After the Fall

by Patricia Gussin

  “Now.”

  When the line went dead, Addie grabbed her purse and the uneaten half of her sandwich. She’d finish it in the car on the way home; she’d stay just long enough to hear Dru out so she could be back for a three o’clock meeting. But on her way to the door, she turned back to her desk. Dru would want an update on Immunone. Since Jake refused to tell her anything, she’d call Dr. Nelson. She didn’t want to bug her, but she’d been so nice before, and Dru’s tone of voice sounded dire.

  Parking spots were hard to come by, and Addie parked on the street, two blocks away from home. As she approached on foot, she saw Dru pacing back and forth in front of her building.

  “Dru,” she said, walking up to him from behind, touching his arm. He appeared bedraggled, not his usual, buttoned-up businessman look.

  Addie almost lost her balance as he pivoted toward her, both arms extended as if he intended to strangle her.

  “What’s the matter with you?” She took two steps backward.

  “Let’s go inside.”

  Dru said nothing on the ride up the elevator to her floor. Once inside her door, he announced, “We have to talk.”

  “Okay.” She led him to two chairs, an end table between them. “Have you had lunch? You caught me during mine. I finished it in the car, but I’d be happy—”

  “No. Let me get to the point. Tell you what you need to do.”

  Addie bristled. This was the United States. Men didn’t tell women what to do.

  “I was summoned to Iraq last week. To the Presidential Palace.”

  Addie felt her heart contract, a long squeezing sensation, followed by lightheadedness.

  Dru continued, “I met with your father—”

  “You did?” She brightened. Word from home was rare since the Gulf War. Then she put it together. The drastic change in Dru’s demeanor—a meeting with her father. “What’s wrong? My mother?” Her mother had terrible asthma, and the pollution in Baghdad was worsening. Her father had tried to get her to move to the country, but she wouldn’t leave the city without him, and he had his research work.

  Dru stared at her, and she repeated, “My mother. Did you see my mother?”

  “No. I didn’t see her. Neither was I allowed to see my mother or my brother.”

  Addie couldn’t imagine going all the way to Iraq and not even seeing your own family. She knew that Dru had a twin brother and two small nephews, whom he’d never seen.

  “Qusay Hussein and Hussein Kamel were there. With your father.”

  “They were?” Addie’s lightheadedness returned, and she slumped back in her chair, for a moment, unable to breathe. Qusay was portrayed as a monster in the Western press, and he was equally demonized among Iraqis. Kamel was Saddam’s cousin and son-in-law, the primary target of the United Nations’ frenzy to find weapons of mass destruction. Weapons she couldn’t fathom: chemical, biological, nuclear. Yes, she knew Iraq had them. But, no, she didn’t want to think about them.

  Dru waited a moment. “They gave me one hour with your father. He is terminally ill, Addie. I’m sorry.”

  Addie’s eyes filled with tears. “Oh, no, please God. I want to see him. Did he say what is wrong? If we could get him over here, maybe—”

  “He needs you in Baghdad, Adawia. Now. Qusay and Kamel demand it. By demand, you know what I mean. A threat of the highest order. You must go. Immediately.”

  “I want to see my father.” Addie fidgeted in her chair. “He’s been wanting me to return to Iraq for a long time. I’ve always promised my mother that I would return, but one thing always led to another and—”

  “I have booked a flight. You will leave Friday.”

  “Three days from now. You must be kidding!”

  “I will take care of everything,” Dru continued. “You just have to be on that flight. DC to London, where you’ll be handed a new passport, a new identity, which you’ll use to get to Amman and on to Baghdad.”

  “No way. You know I can’t leave until Immunone is approved. You’re the one who explained all the details of my contract with Replica. As long as I am still employed by Replica when the FDA approval milestone payment of one hundred fifty million dollars comes in, I get five percent. Seven and a half million dollars. Once I have the money, I’ll be secure. And there’s something else. Jake Harter asked me to marry him.” Addie couldn’t help but flash a smug look. A look that vanished as Dru continued.

  “Adawia, forget about marrying an infidel. They’d kill him. But here’s the reality from Baghdad—if you don’t show up there by the end of this week, your family, and my family, will be eliminated. Outright. No trial. Simply disappear.”

