The Pressure of Darkness (37 page)

"Please, open the door, honey. Talk to me."

Indira drops her right hand to the .22 in the pocket of the robe. She palms it, swallows. "I think you have the wrong house." Her left hand strokes the little cell phone as if it were a lover.

"Gretchen, I do not. Now open up."

Gretchen?
"Ma'am, you have the wrong house. There is no one by that name here." She backs away from the door.

A long silence, fraught with tension. And then a muffled, whooping sound. Indira cringes and steps back to the door, peers out. The old woman, seemingly dazed and confused, has begun to sob. "Please don't send me away. I have nowhere else to go."

Indira, still looking through the little peephole, opts to test her. "Would you like me to call the police?"

The old woman nods furiously. "Maybe that would be best. I'm very lost, you see. My memory is not what it once was."

"I'll call 911, then."

"Yes, please. Would you call them for me, dear? Perhaps they might help me to find my Gretchen." She leans forward and one blue eye enlarges at the peephole. A conspiratorial whisper follows. "You see, my husband is trying to take me back to the home."

"The home?"

The woman twirls around like Cinderella at the ball, a chubby little octogenarian in powder blue sweats. "There's nothing at all wrong with me, mentally or physically. I can still dance up a storm and my mind is sharp as a tack." She pauses to thump the fingers of her right hand against her temple. "Sharp as a tack," she repeats. "Sharper, even." She taps those fingers on the door and whispers. "And I know perfectly well it's you, Gretchen. So stop playing around and let me in."

She's not afraid of me calling the cops, I've got a gun, and she's eighty if she's a day
. Indira doesn't know if it is the wine, a whim, or her loneliness, but she figures the thick screen door will protect her. She cinches up the robe and opens the front door. Indira looks out into the night at the foolish old woman and smiles a bit sadly. "As you can see, my name is not Gretchen."

The old woman looks her up and down. Her lower lip begins to tremble and her eyes fill. She seems hopelessly depressed and baffled. "Oh, dear. My, my. Perhaps there is something wrong with me after all, then."

"You just have the wrong house."

"Oh, I'm sorry to have disturbed you, then."

"It's all right. I wish I could help you."

"Perhaps you should call the police to report that I am here with you. I do seem to be lost."

"Certainly," Indira says, gently. "What is your name?"

That lower lip, those eyes. "Oh, dear. This is awful. I can't seem to remember my name, either."

"Perhaps you have some identification on you."

The woman searches her bag, and her heartbreak is achingly visible. "There's nothing in here but candy and some tampons. Imagine that! I haven't had a period in many, many years. Why do you suppose I bought tampons?" She looks up. "I think I may be ill, dear. May I use your phone?"

Indira opens the screen door slightly. "You can use my cell." She is about to offer up the phone when the old woman grabs the screen door and opens it. Indira steps back, startled. The old woman breezes by her, chattering up a storm, calling out: "Gretchen? Gretchen? Come out and talk to me!"

Indira keeps her hand on the gun. "Ma'am, you need to leave."

The old woman moves from room to room, ignoring her, calling out for the invisible Gretchen. Finally she ends up back in the living room, that hollow look in her eyes again. "Who am I, dear? What is my name?"

Indira takes one arm and steers her to the door. "You need to leave." Surprisingly, the woman allows herself to be led, although Indira finds a startling amount of muscle in the arm and elbow she holds. She moves the chattering crone out onto the porch again. Once she has her back to the house and the screen between them again, Indira realizes how terrified she has been for the last several moments. She holds up the cell phone.

"One last chance to use this, or I am going back inside."

"That won't be necessary."

Another voice startles Indira; it is a man's voice, this time. A distinguished looking man of about the woman's age comes striding up the walk. His features are stern. The old woman crumbles against the porch railing. "Don't let him take me back there, dear."

Indira reaches down to close and lock the screen door. To her horror, the man steps up onto the porch, whirls the old woman around and slaps her across the face. Hard.

"I told you to wait in the car, damn you!"

The redness on the woman's cheek is clearly visible. She covers her face and her shoulders quiver beneath the blue jogging suit. The man raises his hand again. His eyes are murderously angry.

