The Key to Midnight (25 page)

“So the importing business is a front,” Alex said.

“In the diplomatic phrasing of our English friends, ‘The distinct possibility exists that the employees of Fielding Athison engage in some sort of unpublicized work in addition to the importation of Asian goods.”

“A front for what? For whom?”

“If you want to find out,” Blankenship said, “it’s going to cost us dearly. And it’s not the sort of thing that can be dug up quickly—if at all. I’d bet a thousand to one that the people using Fielding Athison are breaking a serious law or two. But they’ve been in business for fourteen years, and no one’s tumbled to them yet, so they’re good at keeping secrets. Do you want me to tell London to try to dig deeper?”

“No,” Alex said. “Not right now. I’ll see what develops here in the next couple of days. If it’s necessary to put the Englishmen on the job again, I’ll call you back.”

“How’s Wayne?” Blankenship asked.

“Better. He’ll keep the leg.”

“Thank God. Look, Alex, do you want me to send help?”

“I’m all right.”

“I’ve got a few good men free at the moment.”

“If they came, they’d only be targets. Like Wayne.”

“Aren’t you a target?”

“Yeah. But the fewer the better.”

“A little protection—”

“I don’t need protection.”

“Wayne needed protection. But I guess you know best.”

“What I need,” Alex said, “is divine guidance.”

“If a voice comes to me from a burning bush anytime soon, I’ll let you know right away what it says.”

“Seriously, Ted, I want you to keep a lid on this. I don’t want to attack the problem with an army. I’d like to find the answers I’m after without, in the process, filling up Japanese hospitals with my employees.”

“It’s still an odd way to handle it—alone.”

“I realize that,” Alex said. “But I’ve thought about it... and it seems to me that these people, whoever they might be, have given me quite a lot of slack already. There’s something odd about the fact that they haven’t just blown my head off by now.”

“You think they’re playing two sides of some game? Using you?”

“Maybe. And maybe if I bring in a platoon from Chicago, they won’t cut me any more slack. Maybe they want to keep the game quiet, with a limited number of players.”

“Why?”

“If I knew that, then there wouldn’t be any need for the game, would there?”

Five o’clock Sunday afternoon. Dr. Inamura’s office. Pastel lighting. Lemon incense. The watchful bird in the brass cage.

The pine shutters were open, and purple twilight pressed at the windows.

“Dancing butterflies,” said the psychiatrist.

In the final session with Omi Inamura, Joanna recalled the exact wording of the three posthypnotic suggestions that had been deeply implanted by the man with the mechanical hand. The first involved the memory block—“Tension, apprehension, and dissension have begun”—with which they had already dealt. The second concerned the devastating attacks of claustrophobia and paranoia that she suffered when anyone became more than casually interested in her. Inamura finished administering the cure that Alex had begun several days ago, patiently convincing Joanna that the words of Herr Doktor no longer had any power over her and that her fears were not valid. They never had been valid. Not surprisingly, the third of Herr Doktor’s directives was that she would never leave Japan; and if she did attempt to get out of the country, if she did board a ship or an aircraft that was bound for any port beyond Japan’s borders, she would become nauseous and extremely disoriented. Any attempt to escape from the prison to which she was assigned would end in an attack of blind terror and hysteria. Her faceless masters had boxed her up every way that they could: emotionally, intellectually, psychologically, chronologically, and now even geographically. Omi Inamura relieved her of that last restriction.

Alex was impressed by the cleverness with which Herr Doktor had programmed Joanna. Whoever and whatever else he might be, the man was a genius in his field.

When Inamura was positive that Joanna could not remember any more about what Herr Doktor had done to her, he took the session in a new direction. He urged her to move further into her past.

She squirmed in the chair. “But there’s nowhere to go.”

“Of course there is. You weren’t born in that room, Joanna.”

“Nowhere to go.”

“Listen carefully,” Inamura said. “You’re strapped in that bed. There’s one window. Outside there’s a mansard roof against a blue sky. Are you there?”

