Shadow of a Broken Man (15 page)

The next face I saw almost gave me a relapse. It was Lippitt.

    16

 The bald man's face was impassive, but his eyes seemed larger than before, swollen by a controlled but seething anger. He wore a light blue gabardine suit that shimmered almost hypnotically in the morning light that filtered in through the window.

Lippitt approached the bed, shoved his hands into the pockets of his suit jacket, and stared down at me. "How are you?" he asked after a long pause. The anger was in his voice as well as his eyes, but he seemed oddly distracted, as though his mind—and possibly his anger—were directed elsewhere.

"How'd you know where I was?" He didn't seem inclined to answer my question, so I answered it myself. "You've been following Tal."

"Perhaps I should have been following
you
," he said with a trace of irony. "It looks like you've had an accident."

"It wasn't an accident: It was an on-purpose. You lied to me about killing Rafferty, didn't you?"

Lippitt's eyes went distant and cold. "Is that what you've concluded from your investigation so far?"

"Oh, I've got lots of company. The field's crowded, and it's a fast track."

"I warned you this would happen."

"Somehow I just knew you were going to say that, Lippitt. The same thing happened five years ago, didn't it? You were one of the hunters. Maybe you
found
Rafferty, but you didn't kill him." I watched his face carefully. "What the
hell
is so special about Victor Rafferty?"

Inexplicably, my voice broke at the end and I began to sob uncontrollably. There had been no warning; it was as if my emotions were being controlled by someone else, a mad dwarf who looked like me but loved to cry. Mortified by the behavior of this stranger, I turned my face to the wall and wiped away the tears. Finally I turned back to Lippitt and stared at him defiantly.

Lippitt casually lighted a cigarette and dropped the match onto my breakfast tray. "Whoever got hold of you hurt you very badly, didn't he?" he said evenly. There was neither sympathy nor lack of it in his voice; it was merely a statement of fact.

"A few screws are loose, but I know how to tighten them up. Why won't you tell me now about Rafferty?"

Lippitt blew smoke into the air over my head. "I didn't come here to trade information. I came to present a bill."

"What bill?"

"It's for the suffering you've caused. The Russians have the Fosters inside their consulate. You and I are going to get them out. We're going to see just how good a tumbler and acrobat you are; that's the price I want you to pay for the harm you've brought these people."

"What the hell are you talking about, Lippitt?"

"I thought I was making myself perfectly clear. I consider you responsible for placing the Fosters in jeopardy, so you're going to help me rescue them."

"You're putting together a D.I.A. operation?"

"That's not what I said, Frederickson. It's just you and me. I have a plan."

"I can't wait to hear it. Isn't it pretty risky for you? I'm betting your superiors won't be too happy about it if you get caught inside the Russian consulate."

"That's my concern. Will you agree to come with me? I do need you."

"What do you have in mind? I have an interest in the Fosters too."

"Frankly, I haven't figured out all the details. But I'll need a small man with exceptional athletic ability... and courage. From your press clippings, you seem to fit that description."

The fact of the matter was that I found the prospect of going anywhere Kaznakov might be terrifying. But I said, "I'll need some time to get back into shape; I'm a little stiff right now." I was gratified to find that my voice was reasonably steady.

Lippitt's eyes narrowed. "What happened to you?"

"I fell off a mountain called Kaznakov."

Lippitt stiffened. His right hand came halfway out of his pocket, then went back in again. "A madman." He spat the words out. "It's remarkable that you're here. You're the first person I know of who's suffered that particular fate and lived to tell about it."

"He thinks I'm dead."

"Good. It's best that he continue to think so. How did you get away?"

I managed a smile. "Sheer dwarf cunning."

"What did he do to you, Frederickson?"

"If you don't mind, I'd rather not talk about it. As I said, I'll need some time to get myself together."

"Of course. And I'll need time to formalize a plan. You still have my number?"

"I do. When I'm ready I'll order some flowers."

Lippitt ground out his cigarette in my oatmeal bowl. "You
must
pull yourself together, Frederickson," he said quietly. "I can only guess how badly Kaznakov hurt you, but I suspect the real hurt is now in your mind. You can't forget, but you must learn to
control
your fear."

