Miracle Cure (45 page)

“Just lie still, fella,” the EMT said. “We’re going to carry you down.”

“There’ll be guns on you every inch of the way, Holbrook,” the Secret Service agent warned.

Brian blinked up at the rain falling through the huge hole in the stained glass.

“I hear you,” he murmured.

The men lashed him to the board, lowered him down, and placed him on a hospital stretcher. The amphitheater was largely empty now. Two doctors and two nurses from the ER immediately began working on him. One of the nurses bent down beside him.

“Brian, it’s Sherry,” his friend from Suburban said. “Sherry Gordon.”

“Hey.”

“Don’t try to speak. I just want you to know that Dr. Jessup’s in the ER. She’s been shot a couple of times, but she’s conscious. She’s been asking about you. The surgeons say she’ll make it. They’re taking her to the OR now.”

Thank you
, Brian mouthed.

A uniformed policeman replaced the Secret Service
agent and handcuffed one of Brian’s wrists to the safety rail of the stretcher.

“You don’t have to do that,” Sherry said.

“You do your job and let me do mine,” the officer replied.

Moments later, Sherry moved aside to make room for Laj Randa. The Sikh, splendid in a dark suit and orange turban, listened to Brian’s chest, then gently squeezed his hand.

“I believe your right lung has collapsed,” he said. “I will accompany you down to the ER and put a tube in. Then we will see what else needs to be done. You picked a hell of a way to demonstrate you have come over to my way of thinking about Vasclear,” he said.

“Believe me, I have.”

They started moving the stretcher away, then stopped.

“Can I speak with him?” he heard a familiar male voice say.

“Just for a few seconds, Senator,” the policeman replied. “No more than that. And stay on this side of the stretcher. This man’s wanted for murder.”

“I know.”

Walter Louderman’s face appeared above Brian. It was flushed with concern.

“What about those films, Holbrook?” he asked. “Why are you doing this to me?”

Brian did his best to smile, aware of his missing front tooth. He reached up a bloodied hand and patted the senator on the sleeve. His voice was hoarse and strained.

“You won’t be upset with me for long,” he said.

O
NE
W
EEK
L
ATER

A
SERIES OF THUNDER SQUALLS HAD LEFT
M
IAMI
I
NTERNATIONAL
Airport even busier than usual. Art Weber was irritated about the delay in his flight to Bogotá, but he was equally grateful for the milling crowds. Anything to stay inconspicuous. That was the reason he was flying coach.

The moment Leon Kulrushtin’s body had come exploding through that stained-glass dome, landing like a sack of cement on the amphitheater seats, Weber knew that his own plans for the future and life as he had come to know it were over. In fact, if he failed to act quickly and decisively, his life might be over in a much more literal sense. In the confusion and panic, he had slipped out of the amphitheater and hurried directly to a studio apartment he had been keeping in Cambridge, across the river from his Back Bay penthouse.

He used the apartment sparingly, usually for exotic sex with women he bought through high-priced escort services.
But in the main, the place was his hedge against just the sort of disaster that Brian Holbrook had brought down upon him. It contained clothes, luggage, three passports with corroborating IDs, several handguns, and $100,000 in twenties and fifties. He had skimmed off more than three million from Newbury Pharmaceuticals over the years of their association, but that money was already in a Grand Cayman bank.

Weber figured he had several days to put as much distance between himself and the Chechens as possible, while they were scrambling to distance themselves from the authorities. After that, the search for him would be on. Favors would be called in. Rewards would be offered. Bribes would be paid. In the years since the collapse of the USSR, the loosely connected Chechen mob had spread over much of the U.S. And they seldom went after anyone they didn’t ultimately get. But they had never gone after a man as resourceful and intelligent as Art Weber.

Planning was the key. Long before he needed it, Weber had mapped his route to Colombia and had begun funneling money to men who would help him disappear for as long as he felt necessary. Now, as he stood in the line to check his baggage, he congratulated himself on his quick action and the flawless design of his escape. In less than five hours, he would be heading out of Bogotá toward the jungle.

