Seth’s head swam. He’d long lived in northern California; he’d felt the ground literally shift beneath his feet before—but this was more disorienting, more terrifying: the whole world shifting, changing, crumbling. His heart pounded, every beat a knife thrust.
“They’re relocating most of the White House staff to a facility in Virginia, I’m told,” said Griffin. Mount Weather was an underground city there, built during the Cold War; there were contingency plans for running most of the executive branch from it.
“Take me…there,” said Seth.
“Not yet, sir. It’s not safe to move you. But your chief of staff will be at the Virginia facility soon. He can be your eyes and ears there; we’ll get you a secure line to him.” A pause. “Mr. President, how do you feel?”
Seth closed his eyes; everything went pink as the overhead light filtered through his eyelids. He tried to breathe, tried to hold on to his sanity, tried not to let go—not to let go again. At last, he managed to speak. “Were…were my…injuries…life-threatening?”
“Yes, sir, to be honest. We almost lost you on the operating table.”
Seth forced his eyes open. To one side, he saw Susan Dawson and another Secret Service agent whose name he didn’t know. He felt weak, still parched, emotional agony layered atop all the physical pain. “Did you…open my chest?”
“Yes, sir, we did.”
“Did my heart stop?”
“Sir, yes. For a time.”
“They say…if you’re about to die…your life…flashes in front of your eyes.”
Griffin, still looming over him, nodded. “I’ve heard that, sir, yes.”
Seth was silent for a few moments, trying to sort it all out, trying to decide if he wanted to confide in this man—but it had been the damnedest thing. “And, well,” he said at last, “something like that happened to me.”
Griffin’s tone was neutral. “Oh?”
“Yes. Except…” He looked at the doctor for a moment, then turned his head toward the windows. “Except it wasn’t my life that I saw.”
“What do you mean, sir?”
“Someone else’s memories,” said the president. “Not mine.”
Griffin said nothing.
“You don’t believe me,” Seth said, with effort.
“All sorts of weird things can happen when the brain is starved for oxygen, Mr. President,” Griffin said.
Seth briefly closed his eyes—but the images were still there. “That’s…not it. I…have someone else’s…memories.”
Griffin was quiet for a moment, then said, “Well, you’re in luck, sir. As it happens, we’ve got one of the world’s top memory experts here—a fellow from Canada. I can ask him—”
Griffin’s BlackBerry must have vibrated because he fished it out and looked at the caller ID. “Speak of the devil,” he said to Jerrison, then into the phone: “Yes, Professor Singh? Um, yes, yes. Wait.” He lowered the handset and turned to Susan Dawson. “Is your middle name Marie?”
Susan’s eyebrows went up. “Yes.”
“Yes, that’s right,” Griffin said into the phone. “What? Um, okay. Sure, I guess. I’ll tell her. Bye.”
Griffin put the BlackBerry away and turned to face Susan. “Our resident memory expert would like to speak to you up in his office.”
CHAPTER 8
ERIC Redekop continued down the hospital corridor, accompanied by Dr. Jurgen Sturgess. They were both still a bit rattled from their encounter with the distraught woman named Nikki, and Eric was exhausted from the hours of performing surgery on the president. Sturgess soon headed off in another direction, leaving Eric walking alone. In the middle of the corridor was the nurses’ station, and he smiled as he saw Janis Falconi there. She was thirty-two, and she was a knockout: leggy, stacked, with long straight platinum blonde hair and icy blue eyes.
He normally saw her only in her nurse’s uniform, but he’d run into her on the street once during the summer when she’d been wearing a tank top, and he’d been surprised to discover she had a large, intricate tattoo of a striped tiger stretching its way up her left arm onto her shoulder. As a doctor, Eric had an instinctive dislike for tattoos, but this one had been so elaborate, with such subtle shading and vibrant coloring, he’d had to admire it; he admired it even more when Janis told him that she herself had done the original art it had been made from.
Of course, right now, he could see no sign of the tattoo as he approached, but his memories of her on that summer day, arms and shoulders exposed, came to the fore, and—
And—ouch!
Getting a tattoo hurt!
And getting one as elaborate as Janis’s really hurt.
Eric found himself looking for a way to steady himself. An empty gurney had been pushed against the corridor wall next to him; he grabbed one of its tubular metal railings, and—
And he couldn’t take his eyes off Janis.
She hadn’t looked up yet, hadn’t noticed him, but—
But he found himself reliving that summer’s day—that August day, standing outside Filomena, a restaurant he’d never heard of or even noticed, he was sure, but he knew that was its name.
His grip on the tubular railing tightened.
Cute.
Yes, yes, she was—very. But it wasn’t just the word “cute” that had popped into Eric’s brain. No, no, no, there was a pronoun in front of it.
He’s cute.
And, although Eric had thought this before about some babies or toddlers, this wasn’t a reference to a tyke with a teddy bear. It was about a man, a grown man. And yet Eric was, as he himself liked to say, flamingly heterosexual. But this thought was about an adult man with a bald pate and a graying beard, and—
Oh!
