Buster’s phone rang.
“Got it. Great. Fucking outstanding. You deserve the Medal of Freedom, Frank. Let’s talk soon, real soon.”
From what we heard, Buster didn’t have to tell us that it was Dr. Frank Buchannan with good news.
“Four of the bad guys are dead, and three in custody, including two who left the building earlier. One of the men they arrested was wearing a lab coat, and Buchannan thinks he may be a technician or maybe even a scientist. Not a drop of substance has been spilled. It’s on its way to the CDC facility in Washington.”
“That’s the good news,” I said, “but without Pushkin to talk to, we just have to hope he left some document with formulas on it so Frank and his medical snoops can figure it out.”
“Hey, Rick,” said Buster. “Remember that your wonderful wife put you on a regimen of positive thinking. Let’s take the good news as it comes. I don’t know about you, but I’m going to have a Scotch on the rocks. And while we’re at it, how about a couple of Jerry Seinfeld jokes.”
“I could use both the Scotch and the Seinfeld jokes,” said Bennie. “It’s too late to go to bed.”
Chapter 52
On May 30, five days after the Baltimore raid, my alarm went off as usual at 5:30 a.m. I actually slept through the night. When I first awoke, I couldn’t figure out why I was in the guest room. Then reality dawned on me, as it does every morning. I was alone.
Following Ellen’s plan to help my stress, I did 20 minutes of yoga, followed by a 20-minute meditation. I poured myself a cup of coffee, my one cup of regular coffee for the day. I had Ellen’s plan taped to the wall in the breakfast nook. I couldn’t make myself cross out step number one of the plan, “sex with Ellen.” Imagining that it may happen someday helped keep my sanity.
I was having a bowl of cereal with sliced banana when the phone rang at 7:15.
“Good morning, Rick, it’s Bill Reynolds.”
Bill Reynolds? Bill Reynolds? I know that name from somewhere.
Holy shit, it’s the President of the United States.
“Good morning, Mr. President.”
“Rick, I have a favor to ask. Could you come to Washington today? I’ll meet you at Walter Reed Hospital. I want you to see Amanda.”
“Of course, sir. I’ll make arrangements right now.”
“The travel arrangements have already been made, Rick. A car will pick you up at 9:30. See you later.”
“Yes, sir.”
President Reynolds wants me to meet the First Lady, the poor stricken First Lady. But why?
I called Buster and Barbara. They both asked why I was going to Washington and I told them.
“You don’t get a call from the president unless it’s something important, Rick,” said Barbara. “Please call me when you can.”
“My spook’s sixth sense tells me that Reynolds has more in mind than a social visit to a woman with dementia,” said Buster.
I had no idea what the day was about to bring.
***
I walked into Walter Reed Hospital at 12:30 p.m. A White House staffer named Marilyn was in the lobby to greet me, along with a Marine sergeant. We took the elevator to the fourth floor, where the First Lady’s room was located. It was not a typical hospital floor. Armed Marines and assorted other personnel milled about. Marilyn, the staffer, led me to Amanda Reynolds’ room, where the president was waiting. Amanda was sitting in a chair in the corner of the private room.
“Honey, this is my good friend Rick Bellamy who I told you about,” the president said.
Amanda smiled, stood, and extended her hand. “Nice to meet you, Rick. Thank you for coming to visit me. Would you like a cup of coffee?”
“No, thank you, ma’am.”
“President Bill has told me all about you. He also told me about your lovely wife, Ellen. How is she doing?”
The thought crossed my mind how embarrassing it would be if my head exploded all over the room. This woman didn’t appear to be suffering from anything. She has The Syndrome? I saw her “speech” at the Waldorf. I actually watched her coming down with the disease, her confused look, her fumbling for words. What the hell is going on? I decided to engage Amanda in a full-blown conversation, not the stilted one-liners people use when communicating with a dementia patient.
“Ellen is doing as well as can be expected. I see her every day. The home is only a few blocks from our apartment. I’m sure she’d love to meet you.”
