Point of Balance (17 page)

“I would have to be a very capricious or very insecure doctor not to accept the special conditions attached to this kind of case. By the way, what kind of approach were you thinking of for the Broca's area?”

His gall flabbergasted me.

“You wouldn't seriously be asking for my opinion, would you, Hockstetter?”

“No, not really.”

He went to the door, but when he had his hand on the knob, he turned to face me.

“You know something, David? You're right about one thing. I really did come to rub your nose in it. As soon as they knew I was willing to operate, they kicked your ass out. Who would want a ­second-rate surgeon when they could have the head of Neuro at Johns Hopkins?” he said, lifting up the folder and waving it dismissively. “Again, it merely goes to show you have nothing I can't whisk away.”

He waltzed off, leaving the door open.

I sat and stared at the cell, which taunted me from the table.

“Well, White. What now?”

The answer wasn't long in coming.

WE NEED TO TALK.

MARBLESTONE 11 P.M.

Kate

The long wait was excruciating.

Kate marked time with her back against the shed wall and her gun aimed at the door, and ran over events, again and again, wondering whether she had been wrong to get caught in a trap like that. Waiting there troubled her all the more. To go uphill to the street without knowing whether anybody else was lying in wait would be madness. She thought of answering David's text but didn't want to take her eye off the ball for a second.

With no warning, there was a rasping noise, a smoker's cough. Then a voice could be heard on the other side of the door, speaking in English this time. Kate stuck her ear to the shed wall and could make out the housebreaker's every word.

“No, couldn't call before. No, cell not work. Yes, understand. Company problem. I tell you, phone is crap.”

Silence.

“I tell you we look all over. Dejan and my brother look in neighborhood, no suspicious car, van, nothing.”

Silence.

“Yes, yes, understand. Search house all over again. But nobody here. I know because I set blind trap, hair stuck to outside door. Hair fall if door open, but hair still there. See?”

More silence.

“Yes, remember Istanbul. No my fault.”

Silence again, longer this time.

“Your money,” the intruder said in a very tense voice.

They'll turn the place over again. If they see the open padlock, in they come. I can shoot down the first one, but the others won't be so stupid.
They'll fire through the shed walls, like shooting fish in a barrel. This flimsy plastic wouldn
't stop a gnat.

But Kate could do nothing except wait, with her finger on the trigger.

Outside, the drizzle became an all-out downpour. The raindrops crashed onto the shed roof like ball bearings falling into a beach bucket. Kate thought she heard a car start up a couple of times but couldn't be sure.

Nobody entered the shed and no more sounds could be heard in the yard. Time drifted away in the choking darkness, which made her think of Julia and the hell she must be suffering. She waited for two seemingly eternal hours, feeling useless and powerless. She realized that all her training, all the bravado she showed, her stalwart stance—all that depended on how others saw her. She was Secret Service Special Agent Robson. Telling suspects that put the fear of God in them, not solely because she was a strong woman with a gun but because she was the face of the beast. To touch her was like pulling on Superman's cape or spitting into the wind. Nobody messes with the Secret Service.

Even so, acting under cover and out of fear, she was no more than the victim's frightened relative. She began to wonder whether going along with David wasn't crazy.

Finally, she decided the trespassers could not possibly still be in the house. She stood up, her muscles cramped after hours spent on her haunches. She stretched her arms and legs several times before she stepped out. She had to loosen up if she was to hit the street as quickly as possible.

The extent of her failure overwhelmed her. Her plan had been a train wreck. She was about to leave without a thorough search of the house, but to turn on the jammer again and reenter the place was a no-no. That trick wouldn't work twice; it would arouse too much suspicion.

She picked up the gadget and was about to go through the door when an idea came to her and she turned around. The Evanses' re
cycling bin was in the shed, where they separated aluminum, plastic and paper. The recycling truck came to Silver Spring once a week.

Maybe they've overlooked it. Come on, please. We simply need a little stroke of luck . . .

She opened the top and took out the blue bag from the paper section. It was featherweight.

Not very promising, but better than nothing.

She opened the door, replaced the padlock and ran back to her car under the rain, wondering whether something in that handful of wastepaper would lead to her kidnapped niece.

Marblestone Diner, Silver Spring

Mr. White watched David Evans enter the diner. What he saw gave him a pleasurable sensation of victory. The person only yards away from him was a completely changed man from the one he had confronted the day before. His attitude was transformed; his eyes no longer burned with yesterday's ardor and fury.

David was capable of staying calm in the midst of chaos but ducked confrontations. He never put up a fight if he could help it but hid behind his sense of humor and intellectual superiority. These were obstacles White had steamrollered over in the last few hours.

Human beings are naturally conditioned to help the young of their species because they are born weak, and they feel responsible for offsetting that weakness. That's why babies
' crying is so unbearable, especially in enclosed spaces such as airplanes.

