Triggers

  She’d studied the Zapruder film during training, of course—including the frames not usually shown that depicted JFK’s head blowing open. She remembered her instructor at Rowley saying that it was actually Kennedy’s bad back that had killed him. Oswald’s first, nonfatal shot should have caused the president to pitch forward, out of Oswald’s line of fire from the School Book Depository, but the back brace he wore had kept Kennedy upright, letting Oswald get the subsequent killing shot in.

  She’d always remembered those grainy images, but this—this!—was so much more vivid, with vibrant colors, deafening sound, the stench of gunpowder, and the recoil of the weapon. She’d been prepared to take a bullet for Jerrison—she really had been. But killing someone herself turned out to be a very different matter. She couldn’t bring herself to participate in the discussion going on around her, but she listened.

  “You weren’t just reading his memory,” Singh had just said to Janis Falconi. “You were reading his thoughts.”

  “But why?” Eric Redekop asked. “The intensity of the feelings?”

  Susan looked up in time to see Singh make his trademark shrug. “Maybe. But this raises a new level of concern. Fortunately, Mrs. Falconi wasn’t injured—but she could have been. Indeed, if she’d been operating a motor vehicle, or even just walking down a tall staircase, she could have been killed.”

  Killed.

  Susan thought again about her pistol firing, Latimer’s blood spraying, and bits of his skull flying—and she thought about his eyes. Still tracking, still alive, still thinking for several seconds, like the severed heads of French guillotine victims looking up at their executioners.

  “Sadly,” continued Singh, “we’ve learned something else. I’d been hoping that the daisy chain might be like the wiring of Christmas lights—if one went out, the whole chain would go, and all the memory linkages would break.”

  Susan briefly wondered what experience a Sikh could have had with Christmas decorations. “But that’s not what happened,” she said.

  “No,” replied Singh. “I can still read Dr. Jono, and I take it, Agent Dawson, that you can still read me.”

  Susan concentrated for a moment; Singh had had two hard-boiled eggs for breakfast; he, she suddenly knew, always kept a few on hand in that small refrigerator over there. “Yes.”

  “And Dr. Redekop, can you still access Mrs. Falconi’s memories?” Singh asked.

  Eric tilted his head sideways, then: “Yes. No problem. It’s exactly the same as before.” He turned to Janis, and it looked to Susan as though an idea had just occurred to him. “But you got Latimer’s memories in real time at the end.”

  “Yes,” said Janis.

  “Obviously, being shot was traumatic for Latimer,” Eric said, “but, well—forgive me, Agent Dawson, I don’t know about people in your line of work, but…”

  “But I do,” said Singh, apparently realizing whatever Eric was getting at. “I spend most of my day dealing with people who’ve had to kill—even when it’s their job, even when it’s in the line of duty.” He looked at Susan. “It’s not easy, is it?”

  Susan thought about saying something, but simply shook her head.

  “What’s the normal procedure following such an incident?” Singh asked.

  “Paperwork,” said Susan. “Forms, reports.”

  “And counseling?”

  It was mandatory. “Yes.”

  “Looking at you, Agent Dawson, it’s obvious that killing Latimer was traumatic for you, wasn’t it?”

  Susan drew a deep breath, glanced at each of the others in turn, then blew the air out. “It was horrifying.”

  Singh’s tone was kind. “I’m sure it was. Do you see our point?”

  She shook her head.

  “It’s this,” said Eric. “If you were severely traumatized by the shooting, maybe the person who is linked to you got your memory—your thoughts—in real time, too.”

  RANJIP Singh entered the room first, followed by Eric Redekop and Janis Falconi; Susan Dawson had been bringing up the rear, but she’d been detained by someone calling her over her earpiece.

  “Hello, Kadeem,” said Ranjip.

  “Hey, guru,” said Kadeem.

  “This is Janis Falconi; she’s a nurse here. And this is Dr. Redekop.”

  “Another memory researcher?” asked Kadeem.

  “Actually, I’m a surgeon” said Eric, “but—” He stopped short as Kadeem’s eyes went wide in horror.