It was a thought about himself.
Yes, he kept his beard neat with a barber’s electric razor, and, sure, he did try to hit the gym a couple of times a week, buthe was no narcissist; he didn’t think of himself as cute. In fact, if anything, he thought he was kind of funny-looking with beady eyes and a nose so short it might fairly be called “pug.”
And, hey, he’s checking me out.
Eric was so discombobulated that he was about to turn on his heel and head back the other way when Janis looked up and smiled a huge, radiant smile at him, and—
It’s her, he realized. It’s what she thought about me, back on that August day, but—
But how?
The pain of the tattoo.
A house—small, cramped.
A dachshund waddling along.
Pink cross-country skis.
He continued walking toward her, drawn to her.
He knew how much she made. Knew her birth date. Knew all kinds of things.
“Hello, Jan…iss.” He paused, having to force the second syllable out, it coming to him in a flash that only people at work ever called her “Janis.” Everyone else in her life called her just “Jan.”
“Dr. Redekop,” she said. “Good to see you.”
His eyes dropped—not to her breasts, although they were certainly noteworthy, but to her shoulder; he was thinking of the tattoo, and—
And the bruise…
Not bruising from having the tattoo made, but—
My God!
But bruising from…from yesterday.
She saw where his gaze had gone, and she turned a little, as if to hide her upper arm from his sight, but then she must have realized that her nurse’s smock covered it completely, and yet, when she turned back to him, it was a long moment before she met his eyes again.
“Um,” he said, “you look well.” And as soon as the words were out, he realized it was an odd thing to say, but—
But his mind was filling now with thoughts that—God!—that must be hers.
He’d never believed in telepathy, or mind reading, or any of that garbage. Jesus!
But, no, wait. It wasn’t that; not quite. She was looking at him quizzically now, and he had no idea what she was currently thinking. But as soon as he tho
ught about the day he’d run into her in the tank top, memories of that came to him—from her point of view.
And other things kept coming to him, too—information about patients in this wing; details about some online game called EVE; a bit from The Colbert Report, which he never watched; and—yes, yes—more thoughts, more memories, about him. About the first time they’d met. He didn’t remember the specific day, but she did; it was her first day on the new job here, nine months ago. It had been—ah, yes, now that he thought about it, he did remember…or she did. All the decorations: it had been Valentine’s Day.
And she’d thought, after meeting him, of this bald, thin man, “Slap a British accent on him, and he’s everything I’ve been fantasizing about since I was fifteen.” She liked older men. She liked Patrick Stewart and Sean Connery and—
And Eric Redekop.
He’d always liked Janis, but he’d had no idea—none!—that she felt that way about him, and…
And she was speaking, he realized, and he’d been so lost in thought he hadn’t heard what she’d said. “Sorry. Um, could you repeat that?”
She gave him another quizzical look, then: “I said, that was quite a surprise when the power went off, wasn’t it? I didn’t think that could happen here.”
“Oh, yeah. Yes, it was.” He was only about three feet away from her now, and he could see that her makeup was perfect—a little eyeliner, a little blue eye shadow—and her eyebrows had been recently and expertly plucked; in fact, he had a flash of seeing herself as she’d leaned toward a bathroom mirror, and he recalled a constellation of pain-points as she’d done the deed.
But thinking about her eyes brought forth other memories—memories of her crying—crying as someone screamed profanity at her. It was so shocking, so wrong, that Eric instinctively stepped backward.
“Janis,” he said, this time getting the full name out without hesitation—although he realized at once that it wasn’t the full name; her full name actually was Janis Louise Falconi, and Falconi was her married name; her maiden name was Amundsen, and—
And he had to finish the sentence he’d begun! “Janis, um, are you okay?”
“As well as can be expected,” she said. “Why do you ask?”
“No reason,” he replied, but he found himself backing further away.
CHAPTER 9
SUSAN Dawson had an odd feeling as she came into the room on the third floor, and it took her a moment to identify it; it was something she’d heard of but never experienced. The incongruity of having déjà vu for the first time made her head spin.
And it was indeed that: this room, this little office tucked away inside a hospital she hadn’t visited before, seemed familiar. It wasn’t just that many institutional offices looked alike—neutral colors, venetian blinds, tiled floors, fluorescent lights. No, there was more to it. The desk, the top of which seemed to be made of pine and was a distinctive kidney shape, looked…
She shook her head slightly, but…
But there was no denying it: it looked exactly as she remembered it.
And yet she’d never seen it before. She couldn’t have.
Oh. Maybe she’d seen one like it in the IKEA catalog; they sold lots of stuff with pine veneers. But the silver-gray roller chair also looked familiar—as did the blue tennis racquet leaning against the wall, and the trophy, there. She knew what it was for, even though she couldn’t read the engraving on it from this distance: it was the top prize from the recent LT tennis tournament.
