Shadow of Eden (6 page)

“Ambassador Gung,” an aide announced presently and handed the phone to Resnick.

Linda cleared her throat and put the handset to her ear. “Mr. Ambassador?”

A sleepy, heavily accented voice came over the line. “Yes, Madam Secretary. What can I do for you?”

“Can you tell me what the PLA’s intentions are with respect to the Falun Gong demonstration in Kowloon?”

“Nothing. I understand there is to be no interference.”

“Are you aware that several thousand troops have surrounded Kowloon Park and have brought in APCs?”

“I’m sorry, Madam Secretary, I do not know what you are talking about.” Gung’s voice sounded more alert.

Could he not know?
Resnick wondered. “Mr. Ambassador, I have satellite pictures in front of me of your troop mobilization. We see about three thousand armed PLA troops dispersed throughout Kowloon and Hong Kong, and currently amassing around Kowloon Park. I pray they are there to observe and not intervene. Most worrisome is that all independent broadcast media have been essentially shut down.”

She kept her voice level and controlled, a technique learned from years of high stakes negotiations, honed while she was ambassador to Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. “I am extremely concerned about this.”

“Linda, I am unaware of any of this, I assure you.”

“Turn on CNN.” Linda’s words were like ice. “I think you will find it interesting. Check with your government. And please express the extreme concern of the United States. We will look with tremendous disfavor at any action that harms peaceful demonstrators.”

Resnick listened to a short silence before Gung replied. “I will communicate that to my government. I’m sure I will call back to assure you that your concerns are unfounded.”

“I sincerely hope so.” Linda hung up the phone, her lips drawn into a thin line, considering.

“The President needs to see this.”

Chapter 9

S
teve sat on the side of a stretcher in his curtained-off Emergency Department cubicle, listening to the controlled bedlam of doctors and nurses managing the large volume of injured passengers. Many of the injured from his flight had descended upon George Washington University Hospital.

Several hours had passed since the 747 landed. Steve had stayed with Captain Palmer until they arrived at the hospital after which Palmer had been taken right back. Only later did they have room for Steve. Finally, an emergency room doctor had performed a quick evaluation in the hallway and later, after they had opened up a cubicle, a harried medical student had sutured his back. At least the lidocaine and some ibuprofen had eased the pain somewhat.

A huge, red-haired Celt stuck his head around Steve’s curtain. “Dr. James? I’m Dr. Martin Walker.” When Steve waved him in, he thrust out his beefy hand and they shook. Dr. Walker’s ruddy face, shrouded by a bushy red beard, wrinkled up in a friendly smile. The white coat did nothing to hide his massive size. Steve could easily imagine him swinging a mace or battering down castle walls. Outside the hospital, one would not mistake him for a physician.

“A pleasure to meet you. It’s Steve, by the way.”

“Okay, Steve. I’m Marty. I understand you were the man who had the presence of mind not to panic.” Steve had to smile at his comment. “And best of all, you’re a neurologist. Welcome to GW. I trust the service wasn’t too plebian?”

“Not bad if you like being a patient.”

“Ouch. As bad as that?” Walker grinned, then turned serious. “Some case you drug in, Steve. I’ve sent the captain off to MRI on the way to his room. What do you think’s up?”

Steve thought a minute before answering. “He’s got moments of altered awareness with directed violence during what he calls flashbacks, complaints of severe headaches, and myoclonic twitches that are intermittent. They seemed to be connected to his hallucinations.”

Marty nodded as Steve continued.

“Except for the myoclonus, I’d bet on a pretty normal exam. I spoke with him a little afterwards and he seemed reasonably intact, but I felt like he had lost his edge.”

Marty nodded again. “Quite on the mark. I found the same thing, including some cognitive impairment, possibly from his concussion. We’ll see about that. Plus,” Marty raised a finger, “he’s anosmic.”

That surprised Steve. “Why did you test that?”

“I’d like to say it was me being my compulsive self, but the fact of the matter is, he complained of a loss of interest in food; it didn’t taste right. So I checked and sure enough, he couldn’t smell.”

“No kidding. Of course, you know all the reasons.”

“And I’ll eliminate most of them on the MRI. He’ll get thin cuts through the nose.”

“Anything else?”

“That’s about it. Denies any meds and his drug and alcohol screen were negative. The routine lab was fine, also.”

“Hmm.” Steve chewed his lip. “Confirms my first axiom of neurological diagnosis: ‘Nothing’s ever easy’.”

Marty chuckled. “Are you through here? You weren’t hurt too badly?”

Steve thought a moment. The medicine had done its job. “Nah. I just need my final paperwork and then I’m through. I’d like to look at Captain Palmer’s scan.”

“Right. I’ll go dictate and then we’ll go see the films.” He shoved the curtains aside and walked out. Just outside the curtain stood a man in a gray suit, flanked by two blue-suited aides, apparently waiting to speak with Steve. His black eyebrows contrasted greatly with his silver hair, an appearance made more striking by his exceptionally pale face. Steve recognized him as the passenger he had seen from the cockpit during the dive and with whom he later had nearly bumped heads.

“Jacob Castell, Secretary, HHS,” the man introduced himself and extended his hand.

