Point of Balance

by J. G. Jurado

  “Go get some sleep, Dave. Tomorrow’s your big day. Oh, and mind you don’t trip over Juanita’s body on your way out.”

  Kate

  David’s words echoed around her head, an endless loop of guilt and reproaches.

  “If you want to ask for her forgiveness, find Julia.”

  Did she have any regrets? She had kissed her brother-in-law one night when her defenses were low and her spirits rock-bottom. She had never gone farther, not even in her innermost thoughts. She respected her sister too much for that.

  No, she couldn’t feel guilty for having fallen in love with David. That would be to betray herself. It had been a horrible move on her part to think of it that way.

  If you knew what I’m about to do for you, David, then would you love me? Or would you hold it against me just as I hold it against myself right now?

  The night wore on. The moon scarcely lit up the stretch of the street between the apartment blocks. The darkness was made deeper still by little pockets of light cast underneath the few streetlamps that hadn’t burned out.

  Kate writhed uncomfortably in her seat. Although she had reclined it, after several hours of lying motionless it felt as if it were digging into her on all sides. She had only gotten out for a minute to pee between the parked cars and then headed straight back to her observation post, afraid that somebody might have spotted her. But all was quiet. Not a single car had gone by in the past hour.

  That gave Kate all the time in the world to stew in thoughts that spiked through her heart like broken glass.

  David’s words had hurt her but had also come as an eye-opener.

  How long have I been chasing shadows? How many years have I wasted fooling myself, saying it was all because of the job, never really admitting that I didn’t want to be with anybody but him?

  As painful as those questions were, there was one that lacerated her soul more than the rest put together.

  Have I ever truly been happy?

  She had taken Vlatko to his home as a shot in the dark, her last chance to locate Julia’s kidnappers before dawn came and it was too late. She knew they’d be looking for him, as he was the only thing that linked them to Svetlana. From what she knew of that crowd’s modus operandi, they would rely on technology to cover as much ground as they could. So it was reasonable to deduce they had planted devices in Vlatko’s apartment. And if they had, the kid’s homecoming would set in motion an unstoppable chain of events.

  Kate felt for her gun through her clothing. Its normally comforting heft now seemed unbearable. If everything went as she had foreseen, then she would have to confront them. She alone against a trained, pitiless force that played by no rules and outnumbered her.

  I’ve got no chance. Today I die. I’ll die without knowing whether I’ve ever been happy.

  And all of a sudden, the answer came to her as blindingly clear as the midday sun. A flash in a clear sky, in the shape of a memory.

  She and Julia at the Evanses’, two summers back, playing catch. Sun streaming down on the lawn, giggling, the sound of the neighbor’s sprinklers. Perspiring skin, the smell of sunscreen, the taste of popcorn and ice cream. Rock music that came out of nowhere, a song as light as air, close enough for them to glory in the moment, but far enough away that they could hear themselves panting as they ran. The two of them fell on the grass and gazed up at the sky, their ears nuzzled together. They whispered secrets, cracked jokes and saw shapes in the clouds.

  Then Julia said it.

  “I want to be like you when I grow up, Auntie Kate.”

  That had taken her completely aback. Nobody had ever said anything remotely like that to her. With that breathtaking, clear-cut certainty.

  “Wouldn’t you rather be like Mommy? Or somebody real important, I dunno . . . like SpongeBob?”

  Julia looked at her as if she were crazy.

  “Come on! SpongeBob is as dumb as a rock.”

  “I thought you liked SpongeBob.”

  “I think he’s funny, but I don’t want to be like him.”

  “Okay, but what about Mommy?”

  “Mommy’s awesome. She’s super-duper. But you’re mega-­super-duper, Auntie Kate. Mommy always says so.”

  “Really? What else does Mommy say?”

  “She says you’re the most amazing person in the world. And I think so too.”

  Julia raised a hand, sticky with ice cream, and stroked her cheeks with it. Her eyes were electric blue, deep and perfect.

  “I really love you, Auntie Kate.”

  That day. That day I was wholly and unquestionably happy. It was all worthwhile, if only to live that afternoon, that minute.

  She leaned her head on the window, grateful for the cool glass against her forehead. Her breath misted up the pane, and Kate drew a smiley on it.

  You don’t belong in this world, Julia. Yours is a world of games, dolls and safe places, where a sheet can protect you from monsters all night long. And I’ll make sure you go right back to it.

  The smiley faded as the mist evaporated. Kate sat up to breathe on the glass again but was cut short. The glare of headlamps lit up the smiley’s eyes with a ghostly shine before it died away.

  Kate shrank down into her seat. The car approached very slowly, the engine purring softly. Observing it in the rearview mirror, Kate judged by the odd shape of the headlights that it must be a foreign car, most likely a Mercedes. When it drew level with hers it was already coasting downhill with the engine and headlights switched off.

  It’s them. Shit, it’s them.

  She grabbed the gun and slipped off the safety, while trying to move as little as possible. As the Mercedes glided past she could make out a pair of dark shapes through the windows on the driver’s side.

  There must be three of them, maybe four. Somebody else would be riding shotgun.

