Side Effects

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Fiction, Suspense, Mystery, Mystery & Detective - General, Fiction - Espionage, Thriller, Medical

SUMMARY:
Kate Bennet. A bright hospital pathologist with a loving husband and a solid future. Until one day her world turns dark. A strange, puzzling illness has killed two women. Now it endangers Kate's closest friend. Soon it will threaten Kate's marriage. Her sanity. Her life. Kate has uncovered a horrifying secret. Important people will stop at nothing to protect it. It is a terrifying medical discovery. And its roots lie in one of the greatest evils in the history of humankind.

SIDE EFFECTS [066-066-4.8]

By: MICHAEL PALMER

Category: Fiction Medical

Synopsis:

Kate Bennet. A bright hospital pathologist with a loving husband and a solid future. Until one day her world turns dark. A strange, puzzling illness has killed two women. Now it endangers Kate's close friend. Soon it will threaten Kate's marriage. Her sanity. Her life. Kate has uncovered a horrifying secret. Important people will stop at nothing to protect it. It is a terrifying medical discovery. And its roots lie in one of the greatest evils in the history of humankind.

Michael Palmer's Bestsellers

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SILENT TREATMENT

Michael Palmer has been a practicing physician for more than twenty years, most recently as an emergency-room doctor and a specialist in the treatment of alcoholism and chemical dependency. side effects

Michael Palmer

The characters, events, institutions, and organizations in this book are wholly fictional or are used fictitiously. Any apparent resemblance to any person alive or dead, to any actual events, and to any actual institutions or organizations, is entirely coincidental.

SIDE EFFECTS A Bantam Book

Bantam edition published April 1985

Bantam reissue/February 1995

All rights reserved.

Copyright (c) 7985 by Michael Palmer.

Cover an copyright (c) 1991 by Stephanie Gerber.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

For information address: Bantam Books.

If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as "unsold and destroyed" to the publisher and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this "stripped book.

ISBN 0-553-27618-2 Published simultaneously in the United States and Canada Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words "Bantam Books" and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Regis trada. Bantam Books, 1540

Broadway, New York, New York 10036.

0PM 23 22 21 20 19 18 17

To Jane Rotrosen Berkey, my agent, my friend, my muse; and, of course, to Danny and Matt Acknowledgment

A novel is hardly the sole endeavor many believe. I am both grateful and fortunate to have had Jeanne Bernkopf, my editor, and Linda Grey, editorial director at Bantam, in my writing life.

Mecklenburg, Germany August 1944

Willi Becker leaned against the coarse wood siding of the officers' club and squinted up at the late
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afternoon sun, a pale disk rendered nearly impotent by the dust from a hundred allied bombings of industrial targets surrounding the Ravensbriick concentration camp for women. He closed his eyes and for an instant thought he heard the drone of enemy planes somewhere to the south.

"Not a moment too soon, Dr. Becker," he muttered.

"You will be leaving this hellhole not a moment too soon."

He checked the chronometer his brother, Edwin, had sent him from "a grateful patient" in the Dachau camp.

Nearly fifteen-thirty. After months of the most meticulous preparations there were now only hours to go. He felt an electric excitement.

Across the dirt courtyard, clusters of prisoners, their shaved heads glistening, worked on bomb shelters, while their SS guards jockeyed for bits of shade beneath the overhangs of barracks. Becker recognized two of the women: a tall, awkward teenager named Eva and a feckless Russian who had encouraged him to call her Bunny. They were but two of the three dozen or so subjects whose examinations he was forced to omit in the interest of escape.

For a minute, Becker battled the urge to call the two scarecrow women over and tell them that fate had denied them their parts in the magnificent work that scholars and generations to come would hail as the start of the Beckerian population control. Beckerian. The word, though he spoke it daily, still had a thrilling ring. Newtonian physics, Shakespearean drama, Malthusian philosophy; upon so very few had human history bestowed such honor. In time, Becker was certain, this immortality would be his. After all, he was still six weeks shy of his thirtieth birthday, yet already acknowledged for his brilliance in the field of reproductive physiology.

Adjusting the collar on the gray-green SS uniform he was wearing for the last time, the tall, classically Nordic physician crossed the courtyard and headed toward the research buildings on the north edge of camp.

The Ravensbriick medical staff, once numbering more than fifty, had dwindled to a dozen. Himmler, bending to the cry for physicians in military hospitals, had suspended the experiments in gas gangrene and bone grafting, as well as those on battlefield cauterization of wounds using coals and acid. The doctors responsible for those programs had been transferred. Only the sterilization units remained, three of them in all, each devoted to the problem of eliminating the ability to procreate without impairing the ability to perform slave labor. Becker strode past the empty laboratories--another sign of the inevitable--and turned onto

"Griinestrasse," the tarmac track on which the officials and research facilities of his Green Unit were located. To the east, he could see the camouflage-painted chimney tops of the crematorium. A gentle west wind was bearing the fetid smoke and ash away from the camp.

