Invasion of Privacy (4 page)

Mary followed Dr. Alexander down the hallway and into the elevator. She listened carefully as he spoke to her of Joe’s injuries and the surgery and his chances for survival. She asked questions. She was the calm, rational wife even as the horizons of her life shrank and her prospects grew bleak, for while she was listening, she was thinking of herself, her past, and how she’d prepared for this moment.

“Mountains don’t get smaller for looking at them,” the admiral had said.

Shying away was not an option. But Mary had never shied away from a challenge in her life, or from anything else, for that matter. Her mother liked to brag that Mary lived “with her elbows out.”

Her youth was a record of plucky survival or divine miracles. She fell off her first pony at age seven. The pony’s hoof caught her in the head, slicing her forehead from port to starboard and leaving her unconscious for God knows how long. When she stumbled into the kitchen, her mother screamed so loudly that the neighbors called 911, certain that someone was being raped, robbed, or tortured with a sharp instrument.

In the hospital afterward, the admiral pinned one of his Purple Hearts on her hospital gown and admitted he’d never seen so much blood in his life, and that included his time running PT boats up the Mekong Delta in Vietnam.

Mary’s next brush with mortality came at twelve. While sailing the family Razor on Chesapeake Bay, she misjudged a change in the wind and was knocked clean off the boat by a wild boom. It was December. The ocean was 42° and the current was running strong. By the time she hauled herself back into the boat and returned to the dock, her body temperature had plummeted to 94° and she was shaking like…well, like she was shaking right now. A bout of double pneumonia followed, accompanied by a 106° fever. At some point a priest was brought to her, though Mary had no recollection of any of it. She only
remembered the Bible she found at her bedside when she woke up, the ribbon placed at the Twenty-third Psalm.

Later there was a bike accident, a broken leg playing soccer, and concussions playing lacrosse. Mary never considered any of them a big deal. The gash on her forehead was a scratch. The two weeks spent in the hospital, a cold. The priest who came to administer last rites, parental hysteria. She lumped them all together as proof of her invincibility. She’d suffered so much and overcome so many obstacles that she could no longer summon up any situation that might frighten her.

Queen Mary the Lionheart.

All that changed with Grace. The past two years had used up all that confidence and then some. There were only so many nights a mother could spend by a bedside, only so many prayers she could utter. Sooner or later even the most stalwart faltered.

And now Joe.

This was one challenge too many. One mountain she was not equipped to climb.

She was not ready to be a widow. Not now. Not with Grace and her illness and Jessie and her attitude, not with so much of life still in front of her requiring her efforts, so many days to be gotten through.

Stand fast, girl. One hand for the boat and an eye on the horizon
.

The elevator reached the fifth floor. The door opened, but Mary didn’t move. She remained where she was, her father’s baritone loud in her ears.

Order refused, Admiral
.

Mary was no longer invincible.

Queen Mary the Lionheart was ready to give up her throne.

She saw Joe through the window—the sole patient in the ICU, eyes closed, respirator protruding from his mouth, more tubes than she could count running in and out of his body. An army of machines monitored his vital signs. There was a heart monitor. An automatic sphyg-momometer to measure blood pressure. An electroencephalograph for brain function. And many more, all of which Mary knew by name.

“Do I need a gown or mask?” she asked, eyes never leaving her husband’s inert form.

“That won’t be necessary,” said Dr. Alexander.

Mary stepped inside the room and approached the bed. “Joe,” she
said softly, as if there were others there she might disturb. “It’s me. I came as soon as I heard. You doing okay?”

Dr. Alexander had been forthright in his explanation of Joe’s injury and his prognosis for recovery. He’d been shot in the chest by a high-caliber weapon. The bullet missed his heart by an eighth of an inch, nicked an artery, then struck the spinal cord before exiting his back. Paralysis below the neck was a foregone conclusion. The bigger issue was loss of brain function because of oxygen deprivation from the prolonged cardiac arrest.

“The paramedics estimate that your husband’s heart had stopped for thirteen minutes when they found him. It’s a miracle he’s alive at all.”

