by Harlan Coben
"Is there a point?"
"There is. That was way back in the fifties or sixties. More than half a century ago. Now we have other drugs and we've had lots of time to fiddle with them. Imagine the tool if we could perfect what they were able to do more than fifty years ago. You could theoretically hold someone for an extended length of time and they'd never remember it."
He waited. I wasn't that slow a study.
"And this is what happened to me?"
"I don't know what happened to you. You've heard of CIA black sites."
"Sure."
"Do you think they exist?"
"Places where the CIA takes prisoners and doesn't tell anyone? Sure, I guess."
"Guess? Don't be naive. Bush admitted we had some. But they didn't start with 9/11 and they didn't end when Congress held a few hearings. Think about what you could do there if you simply put prisoners into extended twilight sleep. It made women forget the pain of childbirth--the worst pain there is. They could interrogate you for hours, get you to say and do whatever, and then you'd forget it."
My leg started jackhammering in place. "Pretty diabolical."
"Is it? Let's say you captured a terrorist. You know the old debate about if you know another bomb is about to go off, is it right to torture him to save lives? Well, here you wipe the slate clean. He doesn't remember. Does that make the act more ethical? You, my dear friend, were probably interrogated harshly, maybe tortured. You don't remember it. So did it happen?"
"Like a tree falling in the woods when nobody's around," I said.
"Precisely."
"You French and your philosophizing."
"We're about more than Sartre's little death."
"Too bad." I shifted in my seat. "I'm having trouble believing this."
"I'm not sure I believe it either. But think about it. Think about people who suddenly vanish and never reappear. Think about people who are productive and healthy and suddenly they are suicidal or homeless or mentally ill. Think about the people--people who always seemed fine and normal--who suddenly claim alien abductions or start suffering post-traumatic stress syndrome."
"Let it go. . . ."
Breathing was a struggle again. I felt my chest hitch and get caught.
"Can't be that simple," I said.
"It isn't. Like I said, think about people who suddenly become psychotic or the rational people who suddenly claim religious rapture or alien hallucinations. And again the moral question--is trauma okay, for the greater good, if it is immediately forgotten? The men who run these places aren't evildoers. They feel they are making it more ethical."
I lifted my hand to my face. Tears were running down my cheeks. I didn't know why.
"Look at it from their viewpoint. The man you killed in Paris, the one working with Mohammad Matar. The government thought he was about to turn and provide us with inside information. There is a lot of infighting with these groups. Why were you in the middle of it? You killed Matar--yes, in self-defense, but maybe, just maybe, you were sent to kill him. Do you see? It was reasonable to conclude that you knew something that could save lives."
"So"--I stopped--"they tortured me?"
He pushed the glasses back up his nose, said nothing.
"Wouldn't someone remember, if this was really going on?" I asked. "Wouldn't someone tell?"
"Tell what? You may start remembering. What are you going to do about it? You don't know where you were. You don't know who held you. And you're terrified because you know in your heart of hearts they can grab you again."
"Your mom and dad . . ."
"So you'll stay quiet because you have no choice. And maybe, just maybe, what they are doing is saving lives. Don't you ever wonder how we break up so many terrorist plots before they hatch?"
"By torturing people and making them forget?"
Berleand gave me an elaborate shoulder shrug.
"If this is so effective," I said, "why didn't they use it on, say, Khalid Sheik Mohammad or some of the other al Qaeda terrorists?"
"Who says they haven't? To date, despite all the talk, the US government has only admitted water boarding three times and none since 2003. Do you really believe that to be the case? And in the case of Khalid, the world was watching. That was the mistake your government learned from Gitmo. You don't do it where everyone can see."
I took another sip of the Diet Coke. I looked around. The place wasn't packed, but it wasn't empty either. I saw business suits and guys in T-shirts and jeans. I saw white men, black men, Latino men. No blind men. Anthony the bouncer was right.
"So what now?" I said.
"The cell is broken up--and so too, most figure, is whatever plot they had planned."
"You don't think so."
"I don't."
"Why?"
"Because Rick Collins seemed to think he was on to something huge. Something long-term and far-reaching. The coalition I work with was upset I showed you the picture of Matar. Fair enough, that's why I'm on the outs."
"Sorry."
"Don't worry about it. They are searching for the next cell and plot. I'm not. I want to keep investigating this one. I have friends who want to help."
"What friends?"
"You met them."
I thought about it. "The Mossad."
He nodded. "Collins had enlisted their help too."
"That's why they were following me?"
"At first they thought maybe you murdered him. I assured them that you had not. Collins clearly knew something, but he wouldn't say exactly what. He played all sides against the middle--it's hard to say by the end where his loyalties lay. According to Mossad, he stopped contacting them and vanished a week before he died."
"Any idea why?"
"None."
Berleand's eyes dropped to his glass. He stirred his drink with his finger.
"So why are you here now?" I asked.
"I flew over when they found you."
"Why?"
He took another deep swallow. "Enough questions for today."
"What are you talking about?"
He rose.
"Where are you going?"
"I explained to you the situation."
"Right, got it. We have work to do."
"We? You have no role in this anymore."