A suitcase nudged him in the back of the leg.

“Perdone usted, señor,”
the embarrassed young woman behind him said.

Weber turned. She was in her early to mid-twenties, dressed in the white pleated blouse and colorful skirt of a peasant, and she was absolutely ravishing—copper skin, thick jet hair, wide dark eyes, and a body that made his mouth go dry.

“Please, think nothing of it,” he replied in near-perfect Spanish. “Are you going to Bogotá?”

Before she had even responded to the question, Weber had mentally undressed her.

“It is my home,” she said, somewhat shyly.

“And it is about to be mine,” he said, forcing his eyes from the cleft between her magnificent breasts. “My business will be keeping me there for many months.”

“Your Spanish is excellent.”

Her name was Rosalita and she was returning home from visiting her sister in Miami. By the time Weber had checked his bags, she had agreed to take the seat next to his on the flight. He stood by as she checked her tattered canvas suitcase. Before they touched down in Bogotá, she would be resting her head on his shoulder, her hands wrapped tightly around his. And by tonight …?

There was still over an hour to kill before the flight. The woman was his now—a reward for his thoroughness. Fifty million and Carolyn Jessup in Boston, or three million and this incredible jewel in the tropics. The choice, had it been his to make, would have been a tough one. He suggested a drink and took her arm as they found an out-of-the-way bar. A booth was vacant in the most dimly lit corner of the wood-and-leather room. Weber couldn’t take his gaze from her breasts and was now considering the giddy notion that she might even be a virgin—clay for him to mold.

They talked for a time about nothing in particular. Weber tried unsuccessfully to keep his hands off her. Finally, he put his arm around her narrow waist and was ecstatic when she let it stay there.

“You really are very beautiful,” he whispered.

“And you are very handsome and very persuasive.”

She turned fully to him. Her scent was intoxicating. Her breast, now pressing against him, was as firm as a
teenager’s. Her eyes widened. Her lips beckoned. Weber glanced furtively around to see if it would be too outrageous to kiss her. None of the few patrons in the place was paying the slightest attention to them. He pulled her toward him and set his mouth against hers. Her lips parted and her tongue sought his.

By the time Weber felt the pain beneath his ribs and realized she had stabbed him, the eight-inch stiletto was through his diaphragm and well into his heart. The woman twisted the blade expertly to enlarge the hole, while she pulled his mouth so tightly against hers that it was impossible for him even to speak. Then she released him, positioning his body to remain seated. Finally, she knelt on the seat beside him, put her lips to Weber’s ear and one hand on his groin.

“No hard feelings,” she said.

O
NE
M
ONTH
L
ATER

T
HE
F
OOD AND
D
RUG
A
DMINISTRATION HEADQUARTERS
was a massive thirteen-story structure, gray and grim, sprawling over a two-block square in Rockville, Maryland. Beneath a cloudless November sky, Brian parked his rental car and entered the Parklawn Building.

It was time to face Teri. Still conscious of his limp, Brian crossed to the guard in the main lobby and was directed to her fourth-floor office. He could tell when he had spoken to her by phone that she was bewildered by his request to meet in her office and not at her home or someplace else away from work. But she certainly had to know things had changed. Except for a brief conversation when she called the day after his emergency surgery, they had not spoken. He hadn’t phoned her since then, nor had he accepted any of her calls.

He left the elevator and entered a modest reception area serving a dozen offices. While the FDA might be
guilty of inefficiency, he thought, as he checked in with the receptionist, no one could ever accuse them of overspending on their physical plant. He settled into a threadbare Danish-modern chair, ran his tongue over the bridge that held his temporary front tooth in place, and thought about what he was going to say to her.

You’re the most exciting lover I have ever been with and probably ever will be with
. That would be the truth, but that was not what Teri was going to hear today. The receptionist called him over and pointed toward an office door indistinguishable from any of the others except for the
T. Sennstrom, M.D., Ph.D
. stenciled on it. Brian knocked once and stepped inside.

