small imaginary thing sideways across his lips, slowly, like he
was closing a zipper. He put his hand back under his arm.
Shook. Stared at the wall. There was crazy fear in his eyes.
Some kind of absolute, uncontrolled terror. He started rocking
again. Started coughing. He was coughing and choking in his
throat. He wouldn’t open his mouth. It was clamped tight. He
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was bucking and shaking on the stool. Clutching his sides.
Gulping desperately inside his clamped mouth. His eyes were
wild and staring. They were pools of horror. Then they rolled
up inside his head and the whites showed and he pitched
backward off the stool.
191
TEN
T
HEY DID WHAT THEY COULD AT THE SCENE, BUT IT WAS USELESS. Nendick just lay on the kitchen floor, not moving, not
really conscious, but not really unconscious either. He
was in some kind of fugue state. Like suspended animation.
He was pale and damp with perspiration. His breathing was
shallow. His pulse was weak. He was responsive to touch and
light but nothing else. An hour later he was in a guarded room
at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center with a tentative
diagnosis of psychosis-induced catatonia.
‘Paralysed with fear, in layman’s language,’ the doctor
said. ‘It’s a genuine medical condition. We see it most often
in superstitious populations, like Haiti, or parts of Louisiana.
Voodoo country, in other words. The victims get cold sweats,
pallor, loss of blood pressure, near-unconsciousness. Not
the same thing as adrenalin-induced panic. It’s a neurogenic
process. The heart slows, the large blood vessels in the
abdomen take blood away from the brain, most voluntary function
shuts down.’
‘What kind of threat could do that to a person?’ Froelich
asked, quietly.
‘One that the person sincerely believes,’ the doctor answered.
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‘That’s the key. The victim has to be convinced. My guess is his
wife’s kidnappers described to him what they would do to her if
he talked. Then your arrival triggered a crisis, because he was
afraid he would talk. Maybe he even wanted to talk, but he
knew he couldn’t afford to. I wouldn’t want to speculate about
the exact nature of the threat against his wife.’
‘Will he be OK?’ Stuyvesant asked.
‘Depends on the condition of his heart. If he tends towards
heart disease he could be in serious trouble. The cardiac stress
is truly enormous.’
‘When can we talk to him?’
‘No time soon. Depends on him, basically. He needs to come
round.’
‘It’s very important. He’s got critical information.’
The doctor shook his head. ‘Could be days,’ he said. ‘Could
be never.’
They waited a long fruitless hour during which nothing
changed. Nendick just lay there inert, surrounded by beeping
machines. He breathed in and out, but that was all. So they gave
it up and left him there and drove back to the office in the dark
and the silence. Regrouped in the windowless conference room
and faced the next big decision.
‘Armstrong’s got to be told,’ Neagley said. ‘They’ve staged
their demonstration. No place to go now except stage the real
thing.’
Stuyvesant shook his head. ‘We never tell them. It’s a rigid
policy. Has been for a hundred and one years. We’re not going
to change it now.’
q’hen we should limit his exposure,’ Froelich said.
‘No,’ Stuyvesant said. Fhat’s an admission of defeat in itself,
and it’s a slippery slope. We pull out once, we’ll be pulling out
for ever, every single threat we get. And that must not happen.
What must happen is that we defend him to the best of our
ability. So we start planning, now. What are we defending
against? What do we know?’
q’hat two men are already dead,’ Froelich replied.
Fwo men and one woman,’ Reacher said. ‘LOok at the
statistics. Kidnapped is the same thing as dead, ninety-nine
times in a hundred.’
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he photographs were proof of life,’ Stuyvesant said.
‘Until the poor guy delivered. Which he did almost two weeks
ago.’
‘He’s still delivering. He’s not talking. So I’m going to keep on
hoping.’
Reacher said nothing.
‘Know anything about her?’ Neagley asked.
Stuyvesant shook his head. ‘Never met her. Don’t even know