Triggers

by Robert J. Sawyer

  But Bessie kept shaking her head. Darryl was tired—it had been a long day already—and so he decided to sit in the one place he’d never been able to in the real Oval: the president’s red leather chair behind the Resolute desk.

  “Anything?” said Darryl. “Ignore the cameras; ignore the cables.”

  “Not yet.”

  Darryl looked around the room, and—

  And of course he spotted it at once, although a casual visitor—or viewer!—would miss it altogether: the plain panel that was the door to the president’s private study, just east of the Oval Office.

  Darryl walked over to it. It had no handle, and it popped open when one pressed against it, just like the real thing had.

  “Jerrison was here,” Darryl said. “He came through this door into the Oval Office from his study.”

  Bessie shuffled over to be next to Darryl. He motioned for her to go into the study, and he sidled along the curving wall of the Oval Office so she could look back through the hidden doorway without having him, an extraneous element, as part of her view.

  “Anything?” called Darryl. “Think about Jerrison in that room, walking through that door, finding Leon Hexley standing here, his back to the president at first, talking on his BlackBerry, and saying…what?”

  “I don’t know,” said Bessie. “There are so many memories of this place, and of meetings here with Mr. Hexley. To find the precise one you want…”

  “It was Wednesday, about four in the afternoon. Hexley said, ‘Tell Gordo to aim’…?” He let the unfinished sentence float in the air, hoping she’d fill in the rest.

  She shook her head but repeated, “Tell Gordo to aim” out loud five times, each time in a slightly different way—and finally her voice brightened. “He said, ‘Tell Gordo to aim 4-2-4-7-4 the echo.’”

  Darryl scrambled for a pen and paper. There was a pad with the presidential seal on the desk, and a fountain pen in a fancy stand. He desperately hoped it was a real pen, and not a nonfunctional prop—and it was. He quickly wrote out what Bessie had said.

  “Are you sure?” he said. “Are you positive?”

  “That’s what he said, all right,” Bessie replied. “He must have heard the president then because he stopped talking and turned around. What does it mean?”

  Darryl shook his head. “I don’t know. But let’s hope to God someone does.”

  CHAPTER 33

  ERIC Redekop and Janis Falconi got into Eric’s maroon Mercedes, out front of the Bronze Shield. He buckled up and waited for her to do so, then gently said, “You’re doing the right thing, Jan. The shelter is open even on weekends. We’ll have no trouble getting you in.”

  “No,” replied Jan softly.

  Eric had his hand on the ignition key. “Sorry?”

  “Don’t take me to a shelter.”

  “You need help, Jan. You need support.”

  “Tomorrow, maybe. But not today. You can’t just abandon me.”

  Whatever they were going to do, sitting outside the gaming store wasn’t prudent. Jan’s husband might come after them, after all. Eric turned the key and drove, heading nowhere in particular. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s get some lunch, then. Do you like—” But merely thinking the question was enough to know the answer. She loved Italian food; memories of her at various restaurants popped into his head. “There’s a great Italian place not far from here.”

  “Thanks,” Jan said.

  They drove in silence for a time; the roads weren’t busy on a normal Saturday and were even more sparsely filled today.

  “You’re recalling my memories,” Jan said. “Right now. Aren’t you?”

  Eric nodded. He was trying not to do it, but they came anyway.

  “You know I like you,” she said. He was keeping his eyes on the road but was aware that she had turned her head and was looking at him.

  “Yes,” he said softly.

  “And I thought, before all this craziness,” she said, “that perhaps you liked me.”

  “Yes,” he said again, signaling a turn.

  “But that was before,” she said. She was quiet for another block, and so was he, but then she asked, “What about now?”

  And that was the question, Eric realized. It was one thing to know someone on the outside, but to know them on the inside! He’d never known anyone but himself this well before. He knew what her childhood had been like. A memory came to him of her at maybe eight years old, unable to sleep, coming down to the kitchen in her family’s little house and telling her mother that she was scared about dying, and her mom comforting her and saying that everyone dies eventually, but it would be a long, long time before either of them did.

