Chronic fear

CHAPTER TWENTY

They were sitting on the porch as the first hush of dusk settled. The birds had found their roosts for the night, and the crickets had yet to take up their instruments. A tumble of clouds brushed the ridge tops, but white outflanked the gray and would likely bring no rain. The moist air was rich with a mix of green vegetation and humus, rebirth and decay dancing on the same ancient Appalachian dirt.

“Here’s what we know,” Gundersson said. “Somebody wants you both dead.”

“Nothing new about that,” Roland said.

Roland placed his revolver on the hand-carved table, where it would be easy to reach. He hoped his show of power would keep the agent in check until he figured out how to approach the situation. Of course, he’d also taken Gundersson’s weapon, which the agent had voluntarily surrendered as a ploy to gain trust. Not that Roland was ready to trust anyone, much less somebody claiming to be with the government.

“We know about the original Monkey House trials and Dr. Sebastian Briggs,” Gundersson said, sipping the iced herbal tea Wendy had served. “We’re not sure how it all ended, but we suspect that someone came away with Briggs’s formulas for Halcyon and Seethe. The files say they were destroyed in the industrial accident that claimed Briggs’s life, but it’s hard to imagine he’d have kept the details of something like that to himself.”

Wendy touched Roland’s arm and spoke before he had a chance. “We don’t remember anything,” she said to Gundersson. “That whole week was like a big blank.”

Roland studied his wife. As much as he wanted to believe her, he could never be sure she wasn’t simply covering her shame and regret. Not that she’d done much wrong, besides submitting to Briggs’s sexual games. It wasn’t like she’d killed anyone.

Not like him. And not like Alexis Morgan.

“Halcyon wipes out memories, so that’s not surprising,” Gundersson said. “And plenty of powerful people would love to have Halcyon just for that purpose.”

“You can’t trust something like that out in the world,” Roland said. “Sure, they dress it up as medicine, a way to treat veterans and accident victims and help them rejoin society. But every fucking evil masquerades as good, at least until it’s got a foothold.”

Politicians fall back on the words “the right thing to do” like I fall back on the Serenity Prayer. Grab a mantra you don’t have to explain.

“I agree, Roland, we need to move cautiously, but I also believe the U.S. government is the body that should make those decisions,” Gundersson said.

“You’ve been drinking the Washington Kool-Aid too long,” Roland said. “How can we trust your judgment?”

“It doesn’t matter anyway,” Wendy said. “We can’t help you. We already told you we don’t know anything.”

“You told me,” he said to Wendy before shifting his gaze to Roland. “But your husband hasn’t said anything about what happened that night in the Research Triangle Park.”

“Because I don’t know who you are,” Roland replied. “Sure, you can give me a blue ID card with ‘CIA’ stamped on it, and the name you give me conveniently matches the name on the card. And you’re the guy in the photo. But anybody can trick up an ID card.”

Like Briggs made me think I was David Underwood when he framed me for murder last year. Killing an innocent woman just to mess with my head. Worst of all, it worked.

And maybe you’ll sell me out to the cops for that crime. Then who’d watch out for Wendy?

“I gave you my gun,” Gundersson said. “And here’s another reason you can trust me. You received two e-mails the past two days that the CIA intercepted. One said, ‘Every four hours or else,’ and the other said, ‘Surely you didn’t think we could let you live, after what happened.’ Right?”

“What’s he talking about, Ro?” Wendy said.

“Nothing,” he said, unable to come up with a satisfactory lie.

“Why didn’t you tell me? Those sound like threats. And you said ‘Every four hours’ was the name of a client’s book.”

“Don’t you remember what that means?” Roland asked her. After she shook her head, he said, “That’s how often we had to take Halcyon to keep from going crazy.”

Wendy’s lips pursed in anger. “I told you, I don’t remember anything.”

I don’t blame you. I wouldn’t, either, if I could help it. And if I was the enemy within, I’d be lying, too.

She must have read the accusation in his eyes. She pushed away from the table and went to the tipped-over easel, where she tried to restore the canvas Roland had shattered during his rampage.

“How do I know you didn’t send those e-mails?” Roland asked Gundersson.

“We hacked into your e-mail account, I’ll admit. But it was to protect you.”

“Every fucking evil masquerades as a good.”

“I don’t blame you for being paranoid-”

“I’m way past paranoia. All the evidence I see says that everybody’s going to do whatever it takes to unlock Seethe and Halcyon. You, the NCS, the FBI, Santa’s little elves, and whoever’s left alive in the Jackson Fucking Five, not to mention Senator Burchfield and no telling how many other warmongering right-wingers and socialist liberals.”

“This isn’t political,” Gundersson said. “Our government wants to make sure it doesn’t fall into the wrong hands.”

“What if all hands are wrong?”

“We have information that Dr. Alexis Morgan is developing a Halcyon formula.”

