by R J Samuel
The man said, “I hate to interrupt, but I’m not seeing any progress.”
His voice was irritated, the first break in the calm. She needed him to remain calm. She had to forget everything else and focus on getting them out of there alive. She rubbed her face, trying to scrub the thoughts away.
She said, “Considering how I left the study, I don’t know if I’m going to be able to add anything. I’ve spent the last few years trying to forget I had a brain.”
Gerry turned to Priya and his voice took on a professorial tone as he pointed out the main elements in front of him. She brought her thoughts into focus as he explained his genius. He took pains to point out where her work had provided him with the answers, or the path to further answers. It seemed like a release for him, after years of not being able to talk about it with anyone, he was suddenly free. Her nausea deepened as she realized he was like a child offering up treasure to his mother, that he seemed to consider Priya as his source, was waiting to drink in her praise.
She closed her eyes. She needed that intellect she had tried so hard to submerge. And she knew in her heart that though her mind had been used to develop a weapon before, she would not let it happen consciously. So as the figures and methods, the frequencies and code, danced in front of her eyes, as she fought to return to a time when that was all she needed to solve her problems, a section of her brain was working on a plan. And her heart was saying goodbye.
She stole a glance around her. She measured the distance from the spot in front of her to the man. To Reyna. To Valerie. She and Gerry were the only two in the room within three feet of where the long-range device would be. She was not going to save Gerry, but she needed the man to be closer.
She turned to the man. He had been staring out of the window and she saw him watching the Corrib Princess float by, its upper deck empty. She could hear the commentary in her mind, clearer than when she had sat in its lower deck on the couch seating, proud of her river, proud of her city, showing it off to her parents.
Priya asked him, “If this is going to be used to kill someone, how are you going to protect the person who presses the button? They are going to be within three feet.”
He turned his head to look at her.
“He has had a pacemaker installed.”
She said, “So when his natural pacemaker is destroyed, the artificial one will kick in and keep his rhythm going. Smart of you. And a huge sacrifice for him.”
The man nodded. He said, and for the first time his voice held a trace of emotion, “People have made sacrifices for this. It is necessary.”
She tried again, this time desperate with hope that Reyna would pick up the message. “You know, if this device goes off there is still a 3 minute timeframe where your target’s heart will stop, but the brain will remain alive. It is not a sure thing. If someone were to carry out immediate CPR and keep doing it until help arrived there is a possibility the target could be saved.” She kept her eyes fixed on the traces of acne scars on the man’s face. She noticed in her peripheral vision that Reyna was staring at her.
“We would be able to distract the help away for a few minutes…” He turned his head and looked back at the window.
Priya focused on what Gerry was doing in his development of the long-range device. The minutes dragged. He was close, but he had started just right of center. His calculations were off by a fraction. He had designed the new device to look like a home controller, above suspicion. He had coded it to create the frequency pattern that should have destroyed the particular ion channels in the test set-up. The ones set up to match the ion channels in the heart muscle that controlled the self-generation of the electrical activity. The oscillometer was measuring the frequency that was being emitted. The frequency was being fed into the ion channel study chambers.
She studied the code. And saw it.
He had made a mistake. And the more he looked through it the less chance he had of seeing it. Wasn’t that how one of the space shuttles crashed, she thought, a missing comma? This wasn’t as simple as punctuation, but in the picture in her mind, the error stood out now like a neon sign blinking on an empty motorway.
Priya said, “You’re not going to let us go anyway, are you? Once we fix this, assuming we can, what’s to stop you killing us then?”
The man turned around. The buttons on his black jacket caught the sunlight and bounced it into her eyes. She knew he couldn’t kill them yet. If she fixed the device, he would kill them and leave and someone would die. And there would be a weapon out there that could be used to commit an undetectable murder. What would he do if she refused to fix it?
“Interesting situation we have here. Let me make it more interesting for you. While I don’t have a working device, she’s expendable.” He gestured with the gun at Reyna. “And the other one there. If she’s still alive.” He nodded in Valerie’s direction. “You two ‘scientists’ are not expendable.”
He moved a step closer and pointed at the device. “However, when I have a working device, you will become expendable, I’ll probably let him live and I don’t really care what happens to her.” He pointed to Valerie with his empty hand. Then turned and looked at Reyna. “Ms. Fairer will not be expendable any more. I made a deal, a working device and the daughter and granddaughter live.” He smiled. “I see you’ve already worked it out.”
Priya saw that Reyna had been quiet because of the threat to her mother. She didn’t know what the exact words would have been, but they had been effective.
Reyna’s life. That was what it came down to for Priya in this little equation of life. The immediate equation. The extended equation involved other people. She could only see one way to solve both equations.
She nodded at the man and he smiled again. “Waste of a good mind. Maybe we should keep you instead of him. But somehow, I don’t think you’d do it for all the money in the world. And I certainly wouldn’t want to have to spend the rest of my time holding a gun to her head. Although, if you could convince me that we could work together, you could be well rewarded. And I wouldn’t need that.” He nodded in Gerry’s direction and Priya could see the disgust in the man’s eyes.
