He turned on the cold water. The tip of his dick hurt; he had exaggerated. He took it in his hand; it showed no sign of life. He was exhausted and slightly disgusted by the mechanical and empty sex.
He dressed in a foul mood and spent the whole night in the lab wondering how he could treat Jane like that and, especially, why he could not enjoy making love the way he wanted. The problem was not merely the absence of emotion.
‘If I keep going like this, I’ll have to switch to inflatable dolls and interminable analysis,’ he thought wryly before falling asleep in the chair at his workplace.
6
Professor Zimmermann was taciturn and withdrawn. He had lived alone with his Weimaraner hound in an on-campus house for the past fifteen years and had very few friends.
Zimmermann had an unusual accent. He didn’t look it, but he was almost certainly a second-generation German. He was a formidable scientist and a doctor who still practiced medicine. He took loving care of his patients, which isn’t common practice.
“Hey, Cooper!” he said to Barnett, entering the lab. He approached Barnett quietly; his student was sleeping with his head on the desk in front of him. “You have been up until the wee hours with your favorite neuroblasts, eh?”
Barnett slowly lifted up his head and looked round at the professor. His right cheek was literally sculpted with letters from the computer keyboard.
“Good…good morning professor...I'm going to get a cup of coffee, I'll be right back,” Barnett mumbled, standing up.
“Remember, tomorrow you have the exam at 9:00 am! And then the interview with me from 5:00 to 6:00 pm. I’m expecting a lot from you.”
Zimmermann left immediately for the classrooms with his notes under his arm.
Barnett spent all day in the lab, and after dinner he went to the gym without reviewing anything for the next day.
7
The written examination lasted three hours, and for Barnett it seemed interminable. He was intent on getting the highest grades. He still had three months to go in Argentina and he wanted to return to Harvard with the highest score in order to get another scholarship for his PhD.
The commission would evaluate all the written exams and publish the results in the early afternoon of the following day.
At the last moment, Zimmermann had told the students that he would receive the candidates in another office located next to one of the research laboratories, rather than use his own office on the ground floor of the Department of Medicine.
When Barnett came in, he saw Zimmermann studying his file intently. Four other students had already been examined by Zimmermann before it was Barnett’s turn.
“Sit down, Cooper,” the professor urged him. “We have only an hour left and it's really not enough time, so no pleasantries.”
Barnett sat down immediately. He felt agitated. Alarm bells were going off full blast in his head, but he did not ask for an explanation because he had never seen Zimmermann look at him this way. He expected, though he did not know why, to be rejected.
“You had the best score of all my students on the course and in the lab exam. Your work on the project has given us some interesting results for the moment.
“The researchers in charge of the project wanted you as a junior member of the team, but I said I was against it because I don’t believe that you can work on a team and, because you're too self-centered. You are going to leave Buenos Aires in two days. You will complete the remaining three months of your work at King's College in London. We’re, in fact, doing the same study simultaneously but using different approaches...they are waiting for you with open arms.”
“But, Professor,” exclaimed Barnett, “it's not true that I can’t work on a team. I would like to complete my studies and training with you, and I know I can do it. If you send me to London to complete my studies, I doubt I will be able to qualify for a PhD. at Harvard.”
Barnett felt like he was on board a STOL (Short Take-Off and Landing) flight in the middle of a tropical storm, having to quickly perform an emergency landing in the jungle.
“If you succeed there, they will give you a scholarship at King's College; it’s all set. Now, stop worrying and trust me. Let me speak and answer my questions, there’s no time.”
Barnett felt like he was in a nightmare. He didn’t understand; his demons were laughing at him behind his back. If he also lost his ability to think, the situation would be completely out of his control.
“I have been studying your behavior and your profile ever since you joined my course. You’ve got a monster on your back but your will-power and your intelligence have allowed you to keep it under control. You have a problem relating to women. You don’t let go; you don’t want to let yourself go, but it's up to you - it's your choice. It's your mind, not your body.”
“Professor, what has this got to do with my university results?” said Barnett, raising his voice suddenly, “It's none of your business; you are not my psychiatrist, nor my analyst!”
Barnett felt mortally wounded. The mere fact that a stranger had studied him, had discovered his faults, and now wanted to return him to sender disregarding his brilliant academic record…made him furious.
“Lower your voice,” replied Zimmermann, patiently. “I am not enjoying bulldozing into your dark areas against all rules and ethics, and I am not sending you away for the official reason that I just told you. But listen, if I don’t explain the reasons to you, you will give up sooner or later. You must know, you arrived here unexpectedly and you put both of us in danger without even imagining the black hole that you brought with you. I know you can make it; no matter how much you hate him, you're very much like your father, Cooper.”
Barnett’s brain reeled furiously but he managed to sit still on his chair despite the unpleasant feeling of nausea taking over his stomach and throat, preventing him from responding.
