by Tim Tigner
To Troy’s surprise, Luther looked over at Farkas and said, “I told you not to hurt him.”
“Nothing is broken. He’s only bruised.”
That was true, Troy thought. Farkas had been somewhat less than reckless when wielding the twelve-pound mallet of steel. Still, that trip up the stairs had felt like a bout with Muhammad Ali. Didn’t they have the fireman’s carry in Croatia or wherever the hell that bastard was from?
Troy made eye contact with Emmy and mouthed the words, “Are you okay?”
She nodded and mouthed back, “And you?”
Troy said, “Never better,” and then turned to his host.
Luther said to Farkas, “Help yourself to a drink. I need to have a word with our guests.” Turning back to Troy and Emmy he said, “Do you two have any idea how lucky you are?”
Troy was not sure if it was the post-traumatic stress talking or if he was just too slaphappy to give a damn, but his mouth just sprung open and words started tumbling out. “You know, that’s just what I was thinking. A quiet Sunday evening, four old friends, and your beautiful home. But if I could make a tiny suggestion: have the trash carted off before inviting company in.”
Luther did not bother attempting to camouflage his amused expression, and Troy took minor comfort in having caught him by surprise. It did not last.
“You make my point for me,” Luther said.
“Why are we lucky?” Emmy asked.
“Were I any other person, or were this any other moment in history, there would be four sets of trash bags on my floor now, instead of just two.”
“Because you can erase our memories,” Emmy said. “With chemicals instead of bullets.”
Luther spread his hands in a magnanimous gesture. “Not to mention the fact that the memories you’ll be losing can hardly be your best. Of course, if you prove to be more trouble than you’re worth your luck will change.” Luther pulled a Beretta from his pocket. Then, turning back to Troy he said, “She’s a lot quicker than you are. I see why you chose to make her your partner.”
Troy was thinking that actually the memories of his time with Emmy were the most precious in his head. But he did not want to give Luther a glimpse through that window into his soul, especially given the scenario that he expected was about to unfold. “I get the feeling that there’s more to it than that. Perhaps you need our help with something first?”
Luther smiled and Troy knew that he was right. “Well, this is a quid-pro-quo world we live in. Tell me, now that you’ve been to my office, do you have any idea what that help might entail?”
Troy looked at Emmy. “He’s planning to erase the memories of all nine justices of the United States Supreme Court. No doubt that’s a bit too tall an order for our friend Farkas here. So he figured, why not involve the clever pair who already know what he’s up to. Nothing to lose …” Troy shifted his gaze back toward Luther. “Half-a-billion dollars to gain. That sound about right, old friend?”
“I’m glad to see that we’re on the same page,” Luther said.
“I’m not going to help you make anybody an amnesiac,” Emmy said.
“Don’t be silly,” Luther said, his voice honey but his eyes ice. “Of course you are—although perhaps not in the way you think. And besides, it’s no big deal. Even Shakespeare wanted to kill all the lawyers.”
Troy said, “First of all, Shakespeare was defending lawyers by suggesting that killing them was the first step toward tyranny. Although to be honest with you, Luther, I can think of one lawyer worth killing. Secondly, the United States Supreme Court is a cornerstone of the greatest democracy the world has ever known. Weakening that foundation could have disastrous consequences, consequences that will be far reaching and impossible to predict. I’m with Emmy. Go fuck yourself.”
Ignoring the last of Troy’s remarks, Luther said, “Well then, I guess I’ll just have to leave the country when we’re done.” He walked over and held the Beretta to Emmy’s right temple. “But that’s then. Let’s talk about now. Now you and Farkas are going to go to Washington to begin stalking your prey. Meanwhile, Emmy and I are going to take a little vacation, a retreat so to speak. During which it’s not myself I’ll be fucking.”
Troy resisted the bait and remained silent.