There was something oddly authoritarian about his voice, as if he were experienced in such matters and knew what he was talking about.

"It shows, huh?" The words blurred together into a whimper.

"I hope you're feeling better," he said formally, then turned on his heel and started toward the door.

"I'll be all right!" I heard myself shouting. "I'm going with you!"

Lippitt stopped, turned. "We'll see," he said simply, and walked out of the room.

Over the objections of my brother and a battery of doctors, I checked myself out of the hospital on Monday. It had reached the point where the hospital's knockout pills weren't working. I didn't want to sleep, because sleep was infinitely worse than staying awake; Kaznakov always visited me in my sleep. If I was going to stay awake, I reasoned it was better to be getting some things done.

The first thing I did was book a seat on a flight to North Carolina for the next morning. I still couldn't bring myself to pick up a telephone, so I decided I'd simply drop in at the Institute and hope to get lucky. I hung around the apartment the rest of the day and drank myself to sleep that night.

The only effect the booze had was to make it impossible for me to wake up when I wanted to. Kaznakov, his face dripping blood, continued to chase me; the difference was that I was drunk in my dreams, easier to catch.

I struggled awake at dawn and promptly threw up. I stood naked in a dry shower, leaning against the tiled wall and shaking. I wanted to cancel my flight, but the travel agency where I'd made my reservation wasn't open until nine, and my flight was at eight. I could, of course, simply not show up, but something told me that much more than the answers to a few questions could be riding on my ability to make myself get out of the apartment and onto that plane. I finally forced myself to shower, shave, and dress. Too sick to eat, I stumbled out into the street to flag down a cab.

Despite a hangover, or because of it, I wanted another drink on the plane. I decided I wouldn't help my cause by becoming an alcoholic, so I settled for two Alka-Seltzers and a lot of tomato juice.

Late morning found me in Durham, strong enough to walk a reasonably straight line. I celebrated my newfound resolve by forcing myself to use a pay phone. Then I rented a car and drove out to the Duke University campus.

It was a lovely campus, with acres of rolling green, a mixture of old and new buildings, and an overall Gothic atmosphere. The summer session had begun and the landscape was decorated with students, most of them wrapped around each other in various phases of lovemaking. Cicadas droned a steady accompaniment to the strains of guitar music and folk songs that floated on the dry, hot air. The liquor from the night before must have lubricated my joints; I walked without a limp.

The Institute for Parapsychology, not actually a part of Duke, was housed in a converted mansion just off the university campus. I asked for Dr. Fritz James, the man I'd spoken to on the phone, and was ushered into his office.

James was a young man with lean features and long hair tied back with a leather thong. He wore a gossamer Indian chambray shirt, tie-dyed jeans, and worn cowboy boots. He was obviously a man who cared little about his surroundings: there was barely enough room in the office for his desk amidst a litter of magazines, books, and abstract sculpture.

James skipped around from behind his desk and shook my hand enthusiastically. "Dr. Frederickson, it's a real pleasure to meet you."

"I appreciate your agreeing to see me on such short notice."

"I need distractions," he said with a deprecating gesture.

"It allows the subconscious to surface and do its work. What's a Yankee like you doing down here in the cotton patches?"

I laughed. "Do I detect a Bronx accent?"

James smiled and nodded. "Fordham Road; born and raised." There was a spontaneous warmth about the man that I liked.

"One of my graduate students wants to do a doctoral dissertation on possible uses of parapsychology in forensic medicine," I lied. "Since I'm his adviser, I thought I'd better find out what he's talking about. I just happened to be in the neighborhood and I thought I'd take a chance that somebody might be willing to talk to me."

"I'm glad you did," James said sincerely. "Are you interested in any particular area of parapsychology?"

I finessed the question by taking out my note pad and drawing a replica of the paper I'd found inside the book on parapsychology. When I finished, I handed it to him and asked, "Have you ever seen a sheet of paper like this?"

"Sure," James said, leaning across his desk and opening a drawer. He withdrew a thick blue pad, which he handed to me. The sheets in the pad were the same: circles, squares, triangles, and parallelograms. "Is this what you mean?"

