The Fifth Vial

by Michael Palmer

  Fifteen minutes later, the magnificent Winnebago Adventurer swung left onto the Brazelton Highway. It was followed not too closely by a bright red Mustang convertible. Eighteen miles down the highway, the RV pulled into a rest area while the Mustang bounced down a two-mile-long dirt road that ended at Redstone Quarry—a small lake that was reputed by the locals to be bottomless. The drop from the cliff’s edge to the water was fifteen feet. The empty Mustang had vanished into the blackness before it hit the surface.

  No one, except the man who had called himself Rudy Brooks, heard the splash.

  Twenty-One

  Would not he who is fitted to be a guardian, besides the spirited nature, need to have the qualities of a philosopher?

  —PLATO, The Republic, Book II

  “Natalie, you’re supposed to be starting back on your surgical rotation next week.”

  Dean Goldenberg held up the stack of paperwork that had been generated in order to get her back on track at school.

  “I know.”

  “And you say that physically you think you can handle such a trip?”

  “From the moment I finished making all those calls to Brazil, I’ve been spending three hours a day or more in rehab. My pulmonary function studies have improved nearly twenty-five percent since the first time they were measured after the fire. I’m even able to jog.”

  “But now you want to take more time off.”

  “I feel that I have to.”

  Goldenberg’s office looked the same as when Natalie had been suspended from school, except that everything had changed. The people there this time, in addition to Natalie and the dean, were Doug Berenger and Terry Millwood. Veronica had offered to come along for moral support, but Natalie saw no reason for her to take time from her obstetrics rotation.

  After her initial flurry of calls to various departments at Santa Teresa Hospital, Natalie had spoken to several police stations around the city of Rio. To the best that she could tell, there was a law requiring hospitals to report all gunshot wounds, and no such report had been filed on her, nor did the police themselves have a record of responding to her being shot.

  First thing the next morning, she had brought her mother over for another try. The results were all the same, with one additional failure—the inability to find any Dr. Xavier Santoro on the staff of Santa Teresa’s or, in fact, in the entire city. Within an hour of her mother’s last call—this one to the Rio de Janeiro State Medical Board, where there was no record of him, either—Natalie was at the gym, dragging herself through a series of aerobic and anaerobic exercises. The next morning she called her pulmonary therapist with an apology and a request for more time—much more time.

  “Terry, you have a note from Natalie’s pulmonologist?” Goldenberg asked.

  “I do. Rachel French dropped it off with me because she couldn’t make it this morning.”

  Millwood passed the sheet over, and the dean scanned it, nodding that the conclusions were clear.

  “Natalie, you are behind on your schedule if you wish to graduate with your class,” he said. “And you, yourself, said that this whole business in Brazil is probably a misunderstanding due to language barriers and the difficulty in negotiating through a hospital system that is half a world away.”

  “If I get there and discover that the hospital and the police do have records of me, I’ll be home on the next available flight. I won’t even try and find out who and where Dr. Santoro is.”

  “Doug, you spoke with this Dr. Santoro?”

  “Once,” Berenger replied. “According to Nat, the man said he knew who I was, although I had never heard of him. Mostly I spoke with a surgical nurse, whose name I just don’t remember.”

  Goldenberg looked nonplussed.

  “Natalie,” he said, “as you know, with your permission, I spoke to Dr. Fierstein, your therapist. She does not think it is in your best interest for you to go. Apparently you have been having some sort of serious flashbacks surrounding the evening you were shot.”

  “I started having them when I was still in the hospital in Rio. Dr. Fierstein is calling them a manifestation of PTSD.”

  “I know. She is worried that your return to the scene of your trauma might have disastrous consequences.”

  “Dr. Goldenberg,” Natalie said, “Terry knows about what I am going to tell you, but aside from him, no one else does, not even my therapist. At the time of the call from my health insurance company, I was seriously contemplating killing myself. I felt my situation was hopeless and that I would live my life either crippled from my pulmonary condition, or debilitated from the antirejection drugs necessary for a transplant. I’m still frightened of both of those possibilities, but from the moment I finished with the first round of calls to Brazil, I have been consumed with the need to find answers to the questions of why there is no record of the crime that changed my life so radically. If I have to give up my scholarship and a year of medical school, then that’s what I’m going to do.”

  The three physicians exchanged looks.

  “Okay then,” Goldenberg said finally, “here is the best I can do. I’ll give you two weeks and take it off one of your electives. Half of the students don’t do any work on their electives anyway. OB in San Francisco, dermatology in London. You all think we don’t know, but the truth is that when we were students we all did the same thing.”

  The three others smiled.

  “So, Nat,” Millwood asked, “when are you going?”

  “As soon as I can get a ticket.”

  “Sam, thank you,” Berenger said, standing and shaking the dean’s hand. “For what it’s worth, I think you’re doing the right and fair thing.”

  He guided Natalie out of the office into the reception area, and then waited until Millwood had gone before extracting an envelope from his jacket pocket.

  “Nat, the moment you told me what was going on, I knew you were headed back to Brazil. I knew because I know you. Since I sent you there in the first place, I thought that helping you get back to Rio to straighten matters out would be the least I can do.”

