by David Zeman
The doctor turned back to Kraig. His eyes told her he was sincere in his concern for Susan Campbell. More than sincere, in fact.
“Are you acquainted personally with Mrs. Campbell?” she asked.
“We’re friends,” Kraig said. “I was her husband’s college roommate. I was present when they first met. I’ve known her husband since prep school. I consider them both friends.”
The doctor thought for a moment. Susan Campbell was an unhappy woman. Moreover, she was the kind of unhappy woman who needs to believe she is happy. That made the therapy difficult, for the doctor had to work on the conflicts indirectly, without forcing Susan to acknowledge them openly. It was reminiscent of the physicians of the last century who had to give women complete physical exams without removing a single article of their clothing.
In recent months Susan had been terrified of the unexplained illness that was affecting so many people, including important political leaders. She had received crank calls suggesting that her husband was part of a conspiracy or plot that was threatening the country.
Her initial reaction was extreme fear for her husband’s safety. But in the course of the winter, she began to express suspicion that there was something more at stake. The voice on the phone made her feel responsible, as though the weight of the whole thing was on her own shoulders.
Like so many neurotics, not to mention normal people, Susan had a lot of guilt inside her which met the outer threat halfway. The guilt stemmed from her father’s abandonment of the family when Susan was six years old, and her mother’s subsequent death. She had never entirely worked through her ambivalence about this.
Her married life had complicated the problem rather than solved it. Michael Campbell represented not only respectability to her, but also family. The Campbells accepted Susan and loved her.
However, the Campbells were not a normal family. The mother, Margery, had committed suicide under questionable circumstances, and the four surviving members were both joined and torn by significant stresses. Judd Campbell, the overbearing father, was the source of much of this trouble. The Campbells depended on Susan even more than she depended on them. Judd’s attachment to her was obviously incestuous.
The tense Campbell family situation was matched by the extreme exposure Susan had to endure as the wife of a famous political man. Her visibility increased her self-consciousness and endangered her self-esteem, which was already fragile. The events of recent months—the sudden illness and death of important political figures—upset her badly.
For a while the doctor had suspected that the crank caller of whom Susan spoke was merely a fantasy. But the caller’s prediction that Michael would be the eventual nominee for vice president had come well before the fact. The caller was real.
When Michael’s selection came to pass, like a prophecy, Susan was shaken to her foundations. Emotionally she seized on the logic that everything was her fault, that the responsibility for curing the evil lay on her own shoulders. She could not talk to Michael himself about her feelings, or to Judd Campbell, who was thrilled by his son’s selection to be vice president.
Was there motivation for suicide in Susan’s situation? For flight? Certainly. That is, if Susan were a different person. But Susan was a fighter. She was motivated to stay at her post, not only by her love for her husband but by her need to protect the life she had built with him. She would not abandon her deeper crusade to feel legitimate as a person, to feel loved. To make a long story short, she was simply too healthy to crack under the strain. She had too much ego strength to run away, or to do herself harm.
The doctor turned to look at Agent Kraig. She suspected his feelings for Susan Campbell went deeper than mere friendship and loyalty. Underneath his cool professional veneer he had the look of a grieving relative holding vigil over a loved one.
“Agent Kraig, I have no patient in my practice at the moment who would be a risk for suicide. As for flight, I can only tell you that many people flee their family situations when stresses become too great. They usually return.”
“You’re saying that Susan was probably abducted,” Kraig said.
“I can’t tell you how to do your job,” the doctor said. “You are far more expert in it than I. I can only tell you my impressions as a psychiatrist.”
“Has she contacted you?” Kraig asked.
“I’m afraid I can’t answer that.”
“Is there a place you know of that she might have gone to from the Green Lake cottage?” Kraig asked.
The doctor shrugged. “As I say, I can’t violate the confidence of a patient.”
“In the event she did get in touch with you . . .”
“I would certainly urge her to let her family know she was safe,” the doctor replied. “That would be my advice to any patient.”
Kraig smiled. “Then there’s nothing else you can tell me.” He stood up. “Doctor, I appreciate your seeing me.”
