Triggers

“Give me a moment,” Ranjip said. There was a gurney nearby. He stretched out on it, reflecting, not for the first time, that it was nice to have a turban that doubled as a portable pillow. He looked up at the same blank ceiling Kadeem had been staring at and tried to discern any faint images of Lucius Jono’s life—not memories of the redheaded surgeon but the sights that Jono himself might currently be seeing. He also strained to listen for any sounds Jono might be hearing. Of course, it was possible that Jono was asleep, even though it was now well past noon, but…

Nothing. Nothing at all. Ranjip got off the gurney.

“Power nap, guru?” asked Kadeem.

“Just trying to see if I was linked in the same way, but I’m not. Still, let’s check our facts.” He pulled out his BlackBerry and a small Bluetooth earpiece for it, then walked across the room, far enough away that Kadeem couldn’t possibly hear what the earpiece was conveying. Then he placed a call. “Agent Dawson. It’s Ranjip. Can you talk?”

“Yes.”

“You are with President Jerrison?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Tell me: does he still have a respirator on?”

“No, they removed that about an hour ago.”

Ranjip felt his heart pounding. Still, it didn’t prove anything other than that Kadeem had Agent Dawson’s memories, as before. “I need your help to conduct an experiment.”

“Sure,” Susan said. “Two seconds.” He heard her begging President Jerrison’s indulgence. Ranjip happened to be looking over at Kadeem when he heard Jerrison say, “I’m not going anywhere,” and he saw Kadeem smile in amusement—but was it at the president’s quip or something else?

When Susan was back, Ranjip spoke loudly so Kadeem could hear from across the room. “Private Adams?”

“Yo.”

“I’m going to ask Agent Dawson to think of a series of numbers from one to ten. As she thinks of them, please hold up the right number of fingers, okay?”

Kadeem nodded.

“All right, Agent Dawson, you heard what I said. Give me a series of numbers, from one to ten. Not any sequence you know by heart, like your social security number, but random numbers, one per second. Just whisper them to me, starting…now.”

“Four,” said Susan, and Kadeem held up his left hand with the fingers splayed and the thumb tucked against his palm.

“Two,” said Susan, and Kadeem made a peace sign.

“Seven,” she said; he kept the peace sign up and added a full hand with all five fingers.

“Six.” Kadeem made the polite choice about which finger to drop from the peace sign.

“Ten.” Both hands, all fingers splayed, like a child showing he’d successfully washed.

“Amazing,” said Ranjip.

“What?” asked Susan.

“That real-time link that Private Adams had with you at the moment you shot Latimer? It’s persisting. He can still read your thoughts.”

“Oh, shit,” Susan said.

And, from across the room, Kadeem added, “She’s wondering what’ll happen if Bessie Stilwell ends up being able to do the same thing with Prospector.”

Dora Hennessey’s internal clock wasn’t adjusting properly to the five-hour time-zone change between London and Washington: although it was only 3:00 P.M. here, it was already 8:00 P.M. back home. And it hadn’t helped that they’d made an incision in her side on Friday morning; the stitches itched. Still, she didn’t like just lying in the hospital bed, and so instead was sitting in a chair by the window, looking out at the November afternoon.

Dora and her father each had a private room, which was all to the good. She’d be ready to go to sleep in a few hours; the last thing she needed was a roommate who’d want to watch television in the evening.

Dora could read the memories of Ann January, a nurse who had been part of the team that had saved the president. She still wasn’t happy about having her own surgery postponed to accommodate him, but she did know, because Ann knew it, just how close they’d come to losing Jerrison, and although her father was thinking of suing, she couldn’t bring herself to contemplate that.

There was a knock on her door. “Yes?” she called.

The door swung inward revealing Dr. Mark Griffin. She’d met him on Friday; he’d come to see her after she woke up from the anesthetic to explain why the surgery had been halted. “Hello, Dora,” he said. “May I come in?”

“Sure.”

There was another chair in the room, a smaller one. He turned it around, and straddled it, facing her, his arms folded across the top of its back. “Dora,” he said, “I’m so sorry, but I’ve got some bad news.”

“You’re not postponing the transplant again,” she said. Did he have any idea how nerve-racking all this was for her?

“There won’t be a transplant.”

“Why not? The tissue match was perfect.”

Griffin took a deep breath. “Dora, your father is dead.”

“What?”

“I’m so, so sorry.”

“Dead?”

“Yes.”

She was quiet for a time, then: “If this is because you postponed giving him my kidney—”

“It’s not that. It’s not that at all. Dora, your father tried to kill someone this afternoon—and he was shot by a federal agent.”

She’d heard a sound earlier, but—God—she’d thought it had been a car backfiring.

“What…what happens now?”