Mortal Fear (62 page)

Tired of playing middleman, I carry the phone across the room and hold it up to one of the computers speakers.

Most women,
Berkmann is saying,
are water-engorged beings of stasis, eternally swelling and sloughing, draining men of life even as they produce more life. They are but corridors back to the grave. I have waited decades for a woman of fire and light

You hear that? I ask Baxter.

Thats him?

Thats a digital facsimile of his voice speaking live to my wife.

In a voice very like the one he used when directing the Dallas raid from Quantico, Baxter says, Captain Riley, you are cleared to go.

How do you like that guy? Miles asks, back on the phone. He

Miless voice is terminated by four flat booms that can only be explosions.

SWAT just blew down the doors! Miles shouts. Im in the command car with Baxter. Ill tell you whats happening as I hear it.

Drewe is still speaking into the headset, her tone almost conspiratorial.

SWATs moving through the building, Miles says softly. Drewe still talking to him?

Yes.

He talking back?

Yes.

That doesnt make sense.

I know.

If someone blew open the side of your house, wouldnt you run like hell?

Im not him. He may be about to blast that whole SWAT team to hell. Remember Dallas.

No shit. Keep him talking.

Drewes got it.

I checked your transcripts in the Tulane Medical School computer,
says Berkmann.
You scored mostly twelves on the MCAT. That put you in the top one percent of medical school applicants. You could have gone to Hopkins or Columbia or Harvard.

So? What did you score?

I am the measuring stick, Drewe.

Ah.

You could have been a surgeon.

You have a point?

Im trying to show you how accident has limited you. Circumscribed your life. You attended university near
your home town. You married a man youd known since childhood, settled in the place you were born. And there you remain. You spend your days delivering welfare babies doomed to wasted lives, your nights alone in bed.

How do you know that?

I know you, Drewe. Youre a barely subcritical mass of potentialities. People realize that youre special, but they dont want you to realize it. Because if you did you would leave them forever. You are a higher being, yet you do the work of a midwife. My God, to think of you bent between the heaving thighs of mindless women spawning children like roe, soiling your hands with their eternal muck. Youre like a saint sentenced to an eternity of healing lepers. Do you understand the kind of work you would be doing with me? Challenging the dominion of death itself

They found a hostage! Miles cries in my ear.

What?

Male hostage in a basement. Alive! It must be Peter Levy. Jesus, they got another one! A woman! Wait... Its just like we thought. A SWAT guy says the basement is set up like a hospital operating room.

What about Berkmann?

Nothing yet. Its confused in there.

Female physicians,
Berkmann is saying,
driven beyond their abilities by their parents, hard little girls pushed into a male system. Slaves to technique, looking for father figures. I dont need supplicants. Do you know the epigram of disappointment? I listened for an echo and heard nothing but praise

They found his computers! Second floor. Theyre powered up, but no Berkmann. Damn it, anybody who knows anything always leaves their computers on!

I know that! I snap.

I was telling Baxter, says Miles.

Berkmann must be in another part of the building, I reason. Thats why he didnt split when they blew the doors. Hes safe in there somewhere. They have the exits covered?

They say they do. Berkmann still talking to Drewe?

I tune in long enough to hear Drewe say, Tell me more about Catherine, Edward. Im sorry, may I call you Edward?

Of course.

Hes still on. Hes all sweetness and light. Miles, could Berkmann own the building next door? Sort of like the apartments in Dallas?

NYPDs covering the adjacent structures. Oh, man

What?

Body parts in the basement. SWAT just found them. Bodies and body parts in a big freezer. Bodies in plastic bags, parts in biological specimen jars.

To hell with that, wheres Berkmann?

Weve got to get in there! Miles yells suddenly. Wait
shit
Ive got to see those computers! Ill tell you where that son of a bitch is!

I hear Daniel Baxters deep voice, the chopped cadence of orders. Were going in, says Miles, panting like a sprinter again. Keep Drewe talking!

Shes rolling, man. Go!

My father took me deer hunting when I was young, Drewe says. With a rifle. I hated it. It seemed a senseless slaughter. But then I learned to shoot a bow. And I loved it. Creeping through the forest looking for scrapes, letting the does pass by. Drawing the bow, holding my breath, waiting for the buck to step clear of cover with his massive rack. My arms quivering from holding at full draw, and then the release, the arrow crashing through his heart in the moment he heard it fly. I felt like a goddess.

That was but a taste of your true nature.

Edward? I want to share something with you. Something Ive never told my husband. Something hes never even asked me.

What is it?

A dream.

Yes.

It started during college, long after Id stopped hunting.

This is a recurring dream?

Yes. Im walking through a forest in winter. Snow on
the ground, ice in the trees. Im not wearing enough clothing to keep warm, just an old dress. No coat. I see many deer, but theyre starving. I pass them by. Then, through the bare black trees, I see a flash of pure white against the bluish snow. Its a great buck, with fur like ermine from antlers to tail, his antlers black like wet branches, the underside of the tail like sable. Not an albino, because his eyes are bottomless rings of blue. Deeper and deeper into the forest I chase him. My throat burns from the cold. Once I catch a longer glimpse, and I see that he is wounded, a splash of blood on his white belly, as though he has taken an arrow yet runs on. Only a heart shot can bring him down. As dusk falls, I track him to a cave. He stands just inside the mouth, as though safe in shadow. I draw the bow. Then, just as he sees me, I release, burying the shaft in his heart.

There is absolute silence in the room.

Do you dress the carcass in the cave?

