Talons of the Falcon (13 page)

It was basically a simple system, but following through with the plan did involve some risk. If someone noticed the garbled lines on her printout of the letter from “Dr. Goldstein” they might get curious; and in fact, she did have a bad moment when Lieutenant Price walked by just as she was tearing the sheet out of the printer.

“Is your terminal acting up?” he asked as he glanced at the less-than-perfect page.

Eden’s heart lurched. As a member of the security team, Price would be on the lookout for any unusual communications. Yet he might be more than just an air force officer doing his job, she reminded herself. He could be a spy sent here to keep tabs on Mark Bradley. If that were the case, he certainly wouldn’t let her know he had any special interest in the message she’d just received.

She looked down at the letter and pretended to see the garbled lines for the first time. “Darn! Wouldn’t you know it. The only material I need has its bits scrambled, but maybe I can get the gist of it from the rest of the text.”

Price seemed to accept the explanation, and Eden didn’t know whether to be relieved or not.

However, he didn’t miss the opportunity to lecture her on procedures. “If you see it happening again, you’d better report it to the Comms Center.”

“Thanks, I will,” she said, tucking the letter into a folder.

After signing off the Medlars system, she wanted to rush back to her room. Instead, she made the effort to walk slowly through the garden as though she simply had a few minutes to kill before the evening meal.

Once she’d closed the door to her room, however, she set to work feverishly decoding the message. Connie had made the process sound simple, but Eden had never done anything like this before. The first time she tried to carry out the set of instructions, she only got more garbage. So she started from the beginning again and worked more carefully. This time her efforts paid off.

Gordon’s message was succinct and to the point. Like Downing, he was pressing for signs of progress. But he’d also given her an important piece of information—a weapon that might help her breach Mark’s defenses. It was a name from Mark Bradley’s recent past, and she was sure he would react to it. The trouble was, that reaction might be quite violent.

* * *

A
T LEAST
M
ARK
was still willing to go outside with her, Eden reflected the next morning as the two of them headed for the beach again. This session with her patient had to be private.

When they reached a stretch of sand that was hidden from view of the main house, she looked back over her shoulder. Since that first time when Yolanski had coordinated his morning constitutional with her session, they had been left alone, but she didn’t take anything for granted anymore.

“Let’s sit down,” she suggested, spreading out the blanket that she’d gotten in the habit of carrying along on their walks. She’d seen Marshall give her a speculative glance when he thought she wasn’t looking, but frankly she hadn’t cared what he thought she and Mark were doing in private.

Her patient shrugged as she spread out the navy blue rectangle. Again as he lowered himself to it, he angled his body away from her; but this morning, the sun glinting off the water seemed to be in his eyes.

“You might be more comfortable if you turned this way,” she hinted.

He shifted his position imperceptibly, but his eyes still avoided hers. Eden watched him for a moment. Getting out in the sun had improved his color, even with the scars, and as the breeze off the water blew his hair back from his face, she noted how vibrant and thick it looked. Even the streaks of gray in his dark locks had taken on a silver sheen.

It made her heart turn over to see him regaining the appearance of vitality, because in Mark’s case appearances were deceiving. Something was still eating him up inside, something he was unwilling to share with her. If pulling him into her arms and holding him close could make a difference, she was willing to offer him everything a woman could offer a man—but she’d already tried that and had been rejected.

He wasn’t emotionally ready for intimacy, but maybe she could reach him with Gordon’s new information. Of course, probing his psyche might be the equivalent of stabbing a raw wound. With one stroke she might wipe away all the progress he’d been able to make, but he had given her no other choice. She was going to have to chance it. Eden took a deep breath and let it out slowly, as though to center her own emotions before pressing ahead. “You remember when we first came out to the beach?” she began.

He didn’t appear to be listening. Instead, his index finger was tracing a random pattern in the sand at the edge of the blanket.

“I told you we didn’t have much time,” she continued. “And we have even less now.”

“So?”

