The Prisoner (42 page)

Floyd draped his arm around Laurel’s shoulders and drew her to his chest. “What’s next?”

“I suppose Tyler will come up with a plan to move Russo in the next few days to a place where he can make some sort of declaration.”

“But he can’t speak.”

“Can’t or won’t?” Laurel asked.

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve caught him awake once or twice, his half-closed eyes following me around the den as I checked his vitals. I think he could have said something but chose not to.”

“And Lukas?” Floyd asked.

“What about him?”

“How can we use his offer?”

“My take is that Tyler will make his contacts and structure his plan today. When he’s ready to go for broke, he’ll ask Lukas to contact the DHS, probably this evening or tomorrow, and give details to send our enemies like a pack of wolves in the opposite direction. That’s what I would do, anyway.”

“Makes sense. Ever thought about the identity of whoever planned the breakout?”

“Many times. It has to be someone high up in government. Probably a group.”

For a while neither spoke. Floyd took one of her hands and kissed the tip of each finger in turn. She peered into Russo’s placid face. He was awake and sentient, easy to determine after the previous days.

Unlike the common pattern of average sleepers, Russo thrashed and moaned constantly in his sleep, his brain probably racked by nightmares. He reverted to immobility only in wakefulness. Floyd had suggested they prepare a quart of watered-down broth, and Laurel had pushed a straw down
the side of Russo’s mouth from time to time when his breath and heartbeat steadied. Then, although Russo didn’t seem to move, the level in the glass did. His body wouldn’t hold anything solid, not even soft foods, but Russo’s ability to process salty broth was a giant leap to jump-start his digestive system—a critical step toward his recovery.

Sucking required a conscious effort, however feeble. Floyd had also removed all traces of sedatives and the IV lines but kept the pulse monitor clipped to one of Russo’s fingers, its volume turned down to a weak blip, its tempo now steadily accelerating as Russo probably sank back into his dreams of cold horror. At intervals, Floyd had drawn a few drops of blood from a port on Russo’s hand to monitor his SATs—the oxygen levels in his blood. After such a protracted time relying on mechanical respiration, Floyd was worried about Russo’s lungs’ ability to provide enough oxygen to his body.

“Will he remember?” Laurel asked now.

Floyd didn’t answer straightaway but drew her closer. When he spoke, his voice sounded strangely muffled. “We have different types of memory. Procedural memory is where we store functions, like walking, laughing, how to use a knife and fork, or how to perform mechanical tasks. A singer doesn’t think about singing when he sings, or a driver how to adjust to different flows of traffic when he drives. If he had to, his responses would be too slow and would cause an accident. Then we have semantic memory to store facts: What is a book? What are garters? What is a keyboard?”

“So, in semantic memory, you have the clue about what a keyboard is, but the ability to use it resides in your procedural memory?”

“More or less. Then there’s episodic memory, the most volatile, residing principally in the frontal lobes of the brain. Picture episodic memory like flypaper—a strip of material with two critical properties: area and stickiness. Over time, the flypaper surface crowds with flies. As its coating becomes less sticky, some flies drop and make room for others, but the new ones don’t adhere as strongly.”

“But I thought the capacity of our brain was almost unlimited.”

“Almost, but like any other system, the brain deteriorates with age. Our brain shrinks at a rate of one percent a year after the age of thirty. Granted, there are one hundred billion neurons packed into our three-pound brain, constantly sending and receiving signals, but over time the signals weaken.”

“And we lose our capacity to remember?”

“It isn’t as simple as that. Fortunately for Russo, the frontal lobes are the ones that shrink earlier and faster. There’s where our capacity to recall events lies.”

“You mean he will eventually forget his ordeal?”

“Not totally, but it will become hazy and, I hope, bearable.”

“I remember.”

They both turned to Russo, and to a voice so ragged it seemed like an old recording. His face was serene and his eyes were closed, though his heartbeat raced, but the words had come from him. Laurel shifted her legs to sit straighter.

