G.I. Chuck snakes past a drag queen on stilts, a three-headed dog, and a throng of not-costumed but drunken revelers, albeit polite ones. Noe Valley is the upscale, label-conscious neighborhood adjacent to the Castro, where the revelers generally are more unruly, and less dressed.
I’d like at this moment to cultivate Grandma’s two skills: the ability to stay calm and, if necessary, do karate. Screw Pauline’s admonitions that I’m melodramatic. I’m feeling entitled.
When we’re four blocks off the main drag, Chuck takes a sharp right, and disappears from view. I pick up speed. Moments later, I’m at the spot where Chuck disappeared from view. It’s the entrance to an alley, more like a narrow one-way street that bisects a handful of million-dollar attached row-houses. Light from the back door of one flat that is halfway down the block provides me meager vision. I can make out the trash and recycling bins parked neatly behind each residence, but no Chuck.
Maybe he made it to the other side of the alley/street. I start hustling to follow his tracks. I make it two steps when I’m pulled violently backwards.
My mask is knocked off, and I feel something soft but tight around my neck.
“I didn’t spend a lifetime in the military without learning how to tell when I’m being followed by a gorilla,” my attacker says in my ear. Chuck.
He loosens his grip on what I’m guessing is his scarf, now around my neck, not his.
“Mr. Idle, whom do you work for?”
“Medblog. Eventually, you,” I manage to squeak out.
“No one else?”
“I do some other freelance work.”
This conversation is ridiculous.
“Why are you following me? I agreed to meet you,” he says.
“My grandmother’s been taken.”
“What?” Alarm.
“Let go of my neck.”
He doesn’t. “What did you say about your grandmother?”
“Someone took her. Knocked me out and kidnapped her. Does it seem all that unlikely, given how easily you subdued me with cashmere?”
He pulls the scarf away. I crane my neck to look at him.
“I think they’d teach journalists better surveillance techniques.”
“Look, I don’t trust anyone at this point. No offense. On the bright side, you got the better of me.”
“You look green,” he says.
I turn my head to the side and throw up. It’s the result of being drugged on an empty stomach, and then having my body jolted by whiplash.
“Jesus, Idle.”
Bent at the waist, I wipe my mouth on my sleeve. I take a deep breath and taste the flavor of soured milk. I turn my head and spit. I stand upright, and get a shot of light-headedness.
“I need your help finding my grandmother,” I say. “But, frankly, your story doesn’t add up. I think you’re involved with Biogen, and Adrianna. And…” I pause.
“What?” he says.
“You’re not injured.”
“What?”
“You supposedly were shot outside my house. Now you’re evading and flattening me like an Olympic sprinter and wrestler.”
“Flesh wound.”
I shake my head. I reach into my pocket for the bullets I found on the ground outside my apartment. I pull a couple out and show him.
“How do I know you didn’t just drop these on the ground?”
He raises his eyebrows; is that really what I think?
“Looks like an automatic. May I have it traced?”
I hand one to him and shrug. I’ve got another. He takes it.
“Your grandmother’s been taken? Where? How?” He seems empathic, concerned.
“Why do you care?”
“I worry about my employees and their families.”
Absurd.
“Chuck, may I tell you about the secret document?”
“You found a secret document?”
“I’ve written one.”
I commence my bluff.
“It’s a preliminary account of what’s going on with the Human Memory Crusade, and Biogen, and military investors — specifically, you.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I’ve included the part about Dr. Pete Laramer, and Biogen’s proposed merger with a Swiss biotech company. Sounding more familiar?”
“You’re cute when you’re making things up.”
Still glib, but I have his attention.
“My thesis goes like this: A group of scientists and doctors backed by the government is studying the impact of computer use on memory.”
As I air my theories, I realize they feel like non-fiction.
“The bad guys are using the Human Memory Crusade as a front — tinkering with memories under the auspices of recording them.”
I pause and reflect on what I’ve gleaned about Adrianna. She seems like a decent person, and she reached out to me for help. I recall that Dr. Laramer studied deep brain-scanning technology, earned a patent for looking at memory centers. Where does he fit in? If at all?
“Nat?”
I continue, more pieces falling into place. “They didn’t start as bad guys. Not all of them. There were good intentions to study the impact of heavy computer use on memory loss. But something went wrong. Or someone inside the camp discovered how to use the technology to a different and devious end. To tinker with memories, override them, or erase them. When Adrianna found out, she tried to figure out what was going on, or to tell someone — me. Biogen freaked out because it couldn’t have its reputation smeared before the big merger goes through.”
I’m making all kinds of leaps, but they feel right.
“Sounds thin. Erasing memories? How?”
“Cortisol.” I recall that Adrianna studied the impact of cortisol on the brain. “It’s a stress hormone. It’s really quite a wonderful thing that kicks in to help us through intense physical and emotional experiences. You’ve heard the stories of when a dad lifts a car off the ground to save his trapped child, right? That’s cortisol. Good stuff, except that like any powerful drug, it has some downsides.”
I pause because I’m going from educated guessing to pure guesswork. What I’m thinking is that one downside of cortisol may be that it might kill memory cells. But how exactly? And how did the cortisol get into the brain of the test subjects? Was it injected at the laboratory sites, like the fake dental office?
Another possibility hits me — a shocking one.
“The computer,” I say. “The butterflies. You’ve figured out a way to stimulate chemical releases through computer interaction. Fascinating technology developed by and for the military industrial complex.”
He shakes his head, the meaning of this gesture unclear to me.
“You’ve put this all in a secret document?”
I stare Chuck in his eyes. They betray the deliberately vague emotion of a hostile witness trying not to appear too unfriendly.
“E-mailed to a couple of friends, and asked them not to open unless something happens to me.”
“The old don’t-open-the-envelope-unless-I-disappear trick, but updated for the Internet era. Nicely done.”
I nod.
Chuck is quiet for several seconds.
“Up until you said ‘cortisol,’ I thought you were bluffing,” he finally says.
“My grandmother learned something about the project, right? She’s carrying critical information. So you’ve taken her. Where is she?”
“Let’s get out of this alley.”
“Tell me where she is, or the world gets a big dose of my fancy journalism.”
“Slow down, Woodward. I need to find your grandmother as much as you do.”
“Why?”
He pauses.
“Why, Chuck? Who has her?”
“Lane is ground zero.”