  Ranjip wheeled around to see what Kadeem was looking at. It was Agent Dawson, who had just now entered the room. “My God, Sue,” said Kadeem. “My God. You blew that motherfucker away.”

  She nodded but said nothing.

  “Did you just realize that?” asked Ranjip. “Did the memory just come to you?”

  “Yes,” said Kadeem. Ranjip looked at Eric; it had seemed like such an interesting idea, but—

  “Again,” added Kadeem.

  “Again?” said Ranjip at once, looking back to Kadeem.

  “Yes.”

  “When did you first recall this?”

  “While ago.”

  “When?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “What room were you in when you recalled it?”

  “This one.”

  “And what time did you come into this room?”

  “I don’t know. Does it matter?”

  “Yes,” said Ranjip. “Is there anything that can help you pin down when you accessed that memory?”

  “Like what?”

  “Did you look at the clock?” asked Eric.

  Kadeem gestured to encompass the room; there was no clock.

  “What about a phone call?” asked Janis.

  “Yes!” said Kadeem. “Yes, now you mention it, it was just after I called Kristah.” He pulled out his phone, and ran his fingertip along the touch screen. “The call lasted three minutes twenty seconds and”—another touch—“it began at 12:03.”

  Ranjip frowned. “And how long after that did the memory of—of what Agent Dawson did—hit you?”

  “Couple of minutes.”

  “It can’t be just a couple of minutes,” said Eric, looking at Janis. “Not unless we’re dealing with precognition now.”

  “Could it be longer than that?” asked Ranjip. “Ten minutes, say?”

  “Sure,” said Kadeem.

  “Or twenty?”

  “Maybe. I guess.”

  “Thirty?”

  “Not that long, man.”

  “How did the memory begin?” asked Ranjip.

  “What?”

  Ranjip frowned. He knew the dangers of priming recollections, but he needed to get to the bottom of this. “What’s the first thing you remember? Was it Agent Dawson bursting into the room? Her confronting that man who was holding the hostage? Her attempts to talk him out of what he was going to do?”

  Kadeem shook his head. “I don’t remember any of that—or, I didn’t at the time; I do now, now you mention it.” He looked sympathetically at Susan. “You did your best, Sue; it’s not your fault.”

  “But what about the first time?” asked Ranjip. “What popped into your mind initially?”

  Kadeem actually shuddered. “Agent Dawson pulling the trigger.”

  Eric and Ranjip exchanged glances. “There it is,” said Ranjip. “Simultaneity—minds linked in real time during a moment of crisis.”

  “But this whole thing began with a moment of crisis,” Eric said. “The electromagnetic pulse when the White House was destroyed. What will happen if there’s another crisis that affects all of us at the same time?”

  Ranjip shrugged. “That’s a very good question.”

  CHAPTER 37

  SUSAN Dawson and Mark Griffin enlisted three LT psychologists to brief the affected people about the dangerous possibility that they might experience direct real-time linkages during moments of crisis, perhaps with debilitating effects. The psychologists spoke face-to-face to the people still in the hospital and phoned the
ones who had left.

  Meanwhile, Ranjip Singh ordered an MRI scan of nurse Janis Falconi but was told there was nothing unusual about her brain; no matter how vivid the pain had been when she’d tapped into Josh Latimer’s mind at the moment of his death, there didn’t seem to have been any gross permanent change.

  He then got Eric Redekop into a second MRI scanner and looked to see if there was any interesting activity in Janis’s brain while he was recalling her memories. It would have been fascinating if corresponding spots in, say, their right temporal lobes had lit up at the same time—but nothing like that happened. That just added fuel to the notion that the linkages were indeed based on quantum entanglement, a realm beyond the resolution of the brain scanners.

  He also ordered an MRI of Kadeem Adams. The private had been scanned just before undergoing Ranjip’s procedure. The aborted attempt at memory-erasing shouldn’t have altered Kadeem’s brain in any way an MRI scanner could see, but Ranjip had wanted to check if there was any structural change that could be attributed to the mind linkings. Again, the results were negative; his earlier MRI and the new one showed no appreciable difference.