The office was small, perhaps twelve feet square. The walls were lined with gunmetal-gray steel shelves, filled to overflowing with manuscripts, texts, and journals. Teri had chosen to greet him from behind her government-issue desk, but extended her hand across it to him, and he took it. She was wearing a black straight skirt and lavender blouse—a simple outfit that on her looked sensational. Brian took the chair directly across the desk. This conversation was not going to be easy, but he wanted to do it right.

“You look good,” Teri said. “Being cleared of murder charges agrees with you.”

“Thanks. My nose is finally approaching its former size, although I think it will never be its former shape. You look pretty fine yourself.”

“I was upset that you never returned any of my calls.”

“I know. Phoebe started coming to see me every day in the hospital. I spent a couple of days recuperating at her house. We’ve … we’ve started talking about getting back together.”

“Oh? That’s why you never called me?”

Brian hesitated but forced himself to maintain eye contact with her.

“Actually, no,” he said. “That’s not why. Some things have been bothering me, Teri—bothering me a lot. I wanted to share them with you to see what your take on them might be.”

She looked at him queerly, coldly.

“Go ahead,” she said.

“Well, when he thought I was never going to leave his little dungeon in the hospital alive, Art Weber assured me that my phone line had not been tapped. I’m certain he was telling the truth.”

“So?”

“So, his man, Leon, and another guy were waiting for me in New York State. Fulbrook. If my phone wasn’t tapped, how did they know where I was going?”

“Maybe they followed you.”

“I don’t believe so, Teri. I thought and thought about who I might have told about the trip. You were the only one.”

“That’s nonsense,” she said, but her color had drained.

“I don’t think so. You see, there’s more. There was a nice old guy named Elovitz. Bill Elovitz. He survived the death camps in Nazi Germany but he couldn’t survive the folks at Newbury Pharmaceuticals. He was killed because I thought he had pulmonary hypertension. But how did they know about his PH almost as soon as I did? I’ll tell you how, Teri. I told you, and you told them.”

“But—”

“And then Art Weber shows up at just the moment Carolyn Jessup had agreed to help me. She’s certain she wasn’t followed home from the hospital. I searched my memory for who could have known I was going to her house. There were only two. One was my NA sponsor,
who would walk into the fire for me. The other was you. Teri, how much was Weber paying you to spy for him?”

“Brian, please. This is ridiculous!”

“No. I’m afraid it isn’t. I’ve gone over the facts a hundred times. You were on Weber’s payroll.”

Her eyes glazed over with tears.

“I had no idea what was going on. You have to believe that. Weber was paying me simply to pass on information. That’s all. I didn’t know what they were doing with it. I had no reason to believe there was anything wrong with Vasclear until … until you began reporting things to me. By the time I realized what kind of a person Weber was, he had videos of … of me accepting money. I was frightened. I didn’t know what to do.”

Brian shook his head.

“People died because of you.”

As quickly as the tears had formed, they were gone. Teri Sennstrom lifted her chin.

“How dare you lay that kind of guilt trip on me,” she snapped. “I didn’t kill anyone. In fact, I didn’t even do anything that illegal. You know, I work my ass off in this job for lousy civil service pay. I made more from Art Weber in a few months than I’ve earned in my entire career here. I
deserved
that money.”

“I’m going to tell Dr. Baird what I know,” Brian said.

“You bastard! Go ahead. You tell him, and I’ll deny it. He loves me. He knows the kind of work I do. Go ahead.”

Brian sighed. The face he had fantasized about, dreamed about so many nights, was pinched and ugly with anger.

“Actually,” he said wearily, “it’s not going to be your word against mine, Teri. It’s going to be your word against yours.”

He stood and opened the door. Then he turned back
to her, unzipped his leather bomber jacket, and showed her the tape recorder he had strapped onto the lining.

“This is closure for that patient of mine who got gunned down,” he said with no joy, “and for my father, and especially for me.”

Teri shrieked at him loudly enough to bring the receptionist running. But Brian merely strode past the woman to the stairs. Teri’s invectives were still echoing through the reception area when the stairwell door closed behind him.