Strangers

“Yes?”

"The forbidden memories, the secrets buried behind this Azrael Block, are apparently so explosive, so frightening, so traumatic, that not even an expertly engineered barrier can contain them. Buried in this woman is a shocking memory of immense power, and it's straining to break out of its prison in her subconscious, into her conscious mind. These objects that trigger her blackoutsthe gloves, the sink drainare very likely elements of those repressed memories. When she fixates on one of these things, she's close to a breakthrough, trembling on the edge of remembrance. Then her program kicks in, and she blacks out."

Pablo's heart quickened with excitement. "Then, after all, it might be possible to use hypnotic regression to probe at this Azrael Block, widen the cracks already in it, without driving her into a coma. One would have to be extremely cautious, of course, but with-"

“You're not listening to me!” Alex said, bolting up again. He stood between their chairs, looming over Pablo, pointing one trembling finger at him. "This is incredibly dangerous. You've stumbled into something much too big for you to handle. If you help her to remember, you're going to make powerful enemies somewhere."

“She's a sweet girl, and her life is in ruins because of this.”

“You can't help her. You're too old, and you're just one man.”

"Listen, maybe you don't understand enough of the situation. I haven't told you her name or profession, but I'll tell you now that-"

“I don't want to know who she is!” Alex said, his eyes widening.

“She's a physician,” Pablo persisted. "Or almost. She's spent the past fourteen years training herself for medical practice, and now she's losing everything. It's tragic."

"Think about this, damn it: she's almost certain to discover that knowing the truth is even worse than not knowing. If the repressed memories are breaking through like this, then they must be so traumatic that they could destroy her psychologically."

“Maybe,” Pablo acknowledged. "But shouldn't she be the one to decide whether or not to keep digging for the truth?"

Alex was adamant. "If the memory itself doesn't destroy her, then she'll probably be killed by whoever implanted the block. I'm surprised they didn't kill her straightaway. If it is an intelligence agency behind this, ours or theirs, then you've got to remember that to them civilians are entirely expendable. She got a rare and amazing reprieve when they used brainwashing instead of a bullet. A bullet's quicker and cheaper. They won't give her a second reprieve. If they discover that the Azrael Block has crumbled, if they learn that she's uncovered the secret they've hidden from her, they'll blow her brains out."

“You can't be sure,” Pablo said. "Besides, she's a real gogetter, Alex, an achiever, a mover and shaker. So from her point of view, her current situation is almost as bad as having her brains blown out."

Making no effort to conceal his frustration with the old magician, Alex said, "You help her, and they'll blow your brains out as well. Doesn't that give you pause?"

“At eightyone,” Pablo said, "not much of interest happens. You can't afford to turn your back on that rare bit of excitement when it comes along. Vogue la galsreel must chance it."

“You're making a mistake.”

"Maybe I am, my friend. Maybe. But . . . then why do I feel so good?"

Chicago, Illinois.

Dr. Bennet Sonneford, who had operated on Winton Tolk yesterday subsequent to the shooting at the sandwich shop, ushered Father Wycazik into a spacious den, where the walls were covered with mounted fish: marlin, an immense albacore, bass, trout. More than thirty glass eyes stared sightlessly down upon the two men. A trophy case was filled with silver and gold cups, bowls, medallions. The doctor sat at a pine desk in the shadow of a foreverswimming, openmouthed marlin of startling proportions, and Stefan sat beside the desk in a comfortable chair.

Although the hospital had provided only Dr. Sonneford's office number, Father Wycazik had been able to track down the surgeon's home address with the aid of friends at the telephone company and police department. He had arrived at Sonneford's doorstep at seventhirty Christmas night, effusively apologetic about interrupting holiday celebrations.

Now, Stefan said, "Brendan works with me at St. Bernadette's, and I think very highly of him, so I don't want to see him in trouble."

Sonneford, who looked a bit like a fishpale, slightly protuberant eyes, a naturally puckered mouthsaid, “Trouble?” He opened a kit of small tools, choosing a miniature screwdriver, and turned his attention to a flycasting reel that lay on the blotter. “What trouble?”

“Interfering with officers in the performance of their duties.”

“Ridiculous.” Sonneford carefully removed tiny screws from the reel housing. "If he hadn't tended to Tolk, the man would be dead now. We gave him four and a half liters."