  The car went past her and rolled on for another ten or twelve yards. A creaking noise told her the driver had hit the handbrake. A pair of doors clicked open, although Kate couldn’t see them from where she was. She could, however, see the dark shadows that came out of nowhere and turned into a couple of men wrapped in black leather jackets as they walked into the light shed by the lamp atop the entrance to Vlatko’s apartment building.

  Kate put her gun on her lap and forced herself to grab the steering wheel with both hands. Her instinct and training, her whole body, demanded that she jump out of the car and into action. She went over two different tactical approaches from her position to their car, almost without thinking.

  She knew she could do it, that she could make it.

  And she could also fail. Another one of them could have stepped out of the car along with the two who were now going upstairs. He might be behind those trees, or in the doorway, to cover the other two’s escape. Or the driver might have a radio channel open. Or, worse still, nobody might get out of there alive. Or if one were to survive and she caught him, she might not get the truth out of him in time. And White would know if they didn’t arrive back.

  These were all pointless arguments, because she’d been over them a thousand and five times in her head to while away the long hours she had sat there, as she thought about an untenable position for a lone person with less firepower than those animals. And because despite everything, she had already made up her mind.

  David, if you only knew what I’m about to do for you.

  Except that he would never know, because she would never allow it. It was a bitter cup she had to drain all by herself, down to the dregs.

  She made herself look at Vlatko’s window and gripped the wheel so hard her knuckles turned white. When two brief flashes punctuated the darkness in the boy’s room, Kate’s body shuddered twice in sympathy.

  They’ve used a silencer, she couldn’t help thinking.

  She closed her eyes and felt tears well up in them and spill down
her cheeks, leaving a trail right where Julia’s sticky fingers had stroked her when she told her she loved her. She tried to evoke that memory, to remember again what that touch had felt like, to get away from the chasm of darkness that was opening up at her feet and threatening to engulf her forever.

  She stifled a sob and struggled to pull herself back together.

  There’ll be time enough to cry afterward. You can feel sorry later. You can even put a bullet in your goddamned head if you want, but for now you have to concentrate. Concentrate!

  She opened her eyes again, in the nick of time, because the hit men were getting back into the Mercedes. The engine was running and they were off before the doors were quite closed.

  Kate made sure her headlights were off and started her car when the others were a couple of blocks away. She turned the wheel and began to follow them, drying her tears with the back of her hand as she went.

  An hour before the operation

  31

  The neon light in the pre-op room blinked every eight or nine seconds. It was driving me nuts. I elbowed the switch a couple of times, a trick that usually worked. This time it didn’t.

  “It’s been like that for a week. I’ve asked the maintenance crew to change it, but they take no notice of me,” Sharon Kendall told me without raising her head. She was studying the Patient’s medical history intently, while she leaned next to the passageway door.

  “He’s just a patient,” I reminded her. “His weight, height, clinical records, everything you’re reading, is real. He has a different name than the one you expected is all.”

  “Hey, I’m cool,” she said, shaking her head.

  She wasn’t. Her face was rapt, and she was biting her lower lip. She had yet to digest the news I had given her a short while before, she and the rest of the crew. At first they had all thought I was clowning around, that it was yet another bad-taste joke. But when they saw my expression didn’t change and realized that it was true, they had all made an effort to act normal. There were a couple of exclamations and one of them scratched his head, but that was it. That’s how I knew they were scared. If there is one thing a surgery professional fears, it’s VIPs. Whether it’s a lawyer specializing in litigation or the boss’s sister, if somebody tells you the patient is special and deserves special treatment, then expect trouble. We call it the VIP syndrome, and it massively affects the odds of screwing up.

  Nonetheless, they were first-class professionals, a dream team, and that day they proved it. When it was all over, the enormity of the task would sink in, but at that stage the adrenaline had kicked in, ensuring their nerves wouldn’t take over. We had done well to put off letting them in on the secret until the last second.

  In fact, I was much more nervous than they were. Against all odds, I had grabbed a few hours’ sleep the night before, if collapsing from sheer exhaustion can be deemed sleep. I had gotten up at six thirty a.m., taken a quick shower and driven to the hospital. All the while I had turned over whether I was capable of going through with White’s plan. And something much more worrying. Kate had sworn to me that if she couldn’t unearth Julia by the time the op began, she would call McKenna and give him the goods.

  That deadline was less than an hour away, and still no news. My iPhone was in my consulting room, as was the BlackBerry Kate had given me. The ban on cell phones in the operating theater would spare me from White’s scrutiny, not that there was anywhere I could hide one, anyway.

  I was wearing my best gown and lucky cap. In theory it’s just a scrap of cloth to keep hair or sweat from falling off us and into the patient, so any old cap ought to do. But we neurosurgeons are more superstitious than a witch doctor or a baseball player. So I had chosen a personalized surgical cap, made out of black cloth showing a Bengal tiger with its jaws wide open, embroidered in orange right in the middle of the forehead. I have six dozen of the things embroidered in all sorts of designs, from turtles to the Superman logo. This one was Rachel’s favorite. It had never failed me.