The doctor came around the desk to escort Kraig to the door. Seeing how disappointed he was, she took pity on him.
“Agent Kraig, all my patients are responsible adults. I would be astonished to hear that one of them had either harmed himself—or herself—or run away. If one of them disappeared, I would be inclined to look elsewhere for the explanation.”
Kraig smiled. “Thank you, Doctor. Thank you for your help.” He went through the waiting room and out into the sun.
The doctor returned to her desk. If her own theory about Susan Campbell was correct, and if Susan had in fact been abducted, there was reason to suspect that the crank on the telephone had not been talking pure nonsense. It was not inconceivable that the bizarre events of this political year had something to do with Susan’s disappearance.
Susan Campbell was sane. The world was not sane. Not this year, anyway.
It was not the doctor’s job to evaluate things like this. Agent Joseph Kraig and his colleagues would have to get to the bottom of it. She only hoped they did so in time to save Susan.
She could still feel Kraig’s warm, firm handshake. A strong man, she mused. A strong man at a weak moment. A man pursuing a woman he perhaps cared too much about, a woman he had little hope of finding.
Sighing, she looked out the window at the deceptive antebellum charm of the yard.
Where was Susan? Was she alive?
The doctor shook her head and prepared to greet her next patient.
————
AS KRAIG was leaving the psychiatrist’s office, Karen Embry was online with Grimm.
He had broken in via instant messaging as she was checking the latest statistics from the World Health Organization about the Pinocchio Syndrome.
GOOD MORNING, said Grimm.
Karen immediately stopped what she was doing.
I’M GLAD TO HEAR YOUR VOICE, she wrote. I MISSED YOU.
I’M TOUCHED, came the reply. WHAT HAVE YOU FOUND OUT?
SICK GIRLS IN BOSTON, Karen wrote. 15 YEARS AGO. COMPLETE MENTAL PARALYSIS, CAUSE UNKNOWN. FOLLOWED BY COMA. 8 ARE DEAD. I VISITED THE OTHER 5. ONE GIRL MISSING WHO WAS WITH ONE OF THE VICTIMS.
GOOD FOR YOU, replied Grimm. WHAT DID THEY TELL YOU?
DOCTORS STILL BAFFLED. Karen thought for a minute. I CHECKED WHEREABOUTS OF ALL MAJOR PLAYERS IN THIS YEAR’S POLITICS. MICHAEL CAMPBELL WAS A STUDENT AT HARVARD FOR ALL 14 GIRLS. COLIN GOSS WAS VISITING BOSTON THAT YEAR TO SET UP NEW ENGLAND HEADQUARTERS. GOSS WAS IN BOSTON FOR ALL 14 GIRLS.
There was a brief pause.
THAT SHOULD BE ALL YOU NEED, wrote Grimm.
Karen was tempted to tell Grimm the results of her conversation with Joe Kraig. But she didn’t want Grimm to know she had shared her information with anyone. She tried to find words that would get him to help her.
NO ONE WILL BELIEVE ME BASED ON WHAT I HAVE SO FAR, she said. THEY’LL SAY COINCIDENCE. CAN YOU GIVE ME SOMETHING MORE?
The screen was silent. Grimm must be thinking.
YOU SAW THE GIRLS, AND YOU STILL DON’T UNDERSTAND? he wrote.
&nb
sp; Karen puffed nervously at her Newport.
I WANT TO UNDERSTAND, she wrote. SOMEONE MADE THE GIRLS SICK. I’M NOT SURE WHY.
I OVERESTIMATED YOU, he wrote. I THOUGHT YOU WERE SMARTER. YOU HAVE ALL YOU NEED. GOODBYE.
WAIT! Karen typed the word hurriedly. To her relief, the IM box remained open. Grimm was listening.
Her fingers trembling, she began to type.
YOU WOULDN’T BE WRITING TO ME UNLESS YOU WANT ME TO TELL THIS STORY SOMEDAY, she wrote. I CAN FEEL TIME RUNNING OUT. I’M BEHIND. HELP ME CATCH UP.
