The Void Protocol

by F. Paul Wilson

  She found Cyrus with Luis, working on increasing the size of the objects he could make disappear.

  His response caused a definite tingle that she couldn’t suppress.

  “The Modern Motherhood Clinic.”

  “Really? And that would be in …?”

  “N’awlins. Ninth Ward.”

  He said “Ninth Ward” like it had some significance. If so, it went right past Laura. She knew nothing about New Orleans. She put two hash marks next to the Modern Motherhood entry. Odd to have two clinics with exactly the same name a thousand-plus miles apart. Connection?

  Ellis called from across the floor. “She’s says Modern Motherhood Clinic in Bed-Stuy.”

  Whoa. She added a third hash mark, then a fourth. Ruthie’s Bed-Stuy “Motherhood” clinic was almost certainly the same as Ellis’s.

  She spotted Luis’s iPad on a nearby table.

  “Hey, Luis, can I borrow your tablet?” She could have used her phone but wanted a bigger screen.

  “Sure.” He grabbed it, tapped in his entry code, and handed it to her. “All yours.”

  Laura Googled “Modern Motherhood Clinic” and was immediately rewarded with a Wikipedia entry. But before she could read it, Rick’s voice echoed through the warehouse.

  “Attention, everyone. Please welcome the newest member of the clan: Anulka M’Bala!”

  He and Marie flanked a very dark-skinned young woman in a worn sweatshirt and ankle-length skirt that had seen better days.

  Laura and those present singsonged, “Hiiiii, Anulkaaaa!”

  Laura saw Leo come out from behind his curtain and stare.

  “Care to show them your gift, Anulka?”

  The young woman looked embarrassed for a second, then … disappeared.

  “Holy shit!” Luis said, and then clapped along with Leo and everyone else when she reappeared and curtsied. Her smile was dazzling.

  Rick stared at Laura and raised his eyebrows. She gave him a quick salute.

  “I’m gonna introduce her to the boss,” he said and led Anulka toward Stahlman’s office.

  Marie hung back, so Laura took the opportunity to approach her.

  “Did you get a chance to ask your mother about—?”

  “Oh, yes. She said the Modern Motherhood Clinic in Bedford-Stuyvesant.”

  Oh, God.

  “But you were born in Coney Island. That’s quite a haul—”

  “Remember, my parents lived in Bushwick during her pregnancy.”

  Right next to Bed-Stuy …

  “Got it!” Laura said, pumping her fist.

  Luis was approaching. “Got what?”

  “The common denominator for the nadaný. Doesn’t matter whether they were born in New York or L.A. or New Orleans, their mothers received prenatal care at something called the Modern Motherhood Clinic.”

  Laura opened the Wikipedia piece and began reading.

  3

  Rick leaned against the office wall as Stahlman and Anulka seated themselves facing across the desk. Marie came in and closed the door behind her, then stood at Anulka’s side.

  “If you’re sleeping in a mattress store,” Stahlman said in a gentle voice, “is it fair to assume you’re homeless?”

  Rick saw Anulka’s throat wobble as she nodded in reply.

  “You’re so young,” Stahlman said. “How did that happen?”

  “Long story.”

  When Anulka offered no more, Stahlman shrugged. “We don’t need to know. But those days are over if you want them to be. We have apartments of a sort upstairs where you can stay. A few are already occupied, but we still have room.”

  Anulka looked ready to cry.

  “We’re gathering a family here,” Marie said.

  “A family of what?”

  “Of people with … talents.”

  Stahlman said, “I will pay you two thousand dollars a week to let us study your talent. You can walk away at any time.”

  “Two thousand a week?” Tears began to run as Anulka’s hands fluttered to her mouth. “I’ve been folding laundry for minimum wage.”

  “For the time being, those days are over—if you want them to be.”

  Rick noticed how Stahlman kept emphasizing the voluntary nature of the arrangement—how Anulka would stay in control.

  “How did you find out you could turn invisible?” Rick asked.

  She leaned back in her chair and composed herself. “I was thirteen and home sick from school. My mother had to do food shopping but I didn’t feel like going out, so she let me stay home. She told me if anyone came to the door, don’t say anything and whatever I did, don’t open the door.”

