Mesmerized

by Gayle Lynds

  It was all over in three seconds. Bates slid the gun back into its holster and wiped the back of his hand across his upper lip, erasing the sweat that had formed as soon as the girl had screamed. He observed the street and other shanties but saw no one.

  He had one final piece of business. He took a small, flat, airtight metal box from his pocket, opened it, and removed a specially treated surgical glove. He slipped it carefully onto his left hand and gripped the windowsill, sliding the gloved fingers back as if he suddenly had to balance himself. The fingerprints would be smudged and look real, the oils would be fresh, and there would be enough of one or more of the prints to be readable—and traceable.

  Earlier this afternoon he had received a phone call reporting their contact at the airport had said Jeffrey Hammond was on his way to Stone Point. That was when Bates had demanded the glove. The fingerprints laid onto it belonged to Hammond's left hand, collected during a meeting at a Washington bar some time ago and saved for this sort of contingency. Preparedness was one of the pillars of Bates's success, and the investigative reporter and onetime FBI special agent was getting annoyingly close. It was time to put an end to his pursuit.

  Bates looked around once more. Whistling tunelessly, he trotted back across the street and disappeared into the forest.

  Bates did not think of himself as a murderer. He had never loved the act, as he knew true assassins often did. He killed only by necessity. Still, he was exhilarated. This afternoon's work was a job well done. Since the young man, Marty Coulson, had shown too much enterprise, and Bates needed followers without the initiative or ambition to lead, Marty had to be eliminated anyway. At the same time, Bates also solved the problem of Jeff Hammond.

  Now he was about to handle his third task. He needed to bind the Keepers to him as closely as if they were his own blood and tissue, and he would use the murders of Marty and the girl to do it. The symmetry of it all pleased him so much that he chuckled.

  He reached camp just as the sun was setting in a radiant orange glow across the forested shoulders of the mountain. As the night grew gray and shadowy, moist with the scent of decaying leaves, he summoned the Keepers for a meeting in the mess hall. He scanned their well-scrubbed faces as they filed in. They were cleaned up and ready for dinner. From the cookhouse, the mouth-watering aromas of roast beef, rich gravy, and cherry pie wafted over the grounds.

  Inside the hall, the sergeant made general announcements. Bates strode over to wait behind him. Eager to hear what his leader had to say, the sergeant sped through his presentation, and Bates took center stage, as erect and sturdy as a mighty buckeye tree. All conversation and movement stopped. He had their attention, but he wanted more.

  "I have a tragedy to relate." His gravelly voice was solemn. The big room seemed to stiffen, readying itself. "As some of you may know, I've just returned from a mission to Stone Point to bring back one of our young patriots, Martin Coulson. Marty had a girlfriend down there in town, and he succumbed to temptation. He didn't follow orders to stay in camp—"

  There was a groan from the audience, and Bates knew it was likely from Marty's mother. "He wasn't stopped by the police, was he?" There was an edge of horror in the woman's voice. "Tell me what's happened to my Marty?"

  "I'm sorry, Mother. Prepare yourself." Bates's voice was appropriately grave. "The boy's dead."

  The Keepers were family people, and the death of the popular young man hit hard. Women gasped. Men's jaws stiffened. Marty's mother buried her face on her husband's shoulder and sobbed, while his eyes glazed, trying to absorb the shock and show no emotion.

  Bates nodded sympathetically. Now it was time to raise the affective bar a notch. He said harshly, "Marty is the Keepers' first casualty. But he didn't kill himself, and it was no accident. He was murdered!"

  Just as he expected, the room erupted.

  "Who did it?" one man demanded. "I'll kill the bastard!"

  "Where's the son of a bitch?" another bellowed, shaking his fist. "Let me get my hands on him!"

  "Tell us who did it, Colonel!" shouted a third.

  Bates raised his hands, palms down, to quiet them. The iron discipline he had instilled, their unquestioned loyalty to him, and their fanatical dedication to their cause, made them quiet instantly.

