Death Match Read online

  “It’s too late,” Caroline Long replied. “The risk goes beyond company secrets now. You of all people, Gregory, should understand that.”

  “Then forget security for the moment. It just doesn’t make sense bringing somebody like Lash inside the Wall. You read his jacket, that messy business just before he left the FBI. We have a hundred psychologists on staff already, all with impeccable credentials. Think of the time and effort it would take to get him up to speed. And for what? Nobody knows why these people died. Who’s to say there’s reason to think it will happen again?”

  “You want to take that chance?” Lash retorted angrily. “Because there’s one thing I can tell you with absolute certainty. You’ve caught a huge break. These two double suicides happened on different coasts. And in the case of the Wilners particularly, so close to home, you’ve managed to keep things low key, out of the press. So nobody’s picked up on the coincidence. But if a third couple decides to go out the same way, there won’t be a chance in hell of keeping your precious company out of the news.”

  He sat back, breathing heavily. He raised his coffee cup, remembered it was empty, set it back down again.

  “I fear Dr. Lash is right,” Lelyveld said, his voice soft. “We must understand what’s going on and put a stop to it, one way or another—not just for the sake of the Thorpes and the Wilners, but for Eden as well.” He glanced at Minor. “Greg, I think Dr. Lash’s objectivity here is an asset rather than a liability. He may not yet understand the process, but he comes to it with a fresh eye. Of the dozen candidates we considered, he has the best qualifications. We already have his confidentiality agreement on file. I say we put bringing him inside to a vote.” He took a sip from a glass of water by his elbow, then raised his hand into the silence.

  Slowly, another hand went up; then another, and another. Soon, all hands had been raised except those of Gregory Minor and another man in a dark suit beside him.

  “The motion is passed,” Lelyveld said. “Dr. Lash, Edwin here will get the process started for you.”

  Lash stood up.

  But Lelyveld wasn’t through. “You’re being given unprecedented access to Eden’s inner workings. You’ve requested—and been granted—a chance to do what nobody with your knowledge has done before: experience the process as an actual applicant. You’d do well to remember the old saying Be careful what you wish for.”

  Lash nodded, turned away.

  “And Dr. Lash?” Lelyveld’s voice came again.

  Lash turned back to face the chairman.

  “Work quickly. Quickly.”

  As Mauchly opened the door, Lash heard Lelyveld say, “You may resume transcribing the minutes of the meeting, Ms. French.”

  ELEVEN

  K evin Connelly walked across the broad blacktop lot of the Stoneham Corporate Center, making for his car. It was a Mercedes S-class, low-slung and silver, and Connelly was careful to park it far from other vehicles: it was worth the extra walk to avoid dings and scratches.

  He unlocked the door, opened it, and slid onto the black leather. Connelly loved fine cars, and everything about the Mercedes—the solid thunk of the door, the cradling sensation of the seat, the low throb of the engine—gave him pleasure. The AMG performance package had been worth every penny of the twenty grand it added to the sticker price. There had been a time, not so long ago, when the drive home itself would have been the highlight of his evening.

  That time was gone.

  Connelly eased across the lot and slid onto the feeder road for Route 128, mentally plotting his route home. He’d stop by Burlington Wine Merchants for a bottle of Perrier-Jouet, then visit the adjoining florist for a bouquet. Fuchsias this week, he decided; she wouldn’t be expecting fuchsias. Flowers and champagne had become a staple of his Saturday evenings with Lynn: the only mystery, she liked to joke, was the color of roses he’d bring home.

  If someone had told him, just a few years before, what a difference Lynn would make in his life, he would have scoffed. He had an exciting and challenging job as CIO for a software development company; he had plenty of friends and more than enough interests to occupy his free time; he made a lot of money and never had problems meeting women. And yet, on some almost subconscious level, he must have known something was missing. Otherwise he would never have visited Eden in the first place. But even after enduring the grueling evaluation, even after shelling out the $25,000 fee, he’d had no inkling of how Lynn would make his life complete. It was as if he’d been blind all his life, never understanding what he’d been missing until the gift of sight was suddenly granted.