To every profession a code, thought Mary. The FBI had its own vocabulary. Debriefings went sideways. Snitches were CIs. And families didn’t have a “need to know.” Doctors were no better. They spoke of prolonged cardiac arrest and cerebral oxygen deficiency and significant tissue damage. Mary spoke their language, too. She knew the doctor meant that Joe was brain-dead, unable to breathe on his own, and that he had a hole in his back the size of a softball.

What were you doing in Dripping Springs?
she inquired silently as she ran a hand through his hair.
Why did you call me instead of Don Bennett? Who’s Sid?

A married couple has its code, too.
Everything’s copacetic, baby
. Meaning “I’m in deep shit and need your help.”

Mary pulled a chair close to the bed and sat. “I’m here, baby,” she whispered in Joe’s ear. “Me and the girls, we know you love us. Take your time. Rest and get better.”

In the elevator she’d asked Dr. Alexander a question: “How many patients have ever come back after being dead for thirteen minutes?”

“None that I’m aware of.”

Mary didn’t like the answer, but at least there was no BS.

She threaded her arm through the protective railings and took her husband’s hand. She looked at the EEG. The gray line ran flat. Pulse: 64. Blood pressure: 90/60. She listened to the wheezing of the respirator.

“But if you need to go, I understand,” she went on. “I’ll make sure Jessie gets to MIT or Caltech or wherever geniuses like her learn all that stuff. You know, she unlocked my phone on the way back from the hospital today. Where does she learn that? And I’ll take care of Gracie. The doc said the spike in white blood cells was just temporary.
The blasts haven’t come back. He’s not sure why, but he said we shouldn’t worry. She threw up on the way home. It might have been carsickness. Jessie wouldn’t help clean up. She said she didn’t do floors or windows. That girl knows how to push all my buttons. You two couldn’t be any more alike. Anyway, three more years and Grace is over the hump. Maybe you can give me a hand and watch over her.”

Joe’s hand squeezed hers.

Mary jumped in her chair. “Joe!”

Her eyes locked on the EEG monitor. She willed the gray line to move, to assume its jackhammer pattern, but it remained flat. There was no spark of electrical activity in Joe’s brain. His heart rate didn’t budge, nor did any of the other vital signs register so much as a blip. Mary squeezed his hand, but it was limp to the touch. It had been a spasm. Some last reflexive and wholly unconscious response.

She gazed through the window into the corridor. Dr. Alexander and Don Bennett were deep in conversation. The resigned expressions on both their faces spoke volumes.

For another hour Mary held her husband’s hand. She told him about the first time she saw him walking across Healy Lawn at Georgetown. He’d just completed his second summer of Officer Candidates School at Quantico. His hair was high and tight and his muscles were practically bursting out of his sleeves. He was one good-looking slab of All-American meat. I want me some of that, she’d told herself.

That fall they had shared a theology class called “Jesus in the Twentieth Century.” Lots of essays by Karl Rahner and Martin Buber. And she saw that Mr. Joseph Grant wasn’t some dumb jarhead. He was smart, and funny, too. And like her, he believed in some higher power. Not believed.
He knew
. Rahner called it love. She was good with that.

She told Joe that marrying him was the happiest moment in her life, and she asked if he remembered holding Jessie an hour after she was born, all of her fitting neatly on his forearm. He’d called her Peanut, because that’s what she had looked like all swaddled, her face so red and wrinkled. And she said that they’d have to put off their anniversary celebration until another time. She wanted to say “until you are better,” but Mary was a no-bullshit girl and Joe liked getting the truth straight, no chaser. Honesty was their bond. They did not lie to one another.

“I looked pretty good in that LBD,” she said. “Don’t know what you’re missing.”

Joe’s hand remained slack.

The EEG didn’t budge.

His chest rose and fell with the respirator.

“Goodbye, hon,” she said. “Whenever you’re ready.”

Joe’s body jumped as if he’d been given a jolt of electricity. An alarm sounded. Code blue. Mary stood. Her eyes locked on the heart-rate monitor as the numbers dived and nurses rushed into the room.

“Don’t do anything,” she said. “Let him go.”

