Benny pocketed his mobile just as he caught a whiff of the policewoman’s perfume behind him. ‘Escape’ by Calvin Klein.
Escape. . .
He couldn’t help smiling at the irony.
‘Your reading was zero,’ the policewoman said, sounding almost disappointed, and returned his papers.
‘You haven’t been out long, have you?’
His smile vanished. ‘Is that it?’
She gave him a lingering stare. Then she did the thing he’d been dreading most: she pointed to the boot.
‘Just the breakdown triangle and the first-aid kit, please. Then we’re through.’
23
It’s easy to spot a mistake after the event. But as long as you haven’t reached the eye of the storm and are still on the edge of the vortex of insanity, you’re subject to its irresistible attraction. While the set pieces of your own life are whirling about your ears, you lose your perspective and make one wrong decision after another. Marc guessed he was making a mistake the moment he got into Emma’s car. He also guessed that he would be making an even bigger one by following her into the cheap commercial travellers’ hotel near the airport.
If he’d been watching a biopic of his own life, he would doubtless have been able to ply the wretched hero on the screen with sensible pieces of advice. Call the police. Go to Constantin’s hospital. Enlist some impartial assistance. But don’t go anywhere with this woman, least of all to a seedy hotel in Tegel!
He wasn’t relaxing in a comfortable cinema seat, however, but sitting on the edge of a worn-out hotel mattress. Nor was his brain functioning normally, in a way that would have enabled him to come to a rational decision. Within the space of a few hours Marc had lost everything he’d believed in up to then: the authenticity of his memories and his own existence.
During the drive Emma had silently handed him a sheet of paper that looked as if it had been ripped out of a binder by someone in a rage. Out of a CV, to be precise, because closer inspection by the car’s dim courtesy light revealed it to be the first page of a three-page résumé. It seemed even less consistent with Emma’s outward appearance than his initial assumption that she begged for a living.
Apparently born in Dresden, she had fled to France with her parents before the reunification of Germany and studied at the Sorbonne. Medicine to begin with, then German, Spanish and French. Thereafter she had worked as a simultaneous interpreter at trade conferences, mainly for the pharmaceutical industry, for which her discontinued medical studies particularly fitted her.
Marc made another attempt to breach the wall of silence. ‘Well, what did you want to show me that’s so important?’ Since reaching the hotel she had confined her conversation to bare essentials. She signalled to him to wait a moment.
Having so far limited himself to watching her get out a holdall and extract several batches of old newspapers, he made a leisurely survey of her hotel room. Its neglected, gloomy appearance matched that of the night porter who had handed them the key at the reception desk. It was also probable that the stale, overheated air smelt like his armpits. Emma had presumably left the ‘Please Don’t Disturb’ sign on her door for days. She had spent the interval transforming her quarters into a cross between a box room and a second-hand bookshop.
Half of the double bed was strewn with press cuttings, sheets of paper written on both sides and medical textbooks, more of which could be seen on the small desk beside the TV cabinet. Emma had taken off her boots and her white hooded jacket, which was lying in a heap on the threadbare carpet. All she now wore was a baggy woollen dress that reached to her ankles.
While Marc was debating how much longer to give her before he finally cut and run, Emma sat down on a precariously creaking upright chair with her left leg draped over her massive right thigh, massaging the ball of her foot.
He got up and went over to the window.
‘Don’t. They might see you.’
‘Who?’ He lowered the blind.
‘Bleibtreu’s people.’
She fiddled nervously with her glasses, then took them off and chewed the end of one arm.
‘Bleibtreu?’ said Marc.
‘Yes.’
‘So the clinic really exists?’
Great. You’re seeking reassurance from a nutter.
He opened the window without raising the blind.
‘Of course.’
Emma had to speak up to make herself heard above the patter of the raindrops, which were hitting the pane like bullets. The wind blew an occasional ricochet into the room. ‘Of course the clinic exists. I was there myself.’
She pushed the glasses up over her forehead like an Alice band, nervously licking her lips again. All at once, as if something had occurred to her, she rose with a jerk and stomped over to the wardrobe.
‘So where, tell me, has the building gone?’ Marc demanded.
Emma keyed a six-digit code into a safe the size of a shoebox secured to one corner of the wardrobe.
‘It hasn’t gone anywhere, Marc. You just didn’t see it.’
His sarcastic laugh was rather shriller than he’d intended. ‘Look, I’ve had one hell of a tiring day. My powers of comprehension are roughly equal to those of someone emerging from a general anaesthetic. Just for once, could you possibly say something that doesn’t raise more questions than it answers?’
Emma took out a slim folder folded in half to enable it to fit into the safe. It trembled in her clumsy-looking hands.
‘It’s all part of their plan. They want to rattle us, confuse us, traumatize us.’
Studying her face closely for signs of the insanity he suspected in himself, Marc could detect nothing but the residue of long-vanished good looks. He guessed that Emma must once have been extremely attractive – until something happened to throw her out of kilter, first mentally, then physically. Today, only the regularity of her features recalled a time preceding the medication that had left such visible traces behind, or so he surmised. Cortisone, for example, which often resulted in a moon face like hers. Psychiatric drugs, perhaps, or worse.
