The Worst Thing

by Aaron Elkins

  I snatched it from his hand and took a step back, out of his line of vision. “Move, turn, and so help me God, I’ll kill you right now,” I said.

  With my eyes never leaving him, it took me a while to find the key slot in the padlock, but eventually I did. Once I’d gotten it off, the arms of the collar spread open easily, and I took it off with a heartfelt sigh.

  “All right, you can sit up now, but keep your back to me.” I quickly slipped the collar around his neck, locked it to the chain, stepped back out of reach, and relaxed enough to rub the sore places on my neck. Then I picked up the flashlight. “Go ahead, you can get up now.”

  He got to his feet and faced me. Anger twisted his mouth like a knife scar. “I’ll kill you for this, Bennett. You’re going to die for this.”

  I tossed the key fifteen feet or so deeper into the cave. “That’s for when they come to find you. If they come to find you. See you around, Camano.” I found one of the mittens, picked it up, and started hunting for the other one.

  He squeezed out a laugh. “Where do you think you’re going to go? We’re twenty miles from Reykjavik. We’re twenty miles from anything. It’s pitch dark. There’s nothing out there but lava flow. No roads, no nothing. You’ll freeze to death long before daylight, if you don’t trip over a rock and break your head open first.”

  “I’ll chance it.” The truth was, my planning had taken me only as far as the cave opening. I was still working on part two.

  “My people will see you. You’re dead meat.”

  “I thought it was pitch dark.” I was still hunting for the other mitten.

  “All I have to do is yell and it’s all over.”

  “Then why don’t you?”

  We both knew why he didn’t. The lichen-covered walls of the cave swallowed up sound like acoustic foam.

  “I’ll kill you for this,” he said again. “You can’t get away.”

  “You’ll enjoy the cuisine,” I said. “I particularly recommend the chicken paste and crackers. The blackberry juice makes an excellent accompaniment, pleasingly tart, but not overly precocious.” I gave up on the second mitten. “Well—”

  “Sonofabitch,” he said, and then, suddenly, he looked as if he’d taken a punch under the ribs. “Sonofabitch! You called me Camano! You . . . you knew who I was all along!”

  “I wondered when you were going to notice,” I said. I know, I should have been out of there by then, not standing around conversing with him, but revenge is indeed sweet and, to my shame (but not that much), I was soaking it up.

  He stared. “You . . . you lied to me . . . again!”

  “Looks like it. I guess you’re just a slow learner. So long, George. I’ll see that somebody comes for you.”

  As I turned to leave I realized I still had my nifty spork combat knife in one hand. I tossed it to him. “Here, this came in pretty handy for me. Maybe you can use it too.” I was discovering a new level of meanness in myself. It felt wonderful too.

  It fell at his feet. When he saw what it was made of, he was apparently too enraged to speak, but he swelled up like a puffer fish—I swear, his eyeballs actually bulged—his head went back, he shook his fists, he opened his mouth, and he let out the most rabid, raging, animallike bellow of fury and impotence I’d ever heard come from a human throat. It beat my trifling panic whimpers by a mile.

  “I’m sorry you’re taking it like that, George,” I said.

  Walking to the entrance, I held the flashlight low and kept it pointing at the floor. A few steps shy of the gate, I turned it off altogether. It would have been prudent to stand there for a few minutes, letting my eyes adjust to the darkness before stepping out, but more than anything else I wanted out of that cave, and the instant I got the latch open I stepped eagerly out into the night . . .

  Chapter 37

  ...And was startled by a blinding barrage of light. All I could do was flinch away from it and throw my arm up over my eyes. Good God, what—

  “Get him!” someone said harshly, and I was wrenched away, stumbling and still blinded, into the darkness on the other side of the lights. The hope drained out of me, and the resistance as well. I was as emptied as a collapsed balloon. There would be no more opportunities.

  “I’m very glad to see you again, Bryan,” said a quiet voice. “You’re looking well, considering.”

  It took a second for the ball to drop. “Ellert?”

