're late for a party. I'll double your fare if you get us there in five minutes.”
“Bien entendu, monsieur.” As the driver sped toward Antibes, he pointed toward the smoke on the upper road. ‘ ‘Qu'est ce que c'est?”
“Un accident d’ automobile.”
“Sérieux?”
“Je pense.”
“Quel dommage.”
“Trop de gens ne regardent pas la route.”
“C'est vrai, monsieur. C'est vrai.” The driver turned from Savage, flinched, and jerked the steering wheel, avoiding a truck.
In the backseat, Savage stared behind him. The hunters had not yet rushed from between the hotels onto the palmlined street. When they finally did, they wouldn't be able to read the license plate on this taxi.
Antibes had a population of more than sixty thousand. Though October was past the height of the tourist season, there were still sufficient visitors to congest the narrow streets. When the taxi began to move with frustrating slowness, Savage told the driver to stop, paid him the promised bonus, and left with Rachel and Akira.
They disappeared into an alley above which laundry dangled from ropes. To his right, Savage heard waves crashing onto the beach. To his left, above the alley, he caught a glimpse of a centuries-old, towering château.
Rachel hurried past the alley's narrow walls made even more narrow by garbage. She frowned toward Savage. “But you gave the driver an address. If my husband's men question the driver, they'll know where we're going.”
“The address was fake,” Savage said.
“Standard practice,” Akira said.
They reached the end of the alley.
Rachel stopped and caught her breath. “So everything's a lie?”
“No,” Savage said. “Our promise to protect you isn't.”
“As long as I'm worth money.”
“I told you before, the money isn't important. You are.” Savage tugged her toward an opposite alley.
“Your husband has spies on your sister's island,” Akira said. “If we try to take you there, we'll face another trap, and then another. Eventually you'll be captured.”
“Which means it's hopeless,” Rachel said.
“No,” Savage said. “You've got to keep trusting me.”
They crossed a street, blended with the crowd, and entered another alley.
“A year and a half ago,” Savage said, “when I worked in this district, I needed special additions to a car. I found a man in Antibes who could do the job. But he didn't care how much I paid him. Money, he said, meant nothing if he couldn't buy what he wanted. He needed extra benefits. What kind? I asked. Guess what he wanted? He saw some movie posters my client had left in the car and took for granted I had something to do with the festival at Cannes. So he wanted to meet his greatest idol, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Yes, I said, that might be possible. But if it happens, you won't get to talk to him, except to shake his hand. Then one day I'll come back to you and ask a favor. Of course, he said. One favor deserves another. And it'll be worth it, he said.”
“So now you'll demand the favor,” Akira said.
“A car.”
“And then what?” Rachel asked.
“Force of circumstance,” Savage said. “We've got our ‘ nightmare, but you're our obligation. So it looks like you get your wish, what you tried to get me to agree to on the plane.”
“You're taking me with you?” Rachel breathed. “To New York?”
“And Graham,” Akira said. “But I have to qualify my approval.”
“Why?” Savage asked.
“Because we're no longer protecting only this woman,” Akira said. “We're also protecting ourselves. Solving our common nightmare. Your death and mine. If this woman gets in the way…”
“You'll defend her,” Savage said.
“But of course,” Akira said, his eyes tinged with sadness. “Arigato for reminding me. The three of us are bound. But our paths conflict.”
“We don't have a choice,” Savage said.
Thirty-six hours later, they arrived at New York 's Kennedy Airport. During the intervening time, they'd driven to Marseilles and flown to Paris, where Savage decided that Rachel's bruises had faded enough that, with the use of cosmetics, she could pose for an acceptable passport photograph. She no longer dared risk attracting attention by pretending to be her sister. Using a trusted contact in Paris, Savage arranged for her to obtain a complete set of first-rate counterfeit documents, all in the name of Susan Porter. If anyone-especially an immigration official-commented on her likeness to Joyce Stone, Rachel merely had to say, “Thanks for the compliment.” As it happened, she and Savage passed through the checkpoints at Kennedy without incident.
Akira, who stood farther back in line so he wouldn't seem to be traveling with them, joined them shortly afterward. “I studied the crowd. No one showed interest in us.”
“Just as we hoped. Papadropolis has no way to guess where Rachel went. He probably figures we're still in southern France, trying to get onto her sister's island.”
They walked through the noisy, crowded concourse.
“Then I'm free?” Rachel asked.
“Let's call it ‘reprieved,’ “ Savage said. “I have to be honest. Your problem's been postponed, not canceled.”
“I'll settle for what I can get. For now, it's a relief not to have to keep watching behind me.”
“Ahead, though,” Akira said. “We have to deal with Graham.”
“I understand. I'm holding you back. I'm sorry. But if it weren't for the two of you… I don't know how to… It sounds so inadequate. Thanks.”
She hugged them.
They took a taxi to Grand Central Station, entered on Forty-second Street, came out on Lexington Avenue, and took another taxi to Central Park, from where they walked two blocks to a hotel on a side street off Fifth Avenue.
The suite that Savage had phoned ahead to reserve was spacious.
“Rachel, the bedroom's yours,” Savage said. “Akira and I will take turns using the sofa.”
They unpacked the travel bags they'd bought before leaving Paris.
“Anybody hungry?” Savage took their requests and ordered smoked-salmon sandwiches, salads, fruit, and bottled water from room service.
For the next few hours, they rested, bathed, and ate. Though they'd slept on the plane, they still felt jet lag. A further call to room service brought coffee and tea. The stimulants helped, as did a change of clothes. Just before five, Savage went to a nearby store to buy coats and gloves, a TV news announcer having warned that the night would be chilly and damp.
They waited till nine.
“Ready?” Savage asked.
“Not yet,” Akira said. “There are still some things we need to discuss. I know the answer already, but the question can't be ignored. Would it not be better to leave Rachel here?”
“We think we weren't followed, but we can't be totally sure,” Savage said. “If we leave her unprotected, she might be in danger.”
“Might be.”
“An unacceptable risk.”
“I agree,” Akira said.
“So what's the trouble?”
“Something I should have realized. Something I suddenly thought of. Your assignment to rescue Rachel,” Akira said. “What about it?”
“My assignment was to protect her husband. I arrived on Mykonos a day before you did. Graham negotiated my fee. And Graham sent you to get Rachel. Doesn't it strike you as curious that the man who arranged for both of us to protect Kamichi also arranged for both of us to go to Mykonos, our first assignment after we recovered from our injuries?”
“We were meant to meet?” Savage's spine froze.
“There was no guarantee we'd see each other. But I'd have chased you.”
“Just as I'd have chased you if our roles had been reversed, “ Savage said. ‘ ‘Graham knew he could count on our sense of obligation.”
“And on my skill. No matter how long it took, eventually I'd have found you.”
“There are few men I'd admit this to, but yes, you're good enough, eventually you'd have found me. We were meant to come face-to-face,” Savage said.
“And confront each other's nightmare.”
“A nightmare that didn't happen. But why do we think it did? Why did Graham arrange for us to meet six months ago and then meet again?”
“That's why I have to ask. Since we don't know what we're facing, should Rachel be part of it? We might be putting her in worse danger than she already is.”
“Then what do we do? Stay here?”
“I have to know why I see a dead man before me.”
“So do I,” Savage said.
“Then you're going,” Rachel said.
They turned, surprised.
“And I'm going with you.”
The weather forecast had been accurate. A cold, damp wind gusted along Fifth Avenue, bringing tears to Savage's eyes. He rubbed them, closed the top button of his overcoat, and watched the taillights of the taxi he'd left recede toward Greenwich Village.
Rachel stood next to him, flanked by Akira.
“One more time,” Savage said. “If there's any trouble, run. Don't worry about Akira and me. Go back to the hotel. If we're not in touch by noon, check out. Leave town. I gave you ten thousand dollars. That'll help you get started. I've told you how to contact your parents and your sister and get money without your husband being able to trace it. Pick a city at random. Begin a new life.”
“At random? But how would you find me?”
“We wouldn't, and no one else would either. That's the point. As long as you stay away from anyone or anything related to your former life, your husband can't track you. You'll be safe.”
“It sounds so”-Rachel shivered-”lonely.”
“The alternative's worse.”
The three of them walked down Fifth Avenue.
Three blocks later, near Washington Square, they reached a lane between streets. A wrought-iron gate blocked the entrance, its bars topped with spikes. The gate had a keyhole beneath a handle. When Savage twisted the handle and pushed, he discovered that the gate was locked. That didn't surprise him.
He studied the bars. They were tall. The many passing cars and pedestrians were bound to see two men and a woman climb over.
Despite the myth that New Yorkers minded their own business, it was more than likely that someone would call the police.
“Do the honors, Akira.”
On the way here, they'd stopped at an East Side tavern, where the owner-one of Savage's contacts-had sold them a set of lockpicks.
Akira freed the lock as easily as if he'd possessed a key. From their frequent visits here, both men knew that the gate was not equipped with intrusion sensors. Akira pushed the gate open, waited for Savage and Rachel to follow, then shoved the gate back into place. In case they needed to leave here quickly, he didn't relock it. Anyone who lived along this lane and found the gate unlocked would merely be disgusted that one of the neighbors had been irresponsible.
They faced the lane. A century earlier, stables and carriage houses had flanked it. The exteriors of the buildings had been carefully modified, their historical appearance preserved. Narrow entrances alternated with quaint double doors that had long ago provided access to barns. The surface of the lane remained cobblestoned. Electric lights, shaped like lanterns, reinforced the impression that time had been suspended.
An exclusive expensive location.
The lane was wide. Intended for horse-drawn buggies, it now permitted residents to steer cars into renovated garages. Lights gleamed from windows. But the only lights Savage cared about were those that shone from the fourth town house on his left.
He walked with Rachel and Akira toward it. Pausing at the entrance, he pressed a button beneath an intercom.
The oak door was lined with steel, Savage knew. Even so, he heard a bell ring faintly behind it. Ten seconds later, he Tang the bell again, and ten seconds later again. He waited to hear Graham's voice from the intercom.
No response.
“Asleep?” Savage wondered.
“At ten P.M.? With the lights on?”
“Then he doesn't want to be interrupted, or else he's gone out.”
“There's one way to tell,” Akira said. “If he's home, he'll have wedged a bar against the door in addition to locking it.”
The door had two dead-bolt locks. Akira picked them in rapid succession. He tested the door. It opened.
