Робин Кук - Cell

“Please!” one of the female attendants said, motioning them to follow her down the hallway the way they had come when they had first arrived. “You need to get a move on. You don’t want to be late.”

George and Paula did as they were told with the other five attendants trailing behind. Having gotten away with the hug, George took Paula’s hand and squeezed it. She squeezed back as they exchanged a wary glance. They held hands as they walked.

“Do you know where we are?” she asked in a whisper.

“If I had to guess, I’d say somewhere in the Hollywood Hills.”

She glanced over at him. “That’s odd if you are right. But then again, what is there about all this that isn’t odd?”

They were led into a conference room, glimpsing a sign on the door: BOARDROOM. They had encountered no other people, attendants or inmates.

Inside the room was a long table with seating for five people along each side and one at each end. A whiteboard was mounted at one end of the room. A large window looked out upon a stand of dense sycamore trees. No other buildings were visible.

George and Paula were asked to sit on the opposite side of the table, facing the door. Again they did as they were told. Hoping answers were forthcoming, they were willing to be compliant. Three attendants positioned themselves at each end of the room and stood silent with folded arms.

George and Paula looked at each other, increasingly baffled. They had no idea what to expect, but at least they were being well treated, hardly like kidnapping victims who would normally be kept in total isolation without being allowed to see or talk to their captors.

After a few moments, George leaned over to Paula and whispered, “How was your night?”

“Delightful,” Paula answered sarcastically. “How was yours?”

“I liked the first half better than the second,” he said.

Paula laughed softly. She reached out and squeezed his hand under the table. “I think I preferred the first part as well.”

“What did you think of the room service?”

“Better than expected,” Paula admitted. “The whole situation defies belief. I never expected a breakfast like that, especially not with a newspaper.”

“Did you sleep?” he asked.

“Not a wink. You?”

“Surprisingly, I did. I suppose it was thanks to my previous night in jail.”

“Lucky for you,” Paula said. Regaining some of her courage, she called out to the attendants, “How long do we have to wait?”

“Not long,” came the reply.

As if on cue, the door to the room opened and three men appeared.

Both Paula’s and George’s jaws dropped in utter shock. They couldn’t have been more shocked if the president of the United States had just walked in.

MENTAL HEALTH FACILITY

HOLLYWOOD HILLS, LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

MONDAY, JULY 7, 2014, 9:05 A.M.

Bradley Thorn, Lewis Langley, and Clayton Hanson entered the room and took seats opposite George and Paula. They avoided eye contact with their totally dumbfounded hostages. It was as if they were embarrassed.

Thorn set a folder on the table with particular deliberateness, adjusting it to be perfectly perpendicular to the table’s edge. He made himself comfortable in his chair and only then did he look across at George and Paula. Langley and Clayton had followed suit but without the folder. For a few pregnant moments the five people stared across the table at one another.

George felt a certain relief in seeing these men, recognizing that there had to be some reason other than death or rendition for why he and Paula had been snatched in the middle of the night. These were professional businessmen and doctors, not murderous thugs. And perhaps most important from George’s perspective, they were not representatives of some secret government organization, or at least he didn’t think they were.

Finally, Thorn cleared his throat. “I can only imagine your surprise. First off, let me apologize on behalf of all of us for the ordeal you’ve suffered, which we heard about only this morning. We can well imagine that it must have been frightening, but as you will soon learn, the situation was thought to be an emergency, and the people in charge didn’t want to take any chances. Actually there was one man in charge, and that was Mr. Gauthier, Amalgamated’s head of security.”

“What?” Paula shouted, practically leaping out of her seat. She pounded the table with both her fists. Everyone at the table jumped. “Amalgamated was responsible for our being kidnapped! You?” Her eyes drilled into Thorn’s. Her voice was shrill and angry. Several of the attendants stepped forward in case they needed to restrain Paula.

Thorn lifted his hands as if he thought he needed to protect himself. He momentarily averted his eyes from Paula’s accusatory stare. He spoke in a carefully modulated voice. “In the final analysis, yes, I am ultimately responsible. Although I should reiterate that in the urgency of the situation, the decision of how to handle it was made by Mr. Gauthier, and I, or should I say we, learned about how the operation had been carried out only after the fact.” Thorn glanced at Langley and Clayton, who both nodded in agreement.

“As head of security, this was in his domain, and he decided it was an extreme situation that needed to be turned over to professionals to whom he has access when the need arises. Ergo, the strong-armed methods that you unfortunately experienced. But still, we are all responsible. So, we again apologize.”

“But why?” Paula demanded, now with more disbelief than anger. It was apparent that she was not about to let Thorn off the hook with a mere mea culpa.

“That’s what we are here to explain,” Thorn said patiently. “We, or at least I, fully expected your deserved outrage, and I accept your anger as appropriate. We know that your being dragged here in the middle of the night with no explanation must have been unnerving, to say the least. But, again, Gauthier thought that it was best to act rapidly and—”

“Where the hell are we?” Paula interrupted with venom. “All we’ve been told is that this is some sort of a private mental health and addiction facility.”

“That is correct,” Thorn said. “It once was a top-secret military film studio. It dates back to the early forties. It was later transformed into a private treatment center for celebrities with addiction problems and for wealthy families who sought complete discretion for their children, who were often brought here, as you were, in the middle of the night. Amalgamated picked up ownership as part of a package deal for a hospital chain. Although we were initially indifferent to its ownership, subsequently we have found the facility handy for a number of functions.”

George remembered that once Zee had pierced the high-anonymity proxy servers, he had identified a server bank located somewhere in the Hollywood Hills. George wondered if those servers were in this facility behind the many closed doors.

“Where is this facility?” George asked, speaking for the first time.

“The Hollywood Hills. Laurel Canyon, to be precise. Few people are aware of its existence. Even most neighbors aren’t aware of it. We’re very secluded up here, despite being ten minutes from the Sunset Strip.” He motioned out the window. “There’s considerable wooded property with an elaborate security system, surrounded by electrified razor-wire fencing.”

George nodded, trying to keep himself calm in contrast to Paula. It seemed to George that Thorn was doing more than giving them a verbal tour of the facility. He was sending a message: Paula and George could be held in the facility and no one would know. Some of the fear that George felt before Thorn, Langley, and Clayton had walked into the conference room returned.