Departure(83)

“I was a sorry father. I doted on Grayson. Coddled him. Never said no. The worst thing you can do for a child is give him everything he wants. Humans should grow up a little hungry, struggle a little, be made to strive for something. That’s what builds character. Struggle reveals who we really are. That journey shows us what we want from this world. Now Grayson wants what he’s always taken for granted: my money.”

“What do you want to do?”

“He says if I give him a little money now, that’ll be the end of it. If not, he promises he’ll extract his inheritance by other means, and it will cost me a lot more. He thinks he knows me, thinks I’ll figure up the dollar amounts and pay out the lesser: cash to keep him quiet, hush money that will keep my reputation intact. That reputation is essential to building this foundation.”

I don’t envy Oliver’s situation. He walks over and stares at a picture on the wall: a young man in his twenties with long, flowing blond hair, the smile on his face just a little too self-confident. I’ve seen that face, slightly older, but wearing the same smirk. On a plane. Then outside it. Him shoving me. My fist connecting with that face.

No. That’s wrong. We were on the plane, shoving. He walked away muttering obscenities.

It’s like there are two memories.

I reach up, touching my temple. The migraine is back. It’s nearly blinding. I close my eyes, hoping it will pass.

I can barely hear Oliver’s words.

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned in business, it’s that giving a tyrant what he wants doesn’t solve your problem. It only makes it worse. My son has to grow up some time. This is as good a time as any.”





48





The migraine faded during the cab ride from Oliver’s home to the hotel, but I can still feel it idling at the back of my head, waiting to attack, almost taunting me, the dread as oppressive as the pain. I’ve been lucky. For my entire life, I’ve been pretty healthy. Now I’m beginning to understand what it’s like for a few of my friends with chronic medical conditions. The uncertainty. The lurking fear. Knowing when you go to bed that tomorrow your health could be markedly worse. Knowing that right when you have to be someplace important, when people are counting on you to be at your best, you might not be able to, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Committing anyway—that takes guts. I know, because I’m scared now. I’m scared this won’t just be an episode, a bump in the road I get past. I’m scared this will persist. I’m scared it will limit what I can do, keep me from this incredible opportunity with Oliver. That’s new. Yesterday I didn’t have that kind of hope, or fear for that matter. Feeling. That’s something.

I need help. I’m desperate enough to risk another flight back to San Francisco. Seeing a doctor there, at home, where I know people, feels a lot less scary. I’m sure I’ll need to find a specialist.

In my room I instinctively turn the TV on to the six o’clock news—my post-work ritual—and get my laptop out, ready to search for flights.

The travel site flashes my most recent trips, and my eyes lock on one.

Flight 305: New York (JFK) -> London (Heathrow)

A bolt of pain shoots from the back of my head to the front, bulging there. The pressure pushes at my eye sockets like water from a fire hose. The surge passes, the pain tapering to a drip.

My eyes still tightly closed, I stand and stagger to the sink. I feel around, find a glass, fill it with tap water, and gulp it down. What could help? Advil. Anything. I don’t have any. Maybe the front desk does.

I’m reaching for the phone when the newsreader catches my attention.

“. . . lost contact with the plane around four fourteen p.m. Eastern time. At this time, authorities don’t believe the flight was hijacked. However, they have activated search-and-rescue teams to begin . . .”

Every word is a sledgehammer to my head. I stumble toward the table, grabbing for the remote, almost blind from the pain.

The report about the missing plane goes off before I can reach it, and the pain fades.

Sight returns. I glance at the papers strewn across the table.

The sketches of the Gibraltar Dam. They’re wrong. I pick one up. The buildings—they’re too short. They look like nubs. Nubs of what? Fingers. Fingers that have been cut off. Why would buildings be fingers? Makes no sense. But they were. That’s what I remember. I rifle through the rest of the papers, everything from the last two days of meetings. This is the only sketch of the dam. It’s wrong. It should be a giant hand, reaching out of the dam . . . a symbol.

A wave of pressure. I squeeze my eyes shut. A single tear rolls down my face.

This is it. The origin point.

It all started after the Gibraltar Dam meeting. Or was it after the Podway meeting? Or the flight?

I glance at the stack of papers. The letterhead reads RAILCELL. It’s wrong too. It will never be called RailCell. Why am I so certain? The cars are off too. They’re too big. They’ll be smaller.

Another pulse through my brain, like a balloon being inflated, pushing out in every direction.

I lay my head on the table.

The first attack was on the plane back from London to San Francisco. I must have contracted this before then.

When?

What do I know?

What was the next event?