The Worst Thing Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Other titles by Aaron Elkins

  Gideon Oliver Novels

  SKULL DUGGERY*

  UNEASY RELATIONS*

  LITTLE TINY TEETH*

  UNNATURAL SELECTION*

  WHERE THERE’S A WILL*

  GOOD BLOOD*

  SKELETON DANCE

  TWENTY BLUE DEVILS

  DEAD MEN’S HEARTS

  MAKE NO BONES

  ICY CLUTCHES

  CURSES!

  OLD BONES*

  MURDER IN THE QUEEN’S ARMES*

  THE DARK PLACE*

  FELLOWSHIP OF FEAR*

  Chris Norgren Novels

  OLD SCORES

  A GLANCING LIGHT

  DECEPTIVE CLARITY

  Lee Ofsted Novels (with Charlotte Elkins)

  ON THE FRINGE

  WHERE HAVE ALL THE BIRDIES GONE?

  NASTY BREAKS

  ROTTEN LIES

  A WICKED SLICE

  Thrillers

  TURNCOAT

  LOOT

  THE WORST THING*

  *Available from Berkley Prime Crime

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Copyright © 2011 by Aaron Elkins.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  BERKLEY® PRIME CRIME and the PRIME CRIME logo are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Elkins, Aaron.

  The worst thing / Aaron Elkins.

  p. cm.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-51492-4

  1. Hostages—Fiction. 2. Hostage negotiations—Fiction. 3. Crisis management—Fiction. 4. Business enterprises—Security measures—Fiction. 5. Psychological fiction. I. Title.

  PS3555.L48W67 2011

  813’.54—dc20

  2010050228

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  Acknowledgments

  It is a pleasure to acknowledge my debt to two eminent psychologists:• The groundbreaking research of Dr. Elizabeth F. Loftus (Distinguished Professor of Social Ecology, and Professor of Law and Cognitive Science, University of California, Irvine) was the basis for key elements in the story. In addition, Dr. Loftus kindly reviewed and critiqued sections of the manuscript.

  • Dr. John E. Carr (Professor Emeritus, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and Psychology, University of Washington) helped me through problems of my own that were similar to (but not nearly as exciting as) the ones that Bryan Bennett runs into in the following pages, and provided many insights into the nature of panic.

  In Iceland, Chief Superintendent Hördur Johannesson of the Reykjavik Police Department generously took the time to explain many aspects of Icelandic police procedure.

  I also owe a good deal to the experiences and expertise of others as described in a number of books, chief among them:• Kidnap, Hijack, and Extortion, by Richard Clutterbuck

  • Terrorism and Personal Protection, edited by Brian Jenkins

  • Surviving the Long Night, by Geoffrey Jackson

  • Winter of Fire, by Richard Oliver Collen and Gordon L. Freedman

  In addition, the members of tAPir (the Anxiety Panic internet resource group) helped me to explore the question: How do you think you would react if you were actually confronted with the situation that terrifies you more than any other—The Worst Thing you can imagine? Thanks for all the scary insights!

  Chapter 1

  The food had been wonderful, the wines had been excellent, and the crème brûlée was slipping down our throats like nectar from Valhalla. Wally, Lori, and I were all feeling relaxed, happy, and expansive. I knew it couldn’t last, and it didn’t.

  Wally slid his unfinished dessert to one side and leaned earnestly forward. “Bryan, I have a proposition for you that I think you’re going to love—that you’re both going to love.”

  Well, that was when the alarm bells really started jangling. Actually, they’d been jingling quietly in the background ever since he’d offhandedly invited Lori and me to dinner at Café Campagne at Seattle’s Pike Place Market. The ostensible reason was to celebrate our tenth wedding anniversary, February 23, 2010, but I knew Wally well enough to know that very little that he ever did was offhanded. There was always something behind it, and that’s what had me worried.

  It’s not that I don’t trust him, you understand. I do trust him. Sort of. Most of the time. I even like him most of the time. He’s intelligent, quick-witted, and fun to joust with. That said, this is a guy you have to watch your step with.

  “Somehow, I doubt it,” I said.

  “Now you just let me speak my piece before you say no,” Wally said, reaching out to squeeze my shoulder encouragingly. The alarm bells got louder. “Just hear me out, that’s all I ask.”

  “That sounds fair,” I agreed, getting back to my crème brûlée. “Okay, I’ll hear you out. Then I’ll say no.”