  And he knew what she’d been like at college, including the one and only time she’d cheated on a test, desperate to get into nursing school.

  And he knew what she’d been like on her wedding day, walking down the aisle, thinking, This is the biggest mistake of my life—but being too afraid of making a scene to put a halt to the whole damn thing.

  He knew it all. And she was right to wonder what effect that had on his perception of her.

  The car rolled on; shops and restaurants passed by.

  And the answer came to him. Not from his mind and not from hers—but from his heart.

  He did still like her.

  He liked her a lot.

  But…

  “Jan,” he said. “I’m a doctor. I can’t…”

  “Can’t what?” she replied. “Get involved with a patient? I’m not your patient, Eric.”

  She was right. “True.”

  “And, yes, you’re older than me, but I like older men.”

  He thought about this; she did indeed. “Ah.”

  “Or,” she said, “is it that you can’t get involved with a nurse? Because, like, this would be the first time in history that has ever happened.”

  He smiled and drove on.

  SUSAN Dawson was waiting down in the lobby of Luther Terry for Paul to show up. They’d been dating for six months, and he’d had a key to her place for the last three. He had kindly gone there to pick up a change of clothes for her.

  And there he was! She ran over and hugged him, holding on tighter than usual; she surprised herself by how much she needed the contact, needed the stability.

  When they separated, he gently swept her hair away from her face. “You managing okay?”

  “Yeah,” she replied. “You?”

  He lifted his shoulders slightly and tipped his head toward the glass doors leading out of the lobby, leading back to the crazy world outside. “As well as anyone, I suppose. Couldn’t sleep last night.”

  She nodded. “Me, neither.”

  He had a big cloth bag with him. In addition to a dark suit and white blouse, he’d also brought along her red ski jacket, since the blood-soaked coat she’d used yesterday was too horrific to wear.

  She desperately wanted to have a coffee with him at the Starbucks here in the lobby, but her BlackBerry vibrated. She pulled it out and read the message from Darryl. Bessie Stilwell had remembered what Leon Hexley had said. Darryl had typed it in, but the words and numbers didn’t make any sense to Susan. Still, she was delighted that the memory had been recovered.

  Darryl’s message noted that they were going to take a military jet back. Susan thought about texting that Jerrison had wanted them to take civilian flights, but then, now that she thought about it, he’d actually only said to make sure they flew to L.A. on a commercial plane; he hadn’t said anything about the return, and—

  “Everything okay?” Paul asked, indicating her BlackBerry.

  She looked up and smiled at him. He worked in security at the Smithsonian; they often went jogging together on the Mall. “Yes, baby—it’s fine. But I gotta go.” She quickly kissed him and headed out of the lobby, taking the bag he’d brought. She went by Singh’s office, which was empty—the Canadian was down the hall in his lab—and quickly changed into the fresh clothes, feeling a little more civilized for
having done so. She then took a yellow pad—this one had some of Kadeem’s doodles on the top sheet, which she tore off—and wrote out in big letters the words and numbers Bessie had remembered Hexley saying. Then she hurried back down to visit the president.

  When the lockdown had ended yesterday, she’d sent a number of the Secret Service agents who had been here home and ordered others to come take their places. The two on duty out front of Prospector’s door were ones she’d had transferred from the detail that looked after visiting dignitaries—in other words, ones who would never normally have direct access to the president and thus were less likely to be involved in any conspiracy against him. She’d also had two FBI agents brought in, and they were there as well—watching the watchers.

  “HELLO, may I please speak to Maria Ramirez?”

  “Speaking.”

  “This is—”

  “Hello, Professor Singh.”

  “Is my voice that distinctive?”

  “I’m afraid so, Professor. Is there—is something wrong?”

  “No, no. But I have a question, if I may.”

  “Sí.”

  “You can read the memories of Darryl Hudkins, one of the Secret Service agents, correct?”

