Tom Cain - No survivors

"That is being dealt with…"

Zhukovskaya consulted her watch.

"Correction. It has just been dealt with."

Ten minutes on the treadmill and already Carver was exhausted. Dr. Geisel was sympathetic, too, which made it even worse.

"Don't worry-this is normal," he said, standing beside the apparatus, as calm and immaculate as ever. "You have been sick for many months. You cannot expect to be fit right away. The main thing is, you are making great progress."

Carver just about managed to speak between gasps for breath.

"How much longer before I'm ready to be discharged? I've got to find out what happened to her."

"I understand, Mr. Carver, but you must appreciate that you are a long way from being cured. When you were admitted, you had suffered a very serious psychological trauma, a rift cutting you off from your own identity. Normally, in a case such as this, I would expect an additional trauma, such as Miss Petrova's departure, to have set you back, maybe worse than ever. And yet now, Mr. Carver, it is as if the shock has dislodged some kind of obstacle. The boulder has rolled away, the cave is open, your consciousness is free. Really, it is a kind of psychic resurrection."

"Well, if I'm so much better," Carver wheezed, "why won't you let me out?"

"Because nothing in psychology is ever that simple. Yes, you are recovering your long-term memory, but chaotically, randomly, and traumatically. Your prognosis is still unclear. You might, indeed, continue this remarkable progress. But, equally likely, the shock of these recovered memories could push you back over the edge, even deeper than ever before."

"So when is it safe for me to leave?"

"When the odds are not so equal. Now enjoy the rest of your work-out. I strongly recommend physical fitness as an aid to your mental recovery."

When Geisel had gone, Carver stepped off the treadmill. His thighs were quivering, his legs barely able to support him as he walked across to the weight machines. He managed forty pounds on the lat pull-down and sixty on the bench press, low reps and feeble weights on the leg extensions and curls, sit-ups in sets of six.

Carver could now remember when he possessed the extreme levels of fitness required of an officer in the Special Boat Service. For him to be struggling with a routine like this was like a professional soccer player getting beaten in a kids' scrimmage. But just to sweat, to feel the burn, and to keep driving himself onward, made him feel alive again.

He accepted that his mind was still balanced on a knife edge between recovery and relapse, just as Geisel had warned. He had a feeling some of his mental doors would stay firmly locked for a while yet. But after the terrible nonexistence of the past few months, he refused to countenance the prospect of failure.

"Come on," he panted, stepping back onto the treadmill. "Go faster."

And so he ran, and the memory came to him of another time he had run, a dash down a street in Geneva, late one night. In his mind's eye he saw a white van, painted with the logo of the Swisscom telephone company. He could not see the man at the wheel, but he knew who he was: Kursk, one of the Russians. Carver felt his stomach tighten with tension at the memory of that name. He knew, too, who had been in the back of that van. Alix had been Kursk's prisoner. The Russian had driven her away. But Carver had gone after her, though he still could not recall precisely what had happened.

He knew one thing, though. He'd got her back. How else could she have been sitting by his bedside for all those months?

With his awakening had come a profound conviction of his love for her, and hers for him. Carver was certain that Alix would never willingly have left him without even saying good-bye. Wherever she had gone, it had not been her choice. He would not rest until he had found her and made her his again.

One of the gymnasium staff was walking toward the treadmill, a look of concern on his face as he ran his eyes over Carver's scarlet face, his heaving chest, and his pale-gray T-shirt, darkened with puddles of sweat under his armpits and down the small of his back.

"Maybe you should stop now," he said.

"No," said Carver. "I want to keep running."

Across town a man was steeling himself to make a difficult call. He was way over six feet tall and beanpole-thin. His milk-skinned, freckled face, illuminated by gentle blue eyes, was topped by a starburst of red-blond dreadlocks.

Thor Larsson took a deep breath and started pressing the buttons. He waited a few moments until the clinic's switchboard had answered and then said, "Monsieur Marchand's office, please."

He paced up and down, waiting to be put through to the finance director.

"It's about Monsieur Carver's account…" Larsson began. "Please, can you just give me another few days? I think I may be able to get some money. Maybe not all the bill, but a lot of it, I assure you."

To his amazement, the voice on the other end of the line was reassuring, almost obsequious.

"Monsieur, please, do not derange yourself," said Marchand. "There is no need to be concerned. Monsieur Carver's account has been settled in full and instructions have been left for any future expenses. He is welcome to stay as long as he likes."

"What? When did that happen?" asked Larsson.

"Pah! Let me see… it must have been two days ago, I suppose."

"Who is paying the bill, then?"

"I am sorry, monsieur, that I cannot say. We have simply received instructions to pass any outstanding invoices to a lawyer acting on behalf of a client. Who that client might be, well… this is Switzerland, monsieur. We respect people's privacy here."

The moment she walked into his office, Kurt Vermulen knew that Natalia Morley would be his new assistant. He'd already been impressed enough by her resume. She was thirty years old, born in Russia, but carried a Canadian passport, thanks to her marriage (now dissolved) to an investment banker, Steve Morley. They'd met in Moscow, where they both worked for a Swiss investment bank-she was his boss's assistant and she'd taken another high-level P.A. job when Morley had been posted to the bank's head office in Geneva. They'd moved again to the States, where the marriage had broken up. Now she was looking to start a new life on her own. It didn't look as if she would have too much trouble doing that. Her letters of recommendation were outstanding, and when he called the men listed as her references, they all sang her praises. Then he saw her, and he understood why.

Natalia Morley was a head-turning, jaw-dropping beauty. Over the past few weeks, Vermulen had been on a couple of pleasant, but unexceptional dates with Megan, the lawyer he'd met that night at the Italian restaurant in Georgetown. Megan was a fine-looking woman. Natalia was in a totally different league.

Even so, looks will get you only so far. Kurt Vermulen had the same basic instincts as any other heterosexual male, but he was also an intelligent, thoughtful man. What really hooked him was a deeper quality, something that suggested vulnerability, and even sadness, as though life had wounded her in some way. It could have been the divorce, he guessed, although, in Vermulen's experience, that was more likely to induce anger or even bitterness in a woman. All he knew was that he sensed a personal loss in Natalia Morley that echoed his own bereavement.

At one point in their first meeting he even found himself talking about Amy and her death. It was, he realized, an inappropriate subject for a job interview. But it happened so naturally, and Natalia was so gracious in her response, that he found himself wanting her to be in his life. The job offer was really just a means, even an excuse, to have her near him. She'd started the following Monday.