The Prodigal Son (2 page)

The meal was fantastic. Iranian caviar and trimmings was followed by the closest Davina could get to a fatted calf, she explained: roast milk-fed veal, lean, pink and juicy, with perfectly cooked vegetables, and an amazing cake for dessert. John ate well — he couldn’t resist such delicious fare.

As they rose from the table Davina sprang another surprise with another crystalline tattoo on a glass.

“Gentlemen, to Max’s study for coffee, after-dinner drinks and cigars!” she cried. “Ladies, to the drawing room!”

And finally, in a kind of foyer that ran between the dining room and Max’s study, John managed to waylay Jim Hunter.

“Do you believe this?” he asked, moving to one side of the traffic flow, six men fleeing from that awful woman.

Jim rolled his eyes, an almost scary expanse of stark white in such a black face. “It’s typical Davina,” he said. “I know the Tunbulls well after this past year and more putting
A Helical God
to press. But we’ll have plenty of time for me to tell you about that now you’re in Holloman.”

“It was terrific to reminisce last night when I found you at home,” John said. His eyes, returned to blue, rested fondly on Jim’s face. “You look great, Jim. No one would ever recognize you for the old Gorilla Hunter.”

“For which I have you to thank. I can pay you back for my operation at last, old friend.”

“Don’t even try!” John frowned. “Millie’s still too thin.”

“That’s her nature, she’s an ectomorph.” The big, luminous green eyes, so strange in Jim Hunter’s darkness, swam with tears. “God, it is good to see you! Over six years!”

John hugged him hard, a strong yet manly embrace that Jim resisted, then, emerging, saw Dr. Al Markoff look at his watch.

“Another hour, and I’ll be able to grab my wife and split. Davina’s hard to take tonight,” Markoff said, leading the way. “Long lost sons crawling out of the woodwork aren’t in her line, no offense, John, but the forestry background makes it an ideal metaphor.” He glanced at his watch again. “Not bad, not bad. It’s just ten-thirty. Muse and I will be sawing
wood
in less than an hour, ha ha ha. Punsters can’t help themselves, John.”

A little to John’s surprise (though his ego wasn’t bruised), Max put Jim Hunter in what was clearly the place of honor in his study: a big, padded, crimson leather wing chair. The whole room was crimson leather, gilt-adorned books, walnut furniture and leaded windows. Artificial. Davina, he would have been prepared to bet.

He drew up a straight chair in front of but to one side of Jim’s wing chair, hardly curious about Jim’s significance: it would all come out in time, and he had loads of time. Max had gone into a huddle with Val and Ivan, each flourishing a large
cigar and a snifter of XO cognac; the Tunbulls don’t skimp on life’s little niceties, he thought, and they love to huddle. Dr. Al drew up another straight chair on Jim’s other side, and the den settled into two separate conversations.

“Are you the Tunbull family physician, Al?” John asked.

“Lord, no! I’m a pathologist specializing in hematology,” Markoff said affably, “which won’t mean any more to you than Douglas fir does to me. Now Jim’s DNA I find fascinating.”

“Is this yours and Muse’s first child?” he pressed.

Markoff guffawed. “I wish! This, my bachelor friend, is the forties accident. We have two boys in their teens, but Muse is too scatty to throw geniuses, so they’re horribly ordinary.”

“I think you’d be a pretty cool father,” John said, enjoying the man’s easygoing humor as he expanded on the theme of the accidental forties pregnancy; while he talked, John almost forgot what he suspected was going on between Max, Val and Ivan: the non-depletion of Ivan’s share of the family business and estate.

He felt suddenly very tired. The meal had been long and his wine glass refilled too often, something he disliked. To gird up his loins for this meeting had taken courage, for there was much of his mother in John Hall, who shrank from confrontations. After Jim and Dr. Al moved on to nucleic acids he managed a surreptitious peek at his watch: 11 p.m. They had been in the study for a half hour, which meant, according to Dr. Al, another half hour to go before he stood any chance of escaping. Max was gazing across at him with real love and
concern, but how could he get to first base with a father shackled to a harpy like Davina? She would be rooting for baby Alexis, and why not?

Sweat was stinging his eyes; funny, he hadn’t noticed until now how hot the room was. Rather clumsily he groped in his trousers side pocket for his handkerchief, found it, yet couldn’t seem to pull it out.

