“The paramedics estimate that your husband’s heart had stopped for thirteen minutes when they found him. It’s a miracle he’s alive at all.”
To every profession a code, thought Mary. The FBI had its own vocabulary. Debriefings went sideways. Snitches were CIs. And families didn’t have a “need to know.” Doctors were no better. They spoke of prolonged cardiac arrest and cerebral oxygen deficiency and significant tissue damage. Mary spoke their language, too. She knew the doctor meant that Joe was brain-dead, unable to breathe on his own, and that he had a hole in his back the size of a softball.
What were you doing in Dripping Springs? she inquired silently as she ran a hand through his hair. Why did you call me instead of Don Bennett? Who’s Sid?
A married couple has its code, too. Everything’s copacetic, baby. Meaning “I’m in deep shit and need your help.”
Mary pulled a chair close to the bed and sat. “I’m here, baby,” she whispered in Joe’s ear. “Me and the girls, we know you love us. Take your time. Rest and get better.”
In the elevator she’d asked Dr. Alexander a question: “How many patients have ever come back after being dead for thirteen minutes?”
“None that I’m aware of.”
Mary didn’t like the answer, but at least there was no BS.
She threaded her arm through the protective railings and took her husband’s hand. She looked at the EEG. The gray line ran flat. Pulse: 64. Blood pressure: 90/60. She listened to the wheezing of the respirator.
“But if you need to go, I understand,” she went on. “I’ll make sure Jessie gets to MIT or Caltech or wherever geniuses like her learn all that stuff. You know, she unlocked my phone on the way back from the hospital today. Where does she learn that? And I’ll take care of Gracie. The doc said the spike in white blood cells was just temporary. The blasts haven’t come back. He’s not sure why, but he said we shouldn’t worry. She threw up on the way home. It might have been carsickness. Jessie wouldn’t help clean up. She said she didn’t do floors or windows. That girl knows how to push all my buttons. You two couldn’t be any more alike. Anyway, three more years and Grace is over the hump. Maybe you can give me a hand and watch over her.”
Joe’s hand squeezed hers.
Mary jumped in her chair. “Joe!”
Her eyes locked on the EEG monitor. She willed the gray line to move, to assume its jackhammer pattern, but it remained flat. There was no spark of electrical activity in Joe’s brain. His heart rate didn’t budge, nor did any of the other vital signs register so much as a blip. Mary squeezed his hand, but it was limp to the touch. It had been a spasm. Some last reflexive and wholly unconscious response.
She gazed through the window into the corridor. Dr. Alexander and Don Bennett were deep in conversation. The resigned expressions on both their faces spoke volumes.
For another hour Mary held her husband’s hand. She told him about the first time she saw him walking across Healy Lawn at Georgetown. He’d just completed his second summer of Officer Candidates School at Quantico. His hair was high and tight and his muscles were practically bursting out of his sleeves. He was one good-looking slab of All-American meat. I want me some of that, she’d told herself.
That fall they had shared a theology class called “Jesus in the Twentieth Century.” Lots of essays by Karl Rahner and Martin Buber. And she saw that Mr. Joseph Grant wasn’t some dumb jarhead. He was smart, and funny, too. And like her, he believed in some higher power. Not believed. He knew. Rahner called it love. She was good with that.
She told Joe that marrying him was the happiest moment in her life, and she asked if he remembered holding Jessie an hour after she was born, all of her fitting neatly on his forearm. He’d called her Peanut, because that’s what she had looked like all swaddled, her face so red and wrinkled. And she said that they’d have to put off their anniversary celebration until another time. She wanted to say “until you are better,” but Mary was a no-bullshit girl and Joe liked getting the truth straight, no chaser. Honesty was their bond. They did not lie to one another.
“I looked pretty good in that LBD,” she said. “Don’t know what you’re missing.”
Joe’s hand remained slack.
The EEG didn’t budge.
His chest rose and fell with the respirator.
“Goodbye, hon,” she said. “Whenever you’re ready.”
