Harlan Coben - Long Lost

The busty waitress came over wearing a neckline that plunged to somewhere just above her knee. “Want some champagne?”

“That’s not champagne,” Berleand said to her.

“Huh?”

“It’s from California.”

“So?”

“Champagne can only be French. You see, Champagne is a place, not merely a beverage. That bottle in your hand is what those who lack taste buds dub ‘sparkling wine.’ ”

She rolled her eyes. “Want some sparkling wine?”

“My dear, that stuff shouldn’t be used as a gargle for a dog.” He held up his empty glass. “Please get me another tremendously watered-down whiskey.” He turned to me. “Myron?”

I didn’t think they would have Yoo-hoo here. “Diet Coke.” When she sauntered away, I said, “So what’s going on?”

“As far as my people go, the case is over. Rick Collins stumbled across a terrorist plot. He was murdered in Paris by the terrorists. They killed two more people connected with Collins in London-before being killed themselves. By you, no less.”

“I didn’t see my name in any of the papers.”

“Were you looking for credit?”

“Hardly. But I do wonder why they kept my name out.”

“Think about it.”

The waitress came back. “Korbel calls it champagne, Mr. Smarty Pants. And they’re from California.”

“Korbel should call it septic-tank droppings. That would be closer to the truth.”

She dropped our drinks down and went away.

“Government forces aren’t trying to hog the credit,” he said. “There are two reasons to leave your name out. First off, your safety. From what I understand, Mohammad Matar made it personal with you. You took out one of his men in Paris. He wanted to make you watch Karen Tower and Terese Collins die-before killing you. If it somehow gets out that you killed Dr. Death, there are people who will seek retribution on you and your family.” Berleand smiled at the dancer and held his palm out toward me. “Do you have any singles?”

I dug into my wallet. “And the second reason?”

“If you weren’t there-if you weren’t at the scene of the killings in London-then the government doesn’t have to explain where you’ve been for the past two-plus weeks.”

The antsy feeling came back. I shook my leg, looked around, wanted to get up. Berleand just watched me.

I said, “Do you know where I’ve been?”

“I have an idea, yes. So do you.”

I shook my head. “I don’t.”

“You have absolutely no memory of the past two weeks?”

I said nothing. My chest tightened. I found it hard to catch my breath. I grabbed my Diet Coke and started taking little sips.

“You’re shaking,” he said.

“So?”

“Last night. Did you have bad dreams? Nightmares?”

“Of course. I was in a hospital. Why?”

“Do you know what twilight sleep is?”

I thought about it. “Doesn’t it have something to do with pregnancy?”

“Childbirth actually. It was quite popular in the fifties and sixties. The theory was, why should a mother have to suffer through the horrible pain of childbirth? So they would give the mother a combination of morphine and scopolamine. In some cases it would knock the mother out. Other times-the end goal-the morphine would lessen the pain while the combination would make it so she didn’t remember. Medical amnesia-or twilight sleep. The practice was stopped because, one, the babies would often come out in something of a drug stupor, and two, there was the whole experience-the-moment movement. I don’t get that second one exactly, but I’m not a woman.”

“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?”