The Syndrome

by John Case

  “‘The plan’? Well, the plan is: first, we get some sleep—then we go shopping.”

  She rolled over on her stomach, and pulled the pillow under her cheek. “Mmmmmn,” she murmured. “That’s a good idea…”

  She was sound asleep.

  Undressing, he lay down beside her and closed his eyes. It wouldn’t be smart to go hunting for Opdahl, jet-lagged and ragged. He needed a couple of hours…

  Opdahl… He remembered being in an ambulance, but he didn’t remember the injury—just the lights flashing across the ceiling. Then a gurney, and Opdahl saying, ‘You’re very brave.’ But he wasn’t brave—not really. And Opdahl wasn’t being encouraging. He was playing with him. Enjoying himself.

  “Lew. Lew!” Adrienne was shaking him. “You’re dreaming. Wake up.”

  His eyes snapped open. Relief surged through him. He’d been dreaming of a man with a tube in his throat—not a real man, but a man without a face. Or a man whose face had been torn away. The man was on television, in close-up, and the image terrified him. Even now, he couldn’t get away from it: the empty visage stuck with him, shimmering in front of his eyes, pixilated and slightly blue. The man’s eyes, wide with horror, the venous pulp where his face should have been—

  But no. That was a dream. And here he was in the Florida, looking at Adrienne looking at him with a worried look. Beyond the windows, a tram clattered and whined toward the train station.

  “Let’s go out,” he suggested, “before the shops close for lunch.”

  “They close for lunch?” Adrienne asked.

  “Yeah—for a couple of hours, usually.”

  “Think of that,” she muttered, having never been to Europe before.

  Downstairs, the woman at the desk seemed charmed by McBride’s German. He was looking for a Jäger-store, he told her. Ein Speicher für Jäger.

  “Of course,” the woman replied and, taking out a small brochure, marked the way in ballpoint pen from the hotel to the Speicher in question.

  “What’s a spiker?” Adrienne asked, as they stepped out into the cold, and began walking in the direction of Zurich’s Old Town.

  “It’s a store,” McBride told her, wishing he’d brought a pair of gloves.

  “What kind of store?” she wanted to know.

  “A store for hunters—a Jäger store.”

  This confused her even more. “You mean, like—bows and arrows, fishing rods and—”

  “Shotguns. Yeah, like that,” he said.

  They continued walking for a while, until Adrienne stopped and turned to him. “Shotguns?” she asked. McBride nodded, and they resumed their stroll, crossing the Quail Bridge into the city’s historic quarter. Once again, and suddenly, Adrienne stopped. “The other day—when you said you were going to kill Opdahl so that everything could come out in court—and I’d be your lawyer—that was crazy, right? That was a joke. I mean, it’s not the plan—not really!”

  He leaned on the parapet overlooking the Zurichsee, where a flotilla of white swans glided on the glassine surface. His breath came and went in clouds. Finally, he said, “You’re trying to tell me you didn’t pass the Swiss bar?”

  She shook her head. “Didn’t come close. Never took the test. Don’t speak the language. Don’t know where I am.”

  He nodded thoughtfully, and shrugged. “Well, it wasn’t much of a plan, anyway.” Then he smiled. “Don’t worry” he told her, “I’m not going to shoot anybody—unless they try to shoot me first.”

  Two minutes later, they were standing in front of an old-fashioned store, looking in the window at a diorama of the hunt, replete with baying hounds, plunging horses, and men with post horns. Going inside, they were greeted by a stuffed bear, rearing on its hind legs. A wild boar’s head bristled from the wall behind the cash register, while a herd of dead stags stared forlornly from the wall.

  Adrienne rolled her eyes. “You can’t just buy a gun,” she told him.

  “You can in Switzerland,” he replied, studying the handguns that lay beneath the glass counter. “The country’s armed to the teeth. In fact, there’s a law: every male between twenty and forty, or something like that, has to own a gun.”

  “Get out!”

  “And not just a gun,” he added. “An assault rifle. It’s the law.” He paused. “Listen,” he said, “there’s a department store just up the block. Would you get me something?”

  She nodded. “Sure. What?”

