The Genius Plague

CHAPTER 15

I nearly missed my flight. My father was back. He was awake and alert and knew who I was and remembered everything he was supposed to know. He charmed the nurses with jokes and good humor and smiled at my mom so much I thought they would both burst from pleasure. It was as if the Alzheimer’s had never happened.

“So you’re working for the agency?” he said.

My chest felt warm with pride. “I’m cracking indecipherables,” I said.

“Any good at it?”

“I’m doing okay so far. I wish I could tell you about the one code I solved…”

“What department are you with?”

“It’s kind of a side group, out of the main organizational structure. I don’t know where Melody gets the funding, but—”

“Melody? Don’t tell me you’re working with Melody Muniz.”

“Yeah,” I said. “You remember her? She said she only knew you by reputation. As a talented colleague.”

He pursed his lips and shot Mom a furtive glance. “It was a bit more than that.”

“She’s great,” I said. “Really sharp, and she cuts through bureaucratic red tape like it’s soft butter.”

“Is she impressed with you?”

I gave an embarrassed smile. “I think. She told the director I was a rising star.”

“Watch it.” Dad shook his head. “You don’t want to be calling attention to yourself. Do good work, but keep your head down. If the brass starts to learn your name, you’re in trouble. They’ll never give you a moment’s peace.”

I smiled wryly. “It may be too late for that. I’m flying to Brazil with the director this morning at his personal request.” I listened to what I had just said and jumped up in panic. It was eight o’clock. The airport wasn’t far, but I was going to have a tough time getting through security before the plane left if I didn’t get moving.

I said goodbye and headed for the door just as Paul was walking in. His eyes were bloodshot and his clothes and hair disheveled, as if he’d been sleeping in his car. He stopped cold, staring over my shoulder at Dad, his mouth literally hanging open. I pushed past him. “You still shouldn’t have done it,” I said. I walked down the hall without another word. After a glance at my watch, I broke into a run.

I didn’t want to leave my mom’s car in airport parking, so I took a cab from the hospital. By the time it dropped me off at the gate, it was almost eight forty-five. The plane was scheduled to start boarding at nine and take off at nine thirty. I impatiently shuffled my way through the line to check my suitcase. The desk employee glanced at my boarding pass and shook his head. “You’d better hurry,” he said.

I pelted up the stairs and down the hallway to security, where I waited again, checking my watch every thirty seconds. I practically threw my shoes through the bag scanner and stepped through the metal detector before the official was ready, causing him to shoo me back and lecture me about waiting my turn.

“My flight is leaving!” I said.

He cocked his head at me. “Baltimore/Washington International recommends you arrive at the airport at least ninety minutes before departure.”

“Please?” I said.

He beckoned me through. On the other side, I grabbed my shoes and took off down the hall without bothering to put them on. The gate was, of course, at the far end. By the time I got there, I was gasping for breath and my watch said 9:27. A woman in a blue uniform shirt was just closing the door.

“Wait!” I called.

She stopped and looked at me. “Delta to Brasília?” she asked.

I nodded, out of breath, and waved my boarding pass at her. She shook her head. “You almost missed us,” she said. “Head down and take your seat.”

I rushed down the deserted ramp and climbed into the plane. Kilpatrick was seated in first class, looking comfortable in his uniform, a laptop on the table in front of him. “Thought you were going to stand me up,” he said. He glanced at the shoes still clutched in my hand, but didn’t say anything. I made my way back to coach and collapsed into my seat.

The flight was twelve hours long, with one stop in Atlanta. Long before we arrived, I was stiff and sore and exhausted. In my haste to pack, I hadn’t brought any books along, and the thriller I bought from a bookstand in Atlanta didn’t hold my interest. The in-flight movies were ones I’d seen before, and I hadn’t liked them all that much the first time around. It was hard to concentrate on anything for very long.

I didn’t want to be on this plane. It felt like such a detour. My life was back in Maryland, where I was just starting to figure out how to do my job, and where my father could fully remember who and where he was for the first time in years. Now, here I was, flying to my childhood home on the front line of some intelligence game that I didn’t begin to understand. It was all happening too fast.

