The Syndrome (3 page)

The second bottle held a drug she called “Placebo #1.” A joke—she’d even written it on the label right below the printed information, which read: 326 nicole sullivan: take as directed. Because the drug was experimental and wasn’t even manufactured in the States, the stuff didn’t have a name, just a number. You couldn’t look it up in the
Merck Index
or buy it at the pharmacy. You had to get it abroad, or through the mail, and so she did—three or four times a year, depending …

It had a way of putting her at a distance from herself, as if her body were an actor in a play she’d come to watch. Supposedly, it was therapeutic—a way of letting her see herself as others saw her. And not only that: Placebo #1 enabled her to do some remarkable things. Without affect, her body and emotions were entirely within her own control. Every reaction was appropriate and measured (or seemed to be) so that, if she’d wanted to, she could have walked an I-beam between the suite she was in and the building across the way. And she’d have enjoyed it, too, because when she was like this, she was free in a way that “normal people” almost never were. It was a strange and interesting way to be.

And unlike the lithium (which could make you fat, if you weren’t careful), the side effects were minor. Although it could mess with your memory. Oh, she was okay minute-to-minute and hour-to-hour, but day-to-day could be a problem. Though whether that was a bug or a feature, she couldn’t say.

Opening the minibar, Nico took out a bottle of Evian water, and unscrewed the cap. Shaking a pill from each bottle into the palm of her hand, she washed them down with a sip of water, and had a look around the suite.

And it was fine: big, clean, crisp, and stylish. She approved of everything: the welcome basket, filled with fruit; the heavy white bathrobe and translucent soap; the little sewing kit, and the split of champagne that lay on its side in the refrigerator. It was California champagne, but even so—it was the good stuff. Domaine Carneros. A nice wine.

Inventory taken, she unpacked her clothes and put them away. Undressing, she tried on each of the swimming suits she’d brought, twisting and turning in the floor-to-ceiling mirrors in the alcove, just outside the bath. She’d almost decided on the black one, a classic maillot that didn’t show too much cheek, when she changed her mind, opting instead for a lemon-yellow bikini.
It’s not like I have anything to hide
, she thought, slipping into a pair of leather sandals.

Crossing the living room, she went out to the balcony and
stood at the railing overlooking the beach. Directly below was the patio-pool complex, with its Jacuzzi and swim-up bar, beach umbrellas and tables. Between the pool and the Gulf, a line of palm trees thrashed in the wind while out to sea the water’s surface shimmered and flashed.

Standing there, she could feel the pills kicking in, softening the air at the edge of her skin. Leaning out over the railing, hands at her sides, she remembered—vaguely—that she was afraid of heights. But, not now. Now, there was nothing. She might as well be standing in her own living room.

On the beach below, attendants were methodically folding and stacking a row of bright blue cabanas that belonged to the resort. Nico gazed, mesmerized, at the patterning and repatterning of the surf, the lacy white foam curling and uncurling with a muffled roar. Every so often, a child’s voice floated up to her, squealing from the pool.

Returning inside, she removed her laptop computer from its leather case, and set it down beside the telephone on the table in the living room. Using an RJ-11 jack, she connected the computer to the phone, adjusted the monitor to cut the glare, and pushed the
On
switch. It took about a minute for the CPU to go through its routine. When it was done, she clicked on the AOL logo, and waited yet again. Finally, there was the familiar rush of noise and bleat of horns, the farcical handshake of the modem exchanging protocols with the server. And then she was on.

You’ve got mail!

Out of habit, she clicked on the mailbox to see who it was.

10-7   Adrienne                     Where are ya, Nikki!?

Little sister.

Ignoring the message, she went to the Internet connection, and in the box for the Web address, typed

www.theprogram.org

and waited.

A moment later, Web Site Found appeared in a box in the lower left-hand corner of the screen. And then

Transferring document
1% 2% 12% 33%

Why did it take so long?

Opening Page

And then: a nearly blank screen with its oh-so-familiar, black-on-white inscription.