  “Sí.”

  “Do you recall him meeting anyone…interesting, shall we say, today?”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure, Maria?”

  “Nothing comes to mind.”

  “An actor, perhaps…?”

  “Oh! Sí! ¡Qué emocionante! Darryl is in Hollywood, no? And he met Courtney B. Vance!”

  “Yes, he did.”

  “But…but why is this important?”

  “Just confirming something. It proves that the links remain intact even over distances of thousands of kilometers.”

  “¡Dios mio!”

  “My thought exactly.”

  SETH Jerrison’s previous nurse Sheila had been replaced by one named Kelly. He liked her better. She wasn’t as stern, and she laughed at his little jokes. Earlier, she’d read him the most recent batch of get-well-soon and sympathy messages from foreign leaders, and she was now rearranging the vast collection of flowers that had been placed on a table by the window; they were a tiny fraction of those that had been delivered to the hospital since the shooting.

  The press had been making noises about a transfer of power under the Twenty-Fifth while Seth was recuperating. Seth would be damned if he’d let that happen; this was a time of crisis, and he intended to lead. He’d insisted on being given another stimulant half an hour ago, and he was feeling, if not chipper, at least more alert and energetic than he had when he woke up.

  The door to the room opened, and in came Susan Dawson. “Pay dirt,” she said.

  “Kelly, will you excuse us?” Seth asked.

  The nurse nodded. “I’ll be just outside.”

  “That’s fine.”

  Susan took the vinyl-covered chair next to Seth’s bed and she held up a lined yellow notepad so he could see it. “Yes, yes!” he said once. “That’s it—that’s it exactly. ‘Tell Gordo to aim 4-2-4-7-4 the echo.’”

  “The ‘aim’ part is certainly suspicious,” Susan said. “But it’s not conclusive.”

  “True,” Seth said. “Call it in to the NSA decoding desk; see what they make of it.”

  Susan nodded and took a minute to do that. When she was off the phone, Seth motioned for her to show him the sheet again. “What do you make of the ‘4-2-4-7-4’ bit?” he asked.

  “Forty-two thousand four hundred and seventy-four,” said Susan. “Does that mean anything to you?”

  “No.”

  “It’s not some sort of reference to you? Maybe your old ZIP code or something?” She pulled out her BlackBerry and went to the USPS site. “Huh,” she said. “It’s not a valid ZIP code. Well, maybe that first ‘four’ isn’t the number. Maybe its, um, the…”

  “Preposition,” Seth provided

  “Right. Maybe it’s ‘aim for 2-4-7-4.’”

  “Well, 2-4-7-4 doesn’t mean anything to me. But if the second ‘four’ is also the preposition—aim for 2-4-7 for the echo—then maybe it’s a time. You know, 2:47?”

  “But surely you’d say ‘two-forty-seven,’ then. And, besides, you were shot in the morning.”

  “What about 24/7—you know, seven days a week?”

  “But he said ‘two-four,’ not ‘twenty-four.’”

  Seth frowned. “And what’s this about echoing?”

  “That is strange. Danbury shot you from inside the Lincoln Memorial. With all that marble around him, it was bound to echo loudly no matter when he took the shot.”

  “‘Echo,’” Seth said. “Suppose it’s not the word; suppose it’s the phonetic alphabet. You know: alpha, bravo, um…”

  “Charlie,” said Susan, “delta, echo.”

  “Right. So maybe it stands for something that begins with E.”

  “Executive?” offered Susan. “Execute? Eliminate?”

  Seth’s heart pounded—which hurt like hell. “God,” he said.

  “What is it?”

  “Two-four-seven. They add up to thirteen.”

  “Yes. So?”

  He hesitated. Did he really want to reveal the 13 Code to a Secret Service agent? But, of course, in this day of RSA encryption, no one except school kids bothered with simple substitution ciphers. He took a moment to explain how his code worked and talked her through writing up the conversion table on her yellow pad so she could see what he meant:

  “There,” he said, when she was done. “A decryption table for the key two-four-seven.”

