left, Dan Kazinsky said, 'You ought to know that sometimes you'll get stuck in there. The mnemonic won't always work. There's another way out. You got to know what it is.'
He explained about the manual override built into the valve itself.
Teresa reached behind her, located the ExEx valve and felt around the rim of it for the minute tripswitch, concealed within a specially stiffened fold of the plastic integument. When she found it she gingerly eased the plastic apart with a fingernail, trying to avoid straining the sensitive area of her skin.
She had never done this before, except in a dry run in Quantico under the instruction of Agent Kazinsky. She found that the switch was more difficult to flick over than she had imagined it would be, and it took her two attempts to do it. As the tiny plastic device closed with a tangible pressure, Teresa braced herself for the traumatic disruption of an emergency withdrawal.
Teresa remained in Welton Road, outside the ExEx building, with Grove's stolen car gleaming in the midsummer sun. Nothing changed.
She reached behind her, located the ExEx valve and felt around the rim of it for the minute tripswitch, concealed within its specially stiffened fold of the plastic integument. When she found it she gingerly eased the plastic apart with a fingernail, and returned the switch to its former position.
Once, years before, Teresa had been driving her car at night in downtown Baltimore, in the area north of Franklin Street, a part of the city she knew well. Not paying attention she had taken a wrong turn. Thinking she knew where she was she drove straight to what she thought was her friends
address, found a parking space, and got out of her car. As soon as she did, paying attention at last to her surroundings, she knew instantly she was in the wrong place, but she was still none the less convinced that it could not be so. She had driven there many times before, and knew the location well. Yet there were two small stores where the entrance to her friend's apartment block should have been, the streetlights were wrong, the buildings opposite were too tall, too decrepit. For a few seconds, Teresa had been convinced of two conflicting facts, knowing they were in conflict, but no less disturbed for knowing it: that she was in the wrong place, and simultaneously that she was not.
Now, as the hot summer's afternoon lay around her, the brilliant sunlight dazzled her, the rolling heat from the ground smothered her, Teresa experienced the same conflict. Her inability to abort the scenario meant that she was really here, on the day of Grove's mass murders.
But that was eight months ago; it couldn't possibly be so.
Perspiration was beginning to trickle from her hairline, down the sides of her face, so she undid the top two buttons of her blouse, and lightly raised and fanned the material, to try to cool herself She found a tissue and mopped her face ineffectually. (The tissue was already damp: was it the same one she had used to dry her face when she staggered in from the arctic blast this morning?) Standing here in the street she could hardly start removing the warmest of the garments she was wearing: her snugly fitting jeans, and the thick tights beneath. She did have cooler clothes with her, but they were already packed in one of her suitcases at the hotel, ready for the flight home.
Staring at Grove's abandoned car, perplexed by what had happened, Teresa gave it a hard look, then went back across the street to the ExEx building.
CHAPTER 35
Paula Willson was still sitting at her desk, with a fan swivelling slowly to and fro across her.
Pieces of paper on the desktop lifted fractionally as the draught swept by.
'Hi,' Teresa said as she walked in and closed the door. After the blazing sunshine outside the building felt cool.
'How may 1 help you?' said Paula.
'Well, I hope you can help me a lot. 1 want to ask you if you know who 1 am?'
'You were here a few minutes ago, weren't you??
'I was leaving, and you asked me if it had started raining.'
'That's right,' said Paula.
'Can you remember why you asked me that?'
'I was surprised to see you, the way you were dressed. You'd put a coat on.'
'OK,' Teresa said. 'Had you seen me in here before then?'
'I don't think so. 1 think you'd been using the simulators. assumed you must have come in before my shift began. You are one of our customers, aren't you?'
'Yeah, that's right. Look, I'm trying to locate'
'May 1 have your name?'
'I've brought my customer ID with me.'
Teresa wanted to say that she and this young woman had been saying hello to each other most mornings for the last three weeks, but there was no point at all in that. She was no longer certain of anything. She groped in the pocket where she normally kept the plastic card, but it was not
there. She tried her other pockets. Then she remembered: Grove had had a similar conversation with Paula, earlier that day, when he had arrived at this building. To cut short the formalities, Teresa had helped him find an ID card, which he had immediately reached for in the back pocket of his pants, exactly as she had done now. Grove had found an ID card; she could not find hers.
'I'm somewhere in your computer records,' Teresa said. 'Teresa Simons, Teresa Ann Simons.
No E on Ann.'
'I won't keep you a moment,' said Paula, already typing at her keyboard and glancing at the screen. 'No, I'm afraid we don't have you, but we are recruiting new members at the moment, and there's a discount scheme with airmile bonuses if you sign up now. If you would fill in this application form, and can supply a major credit card, we will grant you temporary membership straight away.'
