Blood Brothers

by Rick Acker

  The posters had been a minor rebellion against her Korean immigrant parents; they disliked anything having to do with the Japanese, who had occupied their homeland for almost half the twentieth century. Kim didn’t feel rebellious tonight, though. The rules and order she had grown up with seemed comforting now, not restrictive. They gave certainty. If only she were certain what to do now.

  Tell Bjornsen Pharmaceuticals? She knew she probably should, but the personal cost would be huge. They would almost certainly call the police, who would arrest David. Their relationship would be ruined, of course, and his future would be destroyed. She couldn’t bear the thought of that happening to the man she loved. Plus, the incident could damage her career as well—potential employers might not believe she was entirely innocent, and she had no proof that she was. Besides, what lab would want to hire a research scientist who dated guys that might steal the drugs she was researching?

  Should she try to talk David out of using Neurostim? That’s what she wanted to do, but she doubted it would work. She remembered too well the rage in his face when she had confronted him about the pills under his bathroom sink. That was not a scene she wanted to repeat. Maybe she could try calling him. She didn’t really think it would do much good, but at least he couldn’t be physically violent with her over the phone.

  Tell her parents? She didn’t know how they would react—they might do anything, from barring her from seeing David to calling his parents to calling the police. She knew that they loved her and would do what they thought was in her best interests. She also wanted to turn the whole situation over to someone who would take care of it for her, or at least tell her what to do.

  She had just made up her mind to tell her mother in the morning when her cell phone rang. She found her purse in the darkness and fished out the phone. David’s number showed on the glowing screen. Her heart raced as she answered the phone. “Hi, David.”

  “Hi. Sorry for calling so late. Did I wake you?”

  “No, I . . . I wasn’t asleep.”

  “Good. I wanted to let you know that I’m really sorry about how I acted when you came over. I shouldn’t have yelled at you like that or grabbed you. That was totally wrong, and I promise it will never happen again. Can you forgive me?”

  “Of course I can, David. I just—I’m really worried about you. That wasn’t like you at all. It was like you were a completely different person.”

  “I know. I’ve let myself get way too stressed about school. I feel all wound up and tense, and sometimes I can’t sleep for days. I didn’t realize how bad it had gotten until I snapped. I’m going to really try to relax and take a step back. I’ll work hard and do my best, but I’ll have to just let go and let the chips fall where they may.” He paused. “I also wanted to let you know that I’ve been thinking about what you said about the box under my sink, and you’re right.”

  “What was I right about?” she asked cautiously.

  “Everything. It was Neurostim, and I shouldn’t have it. I just finished flushing all the pills down the toilet, and I thought you should know.”

  Relief flooded Kim’s heart. “Oh, David, that is such good news! Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

  He laughed. “Hey, when you’re right, you’re right. Anyway, I thought you would want to know as soon as possible.”

  “You were right. I love you.”

  “I love you too.” He yawned. “I think it’s time that both of us get some sleep.”

  As the tension drained out of her body, Kim realized just how tired she was. She yawned too. “No kidding. Good night.”

  “G’night. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  Kim hung up her phone and dropped it back into her purse. She snuggled down among her pillows and stuffed animals with a sleepy smile on her face, feeling as light and carefree as a feather on a summer breeze. A flicker of doubt hovered at the edges of her mind, but she pushed it away. David had lied to her before to protect his access to Neurostim, but just now he had seemed genuinely contrite. Besides, she would be seeing a lot more of him now that they were both in LA again. She could keep an eye on him for any odd behavior, and she would have plenty of opportunities to poke around his apartment.

  It was a good thing he’d called her before she talked to her mom. That could have been a real disaster.

  Karl reboarded the Agnes Larsen with George Kulish in tow. Captain Kjeldaas stepped out of the pilothouse as they came aboard. He watched wordlessly as Karl took George downstairs and locked him into one of the holds. When Karl came back up, he asked, “Was that George?”

  “It was,” Karl confirmed.

  The fisherman nodded impassively. “He is younger than I expected.”

  A siren wailed in the Yuragorsk streets and was almost immediately joined by another. “We should cast off,” said Karl. He quickly untied the mooring ropes as Captain Kjeldaas primed the engine and coaxed it to life.

  The fishing boat turned toward the harbor mouth and the open ocean beyond. Karl leaned against the boat’s rusty winch and watched the slowly receding shoreline. The busy piers and waterfront streets were filled with honking vehicles and shouting men, but none appeared to be from the police and no one paid any attention to the Agnes Larsen as she chugged away. A couple of kilometers inland, a pall of gray-and-black smoke had begun to rise over the rooftops from the direction of the Cleverlad building. Karl smiled with satisfaction. “One good fire deserves another,” he said to himself.

  He opened a steel briefcase he had left onboard during his visit with George. Inside were his passport; thick wads of dollars, kroner, and rubles; and a bulky satellite phone. He took out the phone and dialed Alex Geist’s cell phone. Geist answered immediately. “Hello, Mr. Bjornsen. Is your Russian business trip complete?”

  “It is. I’m on my way back to Norway now. How did your meeting go?”