             
Unknown Host

                      
Description: Could not resolve the host
     “www.theprogram.org” in the URL

“http://www.theprogram.org/”.

                              
Traffic Server version 1.1.7

Reaching into the computer’s carrying case, she took out a transparent plastic overlay, and fitted it over the monitor’s screen—whose size it duplicated perfectly. A calendar of sorts, the overlay had two axes—a vertical one, divided into twelfths, and a horizontal axis with thirty-one gradations. Together, they created a grid with 372 boxes, one for every day of the year, with seven left over. Using her mouse, Nico slid the cursor over to the box that corresponded to that day’s date (October 7th), clicked, and moved on to a second box, the one that corresponded to her birthday (February 11th). And clicked again. Instantly, a tiny hourglass appeared, floating behind the overlay, which Nico then removed.

It always took a minute for the site to load. She watched the blue bar crawl across the page and then she was on:

The cursor blinked beneath the greeting, awaiting her instructions. Taking a deep breath, she touched
Ctrl-F5
, and—pictures and words and … something else, a sound she couldn’t quite hear, but
felt.
Pictures and words, scrolling and flipping, moving so fast you wouldn’t believe she could take it all in. But she did. She sat there in the room, unmoving, eyes bright with the turmoil on the monitor.

She had been at the resort for three nights, and he still hadn’t shown. Each evening, she went down to the beach and waited for him, just to get a look—but he was never there. And the pills were beginning to get to her. If she took them for too many days running, she started to …

What?

Lose track of herself.

That was the only way to put it. There were long periods of time when … there was nothing. And then, quite suddenly, she’d be herself again—except at a distance, always at a distance, as if her identity were a phantom limb. You wouldn’t think a little pill could grab you like that, but—

Not to worry. They said he’d be here, and they were always right. It was just a matter of time.

She glanced at her watch (it was 7:15), then looked out the window to where the sky had just begun to blush. Her fourth sunset.

Grabbing a towel, she took the elevator to the ground floor, and walked through the pool area toward the little boardwalk that led to the beach.

It wasn’t exactly the season yet, only the beginning of October, so there weren’t that many people around. A couple of kids in the pool, attacking each other with what looked like big, Styrofoam noodles. Mom on a chaise lounge, reading, and over there, two oiled, teenaged girls lying on their stomachs, bikini tops undone. Nico thought maybe they were asleep because, really, there wasn’t much sun left to bathe in.
The area around the pool was already in shadow, the underwater lights glowing eerily. Lamps were beginning to flicker on the periphery of the terrace. The attendant who sold hats and sunglasses, sand toys and sunscreen was busy putting away things at his little stand, closing up for the night. As Nico walked past, a fiftyish woman in a purple bathing suit lowered herself carefully into the Jacuzzi beside the pool, her mouth releasing a soft
Ooof of
pleasure.

The beach was even less crowded. Most people seemed to be at dinner, or dressing for dinner.

And then she saw him—

An old man, sitting in a wheelchair at the end of the boardwalk, where it broadened into a platform above a flight of steps leading down to the sand. He had a shawl over his shoulders, and his eyes were fixed on the reddening horizon. Nearby, the old man’s dreadlocked Jamaican caretaker leaned on a railing, listening raptly to the music blasting through the earphones of his Walkman. Reggae, Nico thought, catching the rhythm as she passed, the sound a remote, tinny whine.

There was no one else, really. Apart from the Jamaican and the old man, the only other people in sight were a lone jogger, running in the wet sand along the surf line—and a couple, walking with their heads down, looking for shells.

And that was it. Everybody else was … somewhere else. Which left Nico with Nico, one on one, watching her towel fall to the sand as she waded into the warm Gulf waters. In front of her, the sun seemed balanced on the horizon’s dark rim, turning the sky the color of a million postcards.