“Hot,” he mumbled, running a finger around the inside of his collar. The handkerchief finally came free; he held it to his brow and mopped. “Anyone else hot?” he asked.

“Some,” said Jim, taking John’s brandy snifter from him. “It’s the end of the evening, why not take off your tie? No one will mind, I’m sure.”

“Of course take it off, John,” said Max, moving to the dial of the thermostat; the response of cooler air was immediate.

His lips felt numb; he licked at them. “Numb,” he said.

Jim had taken the tie off, loosened the collar. “Better?”

“Not — really,” he managed.

He couldn’t seem to draw air into his lungs properly, and gasped. Sweet cool air flooded in; he gasped again, but this time it was harder to suck in a breath. He swayed on the chair.

“Get him on the floor, guys,” he heard Dr. Al say, then felt himself laid prone, a loosely rolled coat behind his head. Markoff was ripping open the buttons on his shirt and barking at someone: “Call an ambulance — resuscitation emergency. Max, tell Muse to give you my bag.”

Nauseated, he retched, tried to vomit, but nothing came up, and now he just felt sick, didn’t have the strength to retch. His teeth chattered, he was appalled to find his whole body invaded by a fine tremor. Then came an almighty, convulsive jerk, as if it were happening to someone else — why was he so aware of everything that was going on? Not in a disembodied way — that he could have borne, to hover looking down on himself. But still to be inside himself going through it was
awful
!

All that became as nothing compared to his struggle to breathe, an ever-increasing impossibility that flung him into a terror he had no way to show beyond the look in his eyes. I am dying, but I can’t tell them! They don’t know, they’ll let me die! I need air, I need air! Air! Air!

“Heartbeat’s weak rather than suspiciously irregular, it isn’t a primary cardiac catastrophe,” Dr. Al was saying, “but his airway is still patent. Shouldn’t have this gear with me, except that I borrowed it for a refresher course in emergency medicine … Gotta keep up with the times … I’ll intubate and bag breathe.”

And while he talked he worked, one of those odd people who like to do both simultaneously. With the first puff of oxygen into his lungs John knew through his mania that he could not have had a better man treating him if it had gone down in the ER itself. For perhaps six or seven blissful breaths he thought he’d beaten whatever it was, but then the gas bag and the strong pressure on it couldn’t force his air passages to inflate, even passively.

Inside his head he was screaming, screaming, screaming a blind, utter panic. No thoughts of the life he had lived or any
life to come intruded for as long as the width of a photon; no heaven, no hell, just the horrifying presence of imminent death, and he so alive, awake, forced to endure to the last, bitterest … In his eyes an electrified terror, in his mind a scream.

John Hall died eleven minutes after he started feeling hot. Dr. Al Markoff knelt to one side of him fighting to keep him alive, Dr. Jim Hunter knelt on his other side holding his hand for comfort. But life was gone, and of comfort there was none.

THURSDAY, JANUARY 2
to
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 8

1969

THURSDAY, JANUARY 2, 1969

“D
addy, what’s the procedure when I’m missing a toxin?”

Patrick O’Donnell’s startled blue eyes flew to his daughter’s face, expecting to see it laughing at having successfully pulled Daddy’s leg. But it was frowning, troubled. He gave her a mug of coffee. “It depends, honey,” he said calmly. “What toxin?”

“A really nasty one — tetrodotoxin.”

Holloman County’s Medical Examiner looked blank. “You’ll have to be more specific, Millie. I’ve never heard of it.”

“It’s a neurotoxin that blocks nerve transmission by acting on the pores of the voltage-gated, fast sodium channels of the cell membrane — or, in simpler words, it shuts the nervous system down.
Very
nasty! That’s what makes it so interesting experimentally, though I’m not interested in it per se. I use it as a tool.” Her blue eyes, so like his, gazed at him imploringly.

“Where did you get it from, Millie?”

“I isolated it myself from its source — the blowfish. Such a cute little critter! Looks like a puppy you’d just love to hug to death. But don’t eat it, especially its liver.” She was perking up, sipping the coffee with enjoyment now. “How do you manage to make a good brew in this godawful building? Carmine’s coffee sucks.”

“I pay for it myself and severely limit those invited to drink it. Okay, you’ve jogged my memory cells. I have heard of tetrodotoxin, but only in papers, and in passing. So you actually isolated it yourself?”

“Yes.” She stopped again.

