Bleeding in the Eye of a Brainstorm m-13

by George C. Chesbro

  "Before harvesting him for possible use as a terror weapon?"

  "Yes. It's one explanation. It's possible they were going to send him out on a trial run, perhaps put him in a situation like the one he's in now. They must have thought they had him under control, could just send him out and reel him back in when they wanted. They were wrong."

  "Indeed. Maybe BUHR didn't even care about reeling him back in, just in seeing what would happen. He's probably not coherent, and he'd die anyway if he were taken alive and his pills taken away from him. They might figure there were other Raymonds to be shaped."

  "I'm just speculating."

  I didn't care what she was doing, didn't care whether she was right or wrong. I'd heard quite enough about Raymond Rogers, and whether or not his handlers had intended to set him loose in some foreign country, for whatever insane reason, was beside the point; he was loose in New York City. The more I heard, the angrier I got; it was also enough to make me increasingly nervous, and I was in no position, had already gone too far, to have my resolve weakened.

  I said, "You escaped with twelve patients. One is dead, and two are upstairs. That leaves nine. Four of them are males. You have any idea at all where I can find them? Not only are they in danger, but they could become killers themselves. One Raymond Rogers is enough."

  She slowly shook her head. "I explained their options to them, and they all decided to go into hiding. I assume they're scattered around the city. They're supposed to meet me by the tree at Rockefeller Center on Christmas Eve. I was hoping I could find the company that manufactured the drug, somehow find a way to force them to give me more of it. I talked to dozens of people, and I wasn't getting anywhere. I was feeling so hopeless. Then those two people found me. And then you came along, out of nowhere. I don't know how to thank you."

  "Thanks are premature, Doctor. I'm not exactly riding a tidal wave of optimism, and I'm very ambivalent about what both of us are trying to do right now."

  "None of this is the patients' fault, Dr. Frederickson. They didn't ask to be mentally ill, nor to be sent to Rivercliff, nor to be experimented on with a drug that just happens to let them think in a way most of us take for granted but to them is a miracle."

  "Thank you, Dr. Schweitzer. I'll try to keep bearing those things in mind."

  "Sorry. I didn't mean to sound. . What can I do to help?"

  "Does Michael know that he could go the way of Raymond Rogers?"

  "No. Those kinds of emotional meltdowns were rare, and to my knowledge neither he nor Emily ever witnessed one."

  "Okay, what you can do to help is go back upstairs and brief the guards, and then check out the living arrangements to make sure we can all kind of keep an eye on each other. If Michael and Emily don't know about this latest twist, I don't see any reason why they should be told. It wouldn't serve any purpose, and they've got enough to worry about."

  "Who are those people?"

  "Friends of a friend. We'll be safe as long as they're here." At least from outsiders, I thought, but didn't say so.

  Tears sprang to the psychiatrist's eyes. "I. . still don't know how to thank you for all you've done-what you're doing."

  "I'll share all my neuroses with you when this matter is resolved. That should be enough for a research paper or two."

  She smiled. "Promise?"

  "Promise."

  I waited until she'd left the office, closing the door behind her, then picked up the phone and called Felix MacWhorter to see if he'd picked up the package I'd left him. He had, and the DA's office was already busy building a case against Punch and Judy. Interpol had been notified, and the information on the tape recording had been passed along to a variety of government offices in Washington. I was betting the Chill Shop had been shut down five minutes after the CIA had found out Punch and Judy had been caught, and they would already be busy preparing denials that BUHR had ever existed. It was even possible any more Company or Lorminix hunting patrols left in the city would be called back, but I wasn't going to count on it. The police captain wanted me to come in for another chat, but I said I had other, more pressing things to do at the moment. He didn't argue with me.

  Step Seven.

  It was time to get my brother into the act. It was almost midnight in Switzerland, and Garth and Mary had probably been asleep for hours after a day on the slopes, but I figured Garth wouldn't mind being awakened when he heard what I had to tell him and what I wanted him to try to do. I dialed the number of his hotel, thought about what I was doing while the phone rang, then abruptly hung up when somebody answered.