  He pulled onto the freeway and merged with the weekend traffic, enjoying the effortless acceleration of the big engine. The strange thing, he remembered, was how he’d felt that night of their first meeting. For the first fifteen minutes, maybe even more, he’d thought it was a huge mistake; that somehow Eden had blundered, maybe mixed up his name with somebody else’s. He’d been warned in his exit interview this was a common initial reaction, but that made no difference: he’d spent the first part of the date looking across the restaurant table at a woman who looked nothing like what he expected, wondering how quickly he could get back the twenty-five grand he’d dropped on the crazy scheme.

  But then, something had happened. Even now, no matter how many times he and Lynn had joked about it in the months that followed, he couldn’t articulate just what it was. It had crept up on him. Over the course of the dinner he’d discovered—often in ways he could never have expected—interests, tastes, likes and dislikes they shared. Even more intriguing were areas where they differed. It was as if, somehow, each filled gaps in the other. He’d always been weak in foreign languages; she was fluent in French as well as Spanish, and explained to him why language immersion was more natural than memorizing a textbook. She’d spent the second half of the dinner speaking only in French, and by the time his crème brûlée arrived he marveled at how much he was managing to understand. On their second date, he learned Lynn was afraid to fly; as a private pilot, he explained how to cope with fear of flying and offered to take her up for desensitization flights in the Cessna he co-owned.

  He shifted lanes, smiling to himself. These were crude examples, and he knew it. Truth was, the way their personalities complemented each other’s was probably too subtle and multifaceted to detail. He could only compare it to the other women he’d known. The real difference, the fundamental difference, was that he’d known her close to two years—and yet he was as excited now at the prospect of seeing her as he’d been in the first flush of new love.

  He wasn’t perfect; far from it. Eden’s psychological screening had made his own faults all too clear. He tended to be impatient. He was rather arrogant. And so on. But somehow, Lynn canceled these things out. He’d learned from her quiet self-assurance, her patience. And she had learned from him, as well. When they’d first met, she was quiet, a little reserved. But she’d loosened up a lot. She was still quiet at times—the last couple of days, for example—but it had grown so subtle that nobody but he would have noticed.

  Although he’d never have admitted it to anybody, the thing he’d been most worried about, going into Eden, was the sex. He was old enough, and he’d had enough relationships, for bedroom marathons to be less important to him than they once were. He was by no means a Viagra candidate, but he found he now had to feel deeply about a woman before he could really respond. This had been an issue in his prior relationship: the woman had been fifteen years his junior, and her sexual hunger, which as a young stud he would have found desirable, had been a little intimidating.

  It proved a non-issue with Lynn. She’d been so patient and so loving—and her body was so wonderfully sensitive to his touch—that the sex was the best of his life. And, like everything else about the marriage, it only seemed to get better with time. He felt an electric tickle of lust as he thought about their upcoming anniversary. They were going to spend it at Niagara-on-the-Lake, in Canada, where their honeymoon had been. Ju
st a few more days, Connelly thought as he slowed for his exit. If there was anything on Lynn’s mind, the spray of the Maid of the Mist would soon drive it far, far away.

  TWELVE

  A t 8:55 Sunday morning, Christopher Lash pushed through a revolving door and entered the lobby of Eden Incorporated, surrounded by dozens of other hopeful clients. It was a crisp, sunny autumn day, and the pink granite walls blazed with light. Today he’d left the satchel at home. In fact, other than his wallet and his car keys, the only thing in Lash’s pockets was a card Mauchly had given him at their last meeting reading simply: Candidate Processing, 9 a.m. Sunday.

  As he walked toward the escalator, Lash mentally reviewed the test preparations he’d been coached on at the Academy, over a decade ago. Get a good night’s sleep. Eat a breakfast high in carbs and low in sugar. No alcohol or drugs. Don’t panic.

