He brought up a window in his mind, navigated his file system. He’d saved the memories of that morning. He’d archived them. There. That was the folder. There were the files.

He pulled the memory up. Sensations engulfed him. He was back in that sweltering July day. Sweat beaded on his brow. Daydreaming as the President droned on. He wanted to yell at his old self, scream at his younger self to get up, to cry out about what was going to happen, but there was no going back, no way to stop it. The past was read-only.

He moved the slider along, fast-forwarded through his own memory, and there. The encrypted radio traffic. He’d craned his head. Spotted Travers, just another nameless Secret Service man to him then, and the awful intuition had come to him. In the memory he was up on his feet now. His heart was pounding, in the memory and in the present.

His past self was shouting now that that man had a gun. Holtzmann cranked down the play speed, and as he watched, Travers pulled the huge pistol out of his jacket in a long, slow motion, no expression on his face. It arced around at a quarter speed and snapped into place, perfectly steadily, and hung there as still as the man’s face for a fraction of a second. Then its muzzle flared and a huge boom filled Holtzmann’s ears. The muzzle of the gun jerked up, came down again in slow motion, and then its muzzle flared again and a second boom exploded in his ears. And only then did a twin blur slam into Travers and take him away. Throughout it all, the man’s expression never changed.

Holtzmann’s heart was pounding. Travers had fired calmly and coolly. He’d fired before he was hit. And his expression never betrayed a single flinch, a single hesitation. And why should it? The man had been turned into a Nexus robot, after all. His arm was controlled by software, not human instinct. His aim was controlled by software.

So why had he missed?

Nakamura’s voice answered him. “To find the cause of an event… who had the most to gain?”

There was a hand on Holtzmann’s chest. Anne was shaking him. “Martin. Martin. You were screaming. Are you OK? Another nightmare?”

Holtzmann opened his eyes, looked over at his wife. And now he was terribly afraid, not just for himself, but for her as well.

“A nightmare,” he said. “A nightmare.”

Anne Holtzmann rolled back over in the bed she shared with her husband, troubled. What was wrong with Martin? Why was he acting so strangely?

She lay there, thinking, finding no answers, until she heard his breath change as he fell back into sleep. Then sleep took her as well.

Chapter 32: Separation Anxiety

32

SEPARATION ANXIETY

Saturday October 27th