then, surprising to me, Pauline. He has no idea how wrong he is about my intimate connections and my will to fight for them.
“None of this explains why they didn’t kill me when they had the chance.”
“What do you mean?”
I tell him about Grandma’s abduction. Whoever took Grandma left me alive, with her care file. He takes it all in. I can see from the machinations in his jaw that he’s working it out, His face shouts stress and concern, displeasure.
“The Swiss took her?” I say, a statement as much as a question.
“I’ll help you find out, Nat. I promise you that.”
“Chuck, you’ve still not explained your interest — the military’s interest.”
“I’ll show you.”
Toting his gun, Chuck starts to walk out of the room. I follow, feeling the sharp tip of the wine opener in my pocket.
Chapter 45
We climb thickly carpeted stairs to the second floor. Chuck walks a few steps in front. He still holds his gun, casually, but his finger is laced through the trigger loop. I keep one hand on the smooth wooden rail and the other curled around the opener.
“Wait here,” Chuck says when we reach the top. We stand in a dark hallway that leads toward the back of the house. He knocks on a door across from the stairs. A deferential woman’s voice tells him to come in. He does.
Left alone, my mind tumbles through a series of images, moments, rapid-fire memories, evidence, and unanswered questions from the last few days:
Grandma and me nearly shot; Why? Because she knew about a science experiment gone wrong?
A Human Memory Crusade transcript that doesn’t seem to test Grandma’s memory so much as write over it. Why?
The hooded man had an accent. Was it Swiss?
Polly’s seductiveness. Is she in with Chuck?
Chuck tells me not to trust the police. How might they possibly be involved? Who shot Chuck outside my house? Why isn’t he limping?
How does any of this relate to the secret from Grandma’s past?
Whom can I trust?
Chuck reemerges.
“Time to meet my father.” He holds open the door for me, then whispers, “Be pleasant.” It sounds like a threat.
The room is dimly lit. In the corner is a desk. An old man sitting behind it, looking down through a magnifying glass.
“Dad, this is Nathaniel Idle. He’s a writer, like Dave Cardigan.”
“Dave could shoot a gook from a thousand yards,” his father responds without looking up. But I can see his face is fleshy and unsubstantial to the point of being gaunt, his cheeks droopy like a cartoon dog. He wears a leather hunting cap. His voice is deep but textured with crackles. He’s had lung trouble, maybe early onset of emphysema. He’s late sixties or early seventies, but poorly aged, his white hair wispy thin.
And yet the room looks like it belongs to a high-school kid. To the right of the desk is a poster of a gleaming Harley Davidson motorcycle shown off by a woman in a tight nurse’s outfit. Hung next to it is a wide-shot picture of a mountain stream, set against sun-drenched peaks.
In the corner opposite the desk is a queen-size bed covered by a dark blue down comforter pulled tight. There is no woman in the room. She must have exited through the doorway next to the bed.
“Did I hear your wife?” I ask Chuck.
“His nurse. Transparent way to elicit personal information.”
The old fellow looks up. “Charles doesn’t like girls.”
He looks down again.
“Guess it worked,” I mutter.
I walk toward the desk. Chuck comes up behind me and puts a hand on my arm, gently holding me back.
For some reason, I’m deeply curious what Chuck’s father is looking at so intently with his magnifying glass. I shuffle another step closer. Chuck doesn’t stop me. I peer over the desk and see that he’s looking at airplane models.
I see a framed photo on the desk, facing in our direction. It’s a picture of Chuck’s dad from a decade ago, at least. I recognize where he’s standing: on the dock of the San Francisco Marina. Behind him is a boat named
Chuck spins me around. “Meeting’s over.”
He whisks me into the hallway.
“What was that dog and pony show?” I ask.
“As you alluded to downstairs, we lose a lot of fine patriots to PTSD. It’s arguably the biggest problem in Iraq and Afghanistan. The wounds you don’t see and that never heal.”
“Your dad served in Vietnam.”
“We’ve created an environment to remind him of the days before the VC popped out of a tunnel in a village Dad and his men were clearing and started spraying fire from a flamethrower. He killed one of Dad’s close friends and left Dad with burn scars on his arms and chest.”
“I’m sorry,” I manage.
“We’d like to help these boys put less emphasis on the bad memories, think about more innocent times.”
“You’re trying to erase their memories?”
“C’mon, Nat. Stop thinking like a muckraker. We never got that far. We just wanted to find out whether there was any validity to our scientific premises that might help us reinforce some memories and limit others.”
“By erasing the bad ones.”
“What is it with journalists always seeing the negative? Progress takes change, which can be disruptive.”
“So now you have to erase the evidence before you all look bad.”
“Nothing of the sort. We’re passive investors trying to make sure that the R and D process doesn’t exceed our downside loss projections.”
After a pause, I say: “But you invest in Internet start-ups, infrastructure companies, not far-fetched neurological experiments.”
“Neuro-tech,” he says.
“What?”
“Biotech combined biology and technology, saved millions of lives, and made billions for investors. This is the next wave.”
“The brain and technology.”
He motions me down the stairs.
“Now what?”
He’s following me. “You go find your grandmother.”
I want to ask how. Instead I say: “I have no money or cell phone.”
At the bottom of the stairs, I turn around. Chuck’s two steps above me, paused in thought. Then he says: “I’ll give you a cell phone but you won’t trust it’s not a tracking device.”
