Trifecta

by Pam Richter

  "Turn around and look at this man," Burgess instructed as the door opened.

  Sabrina, Eve and Mark turned and looked at the tall muscular man with a bandage prominently displayed on his neck.

  "Do you recognize these two women, Mr. Malcovich?" Burgess asked.

  "Yes."

  "Thank you. You may leave."

  Burgess waited until the door closed behind Sergi.

  "I want to know which one of you two women bit the man you just saw."

  "Neither of them would..."

  "Mr. Ponti," Burgess thundered. "I'm warning you. This is a serious matter. If you continue to give unsubstantiated opinions you will have to leave."

  "Neither of us bit him," Eve said calmly "He was threatening both Sabrina and I with a gun. Then a dog came up and bit him. It was tan colored. A large boxer."

  "Is that the truth?" Burgess asked, looking at Sabrina.

  "Yes. That is the truth."

  Burgess turned and looked at Ivar. "You said you were observing from behind a tree. What did you see?"

  "I saw a large dog in the area. I presume it bit Sergi."

  "Where do you come from, Ms. Miller?" Burgess asked, quickly changing the subject and looking at Eve.

  Eve hoped the story would sound logical. She had to account for the time before she was born. Her nonexistent childhood. They didn't expect the identity papers that Eve had received from Stephan to check out once they were put through the rigorous scrutiny that Burgess Whitcomb would insist upon. She had to have come from another country.

  "I'm an illegal alien. When I met Sabrina a few days ago and saw the remarkable likeness, I began to doubt for the first time who I really was. You see, I was brought up in Mexico. Maria Estavez was my mother. We didn't look alike. Our coloring. But that happens sometimes. She told me my father was blond and that he left her soon after I was born. She died a few months ago, and it was then that I found that I didn't have any identification. There was no birth certificate or anything."

  "Say something in Spanish," Burgess ordered.

  "I think Sabrina is my sister," Eve said in Spanish.

  "More," Burgess ordered.

  Eve told him the whole story of her childhood in rapid Spanish. She and her mother never stayed in one town in Mexico for long. Her mother did not have any family that she knew about, but was well educated and taught her English. She did not go to regular schools. Her mother gave her lessons.

  "Okay," Burgess said. "You can speak Spanish. Any theories on how this all come about?"

  "Sabrina is an orphan. Her mother died in childbirth. I know that the woman I though was my mother worked in the United States for a while, at a hospital in the Los Angeles area. I think she took me shortly after my birth and fled to Mexico.

  "After she died, I hitched a ride with some tourists into the United States. I look like an American and speak perfect English, so at the border I was not questioned. When I came into Los Angeles, I met Dr. Steinbrenner. He said I could stay for a while and employed me to do the cooking and cleaning, and to take care of the tanning salon when he was absent. Then Sabrina came into the spa. I couldn't believe it. We look exactly alike. We knew we must be sisters. Probably twins."

  "Did Dr. Steinbrenner ever do any experiments on your brain."

  "No."

  "He never gave you drugs to enhance your mental acuity or your strength?"

  "If you would like to search for a sign of surgery or any drugs you may do so. Sabrina and I were joking when Stephan asked if one of us was a computer. The only experiments I saw Dr. Steinbrenner do was on rats. After I met Sabrina, I moved in with her. We wanted to know all about each other. To understand the truth."

  "Mr. Ponti, what did you think when this double turned up?"

  "Look at them," Mark said simply. "They have to be twins."

  "This whole story is outrageous," Burgess stated. "Even preposterous. Now we have a hospital worker spiriting away an infant! To Mexico."

  "We don't know the truth, so if you could find out we would be grateful," Eve said, smiling at Burgess.

  "This isn't a missing person bureau. The Defense Department was notified that Dr. Steinbrenner had made what could be a super-human. A person who was phenomenally strong. A person with a computer in their brain. By the way, I will have both of you women checked by a doctor. We will also do blood tests for ingestion of chemicals."

  "Good," Eve said.

  "Why would Mr. Hashimoto's corporation want to hire you, Ms. Miller?"

