The Terrorizers Read Online Free PDF Page B

patient. My professional advice is: don’t waste time and effort trying to remember something that never happened, regardless of the official records.”
    I said slowly, “Something like being wounded in Vietnam while heroically snapping pictures under fire?”
    “Exactly. Your various scars were caused by different weapons, and incurred at different times, not in a single traumatic wartime experience. Dr. DeLong tried to point this out to the authorities, but you know how they are when they already have a simple solution to a problem. They refuse to let it be complicated by contradictory information.” Lilienthal rose, and spoke curtly: “As far as I’m concerned, you’re well enough to be released from this hospital. Goodbye, Mr. Madden.”
    “Doctor,” I said, “you’re mad about something. What is it?”
    He hesitated, and said, “I think you know.”
    “Sure,” I said. “You think I’m a phony but you’re not quite sure. Right?”
    He didn’t speak for a moment. At last he nodded. “As you say, I’m not sure.”
    I said, “For what it’s worth, you have my word that, no matter what kind of a phony I may turn out to be, my amnesia is perfectly genuine.”
    He hesitated once more. “Good luck, Mr. Madden,” he said again, but his voice was friendlier than it had been.

5
    They rolled me to the hospital’s front door in a wheelchair. After that I was on my own—well, except for Kitty, who seemed to be indulging a highly developed Florence Nightingale complex. She helped me solicitously to the waiting taxi, which took us to the airport by way of a small car ferry. Apparently there’s no real estate level enough for a landing strip on that rugged mainland; the Prince Rupert Airport is therefore located on an island across the harbor.
    The plane was a goodsized jet, wide open inside and crammed full of tourist-class-sized seats from bow to stern: a giant, airborne commuter bus. We took off on schedule and headed south. There were snowy mountains off to the left of our course. There was a dense, damp-looking wilderness below. Off to the right, the west, was a misty maze of islands and waterways that reminded me of Scandinavia or pictures of Scandinavia, I wasn’t quite sure which. I only knew that I associated that kind of rocky, piny archipelago with a different part of the world; but of course you can see practically anything on color TV these days.
    I reminded myself that I must have flown over just such country as this—maybe even this particular landscape—within the past few weeks with a guy named Herb Walters, but I still couldn’t bring back a thing from that illfated plane ride. As the big jet rumbled southwards, I was aware of an odd and not entirely unpleasant sense of expectation. It wasn’t, I realized, that I thought the rest of my memory would return like a sudden gift from heaven the instant I walked through the door of my own house in Bellevue, Wash. It was, instead, that I had a pretty strong hunch it wouldn’t. I’d got back all I was going to for the time being. I was going to have to figure things out for myself. To hell with the recalcitrant mental machinery; I’d spent enough time waiting for it to get into a cooperative mood. It was a challenge, let’s say. A good man ought to be able to get by in the present without a lot of help from the past. If a newborn baby could do it, dammit, I could.
    “Do we have to change for Seattle?” I asked. “Or does this plane go right through?”
    “Who’s going to Seattle?” Kitty asked. She reached out and squeezed my hand. Apparently I’d been forgiven for my amorous crudities of yesterday. “I’m taking you home with me,” she said, smiling.
    I said, “That’s called kidnaping, ma’am. A capital offense, I do believe.”
    “You don’t really mind, do you, darling? After all, it isn’t as if you hadn’t stayed in my apartment before; and you need somebody to look after you for a few days, at least.”
    “Sure,” I