  I absentmindedly touched the embroidery with my fingers, thinking of all the times we had operated together. Of how she would stand on tiptoe to give the tiger a discreet kiss to bring me luck.

  How ironic that I should put it on for the one operation that must fail, I thought.

  I leaned against the wall and heard the metallic crinkling of the poisoned Gliadel pouches. I startled, thinking Sharon might have heard it, but she was still going over the Patient’s case history. I had secreted them behind my back, secured by the elastic in my pants, and was waiting for the right time to switch them with the real ones.

  There was movement on the other side of the round glass window in the door that led to the passageway. We both stood up straight. There he was, followed by the Secret Service agents. I went to the door and opened it.

  “Just you, sir. They wait outside.”

  There was a chorus of protest, which the president hushed with a wave of his hand.

  “Good morning, Dr. Evans. You’ll have to excuse them, they’re very worked up. I’ve made them bring me here in a regular SUV and a motorcade with only three cars in it. For them it’s like walking the street naked.”

  The rest of the hospital had been turned upside down. He had been admitted by elevator through the service area, but the second floor, where all the operating theaters were located, had been completely evacuated three hours before. That morning only one person would be operated on in St. Clement’s. Plainclothes agents watched over the elevator and stairways, to prevent anybody from entering. Unauthorized personnel had been sent a memo telling them the operating theaters were being disinfected with toxic products. That would make them stay away and enjoy their day off.

  “We must keep the area sterile, sir.”

  “I understand. They’ll wait here.”

  We gave him a little time in which to get changed behind a screen and don the blue smock we give to all patients. When we went back in, he had sat down on a bench, with his legs crossed, making the gown gape open. It often happens to patients. They are so preoccupied with what is about to happen inside that they forget they aren’t wearing any underwear.

  “Sir,” I told him. “You may want to fold your legs in a less revealing way.”

  “Oh. Oh, right. I’m sorry, doctor,” he said to Sharon.

  “Relax, sir. We’re doctors. We’re used to it.”

  She kept a straight face, but if I knew Sharon, within a week she’d be boasting to all her girlfriends that she’d seen the presidential pecker.

  “You should also put on the blanket we’ve given you.”

  “I’m not cold.”

  “It will be a long operation in a very low-temperature room. You will be losing body heat. Even a small variation in your body temperature may harm your ability to fight infection. Just do it.”

  “You remind me of my wife. Okay, I’ll just do it.”

  He wrapped himself in the blanket.

  “Where is the First Lady?”

  “Distracting the press. She’ll be making public appearances around town all morning, all smiles while regretting from the bottom of her heart that she can’t be here. But that’s the way it has to be.”

  “I guess it must be very tough on her.”

  “It was her idea. Nobody can know what’s going on. We’ve informed the attorney general and the vice president, who will be acting president while I’m under anesthesia. But we won’t say a thing until after the operation. By the way, she has a message for you.”

  “Which is, sir?”

  “She said, and I quote, ‘Cure him or I’ll kill you.’ She said you’d know what it meant.”

  We all laughed. Me included, attempting to cover up how dirty and treacherous I felt.

  I left Sharon to ask him the routine questions and give him his final instructions, while I discreetly went out the other door. Between the pre-op room a
nd the swing doors leading to Operating Theater 2 there was a passageway, opposite which was the scrub-up sink and the side entrance. In theory, nobody was allowed into the surgical suite without scrubbing up, but I had no time to play with. The nurses and the rest of the crew would be along any moment now. I walked past the sink and into the operating theater through the side door.

  Theater 2 is the biggest in St. Clement’s and one of the world’s most advanced. Anybody who enters is instantly astonished. To walk through a nineteenth-century building, with its plate-glass windows and Victorian air, disconcerts you. It brings to mind images of old doctors with bushy eyebrows and long beards, liniment rubs and pots of leeches. And then you clap eyes on Theater 2 and leap forward three centuries into one of Steve Jobs’s wet dreams. The walls, the array of instruments, the trolleys, everything in the room is pristine white, with soft, round designs. A huge robotic arm, six feet high and weighing three tons, supports the operating bed and can place the patient in any imaginable position. There are only three like it on the planet.

  And at the other end of that theme park straight out of Star Trek, a humble instrument trolley. The Gliadel pouches would be in the second drawer down.

  I looked up, to the balcony. A couple of people were chatting in the observation room. They were standing side-on to me, so they wouldn’t see me if I was quick about it. I walked over to the trolley and turned my back to it when I got there. There were cameras everywhere, and what happened down here would be relayed to monitors upstairs. I couldn’t tell whether the cameras were rolling—I know now, of course—but I didn’t want to draw anybody’s attention. I took the pouches from behind my back with my left hand, while with my right I felt for the edge of the second drawer down. I pulled it open a couple of inches with my fingertips and slipped in my hand, groping for the familiar feel of the bags. There they were. I extricated them using the index and middle fingers of one hand, while sliding in the new ones with my other hand.

  “Dr. Evans!”

  McKenna’s voice was a whiplash of sound over the loudspeakers connecting the operating theater to the balcony.