Miracle Cure

by Michael Palmer

  Brian zigzagged as much as he dared, cursing himself for not changing into his sneakers for the drive home after the Purefoy interview. Another gunshot, this time accompanied by a sharp sting across his deltoid muscle. Was that it? Was that what it felt like to be shot?

  He had been running for no more than fifteen or twenty seconds, but already he felt his wind beginning to go. Six foot three, 215, and slowing down—he was about to become a hell of a target. Staying on the road was suicidal. There was a small opening up ahead between the trees to his right. He feinted once to his left, then charged into the woods, glancing back just long enough to check on his pursuers. The linebacker with the gun was closer to him, maybe twenty yards away. Behind him, the smaller man, moving with an awkward gait, was trying gamely to catch up. Neither of them wore sneakers, either.

  Arms flailing at branches, Brian thrashed through saplings and bushes, frantically trying to put some distance between himself and the two men. One of them called out to the other in a language other than English. Russian? There was another gunshot, but no sound of an impact. Brian, now battling a fierce stitch in his side, lost his footing and tumbled down a steep, shrub-covered embankment. Scraped, scratched, and bleeding from the backs of both hands, he scrambled to his feet and risked a check behind him. He could hear the two men, but couldn’t see them. Then suddenly, there was only silence. They had lost sight of him, too, and were waiting for a telltale sound.

  Brian crouched down, fighting the urge to suck in air too greedily. It was after five now, and the gathering dusk was his ally and their enemy. If he could only find a place to hide.…

  He dropped onto all fours and slowly, quietly began inching his way along the gully at the base of the embankment. Suddenly, from above and behind him, one of the gunmen cried out. It was the smaller of the two, hanging on to a tree at the top of the embankment about thirty yards away, visible through a perfect corridor in the foliage. The only word Brian made out clearly was Leon, the name of the taller man.

  As the killer reached for his gun, Brian pushed off and started running again—a steeplechase this time, hurdling fallen logs and splashing across a narrow streambed. Slipping on the slick rocks, he barely managed to keep his balance. Another shot. Then another. Brian knew the trees and shadows were making him a tougher target. His knee was beginning to worry him, though. Running on the roads, with no twisting, no torque, the knee had felt reasonably solid and secure. But now, sprinting on sodden, leaf-covered, uneven ground, over bumps, rocks, and branches, he knew a disaster was only an unlucky misstep away.

  As he ran, in spite of himself he wondered how the two men had known he would be in Fulbrook. It was possible they had followed him from Reading. When he was cruising through the magnificent autumn colors, lost in thought, he hadn’t been paying much attention. But he didn’t recall noticing their car, even on the mountain roads. Then he remembered the strange click on the line when he was talking with Teri. He had actually mentioned the sound to her, just as he had mentioned he was going to Fulbrook. His phone was tapped. That had to be it. They didn’t follow him to Purefoy’s office. They were already there, waiting.

  He sensed that he was opening some ground on the two thugs. As he pushed deeper into the forest, huge granite boulders and outcroppings became part of the landscape, offering him even more protection. Gasping for breath, he stopped, leaned against a massive boulder at least ten feet high, and listened. He could hear one pursuer behind him, and another to his right, both closer than he had expected. If he moved, they were almost certain to hear him. If he stayed and tried to conceal himself at the base of the boulder, he might luck out. Being passive, doing nothing, had never been in character for him. He decided to keep running.

  He took another few moments to gauge the two men’s positions, and decided to bolt up the hill to his left, away from at least one of them. He whirled, but as he planted his right leg, his knee popped out, then back. There was an immediate dull shock all the way up to his hip. But just as quickly, most of the pain vanished. He took a tentative step. There was discomfort, but he had no trouble bearing weight. A slight sprain—the sort that would slow him down some. Now what?

  The rustle made by the man behind him sounded closer. Brian wondered why in the hell he hadn’t listened to Phil, and simply let the whole matter drop. He was about to get tortured and probably killed, and for what? Even if they had left him completely alone, he still hadn’t come across anything significant enough to interest Teri and her boss. Apparently the Russians didn’t care.