“So we’ve got to make some progress, even if it’s painful for you.”

His senses seemed to sharpen like those of a boxer waiting to dodge a lethal right hook.

She’d have to hit him now before he could raise any more defenses. “Let’s talk about Hans Erlich.”

The fingers that had been sifting through the sand convulsively clutched for a handful of the tiny grains.

“Hans Erlich,” she repeated. “Tell me about Dr. Erlich.”

His face had turned ashen and she glimpsed fear in the depths of his soul. “Satan come to life.” The words were torn from him in a haunted whisper. He didn’t say anything else, but the power of that name had propelled him into a maelstrom of nightmare images. He saw a hard, uncompromising face with blond hair curled across the forehead. A dark, prominent mole stood out on the right cheek. The eyes were watery blue, with colorless lashes. The intelligence that gleamed from them had belonged to a genius—or a madman. The memories were jumbled, indistinct, but he knew one thing. Erlich had been his lifeline, his salvation, his link to reality, and the key to his destruction.

“You are Mark Bradley. You are my creation.”

His mind echoed the words that had been drummed into him with the force of a sledgehammer.

“No,”
came his answering silent denial.

“You are a means to an end.”

“No.”

“You will bend to my will.”

“No.”

“Mark Bradley belongs to me...to me...to me... You will remember the importance of 002-72-52, 002-72-52, 002-72-52... But when you try to recall anything else about our conversations, the pain in your head will be intolerable.”

Suddenly even that snatch of memory was gone, and he felt like a man bashing his head against a brick wall. The veins in his temples stood out. His face had taken on the flush of fever; and all at once Eden was afraid at what she’d unleashed. She didn’t want to go on with this, but there was no other way. “What did he do to you?” she persisted. “Try to remember.”

For a moment, it looked as though he were trying to answer her question. “He... Oh, God— Day after day— Week after week...” The effort to get out each word was a silver spike of pain in his head. His hands clawed at his temples as though he could somehow pull those spikes out, but it was no good.

He was gasping for breath now, his skin cold and clammy.

She tried to bring him back to the present. “Mark!” But it was obvious that he was beyond her reach.

A spasm hit him, and then another, and then, in slow motion, he collapsed sideways onto the blanket, his knees curled up to his chest.

Eden watched in horror. Erlich was the doctor who had interrogated Mark. The techniques he had used must have been unspeakable. No wonder Mark had tried to lock away the terrifying experience.

She put her hand on his shoulder, but he was too withdrawn now to even shrug away her touch. His eyes were glazed over and each breath was a painful gasp. She grabbed his icy hands, chafing them between her fingers. “It’s all right. He can’t hurt you here,” she repeated over and over.

You’re wrong,
his mind shouted.
You don’t know what he can do, what power he can exercise.
But the words were frozen in his throat.

It was only slowly that he came back to the reality of Pine Island. He was aware first of the sun’s healing warmth and then the waves pounding against the shore. When his eyes snapped open, he saw Eden’s tense face hovering above his. “Mark, forgive me. I didn’t know it would be that bad.” Her fingers brushed back the dark hair that clung damply to his forehead.

“Eden, hold me,” he whispered.

Until now, he hadn’t asked for what she so desperately wanted to give. There was a sad joy in her heart as she stretched out beside him on the blanket and pulled him into her arms. For long moments, she held him against her body, rocking him back and forth, and this time he didn’t fight the comfort of her embrace. His arms went around her shoulders to pull her even closer. The seconds that ticked by were beats of his heart. She couldn’t be sure what had happened. She only knew that by bringing him pain, she had broken through to him again.

By slow degrees, she felt some of the tension go out of his body.

He drew in a ragged breath. “That plane crash in Berlin should have been the end of Mark Bradley.”

“No!”

“You don’t know. You can’t understand.”

“Mark, you think this is something unique, but you’re wrong. I’ve worked with people who’ve been through what you have. I’ve helped them.”