“Yes,” she said, more relaxed in this trance than she had been in any of the previous sessions. “Big black birds are sitting on the chimneys. A dozen big black birds.”

“You’re approximately twenty years old,” Inamura said. “But now you’re growing younger. Minute by minute, you’re growing younger. You have not been in that room for a long time. In fact you’ve just come there, and you haven’t yet even met the man with the mechanical hand. You haven’t yet undergone a treatment. You’re drifting back, back in time. You have just come awake in that room. And now time is running backward even faster... back beyond the moment you were brought into that room... hours slipping away... faster, faster... now days instead of hours... backward in time, flowing like a great river... carrying you back, back, back... Where are you now, Joanna?”

She didn’t respond.

Inamura repeated the question.

“Nowhere,” she said hollowly.

“Look around you.”

“Nothing.”

“What is your name?”

She didn’t reply.

“Are you Joanna Rand?”

“Who?” she asked.

“Are you Lisa Chelgrin?”

“Who’s she? Do I know her?”

“What’s your name?”

“I... I don’t have a name.”

“Who are you?”

“Nobody.”

“You must be somebody.”

“I’m waiting to become.”

“To become Joanna Rand?”

“I’m waiting,” she said simply.

“Concentrate for me.”

“I’m so cold. Freezing.”

“Where are you?”

“Nowhere.”

“What do you see?”

“Nothing,” she insisted.

“What do you feel?”

“Dead.”

Alex said, “Jesus.”

Inamura stared thoughtfully at her. After a while he said, “I’ll tell you where you are, Joanna.”

“Okay.”

“You are standing in front of a door. An iron door. Very imposing. Like the door to a fortress. Do you see it?”

“No.”

“Try to visualize it,” Inamura said. “Look closely. You really cannot miss it. The door is huge, absolutely massive. Solid iron. If you could see through to the far side of it, you would find four large hinges, each as thick as your wrist. The iron is pitted and spotted with rust, but the door nevertheless appears impregnable. It’s five feet wide, nine feet high, rounded at the top, set in an arch in the middle of a great stone wall.”

What the devil’s he doing?
Alex wondered.

“You see the door now, I’m sure,” Inamura said.

“Yes,” Joanna agreed.

“Touch it.”

Lying in her chair but obviously believing herself to be in front of the door, Joanna raised one hand and tested the empty air.

“What does the door feel like?” Inamura asked.

“Cold and rough,” she said.

“Rap your knuckles on it.”

She rapped silently on nothing.

“What do you hear, Joanna?”

“A dull ringing sound. It’s a very thick door.”

“Yes, it is,” Inamura said. “And it’s locked.”

Resting in the reclining chair but simultaneously existing in another time and place, Joanna tried the door that only she could see. “Yeah. Locked.”

“But you’ve got to open it,” Inamura said.

“Why?”

“Because beyond it lies twenty years of your life. The first twenty years. That’s why you can’t remember any of it. They’ve put it behind the door. They’ve locked it away from you.”

“Oh. Yes. I see.”

“Luckily, I’ve found the key that will unlock the door,” said Inamura. “I have it right here.”

Alex smiled, pleased with the doctor’s creative approach to the problem.

“It’s a large iron key,” Inamura said. “A large iron key attached to an iron ring. I’ll shake it. There. Do you hear it rattling, Joanna?”

“I hear it,” she said.

Inamura was so skillful that Alex almost heard it too.

“I’m putting the key in your hand,” Inamura told her, even though he didn’t move from his armchair. “There. You have it now.”

“I’ve got it,” Joanna said, closing her right hand around the imaginary key.

“Now put the key in the door and give it a full turn. That’s right. Just like that. Fine. You’ve unlocked it.”

“What happens next?” Joanna asked apprehensively.

“Push the door open,” the doctor said.

“It’s so heavy.”

“Yes, but it’s coming open just the same. Hear the hinges creaking? It’s been closed a long time. A long, long time. But it’s coming open... open... open all the way. There. You’ve done it. Now step across the threshold.”