Joe’s body jumped as if he’d been given a jolt of electricity. An alarm sounded. Code blue. Mary stood. Her eyes locked on the heart-rate monitor as the numbers dived and nurses rushed into the room.
“Don’t do anything,” she said. “Let him go.”
“Excuse me, ma’am,” said one. “You’ll have to leave.”
Dr. Alexander was there a moment later. Mary looked at him, pleading, and he nodded.
Outside the ICU, she placed her palm against the glass and searched out her husband’s face. A nurse wheeled the defib cart to the bed and took hold of the paddles, raising them above Joe’s chest. Dr. Alexander stopped her, giving a firm shake of the head.
For a moment Mary caught a glimpse of her husband, the proud profile, the raised chin. She closed her eyes, wanting to see him as he was, as she remembered him when he was away.
It was in Samui. Joe walked ahead of her on the beach, Jessie and Grace to either side. He kicked water at them and they kicked it right back. She heard him call their names and laugh. A happy man.
Mary opened her eyes to say goodbye.
“Safe journey.”
5
It was the third lap and Ian Prince was falling behind.
He curled the fingers of his left hand around the throttle of the P-51D Mustang and eased it forward, keeping one eye on the rpm’s, the other on the panorama of earth and sky that wrapped itself around the Perspex canopy and the planes flying above and below him. His right hand gripped the stick lightly as he approached the third pylon, a red-striped oil can set atop a fifty-foot telephone pole. The plane whipped past the pylon, Ian pushed the stick over, and the plane banked sharply, wings tilting to ninety degrees, the Nevada desert an adobe blur. He clamped his mouth shut, holding his breath and tightening the muscles of his core. He was pulling five g’s through the turn, shoulders digging into the seat, jaw burrowing into his neck. The engine whined magnificently, a buzz saw cutting hard lumber. He completed the turn and leveled the wings, the g’s easing, shoulders freed from gravity’s grip.
Ian focused on the tail of the bird in front of him. It was Gordon May’s bird, the Battleax, a P-51D like his. Stalwart of the Second World War. Packard piston engine. Four-bladed propeller. May had painted the plane fire-engine red, his company’s logo covering every inch of the fuselage: MAY MICROCHIPS.
By contrast, Ian’s plane looked factory-new, silver steel skin without a blemish, the Stars and Stripes of the United States Army Air Corps decorating the wings. It had looked no different in May 1945, when George Westerman, a pilot with the 477th Fighter Group, had flown it above the fields of Bavaria and shot down fourteen German aircraft.
Ian had rescued the machine from a scrap-metal yard and, after extensive reconstruction, renamed it Lara, after his mother, which was a nicer name than she deserved. Like his mother, Lara the plane was a mean, hot-tempered bitch who’d kill you as soon as look at you.
Ian feathered the throttle and scanned the instrument panel. The temperature gauge was running high. He looked at the white needle tickling the red. To hell with the heat. He couldn’t wait any longer or May’s lead would be insurmountable.
Ian didn’t like Gordon May.
He disliked losing more.
He pushed the speed back up to 400 knots. The plane shook, reverberations rattling his spine. He held the stick steady. He had thick wrists and large, strong hands. His grip surprised people. Executives in the information technology industry were not renowned for being fit. Somehow it had been ingrained in the public that there was an inverse relationship between IQ and strength. Ian confounded the perception
. He was nothing like what people thought he should be.
A fat, slow Grumman Bearcat slipped below him to his left. A relic. A Commodore to his Cray. The comparison pleased him. A smile formed beneath Ian’s goggles and helmet. The smile hardened when he saw May’s tail flash in the sun, only a second or two ahead.
Ian was gaining.
Approaching the last pylon, he brought the plane down to fifty feet, low enough to see the faces of the crowd below. Twenty thousand people had gathered in the high desert north of Reno for the race. The course measured eight miles, an extended oval around ten pylons. Eight times around determined the winner. Pedal to the metal all the way. A sky full of screaming eagles.