“And I’d love to meet her. She’s quite a woman. A world-class architect who knows how to handle an AK-47. I’ve read all about her in the papers. When did she come down with this thing everybody is calling The Syndrome?”
“On April 4, Mrs. Reynolds. It happened overnight.”
“I hear you, Rick. That shit hits you like a ton of bricks. And please call me Amanda.”
Okay screw it. That’s it. Something is out of focus here. I’m having a conversation with a woman who is supposed to be in advanced dementia, but she seems totally normal. I’m going to find out what the hell is going on.
“Mrs. Reynolds, Amanda, if you don’t mind me saying, you seem to be in perfect health.”
“Other than a bit of a headache, I’m feeling just fine, Rick, and thank you for noticing. Bill told me that you were on hand for my command performance at the Waldorf. People tell me I was quite a hit. Apparently, I kept calling Hugh Jackson ‘Jimmy,’ and asking him what the fuck everybody was doing there.” She cracked up laughing.
“Yes, I was there, Amanda. It broke my heart, along with a lot of other hearts in the room. But if you have The Syndrome, how can we be having this conversation. I don’t get it.”
“I think I’ll let POTUS over here explain it to you.”
President Reynolds was grinning like a happy Golden Retriever.
“Rick, I wanted you to be the first to see this. When Amanda checked in here, she looked like the Night of the Living Dead.”
“Thanks for the compliment, Prince Charming,” she said as she reached over and grabbed his hand.
“I’ve invited a guy who I think you want to talk to,” said the president. “He can explain everything.”
Dr. Frank Buchannan walked into the room, smiling as if he was rehearsing for a toothpaste commercial. The good doctor, normally a shy intellectual kind of guy, walked up to me and gave me a bear hug.
“The last time I saw you, Rick, I said that I was cautiously optimistic that we may have been on the road to a discovery, a vaccine. The raid on that place in Baltimore nailed it for us. Even though the jihadis disposed of Dmitri Pushkin, that evil bastard, we found the documents we needed. It became a process of reverse engineering. We discovered exactly what the substance was, and, working from there, we looked to find something that could reverse the symptoms. Yes, you heard me—reverse the symptoms. Rick, we found a cure—a fucking cure, not just a vaccine. It was amazingly simple. Remember when I told you about my hunch that we may be looking at a bacteria?”
“Remember?” I said. “It was the only good news I had heard in weeks. So you’re telling me that your hunch paid off?”
“Big time, Rick. We found that the substance was a combination of various bacteria, mixed in a brilliantly evil way by Pushkin. I then formed a hunch that we may have an already existing antibiotic that could act on The Syndrome. It’s Tralforlalazine, an effective but seldom used drug for treating the flu. The great thing about it was that it had been widely tested in clinical trials and approved by the FDA five years ago. We already knew its side effects, which are rare and relatively mild—joint pain and headaches—both of which can be helped with over-the-counter medications like ibuprofen. When I told the president about it, and how it was relatively risk free, he insisted that we administer it to the First Lady. Within 12 hours, she was symptom-free. And this happened with the first dose of the medication. I’ve prescribed a seven-day regimen. We’ll see where it goes from there. It’s possible that none of the people affected will ever have to take another dos
e. We have our fingers crossed with the children who got infected on the Ocean Ecstasy, but, so far, the results are excellent. You see Mrs. Reynolds here with your own eyes. Yes, we didn’t just find a vaccine, we found the cure,” he said as he grabbed my shoulders and stared into my eyes.
“Frank, you know what my next question is.”
“Yes, I do, Rick. You want to know when we can give the drug to your wife, Ellen. Well, because the drug is a simple prescription medication, we didn’t need to get your permission as next of kin.”
“So what are you telling me, Frank? Did you give her the fucking stuff or not?”
“Why don’t you turn around, Rick?”
Sometimes events go by so fast your mind doesn’t come up with words. But when Frank told me to turn around, I thought of one word, a word I’d almost forgotten—hope. I remembered my Episcopal priest friend and his words to me about the meaning of the word hope. I felt the hand of God on my shoulder.