  But, still, something had changed.

  As Kadeem was pulled out of the MRI tunnel, he looked up at Ranjip and the MRI technician, and said, “Sue’s with Prospector.”

  Ranjip tilted his head slightly; he’d never heard Kadeem refer to the president by his code name before. “Oh?”

  “She’s with Prospector right now,” said Kadeem.

  “Probably,” said Ranjip.

  “I see it,” said Kadeem. “Him. His room. I see it, right now.”

  “Instead of me?” asked Ranjip.

  “No, I see you, too, guru. You’re more vivid, but I see…I’m seeing what she’s seeing, too. Like a faint double exposure, or an afterimage, or something.”

  “Superimposed over your vision?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How long has this been going on?”

  “I don’t know. Not long. It’s faint, like I said. Couldn’t make it out in the MRI machine, but here, lying on my back, looking up at the ceiling—it’s a plain white roof, see?” He pointed; Ranjip glanced up and confirmed it. “So, my own vision’s not showing much, and I can—damn, it’s strange—I can see what she’s seeing, faint, ghostlike, but clear.”

  “Memories don’t contain a lot of visual information,” Ranjip said.

  “Ain’t no memory, guru. I can jump around in her memories. What’d she have for dinner last night? Bunless hamburger, down in the cafeteria here. What’d she have for lunch? Protein bar. Where’d she go after dinner? Woman’s room, off the lobby—had something in her eye, took a bit to get it out. Memories I can get in any order, and from any time. This is playing out like a movie—I can’t skip ahead, or go back, or anything.”

  “And it’s from her point of view? You’re sure?”

  “Yeah. Prospector just asked, ‘Any update on the matter we were discussing earlier?’”

  “You can hear what she’s hearing, too?”

  “If it’s quiet around me. Volume’s really low—like, you know, if you left your iPod on but have taken off the earbuds. You hear that faint music, and you think, damn, where that be coming from? It’s like that. We’re talking now—you and me—so I can’t make it out, and when I look at you, or over at all that equipment over there, the background is too messy and complex for me to really see what she be seeing, but if I really concentrate, it’s there.”

  The MRI technician—a petite white woman with bright red hair—spoke. “Like floaters, sort of?”

  Kadeem frowned. “What?”

  “Lots of people have them,” said the technician. “Bits of junk in the vitreous humor of the eye; you see them when looking at a clear blue sky, or a plain sheet of paper, or whatever, but can’t make them out the rest of the time.”

  “Yeah,” said Kadeem. “Kinda like that. But way more detailed.” He looked up at the blank ceiling again. “I can see Prospector right now—like he’s looking right at me—and he doesn’t have that breathing thing in his nose anymore.”

  “Are you just getting her sensory stream,” asked Ranjip, “or can you also read Agent Dawson’s thoughts?”

  “Hard to say. There are some words, and they ain’t Prospector’s. But I don’t hear them—and they’re not a steady stream. But, yeah, must be Sue. ‘Check with Darryl…’ ‘…something something keycard access.’ Fragments, but I hear them.”

  “Give me a moment,” Ranjip said. There was a gurney nearby. He stretched out on it, reflecting, not for the first time, that it was nice to have a turban that doubled as a portable pillow. He looked up at the same blank ceiling Kadeem had been staring at and tried to discern any faint images of Lucius Jono’s life—not memories of the redheaded surgeon but the sights that Jono himself might currently be seeing. He also strained to listen for any sounds Jono might be hearing. Of course, it was possible that Jono was asleep, even though it was now well past noon, but…

  Nothing. Nothing at all. Ranjip got off the gurney.

  “Power nap, guru?” asked Kadeem.

  “Just trying to see if I was linked in the same way, but I’m not. Still, let’s check our facts.” He pulled out his BlackBerry and a small Bluetooth earpiece for it, then walked across the room, far enough away that Kadeem couldn’t possibly hear what the earpiece was conveying. Then he placed a call. “Agent Dawson. It’s Ranjip. Can you talk?”

  “Yes.”