David's bond with his daughter had fed his need to collaborate, but intense pressure was still required to break his professional conditioning.

Nevertheless, White still had his doubts. David's reactions were sometimes unexpected. He wondered whether he wasn't mistaken and there were more people like Dr. Evans out there. Men who cast doubt on his current personality types. Maybe together they could make up a new category. The very idea gave him a shiver of anticipation but irritated him at the same time. He didn't like to get things wrong.

He had to think clearly. The main thing now was to get back in control of his tool. White hadn't expected the Hockstetter business, and when he heard Dr. Wong tell David he wouldn'
t operate, he felt momentarily hemmed in. But on reflection he reckoned that setback could be a good way to strengthen his hold over David. He needed only to make him think it was all part of his plan. With the right lies, the subject's illusion that White was all-powerful would remain unaltered. He had to pull the right levers in his brain.

Bring him back to the tipping point.

It was almost a decade since White had set up his lucrative business. In the first few months he had made a fairly startling discovery: that public knowledge, news and headlines, were not winnowed into truth and lies. Just palatable lies.

At bottom, it made sense. Nobody wants the truth, because it is too knotty and unpleasant. Humans accept as true the most outrageous falsehoods, simply because they came gift-wrapped. Sunflowers don't follow the sun, the Great Wall of China cannot be seen from space, and neither do we use only 10 percent of our brain.

The same could be said for the economic crisis, the Occupy Wall Street movement, Benedict XVI's resignation or the Osama bin Laden hit. The truth behind the official façade was deeply inconvenient. White himself had had a hand in some of those deeds, had moved pieces in the dark that had changed the world stage. Often he'd been hired by the same man who had put out the current contract, a man he
'd never met but who had done much to enlighten him. Somebody whose immense power was based on other people's trust, and to whom he owed some of his most worthy creations. That said, never before had White gone after a piece as big and valuable as the one he would take at nine on Friday morning.

White pondered whether the inherent human need to take the part for the whole could work in his favor at that moment. The tool would be more than willing to be put in harm's way if he thought it was part of the plan from the outset.

He would have to play it by ear it for the next few hours until he could sort things out. To see the ante raised filled him with an emotion he
hadn't felt before. Total planning made for more certainty but took the fun out of his projects. Using David Evans to assassinate the president had been a risky choice, but doubtless much more stimulating than the other four he had weighed up.

He had to put the surgeon right back at the point of balance. The point that never moves, no matter how the arms swing.

21

“A Hawaiian Punch, please. Lemon Berry Squeeze. And for you, doctor?”

“Black coffee, Juanita. Double, please.”

The waitress smiled and went for the drinks.

“I picked this diner for our meetings because they have Hawaiian Punch,” White said. “It's not easy to find outside of supermarkets. Nowadays it's all Coke or Pepsi. If only people knew what they pay for each time they drink down one of those brews.”

“You wouldn't be turning all conspiranoid on me, now, would you?”

White looked at me, amused.

“Not at all. Conspiracies don't exist.”

Juanita's arrival with the tray took the sting out of how ridiculous he had just made me feel.

“Human beings are very simple,” White went on, touching his thumb and forefinger to make a circle. “Take the waitress, Dave. She dreams of being Mariah Carey, she longs to meet Simon Cowell. When she gets home she curses her swollen ankles.”

Juanita was back behind the counter, watching
American Idol
with rapt attention, mouthing the words to the songs on the show. It was too late to see it live, so she must have DVRed it in the hope of hav
ing a quiet night. Like the day before, we had the place to ourselves.

“Maybe she sings like an angel,” I answered.

“Maybe she does, Dave. But that's beside the point. The world is full of people with talent who spend their lives hanging on in quiet desperation, trapped in dead-end jobs. Why do some take the subway while others fly Learjets? It's a matter of character. To really want what we wish for.”

“Something tells me there's a point to all your talk. I just don't see it.”

“I still have a problem, Dave. I still need somebody to eliminate my target.”

“But . . . What about Hockstetter?”

“Hockstetter is not an active part of this operation.”

My next words were so selfish it shames me even to recall them, but I have sworn to tell my story like it is.

“Listen, Hockstetter's your man. He'll be no loss to the world if he disappears. Lean on him and give me back Julia.”

“Negative. There is no entry route or time. You'll have to do it, David. The old-fashioned way. That was the plan from the start.”

“The plan . . . What plan? No, hang on . . .”

“Simple, Dave. It was me who told Hockstetter the Patient's identity. And he called the man in the bow tie from Baltimore and told him he wanted to do the op.”

I opened my eyes wide and took a few seconds to digest what he'd just told me.

“What? But . . . Why? Why complicate things that way?”

