The Memory Collector

by Meg Gardiner

  The captain came over the P.A. “Flight attendants, prepare for takeoff.”

  The engines cycled up to full thrust and the big jet began to accelerate down the runway. The cabin rattled. Stef closed her eyes.

  Stef heard a bell ring. She sighed and unhooked her seat belt.

  Charlotte tugged on her arm. “What’s wrong? We’ve only been airborne ten seconds.”

  “I thought . . .”

  “Twelve-B pushed the call button again. We’re at a thousand feet. Stef, are you quite all right?”

  Twelve-B? What did Charlotte mean, “again”? The floor was pitched at a steep angle and the engines were roaring, still near takeoff thrust. Why had she unbuckled?

  She was hot. The air-conditioning seemed to be blasting, but the plane felt stifling. She lay her head back against the bulkhead.

  “Are you feeling unwell?” Charlotte said.

  “Not so great, to tell the truth.” They lurched. “Kick-ass turbulence.”

  But turbulence generally never bothered her. It could freak out the passengers, though. Sometimes they begged to get off the flight. Sometimes while airborne.

  The crazy passenger on the flight in from London—what had made him rush for the exit? The heat in the airliner? The lack of oxygen? She tugged at the scarf that was tied stylishly around her neck. She hated the stale, germ-laden air in jetliners. The wild man, Kanan, had been desperate to get off the plane. She understood how he felt.

  She pulled off the scarf. “So damned hot.”

  And she was itching. She scratched at her arm. Actually, it was itching at the spot where Kanan had put his hand on her during the scuffle. She felt a twinge of alarm.

  She looked around the cabin. The walls were curved at a parabolic angle. Sunlight etched the faces of the passengers so sharply that she could see every thread in the seams of their clothing, every hair on their heads. The turbulence jostled them in their seats. The passenger in 12B was leaning into the aisle and waving to her colleague Allen like a bar patron summoning a cocktail waitress.

  Why didn’t somebody turn on the air conditioner? The cabin felt— God, it felt choking. There wasn’t any air at all. Somebody should do something. Lack of oxygen could kill airplane passengers and crew.

  She recalled the training. Anoxia can kill silently, quickly, and invisibly. Depressurization at high altitude asphyxiates, and the plane’s emergency oxygen system—those masks she’d demonstrated a thousand times—delivers only ten minutes of air. If there’s an explosive decompression the pilots must descend below fifteen thousand feet immediately. Otherwise, everybody aboard passes out.

  But a window blowing out isn’t the only thing that can choke off the plane’s oxygen supply. The cabin can also fill with deadly fumes.

  The 747 kept climbing. The five-point restraint was crushing her lungs. She really couldn’t breathe there, next to Charlotte. Charlotte was taking all the oxygen. Everything looked cramped and crystal-clear in the cabin—as though they were in a vacuum, with no air to haze the view. The man in 12B unbuckled and staggered to his feet. He looked drunk already, maybe some British banker who got sauced in the upper-class lounge before boarding. He tottered down the aisle toward the lavatory.

  She had to breathe. Across the plane, by the other main door, the jump seats were empty. Stef unhooked her seat belt, lurched to her feet, and headed across the galley to sit down.

  “Stef?” Charlotte said.

  “Need air,” she said.

  She pressed her hand against the bulkhead for balance and pulled down the jump seat. The jet bounced. Outside the little window the horizon zigged up and down. She pulled down the window shade and pressed her head back against the flimsy bulkhead wall. The air still felt close and hot.

  Really hot. She let her eyes flicker open. Everybody but the drunken banker was seated. The plane was pitched nose-up in a climb.

  Her arm itched where the wild man had scratched her. She looked at it.

  The man had kept wiping his hands on his jeans during the flight. She remembered now. The man in row 39—handsome guy who hadn’t shaved, looked exhausted, stared at the seat in front of him like he was burning holes in it. Those eyes, like a blue star, so pale.

  He had long, deep scratches on his left arm. During the scuffle with the other passengers, the scratches had been pulled open. They’d bled.

  Had she told anybody? She didn’t think so. She should have told that doctor.