Savage hurried through. He'd been here so often that he knew the specifics of Graham's defenses. Not only were the windows barred; they had intrusion sensors. So did the doors to Graham's garage. And this door. As soon as its locks were freed, anyone entering had to open a closet on the left and press a series of buttons on a console to prevent an alarm from shrieking throughout the neighborhood and, more important, to prevent the local police from sending a squad car in response to a flashing light on their precinct's monitor. This had to be done within fifteen seconds.
Savage yanked the closet door open. A year ago, after several tries, due to professional habit, he'd managed to catch a glimpse of the numbers Graham had pressed.
He pressed those numbers now. A red light stopped glowing.
No siren wailed.
Savage leaned against the closet's wall.
Akira's silhouette filled the doorway. “I've checked this floor. No sign of him.”
Savage had been so preoccupied he hadn't paid attention to the harsh throbbing music he'd heard when he entered. “Heavy metal?”
“The radio,” Akira said. “Graham must have left it on when he went out. If someone tried to break in, the intruder would hear the music, decide the house was occupied, and look for another target.”
“But why would Graham bother? If someone tripped a sensor, the sirens would scare an intruder a lot more than the music would. Besides, when we stood outside, I barely heard the doorbell and didn't hear the music at all. The radio's hardly a deterrent.”
“It's not like Graham to go out and forget to turn it off. Heavy metal? Graham hates electric music. He's strictly classical.”
“Something's wrong. Check the top floors. I'll take the basement. Rachel, stay here.”
As Akira crept up a stairway to the left, Savage's bowels contracted. He crossed the large room that occupied this level. The room was Graham's office, though the glass-and-chrome desk at the rear was the only detail that indicated its purpose. Otherwise, it seemed a living room. To the right, bookshelves flanked a fireplace. To the left, stereo equipment filled a cabinet, Boston Acoustics speakers on either side, the source of the throbbing music. In the middle, a coffee table-its glass and chrome a match to Graham's desk-separated two leather sofas. Beneath them, an Afghan rug covered most of the floor, the border brightly waxed hardwood. Large pots of ferns occupied each corner. The brilliant white walls-upon which hung only a few paintings, all by Monet-reinforced the feeling of spaciousness created by the sparse furnishings.
A stranger could not have known, as Savage did, that Graham hid business documents in alcoves behind the bookshelves, and that the stereo's purpose was to assure those few clients he trusted enough to come here that the swelling cadences of Beethoven's glorious Eroica prevented their subdued conversation from being picked up by undetected microphones.
While Savage passed the coffee table, he noticed three empty bottles of champagne. Approaching the desk in the rear, he saw an ashtray filled with cigar butts and a tall-stemmed glass, the bottom of which contained a remnant of liquid.
To the left of the desk, he reached a door and cautiously opened it. Shadowy steps descended to a murky basement. He opened his overcoat and withdrew a.45 pistol that the owner of the East Side bar had sold him along with the lockpicks. Akira had bought one as well.
Gripping the pistol with his leather-gloved right hand, Savage pawed with his other hand, found a light switch, and illuminated the basement. Sweating, he took one step down. Another. Then another.
He held his breath, sprang to the bottom, and tensely aimed.
Three tables. Neat piles of wires, batteries, and disc-shaped objects covered them, various sophisticated eavesdropping devices in progressive stages of assembly.
A furnace. Ready with the.45, Savage peered behind it, seeing no one. Moisture dripped from his forehead. There weren't any other hiding places. He climbed the stairs.
But he wasn't relieved.
When Akira joined him, having searched the upper floors and reporting nothing unusual, Savage still didn't feel at ease.
Rachel slumped on a sofa.
Akira holstered his pistol. Electric guitars kept wailing.
“Maybe we're overreacting. There might be a simple explanation for Graham's uncharacteristic choice of music.”
“You don't sound convinced.”
Rachel pressed her hands to her ears. “Maybe he likes to torture himself.”
“Let's do ourselves a favor.” Savage pushed a button on the stereo's tuner, and the heavy-metal radio station became mercifully silent.
“Thank God,” Rachel said. She studied the coffee table. “Did you notice these empty bottles?”
Akira nodded. “Champagne. Graham loves it.”
“So much? Three bottles in one evening?”
“Graham's large enough to tolerate a great deal of alcohol,” Savage said. “But you're right, it does seem strange. I've never seen him overindulge.”
“Perhaps he had company,” Akira said.
“There's only one glass,” Rachel said. “If he did have guests and he put away their glasses, why didn't he put away his own glass and the empty bottles as well? And something else. Have you read the labels on the bottles?”
“No,” Savage said. “What about them?”
“At the farmhouse outside Athens, when the two of you talked about Graham, you said he drank Dom Pérignon.”
“It's the only brand he'll accept,” Akira said.
“Well, two of these labels say Dom Pérignon. But the third is Asti Spumante.”
“What?” Savage straightened.
“And what's that noise?” Rachel asked.
Savage glanced around sharply. His ears had been slow to adjust to the silence after the throbbing music. But now he heard a muted drone.
“Yes,” Akira said. “A faint vibration. What's causing it?”
“A refrigerator?” Savage said.
“Graham's kitchen's on the second floor,” Akira said. “We wouldn't hear the refrigerator this far away.”
“Maybe the furnace turned on,” Savage said.
Akira lowered his hand toward a vent. “No rush of air.”
“Then what…?”
“It seems to come from”-Rachel frowned, passing Savage- “this door beside the bookshelf.”
She opened the door and lurched back as thick gray smoke enveloped her. The faint drone became a rumble. Rachel coughed from the acrid stench of the smoke.
Except that it wasn't smoke, Savage realized.
Graham's garage! Savage hurried through the doorway. The garage was dark, but the lights in the living room managed to pierce the dense exhaust rushing past him. He saw Graham's Cadillac, its engine running, a bald, overweight figure slumped behind the steering wheel.
He rushed to lean through the car's open window and twisted the ignition key. The engine stopped. Straining not to breathe, he yanked the driver's door open, clutched Graham, and dragged him across the garage's concrete floor into the living room.
Rachel shoved the door closed, preventing more exhaust from spewing in, but enough had already entered the living room that when Savage finally breathed, he bent over, coughing.
Akira knelt beside Graham, feeling for a pulse.
“His face is deep red,” Rachel said.
“Carbon monoxide.” Akira listened to Graham's chest. “His heart isn't beating.”
Savage knelt opposite Akira, Graham between them. “Give him mouth-to-mouth. I'll work on his heart.”
As Akira opened Graham's mouth and breathed into it, Savage pounded Graham's chest once, then placed both palms over his heart, applying and releasing pressure.
“Rachel, call nine eleven,” Savage blurted, pressing again on Graham's chest, leaning back, pressing once more.
Rachel scrambled toward the phone on Graham's desk. She picked it up and began to press numbers.
“No, Rachel.” Akira sounded sick. “Never mind.” He stared at Graham and slowly stood.
“Keep trying!” Savage said.
Akira shook his head in despair. “Feel how cold he is. Look at his legs. When you set him on the floor, they stayed bent-as if he's still sitting in the car. He's been dead for quite a while. Nothing's going to revive him.”
Savage squinted at Graham's bent knees, swallowed, and stopped pressing Graham's chest.
Rachel set down the phone.
For several seconds, they didn't move.
“Jesus.” Savage's hands shook. He had trouble standing.
Akira's neck muscles were so taut they resembled ropes.
Rachel approached, trying not to look at Graham's corpse.
Savage suddenly noticed how pale she was. He reached her just in time before her legs gave out. He helped her toward a sofa, choosing the one that allowed her to sit with her back to Graham. “Put your head between your knees.”
“I just lost my balance for a second.”
“Sure.”
“I feel better now.”
“Of course. I'll get you some water,” Akira said.
“No, really, I think I'm okay.” Her color was returning. “For a moment there, the room seemed blurry. Now… Yes.” She mustered strength. “I'll be fine. You don't need to worry. I'm not going to faint. I promised myself I wouldn't get in the way. I won't hold you back.” Her blue eyes glinted, stubborn, proud.
“Get in the way? The opposite,” Savage said. “If it hadn't been for you, we probably wouldn't have discovered…” He bit his lower lip and turned toward Graham's body. “The poor bastard. I came here ready to strangle him. Now I'd hug him if he were alive. God, I'll miss him.” He pressed downward with his hands, as if repressing emotion. “So what the hell happened?”
“You mean what appears to have happened,” Akira said.
“Exactly.”
Rachel looked confused.
“Three empty wine bottles,” Akira said.
“Right. A drunken man decides to go out for the evening. He starts his car, but before he can open the garage, he passes out. The exhaust fumes kill him.”
“A coroner will reject that explanation.”
“Of course,” Savage said.
“I don't understand,” Rachel said.
“The garage was dark, and the door from the living room was shut,” Akira said. “Even a drunk would realize that the garage wasn't open when he found himself blundering around in the dark. His first instinct would be to open the outside door.”
“Unless he had an automatic garage-door opener, and he figured he could press the remote control in his car while he started the engine.”
“But Graham's garage actually has two doors. Like the stable doors they're supposed to resemble, they open out on each side, and it has to be done by hand.”
“So the garage was left closed deliberately.”
“I'm missing something,” Rachel said. “It sounds like … Graham committed suicide?”
“He sits here alone, the stereo blaring while he smokes and drinks and broods. When he's drunk enough to work up his nerve, he goes out to his car. Doesn't bother to shut off the stereo. Why worry about it? Makes sure the living room door is closed to keep the garage sealed. Turns the ignition key. The exhaust smells terrible, but after several deep breaths, his eyes feel heavy. He drifts. He dies. No muss, no fuss. Yeah,” Savage said, “the coroner will buy it.”
“And that's the way Graham would do it. He's too fastidious about his appearance to put a bullet through his head. All the blood would ruin his three-piece suit,” Akira said.
Rachel looked disturbed.
“He'd need a reason to kill himself,” Savage said.
“Problems with his health?”
Savage shrugged. “The last time I saw him, three weeks ago, there didn't seem anything wrong. Overweight, of course, but robust as ever. Even if he suddenly learned he had cancer, he's the type that would pamper himself till every medical option proved useless and he was terminal. Then he might kill himself. But not before.”
“Then business problems.”
“Better,” Savage said.
“You're still confusing me,” Rachel said.
“It wouldn't have anything to do with money,” Akira said. “Graham was wealthy. He invested shrewdly. So it has to be a client that turned against him, or a client's enemy who discovered that Graham arranged an attack against him.”
Savage thought about it. “Good. It'll work. In his prime, when Graham belonged to the British commandos, a challenge excited him. But after he retired, once he put on weight and got soft from too much champagne and caviar, he'd have realized that he'd lost his ability to tolerate pain. He trained me, but his own skills were memories from his youth. He once admitted to me that these days, one-on-one, he wouldn't have a chance against a practiced opponent. If he knew he was being stalked, if he was certain his death would be painful, he might have chosen a peaceful suicide.”
