The Memory Collector (20 page)

But he knew that something had gone haywire with Slick. Chira-Sayf’s killer app had somehow turned on the company.

“Alec’s pulling the plug. The military’s never going to get it.” He stared out the windshield. “There’s a fight brewing.”

“Between?” she said. “Are they dragging you into it?”

“If they do, they’ll regret it. Because I’ll take care of things.”

And when Ian took care of things, the results weren’t pretty.

The nails in the boards wouldn’t budge. She wiped her palms on her pants. Maybe she could split the plywood. It was dry and brittle. She ran her fingers over the board until she found a chip in the wood, about a quarter of an inch wide.

The window faced the street. Maybe she could shove something through the chip in the wood and send a message. Wave a flag. Somehow.

How could she alert a passerby? She didn’t have any I.D. They’d taken her purse, cell phone, car and house keys. They’d taken her jewelry. Even her wedding ring, the thieving bastards. And they’d shoved her in this stinking bedroom.

She turned to the brown paper bag. Inside were the clothes Murdock had provided in his strange burst of generosity—a turtleneck sweater, wool slacks, blouse, a designer sweatshirt. She got the sweatshirt from the stack. She could pull the string from the hood and use it somehow.

Wait. She turned up the hem of the sweatshirt. There was a dry cleaning label inside.

CALDER.

Her heart rate bumped up. Talk about waving a flag.

Then a weird suspicion came over her. She got the slacks and looked inside the waistband. Again she saw the dry cleaning label. She got the blouse. Same.

These clothes virtually begged for somebody to identify her. Somebody, for instance, dragging a body out of the mud flats on the bay.

“Holy shit,” she whispered.

She sat down on the edge of the bed and tore the hem of the blouse with her teeth. She ripped out the tag on a long strip of fabric, like a nurse preparing a field dressing, and got to work.

Jo walked into radiology feeling that something was on her heels, waiting for the opportunity to bite her. Lieutenant Tang was in the hallway talking on the phone, looking unsettled and grim. She jerked her head at a doorway and murmured, “Go on in.”

The room was cool and hushed, illuminated by X-rays in light boxes and MRI images on the radiologist’s computer screen. Bone art. Soul stripped bare, to neurons and gray matter. Rick Simioni was standing by the desk, wearing his white coat over a dress shirt of Egyptian cotton as rich as cream.

“Rick,” she said.

When he looked at her, the light from the computer screen gave his face an eerie, hollow look.

Dr. Chakrabarti, the radiologist, gave Jo a prim nod and pointed at the screen with a pen. “Mr. Gingrich’s MRI.”

The images on the screen were repetitive and disconcerting, like Warhol’s grayscale death montages. The three of them stared.

What
was
that?

Jo slowed her breathing. Training and experience had taught her to hold part of herself back when seeing the evidence of a catastrophic diagnosis. She pulled her emotions safely off the ground, tucked them away, close enough for empathy but not so close that she’d get sucked into the patient’s tragedy.

And nothing that happened to the human body could surprise her.

So she thought. But though she stood rooted to the floor in front of the computer screen, she wanted to run away.

The same black threads that had chewed through Ian Kanan’s brain were advancing through Ron Gingrich’s, doing—what? Growing, or eating their way through his medial temporal lobes.

“You’re sure it’s not an imaging artifact?” Jo said.

The fluorescent tubes in the light boxes hummed like bug zappers. Simioni crossed his arms and stared at the screen. Chakrabarti hadn’t looked away. It was as if the Warhol images were hypnotizing him.

“It’s not an imaging error,” Chakrabarti said. “The same thing emerges on both sets of MRIs. I don’t know what it is.”

Jo looked at Simioni. “Rick?”

Simioni focused on the screen. “A natural neurotoxin? A tropical parasite? Something they both came in contact with on the airplane?”

“An industrial pollutant?” she said. “A contaminant from high-tech manufacturing?”

“That’s an interesting possibility.”

“Kanan works for a nanotechnology company.”

Both men turned to her. Simioni said, “Really?”

“Really.”

With a knock, Amy Tang opened the door and stuck her head in. “Got something going on at the marina. It may relate. I’m heading over.”

Jo nodded, and Tang disappeared. Jo turned back to the MRI images.

“Thoughts?” she said.

Simioni turned pensive. “Nanotech is being investigated as a treatment for brain tumors. Treating brain cancers is notoriously difficult, because many anticancer drugs consist of molecules too large to cross the blood-brain barrier and reach the tumor site. The barrier keeps most agents out. Only very small substances can breach it.”