  Wally laughed and winked at Lori. “Listen to him. You’
d think I wanted something from him instead of offering him an assignment that anybody else would kill for.”

  Now, there was Wally in a nutshell, going out of his way to pretend that he was conning the hell out of you in order—he thought—to disguise the fact that he was in fact conning the hell out of you. You’d think it wouldn’t work, but apparently it did. Wallace North, executive director of the Odysseus Institute for Crisis Management and Executive Security, had been a great success in doing what the board had hired him to do, which was to bring in more outside income. Wally is also my boss; I’ve been a research fellow at the institute for over nine years now, hard as that is to believe sometimes.

  For seven of those nine years, the director had been the estimable Laura Hyzy, she of the unpronounceable name, a woman whose approach to life was very much in sync with my own. She’d been a social psychologist, a quiet, modest scholar, constitutionally averse to artifice and publicity. Her replacement, Wally, who had come out of the public relations department of a giant media conglomerate, lived for such things. I understood that Odysseus was in dire need of someone with Wally’s skills, but I was having a hard time getting used to his style.

  “How,” he said, subjecting us to his most engaging and confident grin, “would the two of you like to spend a week in Iceland? The best hotel in Reykjavik?”

  It was spoken in the same tone in which he might have said, “How would you like to spend a month in the South of France?” and it made me burst out laughing.

  “A week in Iceland? In February? That’s a deal that anyone would kill for?”

  “In March, actually.”

  “Oh, in March, well, that’s different. We’ll be sure to pack our bathing suits and suntan lotion. Thanks all the same, Wally, but—”

  But Lori was intrigued. “Why Iceland,” she asked, “of all places?”

  The check had come, and Wally paused to fish out a credit card and hand it to the waiter before he answered. “Because that’s where GlobalSeas is, and they specifically asked for Bryan. Demanded him.”

  “GlobalSeas,” Lori echoed, frowning. “Do you mean the fisheries company? The one that does all that research?”

  “That’s them. They’re all over the world, of course, but their headquarters are in Reykjavik.”

  “And they specifically want Bryan?”

  “Demanded him. The CEO himself, Baldursson. Bryan or no one. You’re the deal-breaker, kid,” he said to me.

  “Demanded me for what?” Okay, I was curious; no harm in that. I wanted to know. Not that there was a ghost of a chance that I would take him up on it. I wasn’t flying to Iceland. I wasn’t flying anywhere.

  “They want our corporate-level kidnapping and extortion seminar,” Wally said.

  “Well, then, how about Sandy Sechrest? She knows it inside out. She’s done it a dozen times.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “And Sandy’s a terrific trainer. People connect with her. Don’t let the gray hair fool you; she’s a little dynamo.”

  “Yes, I know, but—”

  “And she’s from Wisconsin. She’ll be right at home in Iceland.”

  Wally sighed. “I am aware of all that, Bryan, but, you see, she didn’t write the program, you did. The thing is, GlobalSeas has had a little trouble in the past, and they want the expert himself, the man who created it. Face it, Bryan, you’re our heavy hitter in this field.”

  “Well, that’s flattering, but it’s not in my job description. Creating programs is what I do. I don’t put them on. Read my contract.”

  “I know that, Bryan. I’m asking you as a favor. A relationship with a company like this would mean a lot to us. Fisheries are a huge industry nowadays, and we don’t have one single client in the business. Besides, these folks are counting on us—on you.”

  “Wally, honestly, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but it’s out of the question. Forget it. I’m not going. No. N-O. Period.” I laid my napkin on the table. “Look, thanks for a great dinner. This was—”

  “Tell me, Lori,” Wally said. “Why is it so hard to get a straight answer out of this man? Why won’t he just up and say what he thinks? Is he always this mealymouthed, even at home?”

  Lori laughed, hesitated, and said: “How come I got invited to go along? That seems a bit extravagant.”

  Wally saw what he thought was an opening and pounced. “That’s the result of my famed negotiating prowess. No, look, the truth is, they really want Bryan, they need Bryan, but they realize Iceland isn’t exactly everybody’s cup of tea—”

  “Really?” I said. “I was under the impression people would kill for it. I may have been misinformed.”