Drugs?
‘All right,’ he said, ‘let me try a different approach.’ He resumed his place on the edge of the bed. ‘This morning, a little old man in a very expensive car offered to delete all my unpleasant memories for ever.’
‘MME. The amnesia experiment.’
‘You took part in it yourself?’
‘Till I broke it off a week ago.’
‘Really?’ Marc frowned. ‘Okay, be that as it may. My problem is – well, how can I put it? – at the moment I’m undergoing experiences that would knock any mystic sideways but which can’t have any connection with the Bleibtreu Clinic.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because those people wanted to blot out my memories, but they’re all still in here.’ Marc tapped his head. ‘Unaltered. It’s just that they don’t add up any more. To be quite honest, the professor and his associates may be a bunch of lunatics, but I’ve no idea how they could have completely brainwashed me in such a short time without my noticing.’
Emma stared at him in bewilderment. ‘A short time?’
‘I was only there five or six hours. I swallowed no pills, wasn’t given any injections and drank a couple of glasses of water.’
‘You’re wrong.’
‘Are you disputing what I remember?’
‘No. All I meant was, today wasn’t your first day as part of the trial.’
‘Huh?’
‘That’s why I wanted you to come with me. To show you this.’
She opened the folder and took out a sheet of paper printed on both sides. Marc had seen it once before. A few hours ago. At the clinic.
‘See this?’
She held out the form and tapped the handwritten box in the top-right corner.
‘This is. . .’
. . .impossible.
Marc took the sheet from her.
Quite impossible.
‘Now do you see why it?
??s so important for us to have a talk?’
He nodded without taking his eyes off the application form, which had been completed and bore his signature. What startled him most of all was the date.
October 1st. The date of the accident.
Four weeks before he answered the Bleibtreu Clinic’s advertisement.
24
It looked like an original, but before he could satisfy himself that he was holding a forgery in his hands there was a knock at the door: three short, two long. Although it sounded like a prearranged signal, Emma didn’t seem to be expecting anyone. She glanced nervously at the door, then at Marc. Then she snatched the application form back.
‘Who?’ she breathed. The right-hand corner of her mouth was quivering.
Marc shrugged. He’d never heard of the Tegel Inn Hotel until a quarter of an hour ago. How should he know who was standing outside her door, which wasn’t, unfortunately, fitted with a spyhole? They would have to open it to discover who wanted them so late. It could hardly be a member of the staff. This seedy hotel boasted neither room service nor a minibar in need of topping up.
‘I’ll go and see,’ he whispered when the knock was repeated. The same rhythm, the same knuckles tapping on laminated wood.
‘No!’ Emma shook her head fiercely and grabbed his arm, pulling him so close that the tip of her nose brushed his ear. ‘Don’t you see what’s going on here?’
‘No.’ He tried to free himself.
‘They’re after us.’
‘Who? Bleibtreu?’
Her hair tickled his cheek as she shook her head again. ‘He doesn’t do his own dirty work. He’s got people for that.’
Her eyelids flickered violently and her massive bosom heaved at every breath. ‘That’s just why I need you,’ she said in a low, shaky voice. ‘I need a witness who’ll confirm what they’re doing to us. . .’
She put a finger to his lips just as he opened his mouth to speak and touched his tongue. Unlike him, she seemed not to notice this involuntarily intimate contact.
‘This is getting ridiculous,’ he whispered.
‘. . .a witness who’ll document the results of the experiment. No one will believe my word alone.’
He shook his head vigorously and freed himself from her grasp. Before she could protest he strode swiftly to the door, undid the chain, and opened it.
Too late.
25
The narrow but surprisingly well-lit corridor was deserted. There was nothing to be seen apart from a trolley overflowing with dirty sheets and a soft-drinks dispenser at the far end.
Marc came back into the room. For one brief moment he was afraid that Emma, too, had disappeared. Then he heard her voice.
‘We must get out of here.’
She was tugging a holdall from under the bed. It looked far too small to contain all the papers strewn around the room.
‘Look, calm down.’
‘No, I won’t!’ She almost shouted the words. ‘You don’t understand the situation we’re in.’
‘You’re right, I don’t understand any of it, but you’re making no attempt to enlighten me.’
Emma slammed the holdall down on the clear side of the bed and brushed a thin film of sweat off her forehead with her forearm. Then she glanced at her watch. ‘All right, here’s the short answer: you’re in the amnesia programme because there’s something you’ve got to forget.’
‘Yes, I know.’
He started to tell her about the accident that had robbed him of his wife and unborn son, but she interrupted him after only a sentence or two.
‘No, that can’t be so.’
‘Why not?’
‘They wouldn’t go to these lengths if it was only a question of heartache.’
Heartache?
‘Hey, I’m not just talking about a broken date. My pregnant wife and unborn son are dead and I’m to blame.’
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings, but there’s far more involved here than a personal tragedy.’
