Lincoln Child - The Forgotten Room

From above, he heard — or thought he heard — the sound of quiet weeping.

Logan stared up at the decorative circle that marked the elevator’s base. Then he cleared his throat. “Dr. Benedict?” he called out. “You can come down now.”

The tall casement windows of the director’s office were flooded with sunlight. Beyond the leaded glass, the impossibly green lawn sloped slowly down toward the rocky coast and the Atlantic — remarkably calm today, as if penitent for the angry histrionics it had so recently displayed. People in Windbreakers and light jackets walked in groups of ones and twos along the manicured paths — now rather disheveled — and a painter had set up her easel down near the shoreline. Here and there, groundskeepers and maintenance workers were picking up twigs and other debris and, in general, repairing the damage done by Hurricane Barbara. Despite the brilliant sunshine and the tranquility of the scene, there was something in the very sharpness of the azure sky, the way the people bent instinctively forward into the occasional puffs of wind, that spoke of winter.

Jeremy Logan walked across the office carpet, favoring his right leg slightly, and took a seat in one of the chairs across from Olafson’s desk.

The director, who’d been on the phone, hung up and nodded. “How’s the leg?”

“Improving, thank you.”

For a moment, the two sat in silence. So much had been said over the last few days — so much done — that now it seemed speech was almost superfluous.

“You’re all packed?” Olafson said.

“Everything’s in the Lotus.”

“Then I guess there’s nothing left but to say thank you.” Olafson hesitated. “That sounded a little facile. I didn’t mean it to be. Jeremy, it’s not too much to say that you’ve saved Lux from itself — and in so doing, I think you may have saved the world from a very serious situation, as well.”

“Saved the world,” Logan repeated, tasting the words as he spoke. “I like the sound of that. Then perhaps you wouldn’t object if I doubled my fee?”

Olafson smiled. “That would be most objectionable.”

Another silence settled over the room while Olafson’s face took on a serious cast. “It seems almost unbelievable, you know. When I first returned after the hurricane, saw you staggering out of the West Wing, Laura Benedict huddled under your arm — it was like something out of a nightmare.”

“How is she doing?” Logan asked.

“She’s responding to stimuli. The doctors liken it to an extreme nervous shock. They predict a full recovery, although it may take six to eight months. Her short-term memory, however, is irretrievably gone.”

“So she did get a significant dose of ultrasound,” Logan said. “That’s a shame.”

“It was unavoidable. In any case, our debriefing is long over, and there’s no need to revisit it. You did what you had to do.”

“I suppose. Still, perhaps the memory loss will prove a blessing in the end.” Logan had been glancing out the windows, not looking at anything in particular. Now he looked back at the director. “What about the other three, from Ironhand?”

Olafson’s face became clouded, and he glanced down at a sheet of paper on his desk. “Not good. One is ‘floridly psychotic — presenting with extreme homicidal paranoia, delusions, ungovernable mania.’ Another is in a state that the evaluators in the psych ward at Newport Hospital, frankly, have never seen before. There is no analogue for it in the DSM-5 . One of the doctors characterized it” — he quoted again from the sheet — “ ‘as if the action potential of the serotonin receptors are always in transmission mode.’ Basically, the man’s brain is being flooded by sensory signals — grotesquely enhanced, distorted, and unavoidable — that are simply too overwhelming and violent to be processed. They have no idea how to treat him except to keep him, for the time being, in a medically induced coma.”

“Long-term prognosis?”

“They wouldn’t say. But reading between the lines, it would appear the condition, barring some miracle, could be irreversible.”

Logan took this in for a moment. “And the third?”

“ ‘Severe catatonic disorder, marked by stupor and rigidity.’ Again, the doctors are at a loss for an explanation, because CT scans show none of the damage to the limbic system, basal ganglia, or frontal cortex that would normally explain catatonic schizophrenia.”

Logan let out a deep sigh. Slowly, he returned his gaze to the window.

“Fortunes of war, Jeremy,” Olafson said in a low voice. “These were bad, bad men. They were responsible — directly or indirectly — for Will Strachey’s death.”

“And Pam Flood’s,” Logan added grimly.

“Yes. If you hadn’t acted, thousands — tens of thousands, perhaps — might soon be living under threat of similar fates.”

“I know.” After a moment, Logan turned his gaze back toward the director. “And what of that? Has the threat been neutralized?”

“In the aftermath of the storm, I had a few well-picked men, under the direction of Albright, remove everything from the room. They also dismantled the central machine — although you’d already done a pretty good job on it — and had it destroyed in the ovens of a foundry in Wakefield.”

“What about Benedict’s work?”

“Again with Albright’s help, our security staff performed an interdiction. We cleaned out her office, her basement lab, her private quarters. Burned everything. With the help of the local authorities, we also emptied her family home in Providence, which she’d inherited — that was where we found most of the notes and files, actually.”

“Local authorities?” Logan repeated.

“There aren’t many large cities up and down the New England coast that don’t owe Lux at least one favor.” Olafson paused. “We’ve also taken the precaution of destroying all other paperwork in our own archives relating to Project Sin. And I’m not speaking merely of those files in my safe — I’m talking about the early work that led up to the project’s formation in the late 1920s. Anything and everything, no matter how indirect or remotely linked.” He glanced at Logan. “I hope you agree.”

“Enthusiastically. But what about Ironhand?”

Olafson’s expression clouded again. “We’re in discreet conversation with the Feds. We’ve destroyed all evidence we can get our hands on, done all we can to put a protective bubble around anything Benedict might have accomplished.” He paused. “What do you think?”

“I think that if she had enough material to continue her work off campus, say in the Ironhand labs, she wouldn’t have acted with such desperation — neutralized Strachey, tried to kill me, done her utmost to buy the time necessary to reduce the footprint of the weapon, get it off premises.” He shook his head slowly. “No — if you’ve destroyed all the equipment and burned all the paperwork, Ironhand won’t have enough to restart her work.”

“Not on their own, perhaps,” Olafson replied. “But that won’t stop them from trying. I’d be lying if I said they’ll go away easily.”

This observation hung in the air for a moment. At last, Logan rose to his feet. Olafson did the same.

“Can I walk you to your car?” the director asked.

“Thanks, but I’ve got one final errand to take care of before I leave.”

“In that case, I’ll say good-bye.” Olafson shook his hand warmly. “We owe you more than we can repay. If I can ever do anything personally, as director of Lux, just let me know.”

Logan thought for a moment. “There is one thing.”

“Name it.”

“The next time I come here to undertake some open-ended research project, make sure Roger Carbon is on extended sabbatical, far away from Lux.”