  “—so they’ve been very generous with their offer. Not only would you get to go with him, sweetie, but they’d fly the two of you first class, put you up in a posh suite at the Hilton, give you a car to tool around in and, of course, a no-holds-barred expense account. And Bryan would be training only five days, Monday through Friday—four-and-a-half, really, since it starts with lunch Monday—and we’ll throw in the weekend after, assuming you want it, for him to rest up from his mighty labors. Hell, we’ll throw in the weekend before too. Lots to see there, they tell me—glaciers, waterfalls, geysers, huge thermal baths. And Reykjavik’s supposed to be a great town. Great restaurants, great nightlife. You’ll have fun!” He finally took a breath. “Now somebody tell me, what am I missing? Is there something not to like here?”

  Lori’s warm, hazel eyes flickered down to the table. “Well, I was just asking. If Bryan’s not going, there’s really no point in talking about it.”

  “Bryan’s not going,” I said.

  Wally shrugged in apparently affable defeat. The credit card bill had been placed before him and he signed without a glance, with his usual flourish. (This was on the institute, of course, and he was as good at spending their money as bringing it in.) “Well, I did my best. Look, Bryan, if you can possibly see your way to changing your mind, it’d really get me out of a bind. Think it over.”

  “Sorry, Wally.”

  A final no-hard-feelings shoulder clasp for me and a friendly, smiling shrug to Lori. “Hope I haven’t created any discord between my two favorite people.”

  “LIKE hell he does,” I grumbled, flicking on the headlights and starting the car out of the parking garage and on its way to the I-5. I got the windshield wipers going too, almost automatically; standard practice on a February night in Seattle.

  “Bryan, he doesn’t know about—you know . . .” Lori placed her hand gently on my thigh. “And it doesn’t matter anyway. Really.”

  But there was a resignation in the way she said it, an unvoiced sigh that burned my heart. Besides, I hadn’t failed to notice her expression earlier, when she’d told Wally, “I was just asking.” I covered her hand with mine. “He knows,” I said, after a long, silent interval. “He may not know about the . . . the worst of it . . . but hell, he knows how I feel about actually doing training. He knows how I am about flying. God.”

  “But he doesn’t know why,” she said softly.

  The windshield wipers whished back and forth—beat, beat—before I answered. “No, he doesn’t know why.”

  “Anyway,” she said, “there’s not much point in talking about it, is there? It doesn’t matter.” This time the sigh was audible. She stared out the window into the wet night.

  “But he does know you’d love the chance to see some of what GlobalSeas is doing up there,” I said after a few more strokes of the wiper blades. “Why else do you think he waited for tonight, when you were with me, to bring it up?”

  She looked at me. “Why would he be so sure I’d be interested in GlobalSeas?”

  “Because he knows you’re a marine ecologist. He knows you’re a consultant to the aquarium; he knows you’ve written about aquaculture and sustainable marine harvesting and that kind of thing.”

  “How would he know that? I never—”

  “Trust me, he knows. He also knows you’ve got a couple of we
eks’ vacation coming. Wally does his research on things like that.”

  “Well, even so, it doesn’t necessarily mean I’m dying to see GlobalSeas.”

  We were on the Woodinville-Redmond Road now, on the other side of Lake Washington, out in the sticks well east of Seattle, heading south toward home. “Aren’t you?” I asked.

  There was a long moment’s silence. “Not dying, no.”

  “But you’d like to see it.”

  Another pause. “Well, naturally, but so what? There are a lot of things I’d like to do. Ah, well.” She gave me a big smile, took her hand from my thigh and went back to looking out into the darkness. “Bryan, honestly, it doesn’t matter.”

  But I was unable to let it alone. “There’s nothing stopping you from going by yourself, babe. I wouldn’t mind, you know that. We can afford it.”

  “I don’t want to go by myself. I want to go with my husband.” She turned suddenly toward me. “Oh, Bryan, I want the fun of . . . of . . .”

  “Lori . . . honey . . . if I could do something about it I would, believe me.”

  I barely heard her murmured reply, delivered to the dark windshield beside her. “Would you?”

  Chapter 2

  Would I?

  Even at the best of times I’m not much of a sleeper, and when something is worrying at me I’ll toss for hours until restlessness, discontent, or plain boredom drives me from bed into my study to read or to work, or, if the weather isn’t too bad, out onto the back deck of the house, where the fresh scents and the hollow, hooting night sounds from the lake—geese, ducks, an occasional owl on its midnight hunt—generally soothe me back to sleepiness, or at least makes being awake tolerable.