  Three out of four, he thought. He was tired, and despite the mammoth Starbucks espresso he’d had on the drive in, he found himself craving another. And though he was far from panicked, he was aware of feeling uncharacteristically nervous. That’s okay, he reminded himself: a little tension kept you alert. But he kept recalling what the man said at the class reunion he’d observed: If I’d known just what was in store for me, I don’t know if I’d have had the cojones to take that evaluation. It was a brutal day.

  He put this aside as he approached the escalator. Amazing to think that demand for Eden’s services was so great it had to process its applicants seven days a week. He stepped on, looking curiously at the people ascending the twin escalator to his left. What had been going through Lewis Thorpe’s head when he rode this same escalator? Or John Wilner’s? Were they excited? Nervous? Scared?

  As he watched, he saw two people on the adjoining escalator—a middle-aged man and a young woman, a few riders apart—exchange a brief glance. The man nodded almost imperceptibly at the woman, then looked away. Lash thought of what the chairman had said: security was subtle but ever-present. Were some of these would-be applicants really Eden operatives?

  Reaching the top of the escalator, Lash passed beneath the wide archway and entered a passage decorated with cheery promotional posters. Faint parallel lines had been etched into the floor, creating a series of wide lanes leading down the passage. They had the effect of making the applicants—of their own accord, or through subtle orchestration—spread apart and walk side by side. Ahead, each lane terminated in a door. A technician in a white coat stood before each. Lash could see the person at the end of his lane was a tall, slender man of about thirty.

  As Lash approached, the man nodded and opened the door behind him. “Step inside, please,” he said. Lash glanced around and noticed attendants at the other doors doing the same. He stepped through his doorway.

  Ahead lay another hallway, very narrow, unrelievedly white. The man closed the door, then led the way down the featureless hall. After the airy lobby and the wide approach corridor, this space felt claustrophobic. Lash followed the man down the passage until it opened into a small, square room. It was as white as the hallway. Its only features were six identical doors set into the surrounding walls. Instead of a handle, each door had a small white card reader bolted to its face. One door in the far wall had a placard designating it a unisex bathroom.

  The man turned toward him. “Dr. Lash,” he said. “I’m Robert Vogel. Welcome to your Eden evaluation.”

  “Thanks,” said Lash, shaking the proffered hand.

  “How are you feeling?”

  “Fine, thanks.”

  “We’ve got a long day ahead of us. If at any time you have questions or concerns, I’ll do my best to address them.”

  Lash nodded as the man slipped a hand into his lab coat and pulled out a palmtop computer. He plucked a stylus from its groove and began scrawling on the pad. After a moment, he frowned.

  “What is it?” Lash asked quickly.

  “Nothing. It’s just—” the man seemed surprised. “It’s just that you’re showing up as pre-approved for the evaluation. I’ve never seen that before. You had no initial screening?”

  “No, I didn’t. If it’s a problem—”

  “Oh, no. Everything else checks out.” The man recovered quickly. “You do understand, of course, that you won’t be formally accepted as a candidate until after today’s evaluation?”

  “Yes.”

  “And that if you are not accepted, your application fee of $1,000 is nonrefundable?”

  “Yes.” There had been no application fee, of course, but the man didn’t have to know everything. Lash was relieved: clearly, Vogel didn’t know his real purpose in being here. Lash had told Mauchly emphatically that he wanted to be treated as a real candidate, see everything the Thorpes and the Wilners had seen.

  “Any questions before we begin?” When Lash shook his head, Vogel drew a card from around his neck, strung on a long black cord. Lash looked at it curiously: it was pewter-colored, with an iridescence that did not completely hide the gold-green of microprocessing inside. Eden’s infinity logo was embossed on one side. Vogel ran the card through the reader by the nearest door, and it sprang open with a click.

  The room beyond seemed little wider than the hallway. There was a digital camera on a tripod inside, and a painted X on the floor beyond the camera.

