by Tim Tigner
Luther knew that last point all too well. An announcement to that effect had marked the second worst day of his life. He said, “Landis thought he had it with 456. It worked in monkeys—but not in humans. When 456 destroyed the memory of the first volunteer, he threw in the towel.”
“Hard to get more volunteers after that,” Arlen agreed. “Now, you said that you can wipe memories from a minimum of about four weeks up to around the last twenty-percent of a person’s life, right?”
“Right.”
“Do you regulate that interval based on the quantity of 456 injected, or the exposure to UV-C?”
“The exposure to UV-C.”
Arlen nodded as though this was the answer he expected. “And the higher the frequency, the longer the erasure, right?”
“Right. So how does it erase memory?” Luther asked.
“Memory is another gray area—pardon the pun. We still know surprisingly little about how memories are created and stored. The building blocks of memory are neurons, and you have billions of them. Each neuron has myriad branches, called dendrites, which conduct the flow of information. Over time, the dendrites become more stable, like the branches on a tree growing thicker. You follow?”
“Sure.”
“Good. Now, there are also different types of dendrites, and again they are not fully understood. But nonetheless, given your explanation, it’s obvious to me that in addition to attaching to beta-amyloid plaque, 456 attaches to dendrites associated with episodic memory. When activated with UV-C, it heats up. The heat fries the more fragile dendrites, the thinner branches so to speak.”
“And at the most powerful setting, the heat is high enough to fry the most fragile twenty percent of branches,” Luther said. “Got it.”
“Good.”
“I’m surprised that the heating doesn’t damage the rest of the brain.”
Arlen nodded. “That’s one of those things you never know until you try. Since no one has caught on to you, apparently not. But I do have to believe that it causes one hell of a headache.”
“So I’ve heard,” Luther said. “Thanks.”
Arlen drained his cup. “Now, with that arsenal in mind, let’s get back to the battle plan.”
Chapter 51
Emmy shut the stateroom door behind them and turned the lock as Troy flopped onto one of the twin beds. She should have felt numb from Fritz’s revelations about her own past, but pity for Troy consumed her instead. She had lost the man that she loved. That was tragic … and probably true. But at the end of the day he was just her boyfriend, not even her fiancé. Troy had lost his wife, his daughter, and his career.
Although Troy had neither expressed nor voiced his feelings, she knew that he was attracted to her—spiritually and romantically. She also knew that those emotions were now fueling fires of guilt. She should probably be feeling guilty too, but she was not. Bo Beaulieu was gone forever. Troy was there with her. He was the only man she knew. And she loved him.
She wanted to lie down next to Troy, to put her arms around him and hold him until he cried himself to sleep. No, she corrected herself, that wasn’t exactly true. In fact, she wanted to rip off their clothes and make love to him all night.
Neither was in the cards.
They had work to do.
Which meant she had to bring her partner around. “I’m so sorry, Troy. I can’t even imagine what you’re feeling.”
He looked up at her with tears in his eyes. “Alisandra. My daughter’s name … was Alisandra. It’s a beautiful name. I’d always wondered if I’d have boys or girls and what I would name them. Now I know.”
Emmy did not want to risk the potential fallout from a supportive squeeze, so she offered a reassuring nod.
“Now that name is all I have,” Troy continued. “I have no idea what she looked like, so I can’t even mourn a picture. Was she a pony-tailed brunette or a pig-tailed blonde? Big blue eyes? Hazel? Brown? Did she inherit my condition? Was she an angel or a mischief-maker? Did her voice sound like little bells? Did she call me Papa, or Daddy, or some variant that was easier for her to pronounce? Will I ever know? She’s not just gone from this Earth, you see, she’s also wiped from my mind. So is her mother. So is … my wife.”
Troy made eye contact once again, his eyes suffused with pain.
“May I make a suggestion?” Emmy asked.
Troy nodded.