He turned back to the window. He was now within four feet of the device.
Priya caught Reyna’s eye. She stared at Reyna, and then looked at the emergency defibrillator on the wall. She stared back at Reyna and willed her to understand. She saw Reyna’s eyes follow hers and she looked back to see that Reyna’s eyes had lingered on the red casing. Reyna looked back at Priya and Priya stared at the device on the counter in front of Gerry and back at the defibrillator. She didn’t know if the defibrillator would work or if CPR was the answer, but she had planted both ideas. She saw the growing awareness and then the horror in Reyna’s eyes. Priya took in a deep breath. The message had been received, Priya didn’t know if it would be enough. And after she pressed the button, she might never know.
She reached for the new device and took it out of Gerry’s hands. She smiled through the glaze over her eyes. She’d used her intellect to win her father’s love, had allowed it to be used by Valerie to seduce her, and had spent the time since trying to destroy it. And now, when she’d found someone she could love, who she thought loved her for all the right reasons... She stopped her thoughts from going there.
Her fingers flew over the keypad as she programmed the new weapon. She didn’t need to test it. She knew it would work. She looked around again and measured the distance. The man was about 4 feet away. Priya just had to make sure where he ended up was within 3 feet of her and that Reyna was further than 3 feet away. She picked out the spot on the floor. She disconnected the keyboard. Picked up the device. Felt its cold corners as her hands curved around it.
Gerry looked at her and then at the device in her hand.
Priya whispered, “All that money, Gerry, where did it go? I didn’t really think that was a great motivator for you.”
Gerry glanced at Valerie’s inert form on the floor.
&
nbsp; Priya continued, “You loved her that much?”
She was surprised that Gerry kept his voice to a whisper too. “I love her. She, she…”
“Consumed you?”
He nodded. There was a look of fervor in his eyes. “She didn’t know about my work with them. She didn’t know where the money came from. She needed all that stuff to be happy, the houses, the car. I didn’t, I came from a comfortable background. She came from a poor family you see. We had it all, and then the crash came. She is so beautiful. She doesn’t realize how beautiful she is, she thinks she’s losing everything as she gets older. She is so innocent.”
Priya almost lost control of the train she was driving towards him.
She whispered, almost directly into his ear, “For the last two years, I felt so guilty because of what Valerie and I did behind your back, but you are a monster.” She moved her head back and saw first the confusion and then the rage in Gerry’s eyes as he processed what she had said.
She moved in again and whispered, “Valerie played games with everyone; she had me, Kathy, Daniel, especially you. She played with all of us, but I think she liked your little brother best. Where do you think Aidan got the money to buy all the stuff he has? You gave up all your principles to make money for her and she gave it to him. The good-looking one. The charmer. She couldn’t bear the thought of losing her power as she got older, of losing her looks. She loved Aidan, the young man who could keep her feeling young.”
She knew she had hit again. She could see in his eyes, recognition, confirmation of his worst suppressed fears. And she could see the mist gather as his mind let go. She braced herself as Gerry lunged at her. She had the new device in her hands, her finger beside the button. She saw the man dart towards them as Gerry’s hands gripped her throat.
She saw Reyna start to get up. No!
She hoped the man was within 3 feet, he moved fast.
She pressed the button.
She heard falling bodies as her heart stopped. She had thought she’d have 3 minutes before her brain stopped functioning, but time flew when you were dying.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
The diplomat rubbed under his collarbone where all that remained was a small scar. A part of him was relieved, relieved to be rid of the wires, of the presence in his body. To know that his heart still controlled its own rhythm. But the greater part of him was devastated.
He walked out of the side street clinic and breathed in the morning air. Was there any point in returning to the embassy? If he could, he would still give his life to save his country. But the sacrifice would be pointless if the deed was known. They had known all along that there could be no comeback at all.
He walked down the street towards Massachusetts Avenue. As he turned onto it, he noticed a man standing at the corner, a suit jacket draped over his shoulder. The man was not even looking at him, but the diplomat felt a pang of fear. The man reminded him of the American, the neat blue suit, the calm. He wondered again what had happened to him, the man who had been so anxious to prevent the destruction of a foreign economy. Desperate enough to kill a fellow American. He wondered whether the man had acted on his own or whether there had been others in the shadows. The complete lack of communication for the last few days told him the American was dead.
He’d had no choice. He had gone to the meeting. Pretended that everything was fine. Smiled at the woman’s jokes. Shook her hand, the hand that would kill his country. Now all he could do was wait and watch as it died.
EPILOGUE
March 2012
Reyna stepped out of the terminal building at Shannon and stopped to breath in the Irish air. She wondered if its silk smoothness felt like home because of what Priya had said. Or whether she had just missed it so much as the last seven months had dragged through the nightmare landscape left after the bomb had exploded in her life. She looked down at the boy gripping onto her fingers, his face wiped clean, but still sleepy after the overnight flight. She had wrapped Skyler in as many layers as she could get away with, not knowing what climate she would find in March in Ireland.