  “As I expected, the American and Norwegian authorities will be grateful for any information you can provide regarding our mutual acquaintance.” His voice was precise and even. “However, he and his affiliates will be very hard to extradite and are unlikely to be prosecuted in Russia. Therefore, any information you have will be of only limited use and value. Under these circumstances, the Americans will not grant you or your companies immunity. The Norwegians were less absolute, but still pessimistic. I am sorry.”

  “Don’t be. Both you and Bert Siwell warned me of that likelihood. Do you think the authorities would change their minds if I could persuade our mutual acquaintance to give a videotaped confession and accompany me to Norway?”

  The line was silent for several seconds. “I . . . Is this possible?”

  Karl laughed. “Did I just flap the unflappable Alex Geist?”

  Geist chuckled drily. “Answer my question first.”

  “It is very possible. My offer has a limited duration, however. I need an answer within the next hour, and I’ll need the paperwork completely executed in two hours. I don’t have the luxury of making this a negotiation. It’s a take-it-or-leave-it offer, and they will have to act fast if they want to take it.”

  “I understand. I will call my contacts at DOJ and Kripos as soon as I get off the phone with you. I will also call Mr. Siwell and tell him that his writing talents are likely to be needed very soon.”

  “Excellent. I look forward to hearing from you.”

  The line went dead, and Karl smiled and walked around to the pilothouse. He opened the door to the bridge, which wasn’t much bigger than a large closet. Captain Kjeldaas glanced at him and gave a curt nod of acknowledgment. “How long until we reach Torsknes?” Karl asked.

  “An hour, maybe an hour and a half.”

  “I may need to stay at sea for two hours or more. Will that be a problem?”

  The fisherman shrugged. “We may get boarded by the Kystvakt, and they will check the holds. That is the only problem.”

  Karl nodded. “Do what you can to avoid them.”

  “I always do. Sometimes I win; sometimes they win.�
��

  “Well, if you win this time, I will double what I am paying to rent your boat today.”

  The fisherman wrinkled his leathery forehead and nodded appreciatively. “I will do what can be done.”

  Karl had no doubt that Captain Kjeldaas meant what he said. He was already getting $250,000 for the day’s work—more than he was likely to net from a decade of smuggling runs.

  Karl’s satellite phone rang and he stepped back out onto the deck. He looked at his watch as he took the call. It had been only twenty minutes. “Hello, Alex.”

  “Hello, Mr. Bjornsen. We have a deal. Mr. Siwell is preparing the papers now.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  OPENINGS

  Anne and Gunnar strolled arm in arm down Hinsdale’s oak-and-maple-lined streets in the night. No moon or stars shone, and the thick darkness was interrupted only by pools of yellow light cast by the wrought-iron street lamps. The day had been unseasonably hot and humid for early October, though few fall days in the Midwest can fairly be described as “seasonable”—most are too hot or too cold, generally without advance warning.

  The heat had eased some with nightfall, but the air remained heavy and warm, stirred occasionally by sudden, gusty breezes that held the promise of a thunderstorm during the night. “Is the trial starting next Monday?” asked Anne.

  “Yes.”

  “How do you feel about it?”

  “Fine.”

  They walked in silence for several seconds. “Are you thinking about it a lot?” she asked.

  “What kind of a question is that?”

  “The more you think about something, the less you talk about it.”

  Gunnar chuckled. “It has been on my mind,” he conceded. “I’ve been fighting with Karl about the company for ten years. One way or the other, that fight is about to end. Except for the day I married you, I can’t think of a more decisive time in my adult life. Either Karl will have the company all to himself, or I will—just in time to launch our first truly revolutionary drug. The other one will be standing on the outside, completely shut out.”

  “That will be hard on whoever is left out.”

  Gunnar shrugged. “It’s his own fault.”

  “And if it’s not him?”

  “Oh, it will be. I’m feeling pretty good about this.”

  “But what if you’re wrong?”

  “Then I’m wrong,” Gunnar said irritably. “That’s a bridge we can cross when we reach it. There’s no reason to ruin our evening by talking about it now.”

  They walked in silence for a few minutes. “Will Henrik Haugeland be staying with us while he’s here?” Anne asked.

  “Ben Corbin wants him to stay in a hotel until after he testifies. Otherwise, it could come out that he was our guest, and that would make him look less impartial to the jury. After he’s done testifying, I may invite him to stay with us. He and I will be very busy.”

  Ben took Eric from Noelle, expertly positioned him, and started patting him gently on the back. After about a minute, Eric produced an enormous belch. “Nice work,” said Noelle.

  “I get a sense of accomplishment when he lets loose a big one like that,” Ben said as he put Eric into his bassinet. “I can actually feel him deflate.”

  Noelle smiled and patted the sofa next to her. Ben sat down and she put her head on his shoulder. “It’s good to be home, isn’t it?” she said.

  “Oh, yeah. There’s nothing like being back in our own house again. And I can’t tell you how much I missed real pizza.”

  “I’ll just be happy to sleep in my own bed with you beside me.”

  For the six weeks that Eric had been in neonatal, Noelle had slept on a narrow hospital bed in his room. Most nights Ben had been there too, but had been stuck sleeping in a vinyl reclining chair.