  “Curtain rods.”

  She didn’t think she’d heard right. Asked him to repeat it. He did. “What kind of curtain rods?”

  “Any kind,” he told her. “As long as they are in a box and aren’t more than five feet long. And I’ll probably need some packing tape, too.” Before she could ask if he wanted café curtains or doilies as well, an elderly clerk came to the counter and inquired, in perfect English, if he could be of help.

  McBride returned the old man’s smile. “I’m looking for a combat shotgun,” he told him. “Something with a pump-action and a pistol grip. A riot gun. Got one?”

  Adrienne reacted in much the same way as if he’d asked for a suitcase full of pornography. Turning on her heel, she went out in search of the department store.

  On the way back to their hotel, half an hour later, they stopped to buy some warmer clothes. A light snow was falling, and the air was clammy and cold. Happily, Seefeldstrasse was lined with stylish consignment shops, including one where Adrienne found a calf length Jil Sander coat, dove-gray and hooded, a long chenille scarf and a pair of soft leather gloves. Everything was marked down to a tenth of its designer’s expectations, which made the purchases a bargain, but the total was still higher than anything she’d ever bought before.

  Then it was McBride’s turn and, to Adrienne’s surprise, he waited until they found a consignment shop that was markedly funkier than the rest. Going inside, he came out a few minutes later wearing a black watchcap, a khaki-colored Army jacket and a pair of Doc Martens that had seen better days.

  Adrienne winced. “Could you afford it?”

  “It’s a fashion statement,” he told her.

  Soon afterward, they plunged into the warmth of the Florida’s lobby, and stood there for a bit, slapping the snow from their clothes, relishing the central heat. Steam rose in a cloud from Adrienne’s hair as they waited for the tiny elevator to arrive. It took the better part of a minute to rattle down from the floor above. When it finally did, McBride held the frosted glass door open for them, and they wedged their way in.

  “Now I see why,” Adrienne said.

  “Why what?”

  “Why they called it the Florida.”

  “And why is that?” McBride asked.

  “For psychological warmth.”

  Back in the room, McBride unpacked the shotgun, pumped the slide two or three times, and tested the trigger’s pull. Then he sat down on the bed with a box of 00 buckshot, and loaded eight shells into the gun’s extended magazine. Finally, he dumped the curtain rods out of the box they were in, and replaced them with the loaded shotgun. Then he closed the box with the packing tape and, producing a penknife, made an incision about two-thirds of the way down the box and three-quarters of the way around it.

  Adrienne didn’t even want to look.

  She skimmed the pages of the Herald-Tribune. There was trouble in Chechnya again, e-tailers were having a big holiday season, and the Redskins were in the hunt for a playoff spot. Turning to the financial pages, her eye was caught by a story with Switzerland in the headline. It was about the upcoming World Economic Summit in Davos, which sounded more like a very expensive party than the financial conference it was alleged to be. The tickets cost $160,000 each. Attendees would include everyone from Bill Gates to Prince Charles, Warren Beatty to Kofi Annan. Fearing demonstrations, organizers of the Summit were laying on extra security. Adrienne didn’t think they had to worry. Switzerland seemed like a pretty orderly place, and, as McBride had pointed out—all the men were armed to the teeth.

&
nbsp; Including him.

  “So what’s the plan?” she asked, setting the newspaper aside.

  “The plan? The plan is: I go to the Institute. Find Opdahl. And talk to him.”

  She was silent for a long moment, as if waiting for McBride to continue. When he didn’t, she asked, “That’s it?”

  “Well, no. First, I’ll put the gun to his head—so it won’t be like a general conversation. I’ll be real focused.”

  She nodded. Thought about it. Said: “Seems kind of basic, doesn’t it? I mean, it’s not exactly a plan. It’s more like—I don’t know—the headline for a plan.”

  McBride shrugged. “Well, that’s my plan.”

  She gave her head a little shake, as if to be certain she was hearing him right. “And what are you going to ask him?”

  “What do you think? Who. What. Where. When. Why. How.”