Ian had won two and lost two, both losses to Gordon May.
“Not this time,” he said aloud.
He executed a hairpin turn around the outermost pylon, the colorful oil drum threatening to tear off the canopy. Nearer he drew to May, and nearer still. If he could just reach out…
He zipped past the control tower.
Lap four was complete.
Ian held his position through the next two laps, content to hang on May’s tail. The temperature needle had moved firmly into the red. There was nothing to be done. The engine would make it or it wouldn’t. He would win or he wouldn’t. It was a binary universe.
Yet even as he raced and part of his mind swore victory, another part was focused on business. Today was momentous for a number of reasons, of which the air race was the least important. On this day twenty years ago he’d sold his first venture, ONEscape, for $200 million to U.S. Online. And it was exactly a year ago that he’d begun his quest to acquire Merriweather Systems. The deal hadn’t been without a hiccup, but he’d taken the necessary measures to emerge victorious. The acquisition had brought the value of ONE Technologies to a wafer over $200 billion.
Ian completed lap six. Battleax’s flaming red tail remained a plane’s length out of reach, but May was played out. If he had any juice left, he’d have used it by now.
Ian pushed the throttle forward, Lara’s nose nipping at Battleaxe’s tail, twenty feet separating them. He eased himself closer, and closer still, his plane bucking in the slipstream.
Faster, he dared May, the taste of victory on his tongue, filling his mouth.
Ian pulled the stick right, going for the pass. May took his plane outside in an effort to block. Ian feinted right as if trying to go abreast; May kicked out again. It was a reckless move, inviting disaster. Ian saw it coming and ducked to the inside, pushing the engine as hard as it could go. His airspeed jumped to 450 knots. He cruised past May, buzzing his aircraft, essentially leapfrogging him. May’s plane juked in the wake. To save himself, he pulled out of the loop and flew high and clear.
May was done.
Ian never looked back.
He won the race by ten seconds.
—
Ian Prince walked across the tarmac, helmet in hand. He was nearly six feet tall, forty years of age, narrow-beamed but sturdy, with Ray-Bans hiding his eyes, at ease in his flight suit.
“Hey there,” shouted Gordon May, running to catch up. “Prince, you bastard. Hold up. You almost killed me.” He was fifty, a fiery bantamweight with red hair and a complexion like mottled leather.
Ian didn’t break stride. “I could say the same.”
May laid a hand on Ian’s shoulder. “You passed on the inside. That’s against the rules. I’m going to file a complaint with the stewards.”
Ian stopped. “I had no choice,” he said calmly. “You kicked out twice. It was pass inside or collide. I think the stewards will see things my way.”
“Is that right?” said May. “Or else what? Not all your rivals crash and burn.”
“Excuse me?” Ian said.
“I’m talking about Titan. John Merriweather wouldn’t sell you his company if it was the last thing he did. Those machines were like his children. Merriweather was a genius. Not some one-hit wonder who cashes in, then spends the rest of his life on a shopping spree, taking credit for everyone else’s achievements. He was a visionary.”
“Yes,” said Ian. “He was. We’ll honor his legacy.”
“Now that you forced his heirs to sell.”
“I made them an offer. They accepted. I completed the deal out of respect for John. The company isn’t the same without him.”
“Maybe they were afraid their plane might go down, too.”
A crowd had gathered. Ian was careful with his words. “Be quiet, Gordon.”
“Crash and burn,” said May accusingly, enjoying his audience, the chance to make Ian squirm. “Without John there was no one left to oppose you.”
Ian grabbed a fistful of the pilot’s flight suit. He felt the rapt eyes on him, sensed their violent ardor. He could not walk away. Not after what May had said. “You’re out of line.”
“Is that what you said to John Merriweather when he refused to sell?”
A fit, ruddy-faced man wearing a tan suit broke through the bystanders and took hold of May’s shoulder. “That’s enough,” said Peter Briggs, Ian’s chief of security. “You have a problem, take it up with the stewards. Mr. Prince is otherwise occupied.”