  “Please stand on the cross and look at the lens. I’m going to ask you two questions. Answer them as completely and as truthfully as you can.” And Vogel took up position behind the camera. Almost immediately, a tiny red light glowed on its upper housing.

  “Why are you here?” Vogel asked.

  Lash hesitated for just a moment, remembering the tapes he’d watched in the Flagstaff house. If I’m going to do this at all, he thought, I should do it right. And that meant honesty, avoiding easy or cynical answers.

  “I’m here because I’m searching for something,” he replied. “For an answer.”

  “Describe one thing you did this morning, and why you think we should know about it.”

  Lash thought. “I caused a traffic jam.”

  Vogel said nothing, and Lash went on.

  “I was on I-95, coming into the city. I’ve got an E-ZPass unit for the windshield so I don’t have to pay cash at the tunnels and toll roads. I get to the bridge leading into Manhattan. It took a little time, because one of the three lanes at the toll plaza was down. The reader scans my card. But for some reason, the wooden gate doesn’t lift. I sit for a minute until an attendant comes. She tells me my E-ZPass is invalid. That it was revoked. But that’s not the case, I’m fully paid up. The thing had worked fine half a dozen times just this week. Clearly their system was messed up. But she insists I pay the six dollars to get across the bridge in cash. I say no, I want her to fix the error. Meanwhile, now there’s only one good lane onto the bridge. The line behind me is growing longer. People are honking. She insists. I stick to my guns. A cop takes notice, starts to walk over. Finally she calls me an unpleasant name, opens the gate manually, and lets me through. I give her my most endearing smile as I pass.”

  He stopped, wondering why this of all things had come to mind. Then he realized it was, in fact, in character. If he’d been here for himself, for real, he’d have said something equally mundane. It wasn’t like him to cough up a teary-eyed story about how he’d embarked on a quest for the woman of his dreams.

  “I guess I mention this because it reminds me of my father,” Lash went on. “He was very combative over the little things, as if it was a personal grudge match between him and life. Maybe I’m more like him than I realized.”

  He fell silent, and after a moment the red light went out.

  “Thank you, Dr. Lash,” Vogel said. He stepped away from the camera. “And now, if you’d follow me, please?”

  They returned to the small central hallway, and Vogel swiped his card through the reader of the adjoining door. The room beyond was larger than the first. It contained a chair and a desk, on which sat a small Lucite cube holding sharpened pencils. Once again
, the room was unrelievedly white. The ceiling was entirely covered in squares of frosted plastic. All these little rooms, identical in color and lack of decoration, each being used for a single purpose: they seemed to Lash almost like a genteel version of an interrogation suite.

  Vogel motioned Lash to sit down. “Our tests run on a clock, but only to make sure that you complete the necessary battery by the end of the day. You have one hour, and I think you’ll find it plenty of time. There are no right or wrong answers. If you have any questions, I’ll be just outside.” He laid a large white envelope on the desk, then left the room, closing the door quietly behind him.

  There was no clock, so Lash removed his watch and laid it on the table. He picked up the envelope, upended it into his hand. Inside was a thin test manual and a blank score sheet:

  Lash scanned the questions quickly. He recognized its basic structure: it was an objective personality test, the kind made famous by the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. It seemed an odd choice for Eden; because such tests were primarily used as psychoanalytical diagnostics, they arranged personality into a series of scales, rather than ferreting out particular likes and dislikes. This seemed an unusually long test, too: while the MMPI-2 consisted of 567 questions, this test had precisely one thousand. Lash decided this was probably due to authentication factors: such tests always included a number of redundant questions to make sure that the subject was answering consistently. Eden was being extra-cautious.

  He became aware of the ticking of his watch. With a sigh, he took one of the pencils from the Lucite cube and turned to the first question.

  1. I enjoy watching large parades.

  Lash did, so he shaded in the o in the “agree” column.

  2. I sometimes hear voices other people claim not to hear.