“Did Mr. Kipling seem agitated to you?” Hex interjects, clearly impatient. He has his own investigation and it has little to do with Scott.
Gus shakes him off.
“Let’s do this in order,” he says. “I’m leading this — it’s my investigation.”
He turns to Scott.
“The airport log says the plane took off at ten oh six.”
“Sounds right,” says Scott. “I didn’t look at my phone.”
“Can you describe the takeoff?”
“It was — smooth. I mean, it was my first private jet.”
He looks at Frank, the OSPRY rep.
“Very nice,” he says. “Except for the crashing, I mean.”
Frank looks stricken.
“So you don’t remember anything unusual?” Gus asks. “Any sounds or jostling out of the ordinary?”
Scott thinks back. It happened so fast. Before he could even get his seat belt on they were taxiing. And Sarah Kipling was talking to him, asking him about his work and how he knew Maggie. And the girl was on her iPhone, listening to music or playing a game. The boy was sleeping. And Kipling was—what was he doing?
“I don’t think so,” he says. “I remember — you felt the force of it more. The power. I guess that’s what a jet is. But then we were off the ground and rising. Most of the shades were closed and it was very light in the cabin. There was a baseball game on the TV.”
“Boston played last night,” says O’Brien.
“Dworkin,” says Frank in a knowing way, and the two feds in the doorway smile.
“I don’t know what that means,” Scott says, “but I also remember music. Something jazzy. Sinatra maybe?”
“And did there come a time when something unusual happened?” Gus asks.
“Well, we fell into the ocean,” says Scott.
Gus nods.
“And how exactly did that happen?”
“Well — I mean — it’s hard to remember exactly,” Scott tells him. “The plane turned suddenly, pitched, and I—”
“Take your time,” says Gus.
Scott thinks back. The takeoff, the offered glass of wine. Images flash through his mind, an astronaut’s vertigo, a blare of sounds. Metal shrieking. The disorienting whirl. Like a movie negative that has been cut and reassembled at random. It is the job of the human brain to assemble all the input of our world — sights, sounds, smells — into a coherent narrative. This is what memory is, a carefully calibrated story that we make up about our past. But what happens when those details crumble? Hailstones on a tin roof. Fireflies firing at random. What happens when your life can’t be translated into a linear narrative?
“There was banging,” he says. “I think. Some kind of — I want to say concussion.”
“Like an explosion?” asks the man from OSPRY, hopefully.
“No. I mean, I don’t think so. It was more like — a knocking and then — at the same time the plane kind of — dropped.”
Gus thinks about saying something then, a follow-up question, but doesn’t.
In his mind, Scott hears a scream. Not of terror, but an involuntary expulsion, a reflexive vocal reaction to something unexpected. It is the sound fear makes when it first appears, the sudden, visceral realization that you are not safe, that this activity you are engaged in is deeply, deeply risky. Your body makes the sound and immediately you break out in a cold sweat. Your sphincter clenches. Your mind, which up until this moment has been moving along at pedestrian speeds, suddenly races forward, running for its life. Fight or flight. It is the moment when the intellect fails and something primal, animal takes over.
With a sudden prickling certainty, Scott realizes that the scream came from him. And then blackness. His face pales. Gus leans in.
“Do you want to stop?”
Scott exhales.
“No. It’s fine.”
Gus asks an aide to bring Scott a soda from the machine. While they’re waiting Gus lays out the facts he’s managed to assemble.
“According to our radar,” he says, “the plane was in the air for eighteen minutes. It reached an altitude of twelve thousand feet, then began to descend rapidly.”
Sweat is dripping down Scott’s back. Images are coming back to him, memories.
“Things were—flying is the wrong word,” he says. “Around. Stuff. I remember my duffel bag. It just kind of levitated off the floor, just calmly floated up in the air like a magic trick, and then, just as I reached for it, it just — took off, just disappeared. And we were spinning, and I hit my head, I guess.”
“Do you know if the plane broke up in the air?” Leslie from the FAA asks him. “Or was the pilot able to make a landing?”
Scott tries to remember, but it’s just flashes. He shakes his head.
Gus nods.
“Okay,” he says. “Let’s stop there.”
“Hold on,” says O’Brien. “I still have questions.”
Gus stands.
“Later,” he says. “Right now I think Mr. Burroughs needs to rest.”
The others stand. This time Scott gets to his feet. His legs are shaking.
Gus offers his hand.
“Get some sleep,” he says. “I saw two news vans pull up outside as we were coming in. This is going to be a story, and you’re going to be at the center of it.”
Scott can’t for the life of him figure out what he’s talking about.
“What do you mean?” he says.
“We’ll try to shield your identity as long as possible,” Gus tells him. “Your name wasn’t on the passenger roster, which helps. But the press is going to want to know how the boy made it to shore. Who saved him. Because that’s a story. You’re a hero now, Mr. Burroughs. Try to wrap your mind around that — what it means. Plus, the boy’s father, Bateman, was a big deal. And Kipling — well, you’ll see — this is a very messy situation.”
He extends his hand. Scott shakes it.
“I’ve seen a lot of things in my day,” says Gus, “but this—”
He shakes his head.
“You’re a hell of a swimmer, Mr. Burroughs.”
Scott feels numb. Gus herds the other agents out of the room with his hands.
“We’ll talk again,” he says.
After they’re gone Scott sways on his feet inside the empty lounge. His left arm is in a polyurethane sling. The room is buzzing with silence. He takes a deep breath, lets it out. He is alive. This time yesterday he was eating lunch on his back porch and staring out at the yard, egg salad and iced tea. The three-legged dog was lying in the grass licking her elbow. There were phone calls to make, clothes to pack.
Now everything has changed.
He wheels his IV over to the window, looks out. In the parking lot he sees six news vans, satellite dishes deployed. A crowd is gathering. How many times has the world been interrupted by the cable buzz of special reports? Political scandals, spree killings, celebrity intercourse caught on tape. Talking heads with their perfect teeth ripping apart the still-warm body? Now it is his turn. Now he is the story, the bug under the microscope. To Scott, watching through tempered glass, they are an enemy army massing at the gates. He stands in his turret watching them assemble their siege engines and sharpen their swords.
All that matters, he thinks, is that the boy be saved from that.
A nurse knocks on the door of the lounge. Scott turns.
“Okay,” she tells him. “Time to rest.”
Scott nods. He remembers the moment from last night when the fog first cleared, and the North Star became visible. A distant point of light that brought with it absolute certainty about which direction they should go.
Standing there, studying his reflection in the glass, Scott wonders if he will ever have that kind of clarity again. He takes a last look at the growing mob, then turns and walks back to his room.