“Once you wipe all nine justices,” Luther continued, “I’ll set her free—less any recollection of these past few weeks, of course. If you’re really nice, I’ll even set her free in the same place we flash you. It will be just like old times all over again—except there won’t be any tattoo on your foot, and by then it wouldn’t even matter if there were.”
Emmy said, “Don’t do it, Troy.”
Luther pulled back the slide on the Beretta and said, “Your choice. I can always get someone else. You’ve seen the ledger, you can do the math. This is going to happen.”
Now that he thought of the possibility of having all memory of her erased, Troy could not bear the thought of losing her.
He decided to seek comfort and guidance from those who had endured even worse. Those who had persevered through the Holocaust, those who had lived to tell their heart-wrenching tales, had done so by holding on to life through any means available. They had done whatever it took to live another day. Only by clinging to life with an iron fist, no matter how shameful, no matter how selfish, had they made it to Nuremberg. To justice. If he took the high road now, they would both be dead but nothing else would change. If he complied, they still had a chance.
He looked over at Emmy who was shaking her head. As tears ran down her cheeks, he said, “I’ll do it. I’ll help you flash the justices.”
The contemptuous look that crossed Emmy’s face scorched his heart. Then Farkas grabbed the rope between his feet and began dragging him out of the room. He prayed that would not be the last he saw of his beloved’s face. Luther had obviously seen Emmy’s venomous glance, because he said, “You should be kinder to your colleague, Emmy. After all, your life is now in his hands.”
Chapter 85
House Call
“THE REPUBLIC ENDURES, and this is the symbol of its faith. Those words were spoken by Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes on October 13, 1932, during the laying of the cornerstone you see before you.” The elegantly dressed African-American tour guide spoke with more reverence than Troy would have thought possible, considering that she repeated her spiel twenty times a day. Troy continued past the group following the red umbrella. He already knew too much about the “symbol of faith” he was about to destroy.
He caught sight of Farkas, who was still talking on the phone with Luther. Farkas had to check in every eight hours with updates, and Troy made sure he never forgot. Luther had warned him that if Farkas missed a call, Emmy got a bullet.
The first words Troy made out as he approached were, “… forged credentials worked out fine. They didn’t give us a second glance.” Farkas paused while Luther spoke. Then he replied, “Only Stevenson’s is left. The man’s eighty-eight, so his social life is minimal. We’re probably going to have to inject him in his house. We’re still finalizing the details of that plan.” Again Farkas listened. “Okay, I’ll tell him.”
Farkas ended the call, opened a text message and then the attached photo. “Here’s today’s eye candy,” he said, holding out his BlackBerry. The screen showed Emmy sitting cross-legged before a white wall. She held a printout of the current USA Today out before her as though reading a proclamation. She looked tan and radiant and wore her breathtaking smile. Troy knew that her smile was almost certainly forced and intended to cheer him up—but it worked anyway. “Thanks. What did Luther say?”
“He said that you weren’t going to be getting any more pictures until we figure out how to implant Stevenson.”
Troy shook his head. He had racked his brains for a way to get to the eldest justice, and he had come up blank. The other eight justices all had habits that took them outdoors where Farkas could either get close enough to hit them with a dart while they were moving, or bump
them with a needle that he swore most people would never feel if they were moving. “Even if they do notice it, they’ll assume that it’s just a bug bite if you don’t act suspicious,” Farkas asserted.
Unfortunately, Stevenson spent virtually all of his time at home. “The trouble isn’t so much getting to him, as making the injection indoors without his noticing,” Troy replied.
Farkas shook his head. “That’s not entirely correct. It’s all right if he is aware of the injection, so long as he doesn’t report it.”
Troy understood the power of Farkas’s insight the moment he heard it. Although it pained him to admit it, Farkas had impressed him over the course of these past nine days. Of the eight plans they had finalized thus far, Farkas had developed seven. He brought the trademark deductive reasoning of a doctor to his new profession. He approached his operations with the same callous precision as a brain surgeon, focusing entirely on the mechanics of the physical task he was performing without allowing himself to be distracted by emotional factors.