***
“Hi, honey. How about a kiss?” Ellen said as she walked into the room, wearing a beautiful yellow dress and a healthy dose of Chanel No. 5.
My FBI Agent tough-guy pose abandoned me. I bawled like an infant as Ellen and I hugged. I thought back over the weeks to April 4, the worst day of my life. But suddenly I found myself savoring the happiest moment of my life. It was one of those peak-of-life experiences that will never leave me. My Ellen was back.
“So, what’s new, Rick?” Ellen asked. She has always had an amazing way of finding just the right touch of humor at the right time. My tears turned to laughter. Everybody else in the room laughed too, especially Amanda Reynolds, who totally cracked up.
“Oh, nothing much,” I said, feeding the good humor of the moment. “What’s new with you?” I said, wiping my tears away. My mind swam with my new reality.
“Here’s one thing that’s new. I decided to try something I had always wanted to do, so I picked up a Time-Life book at the airport.” Ellen then recited the presidents and vice-presidents of the United States from memory, barely pausing for breath. “It only took me five minutes to memorize the list.”
“Go, girl!” shouted Amanda.
“Mr. and Mrs. Bellamy” said a White House staffer. Maybe you folks would like to have a little privacy. The president will be holding a press conference in 45 minutes. He asks if you can be part of it, Mrs. Bellamy. That’s totally up to you.” He escorted us into an adjacent room. These White House types are classy operators, I thought.
I’ve never fainted in my life. It’s just something that never happened to me. But I felt close. After weeks of despair, weeks of returning to an empty apartment, weeks without hope, there was Ellen, my Ellen, standing there in front of me, totally alert.
“Hon, the past few weeks have been the worst in my life, worse even than the time you were kidnapped. You couldn’t even remember my name. You thought I was your father. Does your nurse, Nancy, know about this? She and I have become good friends recently.”
“Yes, she does. We had breakfast this morning before I caught my flight. Here’s a selfie she took and asked me to show you.”
There was Nancy, grinning broadly and flashing the thumbs up sign with her free hand.
“Have you been following my plan for the new Rick?”
“Yes, every day, except of course for number one. You remember what number one is?”
“Do I ever. We’re going to work on that with extreme diligence when we get home. Got any good Seinfeld jokes for me?”
“I will as soon as my phone rings.”
Chapter 53
We were still in our private room. I was slowly adjusting to the life that flowed into me. I couldn’t let go of Ellen, even if I wanted to, and I didn’t.
“Rick, tell me everything about the past few weeks. Nurse Nancy said I should hear it from you. I feel like I’m missing part of my life. Well, I guess I am. The last thing I recall was having lunch with you after a meeting at your office. I have a vague recollection that something upsetting happened. So talk to me, hon, where have I been?”
“Yes, it started with lunch at Chez Amis. You went to get cash from the ATM machine and came back to the table really upset. You had forgotten your bank PIN number, one that you used for years.”
“You mean 435927?”
“If that’s what you say it is, I know it’s the number.”
We kissed again.
“When I got home that night, I realized that something terrible was going on. Instead of greeting me at the door like you always did, you sat in the den and stared at a blank TV screen. Every time I called you ‘hon’ or ‘honey,’ you said that your name was Ellen. I called Bennie to come over the next day. That clinched it. We were both convinced that you had some kind of crazy fast onset Alzheimer’s disease. You didn’t remember Bennie at all. I hired a wonderful private duty nurse named Olga on Bennie’s suggestion. No way would I leave you alone. When I came home that first day, Olga was upset that you had gotten worse in a single day. I knew I had to get you into a full-time facility. That was also Bennie’s suggestion.”
“What was I like at the nursing home, the place called New Horizons?”
“Like a zombie, to be blunt. I visited you every day. You kept confusing me with your father. After a while, your agitation stopped, your coldness changed, and you actually showed some affection—for your father. It seemed that you were adjusting to your new reality.”
“You mean my lack of reality?”