  “That’ll be nice,” Ben agreed. “It’ll also be nice not to have a nurse coming in every hour and turning on the light to do whatever it is they did with Eric.”

  “It was only a couple of times a night. The other times it was usually Eric wanting to be fed.”

  “Well, at least there will be fewer nightly interruptions,” Ben replied. “To tell you the truth, though, I’m just glad he’s okay and acting like a normal baby. And I’m glad you’ll be okay as soon as that cast comes off your leg. I’m willing to go through lots of sleepless nights for that.”

  “Me too. We’ve been really blessed; this could have turned out a lot worse. It scares me that whoever attacked us is still out there. I’ll be happy when they catch him and we can close the book on the whole thing.”

  “I don’t know who pulled the trigger that night in Oslo,” replied Ben, “but I still think Karl pulled the strings. I’d love to see him arrested, but first I’m going to take away his company and every penny he owns. Then the cops can have him.”

  “Speaking of cops, did you or Sergei ever get a clear answer on why no one is guarding us? I’d feel a lot safer if there was a squad car parked out front.”

  “So would I,” agreed Ben. “My guess is that the police are watching every move Karl makes, so he’s not likely to send someone after you again. It’s tough to tell exactly what’s going on, though—Sergei has been getting some pushback from his contacts in Norway. They say that their organized-crime task force, Kripos, is handling the case now, so they can’t talk about it. Sergei tried calling Kripos, but they say they have a confidentiality policy about ongoing investigations, so they won’t tell him anything.

  “Now that we’re back in the US, we don’t have to rely on the Norwegian police, of course. Sergei and Elena are going to try the FBI to see if they can get some answers, or at least get someone to keep an eye on you until Karl and his hit man are arrested.”

  David sat at his kitchen table. Canned outlines on cardiology and advanced cytology, heavily highlighted textbooks, class notes, and practice exams formed a rough crescent around him.

  His first round of exams started in just a few days, and his studying was not going well. He thought he would be okay on oncology and immunology, the two subjects he had studied over the summer, but the rest of his courses were giving him trouble. No matter how much he studied and memorized, it was so hard to keep everything straight, and some of the formulas he was supposed to be able to apply simply made no sense to him. Without help, he doubted he would do much better than a C average—better than last year, but still not enough to land a good internship.

  He got up, stretched, and walked over to his hall closet, which held a small stacked washer/dryer unit. He opened the door and paced up and down the hall for several minutes, pausing occasionally to look thoughtfully at the washer. Taped to the back of it were two large freezer-storage bags that together contained 823 doses of Neurostim. Despite his promise to Kim, he had not flushed the pills, though he had cut his dosage to one-third of what he had been taking at the time of “the Incident.”

  The new dosage level seemed to be working—sort of. Since he had made the change, he hadn’t experienced any more episodes of uncontrollable rage. Also, Kim had commented several times that he was “the old David again.” He found himself getting irritable a little more easily than he had before, but he attributed that mainly to increased caffeine consumption with the beginning of the school year. On the other hand, he was still struggling in school, just not as much as last year. That wasn’t good enough. Not for him.

  He decided to go back to the old dosage level, but only until exams were over. Even if there were a direct link between Neurostim and the Incident—which he wasn’t convinced of—he doubted there was much risk that he’d lose control again. He could handle high levels of the drug for a few days. Kim had told him that the human body processed Neurostim quickly, so if he caught himself getting agitated or losing his temper, he could just go off the drug for a day or two and his blood levels would drop back down.

  He reached behind the washer, grabbed two doses of Neurostim, and popped them in his mouth. He swallowed quickly and waited for the familiar
sense of increased focus and alertness to hit him.

  Sergei found Ben in his conference room, getting ready for opening statements amid piles of heavily highlighted transcripts, financial statements, notes, and empty Mud Hole coffee cups. Ben muttered and gestured as he ran through his points, occasionally jotting something on the outline in his hands. He looked up and saw his friend leaning in the doorway. “I didn’t want to interrupt you in midargument,” said the tall Russian.

  “I’ve run through it five times and there’s one point that bothers me each time: I want to tell the jury about the shootings and fire and leave them with the clear impression that Karl was involved. Bert Siwell will jump up and object, of course, so I need to make sure I have irrefutable evidence backing me up. Ideally, I’d like it if Karl had been indicted or arrested. I know none of your sources will tell you if they’re getting ready to make an arrest, but what kind of vibe are you getting from them? Are they close to issuing an indictment or arrest warrant?”

  “Tough to tell,” Sergei replied. “I’m having trouble getting a clear read on what’s going on. This is being handled by the IOCC—the International Organized Crime Center in DC—and they’re playing it very close to the vest. I have a friend there, but the most he could do was imply that the Norwegians may have made one arrest already.”

  “Karl’s hit man?”

  “Could be. Whatever they’re working on, it’s bigger than the warehouse-robbery-gone-bad scenario the Norwegian police were talking about when we were there. Something like that wouldn’t get an IOCC investigation, even if an American was a victim.”

  “Can you think of anything it could be other than that they’re looking at Karl and Bjornsen Pharmaceuticals?”