"It sure is. What are they used for?"

"They're score sheets. We use them to test for telepathy. Would you like to take a stab at it?"

I nodded.

James went back into his desk and came up with a deck of what looked like oversized playing cards. He spread them face up on the desk. Each card had a symbol—a circle, square, triangle, or parallelogram—corresponding to one of the columns on the score sheet.

He put the cards back together, tore a score sheet from the blue pad, and sat down behind his desk. He picked up a couple of large books off the floor and set them on edge between us so that I couldn't see his hands. "We usually use a more sophisticated procedure," he said, shuffling the cards, "but I think this will serve our purpose.

"I'm going to turn over these cards one by one and concentrate on whichever one I'm looking at," he continued. "You try to open your mind to mine, try to get a picture in your mind of which symbol is on the card in front of me. When I rap on the desk, you call out what symbol you think it is. Got it?"

"Got it."

James finished shuffling the cards, then abruptly snapped one face up and rapped on the desk.

The only thing I could think of was Kaznakov.

"Quickly," James said with a note of authority. "Don't try to think about it. Just give me your first impression; let your subconscious do the work."

"Parallelogram."

He checked one of the boxes on the sheet, flipped another card, knocked.

"Triangle."

Knock.

"Triangle."

Knock.

"Square."

It took him twenty minutes to go through the deck. Then he pushed the books aside and spent another minute or so tallying the check marks in the boxes on the sheet. He finished and tapped the paper with the eraser end of his pencil.

"How'd I do?"

"About twenty-five percent. That's average for a random selection. Chance. With four symbols to choose from, the average person would get one out of four right."

"You mean I'm not a telepath?"

He smiled. "I'm afraid not. Welcome to the club."

"Are there people who score better than chance?"

"Oh, God, yes. Since we began testing for it in the past few years, people with latent telepathic skills have been crawling out of the woodwork. It really is amazing. We've got three students here who can consistently score between thirty and forty-five percent. That's pretty damn good."

"On symbols," I said. "What about reading other people's thoughts?"

He shrugged. "There are twins in Minneapolis who are apparently able to communicate with each other through dreams. But picking up thought transference—and
proving
that it's taking place—is pretty esoteric. We use this test because it lends itself to hard statistical analysis."

"What about a hundred percent on the cards? Is there anyone around who can manage that?"

He looked pained as he reached back and tugged at the thong on his hair. "Nobody scores a hundred percent. Maybe men did ten thousand years ago—there's reason to suspect that early man may have been telepathic. Or maybe someone will a few thousand years from now. But not today. A score of thirty percent is considered statistically significant. About a year ago we had a young girl who scored fifty-five—but she never got above thirty after that. Fifty- five percent is the record. We're trying to develop training programs."

"How does it work?" I asked.

"The training programs?"

"Telepathy."

He chuckled amiably. "If we knew that, we'd be home free. Actually, it's all quite a mystery. You see the
effects,
but not the cause. We've found that most people tested do best on their first try, assuming they have the ability to begin with. They don't know how they do it. A thought— a picture of one of those symbols—comes into their minds and they report it. A great deal seems to depend on their mood."

"You mean that on a given day one of these people might be able to read my mind?"

"Well, yes and no. 'Reading your mind' is putting it a bit too melodramatically. They might pick up a mood—or sometimes a word, or a strand of thought—better than other people."

"It all sounds pretty imprecise."

"Oh, it is," James said. "Strictly hit-and-miss when you get beyond the technique we use here."

"But you must have some theory about the mental processes involved."

"You see," James said carefully, staring at the wall behind me, "the 'mind,' as we call it, is much more than just a mere biochemical function of the brain. The brain gives off electrical impulses—much like a radio or television transmitter, to use an overworked analogy. There is
energy
emanated, and we can measure that energy with an electroencephalograph. Now, as far as telepathy is concerned, it seems that some people have a 'talent,' if you will, for picking up and decoding this energy. The astonishing thing is that a few of these people can pick up these 'signals' from great distances, almost instantaneously. So thoughts are not completely analogous to radio waves."