“Especially if we were stalking him,” Akira said.
“Except that when Graham sent us to Mykonos, he had to assume we'd eventually come here demanding answers, and he knew us well enough to assume that no matter how angry we were, we'd never kill him. Besides, the coroner isn't aware of us. I don't think he's supposed to be aware of us, either.”
“I agree,” Akira said. “Still, the coroner will have to believe that someone was stalking Graham, or else the scenario isn't valid. Somewhere-probably behind those bookshelves, in Graham's hidden files-the police will find evidence that Graham feared for his life.”
“And knew he would suffer.”
“And chose the dignity of a self-inflicted death.” Akira raised his eyebrows. “Very Japanese.”
“Would the two of you please explain?” Rachel asked.
“Graham didn't kill himself,” Akira said.
“But the way you've been talking…”
“We're pretending to be the coroner,” Savage said. “The verdict is suicide. But the coroner doesn't know that Graham would never have chosen a heavy-metal radio station. And the coroner doesn't know that Graham would never have mixed Dom Pérignon with Asti Spumante. Graham was murdered. He was forced-I assume by several men-to drink the champagne he had in stock. But two bottles weren't enough. So they sent a man to buy another. He came back with his choice, not Graham's. When Graham passed out, they put him in the car, turned it on, shut the living room door, waited till he was dead, then left.”
“But not before they played the radio to pass the time,” Akira said. “Again their choice of stations. They probably figured the music would be a realistic touch, so they didn't switch it off before they activated the alarm on the outside entrance and left.”
“Almost perfect,” Savage said. “The bastards. I'll…”
“Make them pay?” Akira's sad eyes blazed. “That goes without saying.”
Savage raised Graham's arms while Akira lifted his legs. Rachel opened the living room door, turning from the cloud of exhaust spewing in while the two men carried the corpse to the garage.
They positioned the body behind the Cadillac's steering wheel. The poisonous fumes were still so dense that Savage held his breath while making sure that Graham slumped on the seat exactly as before. After all, as soon as Graham's blood had stopped circulating, gravity would have made the blood settle toward various pockets in his abdomen, hips, and legs, causing purplish-red discolorations in those areas. If the corpse had discolorations in higher areas, a coroner would know that the corpse had been moved.
The corpse had been moved, but Graham's body had not lain in the living room long enough for the blood to be redistributed and thus discolor the back. The coroner would not become suspicious.
Savage twisted the ignition key, hearing the Cadillac's engine rumble. He slammed the driver's door and ran with Akira into the living room.
The room was filled with haze. Savage coughed, hearing Rachel shut the door.
“The windows,” Akira said.
They hurried toward opposite ends of the room, pressed buttons that shut off intruder-detection alarms, raised panes, and gulped fresh air.
A cold wind billowed drapes, attacking the fumes. Gray wisps swirled toward the ceiling, dispersed, and flowed out the tops of the open windows.
In the wind's subtle hiss, Savage listened to the muffled drone of the Cadillac's engine. He turned toward the living room door, the garage beyond it. “I'm sorry, friend.”
“But was he a friend?” Akira asked. “A friend wouldn't have deceived us. Why did he do it?”
Anger conflicted with grief and made Savage hoarse. “Let's find out.” He crossed the room and tugged at the bookshelves.
The wall swung outward, revealing further shelves. Metal containers. Graham's documents.
Savage and Akira sorted urgently through them.
Rachel stood in the background. “You said you didn't think the coroner was supposed to know about you. What did you mean?”
“Too coincidental. Graham's murder. Our coming here to question him. They're related.” Savage scanned pages.
“You can't prove that.”
“Yes,” Akira said, “we can.” He sorted through another box of files. “Graham keeps these documents for one reason only-to explain his income to the IRS. If it weren't for taxes, his passion for secrecy would never have allowed him to keep business records. Of course, he took the precaution of using pseudonyms for his operatives and his clients, so an enemy wouldn't learn anything vital if he found these files. The code for the pseudonyms is in a safe-deposit box. The arrangement with the bank is that both Graham and his lawyer have to be present to open it, so we know the code is secure. But Savage and I don't need the code to tell us which pseudonyms Graham used for us. We chose our pseudonyms ourselves. In fact, the names by which you know us are our pseudonyms.”
They searched through other boxes.
“What are you looking for?” Rachel asked.
“Graham kept two sets of documents, cross-referenced, one for his operatives and the jobs they did, the other for the clients who commissioned the jobs. Did you find them?”
Akira checked the final box. “No.”
“I didn't either.”
“Find what?” Rachel asked.
“Our files,” Savage said. “They're gone.”
“We don't know the pseudonym Graham gave Kamichi, or the ones he gave your sister and your husband,” Akira said. “But since our files aren't here, I assume the others are gone as well. That's the proof I referred to. Whoever killed Graham must have taken the files. The coroner isn't supposed to be aware of us, not even of our pseudonyms. Graham was killed to keep him from telling us why we saw each other die.”
“And here's the suicide note Akira predicted we'd find. Typed, of course. Because Graham didn't compose it.”
“Left by his killers. All right,” Rachel said. “I'm convinced. But how could they be sure the police would look behind these bookshelves?”
“The shelves weren't closed completely.”
“We'd better get out,” Akira said. “The neighbor on the other side of Graham's garage might wonder about the faint rumble he hears through the wall and call the police.”
They replaced the files and arranged the metal containers in their original positions.
Savage shut the bookshelves, leaving a slight gap just as Graham's killers had done.
Akira turned on the radio. Guitars throbbed and wailed.
“The room's aired out. I don't smell exhaust fumes.” Rachel closed the windows.
Savage glanced around. “Is everything the way we found it? We all wore gloves. There'll be no fingerprints. Okay.”
Akira went outside, checked the lane, and motioned for Rachel to follow.
Savage activated the intrusion alarm in the closet, shut the closet's door, stepped outside, shut the front door, and waited for Akira to use his lockpicks to secure the two dead-bolt locks on the entrance.
Savage held Rachel's arm as they walked along the lane.
She trembled. “Don't forget to lock the gate behind us.”
“Don't worry. We wouldn't have. But thanks for reminding us,” Akira said. “I'm impressed. You're learning, Rachel.”
“The way this is going, when it's finally over-assuming it ever is-I've got a terrible feeling I'll be an expert.”
In the night, they walked down Fifth Avenue, passing streetlights, approaching the shadows of Washington Square. The cold, damp wind continued gusting and again brought tears to Savage's eyes. “Would the killers have left the area?”
“I assume so. Their work was completed,” Akira said.
“But was it completed? If the point was to silence Graham, they must have guessed we'd be coming here.”
“How would they know about us?”
“The only explanation I can think of…”
“Say it.”
“… is that Graham worked with and possibly for the men who killed him,” Savage said.
“But why would he have helped them in the first place? He didn't need money. He valued loyalty. Why did he turn against us?”
“Hey,” Rachel said. “Let me understand this. You're saying we're being watched by Graham's killers?” She stared behind her. “And they'll try to kill us as well?”
“They'll follow us,” Akira said. “But try to kill us? I don't think so. Someone went to a lot of trouble to convince Savage and me that we saw each other die. Why, I don't know. But we're very important to somebody. Whoever it is will want to protect his investment.”
Savage hailed an approaching taxi. They scrambled inside.
“ Times Square,” Savage said.
For the next hour, they shifted from taxi to taxi, switched to a subway, went back to a taxi, and ended with a stroll through Central Park.
Rachel was surprised to see so many joggers. “I thought the park wasn't safe at night.”
“They run in groups. The junkies don't bother them.”
She looked doubly surprised when she noticed that Akira wasn't next to her. “Where…?”
“Among the trees, above the rocks, going back the way we came. If we're being followed, he'll deal with them.”
“But he didn't explain what he was doing.”
“He didn't have to,” Savage said.
“The two of you read each other's mind?”
“We know what needs to be done.”
Ten minutes later, Akira emerged from bushes. “If we were being followed, they're not foolish enough to trail us through Central Park at midnight.”
The shadowy path forked.
“This way, Rachel.” Savage guided her toward the right. “It's safe to go back to the hotel.”
The fourth man swung his katana.Its blade hissed, struck Kamichi's waist, kept speeding as if through air, and sliced him in half. Kamichi's upper and lower torso fell in opposite directions.
Blood gushed. Severed organs spilled over the floor.
Akira wailed in outrage, rushing to chop the man's windpipe before the assassin could swing again.
Too late. The assassin reversed his aim, both hands gripping the katana.
From Savage's agonized perspective on the floor, it seemed that Akira jumped backward in time to avoid the blade. But the swordsman didn't swing a third time. Instead he watched indifferently as Akira's head fell off his shoulders.
As blood spewed from Akira's severed neck.
As Akira's torso remained standing for three grotesque seconds before it toppled.
Akira's head hit the floor with the thunk of a pumpkin, rolled, and stopped in front of Savage. The head rested on its stump, its eyes on a level with Savage's.
The eyes were open.
They blinked.
Savage screamed.
Frantic, he struggled to overcome the pain of his broken arms and legs, to force them to move, to raise himself from the floor. He'd failed to protect Kamichi and assist Akira. But he still had an obligation to avenge their deaths before the assassins killed him.
He compelled his anguished limbs to respond, lurched upward, felt hands press against him, and fought. The hands became arms encircling him. They pinned his own arms, squeezing against his back, thrusting air from his lungs.
“No,” Akira said.
Savage thrashed.
“No,” Akira repeated.
Abruptly Savage stopped. He blinked. In contrast with the sweat trickling off his brow, his skin felt terribly cold. He shivered.
Akira-
Impossible!
– hugged him fiercely.
No! You're dead!
Akira's face loomed inches away, his sad eyes narrowed with alarm, eyes that Savage had just seen blink from a severed head resting upright on the floor.
Akira again repeated, this time whispering, “No.” Savage slowly peered around. The image of the blood-spattered hallway in the Medford Gap Mountain Retreat blurred and dissolved, replaced by the tasteful furnishings in a room, in a suite, in a hotel off Fifth Avenue.
The room was mostly dark, except for a dim light next to a chair in a comer to the left of the door to the hallway. Akira, having slept while Savage kept watch, had taken his turn on guard.
Savage breathed. “Okay.” He relaxed.
“You're sure?” Akira kept holding him.
“A nightmare.”
“No doubt the same as mine. Brace your legs.”
Savage nodded.