  Cancel Step Seven.

  I no longer had any qualms about disrupting my brother and sister-in-law's holiday, for the circumstances now certainly warranted it, and they would be the first to agree. Indeed, Garth was going to be more than a little upset with me when he found out I hadn't brought him into the situation immediately, and heard about what I'd been up to while he was gone. It wasn't disrupted vacation plans, but Garth himself I was worried about. My brother was absolutely fearless, and a bullet between the eyes was the only thing that would stop him once he had committed himself to a certain course of action. He was a quiet warrior whose actions spoke very loudly, and who took no prisoners if he thought his cause was just; and I had no doubt that he would think getting more medication for the patients from Rivercliff was the right thing to do. If I involved Garth, I was going to have a lot of explaining to do; once he found out about the drug a certain company with headquarters in Switzerland had been manufacturing for the CIA, and once I told him that somebody in said headquarters might be able to provide information that could save the lives of a dozen people who were otherwise going to die in a few days, he was going to be out the door and on his way to Berne. The one thing predictable about Garth was that he could be unpredictable, and very dangerous to anybody he considered a bad guy. He was in a foreign country, one that went to great pains to protect the privacy and interests of the corporations that were headquartered there. If I told him about Lorminix and asked for his help, he would be working alone and blind, without any franchise or weapons, in what could quickly turn into a very hostile environment. His wife wasn't going to be too pleased with me if Garth ended up in a Swiss prison, or dead, and I wouldn't be too happy myself.

  Besides, I might not need Garth. Thanks to my very informative chat with Punch and Judy, I could probably take care of the business I wanted done with Lorminix myself, or at least accomplish as much as my brother could in person.

  My alarm woke me at four in the morning. I got up and put on my thick terry-cloth robe. Stepping over the figure of Michael Stout, who was in a sleeping bag in the middle of the floor in the living room, I went into the kitchen to make myself a cup of coffee. Then, wanting to make sure that Michael didn't overhear any of my conversation, I padded downstairs to my office, taking along with me the notebook in which I had jotted down the salient details of Punch and Judy's story. I consulted my notes, then dialed the office number of one Heinrich Muller at Lorminix headquarters in Berne. "Ja?"

  "You speak English, Herr Muller?"

  "Who is this?" the man on the other end of the line asked in English that had a thick German accent. "How did you get this number?"

  "My name's Robert Frederickson, and since this is my nickel, I'll do most of the talking."

  "I'm not interested in anything you have to say. Goodbye, Herr Frederickson."

  "I got your name and this number from Punch and Judy, Muller. They also let slip the fact that Lorminix occasionally acts as a CIA asset, and that you're the liaison. You're also the cutout. Those two assassins are paid through a Swiss account that belongs to Lorminix. Right now your two hired hands are sitting in a New York City jail cell spilling their guts out. Now do I have your attention?"

  The silence on the other end was broken only by the sound of heavy breathing; Heinrich Muller even breathed with a German accent.