YOU’RE RIGHT ABOUT TIME, Grimm wrote. THERE IS VERY LITTLE TIME.
FOR WHOM? Karen wrote. SUSAN?ME?
FOR ME. And after a pause: FOR ALL.
The reply chilled Karen.
ONE MORE THREAD, she wrote. I’LL FOLLOW IT TO THE END. AND I’LL TELL YOUR STORY, I PROMISE.
A long pause.
SEE PATRICIA BRODERICK. SHE WAS THERE.
The message board went dead. Karen was left looking at the name, and wondering who it belonged to.
55
—————
WHILE KRAIG was on his way from Baltimore back to Washington on I-95, the ransom demand the authorities had been anxiously awaiting for eleven days came in.
It was received by the managing editor of theNew York Times . It came in the form of a telephone message. The message was recorded.
“This is Susan Campbell,”it began.
The editor’s assistant, who had taken the call, frantically pushed the intercom button to get the editor to pick up. It was too late. The editor was on another line.
“I am safe and being well cared for,”said Susan’s voice. The recording was of poor quality, probably from a discount-house Walkman with an interior microphone.“No one intends to hurt me, provided that my husband Michael complies with the following demand.”
The assistant was writing furiously. Before she could finish the second sentence a different voice came on the recording.
“Michael Campbell must immediately withdraw his name from consideration as vice president,”said the voice.“When Campbell has withdrawn and another person has been selected, Mrs. Campbell will be released. If there is a delay in complying with this request, Mrs. Campbell will die.”
Word of the call spread like wildfire through the entire floor. Computer keyboards stopped clicking, voices were stilled. A deathly silence reigned. The assistant cursed as she tried to copy down the message.
“Can you repeat that?” she said into the phone. “Please, I’m trying to write it down.”
The voice of Susan Campbell returned.
“Michael, please do what they say right away,”Susan said.“They mean business. They know what they’re doing. Michael, I love you.”
The recording went dead.
A small group of reporters and secretaries had gathered at the door of the assistant’s cubicle.
“Did you get it all?” someone asked.
The assistant shook her head. “Just the gist. They want Campbell to withdraw. That’s all.”
“Whose voice was it?” someone asked.
“Two voices. Susan Campbell and someone else,” the assistant said. “A really shitty tape. I could barely understand it.”
“Was it Susan?” one of the reporters asked.
The assistant nodded. “I recognized her voice. It was her all right.”
“God damn,” the editor said. “We should have got that on tape.”
The assistant shrugged. The newspaper did not have facilities for taping incoming calls.
They need not have worried. The same recording was phoned in to CNN headquarters in Atlanta later that day while a report on the demand was in progress. The cable technicians got the entire message on tape, including Susan Campbell’s voice and that of her captor.
56
—————
Washington
A SPECIAL meeting of the intelligence and law enforcement people was held that evening. The first order of business was to determine if the voice of Susan Campbell on the kidnappers’ tape was genuine.
The FBI’s director was categorical on this. “I’ll have the answer to that tonight. We have voiceprints of all the major political officials. That goes for the more visible spouses like Susan Campbell. We’ll do a comparison.”
Few of those present had any doubt that the voice on the tape belonged to Susan. The question was what condition she was in when she made the tape, and how much duress she was under at the time.
Again the FBI director took responsibility. “Our hostage rescue guys have psychological consultants,” he said. “There are ways to analyze a recorded voice so that various methods of coercion can be determined.”
“What do you mean?” asked the Secret Service head.
“Whether she’s reading from a prepared document,” the director said. “Whether she’s reading it for the tenth time. Whether certain words upset her more than other words. We can also get some profiling data on the abductor by a careful analysis of the word choice. This technique got a lot of refining when Patty Hearst was kidnapped back in the 1970s. You’d be surprised what you can learn from a recorded ransom demand.”
“Except they’re not demanding a ransom,” threw in one of the national security men.
“True.” Heads nodded at this remark.
“What about the other voice?” someone asked.