“Are nanoparticles small enough?”

“Some are. But nanoparticle chemotherapy is problematic. If the wrong agents cross the barrier they can cause serious brain infections, which are tenacious and difficult to treat. And some nanoparticles deliver anticancer drugs but don’t target only tumors—they accumulate in surrounding healthy tissue.”

“You’re saying nanoparticles can be a Trojan horse,” Jo said. “They could slip past the brain’s natural defenses and cause havoc.”

“Precisely.”

All three of them stared at the images on the screen.

Simioni pointed at the images of Gingrich’s brain. “What could cross the blood-brain barrier and lodge so specifically in this one area, I’m not sure.”

“Where’s Mr. Gingrich now?” Jo asked.

“Upstairs. We admitted him.” Simioni continued gazing at the screen.

“Is it contagious?” Jo said.

He looked at her. “I hope not.”

15

S
tanding aboard the crowded AirTrain, Stef Nivesen watched the clouds above the coastal mountains. They were so bright they seemed to amplify the sunlight. They looked like klieg lights in the sky.

The AirTrain rattled along the elevated track toward the terminal at San Francisco International Airport. Stef was stuffed in a corner, holding the handle of her roller case. She kept her balance as the train rounded a curve. She pretended to ignore the looks from men on the train. She knew her red Virgin Atlantic uniform fit her to perfection. She was twenty-six, she worked out, she wore heels that made her legs look great. The Virgin uniforms were retro-styled, giving off the aura of jet-set glamour. And she knew she could take down any of these guys in a judo bout. She flew the SFO-Heathrow route, and she loved her job. Loved flying to London, loved British men, and knew they regarded a long-haul flight as a twelve-hour party with an open bar. At times she wished the 747 carried a fire hose, so she could blast sloshed and grabby passengers straight back to their seats.

She scratched her arm. The train was hot. She felt tired but wide awake.

The train stopped, doors opened, and people streamed out. Stef looked around in surprise. What was she doing at the car rental stop? She’d been going the other way, from the garage to the international terminal.

How had she missed her stop?

She checked her watch and relaxed. She had plenty of time.

People streamed aboard, hauling luggage, and the train pulled out. Stef stared at the clouds in the sky above the coastal mountains. They were as bright as klieg lights.

At least it was sunny today. Not like yesterday when her flight came in with the lunatic on board.
That
had been weird. She scratched her arm again. She was glad those two men had stopped the nutball before he opened the emergency exit. She’d been strapped in her jump seat forty feet away. She would have had a hell of a time reaching him, much less stopping him.

Why had Berserko tried to open the door? Did he need air? She sure did. The train was hot and close. And bright. Everybody seemed exceptionally bright and sharply defined.

“Miss? Are you all right?”

Stef blinked at the man standing in front of her. Forty-Niners cap and forty-nine pounds of pudge around his waist.

“Excuse me?” she said.

“Are you all right? You were turning around, like something was pushing you.”

“I’m fine.” What a weird thing for the man to say.

The train stopped and the doors opened. Crap, this was the international terminal. She rushed out as the doors closed.

She took the crew lane through security and headed straight for the gate. It was already crowded with passengers waiting to board. She checked her watch.

Alarm rang through her. Thirty minutes to departure. Holy crap, how had it gotten so late?

She picked up her pace. Her cell phone rang. She checked the display. It was Charlotte Thorne, one of her British colleagues.

Stef answered in a rush. “I’m on my way.”

“You said that an hour ago. Where are you?”

“I’m coming down the concourse. What do you mean, I said that?”

Charlotte exhaled with annoyance. “Are you really here this time? You sure you haven’t been skiving with your boyfriend?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I can see the gate.”

She hung up, irked. Why would Charlotte claim she’d lied? She hadn’t spoken to Charlotte an hour ago. She hadn’t spoken to her since their last flight together. How daft, as Charlotte would put it.

She reached the gate. Throwing her shoulders back, she smiled and walked toward the plane.

Jo dropped her satchel on the kitchen table, turned on the coffeepot, and opened the French doors to the patio. It was chilly, but after seeing Ron Gingrich’s MRI she wanted fresh air.

She got out her notes and checked e-mail. A message confirmed that Kanan had customs papers on the daggers and sword he’d brought back. They were classed as museum pieces, purchased from an antiquities dealer in Jordan, destined for display. Kanan was transporting them on behalf of Chira-Sayf Inc.