  Susan looked at him like he was crazy. Seth nodded sagely. “They called me mad at the university.”

  She smiled. “I’m sure they did, sir.”

  CHAPTER 34

  AFTER leaving Professor Singh’s lab, Ivan Tarasov had intended to simply get through his day, trying to think of nothing but his duties as a security guard here at the hospital. He was good at his job, and he liked its repetitive quality: at this time, walk down this corridor, check that the doors to these rooms were properly locked, and—

  And there he was. Ivan caught sight of Josh Latimer walking toward him. Seeing him, even from a distance, brought back a flood of Dora’s memories, including the awkward call, months ago, when he’d phoned her—him here in Washington, her over in London, the father who had missed all her school plays and her move to England and her wedding and even the funeral of her mother, calling up to make sure he’d tracked down the right Dora, checking that her maiden name had been Latimer, that she’d been born in Maryland, that her birthday was August 6, and then, once he was sure, explaining that he was her long-lost father, and arranging to come visit her for a face-to-face meeting. And in a little restaurant off Piccadilly Circus, after they’d each tried to compress three decades of life into an hour, he told her why he’d sought her out and what he needed from her.

  Memories of what had happened after they’d parted came to him, too. Of her talking it over with her doctor, her best friend Mandy, and her minister, and ultimately deciding she had to do this; she couldn’t deny him.

  Latimer was wearing a green hospital gown but blue jeans underneath. As Ivan watched, he turned and entered a room. Ivan’s own path took him by the same room, and suddenly he found himself pushing the door open, entering, and closing the door behind him.

  Latimer was sitting in the chair by his bed. Across the street, through the window, George Washington University’s Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis dorm was visible. Latimer looked up, clearly startled to see a security guard entering.

  Ivan felt his blood boiling; the mere sight of Latimer infuriated him. “How could you?” Ivan demanded.

  Latimer frowned. “What?”

  “After what you did to Dora, to ask her to let herself be cut open for you, to give a piece of her own body to you—how could you?”

  Latimer groped on the table next to his chair for his eyeglasses, unfolded them, and put them on. “I don
’t know you,” he said. “And you don’t know me. The person reading my memories is a woman—a nurse. Janis something.”

  “Falconi,” said Ivan, nodding; he knew the names of all the nurses and doctors here. “I’m not reading you. I’m reading your daughter Dora.”

  Latimer said nothing.

  “You’re thinking she can’t possibly remember—because if she did, she’d never have agreed to help you. And maybe she doesn’t remember. But I do.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Latimer.

  That further infuriated Ivan. “Don’t lie to me,” he said, moving closer. “Don’t you dare lie to me.”

  “What are you going to do?” asked Latimer.

  “I’m going to tell Dora,” Ivan said. “She deserves to know.”

  “You can’t,” said Latimer, rising now.

  “Oh?” said Ivan, turning now to exit, and—

  Sound, movement, a tugging, and—

  And Latimer grabbed the gun out of Ivan’s holster. Ivan spun around and saw the pistol aimed at his chest. “I’ll die without that transplant,” Latimer said. “You’re going to keep your mouth shut—about everything.”

  “Or what?” asked Ivan, proud of himself for managing to briefly meet Latimer’s gaze.

  “Or I’ll shoot you,” said Latimer.

  “You’ll go to jail.”

  “Wanna bet? I was just talking to that guy Gillett, the lawyer. He said this was the perfect time to do something crazy because any competent attorney could get you off. Scrambled brains? Other people’s memories? No one’s fault. It’s carte fucking blanche.”

  “No judge is going to buy that,” said Ivan.

  “No?” said Latimer, waving the gun. “You came in here threatening me. There was a struggle; I got your gun, and it went off. Simple as that…”

  AFTER leaving President Jerrison, Susan headed up to four, and was surprised to see that Orrin Gillett was still in the building. “What are you still doing here?”

  “I had an appointment with Josh Latimer,” he replied.