Robert Sawyer - Triggers

“Depends on the memory, of course. Some are more detailed than others—and some are more detailed for me and hazy for her, and vice versa.” He made an indulgent little smile. “She doesn’t like hockey nearly as much as I do; she can barely remember what teams are playing, let alone individual plays.”

“All right,” Susan said. “Let me ask you a question.”

“Go ahead.”

“What is Ann’s lover’s name?”

“She doesn’t have a lover,” January said, sounding miffed. “Other than me.”

“Oh?” said Susan. “Think back to last month—October. She dropped you at Reagan, and you flew to—where was it now? Ah, yes. Denver, for a conference on defibrillation technology, right?” Her Google search had found his name on the program. “You settled in for a long flight and maybe watched a movie.”

“I did. On my laptop.”

“But continue that memory from her point of view,” said Susan. “What did she do the moment she dropped you off?”

“My wife drops me off all the time at the airport; I attend a lot of meetings. There was nothing special about that day that I recall—that she recalls.”

“No? October eighteenth? Unseasonably cold and windy. And you were going to be gone for an entire week that time.”

“I don’t…”

“Remember it?” asked Susan. “Remember that day?”

“Nothing comes to mind.”

“All right. I’ll tell you. Stop me when this begins to sound familiar. She left Reagan and drove on to Dulles, leaving her car in long-term parking. She then took the shuttle to the terminal, and there she met a man named William Cordt—although she called him Willie.”

“Then there’s no way you could know that. There’s nothing exceptional about my wife; there’s no way you’d have been watching her back then.”

“That’s true,” said Susan. “We weren’t watching her. We were watching William Cordt. This is Washington, after all. We watch a lot of people—especially those who have illicit ties to foreign defense contractors, as Mr. Cordt does. When he takes a trip out of the country, we know—and he did, with your wife, to Switzerland, for a skiing vacation.”

“Bullshit,” he said. “Annie was never involved with any arms smuggler, or anything like that.”

“Now, that I actually believe,” Susan said. “That is, I believe that she never knew that that’s what he was and so would have no memories of it. But you must surely have other memories of this event, from her point of view. The trip to Switzerland. The hotel they stayed in there, the Englischer Hof. The evenings they spent there.”

January narrowed his eyes, as if concentrating on something small. And then he made a short, sharp intake of breath. “Oh, my…Oh, God.” He slumped in the chair. “I—I had no idea…We…she…I…”

Then he looked at her, and his face was contorted in rage. “That was cruel,” he said. “Making me see that. Making me know that.”

“It would have been cruel, Mr. January, if any of it had ever really happened. But it didn’t. There is no William Cordt. Your wife hasn’t left the United States in over three years; I checked her passport records.”

January’s eyes went wide. “You… bitch!”

“And you’re under arrest.”

“For what?”

“For espionage. Spying on the president is a felony.”

“The president!” said January.

“Don’t play games now,” Susan said. “Yes, the president.” She stood up. “Extend your arms.”

“What for?” asked January.

“So I can cuff you.”

“I demand to see a lawyer.”

“Oh, you will. Before this is over, you’ll have seen more of them than you can count. But for now, not only do you have the right to remain silent, you have the obligation. Spying on the president is bad enough. Revealing what you’ve learned is…well, I’m glad we never got around to closing Gitmo.”

“Wait!” said January as Susan went to cuff him. “You’re wrong! You’re wrong!”

Susan closed the metal loops around his wrists. “Tell it to the judge.”

“No, no. Listen to me! You’re wrong. I’m not linked to the president, honestly. God, it never even occurred to me that anyone might be linked to him—he wasn’t conscious, after all, when all this went down; he was under general anesthesia.”

“Then why’d you lie about being linked to your wife?”

He hesitated. Susan put the flat of her hand against his back and propelled him toward the door.

“All right!” he said. “All right. I’m telling you the truth. I’m not linked to President Jerrison. I’m linked to Mark Griffin.”

“The hospital CEO?” she said. “Why lie about that?” They were at the closed door to Singh’s office; Singh’s black bomber jacket was hanging from a hook on the door’s back.

“Because I’m president of the staff association here, and he’s the hospital’s chief executive officer—and my opponent. I’m facing off against him over contract negotiations, and, well, this will give me the edge, so long as he doesn’t know I’m reading him. I figured it would be easy to fake that I was linked to my wife; we already have so many memories in common.”

“Prove it,” Susan said. “Prove you’re linked to Griffin. When did he and I first meet?”

“When you arrived here this morning with the president. He was on the right side of the gurney, and you were on the left. You had blood smeared on your jacket.”

“Who was behind me?”

“The president’s personal physician. Griffin greeted her, although he called her by her military rank: Captain Snow.”

“And what did he say about Dr. Redekop?”

“Nothing, then.”

“Later, I mean. What did he call him when we were in the observation gallery?”

“He said Redekop was ‘a doctor of the’—well, I don’t know what this means, but it’s what he said: ‘a doctor of the first water.’ ”

“Fuck,” said Susan.

“I’m sorry,” said January. “I really am. I—this all just sort of fell into my lap, you know? I didn’t know what to do.”

“Rule number one, asshole: don’t lie to the Secret Service.” She took off the handcuffs. “Get out of here.”

“You mean I can go home?”

“No, you cannot. Not until I choose to end the lockdown. But get out of my sight.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, and he scurried out the door.

Susan was livid as she walked down to Singh’s lab. The Canadian was sitting at his computer, and Darryl Hudkins had now joined him. He was looking at a city map spread out on a table.

“Any luck tracking down the woman who went AWOL?” she demanded.

“Not yet,” Darryl replied, looking up. “Problem is, the old thing has cataracts, I think. She’s somewhere today—I just can’t make out where; the visuals in her memories of this afternoon are indistinct. It’s noisy—she doesn’t like that—but I still don’t know where it is. She’s just not paying any real attention to her surroundings.”

“Indoors or out?”

“Indoors. But it’s not a museum or a gallery or a store. She’s just wandering around in a daze, it seems—she was already preoccupied with her son’s having a heart attack, and then someone told her about the president being shot, and later about the White House. When I think about this afternoon, the only memories of hers I get are of her worrying about, well, about everything.”

“Damn it,” said Susan. “Keep trying.” She went over to the whiteboard and corrected the information on it, now that they knew that David January was really linked to Mark Griffin.

“Agent Dawson?” said Singh.