Akira released his grip.
Savage sank onto the sofa.
The bedroom door jerked open. Rachel appeared, focused on Savage and Akira, inhaled, and quickly approached. She wore a thigh-length blue nightshirt. Her breasts swelled the cotton garment. Her urgent strides raised its hem.
She showed no embarrassment. Savage and Akira paid no attention. She was part of the team.
“You screamed,” Rachel said. “What happened?”
“A nightmare,” Savage said.
“The nightmare?”
Savage nodded, then turned and peered up at Akira.
“I have it, too,” Akira said. “Every night.”
Savage studied Akira in pained confusion. “I thought, once we'd met for a second time, it would finally go away.”
“I thought mine would, too. But it hasn't.”
“I've been trying not to talk about it.” Savage gestured in frustration. “I still can't get over the certainty that I saw you killed. I see you before me! I hear your voice! I can touch you! But it makes no difference. We've been together for several days. Yet I'm still sure I saw you die.”
“As I saw you die,” Akira said. “Every time I doubt myself, I think of my six months of agony while I convalesced. I've got the scars on my arms and legs to remind me.”
Savage unbuttoned his shirt and revealed two surgical scars, one below his left rib cage, the other near his right pelvic bone. “Where my spleen and appendix had to be removed because they'd been ruptured by the beating I received.”
“Mine were removed as well.” Akira exposed his muscular chest and abdomen, showing two scars identical to Savage's.
“So we know… we can prove… that you both were beaten,” Rachel said. “But obviously your ‘deaths’-that part of your nightmare-are exactly that: a nightmare.”
“Don't you understand it doesn't matter?” Savage said. “The fact that Akira's alive doesn't change what I know I saw. This is worse than déjà vu, worse than the eerie feeling that I've lived through this before. It's more like the opposite. I don't know what to call it. Jamais vu, the sense that what I saw never happened. And yet it did, and what I'm seeing now isn't possible. I've got to find out why I'm facing a ghost.”
“We both do,” Akira said.
“But Graham's dead. Who else could explain what happened? How do we find the answer? Where do we start?”
“Why don't you…?” Rachel's voice dropped.
“Yes? Go on,” Savage said.
“This is just a suggestion.”
“Your suggestions have been good so far,” Akira said.
“It's probably obvious.” Rachel shrugged. “For all I know, the two of you have already thought of it and dismissed it.”
“What?” Akira asked.
“You start where your problem started. Six months ago. At this place you keep talking about.”
“The Medford Gap Mountain Retreat.”
They ate a room-service breakfast and checked out shortly after seven. Using evasion procedures, they reached a car rental agency when it opened an hour later. Savage had considered asking one of his contacts to supply a car, but he felt nervously convinced that the fewer people who knew he was in town, the better. Especially now that Graham was dead.
Rachel confessed that she'd had a nightmare of her own, seeing Graham propped behind the steering wheel of his Cadillac, enveloped by exhaust fumes, driving into eternity. But the Cadillac would eventually use up its fuel, she explained. If a neighbor didn't hear the engine's faint rumble before then, it was possible that Graham would sit in the car for several days, bloating, decomposing, riddled with maggots, until the stench from his garage finally made someone call the police. Graham's nostrils, filled with maggots, had climaxed her nightmare, startling her awake.
“Why couldn't we have phoned the police and pretended to be a neighbor concerned about the sound in Graham's garage?” she asked.
“Because the police have an automatic computerized trace on incoming calls. In case someone reports an emergency and hangs up without giving a number. If we phoned from Graham's house or a pay phone, it would have told the police a neighbor wasn't calling. Since we don't know what Graham's killers are up to, it's better to let the scenario play out the way they intended.”
As Savage drove the rented Taurus from the city, Rachel lapsed into brooding silence. Akira slept in the back.
Attempting to recreate his previous journey, Savage left Manhattan via the George Washington Bridge and entered New Jersey, heading along Interstate 80. Twenty minutes later, he started scanning the motels near the exit ramps.
Holiday Inn. Best Western.
“There,” Savage said. “Howard Johnson's. That's where Kamichi changed briefcases. It puzzled me.”
The October day was splendidly clear, the sun dispersing the chill of the night before. As they left New Jersey and progressed into Pennsylvania, cliffs rimmed Interstate 80. After half an hour, the cliffs were mountains.
Rachel began to relax. “I've always loved autumn. The leaves turning colors.”
“The last time I drove here, the trees hadn't budded yet. There were patches of snow. Dirt-covered snow. It was dusk.
The clouds looked like coal dust. Akira, wake up. We'll soon be leaving the highway.”
Savage steered toward an exit ramp. He followed the directions he'd memorized six months ago, found his way through a maze of narrow roads, and finally saw a road sign: MEDFORD GAP.
The town was small. Impoverished. Almost no traffic. Few pedestrians. Boards on many store windows.
“Akira, is this the way you remember it?”
“We came here after dark. Except for the streetlights, I saw almost nothing. We turned to the left at the town's main intersection.”
“This stop-street ahead.” Savage braked and turned, proceeding up a tree-lined mountain road. It curved, bringing him back to Medford Gap.
“Obviously not the main intersection.” He drove farther. “Here. Yes. This is it.”
He turned left at a traffic light and angled up a steep winding road. Six months ago, mud and snow on the shoulders had made him worry about descending cars he might have to avoid. The road had been so narrow that he couldn't have passed approaching headlights and would have been forced to risk getting stuck in the ditch near the trees.
But now, as before, no cars descended. Thank God, unlike earlier, the dirt road was dry and firm. And in daylight, he could see where to swerve if a vehicle did approach.
He steered through a hairpin curve, driving higher past isolated cabins flanked by dense forest. “Wait'll you see this, Rachel. It's the strangest building. So many styles. The whole thing's a fifth of a mile long.”
He crested the peak, veered past a rock, and braked, his seat belt squeezing his chest. The Taurus skidded.
He stared in disbelief.
Ahead, the road stopped. Beyond, there was nothing. Except boulders and brilliantly colored trees.
“What?”
“You took another wrong road,” Akira said.
“No. This was the road.”
“Day versus night. You can't be certain. Try it again.” Savage did.
And when he'd eliminated every left road up from Medford Gap, he stopped outside a tavern.
A group of men stood next to the entrance, adjusting their caps, spitting tobacco juice.
“The Medford Gap Mountain Retreat. How do I get there?” Savage asked.
“Mountain Retreat?” A gaunt man squinted. “Never heard of the fucking thing.”
Savage drove faster, unable to control his urge to flee. With tunnel vision, he stared at the broken line down the middle of the narrow road, oblivious to the glorious orange, red, and yellow of the trees on the flanking towering slopes.
“But it was there!” Savage drove even faster. “Akira and I both saw it. We slept there. We ate there. We guarded Kamichi along every corridor! Three nights! Three days!”
“Soold,” Akira said. “The wagon-wheel chandeliers. The ancient staircase. I can still smell the must in the lobby. And the smoke from the logs in the parlor's fireplace.”
“But it isn't there,” Rachel said.
The Taurus squealed around a bend. Struggling with the steering wheel, Savage suddenly realized he was doing seventy. He eased his foot from the gas pedal. Beyond a bare ridge-a sign said BEWARE OF FALLING ROCKS-he saw an abandoned service station, its sign dangling, its windows broken, and pulled off the road, stopping at the concrete slabs where fuel pumps once had stood.
“We asked a dozen different people.” Though Savage no longer drove, he continued to clutch the steering wheel. “None of them had the faintest idea what we were talking about.”
He felt smothered. Jerking the driver's door open, he lunged from the car, filling his lungs with fresh air.
Akira and Rachel joined him.
“This isn't some small hotel so far from Medford Gap that the locals might not have heard of it.” Savage stared toward the bluffs beyond the service station but was too preoccupied to notice them. “It's a major tourist attraction, so close that Medford Gap's part of its name.”
“And we checked every road that led to the top of the mountain,” Akira said.
“We even drove back up the road that you're sure is the one you used six months ago,” Rachel said. “We searched the trees in case there'd been a fire. But there wasn't any charred wreckage. A half-year isn't enough time for the forest to hide evidence of the building.”
“No,” Savage said. “The forest couldn't have hidden a burnt-out cabin, let alone a massive hotel. And the fire would have been spectacular. The local population couldn't possibly forget it so fast. Even if there had been a fire, it wouldn't have destroyed the lake beside the hotel. But the lake's not there either!”
“And yet we're certain both the hotel and the lake were there,” Akira said.
“Certain?” Savage asked. “Just as we're certain we saw each other die? But we didn't.”
“And”-Akira hesitated-“the Mountain Retreat never existed.”
Savage exhaled, nodding. “I feel like…What I described last night in the hotel. Jamais vu. Nothing seems real. I can't trust my senses. It's as if I'm losing my mind.”
“What happened to us?” Akira asked.
“And where?” Savage scowled. “And why?”
“Keep retracing your steps,” Rachel said. “Where did you go from here?”
“A hospital,” Savage said.
“Mine was in Harrisburg,” Akira said. “A hundred miles south. I had to be flown by helicopter.”
“ Harrisburg?” Savage's hands and feet became numb. “You never mentioned…”
“It didn't occur to me. The look in your eyes. Don't tell me you were flown there as well.”
“Did your doctor have blond hair?”
“Yes.”
“And freckles?”
“And glasses?”
“And his name was…?”
“ Hamilton.”
“Shit,” Savage said.
They raced toward the car.
“What's keeping her?” Akira asked.
“It's been only ten minutes.” Savage had let Rachel out when he couldn't find a parking space. He'd been driving repeatedly around the block. Still, despite his assurance to Akira, Savage's need to protect her-coupled with his growing affection for her-made him nervous by her absence.
Midafternoon. Traffic accumulated. Savage reached an intersection, turned right, and sat straighter, pointing.
“Yes,” Akira said. “Good. There she is.”
Relieved, Savage watched her hurry from the Harrisburg public library, glimpse the Taurus, and quickly get in. He drove on.
“I checked the phone book,” she said. “Here's a photocopy of the city map. And a list of the hospitals in the area. But this'll take longer than you expected. There are several. You're sure you don't remember the name of the hospital?”
“No one ever mentioned it,” Akira said.
“But the name must have been stenciled on the sheets and the gowns.”
“I was groggy from Demerol,” Savage said. “If the name was on the sheets, I didn't notice.”
Akira studied the list and read it to Savage. “Community General Osteopathic Hospital. Harrisburg Hospital. Harrisburg State Hospital.”
“Osteopathic?” Savage said. “Isn't that something like chiropractic?”