  Crossing the room to the window, she looked out at the lightly falling snow. After a bit, she turned and, leaning her back against the windowsill, said, “Okay, that’s what we’ll do—but I’m going in first.”

  McBride shook his head. “Unh-unh.”

  “They don’t know me,” she insisted. “If you go in, and they recognize you, that’s it. What if Opdahl’s not there? They’ll alert him. And then you’ll never get close to him. But, me? I’m just a student passing through. At least I can find out if he’s there or not.”

  “‘A student,’“ he repeated.

  “Right. I’ll say I was in the neighborhood. Skiing. And one of the fellows—who I met in the States—said I should stop in. Get an application.”

  “They don’t have applications,” McBride told her. “You have to be recommended.”

  “Right! That’s what I mean. He said while I was over here, I should stop in and say hello. Let Opdahl know who I am. Because, ‘I don’t want to promise anything, but:’ I think there might be a recommendation in my future.”

  “And which fellow was this?” McBride asked. “I hope it wasn’t Jeff Duran, because—”

  “No! Of course not! I never heard of Jeff Duran. Who’s Jeff Duran? This was someone else. This was… who was it?”

  “Eric Branch.”

  “Right!” she exclaimed.

  “He was studying sub-Saharan migration. I read a couple of his reports. Good stuff.”

  “Great! So, I’ll ask to see Opdahl. And if he isn’t there, I’ll find out where he is.”

  “And if they say, ‘I’m afraid you can’t just “drop in” on Dr. Opdahl,’“ McBride said in a snotty German accent. “‘You must have an appointment.’”

  Adrienne’s voice turned waiflike and pitiable: “‘But I’m only in Zurich for a couple of days.’”

  “Don’t wheedle,” he told her. “It’s their loss.”

  Again, her voice changed, plunging to throaty and lascivious depths: “‘But I’m only in Zurich for a couple of days.’”

  The tone was silly and irresistible, all at once. Lunging across the bed, he pushed her down, rolling with her in the cloudlike folds of the comforter, giddy and making out, with Adrienne trying one variation after another of “I’m only in Zurich for a couple of days… “ Then the kissing became more serious, until Adrienne finally pulled away, flushed, her dirty blond hair in disarray, one strand plastered to her cheek. She was one of those women, McBride thought, who looked better disheveled. You could see the wildness in her then, which at most times she kept so well hidden.

  “We can’t,” she said. Breathless. “It will get too late.”

  Reluctantly, he agreed. Stood up, plucked a tiny feather from his pants leg. “Which fellow?”

  “Eric Branch.” Adrienne found a brush on the bedside table, and began to brush her hair. “One thing: what if—what if—they say, ‘Fine—Mr. Opdahl will see you right away’? What then?”

  “Get out.”

  “But—”

  “Just don’t go upstairs with him,” he told her.

  “Why not? Maybe—”

  He shook his head. “Promise…”

  The tram took them most of the way to the Institute, with McBride clutching the box of “curtain rods.” Adrienne sat stiffly, holding the cylindrical metal post. At nearly every stop the tram’s accordion doors wheezed open to admit a blast of arctic air and some rosy-faced commuters. At this time of day, these were an odd mixture of senior citizens, working men who smelled of nicotine and well-dressed women with plastic mesh shopping bags. At one stop, a high-spirited influx of uniformed school children clambered aboard.

  The animation of the children seemed to exist in counterpoint to McBride’s own mood, which was bleak and getting bleaker. The closer they got to their destination, the more he worried that he was on a fool’s errand—that they’d get to the address, and it wouldn’t be there. Instead of a townhouse with mullioned windows and gargoyles, and a massive front door—there would be an empty lot or a train station. That’s what had happened in Bethany Beach, and the effect of that now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t memory was to make him doubt the reality of his own past.

  “What’s the matter?” Adrienne asked, but he just shook his head and looked away.

  He’d thought all this was behind him, these worries about his memory, about what was real and what was not. He’d thought they’d gotten down to bedrock. He was Lew McBride, and that was that. Only it wasn’t. That would never be that. That was something Opdahl had taken from him.

