by Rebecca York
She looked down at the tube of suntan cream in her shirt pocket. She’d brought it along to smooth on Mark’s face to protect his skin from the sun. Now she knew that her touch would definitely not be welcome.
* * *
THE CHIEF of station’s face registered his disdain. “This isn’t grand rounds at the hospital, Doctor. I just want a simple medical opinion about giving Bradley the RL2957. Answer yes or no.”
Dr. Hubbard cleared his throat. “It’s not as simple as yes or no.”
“Why not?”
“Because a thousand things could go wrong.”
“Like what?”
“You’ve read the case studies. Bradley’s cardiovascular system may not be able to withstand the dose you’re proposing. His brain may be irreparably damaged. This information he gives you when he’s under has only a seventy-five percent chance of being accurate.”
Downing waved his arm dismissively. He didn’t want to let this has-been physician interfere with what he had to do. Yet it was incumbent on him to make a show of asking for a consultation—for the record, in case anybody decided to sift back through the Pine Island logs. Considering what was riding on this assignment, he had a pretty good suspicion that might turn out to be the case.
“A medical opinion, Doctor,” he said now. “I just want a medical opinion. The stuff arrived yesterday, and I want to know if Bradley’s body can withstand its effects.”
Dr. Hubbard shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Downing had been treating him like a two-bit veterinarian ever since he’d arrived here—and he hadn’t exactly protested. He’d decided a long time ago that it was safer to go with the flow. Now he thought of the performance appraisal the major would be writing on him at the end of this tour. He’d already been passed over for promotion twice now. If it happened again, he’d had it as far as the air force was concerned. What would become of his wife then? She needed round-the-clock nursing care, and that cost money. If he were forced out of the service, he’d be scraping for cash, and he’d be of use to no one. The thought made him set his jaw. The worst wasn’t going to happen, he assured himself.
Then he thought about Eden Sommers and the dedication she’d brought to this case. Before she’d arrived, he’d been able to convince himself that Mark Bradley was just an unfortunate son of a bitch caught in a web of circumstances. Now it wasn’t so easy to remain detached.
“I thought you were going to give Dr. Sommers two weeks,” he ventured.
“She’s stalled again. If something positive doesn’t happen by the end of the week, all bets are off.”
“Are you going to tell her that?”
“No, and I want this conversation kept completely confidential. Do you understand?”
The doctor bit back the scathing remark on the tip of his tongue. “Yes.”
* * *
THE EXCHANGE between Downing and Hubbard would have chilled Eden to the bone, had she known about it. Instead she was simply left to ponder her own assessment of Mark’s condition. Physically he was much better. The scars on his face had blended in with his normal skin. Now that he had gained a little weight, his features had almost the old harmony she remembered. From the strength of his uncompromising jaw to his aquiline nose, he was once more a handsome man. When he walked, he held himself straight and tall. And almost all trace of his limp was gone. Since his hair was wet when she came in for their afternoon sessions, she had to assume he was being allowed to use the pool as she had suggested, but he didn’t say anything about the new concession to her.
Although she tried a number of conversational gambits during the next two days, she met with no better success than she had on the beach. The bond she’d begun to establish had just been too fragile. Mark didn’t really trust her enough to share his fears. With another patient there would have been no question about pulling back. It would be much more effective to let the healing process unfold naturally in its own good time, but time was one of the luxuries Pine Island lacked. She had to keep fighting.
Though Eden knew nothing definite about Downing’s plans, she was good at picking up vibrations. She didn’t like the assessing looks the chief of station and Price were giving her. More than once she thought Dr. Hubbard was about to confide some privileged piece of information, but he always turned away before he could get the words out.
However, the long-awaited message from the Falcon tipped the balance. She had been depressed after her fourth unsuccessful session with Mark and had almost decided to lie down before dinner instead of checking in with the Medlars data base, but some sixth sense had urged her to log on.
The communication she had been waiting for was embedded in the text of a letter from “Dr. Goldstein.” It looked like four lines which had been garbled in transmission, but the seemingly meaningless character sets could be easily decoded using a simple key; and that key was found in one of the standard psychology textbooks Eden had brought to Pine Island. A duplicate volume was on Constance McGuire’s desk back at the Aviary. Gordon’s assistant had simply used the date at the top of the letter as a page number in the book and encoded her message using alphabetical substitutions keyed into the first eight letters of the top line of that page. To read the message, Eden had to check the date and turn to the same page so she could reconvert those substitutions to the letters of the plain text. Without the psychology book as a reference, the code was virtually unbreakable by anyone else without a computer powerful enough to test every possible letter combination.
It was basically a simple system, but following through with the plan did involve some risk. If someone noticed the garbled lines on her printout of the letter from “Dr. Goldstein” they might get curious; and in fact, she did have a bad moment when Lieutenant Price walked by just as she was tearing the sheet out of the printer.
“Is your terminal acting up?” he asked as he glanced at the less-than-perfect page.
Eden’s heart lurched. As a member of the security team, Price would be on the lookout for any unusual communications. Yet he might be more than just an air force officer doing his job, she reminded herself. He could be a spy sent here to keep tabs on Mark Bradley. If that were the case, he certainly wouldn’t let her know he had any special interest in the message she’d just received.