  The fuselage creaked.

  God, she was hot. Like she was in an oven. The cabin felt roasting. She could barely draw breath.

  Blue Eyes, sitting back in row thirty-nine. Maybe he couldn’t breathe either.

  The plane rocked. Blue Eyes—maybe he understood. When it was an emergency, you had to take action right away. Evacuate this monster of a jet in ninety seconds. Three hundred fifty people it had taken forty minutes to load—get them out in a minute and a half.

  Blue Eyes wanted to open the emergency exit.

  She felt as though the cabin were at one hundred twenty degrees. Or hotter. And the air was just not there.

  No, it wasn’t a hundred twenty degrees. It was a hundred forty. Fifty, maybe. More. It was the intense heat of a sauna.

  Outside the lav, the banker was trying to pull open the door. Allen was coming down the aisle to usher him back to his seat. But the banker probably wanted to splash water on his face because he was just as damn hot as she was.

  She yanked at the collar of her blouse. Two buttons chattered loose and bounced, clicking, off the door. Only one thing could be making the cabin so hot.

  In an emergency, when the plane is at low altitude, and there’s—Christ. Heat. This much heat meant there had to be a fire. Fire meant smoke. That’s why she felt so hot and couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t see it, though she could see everything else with laser-etched clarity. Fire meant smoke—or, more accurately, combustible gases. And gases could be invisible.

  In such an emergency, when passengers and the crew aren’t able to breathe, and the supplementary oxygen system hasn’t deployed, it’s imperative to clear the smoke from the cabin.

  Her eyes widened. There was only one way to do that. And it had to be done at low altitude, because above ten thousand feet, the jet became too highly pressurized and it wouldn’t work.

  “Oh, my God,” she said.

  Blue Eyes had felt it, too. The heat, the lack of oxygen. He knew what had to be done. He’d tried to do it.

  You had to do it quick. Before the plane reached the critical altitude.

  She was suffocating. The temperature was heading toward boiling. Toward baking. How much more before it reached ignition point?

  Those two men in the main cabin had wrestled Blue Eyes to the floor. Blue Eyes kept shouting that they were crazy, but they wouldn’t listen. He writhed and threw them off, but by then his path was blocked.

  The 747 was nose-up. It hit an air pocket and dropped, a swooping, silent dip through the bounding atmosphere. She clutched her knees. She hadn’t heard any signals from the flight deck. None of the other cabin crew seemed to notice. Allen was arguing with the drunken banker, and Charlotte was focused on the argument.

  Everything looked clearer than fresh snow. If she didn’t do something now, they wouldn’t make it. Even if the pilots were wearing oxygen masks, the heat was intolerable. And it would do no good for the pilots to land the jet safely if everybody back here in the main cabin was dead. Carbon monoxide was colorless. And a by-product of incomplete combustion.

  The goddamned 747 was on fire. Blue Eyes had seen it and had tried to warn everybody. He had been trying to save the plane, and she’d ignored it, and those two bullies back in economy, those two crazies, had kept Blue Eyes from saving them all.

  She tried to inhale but her lungs wouldn’t expand. The air around her was clear and roasting. Tears of panic filled her eyes.

  Nobody was aware. The gas was affecting them already. Blue Eyes was out of action. She had to act.


  She was terrified, but she had trained for this. She could do it.

  She stood up and disarmed the door.

  Across the airliner, Charlotte cried, “Stef? What are you doing?”

  She had to do this before the 747 reached ten thousand feet, or the pressure inside the cabin would jam the door into the opening.

  “Stef, no!”

  She pulled the lever to open the door.

  With a blast of noise and a wind like God sweeping down to smite them, the door retracted. An inch, two, six. The air in the cabin turned to frozen mist and as Charlotte screamed, everything that wasn’t nailed down sought the exit as if magnetized, as if fleeing a little box of hell. The door moved with rugged determination, inward and upward. The jet turned freezing. Outside, all was air. Beautiful, cool, plentiful air. Stef inhaled. Seven inches. Eight. Twelve. The banker howled and lifted off his feet. Coffeepots and magazines and eyeglasses and a man’s jacket screamed past Stef through the widening aperture.