“Really? That isn't a mistake on the patient's chart.”

“No mistake.” Sonneford removed the metal case from the automatic reel, peered intently into its mechanical guts. "An adult has seventy milliliters of blood per kilogram of body weight. Tolk is a big manone hundred kilos. He'd normally contain seven liters. So when I first ordered blood in the ER, he'd lost over sixty percent of his own." He put down the screwdriver and picked up an equally small wrench. "And they gave him another liter in the ambulance before I saw him."

"You mean he'd actually lost over seventyfive percent of his blood by the time they got him out of that sandwich shop?

But . . . can a man lose so much blood and survive?"

“No,” Sonneford said quietly.

A pleasant shiver passed through Stefan. "And both bullets lodged in soft tissue but damaged no organs. Deflected by ribs, other bones?"

Sonneford was still squinting at the reel but had stopped tinkering with it. "If those .38s had hit bone, the impact would've resulted in chipping, splintering. I found nothing like that. On the other hand, if they were not deflected by bone, they should've passed through him, leaving massive exit wounds. But I found them lodged in muscle tissue."

Stefan stared at the surgeon's bent head. "Why do I have the feeling there's something more you want to tell me, but that it's something you're afraid to talk about?"

At last Sonneford glanced up. "And why do I get the feeling that you've not told the truth about your reasons for coming here, Father?"

“Touchd,” Stefan said.

Sonneford sighed and put the tools away in the kit. "All right. The entry wounds make it clear that one bullet hit Tolk in the chest, impacted with the lower portion of the sternum, which should've snapped off or fractured; splinters like shrapnel should've pierced organs, vital blood vessels. Apparently, none of that happened."

“Why do you say 'apparently'? Either it happened, or it didn't.”

"From the entry wound in the flesh, I know that bullet hit the sternum, Father, and I found it lodged harmlessly in tissue on the other side of the sternum; therefore . . . somehow ... it passed through that bone without damaging it. Impossible, of course. Yet I found just an entry wound over the sternum, the undamaged bone directly under the woundand then the bullet lodged inside behind the sternum, with no indication how it had gotten from one place to the other. Furthermore, the entry wound of the second slug was over the base of the fourth rib, right side, but that rib was undamaged as well. The bullet should have shattered it. ,

“Maybe you're wrong,” Stefan said, playing devil's advocate. "Maybe the bullet entered just slightly off the rib, between ribs."

“No.” Sonneford raised his head but did not look at Stefan. The physician's uneasiness still seemed peculiar and was not explained by what he had said thus far. "I don't make diagnostic errors. Besides, inside the patient, those bullets were lodged where you'd expect them to be if they had hit bone, had punched through, and had had the last of their energy absorbed by the muscle. But there were no damaged tissues between the point of entry and the expended slugs. Which is impossible. Bullets can't pass through a man's chest and leave no trail at all!"

“Almost seems as if we have a minor miracle.”

“More than minor. Seems like a pretty damn major miracle to me.”

"If only one artery and vein were injured, and if both were only nicked, how did Tolk lose so much blood? Were those nicks big enough to account for it?"

“No. He couldn't have hemorrhaged so massively from those traumas.”

The surgeon said nothing more. He seemed gripped in the talons of some dark fear that Stefan could not understand. What had he to fear? If he believed that he had witnessed a miracle, should he not be joyous?

"Doctor, I know it's difficult for a man of science and medicine to admit he's seen something that his education can't explain, something that in fact is in opposition to everything he had believed to be true. But I beg you to tell me everything you saw. What are you holding back? How did Winton Tolk lose so much blood if his injuries were so small?"

Sonneford slumped back in his chair. "In surgery, after beginning transfusions, I located the bullets on the X rays and made the necessary incisions to remove them. In the process, I found a tiny hole in the superior mesenteric artery and another small tear in one of the superior intercostal veins. I was certain there must be other severed vessels, but I couldn't locate them immediately, so I clamped off both the superior mesenteric and the intercostal for repair, figuring to search further when those were attended to. It only took ' a few minutes, an easy task. I sewed the artery first, of course, because the bleeding was in spurts and was more serious. Then . . ."

“Then?” Father Wycazik urged gently.