"Stop that. Let her go." Indira steps out onto the porch. Confident it will stop him, she raises the Koch .22 waist high. The man's hand freezes in mid air and he looks down at the little gun. Before Indira can react the old woman whirls, a lithe dancer again, and her two small hands grab the gun and the wrist that supports it; they twist and turn. Indira cries out and the pistol is no longer hers.

The sobbing old woman is smiling now, a wickedly satisfied expression of disdain. Indira gasps as the gun is wedged under her chin. "Twenty-two shells rattle around in the skull a lot, dear. One has to use them in close for them to be effective. Now get back in the house."

Indira floats on her anxiety, backs into the living room thinking
Oh, Burke I've screwed up, I'm so sorry
as the old man opens his coat and removes a hypodermic needle. He squirts a drop of clear fluid from the tip. He is making an annoying, condescending clucking sound with his tongue. "Hold her, Mrs. Farnsworth."

The old woman grinds the gun into her chin and Indira finds it painful to swallow. She manages to speak. "No. Please don't kill me."

"Oh, sit down, you silly little bitch," Mrs. Farnsworth says. "We're not going to kill you."

"You see, we are also Shahr-e-Khamosh," Mr. Farnsworth chortles. "
Mo
is going to kill you."

Indira sits. She is the one crying now. The old woman yanks the robe down and grips her arm tightly. The needle slides home with a bitter sting.

FIFTY-THREE

Burke came through the open front door already knowing in his heart that she was gone. He swept the rooms anyway, 9mm at the end of one extended arm like an accusing finger. The throw rug was bunched up near the wall, the coffee table slightly out of place. Infuriated, he slammed the screen and locked it. He kicked the front door shut and put the cell phone to his ear.

"Where the fuck is Pal?"

"He's not home, that's for sure," Gina said. "In fact, he's left town."

"What the fuck?" A cold wave of sadness ran through Burke. He sat down on the couch. "Explain."

"The home phone was disconnected, so I did a quick search. He's history. Pal has even cut off his utilities."

"When?"

"First thing this morning. His e-mail addy is no longer in service and the website says he has resigned his position at the university for health reasons."

"Shit. Indira is gone."

"Which means?"

"Pal took her, or had somebody else do it." Burke closed his eyes. "Let me think for a minute." The last few days had been frantic. He worked to bring the disparate pieces into a cohesive whole. "Gina, we need to know if he went to Mexico."

Gina's fingers busily clacking on the keyboard, a small intake of breath. "Son of a bitch."

"I'm right? What have you got, Gina?"

"I just hacked the school's system and I found an e-mail between two other instructors. It says that he's gone there, supposedly for some kind cancer treatment he can't get here in the states. It doesn't say
where
in Mexico, though."

Burke opened his eyes. "I think I know," he said, with a sinking feeling. "Leave that for now. Have you got anything else on what happened to Doc?"

"Not yet. But get this, Jack. I started fucking around with the name Stryker registered under at the Sheraton. Dan Ira Palski. It sounds weird. I got to thinking it was in code, or it meant something, and you said Stryker liked word games. So I started doing some anagrams, shit like that."

"Damn it. It's her name. He knew she would talk."

"That's right. Dan Ira Palski is an anagram for 'ask Indira Pal.'"

Burke rocked sideways. "Peter Stryker was leaving clues behind. He probably checked in to meet somebody from Pal's cult, and was pretty sure he wouldn't be checking out again. What about the letter that came to Nicole, anything from Cary?"

"He wants to talk to you."

"Yeah," Burke said, quietly. "And that's a damned good idea. Did he say where he wants me to meet him?"

"Online." Part of Gina's mind was elsewhere, the magic fingers still occupied. "ASAP, the man said. He told me via the emergency route, whatever that means to you two."

"Okay, but stay on the line."

Moments later Burke was at the computer, typing code sequences. He removed the small camera from its plastic case. The piece was designed for a one-time use and had been encoded to a specific frequency. Burke lined it up, rolled the office chair backwards on the hard plastic sheet. The monitor flickered and rolled, then burst into white static. After a few seconds he saw a split screen with his face on one side and Cary's features on the other. The images ran together and then resolved. Cary sat alone, in some nondescript office. He was holding a sheaf of papers. He looked exhausted.