She looked down at the letter and pretended to see the garbled lines for the first time. “Darn! Wouldn’t you know it. The only material I need has its bits scrambled, but maybe I can get the gist of it from the rest of the text.”
Price seemed to accept the explanation, and Eden didn’t know whether to be relieved or not.
However, he didn’t miss the opportunity to lecture her on procedures. “If you see it happening again, you’d better report it to the Comms Center.”
“Thanks, I will,” she said, tucking the letter into a folder.
After signing off the Medlars system, she wanted to rush back to her room. Instead, she made the effort to walk slowly through the garden as though she simply had a few minutes to kill before the evening meal.
Once she’d closed the door to her room, however, she set to work feverishly decoding the message. Connie had made the process sound simple, but Eden had never done anything like this before. The first time she tried to carry out the set of instructions, she only got more garbage. So she started from the beginning again and worked more carefully. This time her efforts paid off.
Gordon’s message was succinct and to the point. Like Downing, he was pressing for signs of progress. But he’d also given her an important piece of information—a weapon that might help her breach Mark’s defenses. It was a name from Mark Bradley’s recent past, and she was sure he would react to it. The trouble was, that reaction might be quite violent.
* * *
AT LEAST MARK was still willing to go outside with her, Eden reflected the next morning as the two of them headed for the beach again. This session with her patient had to be private.
When they reached a stretch of sand that was hidden from view o
f the main house, she looked back over her shoulder. Since that first time when Yolanski had coordinated his morning constitutional with her session, they had been left alone, but she didn’t take anything for granted anymore.
“Let’s sit down,” she suggested, spreading out the blanket that she’d gotten in the habit of carrying along on their walks. She’d seen Marshall give her a speculative glance when he thought she wasn’t looking, but frankly she hadn’t cared what he thought she and Mark were doing in private.
Her patient shrugged as she spread out the navy blue rectangle. Again as he lowered himself to it, he angled his body away from her; but this morning, the sun glinting off the water seemed to be in his eyes.
“You might be more comfortable if you turned this way,” she hinted.
He shifted his position imperceptibly, but his eyes still avoided hers. Eden watched him for a moment. Getting out in the sun had improved his color, even with the scars, and as the breeze off the water blew his hair back from his face, she noted how vibrant and thick it looked. Even the streaks of gray in his dark locks had taken on a silver sheen.
It made her heart turn over to see him regaining the appearance of vitality, because in Mark’s case appearances were deceiving. Something was still eating him up inside, something he was unwilling to share with her. If pulling him into her arms and holding him close could make a difference, she was willing to offer him everything a woman could offer a man—but she’d already tried that and had been rejected.
He wasn’t emotionally ready for intimacy, but maybe she could reach him with Gordon’s new information. Of course, probing his psyche might be the equivalent of stabbing a raw wound. With one stroke she might wipe away all the progress he’d been able to make, but he had given her no other choice. She was going to have to chance it. Eden took a deep breath and let it out slowly, as though to center her own emotions before pressing ahead. “You remember when we first came out to the beach?” she began.
He didn’t appear to be listening. Instead, his index finger was tracing a random pattern in the sand at the edge of the blanket.
“I told you we didn’t have much time,” she continued. “And we have even less now.”
“So?”
“So we’ve got to make some progress, even if it’s painful for you.”
His senses seemed to sharpen like those of a boxer waiting to dodge a lethal right hook.
She’d have to hit him now before he could raise any more defenses. “Let’s talk about Hans Erlich.”
The fingers that had been sifting through the sand convulsively clutched for a handful of the tiny grains.
“Hans Erlich,” she repeated. “Tell me about Dr. Erlich.”
His face had turned ashen and she glimpsed fear in the depths of his soul. “Satan come to life.” The words were torn from him in a haunted whisper. He didn’t say anything else, but the power of that name had propelled him into a maelstrom of nightmare images. He saw a hard, uncompromising face with blond hair curled across the forehead. A dark, prominent mole stood out on the right cheek. The eyes were watery blue, with colorless lashes. The intelligence that gleamed from them had belonged to a genius—or a madman. The memories were jumbled, indistinct, but he knew one thing. Erlich had been his lifeline, his salvation, his link to reality, and the key to his destruction.
“You are Mark Bradley. You are my creation.”
His mind echoed the words that had been drummed into him with the force of a sledgehammer.
“No,” came his answering silent denial.
“You are a means to an end.”
“No.”
“You will bend to my will.”
“No.”
“Mark Bradley belongs to me...to me...to me... You will remember the importance of 002-72-52, 002-72-52, 002-72-52... But when you try to recall anything else about our conversations, the pain in your head will be intolerable.”
Suddenly even that snatch of memory was gone, and he felt like a man bashing his head against a brick wall. The veins in his temples stood out. His face had taken on the flush of fever; and all at once Eden was afraid at what she’d unleashed. She didn’t want to go on with this, but there was no other way. “What did he do to you?” she persisted. “Try to remember.”