She had rented the same Mercedes and this time the heating was not necessary. Skyler was almost five and if he hadn’t been so tired, he would have chatted the whole way, but instead he snuggled into the passenger seat and slept. Reyna put the radio on low and listened to the debate that had raged over the destruction of a few smaller economies when America had changed its foreign policy. Reyna had listened to the same debate in America, though it had been less heated, had heard the soothing tones of the politician who had signed the changes into law in August, the media loved the attractive, charismatic politician and she had had more than the usual fifteen minutes of fame, but not much more.
As Reyna drove, she occasionally glanced over at Skyler’s thin chest, reassuring herself with its movements. The three-year battle was over. And there was no clear victor except, she hoped, Skyler himself. Simone had teased her often enough about her name and had then gone and named the child… But Reyna liked it. Maybe because she loved him with an intensity that accepted every part of him, including the fact that he was Simone’s flesh and blood whose fine features and dark eyes and hair he had inherited. And that his father had been an 18-year-old waiter who wanted nothing to do with him or the ‘crazy French chef’ as he had referred to Simone when she had told him she was pregnant.
And Simone hadn’t wanted anything to do with the baby either; there wouldn’t have been a baby if Reyna hadn’t insisted that Simone listen to the doctor who had told them it was too late for a termination, that she would care for the baby. And Reyna had put up with the screaming, the ranting, the hitting. She had loved that baby from the first breath he took. And in doing so, Reyna had handed Simone the deadliest weapon to use against her. Which Simone had done. For two long years after Reyna, not able to put up with the abuse anymore, had left her. Simone had always made it clear she did not want Skyler so Reyna had never imagined Simone would restrict Reyna’s contact with the child to monthly visits, but Simone’s spite had been stronger than any vestige of maternal feeling. She used the threat of never seeing the boy again to make sure Reyna could never break free of her. .
Reyna drove slowly. She was too late anyway; the memorial service would be over by the time she got to Connemara. She had always been too late for Priya. Too late to realize what she felt, too late to realize that Priya was not like Simone, could never have been like Simone. Too late for everything, the words cycled by riding on the broken white line of the motorway.
She drove through Galway, barely able to look at the green glass walls of the buildings she could see from the Quincentennial Bridge as she paused in its traffic. There would be enough time to visit the clinic later. The Fairer Research Company was gone, but the Fairer Clinic was still there. It supported the patients with implanted Fairer pacemakers, though now the pacemakers that were installed were those manufactured by other companies. No company could survive the deaths of the two Daniel Fairers and Gerry Lynch, especially when one of them was the owner of TechMed Devices.
Her insides hurt when she thought of her grandfather, still convinced he had done everything for the right reasons. Until Daniel had been killed. Reyna had watched the agony in his eyes when Catherine had screamed over and over again at him for her lost son, for all the losses. Reyna couldn’t bear the pain in the study and walked out to sit outside on the steps of the mansion, melting in the heat of a New York August. Catherine joined her and they had gotten into the car, but her mother had run back into the mansion emerging a few minutes later with the wooden rocking horse. Reyna looked at Skyler and knew he would love the carved horse that Catherine had brought back to Connemara. Catherine had flown from New York to Shannon later that day so had missed the discovery of her father’s body that evening, slumped at his desk. Age, grief, and guilt too high a toll for his 86-year-old body. Catherine had not come back for the funeral.
The road past Priya�
�s house was edged with traffic so Reyna was forced to sit for a few minutes outside its driveway. The grass was neat, the new paint gleaming and she wondered why Tara and Aidan kept it so well when they were only renting it until they found somewhere else. Or that’s what they said, but Reyna knew the house was now their home. She envied their ability to put the past behind them. But she wondered whether Tara looked over at Aidan every now and then and wondered.
At least they didn’t have to see Valerie. Valerie who had fought on that awful day to hide the truth from Gerry even when threatened with a gun. The surprise at Reyna’s sudden arrival that morning and the terror of Reyna disclosing anything about her had pushed Valerie into an attack that the American man had stopped with a vicious blow. Valerie’s injury and the resulting brain damage, though slight, had forced her to retire. She now lived in London in the flat she had bought for Aidan and where she had visited him whenever she could in the six years since she’d met him at her wedding to his brother. She had not done anything illegal; she’d eventually been allowed to leave Galway after the police had dredged through her past. Valerie would not talk about the details of the games she had played, or the reasons. Reyna had the feeling Valerie’s future would be very different to the one she had planned, that the fear of growing old alone was now a real one.
Skyler mumbled in his sleep. He woke up as they approached Spiddal and demanded the toilet. Reyna pulled in at a hotel in Spiddal and waited for him outside the toilets. She was getting used to having him around again. They came out of the hotel and she decided to stretch her legs. They wandered hand in hand down the main street stopping every few yards as she pointed out places and objects. He took it all in with a serious look on his face. She leaned down to kiss his cheek.
The painting stared out at her from the gallery window. She straightened up and took in the painted words branded across the top of the window.