Wendy paused in her restoration work. “Lex wouldn’t do anything like that. Not after what happened.”

I thought you didn’t remember anything. Gundersson’s eyes met Roland’s.

“Susan Sharpe,” Wendy said. “From the original trial. She died in that accident.”

“Dr. Morgan was Briggs’s graduate assistant,” Gundersson said. “Wouldn’t it make sense that he’d entrust her with the formula? Maybe she even contributed to the research. Maybe she was involved all along.”

Roland recalled the crazed rage of the woman as the Seethe swept over her and she killed Briggs’s bodyguard with a rusty tool. She hadn’t looked like a disciplined woman of science then. She was like a feral animal, taking prey that she had no intention of eating.

Or protecting a secret.

“Why are you bothering us, then? I can’t even cook a pot of coffee, and Wendy’s an artist, not a brain surgeon.” He ignored her glower. “You ought to be watching the Morgans. Her husband was tied up with CRO Pharmaceuticals.”

“They are…under observation by the CIA,” Gundersson said. “But other elements in the capital believe you two are hiding out because you know something.”

“What about you, Secret Agent Gundersson? What do you believe?”

“Off the record, the CIA is not happy about getting our nuts snipped in the aftermath of Nine/Eleven. There was enough blame to go around for everybody, but the competition really got rolling at that point and it’s harder than ever to know who you can trust.”

“Tell me about it,” Roland said. “Put J. Edgar Hoover in a skirt and he still comes out Hitler. As far as I’m concerned, the government is doing what the terrorists couldn’t: destroying this country from the inside. Best thing that could happen to protect our freedom is a big fucking asteroid blazing down Pennsylvania Avenue.”

“I respect your libertarian principles, and I even share some of them, but I’ve sworn loyalty to the United States,” Gundersson said. “It may be a mess, but it’s the best mess in the history of human civilization.”

“And you can fix the mess by getting answers from us.”

“More importantly, I can help you,” Gundersson said, glancing at Wendy to exploit Roland’s protective streak. “Both of you. Give me what you know, and the official word goes around that you know nothing.”

“Why should we believe that anybody trusts the official word?”

“Because it will be one of those secrets that people are allowed to discover. You know, the secret that nobody’s supposed to know but it’s hiding right there in plain sight.”

“Boy, DC is an even bigger clusterfuck than I figured. The only way they’ll accept the truth is if you disguise it as a lie.”

Wendy was dabbing violet paint around the gash in the canvas, using it as a foundational feature. She worked with savage strokes, using bold straight lines with a geometric precision. “Secret messages,” she said, her back to them, not pausing in her work. “All you have to do is add more layers, change things around. Illusion is your friend.”

“No, honey,” Roland said. “Illusion is your lover. Reality is your husband.”

She turned, letting the brush splash acrylic on the rough pine planks. Roland looked at the Rorschach pattern on the porch and decided it was Sebastian Briggs kneeling between his wife’s naked thighs.

Then again, he read that image into everything.

What a bargain. Wendy gets lost in Halcyon while Seethe makes me obsess over every memory. God, if ever you feel the need to let me accept the things I cannot change…

Gundersson cleared his throat to break the tension in the air, but the clumsy guttural noise only heightened it. “Mr. Doyle, I doubt aiding the government inspires you, but you have my personal guarantee that you’ll come to no harm. I am under orders to protect you until this situation is all clear.”

“And just when would that be? It looks like the only way to clear it would be to find your precious drugs and then kill us both.”

“There are powerful elements-”

Roland swept the. 38 into his hand and banged its butt on the table. “I’m a powerful goddamned element. I can take care of us.”

“No offense, Mr. Doyle, but I saw you shoot at the fox yesterday. Four rounds at twenty paces and you didn’t come close.”

Roland’s gaze dropped to the gun. “It was beautiful. I couldn’t…”

“What makes you think your aim would be better if the fox is shooting back?”

“He’s no killer,” Wendy said, storming her painting, applying a second swollen breast. “A woman knows.”

Keep on loving the illusion, honey. That’s all you get of me anyway.

“One question,” Roland said to Gundersson. “If it wasn’t the CIA that sent the e-mails, then who did?”

“National Clandestine Service. One of those new federal agencies gone a little rogue. The great bait-and-switch was that they were created to monitor overseas threats, but we all know how that goes, right?”

“The enemy within,” Roland said. “That’s the one that gets you.”

He pulled Gundersson’s gun out of his waistband, where it had been digging into his skin. He slid it across the table. “Your move.”

Gundersson left the gun lying there between them. “Tell me what you know.”

Roland sighed. The truth-at least, the truth as Seethe remembered it-had haunted him like those shadowy figures in Wendy’s paintings. Maybe if he exorcised it, he could sleep at night without lying next to his wife and imagining squeezing her throat until the images went away.

“I’ll tell you both what I remember,” Roland said. “But I’m not sure I know anything.”