“No, osteopathic medicine's a theory that most illness is caused by pressure from injured muscles and displaced bones,” Akira said.
Savage thought about it and shook his head. “Let's try…”
“I'm sorry, sir,” the elderly woman at the Harrisburg Hospital information desk said. “There's no Dr. Hamilton on our staff.”
“Please,” Akira said tensely, “check again.”
“But I checked three times already. The computer shows no reference to a Dr. Hamilton.”
“Maybe he's not on the staff,” Akira said. “He might be in private practice and sends his patients here.”
“Well, of course that's possible,” the woman said behind the desk.
“No,” Rachel said.
Savage and Akira turned to her.
“When I checked the phone book, I looked under private physicians. He isn't listed.”
“Then he works for another hospital,” Akira said.
They crossed the crowded lobby toward the exit.
“What troubles me,” Rachel said, “is there was no Dr. Hamilton in the white pages either.”
“An unlisted number.”
“What kind of physician has an unlisted private number?” The lobby's door hissed open.
The overweight man behind the information desk at the Harrisburg State Hospital shook his head, tapped more buttons on the keyboard, watched the computer screen, and pursed his lips.
“Nope. No Dr. Hamilton. Sorry.”
“But that's impossible,” Savage said.
“After Medford Gap, nothing's impossible,” Akira said.
“There's got to be an explanation.” Savage suddenly thought of one. “This happened six months ago. For all we know, he resigned and moved to another city to work for another institution.”
“Then how would we find that information?” Rachel asked the man behind the desk.
“You'd have to talk to Personnel. The computer lists only current staff members.”
“And where-?”
The man gave directions to Personnel. “But you'd better hurry. It's almost five. They'll soon be closing.”
“I'll do it,” Akira said quickly. “Savage, phone the personnel office at the other hospital.”
Akira hurried down a corridor.
Trying not to bump into visitors, Savage rushed toward a row of pay phones at the side of the lobby.
“I'll meet you back here,” Rachel said.
“Where are-?”
“I've got an idea.”
Continuing toward the phones, Savage heard her urgently ask the man at the information desk, “How do I find the business office?” Savage wondered why she wanted to know. But at once all he cared about was that every phone was being used. He glanced at his watch. Six minutes to five. Anxious, he pulled coins from his pocket, scanned the list of hospitals, addresses, and phone numbers Rachel had given him, saw a woman leave a phone, and darted toward it. As the call went through, he glanced across the lobby. Rachel was gone.
They sat in the hospital's coffee shop, staring at their Styrofoam cups.
“The personnel office has no listing for a Dr. Hamilton in the past five years,” Akira said.
“The other hospital did have a Dr. Hamilton,” Savage said.
Akira straightened.
“Three years ago,” Savage said. “Female. Elderly. She died from a stroke.”
Akira slumped back in his chair.
“It's beginning to look as if our Dr. Hamilton didn't exist any more than the Medford Gap Mountain Retreat did,” Savage said.
“And that's not all that didn't exist,” Rachel said. “The two of you may think you're real, but you're not.”
“What are you talking about?” Akira asked.
“At least as far as the Harrisburg hospitals are concerned. I went to the business office. While they found out what I needed, I went to a phone to call the other hospital and get its business office before it closed. I asked for the same information.”
“What information?” Akira asked.
“The business office is the place that sends patients their bills. Earlier you told me the names you'd used when you stayed in the hospital. I pretended to be an insurance agent. I said my company had paid for your treatment several months ago. Now I was getting complaints from you. I asked each hospital why it was sending you notices about overdue bills. The people I spoke to were quite sympathetic. It was easy to solve the problem, they said. They checked their computers. You'll never guess what. The computers came up blank. There's no record that you stayed in either hospital.”
Savage squeezed his Styrofoam cup, almost breaking it. “Then where the hell were we?”
“Maybe the Osteopathic Hospital,” Rachel said. “But when we go there during business hours tomorrow, I strongly suspect…”
“We'll get the same answers,” Akira said. “There's no such place as the Medford Gap Mountain Retreat. We didn't see each other die. We never met Dr. Hamilton. We weren't in a Harrisburg hospital. What else didn't happen?”
Savage stood forcefully and walked away.
“Where are you going?” Rachel hurried to follow, joined by Akira.
“The information desk.”
“But why?” Rachel tried to keep pace as Savage stalked into the lobby. “We've asked everything we can think of.”
“No. There's one thing we haven't asked. The way to the goddamn Emergency Ward.”
In a brightly lit vestibule, a weary nurse peered up from behind a counter. “Yes, sir? May 1…?”
She suddenly frowned, seeing the tension on Savage's face. She shifted her troubled gaze toward Rachel and Akira.
“I want to see a doctor,” Savage said.
“Has there been an accident?” She stood. “You don't look injured. Is it someone else who needs…?”
“I said I want to see a doctor.”
The nurse blinked, startled. “Of course, sir.” She stepped back nervously. “Please wait right here.” She disappeared down a corridor.
“Be calm,” Akira said.
“I'm trying, but it's not doing any good. I have to know.”
Abruptly the nurse returned, accompanied by a tall man wearing hospital greens.
“Yes, sir?” The young man slowed, approaching Savage cautiously. “I'm Dr. Reynolds. The senior resident on this ward. Is there something-”
“I need an X ray.”
“Why?” The resident studied him. “Are you in pain?”
“You bet I'm in pain.”
“But where? Your chest? An arm?”
“Everywhere.”
“What?”
“I want…What I need… is a full-body X ray.”
“A full-body…? Why would you…? Describe your symptoms.”
“I ache from head to foot. I can't bear the pain anymore. I have to know what's wrong. Just give me the X rays.”
“But we can't just…”
“I'll pay.”
“We still can't…Does your family doctor know about your pain?”
“I travel a lot. I don't have a family doctor.”
“But without a diagnosis…”
“I said I'm willing to pay.”
“Money's not the issue. We can't give X rays needlessly. If your pain's as severe as you indicate, you'd better come into the ward. Let me examine you.”
“Your name, please,” a young woman said.
Savage turned toward a civilian, who'd replaced the nurse at the counter.
“And the name of your insurance company.”
“I changed my mind,” Savage said.
The resident frowned. “You don't want to be examined?”
Savage shook his head. The resident's suspicious gaze bothered him. “I thought if I asked…My friend here was right. Be calm.”
“But something is wrong with you.”
“You're right about that. The question is what.Don't worry, though. I'll take your advice. I need a family doctor.”
The elderly physician, who had a gray mustache, wore suspenders, and didn't mind ordering full-body X rays for anyone willing to pay him five thousand dollars, came out of a door marked TECHNICIANS ONLY. Instead of sending his patients to one of the hospitals, he'd chosen a private facility called the Radiology Clinic. As he crossed the waiting room, Savage, Akira, and Rachel stood.
“Well?” Savage asked.
“The films are excellent. We won't need to take a second set. I've studied them carefully.”
Savage couldn't keep the anxiety out of his voice. “But what did you find?”
“You paid so handsomely to have your pictures taken, why don't you come along and see for yourselves?”
The doctor led them through the door. They quickly entered a dimly lit room. To the right was a counter with cupboards above and below. To the left was a wall upon which a row of X-ray films hung from clips, illuminated by fluorescent lights behind them.
Various skeletal segments were revealed in shades of gray.
“These are yours,” the doctor said, gesturing to Savage. “And these farther over are yours,” he told Akira.
They leaned toward the films. After thirty seconds, Akira shook his head and faced the doctor. “I don't know how to read them.”
“You asked me to determine how well your injuries had mended. My response is, what injuries?”
“Jesus,” Savage said. “I was right.”
“I'm not sure what you mean, but I'm sure of this.” The doctor traced a pencil along bones on the various films. “I'll save you the medical terminology. This is your upper right leg. Your lower. Your left leg, upper and lower. Right ribs. Left ribs. Various views of the skull.”
The doctor shifted toward Akira's X rays and used the pencil to draw attention to the images of his bones as well. “Completely intact. No sign of calcium deposits where the bones would have mended. Why would you tell me that each of you had suffered broken legs, broken arms, broken ribs, and a fractured skull, when none of those injuries obviously ever happened?”
“We thought they did,” Akira said.
“Thought?Traumas that extensive wouldn't leave you in doubt. Your suffering would have been enormous.”
“It was,” Savage said.
He trembled. Rachel gripped his arm.
“Howcould you have suffered?” the doctor asked. “If the injuries didn't occur?”
“That's a damned good question. Believe me, I intend to find out.”
“Well, while you're at it, find out something else,” the doctor said. “I don't like coincidence. Both of you claim identical injuries, though they never occurred. But both of you do have signs of surgery”-he gestured with his pencil toward two X-ray films-“which weren't the result of broken bones.”
“Yes, each of us had our spleen and appendix removed,” Akira said.
“You showed me those scars,” the doctor said. “They're exactly as they should look if those organs were in fact removed. Your X rays aren't detailed enough to verify my conclusion, of course. Only further surgery would prove it. But that's not my point The surgery I'm referring to wasn't on your chests and your lower torsos. It was on your skulls.”
“What?” Savage said.
“Of course. Because of the fractures,” Akira said.
“No.”The doctor kept gesturing toward separate X-ray films. “These tiny circles? One above each left ear? They're unmistakable evidence.”
“Of?”
“Intrusions into the left temporal lobe of each brain.” The doctor pivoted toward Savage, then Akira. “And neither of you is aware of the surgery?”
Savage hesitated.
“I asked you a question.”
“No,” Savage said, “we weren't aware.”
“That's hard to believe.”
“It wouldn't be if you'd been with us for the past few days. Please.” Savage swallowed bile. “Help us.”
“How? I've done what I could.”
“No, where do we go? Who do we ask from here?”
“All I can tell you”-the doctor turned to the films-“is the surgeon was a genius. I'm merely a Pennsylvania general practitioner about to retire. But I haven't ignored the latest medical texts. And I know of nothing this sophisticated. The juncture between detached skull segments and each skull itself is almost perfectly disguised. The procedure was magnificent. Where do you go from here? Where money buys superstars. The best neurosurgeons at the biggest institutions.”
The neurosurgeon's name was Anthony Santizo. He had thick dark hair, swarthy skin, and extremely intelligent eyes. His handsome features were somewhat haggard-the consequence of fatigue, Savage guessed, since the doctor had just completed seven hours of surgery. In contrast, his body was trim-the consequence of addiction to racquetball games, one of which Santizo had explained he was scheduled to play in an hour.
“I know you're busy,” Savage said. “We're grateful you made time for us.”