She’s in heaven
, Nico thought, watching herself move through the water. Which was shallow here, no more than knee-deep for upwards of a mile offshore. Wading farther and farther out to sea, she could see herself dwindling in the old man’s eyes. Finally, she slowed, stopped, and sank to her knees. Leaning back on her arms, she luxuriated in the warm bath of the Gulf, listening to the cry of gulls wheeling overhead. She remained this way for what seemed a long time, eyes shut, face turned toward the sky. Then she pivoted on her
left arm, and spun to her feet in a single move that would have been startling if anyone other than she had seen it.

Slogging back to the beach, she picked up her towel and climbed the steps to the little boardwalk. As she passed the old man, she gave him a shy smile and a meek “hello,” and kept on going. The Jamaican didn’t even notice. He was up to his ears in Bob Marley, eyes closed, shoulders swaying, quietly singing the words

At the footbath inside the gate, Nico rinsed her feet, slipped on her flip-flops and crossed the terrace to the elevator.

Back in her room, she removed the little bottle of champagne from the refrigerator, and opened it with a soft pop. Then she filled a flute from the kitchen cabinet, and took a single sip. It was nice, she thought, very nice.

Moving to the couch, she set the champagne glass down on the glass-and-rattan coffee table, and got out her laptop. Connecting it to the phone, she waited for the CPU to boot up, then got out the plastic overlay, and went to the hidden URL she’d accessed the day before (and the day before that). She moved the cursor to today’s rectangle, and then to the one that represented her birthdate:

The cursor blinked silently.

Resting her fingertips on the keyboard, she typed

Instantly, an hourglass appeared in the center of the screen, and hung there, like a bug in the air at the end of an invisible thread. After a while, an image began to form, one line after another until, in the end, there was a snapshot of an old man,
the same old man who was sitting in the wheelchair eight floors below.

Certain now that she had the right man, Nico went to the folding luggage rack that held her baggage. These were a battered leather pullman in which she kept her clothes, and a waterproofed case made of lime-green, high-impact plastic with a customized, foam interior. Turning the numbered wheels of the combination lock on the second bag, she sprung the catch, opened the case and checked her tools.

These were nestled in a complex of foam compartments and, once assembled, constituted the finest sniping system money could buy. There was a bolt-action, M-24 barrel that coupled with a reassuring
cliick
to a Kevlar-reinforced, fiberglass stock with a matte-black finish. A Leupold scope was mounted to the barrel on steel rings and bases, in tandem with a B-Square Laser. Support came from a Harris bipod, and silence from a Belgian-made helical suppressor that threaded onto the maw of the rifle’s twenty-inch barrel.

Nico assembled the weapon system with practiced ease, taking about thirty seconds, and tested the trigger’s three-pound pull. Then she inserted a single round of Teflon-coated, .308 ammunition, and rammed it home. With the silencer, scope, and laser, the rifle weighed almost eleven pounds—which made the bipod essential for accuracy.

Walking out onto the balcony, she saw that the sun was almost underwater, the horizon hemorrhaging as the sky darkened to a blue-black bruise. Backlighted from below, a dozen palm trees trembled in the evening breeze.

But the old man was right where he was supposed to be, sitting in the twilight, enjoying the day’s last gasp.

Lying on her stomach, Nico slid the muzzle between the pink balustrades at the edge of the balcony, its barrel resting on the bipod, taking the weight off her arms. Then she looked through the scope, and flicked on the laser, which cast a wafer of bloodred light between the old man’s fourth and sixth vertebrae. From the end of the barrel to the edge of his skin was less than two hundred yards, an easy shot for her, even in the
gloaming. Still, she could see the light tremble on her target’s back as her finger curled on the trigger, drawing it toward her for what seemed like forever. Then the rifle spasmed, and she heard a sound like a champagne cork going off in another room. The old man jerked upright and stiffened, as if an electric shock was moving through him. Then his body slumped, sinking into itself in such a way that she knew she’d cut his spine in two.

There was no smoke, really, and no flash that anyone was likely to have seen. The cartridge she’d fired was subsonic, so the only sound that could have given things away was the noise of the slug as it slapped into the old man’s back.

Not that it mattered. No one was paying attention—certainly not the Jamaican, who was lost to Bob Marley, and certainly not the children in the pool, whose laughter hung in the air like music.