  I let some more time pass, then continued, "This is your lucky day, Herr Mull
er. I suspect you've already received a report on me, maybe even have it in front of you right now, so I won't bore you with all my credentials. I'm a private investigator, somewhat to the left of center politically, but I have a special place in my heart for big companies like yours, and I tend to be very sensitive to their needs. Very shortly, the needs of Lorminix will be great. I can not only directly link your company to the CIA, which isn't going to please a lot of your other customers around the world, but I can also prove that you developed and manufactured a very dangerous drug to CIA specifications, and then shipped it to them for illegal experiments on humans. Shades of Nazi Germany, Herr Muller. I can prove that your company bears at least some responsibility for producing a serial killer who's loose on the streets of New York City and probably killing somebody even as we speak. I know all about Rivercliff, Punch and Judy, BUHR-all of it. Your company's ass and your personal ass are fried anyway; if the courts in this country don't kill you with criminal charges and civil suits, the bad publicity will. Luckily for you, I'm here to offer you a measure of corporate and personal redemption. You can help save the lives of some of the people whose heads and bodies you've been helping the CIA mess with. Cooperating in that way could prove advantageous to you, providing a bit of an umbrella in the shit storm that's about to come down on your head. If you help me, I'll do what I can to help you contain the damage, including offering testimony in any court about the way in which you cooperated. If you don't help me, Herr Muller, I'm going to start banging the publicity drums the minute I hang up this telephone, and I'll make sure that you get personal credit for the deaths that are going to occur if you don't help. Now, here's the deal. It's very simple. I want a case-a big case, all you've got-of that mystery drug in the black-and-yellow capsules delivered to my doorstep within the next forty-eight hours. I don't care how you do it, just get it done. If it arrives, you get a friend in court; if it doesn't, I use this same phone to call a friend of mine at The New York Times. Now, I want to hear you tell me that you understand."

  The response was more guttural breathing.

  "Muller? Let me hear it. If I don't, I hang up and call my reporter friend. She'd kill for a story like this."

  "Ja. I understand."

  "Good," I said, and hung up.

  I sat for a few minutes, sipping at my coffee, which had gone cold, thinking. I finally decided to give my performance a favorable review, reasoning that my move on Muller had been as good as anything that Garth could have done-and a lot better than a few things he might have done. The next two days would tell whether I had been able to shake loose a supply of the drug, but I wasn't going to count on it. For one thing, there was always the possibility that Lorminix had destroyed any existing supply of the drug after the patients escaped from

  Rivercliff. Also, Herr Muller might not panic as easily as I hoped he would; he could confer with his colleagues, who might conclude that, in fact, I probably couldn't prove anything. Then they would take the defensive posture of complete stonewalling, denying everything, letting matters drag on in court, if it ever came to that, for years.

  There was nothing left to do at 4:30 in the morning, so I went back to bed.

  I awoke again at 6:45. I made more coffee for Michael and myself, then went down to my office. I was very anxious to talk to Bailey Kramer to get at least a preliminary indication of whether or not he could do the job I wanted him to do, and so I called his apartment on the Lower East Side at 7:50. There was no answer, which surprised me; he didn't go in to work until nine, and at that hour of the morning he should have been up and eating breakfast, maybe reading the newspaper. Thinking that he might be in the shower, I waited twenty minutes, called again. There was still no answer.

  Now I was getting nervous. I didn't want to call him at work, because I didn't want Frank Lemengello to know anything about the private little arrangement between Bailey and myself. At the same time I wanted to know where we stood, and I didn't want to have to sit around all day biting my fingernails while waiting for Bailey to call me. I presumed it would take some time to find suitable lab space and equipment and anything else Bailey might need if it was possible for him to replicate the drug, and I wanted to get started as soon as possible. I tried Bailey's apartment once more, with the same result, then, at 9:15, I called the lab, thinking that if Frank answered I would simply hang up.

  I needn't have worried. What I got was a recorded message informing me that Frank was on vacation and the lab would be closed until after New Year's. Frank hadn't told me he was going away on vacation, but then there was no reason why he should have; we had concluded our business. But with the lab closed, that left the very loud question of just where Bailey Kramer might be.

  I worked in the office through the morning, trying to concentrate on contracts and reports while I waited for the phone to ring. At noon a deliveryman arrived with pizza, apparently my guests' choice for their midday meal. Francisco had given Chico Velasquez, one of the day's guards, money to pay, but I waved him off, paid the deliveryman, then took the two pies upstairs myself. I gathered Margaret, Michael, Emily, and Sharon Stephens in my kitchen, and I shared their meal with them. When we had finished, I said, "We have to talk."

  Margaret, who was sitting next to me at the table, touched my arm. "Mongo, what's wrong?"

