Bane’s silence confirmed he didn’t.
“She can’t answer any of your damned questions about that damned plane because since she got off it, she hasn’t spoken one word!” Mrs. Peretz screeched. “Not one damn word! She just sits in her room and stares out the window. She doesn’t move now unless we move her. She doesn’t eat unless we feed her.” Mrs. Peretz suddenly looked old. She rubbed the black sleeve of her dress against her face, lowering her voice as well as her eyes. “The doctors say she experienced a severe trauma or shock. They say she’s totally withdrawn into herself as a result of it. But they’re wrong, all of them!” She was almost shouting again. “A sudden severe trauma or shock, they say. But she was fine when she boarded that plane — I checked with the close friends who dropped her at the airport. Then six hours later she stumbled off white as a ghost and hasn’t uttered a word since, so I suppose the doctors would have me believe the shock occurred in the jet. Hah! Can you tell me what kind of traumatic experience could happen in midair?”
Chapter Nineteen
Bane lost his tail on the way to Janie Finlaw’s apartment, for naught as it turned out because as he pulled into the parking garage he spotted an obvious COBRA team in a sedan just down the street. He was meeting Janie here for dinner and he was glad now he’d invited Harry the Bat along. Harry’s presence would have kept the men at bay if they’d had plans to do more than watch prior to Bane’s arrival.
He rode the elevator to the twelfth floor and rang Janie’s bell.
“What’s the password?” Harry’s voice called from the inside.
“Open the door, you son of a bitch.”
A chain rattled. “Got it right on the first shot.” Harry swung the door open.
“How’d you know it was me?” Bane asked, closing it.
“Saw you drive into the garage.”
“Then you’ve no doubt noticed our friends.”
“The fuckers have been parked across the street for the past hour. Be a lot easier if we just invited them in for coffee.”
Janie appeared from the kitchen. “You boys plan on talking shop all night?”
“Not if you tell me what you dug up on the computer,” Bane said.
“I focused on what you asked me to, Josh,” she reported after they sat down in the living room, “and I think I latched on to something. “She consulted her notes. “To begin with, Colonel Chilgers relies primarily on two men for the day-to-day functioning of COBRA: Dr. Benjamin Teke and Professor Lewis Metzencroy. I’ve got pictures of both of them, in addition to one of Chilgers for you to look at later. Anyway, Teke’s the more well rounded of the two but holds no real expertise in any scientific field. He’s more or less become COBRA’s chief administrator as well as Chilgers’ confidant. Metzencroy’s another matter entirely, an absolute genius in the fields of physics and astrophysics. His work for COBRA is confined to the laboratory and their Confidential Projects section and he almost never mixes with politics. According to his title, he fills the vague position of chief of new weapons research and development. But I doubt he even goes near anything but the big stuff, top secret all the way — nothing you’ll ever read about in the paper.”
Harry the Bat sighed. “That computer tell you how much he makes a year?”
“No, but it did have something to say about seven scientists hired by Metzencroy and COBRA over the last three years, and they’ve all got one thing in common: Einstein.”
“Einstein?” Bane wondered, and drew a nod from Janie.
“All strict disciples of the master who have followed his words virtually to the letter throughout their careers.”
“I assume the same holds true for Metzencroy.”
“Even more so. Metzencroy’s somewhere in his mid-sixties which would put him roughly in his mid-thirties when Einstein died in ’fifty-five. His entire career has been a continuous attempt to expand on some of his mentor’s theories and complete the rest.”
“What do you mean complete?” Bane wondered.
“I’m no expert,” Janie said, “but it’s fairly common knowledge that Einstein died with a number of theories incomplete and untested. E=mc2, some say, was child’s play compared to what he worked out later. So potentially he was onto forces in the world even greater than nuclear fission. And assuming Metzencroy has picked up his work—”
“—COBRA might be developing it right now,” Bane finished. “With the help of seven additional experts Metzencroy has chosen just for the job. I think we’re on to something here.”
“Except that’s about as far as we can go without additional information,” Janie explained. “COBRA’s computer lines are sealed in San Diego so there’s no way Harry or I can tap in. The only thing we seem to have gained is the possibility that Metzencroy is developing one of Einstein’s uncompleted theories.”
“I’d say it’s more than just a possibility,” Bane noted. “It’s not just Davey Phelps who’s been affected by Flight 22; the whole damn plane was cursed.” And he went on to relate the essence of his meetings that day; with a madman, the mother of a catatonic, and a manic depressive who swore she saw two passengers vanish on board only to reappear.
“Sounds to me like COBRA zapped that plane,” Harry the Bat concluded.
“And whatever they zapped it with,” Bane followed, “went to work on the minds of the passengers. Every one of them was affected differently, and a few — as many as half I’d guess — were affected at levels too small to notice … yet.”
“‘Yet’?”
Bane nodded. “The effects appear to be cumulative. They grow, worsen instead of dissipating. Davey Phelps’s powers have gotten progressively stronger. Gladys Baker claims her manic depression is getting worse, and Mrs. Peretz insists that her daughter withdraws more and more every day. It’s possible, then, that those who haven’t noticed any effect from the flight will before too much longer.”
“The next question, I guess,” Janie said, “is what happened to them? What did COBRA do?”
“Lord fuck a duck,” Harry muttered, “they must’ve loaded the food with some contaminant about to be let loose on Russia.”
“Or a new weapon maybe,” Janie added, “that attacks the nerve centers of the brain and causes the symptoms Josh has been summarizing. A mad version of psychological warfare.”
“Einstein never had anything to do with psychological warfare,” Bane pointed out.
“Not directly,” Janie admitted. “But he might have left the door open for it somewhere. The kind of weapon we’re talking about is terrifying. Developed sufficiently, it could destroy an entire nation from the inside, assuming proper methods of dispersal were worked out.”
“And that,” picked up Harry the Bat immediately, snapping his fingers, “could’ve been exactly what Flight 22 was all about.”
“Could’ve been,” Bane noted, “but wasn’t.”
“And I was just starting to get rolling….”
“You see,” Bane went on, “we’re forgetting something here, perhaps the most important part of the puzzle: Jake Del Gennio. This whole thing started for us because he claimed the whole plane disappeared.”
“So what’s the point?”
“Focus on what they did to the plane itself, not the people. All passengers I’ve spoken to who exhibit symptoms recall a brief period on board when they felt dizzy, lightheaded, or passed out altogether. The period seems to correspond with the time Jake Del Gennio claimed the jet vanished. Except the passengers claim the spell only lasted for a few seconds, minutes at the outside, and yet Flight 22 didn’t land until forty minutes later.”