by Thomas Locke
Byron asked, “Who are you?”
“That’s not important. Right now you need to focus on just two items. First, I obviously represent some extremely powerful interests. Second, what these people have taken away, they can give back.”
His voice had aged a thousand years. “You’ll restore my money?”
“Every cent,” she lied. “Just give us what we want, and we’ll vanish. Poof. We’ve never even met. Your life goes back to fun and games and all the Swiss gold one bad boy can spend. And you can spend a lot, can’t you, Byron?”
“You’re not from the IRS?”
“No, Byron. Now that’s enough of your questions. Tell me about your wife’s work.”
“I don’t get it. Gabriella’s research isn’t worth this.” He struck the accounts sheet with a trembling hand.
“Your wife represents a threat. That threat must be eliminated. As soon as that happens, your accounts will be restored.”
“Gabriella is a psychologist. Before she started on this project, she worked with rats.”
“Listen very carefully, Byron. You recall how the Vero Beach hospital’s fund-raising chairman approached you and said you could have the medical school’s teaching unit named after you for a ridiculously low sum. Not to mention how he let you have the top-floor research unit basically for free. That was our doing.” She let that sink in. “I’m sharing this with you because I want you to understand just how vital we consider Gabriella’s work to be. Now I want you to focus. Good. Tell me about her project.”
“They’re after quantifying certain experiences that the world considers totally off-the-wall. They call them ascents. Their aim is to make them measurable events. Create an environment where the events can be both repeated and computed.”
Reese let him ramble on. Actually, they knew far more than he ever would. And further information was not what was required. But there was nothing to be gained by revealing this to a newly broken man.
Byron did not so much finish as run out of steam. Perspiration was not normally served as part of the Plaza’s first course, but Byron used his napkin like a towel, wiping himself from hairline to neck. It was too soon for the man to enter meltdown.
“So you’ve assumed all this was just another quasi-spiritual sham. You figured, hey, give the girl her toys, play the hero, get a nice write-off, maybe score with some of the cute researchers. What’s wrong with a little harmless fun, right?” She moved in tight. “But they’ve made some fundamental progress into areas we can’t permit, for reasons of national security and our own corporate interests. Areas such as teleportation.” Reese straightened. “Here comes the headwaiter, Byron. You need anything?”
Byron had left polite etiquette behind a long time ago. He snarled at the waiter, “Go away.”
This being New York, the maître d’ simply bowed and said, “Very good, sir.”
When they were alone, Reese said, “Their work is in the early stages. We think it can still be halted in time. But we’re not certain. We need to move fast.”
Byron again applied the napkin to his forehead. “This is nuts.”
Reese moved in closer, using her looks to calm and stabilize her victim. To any observer she was simply another cute young blonde nestling up to a guy having a stroke. “Soon after they arrived at what was an absolutely perfect Vero research center, Gabriella came up with this incredible stunt of bringing in Charlie Hazard. Don’t look so surprised, Byron. I told you we had surveillance in place. They tested Hazard according to these impossible protocols of hers, and then that same night everybody pulled out. A state-of-the-art facility designed specifically for her work, paid for by her loving but not-so-loyal husband. Somehow your wife became aware of our interest, and did so at a level beyond either the physical state or time. You see why we’re so worried here, Byron? Your wife and her team have been successful at spatial and temporal shifts. She can go anywhere, see anything. No secret will ever be safe again.”
Reese stopped because Byron was no longer listening. His eyes stared into the distance, far beyond their table. She asked, “What is it, Byron?”
“This explains something she’s done.”
She saw him reaching for his soaked napkin and handed over her own. “We’re certain your wife and her team have left the country. We need—”
“Gabriella hasn’t.”
“What?”
“Or that man. Hazard. They haven’t left.” His waxy coloring returned. “I saw them.”
“You’re telling me Gabriella is here? In New York?”
“This afternoon. They were in my suite.”
While she recovered from that bombshell, Reese’s phone started ringing. Weldon Hawkins was listening in and now felt it necessary to intervene. Reese cut the connection and stowed the phone in her purse. “Go on.”
“I couldn’t figure out how she knew where to find me. I didn’t tell anybody where I was staying. But she popped up out of the blue. With that man.”
“Gabriella appeared in your suite with Charlie Hazard.” Light dawned, and Byron’s current state suddenly made sense. “She caught you with another woman, didn’t she. And it must have been earlier today, before you hit on me in the bar. My, but you’re a busy little boy.”
“She had the divorce papers already written up. It was either sign or they’d go public with the video that man Hazard was shooting.”
Reese gathered up her purse and rose from her chair. “We’ve got to assume they’ve already left town. We want you to find out where she’s moved her team.”
“You’ll give me back my money?”
“I already covered that.”
“Can I have that in writing?”
Reese was glad for a reason to laugh. “Get real, Byron. And get us that location.”
Reese waited until she had settled into the limo’s backseat to turn on her phone. It rang instantly.
Weldon said, “Teleportation?”
“Hang on a second.”
