Home Fires

11. RIGHT AND LEFT

“Oh, my God! Oh, my God!”

Vanessa was sobbing in Skip’s arms, and Rick Johnson was cursing, his voice low and savage. Skip was not sure who had spoken. Possibly it had been Susan, but quite possibly it had been Skip himself.

Three sailors arrived with fire extinguishers and began to spray the smoking ruins with foam. Almost idly, as one sees things in a dream, Skip saw a wristless hand in the wreckage. That’s a woman’s hand, he thought; there was crimson polish on the nails.

“What was it?” Johnson coughed and backed away. When no one answered, he added, “What did they blow up? I’m new here.”

Skip only shrugged, his arm around the weeping Vanessa.

“That woman went into the hold with us. She and this other woman here.”

Susan said, “Yes, we did. They asked for volunteers, for women particularly. Skip and the captain did.”

“I was there,” Johnson told her. “I volunteered too.”

“A black woman volunteered, but they didn’t take her. They took this woman, though. And they took me.”

Skip said, “I want Mick Tooley, Susan. Find him for me. Try your phone to start with. There’s a classroom on G Deck. I’m not talking about the big meeting room on E Deck—a smaller room on G Deck. It could be Room Twelve. Tell Mick to meet us there as soon as he can.”

He turned to Johnson. “I know your name, but who are you?”

“I can tell you, but you’ll have to do a lot of snooping around to verify it.” Johnson had taken out his wallet. “Here my driver’s license, with my picture on it, if that interests you.”

Skip shook his head.

“Right. Come to think of it, I’ve got something better—a little better, anyhow. My gun license.” He slipped it out of his wallet and handed it over. “Look under training, and you’ll see ex-military.”

Skip did, nodded, and handed the license back.

“I was West Point, and after graduation I got stuck in Military Intelligence. They sent me off—I can’t tell you where—and by the time I got home to Earth I’d put in over twenty years. You know how that works, I’m sure.”

Skip smiled. He had relaxed a trifle.

Susan said, “Lieutenant Colonel, right? You look it.”

“Don’t I wish!” Johnson grinned. “I was a captain, Ms. Clerkin, but a captain with twenty years’ service. I took my leave. I assume Mastergunner Blue’s doing that.”

Skip said, “She is.”

“After that I tried a desk job here. That lasted…” Johnson paused to think. “Two hundred-days or so, about half a year. It bored the shit out of me, so I applied for a discharge and got it. I’ve been knocking around trying to find something worth doing ever since. Mick Tooley works for you, Mr. Grison?”

“He’s a junior member of my firm, yes.”

“Well, Tooley put out a call on one of the mercenary sites. I thought it sounded interesting, and the money was good. So—”

Susan coughed. “I texted Mr. Tooley, asking him to meet us on G Deck, and I hate looking at this. Can’t we please go up there now?”

Skip nodded, and led Vanessa away. The air of the corridor seemed clear, but there was enough smoke in it to sting his eyes. Feeling foolish, he blinked back tears. Johnson was asking Susan what had been blown up, and Susan was saying she had no idea.

Vanessa murmured, “Polly’s dead. So is Amelia. I know they are.”

Skip wanted to say that one or the other might have survived; but he knew it would sound as false as he felt it to be, and kept silent.

“I killed them.” Vanessa stepped in front of him and clutched his shirt. “I killed them when I volunteered, but I didn’t mean to.”

He said, “I doubt that the hijackers did this,” and managed to get her to the stairs. The stairwell, closed off as it was by massive watertight doors, had purer air, and G Deck, when they reached it, better air still. The door to the conference room was not locked; Skip and Susan opened the portholes, welcoming a warm breeze from the sea.

“You want to have a conference?” Johnson was not sweating, Skip noticed, despite the climb and his tweed jacket. “Are you sure you want to include me?”

Skip nodded and flipped open his mobile phone. “Give me the second-class bar, please. I don’t know the number.” After a second or two, he said, “Thank you.”

Susan asked, “Collecting more people, Mr. Grison?”

“Trying to. Yes.”

“I might be able to help.”