"You're kidding, right? I need to find Terese, for one."
He smiled down at me. "May I be blunt?"
"No, I'd rather you keep beating around the bush."
"I say that because I'm not good with delivering bad news."
"You seem pretty good at it so far."
"But not like this." Berleand kept his eyes off me and on the stage, but I don't think he was looking at the dancer anymore. "You Americans call it a reality check. So here it comes: Terese is either dead, in which case you can't help her. Or like you, she is being held at a black site, in which case you're helpless."
"I'm not helpless," I said in a voice that couldn't have sounded more feeble.
"Yes, my friend, you are. Even before I contacted him, Win knew to keep everyone quiet about your disappearance. Why? Because he knew that if anyone--your parents, whoever--made a stink you'd maybe never come home. They'd stage a car accident and you'd be dead. Or a suicide. With Terese Collins, it is even easier. They could kill her and bury her and say she is back hiding in Angola. Or they can stage a suicide and say her daughter's death became too much for her. There is nothing you can do for her."
I sat back.
"You need to take care of yourself," he said.
"You want me to stay out of this?"
"Yes. And while I meant it when I said you're not to blame, I warned you once before. You chose not to listen."
He had a point.
"One last question," I said.
He waited.
"Why tell me all this?"
"About the black site?"
"Yes."
"Because despite what they think the medications will do, I don't believe you can totally forget. You need h
elp, Myron. Please get it."
HERE was how I found out that maybe Berleand was right.
When I came back to the office, I called some clients. Esperanza ordered in sandwiches from Lenny's. We all ate at the desk. Esperanza talked about her baby boy, Hector. I realize that there are few bigger cliches than saying that motherhood changes a woman, but in the case of Esperanza the changes seemed particularly startling and not all that appealing.
When we were done, I went back into my office and closed the door. I left the light off. I sat at my desk for a very long time. We all have our moments of contemplation and depression, but this was something different, something more profound and deeper and heavier. I could not move. My limbs felt heavy. I have gotten into my share of scrapes over the years, so I keep a weapon in my office.
A .38 Smith & Wesson to be more exact.
I opened the bottom drawer, took out the gun, and held it in my hand. Tears ran down my face.
I know how melodramatic this must sound. This image of poor, pitiful me, sitting alone at my desk, feeling depressed, a gun in my hand--it's laughable when you think about it. If there had been a photograph of Terese on my desk, I could have picked it up a la Mel Gibson in the first Lethal Weapon movie and jammed the barrel into my mouth.
I didn't do that.
But I had thoughts.
When the doorknob on my office door started to turn--no one knocks here, especially Esperanza--I moved fast, dropping the gun back into the drawer. Esperanza walked in and looked at me.
"What are you up to?" she asked.
"Nothing."
"What were you just doing?"
"Nothing."
She looked at me. "Were you pleasuring yourself under the desk?"
"Caught me."
"You still look terrible."
"That's the word on the street, yeah."
"I would tell you to go home, but you've missed enough days and I don't think wallowing around by yourself is going to do you much good."
"Agreed. Was there a reason you intruded?"
"Does there need to be?"
"Never been one in the past," I said. "By the way, what's up with Win?"
"That's why I intruded. He's on the Batphone." She gestured for me to turn around.
On the credenza behind my desk there is a red phone that sits under what looks like a glass cake cover. If you saw the original Batman TV show, you know why. The red phone was blinking. Win. I picked it up and said, "Where are you?"
"Bangkok," Win said, his tone a tad too upbeat, "which is really an ironic name for this place when you stop and think about it."
"Since when?" I asked.
"Is that important?"
"Just seems like weird timing," I said. Then remembering: "What happened with that DNA sample we took from Miriam's grave?"
"Confiscated."
"By?"
"Men with shiny badges and shinier suits."
"How did they find out about it?"
Silence.
That wave of shame. Then I said, "Me?"
He did not bother replying. "Did you speak with Captain Berleand?"
"I did. What do you think?"
"I think," Win said, "that his hypothesis has merit."
"I don't get it. Why are you in Bangkok?"
"Where should I be?"
"Here, home, I don't know."
"That's probably not a very good idea right now."
I thought about it.
"Is this line safe?" I asked.
"Very. And your office was swept this morning."
"So what happened in London?"
"You saw me kill Tweedledee and Tweedledum?"
"Yes."
"You know the rest then. Officials crashed in. There was no way I could get you out, so I decided that it would be best for me to depart. I immediately headed out of the country. Why? Because I, as I just stated, believe Berleand's tale has merit. I thus did not think it would behoove either of us for me to be taken into custody too. Do you understand?"
"I do. So what's your plan now?"
"To stay hidden just a little while longer."
"Best way to make everyone safe is to get to the bottom of this."
"True dat, dawg," Win said.
I love it when he talks street.
"To that end, I'm putting out some feelers. I'm hoping to get someone to tell me the fate of Ms. Collins. To put it bluntly--and, yes, I know you have feelings for her--if Terese was killed, this is pretty much over for us. Our interests are gone."
"What about finding her daughter?"
"If Terese is dead, what would be the point?"