  “Not the best advice,” Rick said.

  Marie frowned at him. “Why not?”

  “Because if someone’s checking to see if the house is empty …”

  “Exactly what happened,” Anulka said. “Someone knocked and knocked but I ignored them. Then I heard the door open. I was reading in my parents’ bedroom so I panicked and hid in my mother’s closet. Worst place to go. That was like the first place the thief looked. I was crouched on the floor with all her shoes, trying to make myself as small as possible, when the closet doors opened. The light wavered and then dimmed, like I was going to pass out. I was too terrified to scream. Good thing, too, because he ignored me and started going through the boxes on the top shelf—stood right over me, but didn’t tell me to keep quiet or anything. Finally he moved on. But he left the doors open. Right across from the closet was my mother’s full-length mirror. I could see her black high heels to my right, and her beige flats to my left, but I couldn’t see me.”

  “Wow,” Stahlman said, grinning. “That must have been a mind-blowing moment.”

  “I almost screamed then. I sat there frozen until he left the room, then I crawled out and got to the bedroom phone. I managed to press 911 and whisper ‘Help.’ I left it off the hook and crawled under the bed until the cops arrived and caught him.”

  “Were you visible again by then?”

  Anulka nodded. “Yeah. I didn’t know how I’d become invisible and didn’t know how I’d reversed it. And no matter how I tried, I couldn’t do it again—not for years.”

  “But eventually you got the hang of it,” Rick said.

  She smiled. “Obviously. But—”

  4

  Laura burst into the office without knocking. Bad manners, yeah, but wait till they heard this.

  “Sorry, sorry, sorry!” she said. “But this can’t wait.”

  Rick, Stahlman, Marie, and the new girl stared at her.

  Stahlman leaned back in his chair. “I defer to your sense of urgency, doctor.”

  “I’ve tracked down the link between all the nadaný—at least I’m ninety-nine percent sure.” She consulted Luis’s tablet. “The nadaný who were able to find out where their mothers received prenatal care, no matter where they were born, all said the same place: a Modern Motherhood Clinic. There were ten of them. In 1991, something called the Horace B. Gilmartin Foundation opened ten free inner-city prenatal clinics around the country. One in Bed-Stuy, right here in Brooklyn, also in New Orleans, Atlanta, Anacostia in D.C., Compton in L.A., Indianapolis, Chicago, St. Louis, Little Rock, and Jackson, Mississippi.”

  “All inner cities?” Rick said.

  “Yep. The mission statement was to bring quality prenatal care to the poorest populations to offset the high infant mortality rate plaguing inner cities.”

  “Never heard of them,” Stahlman said.

  Laura couldn’t help smiling. “You weren’t exactly a member of the target population.”

  “No, I guess not. They still around? We should—”

  “They all closed up in 2006. Pretty much without warning from what I’ve gathered. The doctor who oversaw the operation, an Emily Jacobi, left that year and wasn’t replaced. The ten clinics shut their doors and never opened again.”

  “Well, then, we’ll get ahold of this Doctor Jacobi and—”

  “She died of
a brain tumor in 2007—probably why she left.”

  Stahlman gave a frustrated sigh. “All right, then, what about this foundation?”

  “Another dead end. It’s no longer operative. In fact, it seems to have disappeared—no listing anywhere, no website, and only a brief, cryptic Wikipedia entry in connection with the Modern Motherhood Clinics.”

  “I have a foundation of my own,” Stahlman said, “so I know something about them. If it closed down it had to file articles of dissolution.”

  “I didn’t delve that deep,” Laura said. “Frankly, I wouldn’t know where to begin. But I know a forensic accountant who’s pure bulldog.”

  Rick grinned. “Hari Tate.”

  “Well,” Stahlman said, “we’ll call him in if it comes to that. But first—”

  “Her,” Laura said. “Hari’s a woman.”

  “Whatever. These clinics started in 1991, you say? Dinkins was mayor then and I was just starting my first tech fund. I hobnobbed with some of the politicos back in the day—Giuliani’s people as well, later on. Let me check and see if any of the Dinkins folks I knew are still around. But in the meantime, good work, Doctor.”