Still May held his ground. “The race is on tape,” he said, jabbing a finger at Ian. “You can’t buy your way out of this one. No one cares about your money here. No senators, no congressmen to smooth your way.”
“Goodbye, Gordon.”
“Last race is next week. I’ll see you there. Crash and burn, buddy. Just you try something.”
Ian didn’t respond as May stalked off toward the control tower.
“Miserable prick,” said Peter Briggs.
“I need to get cleaned up.”
6
Mary Grant sat in her car, bathed in the gloom of the parking lot. She had signed all the paperwork and collected Joe’s belongings: his wallet, watch, belt, and tie clip. His suit had been cut off him by the paramedics, and it was hinted that she might not wish to see the ruined garments. The phone was government property. She had thanked Don Bennett and all the other agents from the Austin residency who’d come to the hospital. She had looked for a Sid, but none of the agents present had that name. She had cried and was done crying. And when Bennett asked if she’d like an escort home, or to have someone stay with her, she had declined his offer, politely but firmly.
Everything was copacetic.
The married couple’s code.
Mary took her phone from the dash tray and accessed her voice messages. She needed to hear Joe speak to her one last time. She needed to believe for one more minute that he was still alive. She recalled her daydreaming in the car earlier that afternoon. Dinner at Sullivan’s. A night on the town to celebrate their seventeenth anniversary.
Stop, she ordered herself. It was too easy to fall into the abyss.
She glanced at the screen. The first voice message listed belonged to Jessie and came from that afternoon at 1:55.
“Mom, I’m waiting by the fountain. You’re late. Where are you?”
Actually, she’d been on time. Jessie’s summer school class in computer programming at UT ended at two. The second message was from Carrie Kramer, her next-door neighbor, confirming that she’d be over at 6:30 to babysit. Several more followed. From friends, from the new school, from the doctor’s office.
But nothing from Joe.
Mary sat up straighter. Joe’s had been the last message she had received. It should stand at the top of the list. She felt a pang of anger as she accessed the deleted voice messages. How could she have been so careless?
Again there was no record of Joe’s message.
She popped back to the home screen and checked all recent calls. Joe’s number popped up at the top of the list. Call received at 4:03. Duration: 27 seconds. There it was.
Back to voicemail.
Nothing.
The message was gone.
Mary shifted in her seat, assiduously reviewing her actions. She’d left the phone in the ca
r the entire time she was in the hospital. She’d listened to the message twice before that: once as she’d left home and a second time prior to running into the hospital.
Again she checked the call log. Again she confirmed that Joe had called, before she jumped back to the screens showing current voicemails and deleted voicemails, then back to the home screen.
No message.
Mary lowered her head, fighting a raw, physical urge to scream. It was impossible. The message couldn’t be gone. For it to be truly erased from her phone, she would have had to first delete it from the current messages, then delete all the previously deleted messages. She had done neither. So where was the message?
Dread took hold of her. Joe was gone. Forever. She’d never hear the last words he spoke to her again. Loss pooled inside her. Her breathing grew labored. The abyss beckoned. She dropped the phone onto the seat next to her and caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. Red-eyed. Frantic. Losing control. Queen Mary the Lionheart was nowhere in sight.
Someone rapped on the window, and Mary jumped in her seat.
“I’m sorry,” said Don Bennett, kneeling beside the car. “You okay?”
Mary wiped at her eyes before rolling down the window. “You surprised me.”
“I know it’s a tough time and I hate bothering you, but I was wondering if I might hear that message.”
“I don’t have it anymore,” said Mary. “It was here—I mean, it was on my phone. I listened to it twice earlier and now it’s gone.”
“Did you delete it?”
“No.”
“It might be in the deleted messages file. I do that all the time.”
Liar, thought Mary. “I checked,” she said. “It’s not there.”
Bennett pursed his lips, the handyman who just might have the right fix. “Do you think I could take a look at your phone? Maybe you missed it.”
Invasion of Privacy: A Novel Page 4