For a moment, it looked as though he were trying to answer her question. “He... Oh, God— Day after day— Week after week...” The effort to get out each word was a silver spike of pain in his head. His hands clawed at his temples as though he could somehow pull those spikes out, but it was no good.
He was gasping for breath now, his skin cold and clammy.
She tried to bring him back to the present. “Mark!” But it was obvious that he was beyond her reach.
A spasm hit him, and then another, and then, in slow motion, he collapsed sideways onto the blanket, his knees curled up to his chest.
Eden watched in horror. Erlich was the doctor who had interrogated Mark. The techniques he had used must have been unspeakable. No wonder Mark had tried to lock away the terrifying experience.
She put her hand on his shoulder, but he was too withdrawn now to even shrug away her touch. His eyes were glazed over and each breath was a painful gasp. She grabbed his icy hands, chafing them between her fingers. “It’s all right. He can’t hurt you here,” she repeated over and over.
You’re wrong, his mind shouted. You don’t know what he can do, what power he can exercise. But the words were frozen in his throat.
It was only slowly that he came back to the reality of Pine Island. He was aware first of the sun’s healing warmth and then the waves pounding against the shore. When his eyes snapped open, he saw Eden’s tense face hovering above his. “Mark, forgive me. I didn’t know it would be that bad.” Her fingers brushed back the dark hair that clung damply to his forehead.
“Eden, hold me,” he whispered.
Until now, he hadn’t asked for what she so desperately wanted to give. There was a sad joy in her heart as she stretched out beside him on the blanket and pulled him into her arms. For long moments, she held him against her body, rocking him back and forth, and this time he didn’t fight the comfort of her embrace. His arms went around her shoulders to pull her even closer. The seconds that ticked by were beats of his heart. She couldn’t be sure what had happened. She only knew that by bringing him pain, she had broken through to him again.
By slow degrees, she felt some of the tension go out of his body.
He drew in a ragged breath. “That plane crash in Berlin should have been the end of Mark Bradley.”
“No!”
“You don’t know. You can’t understand.”
“Mark, you think this is something unique, but you’re wrong. I’ve worked with people who’ve been through what you have. I’ve helped them.”
Been through what he had. He doubted it.
“I can help you,” she repeated, shifting slightly so she could look down into his face. “Breaking the lock on those memories was the worst part, but you’ve got to go back more than once, Mark, if you want to be whole again.”
He shuddered. “I can’t. When I try, I feel as though the pain in my head is going to shatter my skull.”
“I didn’t know.” So that’s what Erlich had done. He had locked up Mark’s mind with barbed wire fence, and when his victim pressed against the barrier, the twisted metal tines dug into his flesh. Erlich was counting on the pain to block Mark’s recovery. She had to hope that the worst part would be crossing that barrier the first time. After that, it would be easier.
She squeezed his hand reassuringly. “It tears me up inside to put you through this, but you’ve got to make that journey, Mark. Nothing less than your survival is at stake.”
“I guess I’ve always known that, too. That’s why it’s so bad. There’s nothing solid to go back to. It’s only fleeting images, incoherent memories—and the damn pain in my head that threatens to explode every time I try to piece things together.”
She recognized
what admitting that had cost him. “Bringing that out into the open is a tremendous step,” she assured.
“Or a dead end.”
“No.”
“Suppose you’re wrong?”
“Trust me. We’ll solve the puzzle together, piece by piece. From now on, whenever you have an image or a memory, no matter how fuzzy or fleeting, bring it to me and we’ll work with it.”
His arms tightened around her again. He was afraid to accept what she was offering. But he was more afraid not to.
Chapter Eight
“You idiot, I told you not to call me here,” the man in Washington hissed.
“This is an emergency.”
“It’d better be.”
“Sommers is on the verge of getting results.”
There was an instant alertness on the other end of the phone line punctuated by a low curse.
“Did you get that information on her?”
“There’s a hold on her file. But my contact in the administrator’s office has promised to make me a copy tonight.”
“So I should be ready to move as soon as you give the word.”
“Yes. And make it look like an accident.”
“That shouldn’t be too hard. You step off this island in the wrong place and the undertow will do the rest.”
“I’ll get back to you tomorrow.”
There was a click and the line went dead. The operative on Pine Island looked at the receiver and then set it down with a jolt. He was doing all the dirty work down here, and that jerk in Washington would keep his hands clean. He’d gotten into the spy business for the money. Somewhere along the line the money had stopped being enough. It didn’t make up for the risks he was being forced to take. Briefly he’d thought about turning himself in. But that was madness. They’d get to him somehow. There simply wasn’t any way to resign from this job and live to tell about it. So he’d just have to follow instructions and make sure everything went as planned.
* * *
MARK STOOD NEXT to his bed, clad only in jeans. He’d been in the act of undressing for the night—Marshall, to his relief, was now letting him do that for himself—when an image had flickered through his mind. It was of a room with institutional green walls and sparse furnishings in sterile white enamel. A hospital room. And he had occupied it. He could almost feel the coarse sheets against the naked skin of his back. The tactile memory made his skin crawl.