The Key to Midnight

sent off to Rotenhausen… for the treatments.'
        His account of the events in Jamaica did not stir even the shadow of a memory in her, although she knew he must be telling the truth. 'But why did Lisa's entire life have to be eradicated? Why couldn't Rotenhausen just remove all memories about what she… about what I overheard… and leave the rest untouched?'
        Chelgrin spat blood again, more and darker than previously. 'It's comparatively easy… for Rotenhausen to scour away… large blocks of memory. Far more difficult… to reach into a mind… and pinch off just a few… selected pieces. He refused to guarantee the results… unless he was permitted to erase all of Lisa… and create an entirely new person. You were put in Japan… because you knew the language… and because they felt it was unlikely… that anyone there would spot you and realize you were Lisa.'
        'Dear God,' Joanna said shakily.
        'I had no choice.'
        'You could have refused. You could have broken with them.'
        'They would've killed you.'
        'Would you have worked for them after they killed me?'
        'No!'
        'Then they would never have touched me,' she said. 'They wouldn't have had anything to gain.'
        'But I couldn't… couldn't go up against them,' Chelgrin said weakly, miserably. 'The only way I could've gotten free… was go to the FBI… expose myself. I'd have been jailed… treated like a spy. I would've lost everything… my businesses, investments, all the houses… the cars… everything… everything.'
        'Not everything,' Joanna said.
        He blinked at her, uncomprehending.
        'You wouldn't have lost your daughter,' she said.
        'You're not… not even… trying to understand.' He sighed as if in frustration, and the sigh ended in a wet rattle.
        'I understand too well,' she said. 'You went from one extreme to the other. There wasn't room for humanity in either position.'
        He didn't reply.
        He was dead. For real this time.
        She stared at him, thinking about what might have been. Perhaps there never could have been anything between them. Perhaps the only Tom Chelgrin who could have been a decent father was the one who had never left Vietnam, the one whose charred bones were still buried in a deep, unmarked grave.
        At last she got up from beside the dead senator and returned to the ground-floor hallway.
        Alex was there, coming toward her. He called her name, and she ran to him.

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    83
        
        As if the bodies littering the house were of little concern, Peterson insisted on a cognac. He led Alex and Joanna to the third floor, into the library where Alex had found the pistol. They sat in the red leather chairs while the fat man poured double measures of Remy Martin from a crystal decanter. He sat in a chair opposite them, nearly overflowing it, and clasped the brandy snifter in both thick hands, warming the Remy with his body heat.
        'A little toast,' Peterson said. He lifted his glass. 'Here's to living.'
        Alex and Joanna didn't bother to raise their glasses. They just drank the cognac - fast. Alex hissed in pain as the Remy stung his cut lips, but he still took a second swallow.
        Peterson savored the Remy and smiled contentedly.
        'Who are you?' Joanna asked.
        'I'm from Maryland, dear. I'm in real estate there.'
        'If you're trying to be funny-'
        'It's true,' said Peterson. 'But of course I'm more than just a realtor.'
        'Of course.'
        'I'm also a Russian.'
        'Isn't everyone?'
        'My name was once Anton Broskov. Oh, you should have seen me in those days of my youth. Very dashing. I was so thin and fit, my dear. Positively svelte. I started getting fat the day that I was sent to the States from Vietnam, the day I began impersonating Anson Peterson in front of his friends and relatives. Eating became my way of coping with the terrible pressures.'
        Joanna finished her cognac. 'The senator told me about the Mirror group before he died. You're one of them?'
        'There were twelve of us,' Peterson said. 'They made us into mirror images of American prisoners of war, Alex. Sent us home in their place. They transformed us - not unlike the way in which this dear lady was transformed.'
        'Bullshit,' Alex said angrily. 'You didn't endure pain like she endured. You weren't raped. You always knew who you really were and