“Excuse me, ma’am,” said one. “You’ll have to leave.”

Dr. Alexander was there a moment later. Mary looked at him, pleading, and he nodded.

Outside the ICU, she placed her palm against the glass and searched out her husband’s face. A nurse wheeled the defib cart to the bed and took hold of the paddles, raising them above Joe’s chest. Dr. Alexander stopped her, giving a firm shake of the head.

For a moment Mary caught a glimpse of her husband, the proud profile, the raised chin. She closed her eyes, wanting to see him as he was, as she remembered him when he was away.

It was in Samui. Joe walked ahead of her on the beach, Jessie and Grace to either side. He kicked water at them and they kicked it right back. She heard him call their names and laugh. A happy man.

Mary opened her eyes to say goodbye.

“Safe journey.”

It was the third lap and Ian Prince was falling behind.

He curled the fingers of his left hand around the throttle of the P-51D Mustang and eased it forward, keeping one eye on the rpm’s, the other on the panorama of earth and sky that wrapped itself around the Perspex canopy and the planes flying above and below him. His right hand gripped the stick lightly as he approached the third pylon, a red-striped oil can set atop a fifty-foot telephone pole. The plane whipped past the pylon, Ian pushed the stick over, and the plane banked sharply, wings tilting to ninety degrees, the Nevada desert an adobe blur. He clamped his mouth shut, holding his breath and tightening the muscles of his core. He was pulling five g’s through the turn, shoulders digging into the seat, jaw burrowing into his neck. The engine whined magnificently, a buzz saw cutting hard lumber. He completed the turn and leveled the wings, the g’s easing, shoulders freed from gravity’s grip.

Ian focused on the tail of the bird in front of him. It was Gordon May’s bird, the
Battleax
, a P-51D like his. Stalwart of the Second World War. Packard piston engine. Four-bladed propeller. May had painted the plane fire-engine red, his company’s logo covering every inch of the fuselage:
MAY MICROCHIPS
.

By contrast, Ian’s plane looked factory-new, silver steel skin without a blemish, the Stars and Stripes of the United States Army Air Corps decorating the wings. It had looked no different in May 1945, when George Westerman, a pilot with the 477th Fighter Group, had flown it above the fields of Bavaria and shot down fourteen German aircraft.

Ian had rescued the machine from a scrap-metal yard and, after extensive reconstruction, renamed it
Lara
, after his mother, which was a nicer name than she deserved. Like his mother,
Lara
the plane was a mean, hot-tempered bitch who’d kill you as soon as look at you.

Ian feathered the throttle and scanned the instrument panel. The temperature gauge was running high. He looked at the white needle
tickling the red. To hell with the heat. He couldn’t wait any longer or May’s lead would be insurmountable.

Ian didn’t like Gordon May.

He disliked losing more.

He pushed the speed back up to 400 knots. The plane shook, reverberations rattling his spine. He held the stick steady. He had thick wrists and large, strong hands. His grip surprised people. Executives in the information technology industry were not renowned for being fit. Somehow it had been ingrained in the public that there was an inverse relationship between IQ and strength. Ian confounded the perception. He was nothing like what people thought he should be.

A fat, slow Grumman Bearcat slipped below him to his left. A relic. A Commodore to his Cray. The comparison pleased him. A smile formed beneath Ian’s goggles and helmet. The smile hardened when he saw May’s tail flash in the sun, only a second or two ahead.

Ian was gaining.

Approaching the last pylon, he brought the plane down to fifty feet, low enough to see the faces of the crowd below. Twenty thousand people had gathered in the high desert north of Reno for the race. The course measured eight miles, an extended oval around ten pylons. Eight times around determined the winner. Pedal to the metal all the way. A sky full of screaming eagles.

Ian had won two and lost two, both losses to Gordon May.

“Not this time,” he said aloud.

He executed a hairpin turn around the outermost pylon, the colorful oil drum threatening to tear off the canopy. Nearer he drew to May, and nearer still. If he could just reach out…

He zipped past the control tower.

Lap four was complete.