  “Tickets!” Natalie exclaimed without even opening the envelope.

  “First-class tickets,” Berenger corrected.

  Natalie hugged him unabashedly as Goldenberg’s secretary looked on, amused.

  “When are they for?” Natalie asked, fumbling open the envelope.

  “When do you think? Remember, I have no more patience than you do. Besides, as I’m sure you recall, my wife owns a travel agency.”

  Natalie took a minute to find the departure date on the ticket.

  “Tomorrow!”

  “Now it’s your turn,” Berenger said. “I hope this circle gets closed quickly.”

  “Me, too.”

  “And I hope one other thing as well.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I hope you take a bus into the city instead of a cab.”

  The physician known among the guardians as Laertes paced across the study of his seacoast estate, overlooking the mouth of the Thames. He was a professor of surgery at St. George’s in London, and a world-renowned lecturer on his specialty, cardiac transplantation. He was also one of the original members of the Guardians. For the past six months he had been serving his rotation as the PK, the Philosopher King of the society—providing day-to-day leadership and, in rare instances, the final word on any controversial decisions.

  “Glaucon, tell us again,” he said, addressing the speakerphone on his Louis Quatorze desk.

  “The patient is W, number eighty-one on your list,” replied Glaucon, a brilliant young renal transplant urologist from Sydney. “As you can see, he is an industrialist, and one of the most economically and politically powerful men in Australia—fifty-eight years old, and conservatively worth four billion dollars, a significant portion of which he is ready to transfer to us in exchange for our services. His cardiac situation has gone from stable to critical, and he will die within the next few weeks without a transplant.”


  “It says here that he is a heavy smoker.”

  “Yes, but he has promised he will stop.”

  “But there is a problem.”

  “Yes. His antibody pattern is quite unusual.”

  “The best our database has been able to do?”

  “An eight out of twelve, which would require him to be treated aggressively with immunosuppressive drugs, and would, of course, greatly increase the possibility of organ rejection.”

  “However,” Laertes said, “we have located a perfect twelve-point match for him in the state of Mississippi.”

  “So what’s the problem?” Themistocles asked.

  “The donor is eleven years old.”

  “I see. Weight?”

  “That’s the good part. He’s chunky. Our man estimates he weighs one hundred and twenty pounds. That’s fifty-four kilos.”

  “And the recipient?”

  “One hundred seventy pounds. Seventy-seven kilos.”

  “That’s a thirty percent difference. Is that going to work?”

  “Twenty percent difference or less would be ideal, but W has an excellent cardiologist. With enforced rest and medication, the transplant might serve for a while, giving us time to search for something more compatible.”

  “How long?”

  “Maybe a month, maybe less, maybe somewhat longer.”

  “Profile of the donor?”

  “Nothing significant. One of four children. Father drinks too much, mother works in a clothes cleaners.”

  “Our facility in New Guinea is ready, and I am willing to make the flight as soon as the donor has been procured and transferred there.”

  “So, I ask you again,” Themistocles said, “what’s the problem?”

  Twenty-Two

  The wise man speaks with authority when he approves of his own life.

  —PLATO, The Republic, Book IX

  From: Benjamin M. Callahan

  To: Congressman Martin Shapiro

  Re: Investigation of Mrs. Valerie Shapiro

  Enclosed are the discs and still photographs associated with my three-week investigation of your wife. It is my conclusion, with a high degree of certainty, that Mrs. Shapiro is not involved in any sort of affair in the commonly understood definition of the term. During the course of my investigation, on four occasions, Mrs. Shapiro visited the home (see photo) of Alejandro Garcia, a mechanic at the Goodyear Automotive store on 13384 Veteran’s Parkway in Cicero, and his wife, Jessica (see photos). Twice she stayed for over an hour, and twice she emerged with a girl about age twelve (photos). Each time they went shopping, mostly for clothes. Their relationship was a warm and loving one, and twice I heard the girl refer to her as Aunty Val. Enclosed are documents validating that Mrs. Garcia’s maiden name is, in fact, Nussbaum—the same as your wife’s. They have no other children. There is a great deal more investigation that could be done, but as of this report, I can say that I believe Julie Garcia is, in fact, your wife’s daughter, born when your wife was sixteen and turned over for adoption to her older (by thirteen years) sister. I have been told that Attorney Clement Goring (see enclosed detail sheet) either brokered this adoption or knows who might have done so.

  Clearly, there has been deception on the part of your wife, but it is not the sort you believed.

  As I told you when I agreed to this investigation, I could give you one month, but no more—at least not until I return from attending to other business.

  Best of luck in sorting this situation out. I hope you agree with my conclusions and that I have been of service to you.

  Ben packaged the summary along with a thick envelope of photos, documents, DVDs, and a final bill, payment of which would take care of his financial problems for some time to come. Of all his recent cases, this one had the chance to be the most rewarding. An up-and-coming congressman, Martin Shapiro was married to a woman nearly half his age—bright, beautiful, educated, and very much of a political asset, provided they could work out their issues. One of those issues concerned his wife at age sixteen, unwilling to terminate her pregnancy, but unable to care for a child.