  “Indeed, Ellert. Are you all right?”

  I was so stunned that the best I could do was nod, openmouthed.

  “Where are they, Bryan? Are they in the cave?”

  “I don’t believe it,” I mumbled, staring stupidly at him. “How did you . . . how did you . . . ?”

  He shook me by the shoulder. “Bryan! Are they in the cave?”

  “He’s . . . he’s, um, yes, he’s in the, the cave. Paris.”

  “Ah, so it is the famous Paris.”

  “Yes, Paris,” I said, blinking, as both my vision and my command of speech returned. “But you don’t have to worry about him. He’s chained to the wall. The others, I don’t know. They’re around here somewhere. There are two of them—”

  “They must be in the shack,” he said. “We saw a light, but it went out as we approached. He nodded to a female sergeant standing beside him, who said something in Icelandic to another cop.

  Following Ellert’s gaze I saw that there was an old plank cabin a few yards from the cave entrance, unlit except for the brilliant bank of lights trained on it. The lights, I saw now, were the headlights and spotlights from three lined-up police cars. Ellert and I were standing behind the cars, along with four or five uniformed officers, with everyone’s eyes focused on the silent shack.

  The cop came back with a bullhorn for Ellert, who flicked it on and brought it up to his mouth.

  “Ellert,” I said, “things are likely to go better if you can do this without the bullhorn. We’re not that far away from the cabin. They can hear you without it.”

  If he had a turf-conscious bone in his body, I hadn’t been made aware of it yet. He nodded and put it down on the hood of the nearest car.

  “And if you can call them by name, that’d be good too. Their names are—”

  “Stig Trygvasson and Dagnyár Eyjólfsdóttir, otherwise known as Gullveig Válisdóttir.”

  I shook my head. “How did you find that out?”

  “Dedicated police work, what else? There was also a third one, a professor, Magnus Haldórsson. But we found his body yesterday. Along with Baldursson’s. Both apparently killed in the shootout.”

  “Oh. So Baldursson is dead. I thought so.”

  “And now,” Ellert said, “we’d better get on with it.” He cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted a rather long message in Icelandic toward the cabin, but there was only silence in response.

  I took advantage of the wait to ask a question. “How the heck did you manage to find this place? And don’t just say ‘dedicated police work.’ ”

  “But that’s what it was. Once we learned the names of the VBJ members, we went out and talked to every relative and friend we could find, in hopes of learning where they had you. This cave belongs to the woman’s uncle, and when we heard about it, it was the first place we looked, but it was deserted. So was every other potential hideout we looked at. However, after you raised that fuss at the apartment complex in Kópavegur last night—”

  “You know about that too?”

  He smiled. “You made it hard to miss. A man jumping out of a window—through a window—at two o’clock in the morning, attached to a bed, is likely to arouse the interest of the neighbors and result in a police report. It was soon clear that the man in question was you, and that you were no longer on the premises. Where would they have taken you—assuming they weren’t annoyed enough to kill you? Well, the cave once again became the most likely place . . . and here we are.”

  “They’re not answering, Chief Inspector,” one of the officers said.

  “Let’s
give them another chance.” This time he tried in English. “Stig, Gullveig, we know who you are. There is no way for you to escape. Come out of the building with your hands held up high. You have my word that you won’t be—”

  The cabin door was suddenly wrenched open. Framed in the doorway, pinned like a butterfly by the glare, Stig stood, squinting and agitated, with Gullveig in front of him. His left arm was clamped around her neck, and his right hand held a pistol to her temple: the quintessential hostage scene. Gullveig, head down and hands at her sides, looked even more than usual as if she were made of wood.

  “I have a gun!” Stig yelled, briefly brandishing it before sticking it back in Gullveig’s ear.

  “We have five guns,” Ellert replied calmly, “and every one of them is bigger than yours. What’s more, we can see you, and you can’t see us.”

  “If you think I won’t kill her, you’re wrong!”

  “If you do, your brains will be all over the floor one second later. We have a sharpshooter trained on you right now.”