‘What makes you say that?’
She struggled with the holdall’s zip, which had jammed. Marc came to her aid.
‘Have you any idea what this series of experiments is costing? Implementation, supervision, evaluation? Add in a new identity and it’ll run to seven figures. No, it’s quite out of the question.’
‘But why would they publicly advertise for guinea pigs if it’s so damned expensive?’
‘They don’t.’
She went over to the desk and opened a drawer. It was filled to the brim with old magazines.
‘When did you send that email?’
‘Two weeks ago.’
She pulled out one magazine after another and tossed them carelessly on the floor until she found what she was looking for.
‘Here.’
She handed him a news magazine. It was the issue in which he’d come across the Bleibtreu Clinic’s advertisement on page 211. The page number had lodged in his memory only because Clause 211 of the penal code related to murder. The habit of using mnemonics to remember telephone and room numbers was a lawyer’s disease you could never shake off, even if you didn’t practise as an attorney or judge.
‘Take a good look,’ Emma told him. ‘Go through it from beginning to end. You won’t find the advertisement there.’
It was true. On page 211 Marc found a puff for an internet bank, not a psychiatric clinic’s slogan.
Learn to forget.
The article at the top of the page, a report on the unutterable cruelty of transporting livestock over long distances, was still there.
Either there were two different editions of the same issue in Constantin’s waiting room. . .
He lowered the magazine and stared at it blankly.
. . .or the edition in Constantin’s waiting room was a fake. But that would mean. . .
He leant against the wall because he felt the room tilting beneath his feet.
‘What about you?’ he asked with his eyes shut. ‘What was your reason for taking part in the experiment?’ He heard Emma clear her throat.
‘It was about a year ago. I received a job offer that didn’t come via my translation agency. It sounded vaguely suspect but involved a great deal of money. Cash I now need to make good my escape.’
‘What was the job?’ Marc opened his eyes.
‘Routine, really. Simultaneous translation on a flight to Barcelona in a pharmaceutical company’s private jet.’
‘A flight during which matters were discussed which you’d have done better not to hear?’
‘Correct.’
‘What were they?’
‘No idea. That’s just my problem, I broke off the experiment too late. I can’t remember.’ She ran her fingers nervously through her hair. ‘I’ve only a patchy recollection of my identity and my life before the amnesia experiment. All I know is what I’ve gleaned from the papers I stole from records before I escaped.’
So that’s how she got hold of her CV. From the clinic.
‘Why did you escape?’ he asked.
‘Because of you.’
‘Me?’
‘I’m sure they explained the methodology of the experiment. In phase one your memories are deleted. In phase two you’re fed with memories of pleasant experiences you never wanted to forget. Last of all, you’re provided with a new identity.’
‘Yes, that I do remember.’ Marc laughed derisively. ‘But how come you know it if your memory has such big gaps in it?’
Emma gripped her Adam’s apple and cleared her throat again. ‘I’ve done some research on the internet since I escaped. There are a number of blog entries describing such amnesia experiments.’ Marc raised his eyebrows incredulously, but she pressed on undaunted. ‘Well, I was just starting on phase two when I overheard a conversation between Professor Bleibtreu and another man.’
‘What was it about?’
‘You.’
‘Me?’
Emma nodded. ‘Bleibtreu was arguin
g fiercely. He’d been asked to treat someone named Marc Lucas, but he was dead against it.’
Bleibtreu didn’t want to treat me? Then why did he pick me up in his car?
‘Who was the other man?’ Marc asked.
‘I’ve no idea. They were behind the frosted-glass door that separated the consulting room from my examination room. A nurse had brought me along too early – they didn’t know I was waiting next door.’
‘What else did they discuss?’
‘They talked about the bogus advertisement that had lured you there. So you could undergo further treatment.’
‘Further treatment?’
‘Yes, but this time it was to be done properly.’
What? What was to be done? And why?
Emma gave him no opportunity to pursue this train of thought. ‘Bleibtreu was startled out of his wits when he saw me,’ she went on. ‘He stepped in front of the other man, quick as a flash, so I never got a chance to see his face. After that I knew there was something fishy going on.’
‘And you escaped?’
‘An opportunity arose the very next day. I stole an overall from one of the cleaning staff.’ Emma looked down at herself with a disparaging expression. ‘I look more like a charwoman than an interpreter in any case. It was child’s play.’
‘But first you took your file?’
She nodded. ‘Yes, from the patients’ records. It was a fortunate coincidence our surnames are so close together. Ludwig, Lucas. My folder still contained my car keys and a parking card, but there was nothing in yours except this application form.’
She pointed to the form she’d taken back from him, which was now lying at the foot of the bed beside a textbook on neuropsychology.
Marc felt the back of his neck. ‘But why? I still don’t understand any of this. Who has designs on my memories? Why are they trying to drive me insane?’
Emma’s eyes widened. She gazed at him expectantly, like a teacher waiting for her pupil to come up with the right answer. ‘That’s just what I’m asking you. What deadly secret – one you can’t remember – are you carrying around with you?’