The Syndrome

Including him.

“So what’s the plan?” she asked, setting the newspaper aside.

“The plan? The plan is: I go to the Institute. Find Opdahl. And talk to him.”

She was silent for a long moment, as if waiting for McBride to continue. When he didn’t, she asked, “That’s it?”

“Well, no. First, I’ll put the gun to his head—so it won’t be like a general conversation. I’ll be real focused.”

She nodded. Thought about it. Said: “Seems kind of basic, doesn’t it? I mean, it’s not exactly a plan. It’s more like—I don’t know—the headline for a plan.”

McBride shrugged. “Well, that’s my plan.”

She gave her head a little shake, as if to be certain she was hearing him right. “And what are you going to ask him?”

“What do you think? Who. What. Where. When. Why. How.”

Crossing the room to the window, she looked out at the lightly falling snow. After a bit, she turned and, leaning her back against the windowsill, said, “Okay, that’s what we’ll do—but I’m going in first.”

McBride shook his head. “Unh-unh.”

“They don’t know me,” she insisted. “If you go in, and they recognize you, that’s it. What if Opdahl’s not there? They’ll alert him. And then you’ll never get close to him. But, me? I’m just a student passing through. At least I can find out if he’s there or not.”

“‘A student,’“ he repeated.

“Right. I’ll say I was in the neighborhood. Skiing. And one of the fellows—who I met in the States—said I should stop in. Get an application.”

“They don’t have applications,” McBride told her. “You have to be recommended.”

“Right! That’s what I mean. He said while I was over here, I should stop in and say hello. Let Opdahl know who I am. Because, ‘I don’t want to promise anything, but:’ I think there might be a recommendation in my future.”

“And which fellow was this?” McBride asked. “I hope it wasn’t Jeff Duran, because—”

“No! Of course not! I never heard of Jeff Duran. Who’s Jeff Duran? This was someone else. This was… who was it?”

“Eric Branch.”

“Right!” she exclaimed.

“He was studying sub-Saharan migration. I read a couple of his reports. Good stuff.”

“Great! So, I’ll ask to see Opdahl. And if he isn’t there, I’ll find out where he is.”

“And if they say, ‘I’m afraid you can’t just “drop in” on Dr. Opdahl,’“ McBride said in a snotty German accent. “‘You must have an appointment.’”

Adrie

“Don’t wheedle,” he told her. “It’s their loss.”

Again, her voice changed, plunging to throaty and lascivious depths: “‘But I’m only in Zurich for a couple of days.’”

The tone was silly and irresistible, all at once. Lunging across the bed, he pushed her down, rolling with her in the cloudlike folds of the comforter, giddy and making out, with Adrie

“We can’t,” she said. Breathless. “It will get too late.”

Reluctantly, he agreed. Stood up, plucked a tiny feather from his pants leg. “Which fellow?”

“Eric Branch.” Adrie

“Get out.”

“But—”

“Just don’t go upstairs with him,” he told her.

“Why not? Maybe—”

He shook his head. “Promise…”

The tram took them most of the way to the Institute, with McBride clutching the box of “curtain rods.” Adrie

The animation of the children seemed to exist in counterpoint to McBride’s own mood, which was bleak and getting bleaker. The closer they got to their destination, the more he worried that he was on a fool’s errand—that they’d get to the address, and it wouldn’t be there. Instead of a townhouse with mullioned windows and gargoyles, and a massive front door—there would be an empty lot or a train station. That’s what had happened in Bethany Beach, and the effect of that now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t memory was to make him doubt the reality of his own past.

“What’s the matter?” Adrie

He’d thought all this was behind him, these worries about his memory, about what was real and what was not. He’d thought they’d gotten down to bedrock. He was Lew McBride, and that was that. Only it wasn’t. That would never be that. That was something Opdahl had taken from him.

The conductor a

The houses on either side of the street were stolid and old, the mansions and near mansions of Swiss industrialists, bankers, lawyers, and tax exiles. In front of each, two or three plane trees stood their ground in the cold, awaiting the spring.

Adrie

They’d traveled three blocks before they came to a dogleg in the street. With each step, McBride’s chest seemed to tighten. He told himself to breathe, just breathe, but how could he? Like a weight lifter finishing his third set of reps, he wasn’t breathing at all, just straining to get it over. Either the Institute would be there, or it wouldn’t. His sanity seemed to hang in the balance.

And then, there it was—just as he’d remembered: a three-story granite structure with mullioned windows and window boxes, filled now with junipers and evergreens. The heavy door with its lion’s head knocker. The leaded glass transom. The small brass plaque with the Institute’s name on it, and the closed-circuit camera overhead. Instinctively, he hung back, across the street and out of range of the camera.

The sense of foreboding that he felt was overwhelming. Suddenly, the idea of sending Adrie

She shook her head, and straightened her back. Put her Scout face on. Prepared. Determined. The lawyer. Then she glanced around. “I think I got the long straw,” she told him. At least I get to go inside.”

“We could have called him on the phone. We still can.”

“It’s too easy to blow someone off on the phone. This way, I’m in their face.”

“If you’re not back in fifteen minutes,” he promised, “I’m coming in. And it won’t be just a box in my hand.”

She nodded. “Eric Branch, Eric Branch, Eric Branch,” she said and, turning, marched toward the door.

McBride checked his watch. It was 2:36.