  "I'll tell you who did it, not so you can take revenge now, but so you'll remember later how much this nation needs us and our cause." He paused to let them hang on his next words. "Fellow Keepers, our young comrade was assassinated by an FBI man!"

  While that was not strictly true, Bates knew they would all read it that way when the newspapers reported the arrest of the former FBI agent. With deep satisfaction, he watched their frustrated torment, the rage and hatred on their faces. Deep in their hearts, he knew they were thinking about who the "real" enemies of their country were.

  Bates nodded. "Yes, fellow patriots. We know who the enemy is and what we have to do! Right?"

  "Right!" they said in unison.

  "And we aren't alone in our quest. Think of our brothers and sisters in the Montana Freemen who faced off the government jackals. Remember the bombings in Washington state and the bank robberies in the Midwest. And most of all, don't forget the righteous destruction of the Oklahoma City federal building. We patriots have a tradition not just of sacrifice and survival, but of victory. Right?"

  "Right!" they shouted.

  Bates raised his voice, filling it with urgency. "But since it was the FBI that assassinated Marty, that means the government must be closing in on us, too. To avenge Marty, we've got to get out of West Virginia fast so we can put the last pieces of our operation together safely. We've got an appointment with a great and glorious future on Saturday. Marty wants us to be there. He wants us to win. We'll do this for Marty! Is that right?"

  "Right!" they roared. "For Marty!"

  From a painful low of grief and outrage, Bates had taken them on a straight ride up to the Olympian heights of honor. There was no greater force than controlled lightning, and that was what they were in his hands. They were his, their aspirations were his, and now he owned them more than ever.

  He poured urgency into his voice: "The helicopters are on their way. Pack your personals. The quartermaster will assign you which supplies to oversee. Let's move!"

  With him in the lead, they double-timed as a group out onto the grounds and dispersed. They were frighteningly efficient, elite troops now, like the paratroopers with whom he had trained so long ago. Within an hour, they had struck camp. A half-hour later, some were boarding helicopters while others drove trucks, cars, and motorcycles out the secret back entrance. The noise of engines reverberated through the forest night.

  As usual, Bates was the last to leave. Alone in his cabin, he became again, briefly, Alexei Berianov. He called his Maryland headquarters and spoke to Ivan Vok in Russian: "Hammond came too close to finding us this time. He could talk, or others could follow his path. Alexei Berianov needs to disappear. Send him to visit our people in Moscow, a trip home. Berianov will have an unfortunate heart attack. Death from natural causes, eh? It will eliminate the risk that anyone might see Berianov in Caleb Bates."

  "I'll arrange it right now, Alexei."

  "Good." Berianov clicked off and composed himself.

  As Caleb Bates, he stepped out into the chilly night, sweeping his gaze over the deserted, moonlit camp as he hurried toward the last helicopter. Ghostly wisps of fog rose from the warm grounds. Around him he saw nothing but empty husks of buildings. There were no dropped mementoes, no trash, no scraps of paper with incriminating information, nothing at all to tell anyone who might arrive that those who had lived and trained here were on a life-or-death mission of targeted destruction.

  With a sense of eager anticipation, he climbed aboard the noisy chopper, turned to the pilot, and jerked his thumb upward. The pilot nodded, acknowledging the signal, and the great bird shuddered and rose like a demon into the black night. For Caleb Bates—and for Alexei Berianov—there was no turning back
.

  13

  A heart was just a two-stroke pump, a simple piece of human machinery. Yet this new heart—this fist-sized chunk of living tissue that thumped so vibrantly inside her chest—seemed to have turned Beth's life upside down and inside out and left her floundering not only in events she did not understand but in a sense of herself, of who she was, of a person she no longer recognized.

  Jeff Hammond was on his way to West Virginia, so Beth went home, her mouth dry with worry. As the afternoon wore on, she paced her Georgetown house from top to bottom. She had always believed that life was straightforward. For her, there had been few curves. She had grown up in the golden shadow of her parents in Los Angeles. For them, the city was more than a hometown or an address: It was both playground and battleground for their glitz, glamour, and stratospheric careers.