  "Well, Stephan and Alexander Steinbrenner thought of me as a servant. They saw me cleaning, running errands. They knew I was an illegal immigrant. I think they decided Mr. Hashimoto would want to hire me for sexual favors. They knew I was powerless. Then they obtained documents that made me a citizen so I could travel with Mr. Hashimoto."

  Eve reached into her purse and handed them to Burgess Whitcomb, who looked at them silently for a few minutes. "Excellent work."

  "But if the blood tests prove that I am Sabrina's sister, then I'll be a citizen of the United States, won't I?"

  "Technically," Burgess said, nodding.

  Eve gave him another of her blinding smiles. If he thought he was being manipulated, he didn't give any indication.

  "Dr. Steinbrenner gave you what amounts to a small fortune, Ms. Miller." Burgess made it sound like an accusation.

  "Yes. He may have found out what his sons were up to with Hashimoto. He knew he was ill and was worried about me, here alone without an identity. He's a very nice man."

  "Why did you change your hair color?"

  "Sabrina has worked as a model, but she is quite well known and we look so much alike. So I changed my hair color and she took me on a shoot to meet a photographer, Tracy Rieber."

  "Then you changed your hair color back again?"

  "Twin modeling is lucrative."

  "Tell me about what happened today. Not you Eve," Burgess said when he saw Eve straighten up, about to speak. "Sabrina."

  Sabrina spoke slowly and told the whole story in great detail. It was obvious that she was still under the influence of the drugs. Sabrina finished by saying that she tried to fight the suggestions. She knew they were brainwashing her, and had injected her with drugs.

  Sabrina excused herself when she started crying, saying she had been so scared. It wasn't hard to cry when she remembered how frightened she had been, but she didn't like doing it.

  "Damn it!" Mark exclaimed. "She shouldn't have to go through this now."

  "Of all your stories, her's I believe."

  "Fuck you," Mark said angrily. "I'm going to print her story in the L.A. Times. Interrogating innocent people because of some incredible hoax about a computer plugged into someone's brain. What a way to spend the tax payer's money!"

  Mark crossed his arms and settled back, frowning. "This is too far out to fucking believe."

  Ivar gave a slow almost imperceptible nod at Mark from across the desk.

  "What do you believe, Mr. Ponti?"

  "Hashimoto is a perverted bastard. He wanted to buy Eve and then he saw Sabrina, and wanted her too. He drugged Sabrina and tried to implant false memories about the time during which she was drugged, saying that she had lunch with him. Then he used mind control techniques to try to get her to go to Japan."

  "What about the Steinbrenner brothers?"

  "Quack lawyers," Mark snapped. "They hope to make a buck by luring Hashimoto to the United States, saying that their father implanted a computer in someone. They couldn't prove that nonsense, so they tried to sell Eve to Hashimoto because she's in the country illegally."

  "But why was Dr. Steinbrenner's lab destroyed?"

  Mark shrugged and looked hostile, "Someone searching for drugs."

  "I'm going to have Sabrina and Eve examined by a doctor. Then we will meet back here."

  Burgess called on the intercom and a man came in to escort Sabrina and Eve to the doctor's office. Mark wandered into the outer office and sat down.

  A co
uple of minutes went by and Ivar came out of the inner office. He saw an unknown man sitting at what had been Modert's desk, practically tearing out his hair and looking over schedules.

  "Where's Modert?" Ivar tried to ask casually.

  "Who knows? Some agents came and escorted him out. Took Sergi Malcovich, too. Strange."

  Ivar knew he had to leave. Now. It was too dangerous to stay. The compulsion to run was strong. So was the urge to stay.

  * * * * *

  Sabrina watched helplessly as the nurse tried to draw blood from Eve. The woman got a few drops, then the blood flow stopped. The nurse tried again, apologizing to Eve, and said this had never happened before. She was sorry. We must feel like a pin-cushion.

  Eve tried to reassure the woman, saying she really didn't feel a thing. On the next try nurse got nothing at all, and looking alarmed, started to withdraw the needle, saying she would get the doctor. Eve took hold of the needle, which was still positioned in the vein in her inner elbow. She wiggled it and blood gushed into the syringe. The nurse protested, warning she would hurt herself, but Eve kept moving the needle around in her arm until the nurse looked nauseous and Sabrina turned away, unable to watch.