  I looked around. If there was a sharpshooter, he was remarkably well hidden. Ellert was a convincing liar.

  “Where do you think this can go, Stig?” Ellert asked. He had a way of sounding quiet and calm even when he was shouting. “What can the end be? We can’t simply walk away and let you leave, you know that.” He had a good style, I thought. He’d make a good negotiator. “So simply release her, throw the gun down, and walk out. Slowly, hands up where we can see them. You have my promise that you won’t be harmed.”

  “I’m warning you, I’m willing to give my life for what I believe, and I’ll take her with me if I have to.” Stig’s voice was strong, but quivering with emotion. Christ, he’s made up his mind to die, I thought; to martyr himself, as he probably saw it. He was working up his nerve to go through with it, and maybe to kill Gullveig as well.

  “Ellert, can I help?” I said, when he raised his hands to his mouth for another shout.

  He lowered his hands. “You’re the expert.”

  What he expected was advice, but I had a nasty feeling that time was running out. I stepped briskly forward, shaking off his restraining hand, into the light. If Stig was surprised to see me free, he didn’t show it. As for Gullveig, her eyes never came up from the ground in front of her.

  “Stig,” I called. “I know what you’re thinking.”

  “You can’t begin to comprehend what I’m thinking.”

  “You’ve already killed Baldur, there’s no hope for you—”

  “And don’t think I’m not ready to kill you too, you goddamn parasite. Just keep talking.”

  “—but what happened to Baldur . . . that was a crime of passion. Unpremeditated. You didn’t intend to do it. There are mitigating circumstances.”

  “You mean I’ll only get ten years instead of twenty? I’d rather end it here and now.”

  It occurred to me that the last time I’d tried negotiating a realtime hostage situation two children had died. Despite the cold, sweat rolled down my sides and beaded up on my forehead and scalp. Lord, I didn’t want any more dead bodies on my shoulders. I tried to keep my voice steady and not to speed up, but I could hear the words coming out in a rush.

  “Stig, if you make them kill you now, that’s the end of it; your side of things will never be heard. But if you come out of there, there’ll be a trial. You’ll have a chance to tell your story, to express your views in public. There’ll be press coverage, tremendous coverage. You’ll get TV interviews, newspaper interviews. All you want.”

  His lip curled. “Oh, sure,” he said sarcastically, but then his face showed some indecision. “Is that true, what he says?” He directed the question not to me, but to where he thought the police were. A good sign, I thought. He was looking for a way out, after all.

  “Oh yes,” Ellert replied serenely. “Very true, entirely true.”

  Stig came to a decision. He straightened up from where he had been hunched behind Gullveig, took his arm from around her neck, and threw the gun on the floor behind him.

  You know those movies where the girl wallops the guy and decks him with one punch? Ridiculous, right? I mean, have you ever seen that happen in real life? Well, I’m here to tell you that it does happen in real life. The gun was still clattering on the wooden planks when Gullveig spun around, hauled back one strapping arm, and let him have it right in the chops. Stig’s head wobbled, his eyes rolled up, and down he went, as boneless as a half-empty sack of flour.

  I’m telling you, it gave me a warm, fuzzy feeling all over.

  Chapter 38

  Two Weeks Later

  “Do you know who Elizabeth Loftus is?” Zeta asked me.

  “Sure. Psychologist. Did some great work debunking the repressed-memory baloney a few years back. Used to be here at the U. She’s down in California now, isn’t she?

  “Yes, UC-Irvine. Are you familiar with her lost-in-the-mall experiments?”

  “Mm, I don’t think so, no.”

  “One tall brewed coffee, one café latte grande, no foam.”

  The call came from the barista behind the counter. We were in the University Way Starbucks, to which we’d walked from Zeta’s office, where I’d told her what had happened in Iceland, and what the happy aftermath had been: Not only had there been no panic attacks since that night in the cave, but I had tried—and succeeded!—flying home without the aid of chemical assistance. Almost as gratifying, the scent of manure from farms on my way to work no longer got my adrenaline pumping, and I had eaten (and tolerated, if not quite enjoyed) a banana muffin one morning the previous week. As to cockroaches, I had yet to cross paths with one, but I was confident of a happy result.