“My real name is Andrew Davis. I was in charge of the A squadron of the Delta Force in 1993 during the fighting in Mogadishu. I was your father’s…Turner’s most trusted friend.”
Barnett was in a cold sweat. He felt dizzy, his nausea mounting. Seeing a pack of chewing gum on the professor's desk, without asking permission, he stuffed two in his mouth to release the tension in his stomach and avoid throwing up.
“Turner was part of Intelligence, Barnett. He was not military, that was his cover. He specialized in counter-terrorism missions and he was a skilled negotiator. He probably got burned by an internal member of the agency who warned General Mohamed Farrah Aidid’s men.
“The militiamen had nothing to do with this. Your father told me that something smelled rotten about some of the links of the CIA officers whose military training camps in Afghanistan in 1989 churned out budding terrorists who later flowed into Somalia.
“That's all I know, but it was too much. When the anti-tank rocket hit the Humvee I was with him, somehow I survived. None of the others made it. They organized my “official” death, changed my name, and made me disappear to this country of fugitives and start a new life. I was lucky. Then you arrived here by chance. I discovered who you are, so others will have as well. Suddenly twenty years have been undone.
“We’re both in danger if you stay here. I know they are watching me, and you should not think that you are completely immune either, but I want to help you. I owe you the explanation that your father was never able to give you before his death because, after tonight, you must never look for me again.”
Barnett listened with the images printing in rapid sequence on his eyelids, like a movie shot by an unknown person. He could not even speak. The nausea had dissolved and his mind was crunching information at the speed of a latest generation microprocessor.
This explained why the clinical study was in Argentina. Barnett was distracted for a moment, thinking about how fate continued to break over him in cyclical waves.
“Your father, admittedly clumsily, tried to protect you from your mother. That's the reason he wanted you to go to Wes
t Point: so you would be independent. A military career is not necessarily tied to military service; it could have opened up new horizons for scientific studies, highly secretive and exciting. He was an upright man with strong ideals, which is why he fought to the end. He did not see you as weak, but he was afraid that your mother would make you so.”
“What does my mother have to do with all this? She always suffered from my father’s harassment and bad behavior,” replied Barnett, hurt.
“With your background and studies Barnett, it amazes me that you still believe in the Tooth Fairy, but sometimes we don’t want to look at the reality of things, and reality is often very different from appearances.”
Barnett jumped up and began to pace nervously around the perimeter of the room.
“Your father was an uncommon man,” continued Davis, “but to give his life a solid base and fit into patterns of social behavior, he decided to marry a woman who would allow him a "normal" life. It’s too bad that he was a champion and that his love for your mother, an attractive, though objectively a predictable and average woman, was over when you were only two years old.”
“Your mother loved money and the easy life. She never worked a day in her life and, since your father’s job guaranteed her the money but not the good life, she started looking for it elsewhere as soon as she could. She was not at the hairdresser’s that day in 1993. She was in the club house bathroom of the Wolferts Roost Country Club in Albany, screwing the owner of a lawn mower factory.”
The sickness was back again, and while the demons laughed behind his back, the house of cards that Barnett had built and glued together through hard work over the years, collapsed miserably to the ground in tiny pieces without a sound.
“But that was only one episode. Your mother had no interests; she got bored of being a parent and this pushed her to seek new adventures, wealthy partners to play with, and all of this just to escape the everyday life that she found very bleak during your father’s long periods of absence. Whenever you were sent to the scout troop or on sports vacations, it was because she didn’t want you in the way. It was not your father. Secretly, he always put a coach next to you who could teach you something useful, give you support and keep you entertained.”
“But she has done a lot for me…” Barnett said in a faint voice.
“Your father felt himself to be in danger and so he left her a letter with instructions for your education, as well as the money that she should dispense to you, threatening to reveal everything to the juvenile court if she didn’t. Otherwise they would have placed you in foster care with her sister, and she would have been denied any kind of financial support.”
Professor Zimmermann-Davis paused just long enough to let Barnett absorb the blow.
“She acted only in her own personal interests, Barnett. Although this, of course, does not mean that she did not and does not love you in some way.”
Barnett's eyes were bloodshot, he felt the knot in his stomach tightening, but now the contours of his cursed demons were well defined; now he understood in part what was haunting him, and he caught a glimpse of how it had affected his adolescence, his life now.
Davis began to speak slowly again. He knew very well the weight of the trauma that he was giving to the best of his students, the child of the only true friend he had ever had, and this deeply disturbed him. But if Barnett was to have a chance of getting out of this mess so that he could freely choose how to live his life, Davis had to force his hand. Barnett had a strong character and was not easily manipulated; he could make it on his own.
“Your father, as I told you, was a champion and an active man, he was curious about the world and he had a soul that knew how to read and express feelings and emotions. Unlike you, he was not at all cynical and he was perfect as a negotiator in very tense political situations.”
“But if he knew about my mother,” asked Barnett, “why didn’t he create an alternative life? How is it that he only had loose women?”