"Well, it works, anyway," Cary said. "I always wondered if it would, or if it was more high-tech bullshit from people with nothing better to do."

"The lady I've been seeing just disappeared," Burke said, quickly, "probably kidnapped by a cult headed by a man named Mohandas Hasari Pal. I think it factors into your troubles in Mexico."

"I wouldn't be surprised. And catch this, the sheet of formulas you faxed me?" Cary raised the paper. "It's got the kids at the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta pretty excited. One of them actually called me on an open line to tell me what it is."

"Tell me, make it quick."

Cary read from the page. "This is a direct quote, Burke. The guy from CDC said 'this is the cure for a disease that doesn't exist.'"

Burke leaned closer. "What the hell does that mean?"

"It means that if a certain super strong influenza virus just happened to be manufactured somewhere, a bug that would have a mortality rate nastier than Ebola and one hell of a long life in the open air, then this sheet of equations Stryker sent his daughter would offer the chance of a cure."

"The note at the bottom, in Stryker's handwriting? It said 'for the government, when the end begins.'"
He was trying to save his daughter's life
. "Jesus Christ, Cary, is that what I think it is?"

"I don't believe in coincidences. We have a lot of bits and pieces coming together. I'm just not sure what they mean yet."

"That's because it's time to factor in Mexico, Cary."

It took Ryan a second to catch up. "Buey?"

"That's right, and now my girlfriend Indira, too. Hang on." Burke raised the cell phone. "Gina, what have you got now?"

"I hope you're sitting down," Gina said. "Doc just sent us an e-mail."

"What?"

"He must have mailed it on time delay from his office computer, Burke. It's a file. I forwarded it to Cary's private e-mail because you both need to see this. I mean right fucking now."

Burke to Cary: "You get something from Gina? Open it."

"Got it."

Burke bristled. "You're the geek, Gina. I can't do it and talk to Cary online. One of you tell me what it is."

"Oh, shit." On the monitor, Cary's jaw fell open at the hinges. "Looks like Doc was doing some extracurricular lab work on a homeless lady brought into the morgue. It's the start of a report on the fact that there was something odd about the virus in her body. He never finished it." Cary looked up. "What do you want to bet?"

Poor Doc.
"That's all the confirmation I need," Burke said. "The only missing piece was Mexico. Not anymore."

"The pile of dead bodies underground at Los Gatos. Shit. And now someone took your girlfriend down there?"

"Cary, you need to do all the workup you can on Dr. Mohandas Hasari Pal. Gina has a leg up and she will send you what she's gotten together. Like I said, he runs a cult of some kind, very secretive, a perversion of Tantra. I can tell you that he has a preoccupation with death and he's just found out he's terminally ill, also that he and Stryker knew each other. So the virus must originate in Mexico. And Cary?"

"Yeah?"

"I want that mission you offered."

FIFTY-FOUR

The young woman awakens with a soft moan, and her head rolls sideways on the pillow. She reaches out for her lover, can almost smell the tang of his sweaty chest hair, but her fingers grasp empty air. She lowers her hand to the pillow and discovers it is wrapped in clear plastic.

She opens her eyes. Her heart sinks.

Indira Pal finds herself in some kind of a hospital room, or perhaps a prison cell. Her surroundings are made of mirrored glass, shiny metal, and clean porcelain that reeks of cleanser. Everything is sanitized to a fault and the recessed lights are painfully bright. She tries to sit up, but her head pounds. She notices an unpleasant taste in her mouth.

"
She might be waking up.
"

The voice is muffled and tinny and comes from somewhere in the wall above her. Indira rolls onto her side. One light rustling sound tells her she is wearing a paper gown that is backless; she can feel a slight breath of air flowing over the skin of her buttocks. The air smells of disinfectant and polished metal. Embarrassed, she rolls onto her back to cover her nakedness. She keeps one arm over her eyes and pretends to fall asleep again in order to buy herself time to think.

Indira remembers that terrifying old couple, the Farnsworth woman dancing madly through the house. Now she understands that the woman was making sure no one else was on the premises. She recalls the senility routine, the old man striking the woman, how abhorrent his action seemed at the time. The way the old woman skillfully disarmed her, the old man's eerie calm. The injection that followed. Her arm still feels sore.
It has not been long, probably less than a day.