  “Dru, you’re exaggerating, blowing this out of proportion. I know that after the Bush war, the military has clamped down, but—”

  “There is no law, no security, anymore. Take this seriously, Adawia. I am afraid for all of us. So much so, that I already have hidden Shada and my sons. I took care of that the moment I returned. But those in Iraq: my mother and my brother and his family, your mother and your sister and your nephews. You know what Qusay will do with them. I faced him eye to eye. His brother Uday and Hussein Kamel are desperate for you to continue your father’s work. They think they can trust you. That you owe them your allegiance.”

  “Why me? They have research scientists.”

  “Not many are left. And few they can trust. Qusay has had many eliminated. You know the extent of his paranoia. He’s at the root of innumerable disappearances. You can be sure that destroying your family will be a simple order.”

  “And you, Dru? They will make you disappear too?”

  “Yes, and you. Their reach in America is extensive. You have no choice in this, Adawia.”

  “And my father’s work?” she asked. Deep down, she’d always known, but had never asked.

  “I didn’t go into that. But your father said he has much to pass along to you. Techniques. Locations. Supplies. Said you were a well-trained scientist and could carry on his legacy.”

  A legacy of mass destruction. Could she do this? At a time when the United Nations kept sending in wave after wave of inspectors looking for evidence of Iraq’s programs in bio, chemical, and nuclear terrorism. The ninth and current IAEA inspection focused on nuclear: uranium enrichment centrifuges and heavy-water production facilities. So far, nothing, nor had they found evidence of anthrax and the other bio pathogens that obsessed George Bush. Uday and Kamel would have taken all that underground, perhaps to Saddam’s palaces, which remained off limits to the inspectors ‘For security reasons.’

  Finally. Payback for her superb education, twelve years of comfortable living. And right as she was on the verge of becoming a millionaire, a woman of substance, a woman with choices. Deep down, Addie had always known it would come down to this, but she’d managed to suppress it, to carry on, ignoring the specter of future demands. And here she was, facing psychological warfare of the purest nature: should she not comply, a sure and painful death for all whom she loved. She thought of her father, a gentle man, a brilliant scientist. Had her father’s participation as a scientist in Saddam’s preparation for mass murder been coerced, just as hers surely would be?

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  TUESDAY, MARCH 3

  A marathon sleeper ever since her medical training, Laura now had become an insomnia victim. Eyes determinedly closed, she saw an album of troubling images. Patrick, pale with shock—she’d not heard from him since her Sunday night confession. If she found a way to tell the other kids about his paternity, would the beautiful, devoted family vanish from her life? Tim, his smile looking a bit forced, asked her at least once a day to set a wedding date. Why did she keep changing the subject? Was it David Monroe, resurfacing a generation later like a faded snapshot?

  When she tried to pry her mind away from her personal problems, Immunone squeezed in. She never should have taken the job; she was in way over her head. She could see Paul Parnell’s unusually hard look…Immunone files, pages and pag
es, fluttering…

  But her personal and professional problems paled in the shadow of Lonnie Greenwood and his ailing son, Johnny—named for Johnny Diggs, whose face was as real as ever—the face of the nightmare that played in high fidelity in her head.

  “Dr. Laura Nelson?” the woman who’d answered at Mayor Coleman Young’s office had said, “Yes. Mr. Greenwood instructed me to interrupt him if you called.”

  Laura shivered under her blanket as she heard the conversation yet again, in her head. What did this man know? Could he destroy everything? Her family? Her professional status? Could she go to jail? She knew there was there was no statutory time limit for murder.

  A deep male voice had answered her call to Detroit. “Dr. Nelson,” Greenwood said, “I am aware of your bad accident. And that you are no longer at Tampa City. I saw you on television answering questions in Washington about the new drug. Actually, I was in DC myself to consult with former Mayor Marion Barry. I left a message that my son has cystic fibrosis and is in dire need of a lung transplant. Because of your reputation, I wanted you to do the surgery, and to use that new drug you tested—”

  When he’d paused for a breath, Laura said, “As you know, I no longer am able to…” She hesitated. For the first time outside her family and her immediate colleagues, she’d spoken her new reality… “operate.”

