Fallout

12

Fisher’s SC pistol had a variety of dart selections, ranging from low to high in anesthetic dosage. Level three would keep a 180-pound man unconscious for ninety minutes; level two, half that; level one, fifteen to twenty minutes. Legard, whom Fisher assumed weighed nearly two hundred pounds, would take around ten minutes.

He was two minutes off. Eight minutes after Fisher darted him, Legard groaned, lifted his head from his chest, and shook it. He blinked his eyes a few times, then opened them and looked around. Fisher had propped him against the mirror with one of the padded dummies behind his back, his hands bound behind his back by a plastic flexicuff. Bruno, who had gotten a level two dart after he went down, was similarly bound, save one addition: a gag made of his own socks.

Now, crouched a few feet away from Legard, Fisher studied the crime lord in the gray-green glow of his NV goggles. The room was pitch-black, except for what little pale moonlight made its way through the upper windows. The rest of Legard’s training dummies stood like frozen sentinels down the center of the room, multiplied by the mirrors on both walls.

Legard cleared his throat, then spoke: “What’s… what’s going on? Bruno, are you there? Bruno!”

“Keep your voice down,” Fisher whispered. “Raise it again, and I’ll put a bullet in your knee. Nod if you understand.”

Legard nodded.

“Bruno’s taking a nap. You and I need to have a chat.”

“Who the hell are you? Don’t you—”

“Know who you are? Of course I know who you are, Mr. Legard.” People like Legard were predictable. First the indignation, then the threats, then the propositioning. “And just to save time, yes, I know what a mistake this is, invading your home; and yes, I know what you’ll do to me if you catch me; and, no, I don’t want any money to let you go. Did I miss anything?”

“You’re a dead man.”

“We’ve already been through that,” Fisher whispered. “Time to move on.”

“You can go fu—”

Fisher jammed the barrel of the pistol against the sole of Legard’s foot. “Be nice, or you’ll be fondling your foil from a wheelchair. Understood?”

“Yes, I understand.”

“Okay, here’s how it’s going to work: I’m going to ask you some questions. I’m a decent judge of character. Now, just because I’m also a nice guy, I’m going to give you two free lies. After that, I’m going to start hurting you. Are you ready?”

“Yeah…” Legard grumbled, clearly not yet a believer.

“Tell me about a woman named Carmen Hayes.”

“Who?”

“Brunette, late thirties, scientific type. Not the typical blond-haired runaway you sell. She was snatched off the streets of Montreal four months ago.”

Legard chewed his lower lip as though giving the question careful thought. “Sorry. Don’t know her.”

“That’s one lie. Okay, we’ll come back to her later. The man you were talking about with Bruno — your ill- mannered guest. Who is he, and where’s he going?”

Legard shook his head. “There’s no one here. I have no guests.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

“Turn your head to the side.”

“What?”

“Turn your head to the side. Now.” Legard did so. Fisher said, “Lift your chin a little…”

Legard did so. Fisher fired a shot into the training dummy just below Legard’s chin. Legard recoiled, nearly tipping on his side. Fisher propped him upright.

Legard blurted, “You’re crazy, Jesus Christ, you’re crazy.”

“It’s a distinct possibility,” Fisher replied. “I’m going to ask you one more time, and then I won’t ask again until you’re bleeding and crippled. So answer carefully. Tell me about Carmen Hayes and your mystery guest at Baie Comeau.”

Legard started talking.

* * *

Fisher’s pistol had in fact four dart settings: one through three, and then level four, which was yet another bit of magic from the shadowed halls and devious minds at DARPA. Fisher had read the scientific name for the dart’s contents once and its tongue-torturing complexity made him glad they’d given it a code name, Spigot, which, he assumed was meant to describe what the chemical did to a person’s short-term memory — namely, it opened a notional valve on his or her brain and let twenty to thirty minutes of short-term memory leak out.

There are two kinds of memory, short-term and long-term; the former stored by the frontal and parietal lobes, the latter stored weblike throughout different portions of the brain. The bridge between the two, the part of the brain that converts short-term memory into long-term memory, is governed by the hippocampus, which is where Spigot worked its magic. By partially dissolving the chemical glue that holds the hippocampus bridge together, Spigot created a mild version of retrograde amnesia that turned the target’s previous thirty minutes of memory into dreamlike recollections that faded within minutes of regaining consciousness.

So, despite his first instinct, the truth was, Fisher had had no intention of killing Legard. As much as the man deserved to be gone from the planet — and Fisher was giving serious thought to paying him another visit after all this was over — his death would stir up a hornet’s nest of trouble, especially if he was in contact with whoever he’d delivered Carmen Hayes to and to whoever was about to deliver his latest prisoner, the man Legard had identified as Calvin Stewart.

If Fisher was going to follow the trail of clues that appeared to have gotten Peter killed, he needed this pipeline to remain open. Of course, Fisher was painfully aware that by maintaining the pipeline’s integrity, he was allowing Legard to send who knew how many kidnapped girls to their overseas buyers. Another time, Fisher thought, another late-night visit.

In quick order, he hit Legard with a level three dart and a level four, then unbound him. He did the same to Bruno, then returned the training dummy to its stand and turned the lights back on. While both men would awake confused, neither would remember anything of the last half hour. Legard was fencing; Bruno watching. And then… nothing until they awoke. And if Fisher did his job right, leaving no trace of his presence, and nothing was found missing or out of place following the inevitable security sweep Legard would order, their minds would find a way to write off the experience.

In the end, Fisher felt certain Legard had told him the whole truth. He had in fact kidnapped Carmen Hayes, but the request had come to him anonymously through a series of cutouts, one of whom he trusted. The price had been right — US$500,000—so Legard had taken the job. Calvin Stewart’s kidnapping had been the same story: kidnapped off the street after being lured to Montreal by a bogus job offer. Legard knew little about either Hayes or Stewart, except that they were both “science types of some kind,” nor did he know where they were ultimately bound. Legard’s latest victim, Stewart, was to be initially delivered to the same place he’d sent Carmen Hayes: a waterfront warehouse in Halifax, Nova Scotia. A group of masked men had met Legard’s own crew and taken custody of Carmen — as they would, Fisher assumed, take custody of Stewart.

But why? Who was collecting scientists, and why? And what did either of them have to do with Peter’s death? Too many questions, Fisher thought, and not enough answers. Perhaps his next stop would remedy that.

Fisher keyed his SVT and said, “Grim, I’ve got a name for you: Calvin Stewart. Somewhere I think you’ll find a missing persons report on him. I need everything you can dig up.”

“Got it. Anything else?”