“Steve James.” He took Castell’s proffered hand.

“Good to meet you, Dr. James,” Castell nodded. “I saw what you did in the airplane cockpit. You did a heroic job rescuing us from certain death.”

Steve shrugged. “Just lucky, sir.”

“No, Dr. James, more than luck. I was there. You acted when you had to. A moment’s hesitation and neither of us would be standing here talking.”

Steve’s mind flashed back to the cockpit and its now jumbled montage of sounds and lights. “Well, you’re welcome. You might say I had a dog in that hunt as well.”

Castell smiled. “So, I just wanted to thank you in person since we didn’t have time to meet properly before.” He chuckled. “You’re a hero, Dr. James. Have you dealt much with the media?”

“A bit. A few interviews here and there.”

Castell leaned forward and lowered his voice. “Some advice. They love you today, hate you tomorrow. Don’t let the adoration you’re about to receive go to your head. Believe me. Keep them at arm’s length.”

“Good advice. Thanks.” Steve liked his privacy and did not care much for that kind of attention, but he recognized the wisdom in Castell’s words. There was liability in fame.

Chapter 10

Phoenix, Arizona

E
dith Rosenwell sighed as she walked into her kitchen from the dark carport, carrying a handful of plastic grocery bags. She had stopped on the way home at an all night Safeway, and after a double shift at work, was exhausted. She was looking forward to a quick shower and crawling into bed.

As she set the bags down on the tile countertop, she heard a loud scream from down the hall.
Shirley!

Edith ran down the hall and into Shirley’s bedroom. A bedside light cast pale yellow daggers onto her twenty-four year old daughter, cowering in a corner.

“Help!” Shirley shrieked, clutching her cotton blanket to her chest. “They’re coming at me!” Her arms and face twitched in that strange way again, her eyes wild and frantic.

“Honey, it’s okay. Stop yelling now.” Edith knelt and put her arms around her daughter. “It’s okay. It’s just another dream.”

“You’re scaring me!” Wild-eyed, Shirley pulled the blanket over her head and kicked at her mother. “Get out! Get out!”

Edith pulled back from her daughter’s thrashing. Why had the childhood nightmares returned with such an evil vengeance? This was by far the worst episode, and those twitches! They had never been this bad.

As a little girl, Shirley had often crawled, trembling with fright, into her mother’s bed, fearful of the monsters that came at her in her dreams. These night terrors, as the doctors called them, had persisted until Shirley was twelve years old, when finally they faded into a bad memory. Edith had attributed their slow disappearance to the lack of a reassuring masculine presence in the house. Shirley’s father had died before her first birthday.

This nightmare— No! This was far worse than a nightmare. It was an evil that possessed her. These things, these awful, malevolent things had steadily destroyed her personality and devastated her life.

Shirley’s jerking gradually diminished and then stopped. Edith gently pulled the blanket down. Shirley looked up, her eyes searching Edith’s face. Recognition slowly crossed her features. “Mother?”

As Edith put her arms tightly around her daughter, she decided, gripped now by guilt that she had waited too long. She had abided by Shirley’s fearful avoidance long enough. It was time.

Edith wrapped the blanket securely around Shirley and tenderly tucked it in around her neck. “I’ll be right back, Honey.” She ran into her small kitchen and dialed the telephone.

“Nine-one-one emergency.”

“My daughter is very ill.” Edith choked up. It was several moments before she could speak again. “Please send an ambulance.”

She hung up and went back to her daughter’s room to wait for the paramedics. Shirley sobbed quietly, hugging herself as she rocked back and forth. She let her mother sit next to her and after a little coaxing, she laid her head in her mother’s lap.

Edith wept, gripped by the helpless frustration of a parent with a sick child. What was happening? As she tenderly stroked Shirley’s wet face, she prayed that the doctors would know how to make her daughter well.

Chapter 11

“W
hat in the hell is that?” Steve’s finger touched the large MRI display screen.

Dr. Walker pulled up a rolling chair next to Steve and filled it with his considerable bulk. “I don’t know,” he said after a minute.

Steve and Dr. Walker stared at a pair of 30-inch computer screens, their faces bathed by the cool bluish light, and examined Captain Palmer’s brain images, arrayed like rows and columns of thinly sliced walnuts.

“It’s like a bulldozer, no, a pair, plowed right through his brain,” muttered Dr. Walker. He hunched closer to the screen and frowned at the pair of parallel white bands that cut through the brain images. “M.S.?”

“Can’t be,” Steve replied, pointing. “Look. It involves the gray matter, too.” He sat back as a strange déjà vu feeling came over him. He had seen a scan like this before . . . but where?

“Herpes encephalitis?” Marty speculated, interrupting Steve’s thoughts. “But it doesn’t really fit that either.”

Steve turned back to the scan and mentally reconstructed the series of two dimensional brain slices into a 3-D image. “It looks like it starts here.” He pointed with his finger. “See, the orbital-frontal area is brighter than the rest. From there, it tracks to the midbrain, then the temporal lobes, and to the cingulate gyrus, here.” He straightened up. Yes, this was a pattern he had seen before.