“I know, and I may have to call on you.” Skip dropped into the nearest chair and spoke into his phone. “My name is Skip Grison. Could I have yours?”

Susan gave Vanessa a package of facial tissues.

“There are soldiers on this ship, Marlon. Men on leave or recently discharged. I’m sure you know them.”

Skip listened intently.

“Correct. I’m trying to find Corporal Donald Miles. Do you know him?”

Johnson said, “He was in that first group they talk about.”

Skip nodded, and spoke into the mobile phone. “If you see him within the next hour or so, please ask him to come to Compartment Twelve on G Deck. Tell him I’m anxious to speak with him.” He snapped his phone shut.

Susan said, “I could get coffee. Probably some sweet rolls or something. Would you like me to do it?”

Mick Tooley came in, tired and worried. “There’s been an explosion on I Deck. Do you know about that?”

Skip nodded. “We were there. Sit down, please.”

The chairs were large and black, and reluctant when it came to moving across the soft Lincoln-green carpet.

“You already know Chelle’s mother. I may not have told you that she’s the ship’s social director.”

“No one did,” Tooley said. “I had assumed she was a passenger.”

“This is pro forma,” Skip said. “Susan, did you know that this lady, on this ship her name is Virginia Healy, is the ship’s social director?”

“No, sir. I didn’t know who Virginia Healy was, sir. Just that the bomb—can we stop calling it the explosion?”

Skip nodded. “You’re right, it was almost certainly a bomb.”

“Just that the bomb killed two of her friends, or she thinks it did.”

Skip turned to Rick Johnson. “What about you? Did someone tell you that Virginia was our social director?”

“No. No one told me.”

“But you heard someone tell someone else. Please tell us everything you can. It’s important.”

“I can see that, but I don’t have a lot of information to give you. It was in that meeting when you and Mick here, and Soriano, were recruiting people to go down into the hold with you.”

Skip nodded. “Go on.”

“She volunteered, and somebody behind me whispered, ‘Who’s that?’ Somebody else whispered, ‘She’s the social director.’ ”

Tooley said, “Did you recognize their voices? Either one of them?”

Johnson shook his head.

“You don’t know who they were?”

“I have no idea. I—to tell you the truth I was trying to decide whether I would volunteer. I raised my hand just after they spoke, I think. I heard the question and the answer, but I paid very little attention to them.”

Skip said, “Yours wasn’t one of the first hands to go up, as I remember.”

“You’re right. It wasn’t. If there had been more hands raised, I wouldn’t have raised mine at all. You had said it was going to be very dangerous, and I felt sure you were right—that it was something just short of a suicide mission. Off Earth…”

Vanessa went to him. “If you know anything, anything at all that might help, please, please tell us! You didn’t know Amelia or Polly. I understand that. But they worked for me, they were nice girls, and they tried to do a good job, both of them. Amelia had been a champion diver, and—and…”

Skip had risen. He put his arm around her.

Johnson cleared his throat. “I didn’t want you to think I was bragging, that’s all. I told you I was in intelligence, and I was. Maybe you thought it meant I had a desk job, and if that’s what you thought I wanted to leave it right there.”

“I did,” Skip said. “I take it I was wrong.”

“I went into some very tight places, Mr. Grison. I did it because it was my duty. It didn’t seem to me that it was my duty to volunteer, and I had to think things over. I did, and went into another tight place, this time with you, and I’d like to know what’s going on.”

“So would I.” Skip cleared his throat. “I need to fill in some details. Virginia will already know much of what I’m going to say—perhaps all of it. I apologize for boring her, and for boring Mick, at least a little bit. But everyone here needs to understand where we stand in this.”

He paused, and Susan said, “Go on, sir.”

“Virginia is Chelle’s mother, as I said a moment ago. That’s why—”

Vanessa said, “A bad mother. You know my name and I know you went down into that dreadful warehouse place with me, but I don’t remember yours. Will you forgive me? I’ve had a terrible shock. I lost … l-lost—”

Skip intervened. “This is Susan Clerkin, Virginia. She’s my confidential secretary, and she joined Mick Tooley here after Mick set out to rescue us. We’re indebted to her, and to Rick, too.”