I thought about that. He made sense. I had wanted to help Terese here. I had wanted to--man, it still sounded so crazy to think it--reunite her with her deceased daughter. What indeed would be the point, if Terese was dead?
I looked down and realized that again I was chewing on a fingernail.
"So what now?" I asked.
"Esperanza says you're a mess."
"You're going to patronize me too?"
Silence.
"Win?"
Win was the best at keeping his voice steady, but for maybe the second time since I've known him, I heard a crack. "The last sixteen days were difficult."
"I know, pal."
"I scorched the earth looking for you."
I said nothing.
"I did some things you would never approve of."
I waited.
"And I still couldn't find you."
I understood what he meant. Win has sources like no one else I know. Win has money and influence--and the truth is, he loves me. Not much scares him. But I knew that he'd had a tough sixteen days.
"I'm okay now," I said. "Come home when you think you can."
26
"HAVE another dumpling," Mom said to me.
"I've had enough, Mom, thanks."
"One more. You're much too skinny. Try the pork one."
"I really don't like them."
"You what?" Mom gave me shocked. "But you used to love them at Fong's Garden."
"Mom, Fong's Garden closed when I was eight years old."
"I know. But still."
But still. The great Mom debate ender. One might understandably attribute her Fong's Garden recollection to an aging brain. One would be wrong. Mom had been making the same comment about my no longer liking dumplings since I was nine.
We sat in the kitchen of my childhood home in Livingston, New Jersey. Currently I split my nights between this abode and Win's lush apartment in the Dakota on West Seventy-second Street and Central Park West. When my parents moved down to Miami a few years back, I bought this house from them. You could rightly wonder about the psychology of buying the property--I had lived here with my parents well into my thirties and still, in fact, sleep in the basement bedroom I'd set up in high school--but in the end I rarely stayed here. Livingston is a town for families raising kids, not single men working in Manhattan. Win's place is far more conveniently located and only slightly smaller, square-footage-wise, than an average European principality.
But Mom and Dad were back in town, so here we were.
I came from the Blame Generation where we all supposedly disliked our parents and found in their actions all the reasons why we ourselves are unhappy adults. I love my mother and father. I love being with them. I didn't live in that basement well into my adult years out of financial necessity. I did it because I liked it here, with them.
We finished dinner, threw away the takeout boxes, rinsed off the utensils. We talked a little about my brother and sister. When Mom mentioned Brad's work in South America, I felt a small but sharp pang--something akin to deja vu but far less pleasant. My stomach clenched. The nail-biting began again. My parents exchanged a glance.
Mom was tired. She gets that way a lot now. I kissed her cheek and watched her trudge up the stairs. She leaned on the banister. I flashed back to past days, of watching her take the steps with a hop and a bouncing ponytail, he
r hand nowhere near that damn banister. I looked back at Dad. He said nothing, but I think that he was flashing back too.
Dad and I moved to the den. He flipped on the TV. When I was little, Dad had a BarcaLounger recliner of hideous maroon. The vinyl-dressed-as-leather tore at the seams, and something metallic stuck out. My dad, not the handiest man in town, kept it together with duct tape. I know people criticize the hours Americans spend watching television, and with good reason, but some of my best memories were in this room, at night, him lounging on the duct-taped recliner, me on the couch. Anyone else remember that classic Saturday night prime-time CBS lineup? All in the Family, MASH, Mary Tyler Moore, The Bob Newhart Show, and The Carol Burnett Show. My dad would laugh so hard at something Archie Bunker would say, and his laugh was so contagious I would guffaw in kind, even though I didn't get a lot of the jokes.
Al Bolitar had worked hard in his factory in Newark. He wasn't a man who liked to play poker or hang with the boys or go to bars. Home was his solace. He liked relaxing with his family. He started very poor and was whip smart and probably had dreams beyond that Newark factory--great, grand dreams--but he never shared them with me. I was his son. You don't burden your child with stuff like that, not for anything.
On this night, he fell asleep during a Seinfeld repeat. I watched his chest rise and fall, his stubble coming in white. After a while I quietly rose, went down to the basement, climbed into bed, and stared at the ceiling.
My chest started hitching again. Panic swept through me. My eyes did not want to close. When they did, when I managed to start a nocturnal voyage of any kind, nightmares would jerk me back to consciousness. I could not recall the dreams, but the fear stayed behind. Sweat covered me. I sat in the dark, terrified, like a child.
At three in the morning, a bolt of memory flashed across my brain. Underwater. Not able to breathe. It lasted less than a second, this image, no more, and was quickly replaced with another, aural one.
"Al-sabr wal-sayf . . ."
My heart pounded as if it were trying to break free.
At three thirty AM, I tiptoed up the stairs and sat in the kitchen. I tried to be as quiet as possible, but I knew. My father was the world's lightest sleeper. As a kid, I would try to sneak past his door late at night, just to make a quick bathroom trip, and he'd startle awake as though someone had dropped a Popsicle on his crotch. So now, as a full-grown middle-aged adult, a man who considered himself braver than most, I knew what would happen if I tiptoed into the kitchen:
"Myron?"
I turned as he made his way down the stairs. "I didn't mean to wake you, Dad."