Santizo raised his shoulders. “I normally wouldn't have. But the neurosurgeon your physician spoke to in Harrisburg happens to know a former classmate of mine, a good friend from Harvard Medical School. Harrisburg has excellent physicians, of course, but the way your problem was described to me, I think my friend was right to send you here.”
Here was Philadelphia, the hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. A hundred miles east of Harrisburg, it was quicker to get to than Pennsylvania 's other major university hospital, twice as far to the west, in Pittsburgh.
“I'm intrigued by mysteries,” Santizo said. “Sherlock Holmes. Agatha Christie. The wonderful clues. The delicious riddles. But the brain is thegreatest mystery. The key to the door to the secret of what makes us human. That's why I chose my specialty.”
A secretary entered the immaculate office, bringing in cups and a pot on a tray.
“Excellent,” Santizo said. “On time. My herbal tea. Would you care for…?”
“Yes,” Akira said. “I'd like some.”
“I'm afraid it's less strong than you're used to in Japan.”
Akira bowed. “I'm sure it's refreshing.”
Santizo bowed in return. “I went to Harvard with one of your countrymen. I'll never forget what he said to me. We were both just starting our internships. The long, brutal hours wore me down. I didn't think I'd survive. Your countryman said, ‘When you're not on duty, you must find an exercise you enjoy.’ I told him I didn't understand. ‘If I'm already tired, why would I want to exercise?’ You know what his answer was? ‘Your fatigue is caused by your mind. You must combat that fatigue by physical fatigue. The latter will cancel your former.’ That made no sense to me. I told him so. He responded with one word.”
“Wa,” Akira said.
Santizo laughed. “Yes! By God, you remind me of your countryman!”
“ ‘Wa’?” Rachel asked, assessed the word, and frowned. As everyone looked at her, she reached self-consciously for a cup.
“It means ‘balance,’” Akira said. “Mental fatigue is neutralized by…”
“Exercise,” Santizo said. “How right your countryman was. It's tough to find time, and after the days and nights I put in, I'm usually so exhausted I hate to do it. But I have to do it. Because racquetball makes me abetter neurosurgeon.” Preoccupied, he glanced at his watch. “And in fifty minutes, I'm due at the court. So show me these supposedly baffling X rays.”
He took the oversize folder. “Hey, don't look depressed. Remember ‘wa.’ Racquetball and neurosurgery. Sherlock Holmes.”
“Mmmmm.”
Santizo stood in a corner of his office, glancing back and forth at two X-ray films of skull profiles that he'd clipped onto a fluorescent screen.
He'd been studying the films for several minutes, his arms crossed, listening to Savage's explanation of the events that had brought them here.
“Executive protectors?” Santizo continued to assess the films. “It sounds like the two of you have a fascinating profession. Even so…”
He turned toward Savage and Akira, took a penlight from his shirt pocket, and examined the left side of each man's head.
“Mmmmm.”
He sat behind his desk, sipped his herbal tea, and thought a moment.
“The surgeon did an excellent job. State of the art, Mind you, I'm referring only to the cosmetic aspects of the procedure. The skillful concealment of the fact of the surgery. The minimal calcification around the portion of each skull that was taken out and then replaced. You see, the standard method is to drill holes in the skull, at the corners of the area to be removed. These holes are carefully calculated so the drill doesn't enter the brain. A thin, very strong, very sharp wire is then inserted into one of the holes and guided along the edge of the brain until the wire comes out another hole. The surgeon grips each end of the wire and pulls, sawing outward through the skull. He repeats the process from one pair of holes to another until the segment of skull can be removed. The wire is thin, as I explained, but nonetheless not thin enough to prevent the demarcation between the skull and the segment that's been removed and later replaced from developing obvious calcification. Even without that calcification, the holes in the skull would be impossible to miss on an X ray. In this case”-Santizo rubbed his chin-“there aren't any holes, only this small circle as if a plug of bone had been removed and then replaced. The demarcation between the plug and the skull is so fine that calcification is negligible. I'm surprised the general practitioner you went to detected the evidence. Someone not prepared to look for it might not have seen it.”
“But if a standard technique wasn't used, what was” Savage asked.
“Now that's the question, isn't it?” Santizo said. “The surgeon could have used a drill with a five millimeter bit to make a hole the same size as this plug. But he wanted a technique that wouldn't leave obvious signs. The only solution that occurs to me is…The plug was removed from the skull by a laser beam. Lasers are already being used in such delicate procedures as repairing arteries and retinas. It's only a matter of time before they become common procedure in other types of surgery. I've experimented with them myself. That's what I meant-this was state of the art. There's no doubt-in terms of getting in and out, whoever did this was impressively skilled and knowledgeable. Not uniquely so, I should add. Among the top neurosurgeons, I know at least a dozen, including myself, who could have concealed the evidence of the procedure equally well. But that's a superficial test of excellence. The ultimate criterion is whether the surgeon accomplished his purpose, and because we're not aware of why the surgery was required, I can't fully judge the quality of the work.”
“But”-Akira hesitated-“could the surgery explain…?”
“Your dilemma? Perhaps,” Santizo said. “And then again maybe not. What was the term you used? The opposite ofdéjà vu?”
“Jamais vu,” Savage said.
“Yes. Something you think you've seen, but you've never seen. I'm not familiar with the concept. But I enjoy being educated. I'll remember the phrase. You realize”-Santizo set down his teacup-“that if it weren't for these X rays, I'd dismiss you as cranks.”
“I admit what I told you sounds bizarre,” Savage said. “But we had to take the risk that you wouldn't believe us. Like you, we're pragmatists. It's our business to deal with facts. Physical problems. How to get our principal safely to his or her destination. How to anticipate an assassin's bullet. How to avoid an intercepting car. But suddenly the physical facts don't match reality. Or our perception of it. We're so confused, we're not just nervous-and it's normal for us to be nervous. We're scared.”
“That's obvious,” Santizo said. “I see it in your eyes. So let me be honest. My schedule's so crowded the only reason I agreed to see you was that my former classmate asked me. He thought I'd be intrigued. He was right. I am.”
Santizo glanced at his watch. “A half hour till I'm due for my racquetball game. After that, I need to make rounds. Meet me back here in”-he calculated-“two and a half hours. I'll try to arrange for a colleague to join us. Meanwhile, I want you to go to Radiology.” He picked up his phone.
“More X rays? To make sure the first sets are accurate?” Savage asked.
“No. I'm ordering magnetic resonance images.”
A frail-looking man with a salt-and-pepper beard, wearing a sportcoat slightly too large for him, was sitting across from Santizo when they returned. “This is Dr. Weinberg,” Santizo said.
They all shook hands.
“Dr. Weinberg is a psychiatrist,” Santizo said.
“Oh?” Savage's back became rigid against his chair.
“Does that trouble you?” Weinberg asked pleasantly.
“No, of course not,” Akira said. “We have a problem. We're eager to solve it.”
“By whatever means necessary,” Savage said.
“Excellent.” Weinberg pulled a notebook and a pen from his sportcoat. “You don't mind?”
Savage felt ill at ease. He tried never to have his conversations documented but was forced to say, “Make all the notes you want.”
“Good.” Weinberg scrawled several words. From Savage's perspective, they looked like the time and date.
“Your MRI scans are being sent up to me,” Santizo said. “I thought, while we wait, Dr. Weinberg could ask you some questions.”
Savage gestured for Weinberg to start.
“Jamais vu.The term is your invention, I'm told.”
“That's right. It was all I could think of to describe my confusion.”
“Please elaborate.”
Savage did. On occasion, Akira added a detail. Rachel listened intently.
Weinberg scribbled. “So to summarize. You both thought you saw each other die? You failed to find the hotel where the deaths supposedly occurred? And you can't find the hospital where you were treated or the physician in charge of your case?”
“Correct,” Savage said.
“And the original traumatizing events took place six months ago.”
“Yes,” Akira said.
Weinberg sighed. “For the moment…” He set down his pen. “I'm treating your dilemma as hypothetical.”
“Treat it any way you want,” Savage said.
“My statement was not antagonistic.”
“I didn't say it was.”
“I'll explain.” Weinberg leaned back in his chair. “As a rule, my patients are referred to me. I'm given corroborating documents. Case histories. If necessary, I can interview their families, their employers. But in this instance, I really know nothing about you. I have only your word about your unusual-to put it mildly-background. No way to confirm what you claim. No reason to believe you. For all I'm aware, you're pathological liars desperate for attention or even reporters testing the gullibility of what the public calls ‘shrinks.’ “
Santizo's eyes glinted. “Max, I told you their story-and their X rays-intrigue me. Give us a theory.”
“As an exercise in logic,” Weinberg said. “Purely for the sake of discussion.”
“Hey, what else?” Santizo said.
Weinberg sighed again, then spread his hands. “The most likely explanation is that you both experienced, you're suffering from, a mutual delusion caused by the nearly fatal beatings you received.”
“How? The X rays show we weren't beaten,” Savage said.
“I disagree. What the X rays show is that your arms, legs, and ribs weren't broken, that your skulls weren't fractured as you believed. That doesn't mean you weren't beaten. I'll reconstruct what conceivably happened. You both were assigned to protect a man.”
“Yes.”
“He went to a conference at a rural hotel. And while he was there, he was killed. In a graphically brutal manner. With a sword that severed his torso.”
Akira nodded.
“In the process of defending him, the two of you were beaten to the point of unconsciousness,” Weinberg said. “On the verge of passing out, you each were tricked by your failing vision into thinking mistakenly that the other was killed. Inasmuch as neither of you died, something caused the hallucination, and the combination of pain and disorientation is a logical explanation.”
“But why would they both have the same hallucination?” Rachel asked.
“Guilt.”
“I don't follow.” Savage frowned.
“If I understand correctly, your profession means more to you than just a job. Obviously your identity is based on protecting, on saving lives. It's a moral commitment. In that respect, you're comparable to devoted physicians.”
“True,” Akira said.
“But unlike physicians, who inevitably lose patients and are consequently forced to put a shell around their emotions, I gather that both of you have had remarkable success. You've never lost a client. Your success rate has been an impressive one hundred percent.”
“Except for…”
“The events in the rural hotel six months ago,” Weinberg said. “For the first-the only-time, you lost a client. A major threat to your identity. With no experience in dealing with failure, you weren't prepared for the shock. A shock that was reinforced by the vividly gruesome manner of your client's death. The natural reaction is guilt. Because you survived and your client didn't. Because your client's safety meant everything to you, to the point where you'd have sacrificed yourself to save him. But it didn't turn out that way. He died. You're still alive. So your guilt becomes unendurable. Your subconscious struggles to compensate. It seizes on your murky impression that your fellow bodyguard died as well. It insists, it demands, that your client couldn't possibly have been defended if both he and your counterpart were killed and you, too, nearly died in your heroic but demonstrably futile effort to fulfill your vocation. Given your similar personalities, your mutual hallucinations are understandable, even predictable.”