“Who are you?” Russo’s lips moved but he didn’t open his eyes.

“He’s Floyd Carpenter, a medical doctor and hibernation specialist from Nyx, a corporation offering commercial hibernation services. I am …” The surreal nature of her relationship with Russo suddenly crashed down on Laurel. “I am a lawyer.”

“Have I been released?”

Laurel glanced at Floyd. He nodded once. “No. We sprung you out.”

Russo’s head lolled in their direction, and the line where his eyelids met widened a fraction of an inch. After so much darkness, even the dim light of a floor lamp on the other end of the living room and the TV panel’s luminance must have seemed painfully bright.

Floyd stood to step out of the room and returned moments later with a pair of sunglasses. “I noticed Tyler kept a pair in the hall drawer.” He leaned over Russo and slipped the sunglasses on.

“Who is ‘we’?” Russo asked. In dark wraparound shades, Russo’s alien appearance deepened. His hand reached to his crotch and seemed to scratch, although Laurel wasn’t sure if his fingers were attempting to relieve an itch from the catheter or trying to ascertain if other parts of his anatomy remained unimpaired.

Over the next thirty minutes, Laurel recounted in broad strokes their scheme and some of the events that occurred after they broke him out of the Washington sugar cube. Throughout the monologue, Russo didn’t move much and she couldn’t be sure if his eyes were open or shut, but the beep of his cardiac monitor remained strong and steady.

“Why?”

“To prevent the DHS from doing what’s been done to you again.”

“Who are you?”

“I told you: a lawyer.”

Russo made a wry movement with his mouth, as if trying to erase an unpleasant taste. Laurel stepped over and slipped the straw from the mug of broth between his lips. He made a face. “Water … please?”

After fixing a glass of water so Russo could suck an inch worth through the straw, Floyd withdrew it and patted his parched lips with a moist towel. “Too much and it won’t stay down,” he admonished.

Russo’s response was directed to Laurel. “I’ve asked twice who you are, and all I get out of you is your profession. You are indeed a lawyer.”

“Well, thank you.”

“Should I ask again?”

“I’m your daughter.”

Russo’s face tensed and the beeps from the monitor increased in pace. “I have no daughter.”

“I agree, but you impregnated Araceli Goldberg, and she gave birth to me.”

“She died.” His weak voice came out as dry as a wasteland.

“Not before giving birth.” Laurel clenched her fists. “You denied paternity to the doctor, but that’s a moot point. Things have changed, but not the infallibility of DNA matching.”

“Do you recall awakening at intervals?” Floyd interrupted, obviously to change the drift the conversation was taking.

For a while Russo didn’t answer. “After the first time, I decided it must be a dream, a recurring dream. I refused to accept that it could be real.”

“An unconscious decision that shielded your mind from disintegrating,” Floyd observed.

“Taking notes for a paper, Doctor?”

“Now that you mention it …”

“And you say you’ve never met the person who planned the breakout?” Russo asked, his voice gathering color.

Laurel shook her head. “No, we never met.”

“I suppose the old bastard can be persuasive.”

Laurel exchanged a quick glance with Floyd. “Do you know his identity?”

“If, as you say, you are my daughter, he’s got to be my father: Senator Jerome Palmer.”

“Senator Palmer? Your father?”
My grandfather?

“It runs in the family. Jerome Palmer was earmarked for political greatness.” Russo paused. “When in his sophomore year he
impregnated
, as you said, his high school sweetheart, his father tried to force an abortion. My mother was young and silly but high on ethics, and she refused.” He stopped and breathed deeply. “So your grandfather arranged an adoption. I found out only in my late twenties, by a stupid coincidence.” He paused, obviously exhausted by the effort of speaking. Floyd was moving to his side when Russo continued, his voice barely above a whisper. “I met him once, to spit in his face and tell him what a bastard he was, but it was ironic. I’m no better.”