She took his hands and pulled him up into a sitting position. Without releasing them, she said, “If I were Sabrina, if I had died in the terrible accident that somehow spared your life, I would want you looking forward, not back. I would tell you it’s a blessing that you don’t remember and I would urge you to treat it as such.”
Troy blinked a few times but did not speak.
Staring into his eyes, trying to lend him strength, Emmy swore she could actually see Troy pulling his act together. She could almost hear the drill sergeant screaming Pull yourself together soldier! in his mind.
And then the pain passed like a summer storm and the old Troy began to shine. “You’re right of course. And I’m being selfish. You lost someone too.”
“That’s not the same and we both know it.”
Troy kept going as though she had not spoken. “I need to start thinking big picture. Someone out there can wipe peoples’ minds at will. The sanctity of memory is at stake—and no one is truly safe. Right now he seems to be using his diabolic power to win court cases, but what if he decides to branch out? What if he begins selling his potion or whatever it is to terrorists? What if the presidential aide carrying the nuclear football suddenly forgets his job and thinks it’s just another briefcase? What if he slips the Kool-Aid to the crew of a nuclear sub? The damage this guy could do is limitless. God, I’ve been so self-centered.”
“No,” Emmy said. “You’ve made tremendous sacrifices in an attempt to bring this guy to justice. The fact that you’ve been doing it for personal reasons is irrelevant. If you boil it down, everything everyone does is for personal reasons.”
Troy did not look convinced. “We’ve got to get to Miami immediately. We need to track this guy down right away. Who knows what violations he has planned for tomorrow, and the day after. There’s no time to waste.”
“Well, I’ve got good news in that regard,” Emmy said, amazed by the speed of Troy’s recovery, but knowing that this was just a break in his psychological storm. “You’re not going to have to wait until tomorrow to start tracking this guy down.”
“How so?”
“It’s time I let you in on a little discovery of my own.…”
Chapter 52
Farkas watched the second hand on his stateroom clock make the sweep that would turn two-fifty-nine to three AM. He had tried to sleep for a couple of hours after sending Troy and Emmy to bed, but it was a lost cause. The knowledge that he would be feeding his guests to the sharks come sunrise, kept the sandman from calling.
He was glad that he had gone the extra mile to learn how Troy and Emmy had gotten back on Luther’s trail. Tattoos. A couple lousy henna tattoos. It was a clever and insightful insurance policy—but one that would disappear when their feet did.
As an added bonus, Farkas now knew Luther’s bank account number. He had memorized it when Emmy showed him the bottom of her foot. One step closer …
As the second-hand hit twelve, Farkas rose from his queen-size bed, his eyes fully adjusted to the dim recessed light that bathed the entire yacht. He grabbed his special camera and crept toward Troy and Emmy’s sleeping quarters. Given the gusting wind, sloshing waves, and ever-present hum of the dual Mercury inboard motors, Farkas found it easier to creep unnoticed about a moving yacht than any home. He would keep that in mind when planning future wipes.
Farkas paused outside the forward stateroom for a moment to listen. He pictured the stateroom’s triangular layout in his mind. It consisted of little more than two twin beds and some storage, all arranged in a V-shape along the curvature of the ship’s prow.
He heard no sound.
Farkas donned his custom sunglasses, gripped the doorknob, and began to turn. Troy and Emmy’s heads would both be about seven feet in front of him when he entered. He would step in and shut the door loudly behind him in order to wake them with the noise and get them looking in his direction. Then he would hit them with the UV-C flash.
This time, they would awake on a reef infested with sharks.
This time, there would be no miracle escape.
The knob stopped turning. He took a deep breath, and threw open the door. He stepped in and slammed the door behind him. The blankets neither moved nor rustled. For a second he worried that his plan to inebriate them had backfired. Then he felt the cord bite into his neck.
Attempting to whirl about, Farkas felt the noose constrict. He dropped the camera and brought both hands to his neck, only to feel something hard crash into the back of his head.
