Part 15 (2/2)

Kira considered. ”Maybe, but my intuition tells me no. I think he's just Moriarty's lieutenant.”

”Go on,” said Desh, pus.h.i.+ng his barely touched dessert to the side, having concluded that he couldn't split his focus between Kira Miller and the entrance and eat a dripping sundae at the same time.

”I knew as soon as Moriarty realized I'd discovered the fountain of youth he wouldn't rest until he had it,” continued Kira. ”Which meant I was in big trouble. I put the flash drive in a stainless steel pill bottle and buried it where I thought no one would ever find it. I memorized its GPS coordinates. And then I enhanced myself. I was panicked, and my thinking was scattershot, so even though I had just promised myself never to do it again, I felt I had no other choice.”

Desh nodded sympathetically. Under the circ.u.mstances he couldn't blame her.

”Once I had transformed myself,” she continued, ”it became clear what I needed to do. The instructions for reconstructing my therapies were dozens and dozens of typed pages long. To be absolutely certain that the secret was safe, even if I was under duress, I imprisoned my memories of the formulas and the GPS coordinates to the buried flash drive: even the memory of the general area in which it was buried. I part.i.tioned these memories behind an impenetrable mental wall.” She sighed. ”It wasn't easy.”

”I don't doubt it,” said Desh.

”Even enhanced, finding and isolated specific memory traces in my own mind was an extraordinarily difficult challenge.”

”But you were able to do it?”

”Yes. I structured these memories so I could only access them if I made a powerful, conscious decision that I wanted to. And like a Chinese finger trap, I set it up so the more I fought to get at the memories while under duress, the stronger the barrier would become.” She paused. ”As it turned out, I didn't do this a moment too soon.”

Desh leaned forward intently.

”A few hours later Larry Lusetti broke into my condo and took me hostage,” said Kira. ”He wanted the secret to extended life and told me he wasn't leaving without it. He used truth drugs on me. They were very effective. I told him about the discovery and why I hadn't shared it with the world. But when he asked about age r.e.t.a.r.dation, I told him I didn't remember the recipe.”

”Which was now absolutely true,” said Desh.

Kira nodded. She took a final bite of her sundae, her spoon clinking loudly against the sides of the tall parfait gla.s.s as she retrieved it, and pushed it aside. ”Unfortunately, I was unable to hold anything else back from him. Under the drugs I told him about the flash drive. I told him exactly how I had part.i.tioned the GPS coordinates in my memory so I couldn't retrieve them under duress. He dutifully reported this to Moriarty.”

”And did Moriarty believe you?”

”I a.s.sume so. If not, I think he would have had Lusetti use torture in addition to truth drugs, which he never did.” Kira paused as if bracing herself to continue, dreading the prospect.

Desh could sense something was very wrong. ”What happened then?” he prompted gently.

”I woke up the next morning, still a hostage.” She looked off into the distance and a tear slowly formed in the corner of one eye. ”And Lusetti told me they had my brother, Alan.”

Desh's eyes widened as the connections became obvious.

”Lusetti told me his boss was in Alan's home in Cincinnati,” she whispered in horror, ”and would burn my brother alive unless I gave him the secret.”

”Did you?” said Desh softly.

She looked pale as she shook her head no.

Desh realized he had asked a stupid question. If Moriarty already had the fountain of youth, he wouldn't be so desperate to capture her alive.

”I knew that Moriarty was a man without principles before his brain was rewired,” she explained somberly. ”But if he had the secret to extended life, he could become the biggest monster in history. What could stop him? He could enhance his intelligence and could use the promise of extended life to ama.s.s power beyond imagining. The kind of power that Smith accused me of wanting.”

Kira stopped and a single tear shook itself loose and rolled slowly down her cheek.

Moriarty had forced her to make an impossible decision, Desh realized. He could tell this had caused a deep rift to her psyche that would never heal. ”You knew the stakes, and you did what you had to do,” he said softly. ”I admire you for that.”

She shook her head as tears now welled up in both of her eyes. ”I wasn't a hero,” she said miserably. ”I was a weakling. I would have done anything to save Alan, even at the risk of unleas.h.i.+ng another Hitler on the world. I tried to unlock the memory with all of my might. But I couldn't,” she whispered. ”The barrier I had constructed was too good.” Kira lowered her eyes. ”It didn't matter, anyway. I knew in my heart that Moriarty would never let Alan go. Once I gave him what he wanted, he would kill Alan and me botha”and Lusetti as well. We would be dangerous loose ends.”

Desh realized her a.n.a.lysis was dead on. She had truly been in a no win situation. ”So what did you do?” he asked.

”I needed to buy time to rescue my brother. So I told Lusetti the truth. I told him I was trying but couldn't reach these memories. The software I had set up in my mind to guard them wasn't fooled. I explained I was under more duress because of the threat to my brother than if I was being physically tortured.”

”Did he believe you?”

”I think so,” she said, absently wiping a tear away with the back of her hand. ”I pleaded with him to make sure Moriarty wouldn't hurt Alan for twenty-four hours while I found a way to unlock my memories. He told me Moriarty agreed to this.”

”And then you killed Lusetti.”

She nodded. ”He untied me for a bathroom break right after the call with his boss. I knew I had the upper hand in any struggle. I knew he couldn't risk killing me before he had the fountain of youth. I was able to hit him with a marble bookend while he was trying to incapacitate me. I didn't want to kill him,” she insisted, her voice distraught. ”It just happened that way.”

Desh's eyes narrowed. ”So you rushed to Lusetti's apartment, hoping you could learn who was pulling his strings,” he said.

”That's right. I took his laptop and a file I found with my name on it and went straight to the airport. I took the first flight to Cincinnati, using one of the false ident.i.ties I already had in place. I studied the file and laptop on the plane, but neither contained Moriarty's ident.i.ty.”

Kira gathered herself. ”I'm sure you've guessed the rest by now,” she said. ”The plane landed and I raced to my brother's house. I was determined to do whatever it took to save his life.”

”But you were too late,” said Desh solemnly.

A tortured expression came over Kira's face and eyes. ”I was too late,” she repeated softly, shuddering. She picked up a napkin and wiped away several tears that had begun to roll their way slowly down her face. ”I had a special relations.h.i.+p with my brother Alan. He was five years older and always looked out for me. When other kids taunted me because I was different, or because I had skipped a few grades, he defended me. And then when my parents dieda””

Her voice broke. She paused and fought to get her emotions under control. ”Alan was in college then,” she said finally, her voice regaining strength. ”At Ohio State. He took a year off to stay with me to make sure I would be okay. I pleaded with him not to put his own life on hold for me, but he wouldn't hear of it. He didn't go back to finish his degree until I left for college myself.”

Desh nodded sympathetically and waited for her to continue, but her expression indicated she was emotionally spent and couldn't bear to talk about her brother any further.

”So once you realized you were too late to save him,” said Desh solemnly, ”you knew you had to vanish from the grid.”

She nodded.

”I am truly sorry,” he said softly.

Silence hung over them like a rain cloud for several long seconds.

”You killed Lusetti,” said Desh finally. ”But this was clearly in self defense. If what you say is true than you really haven't committed any crimes.”

She sighed. ”If you don't count illegal human experimentation and misappropriation of corporate resources.”

”I don't,” said Desh without hesitation.

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