Unforgettable - eARC (14 page)

Chapter Twenty

On the other roof, the neighbor started yelling, too.

Yelena said something in Farsi, and the neighbor shut up.

“I give up. I’ll do whatever you want,” said Parham. “Just don’t hurt my family.” He winked at me and let me take him by the arm. Yelena and I helped him across the wall onto the other roof, and then the three of us went down the stairs and rushed out into the street.

We rounded the corner and Yelena opened the trunk of the BMW. She climbed in.

“You’re with her,” I said. I helped him into the trunk, then slammed it shut. I got into the driver’s side, started up the engine and drove.

I only got to the end of the block before I had to stop for pedestrians. I kept an anxious eye on the rear view mirror, but managed to turn the corner without seeing a guard chasing us.

With Yelena and Parham invisible in the trunk and me as the driver, I hoped people would forget seeing the car. Then the guards would have no way to figure out which direction we had gone. But it was also possible that people would remember Yelena driving it—I didn’t have control over what they remembered, and Yelena driving would make sense if I weren’t there.

In any case, I wanted to get out of town quickly so I could let Yelena and Parham out of the trunk.

Pedestrian traffic thinned as we neared the outskirts of the town, and I was able to speed up. A few miles out of town, as the sun hovered over the horizon to the west, I pulled off to the side of the highway, got out, and unlocked the trunk.

Yelena and Parham blinked at me as their eyes adjusted to the light.

“I think we’ve lost any pursuit, at least for now,” I said. “Come get comfortable in the car.”

A few minutes later, Yelena was driving us along a route that would take us to the Iraqi border. I sat in the back seat with Parham.

“How did you know I wanted to defect?” he asked. “I have never told anyone.”

There was no harm in explaining my talent, since he would forget anyway. “Actually, you told me earlier today that you wanted to defect,” I said. “You also indicated that it needed to look like a kidnapping.”

He frowned. “Am I developing Alzheimer’s Disease? I do not recall such a conversation. I never saw you before, until you opened the trunk.”

“No, your mind is fine,” I said. “In fact, it’s brilliant. You caught on immediately that my identity was fake and played along, giving me signals with wordplay that you wanted to defect. The reason you don’t remember those events is because everyone forgets me after a minute. They remember things as if I had never been there.”

He looked at me skeptically. “It has been more than a minute since you let us out of the trunk, and I still remember you.”

“Sorry,” I said. “I meant that no one remembers me after they haven’t seen or heard me for a minute.”

“It is true,” Yelena said from the front seat. “I have seen it myself.”

“Not only that, but when I met you in Rome a few days ago, you told me that it might have something to do with quantum mechanics. You mentioned ‘superpositon of memories’ and ‘quantum eraser experiments.’”

“I recall no such conversation, but if your claim is true, I wouldn’t. That does seem rather convenient for you and inconvenient for me.”

“I also disappear from electronic records,” I said. “And from undeveloped photos.”

“What is left? A blank spot where your picture would be?” he asked.

“No. Whatever was behind me when the picture was taken,” I said.

“Ah, then it could indeed be a quantum phenomenon,” he said. “Yes, it fits together quite nicely.”

I felt a surge of excitement. Maybe he was just humoring the insane CIA agent who had kidnapped him, but he actually seemed to understand my talent. “Have you heard of this sort of thing before?”

“Yes and no.” He reached to his shirt pocket as if to pull out a pen, but there was nothing for him to pull out. “How much do you know about quantum mechanics?”

“I’ve stolen a lot of quantum computer technology,” I said. “I know it’s supposed to be superfast. But I don’t really understand how it works.”

Parham reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a coin. “You see this coin?”

“Yeah.”

He brought both hands together, then clenched them into fists and separated them. “Now, what is the probability that the coin is in my right hand instead of my left hand?”

“Fifty percent,” I said.

“Very good.” He smiled. “You would agree that the coin is really in one hand or in the other. You just lack the knowledge of which hand the coin is in.”

“Right.”

“That is the way most people look at the world. But it is not the quantum physics way. According to quantum physics, the coin is both in and not in each hand. It is what we call a ‘superposition’—two contradictory possibilities existing in the same place at the same time. The decision as to which probability becomes reality is not made until you look in one of my hands to see if it contains the coin.”