  A branch snapped not too far away. It was almost over, Brian thought. Two professional killers, two guns against one unarmed doctor with a gimpy knee. He thought about Caitlin and Becky. The idea of never seeing them again, the notion of their pain should anything happen to him, forced him into action. Running seemed out of the question. But there was a large rock by his foot. If he could loosen it enough to pick it up, and somehow manage to haul it up on top of the boulder …

  Without the time to reason his actions through too carefully, he dug his fingers beneath the rock, pried it up from its muddy bed, and filled the hole with leaves and soil. The rock was twenty, maybe twenty-five pounds of absolute dead weight, but Brian found a balance point beneath one arm, and using the other to brace himself, inched his way around to a spot where he could gain some purchase on the boulder. He made the tough first step up, clutching the rock in the crook of his arm like an oversized, prehistoric football. Then he had to set it down to maintain his balance. The boulder sloped just enough, though, so that he could inch the rock along ahead of him as he climbed.

  Then, just when he needed a break, the man closer to him called out to Leon again. He couldn’t have been more than a dozen yards away. The pockmarked linebacker responded with a short, angry burst from somewhere to Brian’s left—probably ordering the first man to shut up. They were both closing in. Brian sensed that before much longer it would be over for him. Using the rock as a weapon had been a stupid idea. Now, essentially trapped, he had no choice but to go through with the effort.

  Lances of pain shot up from his knee as he forced himself in an awkward duckwalk to the crest of the huge boulder. Once there, he flattened his body against the cool, smooth gray stone and listened. If the man came up behind the boulder, Brian was finished. If he passed below, on the same natural trail Brian had taken, there was a small chance. A branch cracked. Then, to his right, Brian saw some leaves move. He eased the rock ahead another inch. A direct hit from this height could easily crush the man’s skull. The notion of killing someone, even someone bent on killing him, made Brian queasy. But if it happened, it happened.

  Again the trees moved. This time, with his cheek pressed against the boulder, Brian saw the top of the smaller man’s head. He was ten feet away if that, moving stealthily through the gray silence. Unless he turned and started around the boulder, he was going to pass directly below where Brian lay. Moments later, the killer stepped out from the trees, his gun, a snub-nosed revolver, at the ready. Five feet.… Three.… Brian was going to have to rise to his knees to achieve any accuracy and force. It would all have to happen very quickly, and there would be no retakes—no second try. Two feet.… One more step.… Just one more step and—

  Now! Brian braced himself, rose to his knees, held the rock at the level of his face, and hurled it almost straight down with all the force he could manage. The man was starting to turn just as the rock caught him—a sickening thud against the hairline between his ear and eye. He dropped with a soft grunt, and the rock clattered away. The gunman, Leon, was immediately alerted.

  From somewhere ahead of Brian, bushes began to thrash. He scrambled down the boulder and hobbled in the opposite direction, deeper into the forest. He half-ran, half-stumbled for nearly five minutes with no notion of whether or not he was still being pursued. Finally, the stitch in his side competing with his knee for possession of his mind’s pain center, he burrowed beneath some gnarled roots overhanging a dry streambed,
pulled in a small wall of sticks and brush to cover his position, and waited for night to fall.

  Freeman Sharpe lived in a neat four-room basement apartment in one of the Roxbury buildings he looked after. He was watching the eleven-o’clock news with his wife of three years when the phone rang. As the handyman for fifty units, and the recovery sponsor for half a dozen men, he was used to late-night calls.

  “Freeman, thank God you’re home.”

  “Doc, what’s the matter?”

  “Only everything. Freeman, could you come and pick me up?”

  “Of course.”

  “I’m at a phone booth by a gas station.”

  “Where’s the station?”

  “New York.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  IT WAS JUST AFTER SEVEN IN THE MORNING WHEN FREEMAN rolled his Chevy van into the small windowless garage that also doubled as his workshop. Brian awoke from a heavy sleep and set a battered hand across the LUCK tattoo on his friend’s knuckles.