The limo driver settled in behind the wheel and asked, “Where to next, Ms. Clawson?”
“Just head uptown.” She lifted the phone. “So what would you prefer to call it?”
“All we know for certain is, the user’s awareness is no longer tied to their physical state.”
“This goes well beyond precognition, Weldon. You just heard Byron confirm what we heard on our monitoring system. Charlie Hazard arrived in their lab, and in his first experience he shifted to another room and read a sign they didn’t even print until he was under. What’s worse, Gabriella saw all of this before it actually happened. She knew where to find him, she knew he would go for it, she knew he would read the sign, she knew we were watching.”
Weldon knew all this as well as she did. He liked to test his assumptions with such discussions. He also had a tendency to cough his words when nervous. Little verbal barks, like the beast in him was barely under control. “I’ve just ordered your crew to search the local hotels.”
“Seeing as how Hazard and the woman have stayed one step ahead of us this far, I kind of doubt they’ll make a mistake now.”
“You’re saying we shouldn’t bother?”
“Of course not. Tell them to check the bus and train stations. Limos, taxis, the works.”
“Are you returning tonight?”
“Tomorrow. We need to be certain they’ve actually left town.”
Weldon hung up. No farewell, no acknowledgment of a job well handled. Reese started to detach her lapel mike, then decided Patel needed to be a part of her final phone call. She asked the driver, “Where does a girl go for the hottest nighttime action in town?”
The driver grinned into his rearview mirror. This was clearly a question he liked. “Lady, this is New York. You got to be more specific than that. You want jazz hot, club hot, R & B hot, down-and-dirty salsa hot—what you like?”
“I’m in the mood for spicy.” She kicked off her shoes. “Salsa sounds perfect.”
The driver was Hispanic and
proud of it. His grin grew broader. “I got just the joint.”
“Great.” She pulled a miniature earpiece from her pocket, fitted it into place, then spoke into her lapel mike. “Patel, you there?”
“Of course I’m here. Where else would I be?”
“Find General Strang and patch him through to my phone. We’ve got some serious business to discuss.”
22
Charlie moved the desk and chair over so that Gabriella could sit next to the bed. He stood behind her as she walked him through the entire ascent, making corrections on her worksheets as she spoke. He studied the curve to the back of her neck and knew he should be paying more careful attention. But her words fell on him like a gentle wash, soft as summer rain.
She arranged the pages in proper order and tamped them into place. “Are you ready, Charlie?”
“Sure thing.”
“Do you understand what you will accomplish in this ascent?”
“Whatever you tell me to do.”
She gave that a significant pause. “Make yourself comfortable on the bed, please.” She arranged her equipment on the desk and fitted the headphones on his head. “How is the volume?”
“Perfect.” He could smell her perfume. Along with a smoldering trace of the day.
“Are you the least bit frightened, Charlie?”
“No.”
“Most people find the second and third ascents the hardest. Particularly just before leaving the body. We call it uncoupling. After the third ascent, sometimes the fourth, either they have begun to find a sense of familiarity or they stop. It is not a conscious choice. Fear simply overrides their ability to ascend.”
“Where are the rest of your team?”
“On their way to Italy, by way of Switzerland. My family used to rent a villa in Brunate, a small village in the mountains above the Lake of Como. There is no record of this anywhere, to my knowledge. We should be safe there. At least until we can establish a more permanent situation.”
He liked how she never hesitated before answering his questions. “I’ve never heard of the place.”
“Como is just south of the Swiss border, in the foothills of the Alps. My aunt’s family, my mother’s sister, had inherited a quarter share of a family villa through her husband’s . . . Never mind, Charlie. It is a very complicated connection. Very Italian. But the villa itself is beautiful, almost six hundred years old—not the largest villa in the village by any means, but still very nice. I called the family and they said it was empty for the season. Just as I saw during my last ascent.”
Charlie saw the shadows pass before her face again and knew she was thinking of what else had come out of that particular session. She almost managed to hide the crack in her voice as she said, “I have a theory as to why you are not afraid. Would you like to hear it?”
“Absolutely.”
“Identity for most people is constantly shifting. People are this way with one person, another way with the next. They are happy, sad, up, down, backwards, forwards. Much of their internal state is dependent upon the things going on around them.” She hesitated, as though suddenly uncertain she should be saying these things. “Recent studies suggest that people who fight in wars fit an entirely different psychological profile.”
“The standard term,” Charlie said, “is combat veteran.”
“Yes. Thank you. These studies suggest one reason so many combat veterans have difficulty adjusting to civilian life is that they lose this ability to shift identities. This flexibility of character has been cauterized. They are frozen in the rigidity required to survive battle. They are precisely who they are. All the time.” She stopped once more. “Was I wrong to tell you this, Charlie?”
“Not at all.”
“I don’t want to make you think that I do not consider you well adjusted.”
“You’re describing a very real problem in my world, Gabriella. A lot of guys just plain can’t come back. I’m glad scientists are taking a look at it. What you’re saying makes a lot of sense.”