  “I do realize that,” he said. “But can you still help my son?”

  So far, no mention of Greenwood’s connection to the Jones family in Detroit. “I’ll do what I can. My colleague in Tampa, Dr. Ed Plant, is extremely capable, and the drug I was testing should be approved very soon.”

  “What if it isn’t?” he asked. “My son is twenty-three years old. He’s in bad shape. I don’t have to tell you how ravaging cystic fibrosis can be. I was in Tampa with Mayor Coleman Young to meet with Mayor Sandra Freedman. She started talking about the study at Tampa City Hospital, talked about you. Your name rang a bell. Found out you did your medical training at Detroit City—and that brought up some painful memories. Did you know the Diggs brothers, Anthony and Johnny? Lived on Theodore Street?”

  Anthony, my first patient; Johnny, just eighteen when I took his life… Self-defense, she had to keep reminding herself. What would the charges be if she were prosecuted now? Second-degree murder? Manslaughter? Laura had been accused of murder once, found innocent, but she’d never been arrested for the one she had committed. All who had known are now dead or at least so she’d thought. What does Lonnie Greenwood know? How do I respond?

  He’d have access to Detroit archives, obviously. She decided truth was the safe option. “Yes,” she said. “And I do know the Jones family. Still in touch with Stacy and Lucy.” The Diggs brothers’ sister Stacy, and Lucy, their mother.

  “Will you help Johnny, Dr. Nelson?” Greenwood asked. “My son, named after my buddy, Johnny Diggs. His mama took Johnny to live in Tampa when he was just a baby and I was still a thug—before I got rehabilitated, treated for post-traumatic stress from ‘Nam.”

  “Yes,” Laura said, “I’ll do what I can. Since I now work for Keystone Pharma, I can fast-track a compassionate IND—investigational drug approval. I’ll work with Dr. Plant. I’ll need your son’s medical doctor’s name, all his records, he’ll have to make an appointment with Dr. Plant. I can facilitate all this, Mr. Greenwood, if you and your son decide—”

  “Please,” the man said.

  They discussed how she could exert her influence to get Johnny Greenwood into the Tampa lung transplant program, despite the long waiting list for a lung.

  The conversation over, Greenwood thanked Laura, without another word about his insights into their shared Detroit contacts and experiences. Her curiosity was on overdrive, but tempered by the reality of what was at stake. She’d been blackmailed once about her role in Johnny Diggs’ death. Was this just a more sophisticated attempt?

  Lonnie Greenwood’s son needed Immunone. That led her back to the missing Immunone data. How could problems at the FDA be so endemic that they lost important data? Over the years, she’d heard endless grumblings about how slow they were, about the caliber of their scientists, and on and on, but she’d always attributed the pharmaceutical industry’s dissatisfaction to the disparate responsibilities and accountabilities of the two groups. The FDA to protect the public by controlling the approval of new medications; the pharmaceutical industry, to develop safe and effective medications that enrich their shareholders and also save lives. A fundamental check and balance system she’d felt worked reasonably well. But until last week, she’d been a member of neither cohort. As a medical practitioner, she and her patients had been the beneficiary of the drug developer and of the governmental drug-approval process. Now she found herself squarely on the side of the drug developer.

  By the time dawn broke, Laura had decided to call the FDA directly instead of going through Louis Sigmund, her VP of regulatory affairs, as protocol would demand. During the “honeymoon” period of her new job, she’d not be expected to know all the “rules.” She’d also personally call Jake Harter, the Immunone project manager. If she could shortcut the bureaucracy, maybe she could nip this missing data issue in the bud. The data existed. She’d seen it ready for submission. But what if Keystone Pharma had slipped up and neglected to submit it?

  Before leaving the office last night, she’d issued an all-hands priority memo to make replicate copies of all the clinical data relevant to deaths in the Immunone trials. Copies should do. If not, would they have to go back to all the clinical trial sites and relocate the source documents? That would take time and an army of Keystone staff. Oh, but, she had copies of those documents in her hospital office in Tampa. Had her office already been taken over by her successor? And who was that successor? Ed Plant, she hoped.