Johnson said, “I probably know less than anybody about what’s been happening on this ship. I know Susan pretty well and know the ship was hijacked, but that’s as far as I go.”

“Virginia’s had some memories wiped,” Skip told him. “You were in Military Intelligence, so you probably know more about that than anyone here.”

Johnson shrugged. “We don’t like to do it and don’t do it unless we have to. If you’re asking whether I’ve done it myself—”

“I’m not.”

“The answer is that I was never authorized. Medical personnel only. If you’re asking whether I myself have been wiped, the answer is no. There are no blanks in my memory.”

Susan said, “How is it done?”

“You should ask a doctor, not me. Roughly, then. You can record a person’s memories and personality by picking up minute electronic impulses in the brain and recording them. You stimulate all the parts of the brain until you have everything in digital form. When you’ve got it, you wipe the forebrain by countering its impulses. After that you edit the record you made, generally by searching out words and images. Maybe you look for Operation Grief, for example, then for mental images of an armed drone. When you find things you want forgotten, you delete.”

Susan said, “And then you upload the data back into the brain?”

“Exactly.” Johnson paused, looking troubled. “It’s not perfect, you understand, and it’s highly dependent on the skill of the operator. Sometimes this bit or that bit escapes, so to speak.”

Skip said, “I didn’t know that.”

Johnson shrugged. “Most people don’t, but it happens. I know you’re an attorney. Susan and I talked a lot on the boat, and she told me quite a bit about you. Let’s say we’ve got you and we want to wipe everything related to a conference you had three years ago with a Ms. Smith. We know more or less what Ms. Smith must have told you, and what you must have told her. We search for that stuff in your record and delete it. We look for mental images of her and delete those, too.”

Skip nodded.

“Swell, but suppose that while she was with you, she asked to use your private restroom. You said yes, and thought over what she’d been saying while she was gone. When you thought about it, you felt certain emotions. Okay, after you were uploaded and released as wiped, you might have a memory you couldn’t quite place, a memory of sitting alone in your office and feeling certain emotions while hearing a toilet flush.”

Tooley asked, “Are you saying that something like that could be dangerous? A serious failure?”

Johnson nodded. “Suppose there were things on your desk then, a picture of an old man and a clock showing date and time.”

Tooley nodded. “I’ve got it.”

“When I signed with you, I told you about the patrols—that we were sent out to take prisoners.”

“Right.”

“I made arrests, too, and questioned the people I’d arrested. That was the main thing I did, keep tabs on suspects, sweat them after they’d been arrested, and report what I’d learned. Let’s leave the Os out of this. They don’t think the way we do, and they don’t do any wiping. Greater Eastasia does a lot of it. They send in spies who’ve forgotten they’re spies, people who do certain things when the time comes without knowing why they do them. We looked for indications of that. Once you suspect somebody, you can download his mind and run searches. Swell, but the equipment’s costly and delicate—we had two setups and one was usually out of service—and the whole thing can take a day or longer. So guys like me look for subjects whose minds might be worth searching, and try to find out enough to give the people who would do it some direction.”

“We need to do some searching ourselves now,” Skip said. He took out his pistol and laid it on a small table at the front of the room. “I think everybody here is armed. I know most of you are. Get out your guns, please, put them on this table with mine, and go back to your chairs. I ask it as a gesture of good faith.”

Johnson said, “What if we won’t comply?”

“Then you’ll be asked to leave.”

Johnson nodded, took out a pistol that looked very much like Chelle’s, and laid it on the table beside Skip’s.

Skip said, “Susan?”

She nodded, rose, and laid her snub revolver there; her hand shook a little. Susan’s revolver was followed by Mick Tooley’s big, dark green semiautomatic.

Vanessa was pushing up her sleeve. Skip said, “Do me a favor, Virginia. Just take off that wrist holster and put the whole affair on the table.”

Vanessa did.

“Most of you will have observed Virginia’s arm. It’s badly scarred, and the scars are fresh.”