“I’ll do a Carmine: expatiate.”

“Well, I had a tank of blowfish, and it seemed a shame to waste all those livers and other rich bits, so I kept on going and wound up with about a gram of it. If taken by mouth, enough to kill ten heavyweight boxers. When I finished my experimental run I sealed the six hundred milligrams I had left over in glass ampoules, one hundred milligrams to each, slapped a poison sticker on the beaker holding the six ampoules, and put it in the back of my refrigerator with the three-molar KCl and stuff,” said Millie.

“Don’t you lock the refrigerator?”

“Why? It’s mine, and my little lab. My grant doesn’t run to a technician — I’m not Jim, surrounded by acolytes.” She held out her mug for more coffee. “I lock my
lab
door when I’m not in it. I’m as paranoid as any other researcher, I don’t advertise my work.
And
I’m post-doctoral, so there’s no thesis adviser looking over my shoulder. I would have thought that no one
even knew I had any tetrodotoxin.” Her face cleared, grew soft. “Except for Jim, that is. I mentioned it in passing to him, but he’s not into neurotoxins. His idea of soup is
E. coli
.”

“Any idea when it disappeared, sweetheart?”

“During the last week. I did a stocktake of my refrigerator on Christmas Eve, and the beaker was there. When I did another stocktake this morning, no beaker anywhere — and believe me, Dad, I looked high and low. The thing is, I don’t know what to do about losing it. It didn’t seem like something Dean Werther is equipped to deal with. I thought of you.”

“Reporting to me is fine, Millie. I’ll notify Carmine, but only as a courtesy. It can’t be equated with someone’s stealing a jar of potassium cyanide — that would galvanize everybody.” Patrick gave a rueful grin. “However, my girl, it’s time to shut the stable door. Put a lock on your refrigerator and make sure you have the only key.”

He leaned to take her hand, long and graceful, but marred by bitten nails and general lack of care. “Honey, where you did go wrong was in keeping what you didn’t use up. You should have disposed of it as a toxic substance.”

She flushed. “No, I don’t agree,” she said, looking mulish. “The extraction process is difficult, painstaking and extremely slow — a lesser biochemist would have botched it. I’m no Jim, but in my lab techniques I’m way above your run-of-the-mill researcher. At some time in the future I might need the leftover tetrodotoxin, and if I don’t, I can legitimately sell it to get my investment in the blowfish back. My grant committee would love that. I’ve stored it under vacuum in sealed glass ampoules,
then slowed its molecules down by refrigerating it. I want it potent and ready to use at any time.”

She got to her feet, revealing that she was tall, slender, and attractive enough to turn most men’s heads. “Is that all?” she asked.

“Yes. I’ll talk to Carmine, but if I were you I wouldn’t go to Dean Werther. That would start the gossip ball rolling. Are you sure of the amount in each ampoule? A hundred milligrams in — liquid? Powder?”

“Powder. Snap the neck of the ampoule and add one mil of pure, distilled water for use. It goes into solution very easily. Ingested, one heavyweight boxer. Injection is a very different matter.
Half
of
one milligram
is fatal, even for a heavyweight boxer. If injected into a vein, death would be rapid enough to call nearly instantaneous. If injected into muscle, death in about ten to fifteen minutes from the onset of symptoms.” Such was her relief at sharing her burden that she sounded quite blithe.

“Shit! Do you know the symptoms, Millie?”

“As with any substance shutting down the nervous system, Dad. If injected, respiratory failure due to paralysis of the chest wall and the diaphragm. If swallowed, nausea, vomiting, purging and then respiratory failure. The duration of the symptoms would depend on dosage and how fast respiratory failure set in. Oh, I forgot. If swallowed, there would be terrible convulsions too.” She had reached the door, dying to be gone. “Will I see you on Saturday night?”

“Mom and I wouldn’t miss it, kiddo. How’s Jim holding up?”

Her voice floated back. “Okay! And thanks, Dad!”

Snow and ice meant that Holloman was fairly quiet; Patrick made his way through the warren of the County Services building sure he would find Carmine in his office — no weather to be out in, even black activists knew that.

Six daughters, he reflected as he plodded, did not mean fewer headaches than boys, though Patrick Junior was doing his solo best to prove boys
were
worse. Nothing in the world could force him to take a shower; two years from now he’d be a prune from showers, but that shimmered on a faraway horizon.