“Yeah, I guess that’s more accurate. But let me ask you a question, babe. Is it okay if I call you babe or do you insist on Ellen?”
“Babe, honey, sweetheart, Ellen—call me whatever you want. Just keep telling me you love me.”
“I love you. But getting back to my question. Frank said he gave you the medication less than 12 hours ago. What was it like coming back to the real world?”
“The best way I can describe it is waking up from a long sleep. Nothing dramatic, just a sudden realization that I didn’t know where I was or why I was there. I talked to Amanda Reynolds about this and she had the same experience.”
“So what about this press conference? Do you think you can handle it?”
“Yeah, I think it’s important. I think I have an obligation to let all the other people who were hit with this shit know how I’m feeling. From what I’ve been told, until just over a week ago, only young women were attacked. Then came that horrible sprinkler event on that cruise ship. My God, almost 6,000 people were hit with this Syndrome thing. But at the news conference, I’ll just answer questions. I don’t want to upstage the president or Amanda.”
“You could upstage the pope if you wanted to. You’ll do just fine.”
***
A large room at Walter Reed Hospital was often used for press conferences and announcements. Because Walter Reed is the place where important government officials are hospitalized, it sees its share of journalists.
“Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States.”
“Good afternoon, my fellow Americans. Today is a day of relief. And speaking for myself, I can also say that it’s a day of joy. In the past few weeks, as you know, over 900 American women were struck down with a terrible illness, an illness that we first thought was a fast-acting form of early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. And then, just shy of a week ago, the cruise ship Ocean Ecstasy saw almost 6,000 men, women, and children come down with the symptoms. We now know that the illness wasn’t natural. It was the result of a weaponized substance delivered with a spray bottle, or, in the case of the cruise ship, sent through a sprinkler system. The result was an affliction that we’ve called The Syndrome. We’ve learned that our enemy called it The Scent of Revenge.
“Because of the diligent efforts of countless people, we found the solution, the cure. Special thanks goes to the brilliant physician, Doctor Frank Buchannan, who isolated the substance and discovered a simple cure, a prescription medication that already exists. Because our policy is not to d
ivulge the names of government agents who were involved in clandestine operations, I just say thank you. You know who you are. But I can single out one agent, because his own wife was a victim, and he played a crucial role in enabling Doctor Buchannan to find the cure. Let’s hear it for FBI Agent Rick Bellamy.”
I only wished that Buster, Bennie, and Barbara Auletta could be there with me.
“Next to me is my wonderful wife, the First Lady, Amanda Reynolds. Amanda came down with The Syndrome a few weeks ago as she was giving a speech in New York City. We’ll never forget the horror of watching her, one of the most articulate women in America, as she stumbled for words. I’m now going to ask Amanda to speak. She’s much better at it than I am, so I’m sure you’ll all be pleased.”
The room thundered with applause for Amanda Reynolds.
“Thanks, Bill, or am I supposed to call you Mr. President?” Good laugh line.
“I’m happy that my new found friend, Ellen Bellamy, is here with us this afternoon, a woman who shares with me the strange sisterhood of the past few weeks. I’m going to ask Ellen to stand next to me, and we can both share our experience with you. Ellen, do you have any recollection of the last thing that happened to you before you drifted into dementia?”
“Yes, Mrs. Reynolds—”
“The name’s Amanda, my friend.”
“Yes, Amanda. I was having lunch with my husband, Rick. I went to an ATM to get some cash, and realized that I forgot my PIN number. I just recall being upset, because normally I have a photographic memory.”
“Do you remember it now, hon?”
“I’m happy to announce 435927! It’s no longer valid, but I just love to say it—because I can remember it. If there’s a horse with that number, I think I’ll play it.”
The crowd roared with laughter. The First Lady had nothing on Ellen.
“And my experience after I was given the medication, as you and I have compared notes, Amanda, was like waking up after a long sleep.”
“Ellen, this won’t take a long time because you do it so fast, but would please share with the American people the little memory game you learned on the plane coming here? I believe you said it took you five minutes to memorize the list.”
The Scent of Revenge Page 14