  “Thanks,” he said hoarsely. “Except for family, I don’t think there’s ever been anyone in my life who would have done for me what you just did.”

  “I’m only glad you finally fell asleep. How’re you feeling?”

  “A lot sorer than I used to feel at football training camp. And I know it’ll be worse tomorrow.”

  “A hot shower, some eggs, and some of Marguerite’s home fries ought to help get you back on the right track. Plus you’ve got to get out of those clothes. I have a sweat suit one of my NA pigeons left here. It ought to fit.”

  Brian worked himself creakily from the van and tested his knee, which did not feel that sore. Then he motioned Freeman to stop.

  “I’m still trying to figure out when they might have started tapping my home phone, and if there’s any chance they would know about you. As far as I can tell, this trouble all started when I got the abnormal blood test back on Bill Elovitz. I don’t see how they could have been at all concerned about me until then, so there’s no way they could have someone watching your place now.”

  Freeman grinned at him through the darkness.

  “For their sake I hope they don’t,” he said.

  Brian remembered Marguerite telling him something about Freeman’s decorations in Vietnam. Such honors were nothing his sponsor would ever talk about himself.

  “I don’t want you getting involved in this any more than you have already,” he said.

  “Oooh,” said Sharpe. “Suddenly we forget that after twenty years of recovery, our sponsor ought to be capable of making up his own mind about such things. Don’t worry, Doc, I don’t like getting hurt any more than the next guy. But I also don’t like seeing my friends getting walked over. Now, come on in and let’s get you cleaned off and fed. Then we’ll talk about what’s next.”

  Brian had stayed concealed beneath the overhanging roots in the forest outside of Fulbrook for almost an hour, until it was too dark to believe anyone might still be looking for him. His sense of direction was never going to win any prizes, but after forty-five minutes of wandering through the pitch-black woods, he heard the sound of a speeding car. A short time later, he dragged himself onto what looked like the same road on which the Russians had originally stopped him. A farmer in a pickup brought him to the police station in the next town over from Fulbrook.

  The police knew nothing of a brown sedan or a red LeBaron convertible parked on Route 213. A patrol car had made that drive not an hour before, he was told, and saw no cars at all on the soft shoulder. To Brian, the fact that both cars were gone meant the recipient of his rock bomb had probably survived in decent shape. It also meant that the LeBaron was probably at the bottom of some thousand-foot-deep, water-filled quarry. The image of it floating down, down brought him close to tears.

  It was the policeman’s theory that the two men were nothing more nor less than professional car thieves, perhaps coming up from New York City to work their scam on a few small-town hicks. When they saw they had a live one in Brian, they chased him around for the fun of it, without any intention of seriously injuring him. Brian had no desire to counter that hypothesis with his theory, which, though much more likely, would sound significantly more far-fetched. He filled out the required forms as quickly as he could manage, and went down the street to a pay phone to call Freeman.

  Marguerite Sharpe was a petite Haitian woman with a knowing smile and a practical intelligence. Freeman called her an unmerited gift of his recovery. And having spent many hours at their place during his first few months back from Fairweather, Brian considered her an unmerited gift of his recovery as well. She worked as a counselor at a halfway house for women and was the best cook he knew.

  Even through the steam of the shower, Brian could smell sausage and onions grilling. He gingerly soaped the dirt and dried blood from the scrapes and cuts on his hands, face, and arms. His pants had been torn at the knees, although he had no recollection of when that could have happened, and a layer of skin over both kneecaps was being replaced by scab. In addition, there was a deep, linear gouge across his right upper arm—probably from a bullet.

  A bullet. Brian recalled how ecstatic he had been when Ernest Pickard notified him of the job at BHI. Now, he was washing out a bullet wound, mourning the loss of the only physical possession that mattered to him, and wondering what he was going to do with his life once the Board of Registration was informed he had a positive urine test and was back on drugs again.