~ ~ ~
When Farkas awoke, his head was pounding and his neck was on fire. He was seated in an aluminum chair, his forearms bound to the armrests with duct tape. The noose Troy had snared him with still encircled his neck. As he tested his bonds, the cord began to tighten.
“Stop moving your legs. You’re only choking yourself,” he heard Troy say.
Understanding at once that they had tied the end of the noose to his ankles—a tactic he and his brothers had often used to interrogate Serbs—Farkas pushed his feet back under the chair. The cord slackened, but his neck still burned. “What the hell are you doing to me?” He asked. “Is this how you treat all your rescuers?”
“You can cut the act, Rokus,” Emmy said, stepping into view. “We found your passport. Rokus Farkas of the Republic of Croatia.”
“And the sniper rifle,” Troy added from behind Farkas’s back. “And the flasher concealed in your camera.”
Like any good field operative, Farkas had a cover story prepared. “Call me Farkas,” he said. “Everyone does. I’m with Interpol. What gave me away?”
Emmy shifted her gaze away from him to look at Troy and said, “He’s lying.” Then, turning back to him she said, “We had our suspicions confirmed hours ago when I feigned motion sickness and searched your room. And just to be accurate, what gave you away was what I did not find, namely the tools of the journalist trade: a notebook, voice recorder, and laptop computer.”
“Let me show you—”
“Save it,” Emmy said, cutting him off. “I found this a few minutes ago.” She held up her left hand as if giving him the finger. She was wearing her engagement ring. A three-carat brilliant cut set in platinum. Farkas figured he could sell it on eBay for at least thirty grand.
“You rigged the window in the car, didn’t you?” Troy asked. “You blew it out yourself with a remote-detonated charge. It was a clever move. Made me a believer. Unfortunately for you, Emmy here wrote the book on cons. She saw right through it.”
Farkas needed time to think of plausible explanations. Given their memory loss, there had to be a formula that would work, if only for a few seconds. That was all it would take to snap their necks. He churned the waters of his mind. Nothing surfaced. He could hardly pretend to be infiltrating them for Interpol after having told them their own sad stories. The ring was a real kicker. And to top it all off, Emmy appeared to be a human lie detector.
Realizing that he was out of time, he decided to stick near the truth, but minimize his own involvement. They weren’t going to hurt him, after all. Were they? No. They weren’t killers. And they couldn’t take him to the police. All he had to do was cooperate until they made a mistake. They had a long way to go and it would only take one slip-up.
An idea bubbled up from his problem-solving center. A delightfully wonderfully simple plan. He knew how to escape.
“Yes, I rigged the car’s window. What else do you want to know?”
Chapter 53
Troy looked up from the greasy pair of pliers and ball-peen hammer he’d found in the yacht’s toolbox. Farkas had given what sounded like an honest answer. As ironic as it sounded, Troy was not sure that an honest answer was what he wanted at that moment.
He had waited in the dark for five hours, steaming and scheming, waiting to see if Emmy’s conclusion proved correct. When it had, when Farkas stormed into their room holding the camera that Troy now knew not to be a camera at all, Troy had boiled over. Now that Farkas was awake, the hickory shank of that hammer was itching his hand.
“What else do you want to know?” Farkas repeated.
Troy looked over at Emmy, hoping she would shake her head and tell him Farkas was trying to play them for fools.
She nodded instead. Farkas was not holding back.
Still thumping the hammer head against his open palm, Troy walked around to face his foe, then sat down to watch his secret weapon work.
“What were you planning to do with us?” She asked.
Farkas shrugged. “I was going to erase your memories again.”
“With the Balinorm,” Troy asked, stressing the phony name.
“You figured that out, huh?” Farkas said, sounding amused.
Looking into his captive’s eyes, Troy realized that Farkas was the real deal. His bravado was not dependant upon superior firepower. Troy knew the type. They were rare. He’d probably be wearing a green beret or a SEAL’s Trident if he’d been born beneath an American flag. As it was, the Croatian really was an army of one.