“All right.”

“Are you across?”

“Yes.”

“Good. What do you see?”

Silence.

At the windows, twilight had given way to night. No wind pressed at the glass. Even the bird was still and attentive in its cage.

“What do you see?” Inamura repeated. “No stars,” Joanna said.

Frowning, Inamura said, “What do you mean?”

She fell silent again.

“Take another step,” Inamura instructed.

“Whatever you say.”

“And another. Five steps in all.”

She counted them off: “... three... four... five.”

“Now stop and look around, Joanna.”

“I’m looking.”

“Where are you?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you see?”

“No stars, no moon.”

“Joanna, what do you see?”

“Midnight.”

“Be more specific, please.”

“Just midnight,” she said.

“Explain, please.”

Joanna took a deep breath. “I see midnight. The most perfect midnight imaginable. Silky. Almost liquid. A fluid midnight sky runs all the way to the earth on all sides, sealing everything up tight, melting like tar over the whole world, over everything that comes before, over everywhere I’ve been and everything I’ve done and everything I’ve seen. No stars at all. Flawless blackness. Not a speck of light. And not a sound either. No wind. No odors. The earth itself is black. All darkness on all sides. Blackness is the only thing, and it goes on forever.”

“No,” Inamura said. “That’s not true. Twenty years of your life will begin to unfold around you. It’s starting to happen even as I speak. You see it now, a world coming to life all around you.”

“Nothing.”

“Look closer, Joanna. It may not be easy to see at first, but it’s all there. I’ve given you the key to your past.”

“You’ve only given me the key to midnight,” Joanna said. A new despair echoed in her voice.

“The key to the past,” Inamura insisted.

“To midnight,” she said miserably. “A key to darkness and hopelessness. I am nobody. I am nowhere. I’m alone. All alone. I don’t like it here.”

By the time they left the psychiatrist’s office, night had claimed Kyoto. From the north came a great wind that drove the bitter air through clothes and skin and flesh all the way to the bone. The light of the street lamps cast stark shadows on the wet pavement, on the dirty slush in the gutters, and on the piled-up snow that had fallen during the previous night.

Saying nothing, going nowhere, Alex and Joanna sat in her Lexus, shivering, steaming the windshield with their breath, waiting to get warm. The exhaust vapors plumed up from the tailpipe and rushed forward past the windows, like multitudes of ghosts hurrying to some otherworldly event.

“Omi Inamura can’t do anything more for me,” Joanna said.

Alex reluctantly agreed. The doctor had brought to the surface every existing scrap of memory involving the man with the mechanical hand, but he hadn’t been able to help her recall enough to provide new leads. Thanks to the genius of those who had tampered with her memory, the specifics of the horrors perpetrated in that strange room had been scattered like the ashes of a long-extinguished fire; and the two thirds of her life spent as Lisa Chelgrin had been thoroughly, painstakingly eradicated beyond recall.

The dashboard fans pushed warm air through the vents, and the patches of condensation on the windshield shrank steadily.

Finally Joanna said, “I can accept that I’ve forgotten... Lisa. They stole my other life, but Joanna Rand is a good person to be.”

“And to be with,” he added.

“I can accept the loss. I can live without a past if I have to. I’m strong enough.”

“I’ve no doubt about that.”

She faced him. “But I can’t just pick up and go on without knowing
why?”
she said angrily.

“We’ll find out why.”

“How? There’s no more in me for Inamura to pull out.”

“And I don’t believe there’s anything more to be discovered here in Kyoto. Not anything important.”

“What about the man who followed you into that alleyway—or the man in your hotel room, the one who cut you?”

“Small fish. Minnows.”

“Where are the big fish?” she asked. “In Jamaica—where Lisa disappeared?”

“More likely Chicago. That’s Senator Tom’s stomping grounds. Or in London.”

“London? But you proved I never lived there. That entire background’s fake.”

“But Fielding Athison is there, the place that fronts on the phone as United British-Continental Insurance. I’m pretty sure they aren’t just small fish.”