Vanessa had pulled her sleeve back down. “I try to keep them covered up. I mean, at dinner people wouldn’t … You understand, I’m sure.”

“I do.” Skip smiled, making it reassuring. “How did you get them?”

“I have no idea.”

He nodded.

Johnson said, “You didn’t do that business with our guns just so we could see this poor lady’s arm.”

“No. I wanted to watch your faces as you handled your guns. Someone tried to kill Virginia before she boarded. Mick knows about it. A man with a steak knife came up behind her and stabbed her in the back.”

Johnson gave a low whistle.

“I have reason to believe—reasons I won’t go into now—that she had seen her attacker from behind. She saw him only briefly as he sat eating in a restaurant.”

“Eating steak,” Johnson said.

“She didn’t see what he was eating, but you’re probably right. Whatever it was, a third person saw her and told her attacker. He got up—I don’t know this, but it seems very probable—and followed her, having filched the steak knife from the restaurant. He may have hidden it in a newspaper. Some of the witnesses to the stabbing say her attacker had one.”

“Do you have a good description?”

“No,” Skip said. “Mick?”

Tooley shrugged. “Everything, sir?”

“Yes. What you told me, and anything else you may not have said. Empty the bag.”

“Okay. Two described him as tall and thin. One said he was average height. Two said white and one Latino. Good clothes—they all agreed on that. One thought he was carrying a newspaper, one thought it was an attaché case, and one didn’t notice that he was carrying anything.”

Johnson said, “Go on.”

“That’s it, except for the knife. The police have it, but a man who works for us got to see it. It was a steak knife, he said, just as Mr. Grison told you. Slightly curved blade, serrated edge, sharp point. A black handle of some kind of synthetic.” Tooley turned to Skip. “I had our friend check restaurants within walking distance of the attack. He found two that used knives like the one the cops showed him. Do you want them?”

Skip shook his head. “After she was stabbed, Virginia was taken to a hospital. She left it in the morning, went to her apartment, packed in a hurry, and fled. She was afraid, obviously, that the man who had stabbed her would track her down and try again.”

Tooley and Johnson nodded.

“I went to her apartment soon after she left, as I told Mick earlier. I found an object on the floor there, an object that’s in my pocket now. I don’t want to take it out and hold it up because it terrified Virginia when I showed it to her earlier. I’ll pass it to anyone who wants to see it, asking that you hold it so that she can’t see it.”

Susan moved her chair nearer Vanessa’s. “Is that all right? What he said? Do you mind if he does it?”

“I don’t.” Vanessa took a deep breath, and let it out in an audible sigh. “I don’t have to see it. He showed it to me, and I know what it is. I’ll shut my eyes.”

Meanwhile, Johnson had put out his hand; Skip put the brown object into it.

“Sharp!” Johnson had opened the blade.

“It is,” Skip said.

Johnson closed it and passed it to Tooley, who offered it to Susan. When she shook her head, he returned it to Skip.

“I’d known Virginia before her daughter and I boarded this ship. She’d worn long sleeves then, but so what? It was cold, so everybody wore long sleeves. It’s warm here, and nobody wore them except Virginia.”

Johnson said, “Her gun. She had to hide it.”

“I was with her when she got it, and she wore long sleeves before that. That may have been why the woman who sold it to her suggested it. Perhaps I should have seen those scars then, but the room was dark—just a couple of candles. Later I saw them in one of our meetings, when she put her gun away: long scars on her left forearm.”

Skip waited for questions, but there were none. “Earlier I had showed her the brown object, the knife or shaver or whatever you call it, that I just showed Rick. She screamed when she saw it, but she couldn’t explain why it frightened her so much.”

Johnson said, “It had made the scars?”

“No. It couldn’t have. They’re recent but not as recent as that. I know when and where she got it, and it wasn’t long before she came aboard. I think those scars were made by something similar, a folding knife with a brown handle or another old shaver. When she saw this one in a shop, it woke some memory. She wanted to buy it, but she had been a good customer and the shopkeeper gave it to her. She left it behind when she fled the apartment I had given her. Seeing it unexpectedly in my hand, she was terrified.”