Troy, meanwhile, had spent the bulk of his waking hours trying to devise a way out of this mess. So far, he had nothing concrete, and time was running short.
Switching his processor to the task at hand, Troy deduced that Farkas’s latest so-long-as-he-doesn’t-report-it insight opened up two new potential avenues of attack. They could look for a way to prevent Stevenson from reporting the injection, or they could look for a way to make him not think to report it. To accomplish the former, some sort of coercion would be the most likely tack. Troy guessed that the Secret Service, even though they did not protect the justices on a day-to-day basis, would have devised the means to immunize them, and thus the Republic, from such threats. So he focused on the second angle: figuring out how to make Stevenson not want to report the injection. “Are you thinking of trying to swap out one of his regular injections for 456?”
“No. That leaves too much to chance. I’m thinking that one of us physicians needs to play doctor.”
“To do that we would have to get around Stevenson’s regular nurse, McGrady. And if we tried to substitute her, they’d put him through every modern diagnostic available the moment the skullduggery was discovered.”
Farkas got the sly look in his eyes that Troy had seen a few times before. “True, but suppose McGrady were to invite one of us for consultation.”
Troy had studied Justice Stevenson’s personal life backwards and forwards, but did not see where this was headed, unless … “Did you happen to go to medical school with Mary McGrady?”
“No. Nothing like that. Tell me, how old is Nurse Mary?”
“Thirty-two.”
“And she’s a looker, right? Safe to assume that Stevenson finds it pleasant to have her around.”
“Sure, I guess.”
“And how long has this pretty young nurse been working for Stevenson?”
“Eight months.”
“Pretty good gig, don’t you think? Days off, good pay, prestige …”
“Sure.”
“So suppose Nurse Mary were to wake up with no memory of the events of the last month. Do you think she would report it right away? Or do you think she would try to cover it up, you know, hope it was just a temporary glitch that went away?”
Troy did not like where this was going. On the other hand, he did not have a better suggestion. “I suppose most people would do whatever they thought was necessary to protect their job, if they saw no harm in it. But how would that help us?”
“Suppose you showed up at Stevenson’s the first day of Mary’s memory loss, pretending to have an appointment—an appointment Mary won’t want to admit she has forgotten?”
Even though he already knew the answer, Troy asked, “What kind of appointment?”
Farkas held out his hand, mimicking a shake. “Hello Mary, I’m Dr. Davis from Georgetown University Hospital, here for that consultation you requested …”
Chapter 86
An Old Friend
“THAT’S IT THEN,” Troy said, looking up from a desk blanketed in hotel stationary and Post-it notes. “We’ve got all nine implants planned down to the last detail. We’re done until Friday.”
Farkas brought his hand up to stroke the beard he kept forgetting was no longer there. “You don’t sound pleased. You should be. You’re saving your girlfriend’s life.”
“She’s not my girlfriend. She’s my …” Troy paused. What was his relationship with Emmy? Thanks to the mind wiping, she was his only friend. She was also his partner, his confidant, and, he suspected, the love of his new life. “I don’t know what she is, but obviously she does mean a lot to me. I’m going to go crazy waiting around for two days with nothing to do but speculate on what Luther might be doing to her.”
Despite the fact that Farkas had flashed away his memory of his wife and child, and that they were now working together only because Troy was under the cruel heel of coercion, a semblance of camaraderie had developed between them. They were both doctors, soldiers, men of the world, and participants in what would likely become the most famous caper since the Lindbergh kidnapping. As much as he hated to admit it, he could understand Farkas’s arms-length point of view—even if he didn’t respect it.
“Don’t you remember anything from Afghanistan?” Farkas asked.
“What does any of this have to do with Afghanistan?”