He opened his right hand, showing it to be empty. He opened his left, and the coin was there.

“What does that have to do with me?” I asked.

“To understand what is happening with you, we need to talk about a cat,” Parham said. “A scientist named Schrödinger came up with a famous thought experiment. Imagine you put a cat in a black box with no windows, along with a vial of poison and a quantum device that has a fifty percent chance of breaking the vial within one hour and killing the cat.”

He looked at me expectantly, so I said, “Okay.”

“So, after one hour, is the cat dead or alive?”

I thought for a moment. “From what you said, since we haven’t looked in the box, we don’t know. The cat is in a superposition of being both dead and alive.”

“Exactly. Until you open the box and look inside, the cat is neither dead nor alive: it is merely a probability wave that encompasses both possibilities.”

“Weird,” I said. “But I still don’t quite understand what that has to do with my talent. Because I really do exist, and I really do go places, so it’s not like there’s a superposition of me not existing.”

“Patience, young man. I’ll get to that. What normally happens when we open the box is that moment, the probability wave collapses, and one of the possibilities becomes reality: dead cat or live cat. But up until that point, the possible live cat is acting very much like a live cat, and the possible dead cat is acting very much like a dead cat. Both possible realities coexist in the probability wave.”

He held up a finger before I could interrupt again. “But the box with the cat is not the only place with a probability wave. I, the researcher, am behind a closed door in my laboratory conducting the experiment with the cat. You are outside the lab, waiting for me to finish my experiment and come tell you the result. Tell me, what are the possibilities?”

“Either you come out and tell me the cat died,” I said, “or you come out and tell me the cat lived.”

“And that means I, the researcher, also exists in superposition. There are two versions of me: one who saw a dead cat and one who saw a live one. Are you with me so far?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Good, because this is where it gets complicated.”

I had thought it got complicated quite a while ago, but I didn’t say that out loud.

“So, there are two versions of me existing in superposition. Normally, when the wave function collapses, which version remains is a result of probability, and it is in sync with whether the cat actually died or not. But let’s say there is some strange quantum interference that makes my wave function always collapse to the version of me who saw a dead cat. That means I always come out of the room and tell you that the cat died. That does not mean the cat actually died—it only means the version of me who came out of the room is the one who remembers seeing a dead cat.”

After thinking it through, I said, “So I’m like the cat in the experiment—only instead of being both dead and alive, I’m both there and not there. And there are two versions of people I meet: one version sees me and the other version doesn’t. After I’m gone, the one who didn’t see me ends up being the one that’s left.”

“That’s the basic idea,” he said. “It’s like the person flips from having seen you to not having seen you. You are a fluke of quantum mechanics. I should very much like to write a paper about you. I would call you ‘Schrödinger’s cat burglar.’”

“This is all fascinating, Professor,” Yelena said, in a tone that indicated she was not all that fascinated, “but we have some questions for you. Where is Jamshidi’s lab?”

“I am sorry,” Parham said. “It’s not that I don’t trust you…Well, to be honest, it is that I don’t trust you. To give you key information now is to risk that you might not bother to get me out of the country. Once I am safely in America, I will tell you anything you want to know.”

It was a bit frustrating, but I could see his point. “Well,” I said. “I need to call my boss to see exactly what arrangements we can make to get you over to the U.S.”

He frowned. “The arrangements were not made already?”

“It was kind of a spur-of-the-moment operation, after you told me you wanted to defect. What we’ll do now is find a place to hole up, then I’ll contact Langley to arrange for your extraction.”

“The city of Ahvaz is big enough that we would be hard to find,” Parham said. “However, I must ask you to please stop the car as soon as possible.”

“Why?” I asked. “I promise you, we can get you out.”

“It’s not that.” He pointed to the western horizon, where the sun’s disk had slipped from view. “The sun has now set, so I must perform the Maghrib prayer.”

Parham had a doctorate in physics from Cambridge University and spoke like an Englishman—and he was defecting from Iran to the United States. From all that, I had assumed he might feign Muslim piety in front of others, but it had not occurred to me he might be an actual believer.

Yelena glanced at me over her shoulder, and I nodded. She slowed down and pulled over to the side of the road. Parham got out.

I got out as well. “Is it okay if I stand and watch in a place you can see me?”