Skip paused, looking from face to face. “The way she got her scars is pretty obvious, I’d say. Not more than a year ago she tried to kill herself, holding the knife in her right hand—she’s clearly right-handed—and cutting her left wrist and forearm.”

Tooley said, “She failed.”

“Correct. She didn’t cut deeply enough or she cut in the wrong places. Or she was saved by someone who came in before she’d lost too much blood. Her suicide attempt was edited out, as Rick would say, but traces clearly remained. It was a traumatic event, and her memories of it must have run deep.”

Susan asked, “What are you getting at, sir?”

“A suicide ring. We were defending a case involving one before Chelle and I left the city.”

“You’re right, sir. David D. Boon.”

Vanessa rose. “You—you’re going to say I belonged to one. I don’t know a thing about them. I— There was something on the news.…”

Skip nodded. “Those memories have been taken from you, and it’s good that they were. Quickly, then. They’re very much against the law because they make a fine cover for murder. If someone—”

Johnson interrupted. “I don’t know a lot about them either, but I know the members don’t kill themselves. They kill each other.”

“Correct. The people who join them have tried to kill themselves in almost every case. They haven’t been able to do it. They lose their nerve or realize at the last moment that their life insurance will be voided by suicide. When they join, they pledge themselves to kill the member who’s been in the ring longer than anyone else. That member may insist he’s changed his mind, or run, or do whatever he chooses to try to cheat death. It doesn’t matter. The other members have sworn to track him down.”

“Him or her.”

“Exactly. I think Virginia joined a ring. The people who edited her memories took that one as well as the memory of her suicide attempt. When Virginia went into a certain restaurant, one of the diners—a female member of the ring—recognized her. This woman told the man she had been eating with, another member. He followed her with a steak knife and stabbed her in the street. I don’t know all that, but it accounts for the facts I have, and it’s the only scenario I’ve been able to put together that does.”

Susan said, “This is horrible, just horrible! Why are we talking about it?”

Johnson turned to look at her. “The bomb, of course.”

Tooley said, “You’re saying we brought the person who planted the bomb, Soriano and me. Only it would almost have to be one of mine.”

“You’re right,” Skip told him. “I’d like you to list the names of the people you got from the mercenary website. Will you do that and give it to me?”

Tooley nodded. “I haven’t got my notebook here, but I’ll make the list and get it to you as quickly as I can. Full names and service numbers.”

“Two of us are here right now,” Johnson told Skip. “Susan and I came with Mick.”

“I know.” Skip went the table and glanced at the guns. “It seems obvious to me that members of the ring traced Virginia’s movements after she left her apartment. They found out she was on this ship, but the ship had already sailed. Mick posted his announcement on a mercenary website—”

“It was a help-wanted ad.” Tooley grinned. “And I put it on all the sites I could find, sir. There were seven of them.”

“It gave the name of the ship? I’ve been assuming that.”

“The ship’s name and your name, sir. Not Virginia’s. I didn’t know she was on board when I entered it.”

“In that case they must have traced her movements. Either that, or they were confident enough that she was associated with me that my name sufficed. They signed with you. I’ve been saying ‘they,’ but it’s probably a single individual. He signed with you, and once he was on board he quickly learned that Virginia was the ship’s social director. He had brought a bomb. I have no idea how he managed to plant it in her office, and the women who might have told us are presumably dead.”

Johnson raised his hand. “I’ve been thinking about the people behind me—what they said and how they said it. I think they were women, both of them. I think I told you the first one said, ‘Who’s that?’ and the second one said, ‘She’s the social director.’ ”

“You did. Do you want to correct that or enlarge on it?”

“Yes, sir. I do. I believe the first one said, ‘Who is that who raised her hand?’ and the second said, ‘She’s the social director.’ ”

“Both were women? That’s the important point.”

Johnson shrugged. “I can’t swear to it, but that’s my impression.”

“I see.” For a moment, Skip fingered his lower lip. “It may not be significant, of course. Others may have asked the same question or the women behind you may have been overheard.”

“They were,” Johnson said. “By me.”