"Then, when I had quickly finished stitching the artery, I turned to the torn intercostal vein ... and the tear was gone."

“Gone,” Stefan said. A quiver of awe passed through him, for this was the thing he had expectedyet it was also a revelation of such astounding importance that it seemed too much to have hoped for.

“Gone,” Sonneford repeated, and at last he met Stefan's gaze. In the surgeon's watery gray eyes, a shadow moved like the halfperceived passage of a leviathan through the depths of a murky sea, the shadow of fear, and Stefan confirmed that for some inexplicable reason the miracle occasioned dread in the doctor. "The torn vein healed itself, Father. I know the tear had been there. Clamped it off myself. My technician saw it. My nurse saw it. But when I was ready to sew it up, the rent was gone. Healed. I removed the clamps, and the blood flowed again through the vein, and there was no leakage. And later ... when I excised the bullets, the muscle tissue appeared to . . . knit up before my eyes."

“Appeared to?”

“No, that's an evasion,” Sonneford admitted. "It did knit before my eyes. Incredible, but I saw it. Can't prove it, Father, but I know those two slugs did smash Tolk's sternum and shatter his rib. They did send bone fragments through him like shrapnel. Major, mortal damage was done, had to have been. But by the time he was on the table in surgery, his body had almost entirely healed itself. The shattered bones had . . . reformed. The superior mesenteric artery and the intercostal vein were severed to begin with, which is why he lost blood so fast, but by the time I opened him, both vessels had knitted up except for a small tear in each. Sounds crazy, but if I hadn't moved to repair the artery, I'm sure it would've finished closing on its own . . . just as the vein did."

“What did your nurse and other assistants think of this?”

"Funny thing is . . . we didn't talk much about it. I can't account for how little we discussed it. Maybe we didn't talk about it because . . . we're living in a rational age when the miraculous is unacceptable."

“How sad if true,” Stefan said.

With the shadow of dread still shimmering anemonelike in the depths of his eyes, Sonneford said, "Father, if there is a Godand I'm not admitting there iswhy would He save this particular cop?"

“He's a good man,” Father Wycazik said.

"So? I've seen hundreds of good men die. Why should this one be saved and none of the others?"

Father Wycazik pulled a chair around from the side of the desk in order to be able to sit near the surgeon. "You've been frank with me, Doctor, so I'll be upfront with you. I sense a force behind these events that's more than human. A Presence. And that Presence isn't primarily concerned with Winton Tolk but with Brendan, the man . . . the priest who first reached Officer Tolk in that sandwich shop."

Bennet Sonneford blinked in surprise. "Oh. But you wouldn't have gotten such a notion unless . . ."

“Unless Brendan was linked to at least one other miraculous event,” Stefan said. Without using Emmy Halbourg's

name, he told Sonneford about the girl's mending limbs that had once been crippled by disease.

Instead of taking hope from what Stefan told him, Bennet Sonneford shriveled farther in the heat of his strange despair.

Frustrated by the physician's relentless gloominess, Father Wycazik said, "Doctor, maybe I'm missing something, but it seems to me you've got every reason to be joyous. You were privileged to witness whatI personally believewas the hand of God at work." He held one hand out to Sonneford and was not surprised when the doctor gripped it tightly. “Bennet, why're you so despondent?”

Sonneford cleared his throat and said, "I was born and raised a Lutheran, but for twentyfive years I've been an atheist. And now . .."

“Ah,” Stefan said, "I see.

Happily, Stefan began angling for Bennet Sonneford's soul in the fishlined den. He had no suspicion that, before the day was done, his current euphoria would be dispelled and that he would experience a bitter disappointment.

Reno, Nevada.

Zeb Lomack had never imagined that his life would end in bloody suicide on Christmas, but by that night he had sunk so low that he longed to end his existence. He loaded his shotgun, put it on the filthy kitchen table, and promised himself that he would use it if he was unable to get rid of all the goddamned moon stuff before midnight.

His bizarre fascination with the moon had begun the summer before last, though at first it had seemed innocent enough. Toward the end of August that year, he had taken to going out on the back porch of his cozy little house and watching the moon and stars while sipping Coors. In midSeptember, he purchased a Tasco 10VR refracting telescope and bought a couple of books on amateur astronomy.