This Shared Dream (61 page)

The door burst open, hitting Bip from behind. “Police!”

Bip staggered and fell. The other man grabbed his gun from the arm of the chair, half-rising.

The policeman fired, and the man with the gun slammed back into the couch, screaming, “You killed me, man, you killed me! Where’s your warrant? Man’s got a right to defend! I’m gonna sue!”

Whens ran out the open door and down the narrow stairs. As he rushed out the door onto the sidewalk, Zoe leaped from the car and hugged him. “I told them you were here! I could hear you! I showed them the way.” A police officer grabbed her and hauled her back inside.

His mother leaped from the car, grabbed him, and smothered him in kisses. He was very glad to see her. His mother was crying. “Don’t you ever, ever, do that again!”

About ten children of various ages stood in the street around the sedan, shouting, “
Aqui!
Whens!” into classbooks. A thin, harassed-looking woman hurried around the corner and stopped. She looked relieved. She put her hands on her hips and shouted, “You kids get back to the center right now!”

A tall black man in beautiful robes stood watching, bemused, as an ambulance pulled up behind them. Some EMTs dashed into the building.

A second ambulance pulled up. Elmore dashed from it, and grabbed Whens, hugging him until Whens thought his back would break. “Ow,” he said, surprised. He had never seen his father cry before.

Brian followed Elmore from the ambulance, then turned and helped a woman climb out. Whens saw her over his father’s shoulder.

“Grandma?”

Wilhelm

WILHELM’S GAME

July 23

A
T ABOUT FIVE
that afternoon, Wilhelm Anderson staggered into the Metro police station on L Street. From one hand dangled a metal tray with a map of the world on it—green continents, blue oceans, a simple child’s map. Parts of the oceans and all the land were almost invisible, peppered with tiny red dots.

Tears seeped down his face, steady as springwater from the ground. Anguish reverberated in his voice as he stepped up to one of the glass reception windows. “I want to turn myself in.”

The people in the tiny waiting room looked up with interest. The guard next to the window became alert. The clerk asked, “Name?” Then he took a second look. “Don’t move.”

Wilhelm didn’t move.

The clerk pushed a button. “I’ve got Anderson, the guy we’ve got an APB out on, standing in front of me. Wants to turn himself in.”

*   *   *

A few hours later, Wilhelm was in an interview room with his lawyer, Detective Kandell, and another detective, Dabelle Fleck. On the table was the metal tray. Wilhelm had been processed, and looked weary. His reddened eyes had dark circles beneath them; his face seemed thinner, more deeply furrowed, and his hair was noticeably whiter than his Bank ID photo, renewed only a week ago. He had already signed his arson confession, his lawyer arguing with him every step of the way, in the end shaking his head and assuring Wilhelm that he could get it thrown out.

Daniel was asking about the board. Wilhelm’s lawyer slouched back in his chair, looking resigned.

“Like I said, this woman behind my condo put cuffs on me and made me drink HD-50. The Hadntz Device.”

The lawyer had a bit of life left in him. But not much; he didn’t even change his posture as he said, “I would like to again state for the record that my client is undoubtedly mentally deranged—obviously, he was drugged.”

“He’s no stranger to drugging others, and without their knowledge,” replied Kandell. “Mr. Anderson, did you or did you not slip Rohypnol, the ‘date-rape’ drug, into the drink of Jill Dance, one of your colleagues, at a World Bank reception at the Four Seasons Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue on July nineteenth, after which she collapsed in view of at least a hundred witnesses?”

“Yes, I did,” said Wilhelm. His lawyer sighed.

“Why?”

“So I could drive her home and get into her house.”

“What for?”

“To find this.” Wilhelm nodded at the board. His weariness was palpable, a thousandfold worse than that of his lawyer.

“Not to sexually accost her?”

“I hoped that she might agree to have sex with me. I even hoped she might marry me. But that was not why I wanted to get into her house.”

“Why did you want this metal tray?”

“It’s the Hadntz Device. One incarnation of it.”

“Look,” said the lawyer. “I demand that a psychiatrist be present and that my client be immediately committed.”

“I don’t need a psychiatrist,” said Wilhelm. “I’m perfectly sane. But if you want one, I don’t object.”

The lawyer opened his Q, typed something, and closed it.