Becker smiled thinly and nodded. The Mecklenburger Bucht, fifty kilometers of capricious Baltic Sea between Rostock and the Danish island fishing village of Gedser, would be calm. One less variable to be concerned about.

Becker was mentally working through the other incalculables when he glanced through the windows of his office. Dr. Franz Muller, his back turned, was inspecting the volumes in Decker's library. Becker tensed. A visit from Muller, the head of the Blue Unit and director of reproductive studies, was not unusual, but the man was considerate to a fault and almost always called ahead. Was M iiller's visit on this of all days a coincidence?

Becker paused by the doorway to his office and prepared for the cerebral swordplay at which the older man was such a master. He congratulated himself for holding back the documentation, however scant, of Blue Unit's deception.

M iiller's blade might be as quick as his own, but his own had poison on its tip. Muller, he felt certain, was a sham.

The Blue Unit work concerning the effect of ovarian irradiation on fertility looked promising on paper. However, Becker had good reason to believe that not one prisoner had actually been treated with radiation. The data were being falsified by Muller and his cohort, Josef Bendl.
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Whether they had gone so far as to assist prisoners in escaping, Becker was unsure, but he suspected as much.

His proof, though skimpy, would have been enough to discredit, if not destroy, both men. However, their destruction had never meant as much to him as their control.

In an effort to gain some tiny advantage, Becker opened the outside door silently and tiptoed up the three stairs to his office door. Not a sound. Not even the creak of a floorboard. Becker opened the door quickly. M iillei as perched on the corner of his desk, looking directly at him.

"Ah, Willi, my friend. Please excuse the brazenness of my intrusion. I was just passing by and remembered your mentioning that Fruhopfs Reproductive Physiology was among your holdings." First exchange to the master.

"It is good to see you, Franz. My library and laboratory are always yours, as I have told you many times." A perfunctory handshake, and Becker moved to his seat behind the desk. "Did you find it?"

"Pardon?"

"The Fruhopf. Did you find it?"

"Oh. Yes. Yes, I have it right here."

"Fine. Keep it as long as you wish."

"Thank you." Mfiller made no move to leave. Instead, he lowered himself into the chair opposite Becker and began packing his pipe from a worn leather pouch.

Not even the formality of a request to stay. Becker's wariness grew. Hidden by the desk, his long, manicured fingers undulated nervously. "Sweet?" he asked, sliding a dish of mints across the desktop. It was M filler's show, and M filler could make the initial move.

"Thank you, no." M filler grinned and patted his belly. "You heard about Paris?" Becker nodded. "No surprise. Except perhaps for the speed with which Patton did the job."

"I agree. The man is a devil." Mfiller ran his fingers through his thick, muddy blond hair. He was Becker's equal in height, perhaps an inch or so more, but he was built like a Kodiak bear. "And in the east the Russians come and come. We wipe out a division and two more take its place. I hear they are nearing the oil field at Ploesti."

"They are a barbarous people. For decades all they have done is rut about and multiply. What our armies cannot do to them, their own expanding population will eventually accomplish."

"Ah, yes," Mfiller said. "The theories of your sainted Thomas Malthus. Keep our panzers in abeyance, and let our enemies procreate themselves into submission."

Becker felt his hackles rise. Cynicism was the finest honed of M Oiler's strokes. An irritated, angry opponent left openings, made mistakes. Calm down, he urged himself.

Calm down and wait until the man declares himself. Could he know about the escape? The mere thought made the Green Unit leader queasy. "Now, Franz," he said evenly, "you know how much I enjoy discussing philosophy with you, especially Malthusian philosophy, but right now we have a war to win, yes?"

M filler's eyes narrowed. "Quatsch," he said.

"What?" "I said Quatsch, Willi. Absolute nonsense. First of all, we are not going to win any war. You know that as well as I do. Secondly, I do not believe you care. One way or the other." Becker stiffened. The bastard had found out. Somehow he had found out. He shifted his right hand slightly on his knee and gauged the distance to the Walther revolver in his top left drawer. "How can you impugn me in this way?" Miiller smiled and sank back in his chair. "You misunderstand me, Willi. What I am saying is a compliment to you as a scientist and philosopher. Surtout le travaille. Above all the work. Is that not how you feel? On second thought, I will have that sweet, if you please." Becker slid the dish across. Here he was, bewildered, apprehensive, and totally off balance, and still with no idea of the reason for M tiller's visit. Inwardly, and grudgingly, he smiled. The man was slick. A total bastard, but a slick one. "I believe in my research, if that is what you mean."