  “Laura, remember?”

  “Right. Laura.”

  Marie was staring at her, looking distraught. “You are saying these clinics did something to us before we were born?”

  Laura realized she probably should have waited until she’d had Stahlman, Luis, and Rick alone.

  “I can’t say that. No one can say that. We have what we call a ‘correlation,’ a common factor—a connection. That’s not the same as cause and effect.”

  Marie didn’t look comforted, and Laura couldn’t blame her. The correlation was very high.

  “Look,” she added, “if it turns out there is a cause-effect relationship, some innocent vitamin or supplement or combination they were using could be the link. We don’t have to make a big dark conspiracy out of it.”

  She glanced at Rick and could tell by his expression that his conspiracy meter was redlining. He lived for this stuff.

  Anulka looked as uneasy as Marie. “I thought I was alone, an accident. Now I—”

  A knock on the door stopped her.

  “Come in,” Stahlman said.

  The door opened and a pretty woman with skin almost as dark as Anulka’s stuck her head into the room. “Am I interrupting?”

  Stahlman rose from his seat. “Not at all, Mrs. Joyner. Come in.”

  She guided a slim, shy teenage girl, just as pretty, ahead of her. The girl wore leather gloves

  “And Sela!” Stahlman said. “So glad you could come.” He turned to Laura and the rest. “Sela’s talent is she can read objects.”

  “Sela …” Laura said. “Pretty name.”

  “From the Bible,” her mother said quickly, as if to assure all present that she hadn’t named her daughter after an actress.

  “Just for the record, Mrs. Joyner,” she said, “did you receive your maternity care at a Modern Motherhood Clinic?”

  “Why, yes,” she said. “In Bed-Stuy. How did you know?”

  Laura suppressed a fist pump. Yes!

  “I can explain later. But for now, how does Sela ‘read objects’? What does that mean?”

  Sela looked up at her mother for help, but Stahlman answered. “Hand her an object and she can tell you things about it—where it’s been, who owned it.”

  The medical-examiner lobe of Laura’s brain immediately flashed on what a forensic treasure this girl could be—if what Stahlman said was true.

  “Here.” He picked up a rock off a stack of papers on his desk and handed it to her. “Do your thing.”

  She removed her gloves and handed them to her mother, then took the sand-colored rock and turned it over and over in her hands without the slightest bit of theatrics beyond closing her eyes.

  She opened them. “California?”

  “Are you asking or telling?” Stahlman said with a smile.

  She smiled back, revealing bright white teeth. “Telling.”

  “Right. It’s one of the rocks I brought back from Bronson Canyon in Hollywood.”

  She started to hand it back, then pulled it close again, her expression puzzled. She cocked her head, then shook it and handed the rock to Stahlman.

  “You were going to say something?”

  A sheepish look. “Yeah, but it’s silly.”

  “Let me decide what’s silly. Shoot.”

  “I kept seeing this weird Batmobile, not the one in the movies.”

  Stahlman’s eyes widened. “Holy shi—sugar! That’s incredible!”

  “What’s incredible?” Laura said.

  “The rock’s from the cave in Bronson Canyon that served as the Bat Cave in the Batman TV series back in the sixties. I was a big fan of the show. They’d raise a door and the Batmobile would roar out.”

  Laura turned to Sela. “You got that just from touching a rock?”

  The girl shrugged, saying nothing. A real shy one.

  “Everything has a story,” her mother said. “That’s why she wears gloves when she’s out. She can also read people.”

  Sela stiffened and grabbed her mother’s arm. “Mom! I don’t like that. You know I don’t like that.”

  “Why not?” Laura said, although she thought she had the answer.

  Mrs. Joyner answered for her. “Some people are hiding things. But Sela sees them, and sometimes it’s … not nice.”

  The forensic possibilities blossomed in Laura’s head. To have someone like Sela present at a post mortem … she could touch the cadaver and see … what? Cause of death? The perp? Or touch a suspect and determine guilt or innocence on the spot? Detectives would know immediately whether to pursue a case against him or look elsewhere.