  Both of the Shapiros seemed like decent people, and Ben was pulling for them. Now it was time to complete his work on Lonnie Durkin. It was surprising to sense such commitment in himself after not really caring about much of anything for so long. But since his trip to Idaho, he had been unable to shuck from his mind the images of the inestimable sadness and sorrow on the faces of Karen and Ray Durkin.

  He was convinced that Whitestone laboratory technicians all over the country, and in all probability the world, were unwitting accomplices in what might prove to be a consummate evil, and he both wanted and needed to know what was going on.

  With Althea Satterfield fluttering about his apartment, Ben packed some warm-weather clothes and set out enough cat supplies for a couple of weeks. Then, after a hug for his elderly neighbor and a final scratch for Pincus, he hurried down the stairs and into his five-year-old black Range Rover. The car was battered with half a dozen dents that were too close to his deductible to bother fixing, but despite more than a little neglect, the engine was still sound. In fact, just yesterday, the mechanic at Quickee Oil Change had pronounced the car good to go for the thousand-mile drive to Fadiman, Texas.

  In addition to his suitcase and a pair of twenty-five-pound dumbbells, Ben set his Moroccan leather valise in back, packed with some new equipment, including several listening devices, a used but serviceable monocular nightscope, a hundred feet of clothesline, and a new Swiss Army knife. Finally, he transferred his Smith & Wesson .38 Special, freshly oiled, from its velvet pouch to a shoulder holster, and set the holster under some papers in the glove compartment.

  Initially, Gustafson, who had finally stopped calling him Mr. Callahan, had been as excited and enthusiastic as he was about the findings in Cincinnati and at the Whitestone lab in Soda Springs, but over the intervening weeks, she had become considerably more cautious.

  “Ben, I think we should call in the FBI,” she had said during their last meeting together.

  “And tell them what? We have no hard proof of anything. Chances are these Whitestone people could easily parry any thrust as feeble as ours. Then they just retool, or relocate, and restart.”

  “I have some friends researching this company,” Gustafson had said, “and what they’ve found really concerns me. Whitestone is based out of London, and financially spearheaded by their laboratories and a pharmaceutical business, they may be one of the fastest-growing privately held companies in the world.”

  “Pharmaceuticals?”

  “Mostly generics and medications that are legal in Europe and Africa, but not here—at least not yet. Ben, I think we’re in over our heads.”

  “So?”

  “So, I don’t want you to get hurt.”

  “Believe me, I’m no hero, but folks are already getting hurt, maybe lots of them. And there’ll be more and more until these people are stopped. A doctor orders a blood sugar and his patient unknowingly gets tissue-typed. It’s like they’re walking around with time bombs in their pockets. How many of those vials of blood—those so-called quality control tubes—are getting sent off to Fadiman, Texas, every day? How many profiles do you think are added to the database?”

  Gustafson shook her head grimly.

  “I’m worried, that’s all,” she said. “All those blood-drawing labs, that huge van, those weapons, that thug who almost killed you—these are not petty thieves.”

  “Hey,” Ben replied, “is this the woman who put on a nurse’s uniform and marched into the operating room of a hospital in Moldavia to document the illicit trade of a kidney in exchange for a job? As I recall, from the article you wrote, it was a lousy, menial job at that and, I might add, a lousy, menial job that never even materialized. I think you succeeded in getting some arrests in that one.”

  “One of the first cases where we actually put an organ broker and a surgeon out of business,” she said somewhat wistfully, “at least f
or the moment.”

  “Professor, Google and Yahoo have more than a hundred thousand entries about you, running around in disguises, making power brokers back down from hundreds of thousands in profits, putting yourself in harm’s way for people that were staring up from the bottom of the barrel. It doesn’t sound as if you’ve ever backed down from anyone.”

  “I think most of the time I was too young to know any better.”

  “Well, you are a great power of example, and for what I’m getting paid by Organ Guard, I would brave any danger.”

  “Very funny. Okay, Ben, do what you have to do, but please, please be careful.”

  “I will.”

  “And speaking of getting paid.”

  “Yes?”

  “Here’s my Sunoco gas card.”

  Another night on the road playing detective, another budget motel—this one the Starlight in Hollis, Oklahoma. At three thirty Ben was still awake, staring into the blackness of room 118. By four thirty, he had showered, packed up, grabbed a cup of coffee from the desk clerk, and hit the road. He had always found the starkness and palette of the desert to be awesome, but never more so than this morning, with sand and sage washed by the pastels of early dawn, stretching out infinitely on either side of the highway.

  He left the CD player off and the windows open, and thought of what might be awaiting him in Fadiman. Soon, he found himself reflecting on “Fred and Ed,” a cartoon he had read religiously in his weekly college newspaper. In his favorite installment of the strip, slow, gangly Fred with a huge net and length of rope announces to his much smaller, sharper friend that he is going alligator hunting.

  “If you catch one, what are you going to do with it?” Ed asks.