The FBI director shook his head. “We don’t have voiceprints on file for the general population. If this is someone from one of the well-known terrorist or militia-type organizations, there is a chance. If it isn’t, forget it.”
He looked at a page in the file he had brought with him.
“Our top priority is going to be the acoustical characteristics of the tape,” he said. “What sort of room they were in when it was made. Where that room might be located. Things like that. One of my guys already mentioned that he could hear planes taking off or landing. We’ll try to get a fix on where this might have come from.”
Joe Kraig raised a hand. “What if they recorded it in one place and are no longer in that place?”
The director nodded. “That’s certainly a possibility. But we’ll learn all we can from the tape and go on from there.”
“What about the demand itself?” Kraig asked. “What do we do about it?”
“The first thing is to gain time. Do nothing for two or three days,” the director said. “Talk to everyone concerned, starting of course with Campbell. Then, if we can, we’ll try to get these people to negotiate. Get them talking.”
“They didn’t give us a method to get in touch,” someone said.
“True, but we can offer to parley in one of several ways. An announcement to the press by me, by Campbell, maybe by the president.”
“What if they won’t talk?” Kraig asked.
“We’ll figure out something. We may have to offer concessions in order to get Mrs. Campbell back alive. After that, we’ll do whatever we have to do.”
Voices spoke up around the table, offering suggestions and warnings. All those present had some experience with terrorism and wanted to put in their two cents’ worth. Kraig could hear territoriality in some of the voices, ego in others. Apparently they scented history in the making. No one of Susan Campbell’s fame had ever been abducted before.
The combined wisdom of those present offered little constructive help, however. It was the old story. The terrorist has the initiative. He sets the rules, defines the parameters. All the authorities can do is react. Keep him talking, stall him, while doing everything possible to find out where he is and how heavily armed he is. Then kill him or overpower him. Or, if you can’t do that, give in to his demand—the least savory course for any modern government.
“If only they hadn’t called the cable news,” one of the national security men said. “Now the whole country knows about this. We could have controlled it better if we were the only ones who knew.”
“That’s true,” said the Secret Service
head. “But there might be an advantage to it. Someone somewhere might know that voice. We can set up hot lines and let people call in. E-mail, too. Let the public help. It might work.”
Everyone seemed to agree rather grudgingly with this notion. Few things were more hateful to intelligence men than public knowledge of their doings. The cloak of secrecy was their life’s blood. Exposure was anathema.
“You know,” Kraig said, “it occurs to me that the people who took Mrs. Campbell must have wanted it this way. They wanted the public to know what was being demanded.” He paused, looking down at his clasped hands. “I wonder why,” he added.
No one took up the question.
“And what about the demand itself?” he asked. “Who would want to keep Campbell from becoming vice president?”
Heads turned to him. The faces of those present bore expressions of incuriosity and even impatience. They seemed to consider his question irrelevant.
“She could be dead before we ever get to the bottom of the why of it,” said the Defense Intelligence Agency man. “We have to go with what we have.”
“It seems to me,” Kraig said, “that we should be thinking about who stands to benefit from this. Who would consider a thing like Campbell’s withdrawal desirable or important.”
“Joe, we’ll learn what we can,” said the FBI director. “But it could be anybody. Arabs, Serbs, Maoists, militia freaks, UFO nuts. Mike Campbell has a high profile, and so does his wife. They’re perfect targets. I thinkwhere is more important thanwho —at least for the moment. And let’s not forget, our track record in protecting important people isn’t so good lately.” He did not glance at the Secret Service head, who reddened at the remark. “The priority is to find Mrs. Campbell.”
Kraig nodded noncommittally. He thought there was a flaw in this logic. He could not forget Susan Campbell’s story of a voice on the phone, a voice that had predicted, months before the event, Michael’s selection as vice president. A voice that had told Susan it would be up to her to stop Michael when the time came. Well, the time had come. And Susan was gone.
Kraig had never heard that voice. Susan had told him it was a woman’s voice. The voice that had made the demand to theTimes was that of a woman.