  Eve told the nurse that jiggling the needle always works on tough veins.

  "Tough veins? Twenty years experience and you have to wiggle the needle?" the nurse muttered as she left with her blood samples.

  Sabrina found she had been holding her breath. "Close one."

  There was no reply and Sabrina looked at Eve. She was surprised that Eve looked sad. It was the first time she had ever seen that expression. "Did she hurt you?"

  "Oh, no."

  "Do you need syrup?"

  Eve shook her head. They were standing in an examining room wearing the paper gowns that tie up in the back. The nurse had snapped name tags on their wrists, so no one would be confused as to which was which. Sabrina's feet were cold on the tile floor so she sat down on the black leather, paper covered examining table. The paper crackled under her. Eve sat down on the backless stool that doctors use when doing an examination.

  "What's wrong?" Sabrina asked.

  "I have to tell you something, Sabrina. I'm really sorry, but the doctors will find it when they look for signs of surgery."

  "What?"

  "When you were drugged by Hashimoto's doctor, they tattooed you."

  "No," Sabrina whispered, shaking her head.

  Eve nodded. "I know how much you hate the thought. He did it so he could tell us apart, I presume."

  "Where?"

  "There's a tiny capitol 'H' behind your left ear."

  "Damn him!" Sabrina almost started crying again.

  "I saw it when you were in the shower. It doesn't show unless you pull the ear flap forward, away from your head. I was washing your hair and saw some blood..."

  "The thought gives me the creeps." Sabrina literally shivered, and then touched behind her ear. "I feel it. Raised and rough. It hurts to touch."

  "I would get one too, but I can't be scarred. So if we're together, there will always be a way to tell us apart. Hashimoto knows that if he kidnaps you again, I'll do anything he asks to get your release. So he will always have the leverage to use one of us against the other."

  Sabrina sat for a while, thinking, "Even with all Ivar did to try protect us, destroying the files, and making that man you bit take back his story..."

  "We can't stay together," Eve said, nodding.

  Sabrina felt as sad as Eve looked. Hashimoto had taken her business and now her best friend. She tried to shrug off the feeling that she had, once again, been violated, but it was hard to do. She had always hated the idea of getting a tattoo. Worse, it denoted ownership of a sort. Like the kind of tattoo dogs are given on the inside of their ear so they won't get lost. But that procedure is done out of fear of losing a beloved pet. This mark was there simply to make her identifiable. It was obscene that Hashimoto chose the mark that was his own initial and one that was his corporate logo. There was a capitol 'H' on his briefcase and on the side of his limousine. Even his Gi had a monogrammed H on the lapel. It gave her the creeps.

  "You'll have to have laser surgery, or use chemicals to get rid of it. You'll always have a scar."

  Sabrina tried to brush it off. "It's not very big. And it doesn't show. I'll have it changed."

  "But you understand, I do have to leave. I'll go tonight."

  "So soon?"

  "Hashimoto will never give up. When I went into his safe, I found the whole CIA file on us. I gave it to Ivar and he got rid of it."

  Sabrina looked around the room. "Ivar really is wonderful. You don't suppose this place is bugged, do you? They bugged Dr. Steinbrenner's hospital room."

  There was a soft knock on the door and, after a discrete moment, a man in a white lab coat entered. The doctor was looking at some forms on a clip board, saying, "We'll do a routine physical. One at a time. Ms. Eve Miller first."

  The doctor looked up and his eyebrows almost hit his nonexistent hairline. He was bald but his thick eyebrows looked like they would shoot into the stratosphere. "They said you were identical!"

  Sabrina stood up and smiled. She extended her hand. "I'm Sabrina. This is Eve. Should I wait outside?"

  "Yes."

  When the doctor started to wash his hands at the sink, Sabrina whispered to Eve hurriedly, as she was leaving, not to get mad. The doctor would do some pretty personal and unusual things, but she better not hit him. Or bite him.

  Eve nodded solemnly.

  Don't growl, Sabrina whispered as she closed the door.

