“Well,” Mary Ann began, “you woke me up at 1 a.m. on Monday morning. You were banging on my door, and I almost called the cops because I didn’t know it was you.”
“But you did not,” Tim said.
“No, but I wanted to. But you said that you had to tell me something important, so I let you in, and...”
“And what?” Tim was becoming slightly impatient.
“You picked me up, carried me to my bed, and said that you were in love with me. And then, well, then we had sex.” Mary Ann grabbed Tim’s hand. “And it was the best I have ever had. I just didn’t think a guy your age could have so much energy. You don’t remember any of this?” she added.
Her face was beginning to register a look of disappointment, so Tim lied and told her that he did remember. Mary Ann began to smile again and continued. “So, we stayed in bed all day Monday, and I didn’t even bother to open up the Goose. I went down and put a note on the door—and remember, we could hear the regulars down on the street banging on the door, and you said, ‘Fuck em if they can’t take a joke?’”
Tim shook his head yes, and suddenly he did remember. He remembered waking up at midnight in his condo, getting dressed, and walking to the Goose. He knew that the Goose closed early on Sunday night, so he’d gone up the stairs to Mary Ann’s apartment.
“You told me to go away when I knocked on your door, right?”
“I told you to go the fuck home,” Mary Ann responded.
“And I said who cares what anybody thinks.”
“Yes, you did.” Mary Ann was now laughing, which made Tim feel good.
Tim began to recall their lovemaking and how long he had lasted, but what was really amazing was the short amount of time it took him to be ready to go again. It had been a very long time since Tim was able to get it up twice in one night, but it seemed that the love fest had gone on the entire next day.
Tim’s memory was coming back a little bit at a time. He remembered that they’d ordered a pizza for dinner on Monday night, watched something on HBO, and had more sex. He recalled Mary Ann telling him on Tuesday that she had to open the Goose, and Tim told her that he was going home and would be back later on. Tim then recalled walking downstairs and around the corner, where there was a black Mercedes SUV and Amin from the Dominican Republic. Was that a dream, or did that really happen?
“Earth to Tim, Earth to Tim,” Mary Ann said as she shook Tim’s hand. “Where did you go, honey?”
“Oh, I’m just thinking,” Tim answered absently. He was still thinking about the black SUV.
“What I want to know is how the hell you ended up at John Hopkins.” Mary Ann was now sounding concerned.
“That, I don’t know,” Tim answered. “I really wish that I did. The cops picked me up on Washington Street and said I was acting crazy.”
“Yeah, that’s how I found out where you were. The Irish cop, Danny B., came by to ask if I knew you. I told him that you were one of my regulars, and he told me the rest. I was very disappointed that you didn’t call me, but I figured you just fell asleep.”
“Mary Ann, I have no idea what happened in the Dominican Republic, but I should not have gone. I was ripped off.”
“Well, they did something to you, Tim, because you seem like a new man.”
Tim leaned over and kissed Mary Ann, and they both go up to leave. It was close to 4 p.m., and Mary Ann had to go and bartend at the Goose. They agreed to meet at Tim’s condo later that night.
Tim watched Mary Ann walk up to Washington Street and wondered why it had taken her so long to ask about his trip to the Dominican Republic, but he decided to let it go. After all, a lot had happened since he’d returned.
Chapter 9
Tim decided to get a sandwich on his way back to his condo. A good sub shop was close by, and he ate there often. CNN was on the sub shop’s TV, and although the sound was turned down very low, Tim could hear a panel of talking heads discussing the President’s job performance, it was not a particularly positive review. Tim had an opinion on just about everything but was surprisingly neutral about the current President—and, for that matter, about all of the Presidents going back to the first President Bush. Tim simply felt that the President was for the most part a figurehead and that it didn’t matter who held the position. The fact that everyone in the press seemed to hate this particular President was a mystery to Tim. He knew the man was a racist, but he recalled hearing a recording of one very progressive President making an extremely racist remark as well.
Tim suddenly realized what he was thinking. How the hell did he hear a recording of a former President making a comment about African Americans and Jews? Was this another one of his dreams? What was going on? Tim thought about seeing his neurologist to get an opinion, but the prospect of more MRIs and CAT scans scared him. Maybe he should speak to Mary Ann about what was happening...but did he want to scare her off as well? Why would she want a senile boyfriend?
Tim’s sandwich was now ready, and the talking heads on CNN had apparently finished talking. The station had gone to commercials, so Tim paid for his sandwich and Diet Coke and headed out the door for North Charles Street and his condo. As Tim walked, he noticed a car, no, an SUV, out of the corner of his left eye. Tim had begun to notice how much his vision had improved lately, and he could see that a black SUV was slowly tailing him as he walked up to Charles Street. Was somebody following him? Why?
Tim decided to find out, so he stopped, turned, and faced the street. The black Mercedes SUV pulled up right in front of him. Tim had to bend down slightly in order to see in the vehicle, and he spotted two men. He could not make out the driver, but the man in the passenger seat had graying hair and a light brown complexion. Maybe from India or Pakistan, Tim thought to himself.