  In other words, as far as I could tell, I was liberated—not only from the wretched panic attacks, but from the whole devil’s brew of unpleasantries that went along with them.

  “Bryan, my boy, I’m absolutely delighted for you,” she’d said. I don’t believe I’ve ever come across a case like this, even in the literature.”

  “Feel free to write it up,” I said airily. “I have no objection to being a poster boy for flooding therapy. I endorse it wholeheartedly. Hey, you think there could be any money in it for me?”

  She didn’t crack a smile. “With your permission,” she said soberly, “I would like to write it up.” She paused. “But not for that reason.”

  “Not for what reason?”

  “Not because of what you’ve been telling me.”

  I was puzzled. “Well, what then?”

  “Let’s go get a cup of coffee” had been her answer, and so here we were.

  I went to the counter and came back with my latte and Zeta’s coffee. “Okay, what about Loftus and her lost-in-the-mall experiments?”

  “Well, there’s been quite a string of them now, but let me give you the one that started it, the classic example.”

  A teenage boy named Chris, she said, had been given descriptions of four events in which he’d been involved as a child. All had been written by older relatives. Chris was told to write about all of these events for several consecutive days, offering whatever additional details he could remember as time went on. If he couldn’t recall any, he was told to say so. What he didn’t know was that one of the four “events” had never happened. It described an occasion when Chris, then five, had supposedly gotten lost at a shopping mall and had been found by a stranger who had reunited him with his family.

  Over time, Chris “remembered” more and more about the incident. He’d wandered off to “look at the toy store, the Kay-Bee Toys.” When he’d realized he was lost, his first thought had been “Uh-oh, I’m in trouble now.” Before long he was “really scared.” “I thought I was never going to see my family again.” The helpful stranger who’d rescued him was recalled in detail: an old man, bald and bespectacled, and wearing a blue flannel shirt.

  Chris was then told that one of the four memories was false; could he guess which one? He chose one of the real ones. When told that be
ing lost in the mall was the false one, he had to be convinced before he finally accepted it. Since then, the fake-memory implantation method had been used in dozens of controlled experiments. Not everyone falls for the fake story, but plenty do.

  I had listened both politely and attentively, and now I was waiting for the punch line, but Zeta only looked at me, her lips pursed.

  “Okay,” I said. “That’s interesting, but why exactly am I being told this?”

  “Bryan,” she said soberly, “what if I told you that your memory of being kidnapped—the abduction, the fifty-eight days, the whole thing—is a false memory?”

  I just stared at her. “Zeta . . .” was all I could get out for a few seconds. On the one hand, I could see she wasn’t kidding, but on the other, I didn’t see how she could be serious. “Zeta, I’m sorry, but that’s ridiculous. I know it happened. Hell, my parents went into hock to pay off their share of my ransom. It ruined their lives.”

  “They did pay off part of the ransom, Bryan, but it wasn’t for you.”

  “Wasn’t for me?” I shook my head, as confused as I’d ever been in my life. “Zeta, you are really losing me here. . . .”

  “I could use some more coffee,” she said, standing up. “How about you, Bryan? I’ll get it.”

  “No. Yes, please.” I appreciated the minute or two she wanted to give me to myself, and indeed, I needed it. She hadn’t told me much, but what she had was surpassingly weird.

  I sat there staring at the tabletop trying to make sense of what she’d said. No, how could it be? I remembered so clearly—

  She returned with black coffees for us both this time. “All right. You told me your parents never spoke directly to you about it afterward, but that you couldn’t help overhearing their exchanges, right?”

  “Yes, but if you’re telling me it was a case of a six-year-old kid’s misunderstanding of grown-up conversation forget it. They were talking about the kidnapping and all the money they’d had to come up with for the ransom, all right: whispers, arguments, recriminations—it ruined their marriage, ruined their lives.”