Susan rose. “I’d like my gun back, Mr. Grison.”

“Certainly.” Skip picked her revolver up and handed it to her. “Do you have to leave?”

“No.” Still holding it, she remained at the front of the room. “This is going to be a lynching—or … or that’s what I think. That man’s trying to put the rope around my neck.”

“I’m not,” Johnson declared.

“Look me in the eye and say that! When we were on the boat I thought we were in it together, and now you want to k-kill m-m-me.”

Skip put his arm about her shoulders. “Nobody’s going to hurt you, Susie. Nobody!”

Johnson said, “I wasn’t trying to. I didn’t know it was you.”

“I was sitting right behind you! Mr. Grison, will you listen to me for just a minute, please?”

He nodded. “Of course I will.”

“You were asking for women. You said you needed women who’d pretend to be prisoners to back up Soriano’s claim that there were good-looking women who’d be at the mercy of the hijackers if they’d throw in with him.”

“Correct.”

“And afterward the women might have to fight. That—I’m not your Chelle Blue.”

Skip smiled. “I was surprised when you volunteered. Surprised and very pleased.”

“I was going to wait until you asked me. I thought that when nobody would, you’d call on me. You know, what about you, Susan? And then I’d stand up and say something brave, only Virginia put her hand up. There was this big muscular woman sitting with me, and she hadn’t volunteered but Virginia had. Is her name really Virginia?”

“On this ship, as I said.”

Susan hesitated, fingered her revolver, and returned it to its holster. “She said Virginia was the social director. Then I put my hand up and she did too—the woman beside me. When you came in here you asked me whether I knew this lady was the social director, and I lied. I lied to you! I lied because I didn’t want you to think I’d done it.”

“I understand, and nobody’s going to lynch you. You may leave if you like.”

Susan shook her head and sat down.

Skip walked the length of the room, turned, and spoke. “A moment ago Rick said that two of the people who had come with Mick were here now. In a sense, three were—the third being Mick himself.” He paused.

“I don’t suspect any of you, and I need to make that clear. Mick and Susan are people I’ve worked with for years, three years plus in Mick’s case and even longer for Susan. Rick himself looked a little more suspicious. For one thing, he’s tall. Some of the witnesses to Virginia’s stabbing said her attacker was tall.”

Tooley added, “Two out of three, actually.”

“For another, he was eager to get in to see Chelle. By that time he could easily have learned that Virginia was Chelle’s mother. If his bomb failed, something he learned from Chelle might be quite useful.”

Johnson grinned. “I’d never realized that I was such a Machiavellian character.”

“It didn’t take long for me to see how unlikely he was. He not only had a gun—all of us have guns now—but he had a license for it. The steak knife strongly suggests that Virginia’s attacker was unarmed when he sat eating in the restaurant. Rick’s gun suggested another reason.”

Returning to the front of the room, Skip held it up. “Look carefully. Chelle’s, which is probably a later model, has ambidextrous safeties. This one doesn’t. The safety is on the right side, where it would be operated by the thumb of the left hand. Here, compare it to mine.”

“They’re reversible,” Johnson told him. “I had the battalion armorer change mine.”

Tooley said, “I take it that Virginia’s wound is on the right side. I should have checked that.”

“I’ve seen it, and it is. On the right side, high up. She wears heels, as you may have noticed. The man who stabbed her need not have been freakishly tall, but he was certainly above average height.”

“You’ve got a gun in your hand,” Tooley remarked, “and nobody else has one except Susan. I take it you’re about to name the bomber.”

Skip returned his gun to the table. “I’m not. I wish I were. I got you together—Chelle would be here too if she weren’t so badly hurt—so I could tell you what I know and ask your help. You brought eleven people south with you, Mick?”

Tooley cleared his throat. “That’s right. Eleven including Susan and Rick.”

“Leaving nine. One of those nine almost certainly planted the bomb. Susan, you and Rick were with them before Soriano sailed, and afterward on the boat. Who do you think is most likely? I realize that—”

“Skip!” Vanessa interrupted him. “I must talk to you, darling.”

There was a knock at the door.