“I have been thinking a great deal about this since meeting you. Why does the warrior become so inflexible? The answer is, of course, survival. This intensity, this focused power, carries the warrior through threats that arrive from every point on the compass. This character inflexibility is a natural side effect. I wonder if perhaps your core personality, this solidity of purpose, makes it easier for you to ascend. For you, the seasoned warrior, ascending becomes the next danger zone you choose to enter.”
He gave that some thought. “I think maybe there’s another reason why I’m not afraid.”
“Yes?”
“I’ve almost died twice. Once in combat, once in a car accident.”
“This also carries a great deal of validity, Charlie. There is documented evidence that near-death experiences leave many subjects with less fear of the end.” She nodded slowly. “Perhaps we should focus upon this in our selection of new test cases.”
He could feel the heat of her body beside the bed. “I’m very sorry about today, Gabriella.”
“We must focus on you now, Charlie.”
“I just wanted you to know.”
She settled a hand on his shoulder and left it there for a time, soft as whispered gratitude. Her other hand became busy with the controls. A rush of sound filled his ears. She said, “You are entering Base Level now.”
This time Charlie was much more aware of the actual process. Like before, his focus gradually turned away from Gabriella’s voice and her presence, taking an increasingly tight aim at his internal state. Yet at one level he remained acutely aware of her at all times. The fact that his focus could be so utterly divided and yet remain so sharp was only of mild interest, a thought that came and went in the sweep of counting upward.
Then he ascended.
The word fit the experience with exquisite precision. He rose away from normal awareness.
He had never considered the concept of awareness in those terms before. Normal awareness meant self, then body, then environment. It was all about analysis and search and defined concepts of danger. Normal awareness meant maintaining an island of security and safety.
Charlie literally felt his awareness draw away from all these things. The elastic moment was strong as a physical sensation. He turned away.
He had expected a wrenching of some sort. Every journey he had experienced started with a sensation of departure. Until now.
There was an instant of transition as natural as the tiny breath his body took. The body he was now looking down upon.
He remained poised slightly above the bed and the lovely woman who observed the body lying there. He watched as Gabriella lifted the pages. He saw the slight tremor to her hands. Then the message formed inside him in tandem to her speaking.
Gabriella said, “Identify what risk we currently face. You will focus exclusively upon the next danger at hand. You will remain in complete safety and complete control at all times. Go now.”
Before the now, Charlie was already gone.
He knew a tornado effect. The sense of gathering force was that great. His senses were honed as he traveled, focusing with such intensity he could fracture a laser.
He came to rest in the back of a limo. Outside the limo’s windows was a nighttime cityscape. Though he recognized no landmarks, Charlie knew with absolute certainty he was still in New York.
Across from him sat the woman he had last seen at Harbor Petroleum. Reese Clawson was blonde and alluring and draped in a cloak woven from sexuality and dread. The combination of menace and manipulated desire tore at Charlie’s psyche. He had noticed it before, but with nothing like the pure intensity he felt now.
Reese said into her cell phone, “I appreciate your willingness to help us out, General Strang.”
The man’s voice on the other end of the phone came through as clearly as if Charlie held the phone to his own nonexistent ear. “I’ve got two reasons. First, Hazard is off the reservation. Second, I want your business
.”
The blonde woman pulled her skirt up a trifle, as though offering a tantalizing pose to the man on the other end of the phone. “I will be equally frank. Our background search has turned up nothing usable on Hazard. He is almost absurdly clean.”
“I figured that was the issue as soon as your man placed this call.”
“We need a lever, General. We need it now.”
“First let’s talk terms.”
“You deliver and so do I.”
“Same deal?”
“The same contract as before, only with Hazard erased.”
“In that case, I’m happy to tell you that Charlie Hazard has an Achilles’ heel.”
Reese smiled. “Men always do.”
Charlie’s next transition was equally smooth and as powerful as the first. He had attended military training seminars where experienced field officers described entering new combat terrain and watching their new troops give in to sensory overload. The new scene offered that same level of bombardment.
He stood at the back of an intel war room. He had visited the Pentagon’s underground chamber once, acting as aide to Colonel Donovan Field, who had been invited by a general who had once served under him. The setup was unmistakable. Arena-like banks of seats rose in four curved rows from a wall of giant flat-screens. Over the loudspeakers, Reese was talking to Curtis Strang.
Strang was saying, “Hazard was in the process of divorcing his wife.”
A slender man stood by a console to Charlie’s left. He had olive skin and an aggrieved air as he cried, “That is not part of any official record!”
On one screen, Reese winced and cupped her hand over the phone’s mouthpiece. “Ease up on the volume, Patel.”
“We have searched everywhere. Charlie Hazard was married until his wife died in the car accident. He never—”
“All right.” Reese replaced the phone to her ear and said, “We show no evidence of that, General.”
“I don’t care what your records state. Forget your own data. If there was written evidence, you wouldn’t be calling me. I know Hazard was divorcing his wife because he told me a month or so after he joined my team. She was having an affair.”