White picked up one of the pink sachets of sweetener from a container on one side of the table and fingered it for a while before he answered me.

“Why did you study neurosurgery, David?”

The politically correct answer to that question would be “Because I'm interested in the brain, science's final frontier.” But the sincere answer, the one I'd never admitted to anybody out loud, other than Rachel, was the one White already knew. So I told him.

“Because it's the top-dog specialty.”

“And you have so much to make up for, so much to prove.” He nodded contentedly. “And now that they've put you up to the definitive challenge with the definitive patient, I make you lose him . . . I don't know, David, something tells me even the motivation to save your daughter may falter at the last minute.”

“That's absurd, White. I won't let Julia down,” I hastened to say. But my conscience told me I wasn't that certain. Hadn't I let my own wife down because of the job? What was the difference?

White pointed at me, but to humor rather than accuse me.

“I dare you to tell me you haven't tried to think up a way to get me off your back and your daughter returned.”

I sized him up quietly. Those calm movements, the suave voice . . . I'd seen it before and it betrayed some poisonous notion bubbling behind his blue eyes. I didn't want to risk riling him up, so I plumped for the truth.

“It's true,” I said with a shrug.

“Aha!” he exclaimed in triumph. “The nearer the operation comes, the more doubts you will have. You will beg, connive, try anything. Drop it, Dave. I've thought of everything.”

“I know that. Believe me, White, if I had come up with a sure plan to get Julia back and put you behind bars, right now I'd be hugging my daughter and you a bar of soap. But I cannot and will not run that risk.”

“Maybe. But I'm still not convinced you're on my side. So I want you to earn that operation.”

His words rang true, but deep inside my intuition told me he was bluffing; it twitched like a stiff and cramped muscle. He wasn't as almighty or as all-knowing as he would have had me think, and he didn't have everything worked out. There were variables beyond his control, but his inflated ego declined to own up to it. White would play the part of superior being to the bitter end. Now I could clearly see the cracks in the cage he had locked us both up in. He knew nothing about what Kate was up to and certainly could not have
foreseen the Hockstetter deal. Those frailties, small as they were, gave Julia and me a chance I could use against him. But the question was:

“How?”

I realized I'd said the last word out loud, but luckily White thought I meant how would we unseat Hockstetter.

“Use your imagination, Dave. But be quick about it.”

“And what about your minions? They clocked up too much overtime this month?”

“That would be too easy. You have to get your hands dirty, David, or the whole exercise will be pointless.”

“I don't know if I'm up to it. This isn't like throwing an operation. I have no clue what to do.”

“You'll think of something.”

That was a blind alley. Maybe White had lied about my swell-headed old boss's involvement being his idea, but he had certainly seized on it to force me to fight for the operation and the chance to save Julia's life. I hadn't seen her for almost twenty-four hours, and the pain of missing her was eating away at my hope. I needed to know she was okay.

“I want to see her.”

White shook his head.

“Negative. Maybe as a prize for removing Dr. Hockstetter from the equation.”

“I told you I want to see her.”

By way of an answer, the psychopath merely stared at me with his shark's eyes. I held his gaze for an instant before I looked at the iPad on the table next to him.

“You're thinking of snatching it from me, aren't you, Dave? It would be so easy, a pushover. You simply have to reach out and it's all yours. You're taller than me, your shoulders are wider. There would be nothing to it.”

I could feel the palms of my hands tingle while the device that monitored the pit Julia was in grew in my mind's eye. I made an imperceptible move toward it.

“I'll burst the bubble of your fantasy, Dave. This marvel is protected by three passwords. If you enter just one of them incorrectly, the data will be erased instantly. But not before sending a signal to a place you know. You want me to tell you about the mechanism that signal activates?”

“No, not really,” I said in a voice as dry and hoarse as a barrel of nails.

“I'll show you all the same. It'll be instructive and motivational. Also, you did ask to see your daughter, didn't you? Maybe I was a bit unkind to deny you that small mercy.”

He lifted the iPad's cover to shield the screen from my sight and keyed in something. When he turned the device around, there was the same interface he'd shown me the day before.

“Watch carefully, David.”

He pushed a button. The image went from black to relaying the live video feed from inside the cavity. Julia was in the corner, digging her fingers into the pit wall. Every now and again she turned and dropped something on the floor. It took me a few seconds to realize she was taking the biggest pebbles from the dirt for some kind of game. I was surprised my daughter was up for playing at a time like that. Julia was a very sensitive girl who could get all wound up over nothing.

“The human mind is adaptable, Dave,” White said, reading my mind. “When you transport it from a safe context to a baleful one, at first it goes into shock. But in time, it tries to fit in with the new situation; it redefines the new context as safe to minimize the trauma. But naturally, new challenges can always surface to make everything harder.”

He pushed another button.