I didn’t even know what to think about my dad’s recovery. On the one hand, I was ecstatic. It was miraculous, like bringing someone back from the dead. The dad I knew had been gone, and now he was back. I knew it wouldn’t all be roses and rainbows, of course. He would have to come to terms with the years he had lost, grow accustomed to the person he could be now. But the thinking, reasoning, remembering father I had known was there to interact with me again.

On the other hand, I was still furious with Paul for doing it behind my back. Not only could it have gone terribly wrong, but it might still end in disaster. There was no telling how long the recovery would last, or what would happen if it wore off. What would the long-term effects be? Would Paul have to continue to give him injections? Would the new injections continue to work as well as the first? I thought again of “Flowers for Algernon.” Had Paul given my father a cure, or just a temporary reprieve? Would Dad thank him if the drug meant experiencing a second slow decline into dementia?

It was the not-telling part that aggravated me the most. Paul was supposed to be a scientist. There were review boards and publications and animal trials and federal regulations for a reason. You didn’t just try a new drug on a human being to see what it would do. The fact that the human was our father and that it seemed to turn out okay didn’t make it right.

It was also baffling, the more I thought about it. Paul was the scientist in our family because he was the one who didn’t take any risks. He had called me the cautious one, but it wasn’t true. I was the one who sneaked into the hospital through the loading docks by lying to the security guard; he was the one who waited until eight o’clock like the rules said he should. I was the younger brother, the troublemaker, the kind of person who got arrested on his first day on the job for stealing his instructor’s badge ID. Paul always played it by the book. So why was he acting like a cowboy now?

I found myself wishing that Melody or Shaunessy was on the plane with me, someone to whom I could talk and explain my concerns. I had never been very good at thinking through things silently, at least where emotional issues were concerned. I could work out math problems in my head no problem, but when it came to making a decision or coming to terms with a relationship crisis, I just chewed on the same thoughts over and over without coming to any conclusions. I couldn’t tell what I really thought until I explained it aloud to someone and heard what I said.

The northern part of the South American continent was nothing but endless green jungle. Hours and hours of it, passing under the plane with only the occasional serpentine river to cut the monotony. We passed over Suriname first, and then into Brazil. There was no way to communicate the vastness of the Amazon rainforest until you tried to fly across it. It was like a speckled green carpet, dark green with swirls of lime. Sometimes, when no rivers were visible, my mind transformed the flat landscape into water, interpreting the patterns of treetops as ripples in a vast sea.

The forest finally gave way to a patchwork of cultivated fields with a gradually thickening network of roads. Buildings sprouted up here and there, and then clusters of buildings in small towns. The elevation rose to a vast, dry plain dotted with villages. By this time, the sun was setting on the right side of the plane, casting long shadows across the landscape.

Suddenly, there was Brasília, lit up like a carnival in the middle of a desert, the edges of the city stretching out like the wings of a bird. It was a ridiculous location for a capital city, hundreds of miles from the population centers on the coast, a place with no history and no significance. But that was part of why it had been built, planned, and constructed from nothing in the late 1950s, as a way to rewrite history and start from scratch. A new city for a new Brazil.

The plane landed with a screech of tires and a rush of air. When I finally made my way down the aisle and out into the terminal, Kilpatrick was waiting for me, flanked by his security detail. He looked refreshed and energetic, as if he had taken a long nap and enjoyed a good meal. His uniform wasn’t even wrinkled.

He seemed surprised when I told him I had a suitcase to retrieve from baggage claim. When he saw the size of it, he raised an eyebrow but made no comment. He carried only a slim carry-on bag. “I didn’t know what I would need, so I packed everything,” I said, sounding whiny even to myself. He watched me wrestle it down from the conveyor belt, but when he turned aside, I saw him smirk.

We caught a taxi to our hotel. I tried to ask him for more details on what I was meant to do here, what meetings there might be, or what information he hoped to get out of Celso. Kilpatrick shook his head. He pointed at the taxi driver with his eyes and placed a finger against his lips.

Under other circumstances, the secrecy might have been thrilling. I was, after all, in the field, doing spy stuff with the director of the NSA. Instead, it was just irritating. I was tired and stressed and worried about my father. I was starting to think it would have been better if I’d missed my flight, or else called Kilpatrick and cited my father’s hospitalization as a family emergency. Then I would be home, talking with my dad and making sure Paul didn’t do anything stupid, instead of sitting in a taxi next to a powerful man with no idea how to act or what was expected of me.