He remembered the scene at the front door, his father drunk and the girl with her hands down his pants.
“Her name was Ludmila. She was thirty years old, and came from Croatia; she was a former agent of the UDBA who had defected and was able to flee to the United States with the help of the CIA to become their operative agent.
She specialized in non-conventional weapons and knew the Balkans by heart; she met your father on a mission in Bosnia during the civil war in Yugoslavia. They fell in love. Your father literally adored her. He met her everywhere whenever it was possible. They couldn’t stand being apart for long. How can I say this…with her your father was a different person. It was pure love, without compromise.”
“And what was she like?” Barnett asked curiously.
“Simply charming...cheerful…with eyes that seemed to be on fire when she looked at you; she spoke six languages and had a degree in archeology, but worked as a spy.”
“She really loved Turner and showed it all the time; tragically, she stepped on a landmine in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1992 while trying to reach her headquarters on a mission headed by your father. It was a terrible blow to him and he never recovered. After her death, he was placed on leave for a month because he had lost his mind, completely lost it.”
“I spent the entire leave with him in Mexico where he underwent therapy, and after that I was with him until the day of his death. We faced that final mission together: I was with Delta, while your father was an operative agent.”
Davis spoke quietly, his eyes watering. As Barnett looked into those two liquid reflections, he formed a deeper understanding of his own story.
“Time’s up, Barnett! I’ve said enough,” announced Davis. “No one must become suspicious. Now go and fight your demons with awareness, take control of your life and live it.”
Davis-Zimmermann got up and left the office, leaving Barnett in a state of total confusion.
Two hours later he was dining with Antonio in a churrascaria steakhouse.
“Antonio, I was deemed unsuitable for the Argentine project. I was rejected despite my grades because they don’t believe I can work on a team. So I'm leaving tomorrow evening…first to New York for a couple of days. I’ll visit my mother and then I’m going to London to complete my studies. I need to get drunk tonight. But no sex! I don’t even want to hear about your women.”
That night, Barnett and Antonio barely managed to get back to their room, it took them at least ten minutes to open the door and they went to bed fully clothed after carefully placing a bowl in the center of the room in case they had to vomit again.
8
Barnett had just finished saying goodbye to the faculty and his fellow students and was now leaning against a tree waiting for the shuttle that would take him to the airport. He had a massive headache. He couldn’t face talking to his mother: this time it would be his turn to give her a nice surprise.
Davis approached and as he passed Barnett murmured in a low voice, “Barnett, fight the demon. Fight. I’ll keep rooting for you,” and without hesitating continued towards the research laboratories.
Again, once his aircraft had taken off, Rio de la Plata seemed like a huge, dirty funnel of pasta and beans to Barnett, but he didn’t even hear the sound of the landing gear retracting into the Airbus A380 which was taking him back to New York because he was already fast asleep.
9
His mother was at home. When she opened the door and saw Barnett, she gasped with surprise:
“Barnett! I wasn’t expecting you. Why didn’t you tell me! How are you?”
“Well, thanks. I just came to say goodbye. I leave for London tomorrow. I’ll finish my studies there and hopefully get a scholarship to pursue my PhD, if I keep my grades up.”
“I’m so proud of you...and your father would be too if he were still with us.”
“Speaking of my father...didn’t he leave instructions in case of his death in writing? I guess he was a soldier; he knew how risky that might be.”
“He left behind a document containing instructions about the financial support for us,” replied his mother, puzzled.
“Why didn't you ever tell me? I thought we were living on what the life insurance paid out.”
“You were just a kid; these were things that didn’t concern you...the life insurance wouldn’t have been enough to finance your studies...but why are you asking me about this now?”
“Can I see it?” Barnett stepped forward a little aggressively.
“Many years have passed. I think I threw it away after doing everything it said to do. I wouldn’t know where to find it,” she answered in a barely audible voice.
“And what do you have to say about the bathroom of the Wolferts Roost Country Club clubhouse in Albany on that day in 1993?” Barnett pressed her.
His mother slowly lowered herself down onto the couch.
“How do you know about that? I'm sorry, but it's none of your business,” said his mother in a shrill voice that came from a woman who now seemed like a stranger to Barnett.
“None of your business!” her son said, mimicking her tone.
For Barnett all of this seemed to confirm what Davis had said. By now he didn’t care anymore, not even enough to get an explanation. It was as if there was a deep rewind and it was time for his movie to start again and, as far as possible, in a new way.
They didn’t even speak to each other the next morning when he left for London, and that was the last time they would ever see each other.
10
The day Barnett received his doctorate he was 26 years old and he was the only student who had no relatives or girlfriends in tow at the ceremony. Barnett had now become a well-known researcher, a reputation built on a significant number of publications considering his young age; he was already an experienced psychiatrist and a talented biochemist.
Black Hawk Day Rewind: An action packed spy thriller (Mark Savannah Espionage Series Book 1) Page 2