“Then why can't we find the hotel?” Savage asked.
“Because deep in your mind you're struggling to deny that your failure ever took place. What better way than to convince yourselves that the hotel, where your failure occurred, doesn't exist? Or the doctor who treated you? Or the hospital where you recovered? They do exist, at least if your account is authentic. But they don't exist where your urge for denial compels you to search.”
Savage and Akira glanced at each other. As one, they shook their heads.
“Why”-Akira sounded skeptical-”did we both know where the hotel ought to be? And the doctor? And the hospital?”
“That's the easiest to explain. You reinforced each other. What one of you said, the other grasped at. To perpetuate the delusion and relieve your guilt.”
“No,” Savage said.
Weinberg shrugged. “I told you, this was all hypothetical.”
“Why,” Akira asked, “if our arms and legs weren't broken, were we put in casts? Why did we endure the agony of rebuilding our muscles for so many terrible months?”
“Casts?” Weinberg asked. “Or were they immobilizers required to help repair ligaments detached from your arms and legs? Were the casts on your chests actually thick, tightly wound tape that protected bruised-but not broken-ribs? And possibly your bandaged skulls indeed had fractures, hairlines that healed so perfectly an X ray wouldn't detect them. You admit you were given Demerol. It affects one's sense of reality.”
“Certainly,” Rachel said. “And of course I wasn't there. I didn't experience their pain. I grant I'm fond of these two men. We've been through a lot together. But I'm not a fool, and of the three of us, I'm the one with the best claim to be objective. My friends have not been reinforcing each other's delusions.”
“Well, of course you've heard of the Stockholm principle,” Weinberg said. “People under stress tend to identify with those they depend on for their safety.”
“And of course you've heard of the ostrich principle,” Rachel said. “A psychiatrist who puts his head in the sand because he can't acknowledge a problem he's never heard of before.”
Weinberg leaned forward, scowled, and abruptly laughed.
“You were right,” he told Santizo. “This is amusing.”
“You're sublimating, Max. Admit it. She made you angry”
“Only hypothetically.”
Now Santizo laughed. “Hey, of course. Let's write a hypothetical article. About the phenomenon of being hypothetically angry.”
“What's going on?” Savage asked.
Santizo stopped laughing. “A test. To determine if you were cranks. I had no choice. And Max is wonderful. A gifted man with a marvelous mind and a talent for acting.”
“I wasn't acting,” Weinberg said. “What I've heard is so bewildering I want to hear more.”
Someone knocked on the door.
Santizo pivoted. “Come.”
A secretary, who'd brought in the teacups, now brought a large brown folder.
“The MRIs.” Santizo stood.
Two minutes later, he turned from the films. “Thanks, Max. I'll take it from here.” “You're sure?”
“Yes. I owe you a dinner.” Santizo faced the MRIs. “But the problem's back to me. Because psychiatry won't explain this.”
Savage stood next to Akira and Rachel, studying the dusky films. Each had twelve images, arranged in four rows and three columns. They made little sense to him, harder to read than the earlier single-image X rays.
“Beautiful,” Santizo said. “I couldn't ask for clearer pictures.”
“You could have fooled me,”Akira said. “They look like ink blots.”
Santizo chuckled. “I can see where you'd get that impression.” He studied the films again. “That's why, to help you understand, I have to begin with some basics, though I'm afraid the basics will still sound technical…An MRI scan is an advanced technique of photography, based on magnetic resonance, that allows us to see past your skull and into your brain. It used to be that the only way we could get pictures of your brain was with a CAT scan. But a CAT scan isn't detailed enough, whereas these are the next best thing to actually opening up your skull and having a look. We take so many pictures from so many different angles, the combined result provides the illusion of 3-D.”
“But what have you learned?” Akira asked.
“Just bear with me a little longer,” Santizo said. “The brain has many parts.” He gestured toward portions of the MRIs. “The right hemisphere. The left hemisphere. Paradoxically the right hemisphere controls the left side of the body, and vice versa. Our ability to think spatially comes from the right hemisphere, our verbal skills from the left. The hemispheres are divided into parts. The frontal lobe. The parietal lobe. The occipital lobe. The temporal lobe. And these in turn contain numerous subparts. The visual cortex. The olfactory tract. The somatic sensory area. The pituitary gland. Et cetera. What makes this awesomely complex organ work is the presence of billions of interconnecting nerves that transmit energy and information. These nerves are called neurons. They're analogous to electrical wires and telephone cables, but that's a simplification. No analogy can truly describe them… By the way, have you ever had epilepsy?”
The question was so unexpected that Savage blinked.
“Epilepsy? No. Why? What makes you ask?”
“I'm trying to account for something.” Santizo pointed toward a dark speck on a light portion of one of the images. The speck was on the left, near the middle. “This is a view of your brain from the rear. That speck is in your mesial temporal lobe-the amygdala hippocampal area. It's in line with the plug of bone that was taken out and then replaced in your skull.”
Savage felt as if he'd swallowed ice. “Speck? Jesus, what-?”
“A lesion. That's why I asked about epilepsy. An abnormality in this area sometimes causes that condition.”
“You're telling me something's growing in my brain?”
“No.” Santizo turned to Akira, then pointed toward another film. “There's an identical speck in the same area of your brain. The coincidence leads me to conclude that whatever it is, it's not a growth.”
“What is it then?” Akira asked.
“An educated guess? Scar tissue. From whatever was done to your brain.”
Savage listened in shock as Santizo returned to his desk. “More basics,” Santizo said. “First rule. Eliminate the obvious. The purpose for the operation performed on each of you was not to excise a tumor. That type of surgery requires a major invasion of the brain. Hence a major portion of the skull would have to be removed.”
“But not,” Rachel said, “a five-millimeter plug of bone.”
“Correct. The only reason to create so small an access to the brain would be”-Santizo debated-“to allow an electrode to be inserted.”
“Why?” Savage had trouble breathing.
“Assuming familiar but serious circumstances? Many reasons. I mentioned epilepsy. An electrode inserted into the brain can measure electrical impulses from various clusters of neurons. In an epileptic, different levels of the brain transmit normal and nonnormal current. If we can determine the source of the nonnormal current, we can operate in a specific location to try to correct the abnormality.”
“But we're not epileptics,” Savage said.
“I was offering an example,” Santizo said. “I'll give you another. A patient with impairments of sight or hearing or smell-impairments due to the brain and not external receptors-can sometimes have their impairments corrected if internal receptors, those in the brain, are stimulated by electrodes.”
“But we can see and hear and smell,” Akira said.
“And yet you think you saw each other die. You can't find a hotel where you were beaten. Or a hospital where you were treated. Or a doctor who supervised your case. Someone has interfered with your brain functions. Specifically your ability to…”
“Remember,” Savage said.
“Or more interesting, has someone caused you to remember what never happened? Jamais vu.The phrase you invented is fascinating.”
“To remember what never happened? I didn't mean it literally. I never believed…”
“I can take you down to Pathology,” Santizo said. “I can dissect a corpse's brain and show you each component. I can tell you why you see and hear, why you taste, touch, and smell, why you feel pain-though the brain itself cannot feel pain. But what I can't do is show you a thought. And I certainly can't find a specific site in your brain that enables you to remember. I've been doing research on memory for the past ten years, and the more I learn, the more I'm baffled…Describe what happens when you remember a past event.”
Savage and Akira hesitated.
Rachel gestured. “Well, it's sort of like seeing a movie inside my head.”
“That's how most people describe it. We experience an event, and it seems as though our brain works like a camera, retaining a series of images of that event. The more we experience, the more films we store in our brain. When circumstances require, when we need to review the past to understand the present, we select an appropriate reel and view it on a mental screen. Of course, we take for granted that the films are permanent records, as immutable as a movie.”
Rachel nodded.
“But a movie isn't permanent. It cracks. It discolors. Scenes can be eliminated. What's more, we're explaining memory by means of analogy. There aren't films in our brain. There isn't a screen. We merely imagine there are. And memory becomes even harder to explain when we pass from concrete events to learned abstractions. When I think of the mathematical principle of pi, I don't see a film in my head. I somehow, intuitively, understand what pi signifies. And when I think of an abstract word such as ‘honor,’ I don't see a film. I just know what ‘honor’ means. Why am I able to recall and understand these abstractions?”
“Do you have an answer?” Savage's chest ached.
“The prevailing theory is that memories are somehow encoded throughout the brain in the neurons. These billions of I nerves-the theory goes-not only transmit electricity and information but also retain the information they transmit. The analogy of a computer is frequently used to illustrate the process, but again, as with the illusion that we have a movie screen in our heads, an analogy is not an explanation. Our memory system is infinitely more complex than any computer. For one thing, the neurons seem capable of transferring information from one network to another, thus protecting certain memories if a portion of the brain is damaged. For another, there are two types of memory-short term and long term-and their relationship is paradoxical. ‘Short term’ refers to temporary memories of recently acquired but unimportant information. The telephone number of my dentist, for example. If I need to make an appointment, I look up the number, remember it long enough to call his office, and immediately forget it until the next time I need an appointment and repeat the process. ‘Long term’ refers to lasting memories of necessary information: the telephone number for my home. What physical mechanism causes my dentist's number to be easily forgotten but not my own? And why, in certain types of amnesia, is a patient unable to remember any recent event, whether trivial or important, while at the same time he can recall in vivid detail minor long-forgotten events from forty years ago? No one understands the process.”
“What do you believe?” Akira asked.
“A musical by Lerner and Loewe.”
“I don't…”
“Gigi. Maurice Chevalier and Hermione Gingold sing a wonderful song, I Remember It Well.’ Their characters are former lovers recalling when they met. ‘We went here.’ ‘No, we went there.’ ‘You wore this dress.’ ‘No, I wore that.’‘Ah, yes, I remember it well.’ But they don't. Sure, the point of the song is that old age has made them forget. The trouble is, I'm not sure the rest of us don't forget also. A lot of specifics. And sooner than we realize. Dr. Weinberg and I have a sentimental tradition. Every Saturday night, when Max and I aren't on call, we and our wives see a movie and then go to dinner. After the stress of the week, we look forward to the distraction. Yesterday, Max fondly remembered a film the four of us had seen together. ‘But Max,’ I said, ‘I saw that movie on cable television, not in a theater.’ ‘No,’ Max insisted, ‘the four of us saw it downtown.’ ‘No,’ I told him, ‘I was at a conference that weekend. You, your wife, and mine went to see the film without me.’ We questioned our wives, who didn't remember the circumstances. We still don't know the truth.”