  She flew out to join them.

  17

  After Tang left, Jo tried to reach Misty Kanan. She left messages on Misty’s cell and the Kanans’ home phone.

  Feeling increasingly frustrated, Jo called Chira-Sayf and left new messages for Alec Shepard and Riva Calder. She felt that everybody involved in this case was playing hide-and-seek. And she was It, stumbling after them blindfolded.

  In the backyard, the green leaves of the magnolia tree flickered in the wind like a revivalist congregation shaking their hands in the air. She set her cell phone on the kitchen table. It rang.

  The ringtone jangled through the room: Incubus, “Sick Sad Little World.” She jumped at it like a soldier diving on a live grenade.

  “Got some information on Ian Kanan,” Gabe said.

  “Great, give it to me. Rock my world.”

  “Sounds like your day’s going well.”

  “Like a P.J. who forgot to pack his chute for a mission.”

  “You should hear the information in person. I’m heading for Noe Valley—have you eaten lunch?”

  “I’ll meet you at Ti Couz.” She grabbed her keys and headed for the door. “Give me the basics. Five words or less.”

  “Regarding Ian Kanan? Bang-bang.”

  A minute later she was jogging along the sidewalk toward the truck, which was parked around the corner and across the cable car tracks in parking space numero quince, when the phone rang again.

  “Dr. Beckett? Alec Shepard.”

  The Chira-Sayf CEO’s voice was worn and dry, like a splintery wooden stake. Jo’s pulse kicked up.

  “Thank you for returning my call,” she said.

  “You certainly saw to it that I would. My pilot gave me the message that Ian wants to kill me.”

  “Can we meet?”

  “We’d better. I just left the San Jose airport. I’m on 101 heading for the city.”

  “You know the Mission? There’s a restaurant on Sixteenth. Ti Couz.”

  “I’ll find it.”

  This time when Murdock and Vance hauled her through the door into the cold garage, they seemed on the verge of losing it. Murdock shoved her hard toward the chair that sat on the concrete beneath the bare bulb.

  “Sit.”

  She lowered herself slowly into the chair and swept her hair over her shoulder. They had total physical control over her, but she could try to maintain emotional control, at least over her self-respect. Murdock ripped the duct tape from her mouth. He positioned himself in front of her, bent over, and put his hands on his knees so his wet gums and shining bald head were at eye level with her.

  “Where’s Ian?” he said.

  “I don’t know.”

  “He tells you everything that goes on at the company. He’d tell you where he’s going.”

  “No.”

  Vance strutted up. “You want me to break out the enhanced interrogation techniques, bitch?”

  He grabbed his crotch. The spit stuck in her throat. Murdock swatted him back as if he were a fly, and Vance retreated to the far side of the garage with a sneer, adjusting his saggy jeans.

  “Who’s Ian after?” Murdock said.

  “I don’t know.”

  “How do we find him?”

  Murdock was right in her face, breathing the words on her. But she heard what he wasn’t saying: How do we find Ian before he finds us?

  They were scared and getting desperate. Something had happened. The third man, the one with extreme acne, wasn’t around anymore. Something had screwed up their plans. Something, maybe, named Ian Kanan.

  “Are they dragging you into it?” she had asked him.

  “If they do, they’ll regret it. Because I’ll take care of things.”

  And the results were not pretty. Inside her heart of dark hearts, she rejoiced.

  Murdock leaned closer and nuzzled her hair with his nose. His words sounded moist. “Play nice, remember?”

  Just so they didn’t tell her to play dress-up in the warm clothes they’d brought along, the ones that would shout “Riva Calder.” What was that line Dave Grohl sang? About the face you see, mirroring your stare?

  “Where’s Ian?” Murdock said.

  That song had another line. I’m the enemy. The one who will bring a foe to his knees.

  She swallowed her fear and stared him in the eye. “What’ll you give me if I tell you?”

  Murdock’s gaze went flat. “Wrong question. What’ll I give you if you don’t?”