He nodded. Reaching into his coat pocket, he pulled out a cell phone and turned it on. “This has a program on it that will accurately point the way to Mecca,” he said. “It’s a wonder of technology that promotes the spiritual life. Very useful while traveling.”

After consulting the screen, he turned to the southwest and put the cell phone away.
“Allahu akbar,”
he said. What followed was a ritual that involved changing position from standing to bowing to kneeling to sitting and back to standing, while reciting various things in Arabic.

As he began the ritual the second time, I saw headlights coming along the road from the northeast. I wondered why the occupants of that car had not stopped to pray as well. And then I realized there was a way the guards could track us: Parham’s cell phone.

Chapter Twenty-One

“We have to get out of here,” I said. “Your guards are probably tracking your cell phone.”

He did not respond, but rather continued his prayer, although there seemed to be a more urgent tone to his voice.

I reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone. Opening the door to the car, I said, “His guards may be tracking this.” I dropped the phone on the front passenger seat. They might track Tooraj’s phone, too, if they realized it was missing, so I took it out of my pocket and dumped it on the seat as well. “Drive somewhere and get rid of these. You’ll have to come back for us.”

“Be careful,” she said.

I slammed the door. She started the car and peeled off, heading northeast, toward the approaching headlights.

“Wrong direction!” I shouted, but there was no way she could hear me. Then I realized what she was doing. If the guards were in that car and she drove away from them, they would pass this spot and might see Parham praying on the side of the road. The only hope was to get them to turn around and follow her for a while, until she could dump the cell phones and lose them.

“Good thing she rented the BMW,” I said. I watched as her taillights approached the headlights, then passed by. The headlights kept coming for a few seconds, then they swerved around. The car had been following us. It was now going after Yelena.

I looked at Parham, kneeling in prayer in the twilight, and said a silent prayer of my own for her.

* * *

As we waited for Yelena to return, we worked out a routine. Each time a vehicle approached from the northeast, Parham would hide behind a Volkswagen-sized boulder and watch as I stood where the headlights could catch me. No one but Yelena would recognize me, so I figured that was safe enough.

In between cars, Parham asked me about my talent and my history. I told him all about my mother, my criminal career, and my decision to join the CIA. Talking about my life helped distract me from the fact that every minute that passed without Yelena’s return made it more likely she had been captured or even killed.

After the fourth time a car ignored me and kept going, Parham said, “If everyone forgets you, how will the Russian woman recognize you when she returns?”

“She’s the only person who can remember me.”

“What? Why didn’t you say so before?” He threw his hands up in the air. “I’ve been building a theory based on the fact that no one can remember you, and now you tell me that someone can remember you. It throws everything off.”

“Sorry,” I said. “It was a shock to me, too, when I found out.”

“Yes, I suppose it was.” He yawned and surveyed the ground around him. “Not the most comfortable place for a lie-down.”

“You can’t go to sleep, Dr. Rezaei,” I said. “Not until Yelena gets back.”

“Call me Parham,” he said. “Why can’t I just take a little nap until she gets back?”

“Because you’ll forget all about me, and without her to vouch for me, you won’t trust me.”

“Oh, bother,” he said. “But the real problem is how am I going to remember my theory about you if I can’t remember you?”

The sound of vehicles approaching drew my eyes to the road. They weren’t coming from the northeast, so it couldn’t be Yelena. From the southwest, a car closely followed by a semi truck sped past us. I wondered if it was my smuggling captors from last night making another run.

“If I could figure out why she remembers you,” said Parham, “then maybe I could remember you, too, unless it’s something genetic.”

“It’s not genetic, I don’t think,” I said. “She forgot me after the first time we met.”

“Hmm. So what changed?”

I told him briefly about how we’d been handcuffed together and then made our escape. When I got to the part about the laboratory with the laser and how we had tried to cut the handcuffs with it, he interrupted me.

“What did it say on the lab door? The exact words?”

“Laboratorio de Entrelazar.”

“Entrelazar? You’re sure about that?” His voice was excited.

“Yes. What does it mean?”

“Literally, it means to interlace. But in the context of quantum mechanics, it means to entangle. I assume there was a prism that split the laser beam, was there not?”

How did he figure that out? “There was.”

“And you tried to cut the handcuffs with the beam before it got to the prism, right?”

“Yes. Is that important?”