The buck doesnt die. As he lies shuddering in the cave mouth, he is transformed into a man. A young man, with skin like alabaster. But the old wound in his belly remains. Then I come to him in the cave, and he goes down on all fours before me, facing away. And though I cannot see anything at my waist, it is I who penetrate him. Some part of me passes into him, and when he rises his wound is healed, he is made whole. But when I rise, I see that
I
now have the wound. And Im no longer a girl, but a woman, and its me running now, running with him chasing me. He gets closer and closer and then... then I wake up. I always wake up before he catches me.

Berkmann says nothing.

I cannot imagine Drewe fabricating this story on the spot. The detail is too vivid. How little we really know about the people we live with.

You still have this dream?
Berkmann asks finally.

Yes. And it... it arouses me. Sometimes I have an orgasm when Im in the cave. Sometimes not. Sometimes I feel only fear. Raw terror.

Its so simple. So clear. Dont you see? You are a huntress who needs to be caught. A healer who needs to be healed. I am the wounded beast, Drewe. I

Berkmanns not in the building, Miles says in my ear. Were on the second floor. SWAT confirms it.

My pulse is racing. Hes still talking, Miles.

Maybe he was telling the truth about being out of the country. Maybe he really has another base, another voice-rec unit somewhere. He probably has the money for it.

The phone company has a busy signal on the warehouse phone?

Yep. Christ, look at this.

What?

Im at the computers. Its serious stuff. Sun, Digital Equipment. Massive power here.

So wheres Berkmann?

Man, some of these boxes I dont even recognize.

I kneel beside Drewe and whisper in the shell of her ear. Theyre in the building. Keep talking.

Her head bobs slightly. Catherine played the piano?

Yes,
Berkmann replies.
She had a gift
.

I play as well, she says. This is a lie.

You play Beethoven?

I prefer Chopin. Tell me something, Edward. Did Catherine breast-feed you?

Of course. There was no cows milk in the basements of Berlin.

Are you circumcised, Edward? Is that how they discovered your hemophilia?

No. That was for Jews. My uncle noticed it first, through abnormal bruising.

Over Drewes shoulder, I watch Berkmanns words materialize on-screen as flawlessly as film credits. Hes definitely using a voice-recognition system. But where is it? I turn away and walk back toward the desk that holds my Gateway computer. It sits purring like a faithful dog. Where could

Harper!

Drewes yell shocks me out of myself. I whirl, afraid that my name has gone out over the data line, but she has her hand on the space bar.

What is it? I ask, moving to her side.

Im getting errors in Berkmanns side of the conversation.

A ball of ice forms in my chest. What do you mean? Like typos?

More like dropouts. Wrong words. Nonwords.

Okay... Ill check on it. Just keep talking to him.

She releases the space bar and resumes the conversation, though in a less controlled voice.

Miles? I say into the phone.

Nothing.

I walk as far from Drewe as I can get and snarl, Miles!

What?

Drewes getting errors from Berkmann!

You mean typos? All of a sudden?

Yes! But more like dropouts, she said.

Theres a lot of gear in this room, Harper, including a home-engineered phone system. I just picked up a receiver and heard a data stream.

Then Berkmann must be there. There must be a room in the building SWAT hasnt found.

But where?

Drewes voice control is degrading by the second. Miles, what if hes
remotely
using the system in front of you? You picking up that receiver could have caused the dropouts Drewe saw. Especially with a cellular data connection.

Hes never used it remotely before. Im sure of it.

So that means he cant?

Miles clucks his tongue. If he could have, why didnt he? Its a lot easier to talk than it is to type, especially when youre flying a plane or hiding outside somebodys house in the dark.

Maybe its technically possible, but not that reliable. So he just never messed with it.

Until now, you mean?

A hot wave of fear rolls up my spine. Miles, what if he knew all along we were using his error rate to predict his movements? Or that we could use it? When he killed Lenzs wife, he
wanted
the FBI to know he was on the move, so he stuck to his old pattern and didnt use voice recognition. He wanted them to see the errors.

And with Erin?

He just stayed off-line until he got here. That way there were no errors to see, even though he was moving.

There is a sudden, awful silence.

Hes known all along, Miles says quietly. Its just like his back door into EROS. He saved it until he needed it.

I feel like Im riding an elevator whose cable just snapped.

Im going to pick up the receiver again, Miles says. Tell me what happens.

Almost instantly Drewe throws up her right hand, then spins in her chair, an anxious look on her face.

More errors? I whisper.

She nods violently.

We got errors, Miles. Would Berkmann have seen that?

Probably. He might think it was just line noise, though.

Hes not in New York, Miles. I hesitate to voice the certainty that has crystallized in my brain. I guess we know where he is.

Harper

Tell Baxter to get somebody out here as fast as humanly possible. Im hanging up now.

Wait!

Ciao, pal. Good knowing you.

With an eerie sense of resignation, I hang up the phone, then walk to the office door and lock it. The heavy window blinds make it virtually impossible for someone outside to see into the room. From my desk I pick up a legal pad and a pen and scrawl,
Berkmann may be here. Stay calm. Im calling for help. Keep talking
. Then I carry it over to Drewe and hold it where she can see it.

Her composure melts like ice thrown into a fire. My immediate concern is her voice. Berkmann cant hear the fear crackling through it like electricity, but if she loses enough control, the voice-rec program may stop functioning. As she struggles to continue the conversation, I dial her fathers house. There are two other optionsSheriff Buckner and Wes Killenbut Bob will come faster. Besides, I made him a promise.

While the phone rings, I walk to one of the two front
windows, slide the blind to the side and peek out into the blue dusk. The deputys car is still at the end of our drive, nose angled toward the highway. Because of the fading light and the cars position, I cant see whether hes in it or not.

Hello?

Mrs. Anderson, its Harper. I need to talk to Dr. Anderson right now.