Ian held his position through the next two laps, content to hang on May’s tail. The temperature needle had moved firmly into the red. There was nothing to be done. The engine would make it or it wouldn’t. He would win or he wouldn’t. It was a binary universe.

Yet even as he raced and part of his mind swore victory, another part was focused on business. Today was momentous for a number of reasons, of which the air race was the least important. On this day twenty years ago he’d sold his first venture, ONEscape, for $200 million to U.S. Online. And it was exactly a year ago that he’d begun his quest to acquire Merriweather Systems. The deal hadn’t been without
a hiccup, but he’d taken the necessary measures to emerge victorious. The acquisition had brought the value of ONE Technologies to a wafer over $200 billion.

Ian completed lap six.
Battleax
’s flaming red tail remained a plane’s length out of reach, but May was played out. If he had any juice left, he’d have used it by now.

Ian pushed the throttle forward,
Lara
’s nose nipping at
Battleaxe
’s tail, twenty feet separating them. He eased himself closer, and closer still, his plane bucking in the slipstream.

Faster, he dared May, the taste of victory on his tongue, filling his mouth.

Ian pulled the stick right, going for the pass. May took his plane outside in an effort to block. Ian feinted right as if trying to go abreast; May kicked out again. It was a reckless move, inviting disaster. Ian saw it coming and ducked to the inside, pushing the engine as hard as it could go. His airspeed jumped to 450 knots. He cruised past May, buzzing his aircraft, essentially leapfrogging him. May’s plane juked in the wake. To save himself, he pulled out of the loop and flew high and clear.

May was done.

Ian never looked back.

He won the race by ten seconds.

Ian Prince walked across the tarmac, helmet in hand. He was nearly six feet tall, forty years of age, narrow-beamed but sturdy, with Ray-Bans hiding his eyes, at ease in his flight suit.

“Hey there,” shouted Gordon May, running to catch up. “Prince, you bastard. Hold up. You almost killed me.” He was fifty, a fiery bantamweight with red hair and a complexion like mottled leather.

Ian didn’t break stride. “I could say the same.”

May laid a hand on Ian’s shoulder. “You passed on the inside. That’s against the rules. I’m going to file a complaint with the stewards.”

Ian stopped. “I had no choice,” he said calmly. “You kicked out twice. It was pass inside or collide. I think the stewards will see things my way.”

“Is that right?” said May. “Or else what? Not all your rivals crash and burn.”

“Excuse me?” Ian said.

“I’m talking about Titan. John Merriweather wouldn’t sell you his company if it was the last thing he did. Those machines were like his children. Merriweather was a genius. Not some one-hit wonder who cashes in, then spends the rest of his life on a shopping spree, taking credit for everyone else’s achievements. He was a visionary.”

“Yes,” said Ian. “He was. We’ll honor his legacy.”

“Now that you forced his heirs to sell.”

“I made them an offer. They accepted. I completed the deal out of respect for John. The company isn’t the same without him.”

“Maybe they were afraid their plane might go down, too.”

A crowd had gathered. Ian was careful with his words. “Be quiet, Gordon.”

“Crash and burn,” said May accusingly, enjoying his audience, the chance to make Ian squirm. “Without John there was no one left to oppose you.”

Ian grabbed a fistful of the pilot’s flight suit. He felt the rapt eyes on him, sensed their violent ardor. He could not walk away. Not after what May had said. “You’re out of line.”

“Is that what you said to John Merriweather when he refused to sell?”

A fit, ruddy-faced man wearing a tan suit broke through the bystanders and took hold of May’s shoulder. “That’s enough,” said Peter Briggs, Ian’s chief of security. “You have a problem, take it up with the stewards. Mr. Prince is otherwise occupied.”

Still May held his ground. “The race is on tape,” he said, jabbing a finger at Ian. “You can’t buy your way out of this one. No one cares about your money here. No senators, no congressmen to smooth your way.”

“Goodbye, Gordon.”

“Last race is next week. I’ll see you there. Crash and burn, buddy. Just you try something.”

Ian didn’t respond as May stalked off toward the control tower.

“Miserable prick,” said Peter Briggs.

“I need to get cleaned up.”