Farkas leaned back in the hotel armchair and laced his fingers behind his head. “You’ve seen war, right? You’ve seen men rape breastfeeding mothers before shooting them through the heart? You’ve seen prepubescent boys hacked to death with machetes to keep them from growing into vengeful men? You’ve witnessed—”
“Okay, okay, I get the gruesome picture. Yes, I have seen war. What is your point?”
“My point is that whatever Luther may be doing to Emmy, it’s insignificant. She’s a grown woman. And besides, four days from now she won’t remember a thing.”
Troy bit back a sharp retort in favor of a more subtle thrust. “I was wondering how a man with the intelligence to get through medical school could do what you do—voluntarily. Now I understand. Civil war lobotomized you, robbed you of your ability to feel. You’ve become little more than a crocodile with a brain.”
Troy thought that would either shut Farkas up or bring him to his feet. Truth be told, Troy welcomed a fistfight with the bastard, although it was anyone’s call who would win.
Farkas surprised him again. “Like most creatures on this planet, humans included, I do what I have to do to survive. And like the best of those, I do it more for my family than for myself.”
“You have a family?” Troy asked, incredulous.
“I have sisters. Their husbands are worthless, the leftovers of a generation that lost its best to war, so they count on me. With the money I make from this job, they will be free to pursue happiness, as you Americans like to say, and I will be able to start my own practice, settle down.”
“How much are you getting for this job? What’s the collapse of the US judicial system worth to you?”
“The US system did not bring me justice. It robbed me of my career. So as far as I’m concerned, it’s not worth a penny. Luther, however, is paying me ten million.”
“Of the half-billion he’s pocketing?” Troy chided. “That’s what, two percent? Not even a bad tip. And you’re doing all the work.”
“It’s as Karl Marx warned a century ago: The man who owns the means of production reaps the lion’s share of the rewards.” Farkas shrugged. “But when the production is as big as this one, the crumbs are big enough. I’m happy with my ten million.”
Troy was still digesting that when Farkas began to squirm in his seat. “Speak of the devil and he appears,” Farkas said, pulling the vibrating BlackBerry from his pocket. “Yeah.”
As Farkas listened, Troy studied his face for any indication of the news. But as always, the hired gun was a blank slate. Farkas said, “We’re confident that we’ve got all nine nailed. We’ve even developed b
ackup plans for most.” After another pause, Farkas said, “No, he’s cooperating. In fact, he’s anxious to get this over with. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with him for the next two days. Run up the pay-per-view bill I guess.” Troy thought he saw a look of mild surprise flash across Farkas’s face after Luther’s next question, but it could have been gas. The Croatian doused everything in Tabasco sauce. After a minute, Farkas simply said, “Okay,” and then he held out the phone. “He wants to talk to you.”
Troy snatched the phone and said, “Let me talk to Emmy.”
“Soon,” Luther replied, not missing a beat. “In the meantime, I understand that you’re bored, that you’ve got two days to kill?”
Rather than take the bait, Troy waited for Luther to get to the point.
Luther did. “I’ve got an assignment for you to complete before this weekend’s finale. I’d like to say that it will keep you out of trouble, but that’s not entirely accurate.”
“We’ve already got our deal. I’m not doing another thing for you, unless you have something else to offer.”
“You’ll do whatever I tell you to do, or—”
“Or what? You’re not going to do anything, so don’t make idle threats. You need me to complete this mission. In fact, it’s safe to say that at this point in the operation, or more precisely at this date on the calendar, you need me more than I need you.” The words just flew from Troy’s mouth without forethought. He knew that it was foolish to challenge a top courtroom attorney to a verbal joust, but the frustration pent up inside him demanded release.
“I’m only getting money out of this, Troy. You are getting two lives; your own, and Miss Green’s here. Shall I let her know how little you think she’s worth?”
“Why don’t you just get to the point, and tell me what you want?” Troy said, trying to sound aggressive as he retreated.