  Sabrina sat waiting anxiously for Eve in a cold corridor outside the examining room. Finally Eve came out and sat down angrily next to her. She almost broke the chair. "I didn't like that at all. But I was good."

  Sabrina laughed. Life would certainly be much less fun without Eve. "Did he weigh you?"

  "Yes."

  "Oh, no!"

  Eve told her it worked out all right. She told the doctor that she never wore anything when she weighed herself. Then she took off her gown. The doctor was too busy avoiding looking at Eve in the nude to notice that she moved the top measurement bar up to 200 before getting on the scale. When she got off the scale she moved the bar lever back to the 100 mark.

  Eve said her experience of the exam was a lot worse than Sabrina's memories. Experience, in Eve's short existence, was always different than memories.

  After the medical exams, Eve and Sabrina were escorted back to Burgess Whitcomb's office. Eve looked around, wondering where Ivar was. They waited silently, about twenty minutes until Burgess came into the office, afraid to speak because they might be overheard by hidden microphones.

  Burgess had medical reports, which he placed precisely in front of him on his desk, patting the papers into a neat pile. This time, though, the atmosphere felt less menacing.

  Burgess looked at the three sitting in front of him and then glanced at a medical report. "What I have here is preliminary. There are more test results still pending from the blood samples, but Sabrina has a real cocktail of chemicals swimming around in her blood stream. Some are morphine based. A couple are hallucinogenic in nature. And by the way, some of these drugs are experimental and all of them are illegal in this country. There is also assault. A tattoo given without one's consent can and will be construed as violent assault, as far as I'm concerned."

  "What!" Mark had erupted out of his chair like an enraged bull. "Where?

  He turned to Sabrina and she showed him.

  "I'll kill him," Mark said furiously.

  "I understand how you feel, Mr. Ponti. But let the United States' government take care of Mr. Hashimoto."

  Mark kept shaking his head. "This is outrageous. Unforgivable. Inconceivable."

  Burgess continued, "From the blood analysis, you could easily have died from the poisons they put into you, Sabrina. The doctor wants you carefully monitored over the next couple of days. So what I want to ask, is if you wish to press charg
es against Mr. Hashimoto?"

  "No, I don't think so," Sabrina said after a moments hesitation. She was shocked that she had been so near death because she felt pretty good now. But she didn't want any more attention than was necessary. Too much publicity would be dangerous for Eve. "I would like to keep everything quiet. And I would like protection from Mr. Hashimoto."

  "We can't just drop this!" Burgess said. "At the very least Mr. Hashimoto will be barred from entering the United States for a very long time. The documents brought in by my agents also reveal that Mr. Hashimoto had some very shady and shabby dealings in mind for the American public. But, I could request a private inquest for the future. And you certainly will be protected, Ms. Miller. Confidentially, I was very upset that one of my agents took part in releasing you today. What he did was highly illegal. And I suspected that the pictures might not show exactly what happened. But with the medical proof from these preliminary blood tests, I'm going to bring this investigation to a close. I'm sorry for the inconvenience you have had in coming here today."

  He did not mention he had no tangible case with his files missing and Ivar corroborating the testimony given by Sabrina and Eve, that Sergi Malcovich and been bitten by a dog. There was no evidence of any unusual experiments since Dr. Steinbrenner's lab had been destroyed.

  Burgess paused and a smile that looked uncomfortable on his face appeared. "I guess, now, the good news is in order. This is still preliminary, but it is indisputable that you, Sabrina," Burgess said nodding at her, "and you, Eve, are sisters. I will get started on the paperwork myself to see that Eve Miller is granted citizenship in the United States."

  Everyone stood up. When Eve shook Burgess Whitcomb's hand he winced, almost involuntarily. A look of incredulous doubt flickered across his face. Then the look was gone. But Sabrina saw it and wondered if Eve had squeezed too hard on purpose. Eve loved to play games. And she liked her versions of revenge.

  CHAPTER 36

  Mark was watching Sabrina and Eve argue about what to pack for Eve's trip abroad. They had already cleaned out Eve's apartment upstairs. Now Sabrina was insisting that Eve take the majority of her own wardrobe.