  For the first time in their overnight relationship, Laura got up before Tim. Managing well enough with one hand, she made coffee and set out the Cheerios that Tim ate every morning with bananas and brown sugar. Ten-grain toast for her with apricot jelly. Cranberry juice for both.

  “Good morning,” she called as Tim joined her in the kitchen.

  Before he could respond, the phone rang. “For you,” she predicted, picking up the handset and handing it to Tim. His first case today was a complicated valve repair on a critically ill, two-month-old baby from Saudi Arabia.

  “Oh, hi,” Tim said, “No, we’re up. She’s right here.” He gave back the phone to Laura, mouthing, “Mike.”

  “Hello?” Over the years, Laura had trained her kids to wait until mid-morning to call her—just in case she was having one of those rare opportunities to sleep in.

  “Hi, Mom.”

  “Everything okay?” Laura asked.

  “Hope so,” Mike said. “Patrick stayed over Sunday and Monday night. Came from Tim’s—I mean—your place Sunday. He was pretty shook up. He left early this morning for New York.”

  Had Patrick told Mike? Hadn’t they left it that they would jointly tell the other kids?

  Mike paused. When Laura said nothing, he continued, “When I asked what was going on, he just said, ‘Ask Mom.’ So I’m asking you, what’s up?”

  “Oh, Mike,” Laura said, giving a sidewise glance to Tim, now pouring his cereal from box to bowl. “I had a talk with Patrick, a long overdue discussion. I’m afraid what we talked about upset him.”

  “Go on,” Mike said when Laura stopped.

  “I’d rather tell you in person,” she said.

  “Can you just tell me what it’s about? Patrick did say to ask you. That’s all he said. Even when Nicole came over yesterday, that’s all he said. Now you have the whole family’s attention. You know what a big-mouth Nicole is. Both Natalie and Kevin called me last night. I couldn’t say much because Patrick was still here.”

  Laura wondered why they hadn’t called her.

  Mike said, “All three of them are afraid to call you. They think that you must have diagnosed him with some terrible disease—Natalie even mentioned AIDS, but t
hat’s—”

  “No,” Laura said, firmly. “Nothing like that, Mike.”

  “Mom, I’m Patrick’s big brother, and I’m trying to figure this out. Just be honest, does it have to do with Dad?”

  “Mike, you and the family need to know what this is about. But I need to work this out with Patrick. When he’s ready—”

  “Then call him. He knows we’re all speculating. Think about it; I’m old enough to know what this is about. I was fourteen when Dad was shot; right after he refused to go with Patrick for the emergency surgery. Mom, I know you know that I know. So it’s up to you to clear this up with all of us. I don’t know the details, but I do know Patrick is not Dad’s son. I’ve never discussed this with Kevin or the girls, but I’ve known since the year Dad died, and I think it’s time for you to be honest with us all.”

  “Okay, Mike. And thank you,” she managed to say, in a voice that shook.

  She related her conversation to Tim and promised she’d call Patrick that day. Tim suggested they all get together for the weekend. He would attempt another home-cooked dinner. Laura nodded her assent. She packed up her briefcase, kissed Tim goodbye, and headed to the waiting limo. She skipped her morning slice of toast.

  Laura’s commute from Center City, Philadelphia, to Keystone’s offices in Montgomery County took forty minutes, enough time for her to organize her day. First on her agenda would be a call to the FDA project manager in charge of Immunone. In fact, not wanting to risk her staff telling her that the drug company vice president calling FDA staff was not kosher, there were protocols for such communications, she placed the call from the limo phone.

  “Drug Evaluation. Immunology. Jake Harter.” Good, Laura thought. No need for phone tag.

  “This is Dr. Nelson. Keystone Pharma.”

  “Yes?”

  A note of wariness in Harter’s tone reminded her that the man’s wife had been murdered since she’d last seen him at the advisory meeting. “I want to offer my condolences on the loss of your wife.” How many times had she delivered a version of this message over her career as a thoracic surgeon? Too many. The throb of pain in her right hand reminded her that future occasions would be limited. She was a paper pusher now, not a surgeon.