  Was there any way out? Was there any way to stop—to acknowledge to himself and notify his pursuers that he had gotten in over his head and was willing to let the whole Vasclear matter drop? Whom could he even deal with? Art Weber? Pickard? Jessup?

  He toweled off and pulled on the gray sweat suit Freeman had left for him. Sharpe’s NA sponsee was an XXL—if not a lineman for the Patriots, a candidate. Brian settled in across from Freeman and sipped gratefully from a cup of rich, aromatic coffee. Marguerite set a pitcher of orange juice and a huge platter of eggs, pan-fried potatoes, and sausage links in the center of the table and joined them. For a few minutes, no one spoke.

  “I’m very glad you weren’t hurt badly, Brian,” Marguerite said finally, in her melodic island accent. “Freeman has told me some of what is going on. It must be very frightening for you.”

  “And confusing,” Brian added. “I don’t even know what’s really going on. Even after all this, I don’t know.”

  “Freeman says the Russian crime syndicate is involved. That’s bad. That’s real bad.”

  “But even if they are, their drug has the potential to save hundreds of thousands of lives. That’s already been proven. I’ve been trying to figure out what they’ve really done that’s wrong, or what they’re planning on doing. The best I can come up with is that they’re planning on holding Vasclear for ransom against the entire world, like the villains in a James Bond movie.”

  “Ah, SMERSH,” Freeman said in a theatrical accent. “Please give us your report on the nuclear warheads project, Number Two.… Except I read somewhere that the income from this Vasclear drug could approach one billion in the first year alone. It doesn’t sound like our friends at Newbury would have to do anything shady. Just send out the trucks and cash the checks.”

  “I don’t know,” Brian said again, running his fingers across the wounds on the backs of his hands.

  “Are you supposed to be at work today?” Marguerite asked.

  Brian looked up at the kitchen clock.

  “Jesus, it’s eight-thirty. I completely forgot about work.”

  He snatched up the phone and called the ward.

  “Clinical ward, this is Jen speaking.”

  “Jen, it’s Dr. Holbrook.”

  “Oh, Dr. Holbrook, everyone’s been looking for you. For Dr. Gianatasio, too.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Neither of you were here for rounds. Dr. Cohen’s on the ward now, leading them.”

  “Have you heard from Phil?”

  “No. I don’t
think anyone has.”

  Brian felt a sudden chill.

  “Well,” he managed to say, “I overslept because I’m sick. It’s just the flu. I might be able to make it in this afternoon. I’m only on second call, so you can reach me by beeper if whoever’s on gets in trouble. I’m scheduled in the clinic later today. I should be in for that.”

  “Okay.”

  “And could you do me one other favor, Jen? Could you have Phil page me as soon as he checks in or shows up? It’s very important.”

  “Of course, Dr. Holbrook. Do you think something’s wrong?”

  “No. I’m sure he just forgot to tell anyone he wasn’t going to be in.”

  “Thank goodness,” the woman said. “We were worried about you both, and now you’ve called in. Maybe Dr. Gianatasio will check in soon.”

  Brian set the receiver down.

  “You look upset,” Marguerite said.

  “The only other person at the hospital who knew something might be wrong with Vasclear hasn’t shown up for work. He’s an old friend of mine who helped me get my job.”

  “Was he investigating the cases like you were?”

  “No, no. At least I don’t think he was. He’s up for academic tenure at the hospital and so we decided he was better off staying out of it. I don’t like this. I don’t like this at all.”

  “Eat some more,” Marguerite said. “I have a feeling you’re going to need the energy.”

  Brian forced down another couple of mouthfuls, then took up the phone again.

  “Who now?” Freeman asked.

  “My machine. Listen, you guys, if you have to get to work, just go. I’ll be okay here.”

  “Marguerite starts at nine-thirty,” Freeman said. “I start whenever I want.”

  “Okay. Just don’t let me put you out.”

  Brian dialed his home, feeling squeamish and angry at the notion that someone was probably listening in.