11:10

A harried woman straining to untangle two leashes—one holding a vociferous toddler and the other a playful puppy—blocked the entrance to the bank. Nikola paused, sighed, and stood aside while the mother got her act together.
I can’t be all bad. Wasn’t it W. C. Fields who said, ‘Anyone who hates children and animals can’t be all bad’?

Nikola eyed the pretty brunette and even stole a quick look at her pert, freckled breasts when she bent over the dog. But he had to concede he didn’t qualify, hate being a burning passion better spent on worthy enemies. No, Nikola was indifferent to brats, although he found the mechanics of producing new ones a challenging exercise if addressed with curiosity and a zest for innovation. With a last assaying glance at her departing derriere, he mulled that, innovative or not, someone must have had a hell of a time, perhaps someone yearning for that woman at this precise moment.

He sighed and reflected, not for the first time, that he was alone not because he had chosen to be but because every turn his life had taken had ensured it. His was a different order of mind. Nikola had never tried to hide his intelligence but had attempted never to show it off or point it directly at anyone. Lesser intellects immediately felt threatened, and his equals didn’t need the advertising; they recognized it at once. Nursing a great intellect was like owning a precious watch, he’d often thought. When Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, probably the twentieth-century’s grandest coloratura soprano, was arraigned before a court of victors at the end of World War II to answer charges of collaboration, she had been heard to state that she performed only for the elite. “For whom else
could I sing?” she answered to the panel of judges. Indeed. Only the elite could understand the breathtaking beauty of her voice as she caressed Mozart’s lieders.

An avid reader since the age of two, according to his long-deceased mother, Nikola had never understood the habit of hoarding books, except dictionaries and perhaps an encyclopedia. Books were made to be read and stored in the vast repository of a mind, to be revisited at leisure when attending a boring lecture, waiting, or traveling through uninteresting scenery. The few visitors he’d ever entertained in any of his sundry homes through the years must have assumed he didn’t read, judging by the lack of books on display. Only one person ever remarked, “Your books gather no dust in the library of your mind”: the late Eve Morse, a Supreme Court judge who could accurately quote Cicero, Wittgenstein, and the
three
books of the major religions.

“Well, hello, Mr. Masek! It must have been … what, two, three years?”

William Stearns, the branch director, rolled from behind his desk and maneuvered his vast anatomy toward Nikola, propelled by short legs. With a shiny dome capping a rotund face, he suffered more than a passing resemblance to Humpty Dumpty.

Nikola faked a smile, shook the blubbery hand once, and nodded, fighting the urge to reach for a handkerchief to mop his palm after.

“Please, make yourself comfortable.” Stearns nodded to a leather sofa. “Can I offer you coffee? Something stronger?”

“No, thank you.” Nikola detoured to occupy an easy chair.

Stearns turned to his secretary, who stood by the door. “That will be all, Mrs. Chapman.” With that, he turned, edged to the sofa, and collapsed on the leather, the cushions groaning as air sighed through the seams. “Well.” He opened his hands as if to part the waters, cradled them over his distended belly, and composed a beatific smile. “What can the bank do for you?”

Nikola considered how to play the forthcoming scene. He had met Stearns a few times over the years, always on issues of little relevance but complex enough to preclude using the Internet. Although he had mentally rehearsed
several approaches, Nikola didn’t know if Stearns would be accompanied by other bank officials. The man could have been sick or chosen to conduct their business in one of the open offices outside. Now that his choice had been settled, Nikola decided to lose no time with niceties.

“Mr. Stea—”

“Please, call me William. We’ve known each other … what, twenty years?”

Like most people marshaling their thoughts, Stearns repeated formulas to keep a section of his brain on automatic pilot while the analytic part did its bit. Now he must be debating the reason behind the visit. His porcine eyes darted, trying to evaluate Nikola’s body language. Regardless of his ludicrous physique, Mr. Stearns owned a first-class brain—one that was, according to Nikola’s file, in perfect working order.