“May I help you?” Tim was somewhat surprised by how direct he was becoming. It felt like he was pretending to be a different person, yet his new behavior also seemed natural.
The man in the passenger seat smiled and said, “Yes, I certainly hope that you can. We are looking for North Charles Street.” The man had a slight accent, perhaps from the UK. One might call it posh. Yes, Tim thought. He had a posh British accent.
“That’s interesting,” Tim replied. “I’m headed that way myself.”
Tim immediately felt stupid. Why the hell did he just tell two strangers where he was going?
Then again, maybe he was just being paranoid.
“Well then,” the man in the SUV replied, “perhaps we can give you a lift?”
Paranoid or not, there was no way Tim was going to get into that car. “Thank you, but my mother told me to never accept a ride with strangers.” Tim was now laughing, although he was still on guard. “But if you take a right turn at the light and then go down two blocks, you’ll see North Charles.”
Tim pointed while walking, hoping to put some distance between himself and the black SUV. The man in the passenger seat gave Tim a friendly wave and drove on.
Tim knew that he had seen the man before. He was just too familiar. Tim thought once again that he was acting paranoid, which might also be a sign of some medical condition. He decided to call his neurologist after all.
Tim made the call to his neurologist as soon as he got home. At first, the doctor’s receptionist told Tim that the doctor would not be able to see him for more than six weeks, but when Tim told her that he was having new symptoms, she relented and a made an appointment for Friday in two weeks. Thirty minutes later, the neurologist’s nurse called Tim back and told him that they had arranged for a number of tests, including a CAT scan and an MRI with contrast plus some blood work to be done before the examination. They also made appointments for Tim to be tested on his cognitive ability and IQ. All of that could be done the week before the appointment.
Tim sat down and began to make notes about the coming appointment in his day planner when he heard a heavy-sounding knock on his door. There were three knocks, to be precise—and then nothing.
When Tim
looked through the peep hole, he didn’t see anything. He slowly opened his front door and cautiously looked each way, but he still saw nothing.
However, at his feet was a thick, padded envelope. Tim bent down, picked it up, and returned to his couch. He placed the package on his coffee table.
All that was written on the large envelope was Tim’s full name, Timothy Robert Hall. He didn’t usually use the Robert, since that was the same name as a low-end men’s clothing store that existed in the 1960s. Tim remembered that some kids used to call him “cheap suit” at school.
Tim had been remembering little things about several subjects all day long but had been unable to connect them with anything. And now he had a mystery package on his coffee table. Tim took stock of the entire week. First, he’d traveled to the Dominican Republic, where something he couldn’t explain had been done to him. Next, he came home, went out with his girlfriend, and took her to bed for a day and a half, not to mention that he’d almost broken a guy’s hand at the Dallas-Fort Worth airport. But what was really beginning to worry Tim was that his personality appeared to be changing. He found himself thinking and saying things that he ordinarily would never say.
Perhaps his memory was returning. The doctors had said that it might, after all—but Tim also knew that a personality change could be an early sign of dementia, which just plain scared him.
Tim looked back down at the package. There were no stamps or postage of any kind on it, no return address. Tim’s address was also not present on it, which told him that it had been hand-delivered. There was only a white label with his full name printed on it.
When Tim picked up the letter opener and carefully opened the top, a book with plastic binding fell out of the envelope onto the coffee table. The book was similar to an employee manual and was certainly not very fancy. The paper could have come from any copy machine.
Tim opened the book to the first page and saw the title “Who Am I?” That is a very good question, Tim thought to himself, but he was fully aware that he was a former employee of the CIA. He was just a little unclear about what his job had been for the last 5 years or so before the accident. Tim had tried to tell some regulars at the Goose that he was a CIA Case Officer but only Mary Ann believed him. Once you retired from the Agency, you were pretty much dead to them. Sometimes, you got the feeling that they would prefer you to actually be dead. Nothing annoyed Agency management more than retired officers shooting off their mouths to civilians at cocktail parties...or worse, write a book. The best the Agency could do was to issue what was known as the Stump Speech, which said, we can neither confirm nor deny (fill in the blank and your name here).
Most people had general misconceptions about the Agency. Generally speaking, CIA employees were usually either analysts or technicians. The ones known as the case officers were actually what people would consider to be spies. Both analysts and technicians could be case officers. These employees worked at CIA Headquarters at Langley and at most US Embassies around the world. Often, the analysts and case officers would be responsible for different tasks—but the one aspect they all held in common was lying. They all lied so often that you never really knew when a case officer or analyst was telling you the truth. Therefore, you just had to accept the fact that you were being lied to most (if not all) of the time.
The other CIA employees you would likely encounter were known as contractors. These men and women performed much of the dirty or unpleasant kinds of work that the CIA was known for. For example, if anyone had a gun, it was probably a contractor, especially since contractors were responsible for Agency security. The case officers tended to feel that they were above that kind of work (although they planned and supervised all of it), but the case officers would be lost without the support of the contractors.