  “I get a look at … like … I don’t know … something that’s important to them, to their life.”

  “Important how?” Laura said.

  Sela shrugged. “I don’t know how to say it. When I touch my mother, I get me.”

  Her mother beamed. “Aw, honey.”

  “When I touch my father—on my weekends with him—I get his father.”

  “That makes sense,” Mrs. Joyner said, “because your daddy’s father beat him terribly as a child.”

  “So …” Laura said, “something important to your life, something that shaped it.”

  “I guess so.”

  Stahlman held out his hand. “Try me.”

  Sela hesitated until her mother nudged her forward. She took Stahlman’s hand, then made a face.

  “Ikhar? What’s that?”

  Stahlman nodded. “Something very important to me.” He glanced at Laura. “I wouldn’t be here today without it. How about you, Laura?”

  Laura hesitated, then held out her hand. “Sure. Why not?”

  Sela’s grip was loose at first then tightened.

  After a few heartbeats, she said, “Someone named Marissa.”

  Laura didn’t know why she felt relief. No other answer could fit.

  “My daughter.”

  Mrs. Joyner beamed again. “We mothers love our children.”

  Of course she loved Marissa. But more than that, her little girl’s leukemia, all the failed therapies and then the successful stem-cell transplant, had defined Laura’s life for years.

  She noticed Rick had retreated to the far wall and stood stony-faced with his hands behind his back. Like a soldier at parade rest.

  Laura understood, or at least thought she did.

  Marie stepped forward and extended her hand. “I have no children. Try me.”

  Now this could be interesting, Laura thought.

  They shook hands, Sela frowned and said, “Osterhagen … Maximilian Osterhagen.”

  Marie’s expression morphed from anticipation to confusion. “What did you say?”

  Sela repeated the name.

  Marie shook her head. “I have never heard that name in my life.” She thrust her other hand at Sela. “Again.”

  And
again, Sela said, “Maximilian Osterhagen.”

  Still no sign of recognition as Marie shook her head in bafflement.

  Laura felt a chill of premonition as Anulka rose and extended her hand. “My turn.”

  Sela took her hand, and now Sela looked confused.

  Her mother stepped closer. “What is it, honey?”

  Sela shook her head and dropped Anulka’s hand. “Maximilian Osterhagen.”

  Laura had been half expecting that but still her stomach fluttered as she began tapping the name into Luis’s tablet. Had Sela just given them a window into the nadaný origin?

  “Who the hell is Maximilian Osterhagen?” Anulka said, staring around.

  Stahlman looked baffled. “I’ve no idea, but we’re going to find out. Laura?”

  “I’m on it. Searching.”

  “Good.” He pointed to the door. “In the meantime, Rick, would you be so good as to check out there and have the nearest nadaný join us?”

  Rick ducked out, then reappeared with Tanisha Little, the telekinetic. Stahlman asked her to shake hands with Sela and the result was the same: Maximilian Osterhagen.

  “Find anything?” Stahlman said, turning to Laura.

  Laura sighed. “Yeah … thirty-three thousand hits.”

  “Put it in quotes,” Rick said. “Otherwise you’ll get a hit for every Maximilian and every Osterhagen on the net.”

  Laura did. “Okay, that’s better. Down to a hundred and twelve, and only one with a Wikipedia entry.” She did a quick read of the scanty entry and summarized. “Born April 29, 1910, died December 6, 1995, was a German physicist who worked with Werner von Braun in Germany’s rocket development program. He helped design and develop the V-2 rocket at Peenemünde during World War II. Brought to the U.S. after the war where he worked on the space program, including development of the Saturn V rocket, until his retirement. He died at his home in Toms River, New Jersey, of complications of lung cancer.”

  Rick grunted. “Toms River? A Nazi rocket scientist living at the Jersey Shore? I’ll be damned.”

  “Nothing here says he was a Nazi.”

  Stahlman said, “I don’t think you could work on government projects if you weren’t a party member. But what’s a German rocket scientist got to do with the nadaný?”