  “You are with President Jerrison?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “Tell me: does he still have a respirator on?”

  “No, they removed that about an hour ago.”

  Ranjip felt his heart pounding. Still, it didn’t prove anything other than that Kadeem had Agent Dawson’s memories, as before. “I need your help to conduct an experiment.”

  “Sure,” Susan said. “Two seconds.” He heard her begging President Jerrison’s indulgence. Ranjip happened to be looking over at Kadeem when he heard Jerrison say, “I’m not going anywhere,” and he saw Kadeem smile in amusement—but was it at the president’s quip or something else?

  When Susan was back, Ranjip spoke loudly so Kadeem could hear from across the room. “Private Adams?”

  “Yo.”

  “I’m going to ask Agent Dawson to think of a series of numbers from one to ten. As she thinks of them, please hold up the right number of fingers, okay?”

  Kadeem nodded.

  “All right, Agent Dawson, you heard what I said. Give me a series of numbers, from one to ten. Not any sequence you know by heart, like your social security number, but random numbers, one per second. Just whisper them to me, starting…now.”

  “Four,” said Susan, and Kadeem held up his left hand with the fingers splayed and the thumb tucked against his palm.

  “Two,” said Susan, and Kadeem made a peace sign.

  “Seven,” she said; he kept the peace sign up and added a full hand with all five fingers.

  “Six.” Kadeem made the polite choice about which finger to drop from the peace sign.

  “Ten.” Both hands, all fingers splayed, like a child showing he’d successfully washed.

  “Amazing,” said Ranjip.

  “What?” asked Susan.

  “That real-time link that Private Adams had with you at the moment you shot Latimer? It’s persisting. He can still read your thoughts.”

  “Oh, shit,” Susan said.

  And, from across the room, Kadeem added, “She’s wondering what’ll happen if Bessie Stilwell ends up being able to do the same thing with Prospector.”

  DORA Hennessey’s internal clock wasn’t adjusting properly to the five-hour time-zone change between London and Washington: although it was only 3:00 P.M. here, it was already 8:00 P.M. back home. And it hadn’t helped that they’d made an incision in her side on Friday morning; the stitches itched. Still, she didn’t like just lying in the hospital bed, and so instead was sitting in a chair by the w
indow, looking out at the November afternoon.

  Dora and her father each had a private room, which was all to the good. She’d be ready to go to sleep in a few hours; the last thing she needed was a roommate who’d want to watch television in the evening.

  Dora could read the memories of Ann January, a nurse who had been part of the team that had saved the president. She still wasn’t happy about having her own surgery postponed to accommodate him, but she did know, because Ann knew it, just how close they’d come to losing Jerrison, and although her father was thinking of suing, she couldn’t bring herself to contemplate that.

  There was a knock on her door. “Yes?” she called.

  The door swung inward revealing Dr. Mark Griffin. She’d met him on Friday; he’d come to see her after she woke up from the anesthetic to explain why the surgery had been halted. “Hello, Dora,” he said. “May I come in?”

  “Sure.”

  There was another chair in the room, a smaller one. He turned it around, and straddled it, facing her, his arms folded across the top of its back. “Dora,” he said, “I’m so sorry, but I’ve got some bad news.”

  “You’re not postponing the transplant again,” she said. Did he have any idea how nerve-racking all this was for her?

  “There won’t be a transplant.”

  “Why not? The tissue match was perfect.”

  Griffin took a deep breath. “Dora, your father is dead.”

  “What?”

  “I’m so, so sorry.”

  “Dead?”

  “Yes.”

  She was quiet for a time, then: “If this is because you postponed giving him my kidney—”

  “It’s not that. It’s not that at all. Dora, your father tried to kill someone this afternoon—and he was shot by a federal agent.”

  She’d heard a sound earlier, but—God—she’d thought it had been a car backfiring.

  “What…what happens now?”

  “One of our surgeons will have a look at your incision; we’d planned to reopen it, of course, so the closure was done to accommodate that. We’ll get you fixed up.”

  Her head was spinning. “I—I don’t know if I can take all this,” she said.