“And then what?” Emmy pressed.
“And then drop you off while you were still unconscious.”
“Unconscious?”
“Yes, the erasure overloads the mind, knocking you out for about three hours. Gives you a hell of a headache, too. But I guess you already know that.”
“Drop us off where?” Troy asked.
“Jamaica. As agreed.”
“He’s lying,” Emmy said.
“On the island, or in the surf?” Troy asked.
Farkas grew a faint smile and looked Troy in the eye. “I know a reef—lots of sharks.”
Emmy shook visibly as Troy felt a shiver run down his spine. He had not thought it was possible, but there actually was an experience worse than waking up in a trunk with a dead cop—and Farkas had planned to give it to them. The admission gave new meaning to the words brutally honest.
Troy changed the subject. “Who are you working with?”
Farkas’s expression became uncomfortable for the first time. “I honestly don’t know.”
“Not good enough,” Troy said, standing. “You’ve been doing this for years. Of course you know.” He gave the hammer another thump. “The only question is how many toes we’re going to pulp before you remember.”
Farkas did not blanch as any normal person would. He seemed completely indifferent, and that sent a second chill up Troy’s spine. What had this guy been through that the ball-peen prospect was not worth a rise?
“Think about it,” Farkas said. “Everything you know. The big picture. This guy gets his hands on a drug that can erase memories. He’s sitting on a vein of pure gold, and he decides that the best way to mine it is to use it to win court cases. What’s his biggest challenge?”
“Sleeping at night?” Emmy suggested.
“Keeping things secret,” Troy said.
“Bingo.”
“So how did he find you?” Emmy asked.
“Another clever move. I lost my license to practice medicine while still in my residency. He called me the day after the notification was posted on an AMA database.”
“He wanted a desperate doctor,” Troy said, nodding.
“How’d you lose your license?” Emmy asked.
Troy could not care less about this scumbag’s personal history, but he decided that letting Emmy probe for details might not be a bad idea. Perhaps she would trip him up.
“I went to medical school at SUNY-Brooklyn. It was a big deal for a Croatian. My family pooled all their money to send me, to get me out of the civil wars—where most of my family eventually died
. They gave me everything they had, but it still barely covered tuition. Since foreign nationals are not eligible for student loans, I had to work nights. Full-time. Even then I couldn’t afford so much as a dorm room. I rented an armchair to sleep on from a fellow Croat living in a one-room apartment in Queens. Long story short, I took a lot of speed to keep going. I had been up for thirty-two hours when I screwed up a diagnosis, mistaking congestive heart failure for an asthma attack. The kid died. A fellow intern—a man after my girlfriend—tipped the administration off to the fact that I was high at the time. They tested my blood, and I lost my license.”
“You’re lucky that’s all that happened,” Emmy said.
“The hospital wanted to keep things quiet.”
“That kind of thing happens more often than you think,” Troy added. “Just check the phonebook for medical malpractice attorneys.”
“I didn’t know what to do,” Farkas continued. “I went from hero to zero overnight. Nonetheless my sisters were still counting on me for financial support. I was distraught and desperate. Then the phone rang. A man who called himself Luther offered ten-thousand dollars cash for secretly administering a special treatment, just a simple two-step procedure. That was nearly four years ago, four years and forty-six procedures.”
“Including ours?” Emmy asked.
“No. You weren’t cases. You were cleanup. Forty-six witnesses. Although you, Ms. Green, were one of those too. You have the honor of being the only person ever flashed twice.”
“Almost three times,” Emmy added. “But we digress. Are you telling me that through forty-six jobs you never once met your employer?”
“Never. We just talk via satellite phone. I don’t even know for sure what country he lives in, although I assume it’s the US.”
“What else do you assume?” Troy asked.
“I assume that he’s an attorney, since he chose to use the drug toward legal ends, and people tend to stick with what they know.”