Daniel asked, “What is the Hadntz Device?”

“It is a tool for promoting the end of war throughout the world.”

“Why did you want it?”

“I misunderstood its capacity, its purpose. I thought it would give me power.”

“Power to do what?”

Tears gathered in Wilhelm’s eyes once again. “To impose a Nazi regime on the world. To bring back Hitler’s vision and make it a reality, this time.”

“And what happened instead?”

“Try it yourself and see.”

“Just describe what happened.”

Wilhelm stood and paced the room. “Visions of horror filled my brain. It was as if I were a Jewish businessman in Treblinka, watching smoke rise from the crematorium, which I had been forced to fill with dead Jews. I was a child, hiding in terror in an attic. I was a Prussian officer, about to be hanged for treason. I was Goebbels, I was … but that’s not all! Touch it! See for yourselves! I was an American soldier on a death march in the Philippines. I was a Chinese woman a thousand years ago, watching as raiders raped my mother and sisters. I was—”

He seized the board and flung it against the wall. “I was a billion horrors, one after the other, and they all ran through me like a fire, and I couldn’t stop seeing them, couldn’t stop touching the goddamned board, sitting on a bench in Dupont Circle, even though that woman cut the cuffs and walked away hours ago. I—”

He looked up, suddenly calm, his eyes quite clear. “I have been changed. This Device, which I thought was about power, is actually quite the opposite.” He sat down, put his elbows on the table, and clasped his hands. “It’s about empowerment, but for everyone. It’s about equality, freedom, education; it’s about the evolution of the human mind; it is about leaving behind our legacy, our habit, of war.” He looked at them for a moment, his eyes lucid, his face relaxed, a bit of his handsomeness reappearing as a thatch of hair fell across his forehead. “It’s much simpler for me now. My mind was imprinted with the rightness of my task—my old task, to defend the Thousand Year Reich, when I was a child, in Germany, when I saw Hitler at my brother’s swearing-in as a Hitler Youth. He really did seem to me the epitome of fatherly love, of the essential goodness of his bizarre strange fantasy of German dominance. Do you know that because of his love of animals, it became illegal, or at least frowned upon, to manufacture using leather? And yet—” He shook his head. “Incarcerate me, please. I deserve punishment for the crimes I’ve committed. I need much more time to heal. Perhaps ages. I only ask that I be allowed a writing device—pen and paper, if necessary—and an outlet for my thoughts. I believe, now, that I can help. I may not be able to help much. I realize, now, that I’m only one man, capable of evil and of good. It’s … very complex. I’m just at the beginning.”

At a knock on the door, Kandell said, “Come in.”

“This is Dr. Bernstein.”

“Hello,” she said. “I’m the on-call psychiatrist.” She handed all of them a card.

The lawyer rose and stretched. “I foresee a long and complicated case.” He did not look unhappy at the prospect.

A Marvelous Evening

July 23

T
HE EMTS PULLED
Sam’s stretcher from the back of the ambulance, put down the legs, and rolled him up the walk. He was beaming; Zoe could almost see light coming out of him. Bette, walking alongside, squeezed his hand.

The doctor at GW had been reluctant to release him, but Elmore quickly filled out a power of attorney for Brian. Sam was released to his son. At Elmore’s frantic, unyielding insistence the ambulance detoured to the scene of the kidnapper’s arrest.

When Bette climbed into the back of the ambulance, his confusion cleared, somewhat. His smile suffused his entire face. “I’ve been looking all over for you!”

“And I’ve been looking all over for
you
.” She kissed him tenderly, and they headed home.

He had a broken rib, which had been taped, and the brain swelling was going down. The doctor emphasized round-the-clock observation, and told them that he wanted to see Sam back in two days even if everything seemed fine. His assailant had slashed him with a knife, which cut his forearm deeply. Then the man had apparently knocked him out with a punch and grabbed Whens. The right side of Sam’s face looked like a bad watercolor, purple and reddish, yellowing around the edges.

Jill and Megan were strongly for taking him back to the hospital, but, as he was shifted from the stretcher to the bed in the living room, he heard them, and was able to reply, in a clear and forceful voice, “I want to be home. I’m fine.”

Bette nodded at them. “We’ll leave him here, for now. I’ll stay with him.”