  "What's wrong is that you don't have enough capsules to make it to Christmas Eve," I said, turning toward her, glancing at Michael and Emily. "I assume everybody's supply is going to be running out by then. There'll be no safety margin."

  Michael ran a hand back through his hair, and his blue eyes glowed with intensity. "Margaret can have some of my capsules. I have twenty-one."

  "I'll share mine too," Emily said quietly.

  "No," Margaret declared in a firm voice. "I can't accept your offers. But thank you."

  "Look," I said, once more glancing in turn at the others around the table, "in a way, it doesn't make any difference. You'll only be postponing the problem of what will happen to all of you when you run out. There may not be any of the drug left in existence; all supplies of it, in this country or anywhere else, could have been destroyed after Raymond Rogers ran amok and you people escaped from Rivercliff. Even the formula itself may have been destroyed. There's a very good chance that's exactly what happened. There are a whole lot of individuals, and one very large corporation, that stand to lose a great deal if any of you survive to tell your stories, and a whole lot to gain if you all end up dead or insane once again."

  "Mongo," Sharon Stephens said quietly, "is there any hope at all?"

  "Yes, there's hope-but absolutely no guarantees. I've taken steps to try to force Lorminix to supply us with more of the drug, and I've got a very good chemist trying to make more of it. The problem is that I'm not sure Lorminix will come through, even if they do have more of the drug to send, and the chemist seems to have disappeared. There's nothing we can do now about the others, because we have no way to contact them. We just have to hope that I can come up with more of the stuff by the time we rendezvous with them on Christmas Eve. But you're not in that position. You know what will happen to you if you run out of the medication. Right now is the time, while you still have a few days' supply left, for you to check yourselves into a hospital and tell your story. Dr. Stephens and I will be with you to back you up. If the three of you lapse back into insanity, and maybe die, then all of this will have been a wasted exercise. So that's my recommendation; the three of you go to a hospital now, while there's still time for the doctors to study your conditions and treat you."

  There was a prolonged silence, which was finally broken by the psychiatrist. "I think Mongo's right," Sharon Stephens said softly. "If you run out, you'll first lose your rationality, and then you'll die. Maybe it is possible for the doctors to come up with at least an interim treatment to prevent the cellular collapse that occurs when you stop taking the drug. Turning yourselves in now for treatment may be the wisest thing to do."

  Margaret, Michael, and Emily
all looked at one another, and finally Michael turned to Sharon Stephens. "Does what you just said mean you think they'll let us keep taking our meds as long as we have them while they work on us?"

  "I don't know," the psychiatrist said in a small voice, looking away.

  I said, "Michael asked what you thought. Give us your best guess."

  "I. . think not," the woman replied. There was anguish in her voice and expressive green eyes as her gaze swept around the table. "You have to understand the thinking of the medical establishment, which is conservative by nature to begin with. You have to look at things from their perspective. They'd see five people walking into an emergency room. Three of these people announce that they're schizophrenics, but they display absolutely no signs of mental illness, nor do they exhibit any of the side effects normally associated with any of the drugs used to treat mental illness. They talk about being patients at a mental hospital called Rivercliff, which these doctors have never heard of. Their records, of course, no longer exist anywhere. Then these people start talking about illegal experiments that were conducted at this place the doctors can't find listed anywhere. They also claim that the ice-pick killer on the streets also came from Rivercliff. So now the doctors start thinking that maybe these three people really are crazy, but they're going to be extremely cautious in diagnosing and treating them. It won't matter what Dr. Stephens or the highly respected Dr. Frederickson have to say on the matter. Doctors and hospitals are being sued all the time. Finally, these three people who claim to be schizophrenic pull out bags of capsules, supposed medication that doesn't have a name, and ask that they be allowed to continue taking one a day while the doctors check them out. I ask you, Mongo, if you were a hospital administrator, would you allow the people I've just described to self-medicate after you'd admitted them into your hospital?"