“Of course,” Savage said. “You just explained short-term memory doesn't last.”
“But where does short term end and long term begin? And how can we be sure that long-term memory truly endures? The basic issue is the limitation of consciousness. We're capable of knowing we remember only if we remember. We can't be aware of something we've forgotten…Describe the future.”
“I can't. The future doesn't exist,” Savage said.
“No more than the past, though memory gives us the illusion the past does exist-in our minds. It's my opinion that our memories don't remain permanent after they're encoded. I believe our memories are constantly changing, details being altered, added, and subtracted. In effect, we each create a version of the past. The discrepancies are usually insignificant. After all, what difference does it make if Max and I saw that movie together or separately? But on occasion, the discrepancies are critical. Max once had a neurotic female patient who as a child had repeatedly been abused by her father. She'd sublimated her nightmarish memories and imagined an idyllic youth with a gentle, loving father. To cure her neuroses, Max had to teach her to discard her false memory and recognize the horrors she'd experienced.”
“False memory,” Savage said. “Jamais vu.But ourfalse memory isn't caused by psychological problems. Our brain scans suggest someone surgically altered our ability to remember. Is that possible?”
“If you mean, would I be able to do it, the answer is no, and I'm not aware of any other neurosurgeon who could do it, either. But is it possible? Yes. Theoretically. Though even if I knew how to do it, I wouldn't. It's called psychosurgery. It alters your personality, and except for a few procedures- an excision of brain tissue to prevent an epileptic from having seizures, or a lobotomy to stop self-destructive impulses-it isn't ethical.”
“But how, in theory, would you do it?” Rachel asked.
Santizo looked reluctant.
“Please.”
“I pride myself on being curious, but sometimes, against my nature, I've refused to investigate intriguing cerebral phenomena. When necessary, I've inserted electrodes into the brains of my patients. I've asked them to describe what they sensed.”
“Wait,” Akira said. “How could they describe the effects if their brains were exposed? They'd be unconscious.”
“Ah,” Santizo said. “I take too much for granted. I skip too many steps. I'm too used to dealing with fellow neurosurgeons. Obviously you think exposing the brain is the same as exposing the heart. I'll emphasize a former remark. The brain-our sense receptor-does notitselfhave a sense receptor. It doesn't feel pain. Using a local anesthetic to prevent the skull from transmitting pain, I can remove a portion of bone and expose the great mystery. Inserting an electrode into the brain, I can make the patient smell oranges that don't exist. I can make the patient hear music from his childhood. I can make him taste apples. I can make him have an orgasm. I can manipulate his sense receptors until he's convinced he's on a sailboat, the sun on his face, the wind in his hair, hearing waves crash, skirting Australia's Great Barrier Reef-a vacation he experienced years before.”
“But would he remember the illusions you caused?” Rachel asked.
“Of course. Just as he'd remember the true vivid event, the operation.”
“So that explains what happened,” Savage said.
“To you and your friend? Not at all,” Santizo said. “What I've just described is an activation of the patient's memory by means of an electronic stimulation to various neurons. But youhave memories of events that apparently…”
“Never happened,” Akira said. “So why do we remember them?”
“I told you, it's only a theory,” Santizo said. “But if I expose the left temporal lobe of your brain…and if I stimulate your neurons with electrodes… if I describe in detail what you're supposed to remember, perhaps show you films or even have actors dramatize the fictional events…if I administer amphetamines to encourage the learning process… and when I'm finished, if I use the electrode to scar selected neurons, to impair your memory of the operation…you'll remember what never happened and forget what did happen.”
“We've been brainwashed?”
“No,” Santizo said. “ ‘Brainwashed’ is a crude expression that originated during the Korean War and is used to describe the process by which a prisoner can be forced to surrender deeply held political convictions. The methodology originated in the USSR, based upon Pavlov's theories of stimulus and response. Subject a prisoner to relentless pain, break his spirit, then offer him a reward if he'll agree to denounce the country he loves. Well, as we know, a few soldiers did succumb. The miracle is that more did not. Especially when psychosuggestive drugs are added to Pavlov's theory of conditioning. But if you've seen newsreels from the fifties, you know that prisoners who were conditioned always looked as if they'd been conditioned. Gaunt features. Shaky hands. Glazed eyes. Their confession of war crimes wasn't convincing. You two show none of those symptoms. You're frightened, yes. But you're functional. What's more, no attitudinal changes seem to have occurred. Your identity remains intact. You're still determined to protect. No, you haven't been conditioned. Your problem isn't directed toward the future. It's not anything you might have been programmed to do. It's what happened to you in the past. Or what didn'thappen. And what really happened that you don't recall.”
“Then why was this done to us?” Savage asked.
“Why? The only answer I can suggest-”
The phone rang. Santizo picked it up. “Hello?” He suddenly listened intensely, his face becoming more grave. “I'll be there at once.”
He set down the phone. “An emergency. I'm due in OR right away.” Standing, he turned toward a wall of bookshelves. “Here. Some standard texts. Young's Programs of the Brain, Baddeley's The Psychology of Memory, Horn's Memory, Imprinting, and the Brain. Study them. Call my secretary tomorrow. She'll arrange a time for us to meet again. I really have to go.”
As Santizo hurried toward the door, Akira surged from his chair. “But you started to tell us why you thought-”
“You were given false memories?” Santizo pivoted. “No. I can't imagine. What I meant to say was the only person who'd know is whoever performed the procedure.”
They managed to get a room in a hotel near the hospital. The setting sun was obscured by smog. After ordering room service-fish and rice for Akira, steak and fries for Savage and Rachel-they each took a book and read in silence.
When their food arrived, they used the distraction of what Savage called “refueling” to talk.
“The medical terms are difficult for me to interpret,” Akira said. “My knowledge of English, I'm embarrassed to confess, has limitations.”
“No,” Rachel said, “your English is perfect. For what it's worth, these medical terms might as well be Japanese to me.”
“I appreciate the compliment. You're very gracious. Arigato,”Akira said. “That means…?”
“Thank you.”
“And what should I say in return? What's the equivalent of…?”
“ ‘You're welcome’? I'll make it simple. Domo arigato.A rough translation-‘thank youvery much.’ “
“Exactly,” Rachel said.“Domo arigato.”
Akira smiled, despite his melancholy eyes.
“Well,” Savage said, “while the two of you are having a cultural exchange-”
“Don't get grumpy,” Rachel told him.
Savage studied her, admiredher, and couldn't help smiling. “I guess that's how I sound. But I thinkI understand a part of this book, and it scares me.”
Rachel and Akira came to attention.
“Memory's more complicated than I realized. Not just that no one's really sure how the neurons in our brain store information. But what about the implication of what it meansto be able to remember? That's what scares me.” Savage's head throbbed. “We think of memory as a mental record of the past. The trouble is the past, by definition, doesn't exist. It's a phantom of what used to be the present. And it isn't just what happened a year ago, last month, or yesterday. It's twenty minutes ago. It's an instantago. What I'm saying is already in the past, in our memories.”
Rachel and Akira waited.
“This book has a theory that when we see an apple fall from a tree, when we hear it land, when we pick it up, smell it, and taste it, we're not experiencing those sensations simultaneously with the events. There's a time lag-let's say a millionth of a second-before the sense impulses reach the brain. By the time we register the taste of the apple, what we think is the present is actually the past. That lag would explain déjà vu. We enter a room and feel eerily convinced we've been there before, though we haven't. Why? Because of the millionth of a second it takes the brain to receive a transmission from the eyes and tell us what we're seeing. If the two hemispheres of the brain are temporarily out of sync, one side of the brain receives the transmission slightly before the other. We see the room twice. We think the sensation happened before because it did Not in the distant past, however. Instead, a fraction of an instant before, one side of the brain received what the other side later received.”
“But our problem isn't déjà vu-it's jamais vu” Akira said. “Why are you disturbed by what you just read?”
“Because I can't be sure of the present, let alone the past. Because there is no present, at least as far as my brain's concerned. Everything it tells me is a delayed reaction.”
“That may be true,” Rachel said. “But for practical purposes, even with the time lag, what we perceive might as well be the present. You've got a big enough problem without exaggerating it.”
“Am I exaggerating? I'm scared because I thought I was struggling with false memories someone implanted in my brain six months ago. But was it six months ago? How do I know the operation didn't happen much more recently? How can I be sure of what occurred yesterday or even this morning?” Savage turned to Rachel. “In France, when you learned about our pseudonyms and the cover stories we had to invent, you said it seemed that everything about us was a lie. In a way I never imagined, maybe you're right. How many false memories do I have? How do I know who I am? How can I be sure that you and Akira are what you seem? Suppose you're actors hired to trick me and reinforce my delusions.”
“But obviously we're not,” Akira said. “We've been through too much together. Rachel's rescue. The escape in the helicopter. The ferry out of Greece. The vans that tried to intercept us in France.”
“My point is maybe none of it happened. My false memories might have begun today. My entire background-everything about me-might be a lie I'm not aware of! Did I ever meet Rachel's sister? Is Graham really dead?”
“Keep thinking like that,” Akira said, “and you'll go crazy.”
“Right,” Savage said. “That's what I mean-I'm scared. I feel like I'm seeing through a haze, like the floor's unsteady, like I'm in an elevator that's falling. Total disorientation. I've based my identity on protecting people. But how can I protect myselffrom my mind?”
Rachel put an arm around him. “You've got to believe we're not actors. We're all you have. Trust us.”
“Trust you? I don't even trust myself.”
That night, as Savage slept fitfully, assaulted by nightmares, he woke abruptly from a hand that caressed his cheek. Startled, he grabbed the hand and lunged upright on the sofa, prepared to defend himself.
He restrained his impulse. In the soft light from a lamp in a corner, he saw Rachel's worried face beside him. She was kneeling.
“What?” Savage scanned the room. “Where's Akira?”
“In the hallway. I asked him to leave us alone.”
“Why would-?”
“Because I asked him,” she repeated, her blond hair silhouetted by the dim light in the corner.
“No, why did you ask him to leave?”
“Because I need to be with you.”
“That still doesn't answer my-”
“Hush.” Rachel touched his lips. “You think too much. You ask too many questions.”
“It's impossible to ask too many questions.”
“But sometimes it's wiser not to ask any.”
Savage smelled her perfume. “I can't imagine-”
“Yes,” she said, “I know