  Jo had a clear view of Sixteenth Street through the front windows of Ti Couz. The restaurant was short on decoration and long on atmosphere, with high ceilings, glossy paint, wobbly tables. Great food. Plates clattered and waiters shouted good-naturedly at the cooks in the kitchen. At the next table a burly, bearded couple held hands. They looked like grizzlies in button-down shirts.

  Watching for Shepard, Jo leafed distractedly through a copy of the Bay Guardian. It was like browsing a time portal, absorbing the latest manifesto from the Summer of Rage. The Man, no surprise, was bent on oppressing the people.

  Her phone chirped with a text message from Gabe. 10 min. out.

  Through the plate-glass windows she saw Alec Shepard stride along the sidewalk. He was the only man on the block wearing a suit. Not just any suit, but one the color of a stealth fighter, sleek and tailored, with a crisp white shirt and an electric-blue tie that hung on his chest like a broadsword. He was built to substantial dimensions, with the broad head and chest of a bison. His gray hair and salt-and-copper beard were clipped close. His stride was confident. He stepped through the door, took off his sunglasses, and gave the room the same bottomless stare that Ian Kanan had given her aboard the 747. Maybe it was a patented Chira-Sayf glare.

  She waved. He strode to the table and shook her hand.

  “I can only stay a few minutes. The police called me. Apparently, someone stole my new Navigator from the driveway this morning.” He sat down across from her. “It’s turning out to be quite a day.”

  Shepard didn’t hesitate to put his back to the windows. Even though Jo had warned him that Kanan was after him, the idea of a deadly threat seemed not to fit with his mental landscape.

  “Please explain this melodramatic message you left with my secretary,” he said.

  “Ian Kanan may be planning to kill you.”

  “Absurd.”

  Jo held his gaze, trying to judge his tone, his attitude, whether he was nervous or frightened. He was stone.

  “Why do you think it’s absurd?” she said.

  He put his sunglasses on the table. “I think, in the circumstances, you’re the one who owes me an explanation.”

  “Haven’t you spoken to the police?”

  “About the auto theft. I just flew in from Montreal. If there’s anything else, the captain didn’t get it over the radio.”

  Jo leaned back. “Have you heard anything in the past thirty hours? Kanan has suffered a brain injury that’s caused short-term memory loss.”

  His mouth twitch
ed, like a fishhook had caught in his lip. “I heard. I want to talk to the neurologist about that. I’d like you to stick to evaluating Ian’s psyche. Tell me why you’ve reached this bizarre conclusion that he’s become a homicidal maniac.”

  “Mr. Shepard—”

  “Alec.”

  “Alec, strange things are going on at Chira-Sayf. One of your employees is missing. Another lied to me two hours ago about her identity. Yesterday Ian assaulted me. He thinks he’s been poisoned. He has a list of names written on his arm, starting with yours, and a declarative sentence ending in ‘they die.’ And I think his injury originated in the theft of materials from your nanotech lab in Johannesburg.”

  Shepard’s eyes were the pale gray of dirty quartz. He peered at her a long moment, assessing her the way she’d assessed him.

  Jo’s face heated. This wasn’t psychoanalysis. She couldn’t afford to sit there like an analyst waiting for defenses to fall, connections to click, insights to light the room. She generally avoided pushing people to respond to her questions. When their memories and impressions unrolled without her prompting, she got more honest answers. But Shepard was stonewalling.

  “Who sent Ian to Africa?” she said.

  “When?”

  “Last week. South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zambia. That’s where he arrived home from yesterday.”

  “I didn’t know he was in Africa.”

  “No?” Jo put her hands flat on the table. “Why did Chira-Sayf shut down the Johannesburg lab?”

  “That’s not within your purview.”

  “What nanotech projects did the lab work on?”

  “I thought you wanted to talk about Ian.”

  “I do. Tell me about your relationship with him. Start at the beginning and don’t leave anything out. Explain whether you think he could be involved in a theft from the lab, whether your nano project could have poisoned him, and why he was seen walking away from the scene of a murder at the marina this morning.”

  That got him to drop the mask for a second. Shock lit his gaze. “Murder?”