  Her father—the dramatic, compelling emperor of L.A. courtrooms—had made his name synonymous with impossible defense cases. When a potential client, usually a guilty murderer, asked what the fee would be for Jack-the-Knife Convey to beat the system, her father would study a list of the person's assets and point to the bottom line. "I think your life's worth at least this, don't you? And if you don't, then I don't have much to defend, do I?" For him, that kind of outrageous logic meant coined gold.

  Her mother, on the other hand, was the high-powered, pantyhose empress of L.A. real estate. Janet Reese Convey had been on the inside of many of the Southwest's hottest projects—convention centers, vast housing tracts, shockingly large shopping malls. As a youngster, Janet first saw the value of property when her grandfather's side yard produced an oil gusher. All of a sudden, a small bungalow surrounded by bougainvillea, tomatoes, and fruit trees—and one ugly oil rig—was transformed into a world of unexpected possibility. Money flowed from the ground, and her extended family was suddenly able to afford cars, vacations, educations, and businesses. The excitement of that time, the remarkable transformation from poverty to affluence, left an indelible impression on her.

  When Beth was born to the union of Jack and Janet, their only child, it was not with a silver spoon in her mouth. It was with an entire set of sterling. She had everything—the latest toys, the best nannies, the right schools, and the children of the West Coast elite for her playmates. As she grew older and turned into a leggy, blond beauty, there were also the hottest parties in Beverly Hills and Brentwood and out on the coast in Newport or on Linda Isle. The fast cars. The coutour clothing, or the hippest rags from Melrose. The hair styles created by Adamo Lentini. And of course, there were boyfriends. Gorgeous boyfriends with the bodies of surfers and the tanned good looks that only leisure and unlimited allowances could buy.

  But when she turned eighteen, her life changed completely. Remembering it all, she felt a chill, but instantly she shrugged it off. That was when she ended her playgirl lifestyle and grew serious. Just as her mother had discovered the allure of the land and her father had found being a courthouse warrior endlessly seductive, Beth uncovered the power of the mind. She wanted to think, analyze, lose herself in ideas. She dismissed emotion and sat for hours, staring out across the sprawling Los Angeles basin, contemplating history, politics, fashion, even mechanics. She took language and drawing lessons. Everything fascinated her.

  But now that she was thirty-three years old, she was confused beyond anything she had ever experienced. The fact that she no longer recognized herself had shaken her. If you do not know who you are, how can you know anything?

  For hours that day she paced her Victorian and looked unseeing at the plush furniture and the expensive artwork, all bought with the spoils of her well-trained legal brain. She had been wrong, she now realized: Despite the occasional detour, her life was not built on the rational mind as she had always believed. Instead, she had done what was easy.

  It had been easy to follow her myriad interests, financed by the trust fund her parents had established for her. Eventually that had led her into law, where it had been easy for her to work hard and succeed. After all, that was what her family did, what she had been trained to do.

  She had never had a significant doubt about any of it, only a hunger to move ahead, to be as good as they had been, and then to be not only better but the best. She'd had a lot to accomplish, to compensate for. But now she was no longer the same. She doubted everything, and she had no idea where to go . . . what to do . . . who she would be next.

  Beth made herself stick to her routine of exercise and shower. She examined the bump on her forehead, which had grown smaller. She wished her problems would vanish as easily as this physical injury. Restless, she dressed again. What she should do, she knew, was start phoning contacts to let them know she was looking for another job. Considering how many times she had been approached by other District firms before her surgery, she figured she would land somewhere interesting. Still, as hard as she tried, she could work up no enthusiasm to begin the process.

  Instead, she wanted to discover how it was that she had recognized Anatoli Yurimengri. How she had known at least part of his name. Why she was having nightmares. Why were the nightmares about Russians, soldiers, and violence? Why?

