Triggers

Seth managed a philosophical movement of his shoulders. “What I’ve discovered today is that I don’t know anybody—well, anybody except Kadeem Adams. I mean, seriously: you and I work together practically every day, Susan, and I know almost nothing about you—where you live, what hobbies you have, whether you’re seeing anyone, what you were like as a little girl.” He paused and caught his breath. “I’ve long been acquainted with Director Hexley, but I don’t know him. And yet there are forty-four hundred sworn members of the Secret Service, and Hexley knew Danbury well enough not only to be on a first-name basis with him, but a nickname basis.”

Susan frowned; that was curious. “But you don’t remember what Mr. Hexley said?”

“No—because it didn’t make sense at the time, and I had other things on my mind. I’ve racked my brain, but…no. It was weird, what he said, I remember that. But I just can’t recall it. I do remember he shut up and turned off his phone the moment he realized I had entered. Didn’t even say good-bye.”

“Forgive me, sir, but that’s not necessarily suspicious. People are conscious of how busy you are. You don’t make the president wait while you finish a personal call.” She paused. “A thought, sir. Did you have the Oval Office set up to record conversations the way Nixon did? And were they maybe backed up off-site?”

Seth shook his head. “Didn’t work out so well for Nixon, that.”

“True enough.” Susan replied. “So now what?”

“First, I need you to get Hexley’s cell-phone records.”

“Will do—but they’re almost certainly encrypted and scrambled. After Obama insisted on getting to keep his BlackBerry, all sorts of extra security was instituted on the units issued to high-level government officials. I suspect it’ll take days to decrypt them, if it can be done at all.”

“Damn,” said Jerrison.

“Is there anything else, Mr. President?”

“Yes,” he said. “I want to send Mrs. Stilwell on a little trip in the morning.”

“It’s so strange,” Jan Falconi said as she sipped her second beer, “having a man’s memories.” She shook her head. “And, I gotta say, Josh Latimer is pissed.”

“About what?” asked Eric.

“He was supposed to receive a kidney transplant this morning, and the surgery was canceled after it had begun, to make room for the president. He and his daughter—she’s the donor—were being dealt with in the corridor outside your O.R. while you were working on Jerrison; I was tending to them.”

“Good Christ,” said Eric. “I saw them there when I went in, but I didn’t know what it was about.”

“He’s thinking about suing.”

“I can’t say I blame him, but…well, most kidney transplants aren’t time-sensitive, and the president had to be treated immediately.”

“Still,” said Jan, shaking, “the last thing I need is someone being angry inside my head.”

“I know,” Eric said gently.

Jan clearly wanted to change the subject. “Somebody must be reading your memories, too.”

“Yeah,” Eric replied. “Her name’s Nikki Van Hausen. She’s a real-estate agent.”

Jan smiled. “That’s funny.”

“It is?”

“Sure. Her name is Van Hausen and she sells houses. It’s like a dentist named Payne or…”

“Or Larry Speakes,” said Eric—and then he realized the name didn’t mean anything to her. “He was the White House spokesman for Ronald Reagan.”

She smiled. “Exactly. There’s a name for that. It’s called—” and as she said it, it came to Eric, but not from his memory—he’d never heard the term before—but from hers: “nominative determinism.”

“Cool,” he said, making an impressed face.

“They talk about it in New Scientist all the time,” she said.

“You read New Scientist?” And then: “Oh, so you do. You subscribe.”

“I adore it,” she said. “Great magazine.”

He looked at her in the dim light of the bar. She was absolutely lovely, but she was eighteen years younger than him. Which was crazy. Which was nuts.

The waitress appeared. “Another round?”

Eric gestured at Jan; it was up to her.

“Sure,” she said. “Why not?”

“Hi, Darryl,” Susan said as she entered the conference room on the first floor, just down the corridor from Trauma.

Darryl Hudkins was sipping a coffee. His shaved head was showing a faint stubble, and his face was showing even more. “Hey, Sue.”

“The president wants me to send you on a trip tomorrow morning.”

“Somewhere warm and exotic, I hope.”

“Well, it’ll be warm, anyway. And he wants you to take Bessie Stilwell with you.”

“Oh,” said Darryl, sounding not at all enthusiastic now. “Does it have to be me?”

Susan looked at him. “You’re the one linked to her so, yeah. There’s no one who knows her mind better than you do. After all, she’s still a security risk.”

“Lucky me,” said Darryl.