Been through what he had. He doubted it.

“I can help you,” she repeated, shifting slightly so she could look down into his face. “Breaking the lock on those memories was the worst part, but you’ve got to go back more than once, Mark, if you want to be whole again.”

He shuddered. “I can’t. When I try, I feel as though the pain in my head is going to shatter my skull.”

“I didn’t know.” So that’s what Erlich had done. He had locked up Mark’s mind with barbed wire fence, and when his victim pressed against the barrier, the twisted metal tines dug into his flesh. Erlich was counting on the pain to block Mark’s recovery. She had to hope that the worst part would be crossing that barrier the first time. After that, it would be easier.

She squeezed his hand reassuringly. “It tears me up inside to put you through this, but you’ve got to make that journey, Mark. Nothing less than your survival is at stake.”

“I guess I’ve always known that, too. That’s why it’s so bad. There’s nothing solid to go back to. It’s only fleeting images, incoherent memories—and the damn pain in my head that threatens to explode every time I try to piece things together.”

She recognized what admitting that had cost him. “Bringing that out into the open is a tremendous step,” she assured.

“Or a dead end.”

“No.”

“Suppose you’re wrong?”

“Trust me. We’ll solve the puzzle together, piece by piece. From now on, whenever you have an image or a memory, no matter how fuzzy or fleeting, bring it to me and we’ll work with it.”

His arms tightened around her again. He was afraid to accept what she was offering. But he was more afraid not to.

Chapter Eight

“Y
ou idiot, I told you not to call me here,” the man in Washington hissed.

“This is an emergency.”

“It’d better be.”

“Sommers is on the verge of getting results.”

There was an instant alertness on the other end of the phone line punctuated by a low curse.

“Did you get that information on her?”

“There’s a hold on her file. But my contact in the administrator’s office has promised to make me a copy tonight.”

“So I should be ready to move as soon as you give the word.”

“Yes. And make it look like an accident.”

“That shouldn’t be too hard. You step off this island in the wrong place and the undertow will do the rest.”

“I’ll get back to you tomorrow.”

There was a click and the line went dead. The operative on Pine Island looked at the receiver and then set it down with a jolt. He was doing all the dirty work down here, and that jerk in Washington would keep his hands clean. He’d gotten into the spy business for the money. Somewhere along the line the money had stopped being enough. It didn’t make up for the risks he was being forced to take. Briefly he’d thought about turning himself in. But that was madness. They’d get to him somehow. There simply wasn’t any way to resign from this job and live to tell about it. So he’d just have to follow instructions and make sure everything went as planned.

* * *

M
ARK STOOD NEXT
to his bed, clad only in jeans. He’d been in the act of undressing for the night—Marshall, to his relief, was now letting him do that for himself—when an image had flickered through his mind. It was of a room with institutional green walls and sparse furnishings in sterile white enamel. A hospital room. And he had occupied it. He could almost feel the coarse sheets against the naked skin of his back. The tactile memory made his skin crawl.

Then he felt the old fear gnawing in his gut. This was where it had happened—whatever it was.

He slammed his fist into the palm of his hand. He wasn’t going to run away this time. When the image faded, he tried to call it back. But it was like trying to dig his fingernails into a cloud. The effort made his head throb again the way it had this afternoon, and he eased himself down the edge of the bed. Eyes closed, he leaned forward, cradling his forehead in his palms as he struggled to calm his breathing.

In a moment the pain passed, to be replaced by frustration. It was the same stone wall he had come up against again and again. There was something here he wanted to understand, had to understand. The pain and the memories of those six months were tied together in a way he couldn’t explain. But maybe Eden was right, maybe he didn’t have to do it by himself. All at once he realized he wanted to talk to her about it. That knowledge made him feel as though someone had just lifted an enormous weight from his chest.

Quickly he glanced toward the bathroom door, where his room connected to Eden’s. There was only dim light coming from underneath. She must be in her room with the door open. That meant she was still awake.