  The conductor announced their stop, and the tram began to slow. He could see the station ahead, the widening of the platform, the Plexiglas shelter with its benches, a few waiting passengers. Children were shouting farewells to each other, getting up, queuing in the aisle toward the front of the car. Looking out the window at the row of solid houses—there was something familiar about it, although he couldn’t have said what. “This is it,” he told her, standing up to press the rubber button that opened the tram’s rear door. Then they were outside and he began to wonder if the whole trip wasn’t a terrible mistake.

  The houses on either side of the street were stolid and old, the mansions and near mansions of Swiss industrialists, bankers, lawyers, and tax exiles. In front of each, two or three plane trees stood their ground in the cold, awaiting the spring.

  Adrienne and McBride lowered their heads against the wind, which was blowing off the lake, even as a light snow zipped through the air, snowflakes flying like sparks.

  They’d traveled three blocks before they came to a dogleg in the street. With each step, McBride’s chest seemed to tighten. He told himself to breathe, just breathe, but how could he? Like a weight lifter finishing his third set of reps, he wasn’t breathing at all, just straining to get it over. Either the Institute would be there, or it wouldn’t. His sanity seemed to hang in the balance.

  And then, there it was—just as he’d remembered: a three-story granite structure with mullioned windows and window boxes, filled now with junipers and evergreens. The heavy door with its lion’s head knocker. The leaded glass transom. The small brass plaque with the Institute’s name on it, and the closed-circuit camera overhead. Instinctively, he hung back, across the street and out of range of the camera.

  The sense of foreboding that he felt was overwhelming. Suddenly, the idea of sending Adrienne inside seemed insane. “Maybe this isn’t such a good plan,” he said. “Maybe we should rethink it.”

  She shook her head, and straightened her back. Put her Scout face on. Prepared. Determined. The lawyer. Then she glanced around. “I think I got the long straw,” she told him. At least I get to go inside.”

  “We could have called him on the phone. We still can.”

  “It’s too easy to blow someone off on the phone. This way, I’m in their face.”

  “If you’re not back in fifteen minutes,” he promised, “I’m coming in. And it won’t be just a box in my hand.”

  She nodded. “Eric Branch, Eric Branch, Eric Branch,” she said and, turning, marched toward the door.

  McBride checked his watch. I
t was 2:36.

  He forced himself to look at the building. Watched Adrienne ring the bell, saw the door open, glimpsed a woman in the doorway, watched Adrienne walk inside.

  He was cold. It was freezing. And time didn’t just slow down, it turned as glacial as the weather. He was standing across the street from the Institute, a quarter of the way up the block, leaning against a sycamore tree. And he felt very conspicuous. There was no reason for him to be there, holding this unwieldy box. But there he was, eyes glued to the massive front door, muttering, “C’mon, c’mon, c’mon…”

  Because, all of a sudden, he didn’t want Opdahl to be there. There was something about the Institute, something about the building he was watching, that affected him in a primal way—like waking in the middle of the night to see a snake writhing across the bedroom floor. The fear he felt came from the deepest and most instinctive part of himself, a region of the brain that had nothing to do with rational thinking, and everything to do with survival.

  And then he remembered. Watching the building from across the street, he remembered the dream he’d had that afternoon, the one Adrienne had interrupted. And, suddenly, he knew who the man without the face was.

  He’d gone to the Institute to meet with Opdahl—and he’d been ambushed. By a man with an aerosol. He remembered a cloud of spray, and then the floor, smacking him in the face. He remembered the long ride in the ambulance, the drugs wearing off, the gurney crunching over gravel as they arrived.

  Then the operating room, where Gunnar Opdahl shone a penlight in his eyes. The big Norwegian dressed in surgical scrubs, a cap on his head. And beside the operating table, the monitor. Which held an expressionless McBride in close-up as a nurse peeled his face up and back and back—until it wasn’t there anymore. McBride could feel the scream rising in his throat, where the trache-tube siphoned it off, turning his terror into a soft, gurgling sound. Nearby, a machine wheezed in and out, breathing for him. He tried to close his eyes, but he couldn’t. And somewhere in all this, Opdahl saying, “A paralytic, but… not an anesthetic. You’re very brave.”