A little whir and then a click sounded in the iPad's speakers. Julia seemed to hear it, too, because she turned to where the sound came from, to the left of where she kneeled, offscreen, and squinted to try to see through the glow of the lights.

All of a sudden there was a gut-wrenching, earsplitting, inhuman sound.

The image lagged behind the sound, and it took me a couple of seconds to realize it was my daughter who had let forth that shriek of sheer terror. She backed up and kept on shrieking.

“What are you doing to her, you son of a bitch?” I said as I jumped up. I clenched my fists, hard. But I didn't get all the way up. A huge mitt pushed my shoulder down. The same cutthroat I had seen that afternoon in the hospital had sneaked up behind me. I hadn't seen him come in. Making sure Juanita couldn't see, he drew a gun and held it against my neck.

“No tricks, eh, doctor?” he said. It wasn't the same guy as the night before. This one had a much thicker accent, and he sounded high-strung, as well as aggressive.

I tried to turn around, but the gun barrel poked my jugular vein even harder. The brawler's hand might have been made of concrete, the way it anchored me to the chair.

“Quiet. Watch video.”

Helpless, I could only obey.

On the iPad's screen, Julia had huddled up against the wall. On the floor, in the middle of the pit, was a dark, long shape.

“
Rattus norvegicus.
An interesting animal. Length ten inches, weight one pound five ounces, long and sharp teeth,” White said.

The rat was acting strangely. It didn't move, its snout pointed straight at Julia's bare foot. My daughter, her arms stretched out, had stopped shrieking and looked at the repugnant vermin with her eyes wide open.

“They don't usually attack humans. Unless, that is, they have been starved for days and shut up in an acrylic cage with microscopic perforations. Your daughter's smell all this time must have driven it crazy.”

The rat scurried across the ground and flung itself at Julia, but she twisted away just in time, turning her back to the camera. The
move unbalanced her and the rat ran over to sink its disgusting yellow teeth into my daughter's skin. I tried to wrest myself free again, but the goon merely dug the gun deeper into my throat, squeezing my windpipe.

“Leave her alone, asshole. She's only seven, you son of a bitch.”

The ox made me lean over, with my face almost against the tabletop, until the screen filled my eyes. A drop of sweat rolled down my nose and fell onto the iPad's screen, creating a pixelated rainbow.

“Hush, Dave, you'll miss it,” White said. “This sure beats the National Geographic Channel.

Julia rolled aside at the last moment, but the rat had meanwhile snagged itself on her pajama leg. Julia shrieked again, stood up and shook her leg, but the rat held tight and would not abandon its prey. With a snarl which sounded even beastlier than the rat that was attacking her, Julia flailed her foot in the air. That tore apart the cotton legging, and the rodent thudded into the wall, fell onto its back and waved its claws in the air. Julia gave it no time to right itself, but stepped forward and stamped her right foot on the dark, verminous body.

Once, twice, three times you're out.

There was a dense and unpleasant silence, and then my daughter turned around and her face came into view. Her eyes were glowing like hot coals under the lights, and she had twisted her mouth into a savage, primeval grimace. She didn't look like my Julia but the offspring of some ancient race, born in a dark age.

Then the spell broke and the poor girl burst into tears. She sobbed and limped off to the other end of the trap, as far as possible from the bloody pulp the rat had turned into.

“Well done! A truly remarkable defense and a most interesting experiment, one I've been wanting to conduct for years,” White said, truly overjoyed.

It was sickening.

The tough released my shoulder and took the gun from my neck. I sat up in my seat and wheezed.

“You see that, Dave? Yesterday, she was a terrified little girl, two minutes ago a helpless victim. But when the occasion called for it she was capable of doing the unthinkable. The mind is flexible, I told you. Let that be an example to you.”

I didn't answer. I looked again at the iPad, which was now displaying its lock screen. That instrument held control over my little girl's life and death. I couldn't take it from him, no way. I shuddered to recall how Julia had limped back to her corner. The rat had surely sunk its infected teeth into the sole of her foot before it died, or could have punctured her skin when she squashed its chest cavity. If so, the risk of catching hantavirus or rabies was very high. I tried to remember how long the incubation period for those diseases was, but my mind drew a blank. There was room for one thing alone in there, and that was hatred.

Pure, total and unadulterated hatred for the man in front of me.

“If you pull another stunt like that, I'll kill you, White,” I whispered. “If it's the last thing I do.”

The psychopath shook his head knowingly.

“I have more rats, fifty or so. All as desperate and hungry as that one, Dave. If you dare screw with me, if the cops get me, if you leave your cell behind on your desk again . . . I'll lift the acrylic hatch that keeps them separate from your daughter. And the system will automatically e-mail a video file to her grandparents with the subject line ‘Look what a fine mess Daddy got me into.' ”