And the wide bookcase, with its dark green shelves and rows of journals with identical spines, somehow were familiar, too. A memory came to her, and this one she did recognize as her own: her anger many years ago when National Geographic had done a special issue on oceans and had given the magazine a blue cover and spine instead of the traditional yellow one, breaking up the lovely set she’d been collecting ever since her grandfather had started sending her gift subscriptions when she was a little girl. And here, in this office, one of the journal volumes had a green spine instead of the wine-colored ones all the others had.
She looked at the wall. On it were three diplomas, including one from McGill University; she was pleased with herself for knowing that it was in Montreal. There was also a framed photograph of a brown-skinned woman and three similarly complexioned children, and—
And the woman’s name was Devi, and the children were Harpreet, Amneet, and Gursiman.
But she’d never met them before. She was sure of that. And yet—
And yet memories of them were pouring into her consciousness. Birthday parties, vacations, Harpreet getting in trouble at school for swearing, and—
“Are you Agent Dawson?” The voice was richly accented.
She spun on her heel and found herself facing a Sikh wearing a jade green turban and a pale blue lab coat. “Ranjip,” she said, the name blurting out of her.
His brown eyes narrowed slightly. “Have we met?” He looked to be perhaps fifty; his beard had wisps of gray in it.
“Um,” said Susan, and “ah,” and then, at last, “no—no, I don’t think so. But…but you are Ranjip Singh, right?”
The man smiled, and Susan belatedly realized that he was quite handsome. “As my son would say—”
“‘That’s my name; don’t wear it out.’” The words had come to Susan in a flash. She found her hand going to her mouth, startled. “I, um—he does say that, doesn’t he?”
Singh smiled again, his friendly eyes crinkling. “So do lots of kids his age. He also likes the one about the chicken going halfway across the road to—”
“To lay it on the line,” said Susan. Her heart was pounding. “What in hell is going on?” She found herself taking a half step backward. “I don’t know you. I don’t know your son. I’ve never been in this room before.”
Singh nodded and gestured at the office’s single chair—the familiar and yet unfamiliar silver-gray roller. “Won’t you have a seat?”
She normally would have stayed standing—it was a stronger position. But she was feeling unsteady, so she took him up on his offer. For his part, Singh leaned against the dark brown bookcase with the green shelves. “As you say,” he said “something is going on. And I do fear it may be my fault.”
Susan felt her eyebrows going up. “You were doing an experiment here,” she said. “Well, not here; down the corridor, in room, um, 324. It’s—damn, it’s too technical; I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I haven’t said anything.”
Susan stopped. “No, you haven’t. What in hell is happening?”
Singh blew out air. “I’d initially thought just my patient and I had been affected, but I see you have been affected, too. I didn’t anticipate that. And it seems you can access my memories?”
“‘Abso-freakin’-lootely,’ as your son would say.” She paused for a second. “God, it’s strange.” And then it hit her. “So, can you read my memories?”
“No,” said Singh. “Not me. My patient—he’s accessing your memories. That’s how I knew you were here with Dr. Griffin; he told me.”
“What about you? Are you…how did you put it? Are you accessing someone?”
“Yes. I know his name, but it’s no one I’ve ever met.”
“Is it someone here at the hospital?”
“Yes. A surgeon named Lucius Jono.”
“But—but how did this happen?” Susan asked.
“I was doing an experiment, attempting to modify a young man’s memories. The lights went off—which should never happen in a hospital—then there was a power surge of some sort.”
“More than that,” said Susan. “There was an electromagnetic pulse.”
“Ah,” said Singh. “Perhaps that explains it. In any event, this seems to be the result.”
Susan looked around, getting her bearings. “Room 324 is just down this hall, isn’t it? I was right next door, in the observation gallery above one of the operating rooms. I was maybe a dozen feet from you when the lights
went off while you were doing your experiment.”
“Yes,” said Singh. “So I guess people within a certain radius were affected.”
Susan felt her eyes go wide. “But the president—God! The president was even closer, but down below—maybe eight or ten feet down, on the second floor.”
Ranjip nodded solemnly. “Yes. I know all about the operation—because Dr. Jono, the person I’m linked to, was there; he was one of the people assisting in the procedure.”
“Shit! If someone’s reading the president’s memories—Christ, national security goes right out the window.” Susan ran out the door and down the corridor to the third-floor nurses’ station. She whipped out her ID. “Susan Dawson, Secret Service. I want this building locked down immediately. No one gets in or out.”
The stocky nurse looked flabbergasted. “I—I don’t have the authority…”
“Then get me Dr. Griffin—stat!”
The nurse scooped up a telephone handset.
Susan caught a movement out of the corner of her eye. She wheeled. A broad-shouldered white man was walking briskly toward the elevator. “Freeze!” she shouted.
The man had doubtless heard what Susan had said to the nurse, but now was pretending not to hear. He reached the elevator station and pressed the down button.
“I said freeze!” Susan snapped. “Secret Service!” She unholstered her SIG Sauer P229.
The man turned; he was perhaps thirty-five, with light brown hair and round rimless glasses, and was wearing a blue business suit. “I’m just a visitor here,” he said.
“No one is leaving,” Susan said.
The man at the elevators spread his arms. “Please. I’ve got a crucial meeting across town. I have to be there.”