  Which made her think about her surgeon, Travis Jackson. She phoned his office, and, of course, he was with a patient.

  "May I give the doctor your name?" the receptionist asked with little interest.

  "I'm Beth Convey, one of his transplant patients."

  The indifference vanished. "Hold on, Ms. Convey."

  The woman had forgotten to put her on hold, and so Beth heard the sounds of a busy office—coughs, laughter, the turning of pages, annoyed voices asking how much longer the doctor would be. She was about to hang up, not wanting to interrupt a desperate person in need, when Travis Jackson's anxious voice sounded in her ear.

  "Beth? What's wrong? Are you all right? Tell me—"

  "I'm fine, Travis. Nothing's wrong." Then she caught herself. "No, that's not true. I'm not fine. At least mentally. I'm a long way from it."

  She could hear him expel a relieved breath. Her heart was not failing, and this was no medical emergency. "Well, then, exactly what's the problem?"

  "Strange things are still happening to me. Frightening things. The worst of it is, I'm not acting like my old self. I don't feel like myself."

  She heard a sigh. In her mind, she could see him again just as he so often had been last year, sitting beside her hospital bed, his face grave but interested, the rimless glasses perched on the end of his nose, as they discussed her condition. His presence had been comforting.

  He said, "Tell me the whole story."

  Without names or locations, she described the events since she called the mysterious Arlington number.

  His voice was startled, even shocked. "You've told this to the police?"

  "Not all of it. I reported the murder, but they thought I was a madwoman or maybe trying to pull a fast one of some kind."

  "That's ridiculous."

  "People are dead. I've been chased and threatened. I still have the nightmares and thoughts, feelings and ideas that I never had before. I'm acting in ways I never did. I don't recognize myself. I'm not even sure I like myself."

  "Calm down. Please." An undertone of impatience intruded on his usually soothing voice. "If everything you've told me really happened, all I can—"

  "If?" She was incredulous. "You don't believe me?"

  "Beth, listen." Now the impatience bordered on annoyance. "Yes, I think it's all probably occurred one way or another. But it isn't your heart that's leading you on and reshaping you. I promise you that. It's the trauma, the medicine, the nervousness, your eagerness to return to work, and then the disaster of finding your client base stolen. It's probably a hundred different things, and all of them are impacting your perceptions and memory. There's no doubt these apparent changes are straight out of your past and that you've simply forgotten what the connections are. Your heart is not speaking to you. Can't be. It's impossible. Ridiculous. There's absolutely no concrete ev
idence or scientific basis for such a macabre notion. I've already told you that."

  He was dismissing her. Her voice was short: "It's a year, Travis, and it hasn't stopped. In fact, it's gotten worse. The terrible things that've happened since yesterday aren't connected to anything in my life before the transplant. I promise you that."

  There was silence. She was beginning to think he had walked away.

  When he spoke again, his tone was brisk. "I want you to take a sedative, get a good night's sleep. You've worked yourself into a state. That's obvious. I'll have Tina make an appointment for you tomorrow. I'm booked up, but we'll squeeze you in somehow. I'm going to bring in a colleague to meet with you. You'll like her. She owes me a favor, and I think the two of you will work well together."

  "Who's this colleague?"

  "Patricia Fall."

  "I've heard the name. She's a psychiatrist?"

  "Yes. Very prominent. Solid credentials. Perhaps it's time we faced the possibility that more is going on with you and your emotional state than either of us realized. . . . "

  "I don't think so." Engulfed with sudden rage, she slammed the receiver down and glared at it. "In fact, I'm now convinced you need the shrink, Travis, because you refuse to listen to reality. You're wrong! This is all happening. You're wrong, and it's real!"

  Shaking with outrage, she stood motionless beside the telephone. All she wanted to do was smash things. She wanted to punch her fist into the wall, break windows, destroy furniture. How dare he. Breathing hard, she worked to quiet herself. And slowly her anger turned into despair. The house seemed terribly empty, where once she had found the long silences a relief. Was there no answer at all? Was she helpless?