“It gives me a good basis for a theory of why she can remember you. You’re entangled.”

“Entangled?”

“Entanglement is a quantum phenomenon. Imagine two particles that are like twins of each other. The twin particles are together at first, but then you separate them. However, no matter how far apart they are, the twin particles are still connected in some way. If you measure something about one of the particles, then you can know the measurement of its twin. And because measuring a particle at the quantum level changes it, then you have changed its twin, even across the universe, because they are entangled.”

“And you think Yelena and I are entangled?”

“In a way. The laser beam in that room was full of entangled photons. They were almost certainly running an experiment in high-speed quantum communication—entangled photons are useful for that. As you tried to cut the handcuffs, some of those photons were reflected onto you and some onto Yelena. As the molecules in your bodies absorbed those photons, some of them became entangled.”

“So we’re connected somehow by this entanglement,” I said.

“Exactly. And while an ordinary person loses contact with you when you leave, and therefore they can flip to not remembering you, it’s like Yelena is constantly in contact with you no matter where she is, so she can’t flip. It’s a real life application of the Quantum Zeno Effect. Oh, this is going to make such a fascinating paper, if I somehow manage to remember the theory behind it all.”

I pulled out my notepad and pen. “Would it help if you wrote down some notes for yourself?” The moon had grown slightly fuller since last night, so there might be enough light for him to write by.

“Yes, thank you,” he said. “I forgot to bring my own while being kidnapped.” Peering closely at the paper, he began to scribble on it.

If Parham did go to sleep before Yelena got back, at least his notes might make him believe me when I explained that he had forgotten me.

“So,” I asked, hating to interrupt his train of thought, but desperate to know more, “would it be possible for me to get entangled with someone besides Yelena?”

“Possibly. However, such an attempt might destroy any previous entanglement. But I really don’t know enough yet.”

Headlights appeared again on the road to the northeast, traveling at maybe twenty miles per hour. It might be Yelena, unsure of the exact spot where she had left us. Or it might be the guards—if they had discovered Parham wasn’t in the car with Yelena, they might have backtracked to see where she dropped him off.

“Watch for my signal,” I said.

Parham looked up from his notes. “Oh, quite right.” He hunkered down and peered at me over the top of the rock.

I walked to the road and waited for the car to approach. As it got nearer, I could hear its engine, which did not have the smooth purr of the BMW. It sounded vaguely familiar, but it took me a moment to place it: an old Mercedes, like the one I’d ridden in last night.

The glare of the headlights caught me as I backed away from the road. The car sped up, then suddenly screeched to a halt alongside me.

I turned to run. I would lead the guards away from Parham, and maybe he could find his own way across the border.

“Nat!” Yelena shouted.

I looked back. She had gotten out of the driver’s side of the Mercedes.

“Yelena?” I said. “What happened?”

“I stole their car.” Her tone was self-satisfied.

“Good show,” said Parham as he came to join us. “However did you manage that?”

“I will tell you as we drive,” she said.

We got in the car. Yelena made a U-turn to head us back northeast toward Ahvaz.

“When they turn to follow,” Yelena said, “I know they are after me. I speed down highway, but is not very good quality road. Not like autobahn. I hit pothole and right front wheel get wobbly.”

I knew what I would do in that situation: pull over and run into the night, hoping to lose contact so they would forget about me.

“Thanks to GPS in car, I know river is a few kilometers to the east. I turn off on road, and they follow. They are very close behind, so I slam on brakes. I hope to damage their engine with my trunk, but their driver is good and swerves out of way into a field.”

As if for emphasis, she swerved the car a bit, then continued, “So they back off, but are still behind me. I get closer and closer to river. I roll down passenger side window. When I am close enough to river, I put car in neutral, climb out passenger side window and jump, then roll away to side as fast as I can. BMW goes into river. Mercedes stops on the bank. Guards get out to look at what happened to BMW and search for survivors. I steal Mercedes, then come look for you.”

Yelena was right about me: I relied on my talent too much. If I had been the one taking the phones away, I would have ended up stranded without a car while our enemies continued searching for Parham. Without any unique talent, Yelena stranded our enemies without a car. It was possible I could have done what she did, but I would have never thought of it because I relied on my talent.

“You’re amazing,” I said.

“It was nothing.” She drove us steadily toward Ahvaz.