The fourth type of CIA employees were known as assets. These were the people who supplied the CIA with valuable information. Although the assets were not considered paid employees of the Agency, many were actually paid very well for the information they provided. Other assets believed that they had a moral obligation, and a few others were simply blackmailed by the Agency. Most of the assets reported to a case officer, who would be known to the assets as their handler. The assets perhaps had the most dangerous jobs of anyone, since if they were caught, the result was usually a very unpleasant death.
It was also not lost on Tim that someone had gone out of their way to erase his past after his accident. Tim accepted that he was suffering from retrograde amnesia, which was the name his condition was given, but the fact that no one came forward and tried to explain anything about his past life before the accident just did not make any sense. Did he not have any friends or coworkers from the Agency? Why didn’t anyone take him to his old house or the town where he lived just to see if any memory would return? He remembered that his doctors had suggested this course of treatment, yet no one ever followed up on it. Tim did not even know where his late wife Pam was buried or where her ashes were scattered. He’d been told by the doctors and nurses in the hospital that Pam had died in the car accident, but that was all. No police officers ever visited Tim in the hospital to take or follow up with a report. Wasn’t that the common practice? Tim’s mysterious second cousin showed up one day to take care of his home, and she did present him with a check for $478,000, which was apparently the sale price of his house and car. He was given a do-nothing job at the Social Security Administration, where he tried to look himself up in the system until the words “Denied Access” appeared in big red letters. “Classified,” it also said.
Tim tried going directly to human resources after that, but all they would tell him was that he’d been transferred from another agency, and its name was redacted. Tim asked if his wife had life insurance. All Federal employees had life insurance provided to them with double indemnity for accidental death, yet no one had any information about that. The manager of the human resources department sympathized with Tim and suggested that he contact his Congressman, which he considered doing until he thought about what he was going to say. “Hi there, I was some kind of spy, but I’m not sure for who or where.” It sounded crazy because it was.
He finally had to face the fact that someone no longer wanted him around and had decided that Tim needed to retire. The message “Just stay in Baltimore and collect your pension” was loud and clear. Tim’s retirement annuity was almost 90K per year, plus he had money in the bank from the sale of his home. And now that he had a girlfriend, so what was there not to like about life?
Well, for one thing, why the trip down to the Dominican Republic? Tim had been lured there, but for what purpose? Now, those two men had appeared in front of the sub shop, and this book was delivered. Tim wondered if the two men were in Baltimore to kill him. Maybe the people who had worked so hard to erase Tim’s former life had decided to retire him for good.
Chapter 10
Tim had finished all of the tests and scans prescribed by his neurologist. He’d even had a sleep study and an EEG performed. After the accident, Tim hated seeing doctors and especially hated waiting for test results, yet now he did not really seem to mind at all. Tim needed to understand his physical condition before he could think about any future with Mary Ann, after all. He also needed to know if there were any side effects from the stem cell treatments he’d received, or at least thought he’d received, in the Dominican Republic. Although he felt great, Mary Ann was concerned about what doctors may have done.
“God, Tim,” Mary Ann had said the other night. “You’re lucky they didn’t take a kidney or something.” She’d even made him lie down on his stomach so she could look for scars.
That happened two weeks ago, and Tim had not seen much of Mary Ann since then. Tim wondered why Mary Ann seemed to disappear every two weeks or so. Perhaps she was seeing someone else. Their sex life was good for the most part, but Mary Ann sometimes behaved as if her mind was on something else entirely. He had been hoping that she would come with him to the neurologist, but appare
ntly, she’d made other plans.
Tim got a cab ride over to the doctor’s office. The driver let Tim off at the Medical Office building, and Tim began his journey through the maze of floors looking for room 876, Drs. Clarkson, Gray, and Harris, Neurology. Tim once again felt sad that Mary Ann was not with him. She hadn’t even bothered to call or text him that morning, which was something they had started to do every day. On the other hand, the smiling Indian man in the Mercedes SUV and his driver had not been seen for at least two weeks, and there were no more books delivered or imaginary attempts on his life. Tim chalked both Mary Ann and the man from India up to his paranoia.
When he found the right room, Tim was led directly into Dr. Gray’s office and told to sit on the examination table. Dr. Gray soon came in with a stack of results under his arm and got directly to the point. “Mr. Hall, I can find absolutely nothing wrong with you, at least neurology related,” he explained. “I have studied your scans, and my partners have studied your scans, and none of us could find anything medically wrong with you.”
Tim was happy with the good news. He really was convinced that he was suffering from the early symptoms of dementia, yet he sensed that something else was troubling the doctor by the look on his face.
The doctor opened to another page of Tim’s report and started to speak. “What is unusual, Mr. Hall, is that we did not detect any shrinkage in the size of your brain. As we age, most of us experience an amount of brain shrinkage, which is normal—but your brain appears to be the brain of someone 35 to 40 years old. In addition, the results of your cognitive tests also indicate the brain of a younger man, not someone who is 58. Your other scans have all come back clear as well as your EEG. You show no sign of seizure or strokes. There are no structural issues such as growths or lesions. Your blood flow through your brain appears excellent. Your blood pressure is exactly normal. We do not see any dead or damaged areas which would indicate dementia. Your vision is 20/20. Your reflexes are above average, and you have an IQ of 128.”
The Adults in the Room Page 5