“God damn it,” said Susan. “We should put a lid on contact with the outside world.”
But Ranjip shook his head. “There’s been a terrorist attack here in the city, Agent Dawson. People need to keep in touch. They need it on a human level; they need to know their loved ones, wherever they are, are well—and to let them know that they themselves are safe.”
Susan said nothing; there was no rule book, no protocol, for a situation like this.
“And, anyway,” continued Singh, “besides the hospital’s phone system, there are hundreds of cell phones here. Patients have them, and staff, too. And, of course, hundreds of laptops and iPads and the like, not to mention all the hospital’s computers. By the time you could confiscate them all, even if you could find legal grounds to do so, the whole world will know about the memory linkages. And if a bomb hits here—the terrorists must know where the president is, after all, and that he’s still alive—you’ll want people to have as many ways to communicate as possible, in hopes that some will function after the EMP.”
“You’re right,” Susan said. Just then, the door to Singh’s office opened and in came Kadeem Adams. Susan knew him at once, although—
Well, that was interesting. There was no doubt that this was indeed Kadeem; he easily matched Ranjip’s memories of him. But she was now looking at him with her own trained agent’s eyes, and seeing details Ranjip had never noted. For starters, Ranjip had had no idea how tall Kadeem was, but Susan immediately pegged him at six-one; agents learned to take the measure of a man even when he was seated. She also noted he was wearing a T-shirt advertising Brickers, a rap group that Ranjip had apparently never heard of; that he had creased earlobes; and that he was a nail-biter.
A memory—her own—of one of her favorite writers flashed through her head: You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive. But that was the other war; she knew, because Ranjip knew it, that Kadeem had actually been in Iraq.
“Kadeem Adams,” said Singh, “this is Agent Susan Dawson. As you know, she’s with the Secret Service.”
Kadeem shook his head. “All this shit that’s goin’ down. I can see it from your point of view—the president bleeding on the steps, you and him in the limo, you looking down on him on the operating table. Been one hell of a day.”
“Yes,” said Susan.
“And—well, damn, girl! You had a hell of night last night, too, didn’t you, Agent Dawson?” Susan felt herself blushing. Kadeem went on. “Although, given how well I now know you, maybe we should be on a first-name basis, don’t you think…Sue?”
Ranjip picked up a lined notepad. “I think we need to start writing this down. Agent Dawson is reading my memories. Kadeem, you’re reading Agent Dawson’s. And…” He paused.
“And?” said Kadeem.
Ranjip looked at Susan, asking permission with his eyes.
Susan thought about it, then said, “I don’t think I’m actually in a position to keep secrets from Kadeem.”
And as soon as she said it, Kadeem’s eyes went wide. “And—God!—the president is reading my memories.”
Susan knew there was no point denying it.
Kadeem looked at Ranjip. “I knew somebody was, from the questions you asked, guru, but…” He shook his head. “No shit! The president!” He smiled slightly. “Guess he knows now I didn’t vote for him.” He then looked at Ranjip. “What about you, guru? Who are you reading?”
“A doctor here named Lucius Jono,” said Ranjip—and he took a moment to jot this fact on the chart he was making.
“And he’s reading a real-estate agent named Nikki Van Hausen,” said Susan. She gestured for the pad and wrote the name down. “And Nikki’s reading Eric Redekop, who was the lead surgeon for the president. And Redekop is reading a nurse, Janis Falconi.” She wrote these names down, too. “The chain just keeps getting longer and longer—which raises the question of exactly how many people are affected. Agent Michaelis wasn’t—he was too far away from your equipment, it seems. But how many were?”
“Good question,” Singh said. He consulted a PC on a worktable. “Huh,” he said, and then, “Hmmm.”
“Yes?” said Susan.
Ranjip moved to his apparatus, a padded chair and a geodesic sphere two feet in diameter. “Well,” he said, “this equipment can edit memories, but the effective field is normally constrained to the interior of this sphere. According to the diagnostics, what happened, it seems—and this certainly was unanticipated—was that during the electromagnetic pulse, the field expanded while maintaining its spherical shape. It got to be about thirty-two feet in diameter, so presumably everyone in that sphere was affected.”
“That’s a radius of sixteen feet,” Susan said. “Enough to reach up to the fourth floor and down to the second, no?”
“Exactly,” said Singh.
Susan considered. “The president was there.” She pointed down and to her left. “And I was right next door in the observation gallery.” She pointed directly to her left. She turned to Singh. “Are you sure the field didn’t get any bigger than that? And you’re sure no one outside that radius could have been affected?”
“We’re not sure of much,” Singh replied. “But the field size is directly proportional to the power used to generate it, and the equipment recorded the magnitude of the surge in its syslog file. Assuming we’re right, and it’s my equipment that caused all this, then, yes, I’d say the effect was limited to people in that bubble.”
“I can’t keep the hundreds of people in this hospital locked up indefinitely,” said Susan.
“Given the size of the bubble, it shouldn’t be more than one or two dozen who were affected,” replied Singh. “Anyone who was on the lobby level or below, or on five or above, probably isn’t affected. And anyone on two, three, or four who was more than a couple of rooms away from here probably wasn’t, either.”
“Assuming nobody has moved to a different floor,” said Susan.
“Ah, right,” replied Ranjip.
“Still, it does narrow the list of suspects,” Susan said.
“Suspects for what?” Kadeem asked. But then he looked at Susan and nodded. “Ah. For who’s reading the president’s memories. Guess you gotta find that dude soon, huh, Sue?”
Chapter 14
Darryl Hudkins and Mark Griffin sat in the security office at Luther Terry Memorial Hospital, along with Deanna Axen, the hospital’s director of security. They were in front of a bank of twelve flatscreen monitors, arranged in three rows of four. Eleven of the monitors were doing what they normally did: cycling through the endless array of security cameras secreted inside the hospital and on its grounds, including the plaza connecting to the Foggy Bottom metro station on the south side of the triangular building. But the twelfth—the lower-right one—was showing footage from just before and just after the lights went out. Darryl and Dr. Griffin were making a list of who was within the critical radius of Singh’s machine at the key moment, starting with those in the operating room. It was almost impossible for Darryl to distinguish the members of the surgical team; nothing but their eyes were visible. Griffin, who knew them all to one degree or another, fared better, and Darryl wrote down the names:
President Seth Jerrison
Lead surgeon Dr. Eric Redekop
Surgeon Dr. Lucius Jono
Cardiac specialist Dr. David January
Anesthesiologist Dr. Christine Lee
Surgical nurse Ann January
Secret Service agent Darryl Hudkins