* * *

We found a hotel, and Yelena went inside to rent a room. Because Jamshidi’s men might be looking for a man and woman checking in together, I picked the lock on a service entrance so Parham and I could sneak in. At the edge of the lobby, I kept Parham out of sight but stood where Yelena could see me.

After the clerk gave her the room key, she said, “Room 407, is that right?” loud enough that I could hear.

Parham and I took the service elevator and met Yelena on the fourth floor. Room 407 was a suite with two queen beds and a couch that pulled out into a third.

“Can I borrow your cell phone, Yelena?” I asked. “I want to report in.”

She pulled out her cell phone and handed it to me. I dialed Edward’s number.

“Put it on speakerphone, please,” said Parham. “I wish to know I can trust you.”

I nodded. When Edward answered, I put him on speakerphone so the others could hear.

After going through our standard procedure with the folder, Edward said, “Okay, it’s good that you called in. We have a team prepping now to go extract Rezaei. They should be there in the next forty-eight—”

“I’ve already got him,” I said. “Yelena helped me fake a kidnapping. Also, I should let you know they’re both here, listening on speakerphone.”

“Oh. Hmm. Okay, I guess I’d better cancel that mission. Has he given you the location of the lab?”

“Not yet,” I said. “He wants to be safely in the U.S. before he gives up any information.”

Edward sighed. “Understandable, I guess. Regarding the extraction, though, how do we usually handle this sort of thing without it being forgotten?”

“Um. We don’t. This is the first time I’ve had someone along with me. Two someones.”

“Pardon me for interrupting,” said Parham, “but I believe our presence simplifies things a great deal. If I’m correct about how Nat’s ability works, you will forget this conversation with him, but you will still remember us. So if you merely arrange my extraction directly with me and the young lady, you will not forget it.”

I was speechless for a moment. I was supposed to be the expert on how my talent worked, but Parham had figured out this new situation before I had. I finally managed to say, “Yeah, I think that should work.”

“Okay,” said Edward. “Let me see. Bringing you out via commercial flights is not an option.”

“Getting across the border into Iraq may be dangerous,” I said. “The guy who was bringing me in got killed.”

“Hmm…Maybe…” Edward clicked away on his keyboard for a bit. “Yes, a Grasshopper is available. Yelena, do you have a cell phone number?”

She gave it to him.

“Okay,” Edward said. “I’ll text you some GPS coordinates and a time for the Grasshopper to pick you up and bring you to Langley. Should be sometime tomorrow.”

“Pardon me,” said Parham, “but what is a Grasshopper?”

“Stealth plane with vertical takeoff and landing,” Edward said. “It’s called a Grasshopper because its radar cross-section is about the same as the insect’s. Don’t worry—you’ll know it when you see it.” He laughed as if he had cracked a really funny joke, but I didn’t get it.

* * *

Yelena shook me awake. Sunlight streamed in through the open curtains. “Get up. Take shower,” she said.

I still hadn’t gotten enough sleep, but despite its low water pressure the shower revived me. Unfortunately, I had to get dressed in my same clothes, but Yelena and Parham were in the same situation. I decided to make shopping for clothes part of today’s agenda.

When I came out of the bathroom, a room service tray stood in the middle of the room. Parham was eating scrambled eggs from a plate on his lap, while Yelena was at the desk writing something on hotel stationery.

Parham jumped slightly when he saw me. “Who are you?” he asked.

“He is CIA,” said Yelena. “Do not worry.”

He went back to eating.

“Have breakfast,” she said.

I checked under a metal dish lid and found more scrambled eggs. Suddenly feeling very hungry, I grabbed a fork and dug in.

“Thanks,” I said, after I’d had a few mouthfuls. “What’re you writing?”

“Is personal,” she said.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to pry.” I continued eating. “We need new clothes and stuff. I can go out and get some after breakfast.”

“Why don’t we all go?” asked Parham.

“You must stay hidden,” said Yelena. “And one of us must stay with you. Is better if I go shopping.” Seeing I was about to object, she added, “I speak the language better than you.”

* * *

I felt a lot better once I was wearing fresh clothes from underwear on out. The tan shirt and pants Yelena had picked out differed from my usual black for infiltration, but when I pointed that out to Yelena, she said, “Look less suspicious in daytime. Blend in more.”