“Oh, we’ll
all
stay with him!” Jill leaned over and hugged her father. He hugged her back with one surprisingly strong arm.

Daniel called soon thereafter, saying that Wilhelm had turned himself in. “Apparently,” he said, “he had an encounter with a woman who administered HD-50, then gave him a Game Board and left him in Dupont Circle. He says he spent most of the day reexperiencing World War Two—from the point of view of other people.”

“What a relief! I was imagining him still roaming around, filled with evil intent. Regarding the woman, I can only think of two possibilities.”

“Well, don’t mention them to me. His lawyer is here, and he looks hungry. I will be over later this evening. Is Whens okay?”

Jill looked over at Whens, asleep on a couch. “He’s pretty worn out. Not hurt physically. We’ll have to wait and see. Thank you so much, Daniel.”

“Just doin’ my job, ma’am.”

Jill hung up and looked at her mother. “Did you, by any chance, meet a man named Wilhelm today?”

She grinned. “I am a teacher, remember? I showed him some of the latest advances in education.”

That evening, she and Sam filled their children in on how those advances had happened, and what they had been doing since they disappeared.

Kind of, anyway.

*   *   *

Before he went to bed, Brian asked, “Dad, do you play the cornet?”

Sam smiled. “No. But Wink does.”

The Reading

July 31

J
ILL WAS SETTING UP
folding chairs in the bookstore for Koslov’s reading of Rosa’s poems.

The trees in front of her store, between the sidewalk and the curb, rustled in the wind. Their leaves turned up silver. The darkening sky over Rosslyn presaged a storm, which, depending on when it happened, might be in time to cool off the store. Her patrons knew of her hatred of air-conditioning, and apparently didn’t mind sweltering a bit for the privilege of perusing her latest choices. She had big ceiling fans, and if she kept the back door open, there was a nice breeze. She set a large copper umbrella holder next to the front door with one umbrella in it to suggest its use.

She pushed back some wheeled shelves to make more room, and asked Zane to open the first bottles of wine.

She’d gathered that Wink had probably been the mysterious man who had visited her hospital room. She and her father had both assumed he had died during the JFK assassination attempt, so Sam was infused with hope, thinking he was the man who accompanied Brian at the Gypsy Cat. They hadn’t heard from him, though.

Zoe, Brian, Abbie, and Cindy arrived, and pitched in to help. Zoe had brought her violin. After reading Rosa’s poems, and talking to Lev, she had written some music to back up the poems. She had been practicing, with Arabelle’s help, in the ballroom. Brian’s family was all moved in now, and it was working out very nicely. Sam had recovered well, and was enlarging his memoirs for Brian. Megan was gathering support for a start-up company that would produce HD-50 and preparing to submit it to the FDA, which would be a long process. When it cleared the FDA, she planned to sell it at just above cost, and was arranging to distribute it for free in many places.

The pod school in the woods clearing had grown quite unnoticed by any of the adults until lately, and was now mature, a neighborhood attraction for kids. Jill and Cindy visited it daily, just to bask in the wonder of it, to explore new additions, and to note any improvements they thought necessary. Q-Schools were appearing all over the world, to much enthusiasm, and in increasing number.

A week ago, Jill had invited Clarissa and, with Lev’s help, the other people who had been a part of the clandestine circle, and many of their friends, to an open house night at the school. There, she dosed their drinks liberally with HD -50, left them to explore some interesting-looking metal boards, and did not feel one whit bad about it. There were more and more stories in the
Post
about schools opening in parts of the world where women and girls had been denied an education, or where children had been denied a full education, and of officials welcoming them with major policy changes. Jill strongly suspected an underground dissemination of HD-50.

She looked around. Everything was ready.

Lev arrived, with a fresh haircut, exuding the smell of Wolf cigarettes. He stood at the lectern going over his marked poems while greeting students, colleagues, and members of the poetry-reading public. Soon, there was only standing room. Jill sent Zane to the bar next door to try and borrow some chairs.

Zoe leaned over her violin case and removed her violin and bow, beginning her preparations as people wandered around with glasses of wine, chatting. Jill was surprised to see Zoe set up a music stand; she was sure she had the piece memorized. Arabelle, Daniel, Gerald, and Ron appeared; Arabelle sat next to Zoe while Daniel gave Jill a quick kiss and asked what needed to be done next.