Silent Treatment

by Michael Palmer

  “There are three stages you should go through in responding to hostile interrogation. Each stage should be dragged out as long as humanly possible. First, deny knowing anything. And keep denying it. Next, admit that you know some things, but give them misinformation—especially if they’ll have to spend time verifying what you say. The longer it takes them to determine you’re lying, the better the chance that you’ll be rescued—take it from one who was. The third stage is telling them what they want to know. Whether you are forced to that stage or not depends a little on what you’re made of and a lot on how good your interrogators are.”

  Orsino reached out a meaty hand and squeezed Ray’s cheeks so tightly their insides touched.

  “I’m glad you didn’t tell us,” he rasped.

  He stepped back. Immediately, Ray was transfixed by the ice blue eyes.

  “Do you know any chemistry at all, Mr. Santana?” Perchek asked. “No matter. You may be interested to know the chemical name for the contents of that syringe. It is four-chloryl, four-hydroxy, trimethyl, six-fluorodimethyl carbamate. Actually, there are two chemical side chains as well, so the name is even longer.”

  “I’m impressed,” Ray said.

  “The short chemical name is hyconidol hydrochloride. A chemist friend did the synthesis, but my own research produced the concept.”

  “Bravo.”

  “You see, Mr. Santana, at the end of every pain nerve in the human body is a chemical transmitter that connects it with the next nerve and fires it off. The impulse shoots up that nerve, and another jet of transmitter connects it with the next. Et cetera, et cetera. Eventually—quite rapidly, actually—the message is transmitted from the point of injury to the pain center of the brain and … ouch!”

  “Nicely put.”

  Santana already knew where Perchek was heading. He was sure his understanding showed in his eyes.

  “Hyconidol almost matches, atom for atom, the pain fiber neurotransmitter chemical. That means I can fire those nerves off all at once and at will. Every single one of them. Think of it, Mr. Santana. No injury … no mess … no blood. Just pain. Pure pain. Except in the work I do, hyconidol has absolutely no clinical value. But if we ever do market it, I thought an appropriate name for it might be Agonyl. It’s incredible stuff, if I do say so myself. A small injection? A little tingle. A larger one? Well, I’m sure you get the picture.”

  Ray’s mouth had become desert dry. The pounding within his chest was so forceful that he felt certain The Doctor could see it.

  Please don’t do this, he screamed silently. Please …

  Perchek’s thumb tightened on the plunger.

  “I think we’ll start with something modest,” he said. “Equivalent, perhaps, to nothing more than a little cool breeze over the cavities in your teeth.”

  The last voice Ray heard before the injection was Joe Dash’s.

  There are three ways a man can choose to handle dying.…

  6 YEARS LATER

  ii

  For twelve years, the Jade Dragon on the Upper West Side of Manhattan had prided itself on exceptional food at very reasonable prices. As a result, on an average weekday its 175-seat capacity turned over twice, and on weekends as many as five times. Tonight, a warm Friday in June, the wait for a table was half an hour.

  Seated in his customary spot, Ron Farrell was commenting to his wife Susan and their friends Jack and Anita Harmon on how the place had grown since he and Susan had first eaten there almost a decade ago. Now, although they had moved three times, they made a point of coming to the Jade Dragon alone or with friends every other Friday, almost like clockwork.

  They were nearly done with a meal that the Harmons had proclaimed as good as any Chinese food they had ever eaten when Ron stopped in mid-sentence and began rubbing his abdomen. With no warning, severe cramps had begun knotting his gut, accompanied almost immediately by waves of nausea. He felt sweat break out beneath his arms and over his face. His vision blurred.

  “Ronnie? Are you all right?” his wife asked.

  Farrell took several slow, deep breaths. He had always handled pain well. But this ache seemed to be worsening.

  “I don’t feel well,” he managed. “I’ve … I’ve just gotten this pain, right here.”

  “It couldn’t be what you ate,” Susan said. “We all shared the same—”

  Susan’s face suddenly went ashen. Beads of perspiration sprang out across her forehead. Then, without another word, she lurched sideways and vomited on the floor.

  Standing by the kitchen door of the crowded restaurant, the young assistant chef watched the commotion grow as one by one, the four customers at table 11 became violently ill. Finally, he reentered the massive kitchen and made his way nonchalantly to the pay phone installed for the use of the hired help. The number he dialed was handwritten on a three-by-five file card.

  “Yes?” the man’s voice at the other end said.

  “Xia Wei Zen here.”

  “Yes?”

  The chef read carefully the words printed on the card.

  “There are four leaves on the clover.”

  “Very good. You know where to go after your shift. The man in the black car will take the empty vial from you in exchange for the rest of what you are now owed.”

  The man hung up without waiting for a reply.

  Xia Wei Zen glanced about to ensure no one was watching, and then returned to his station. Work would not be nearly so taxing for the rest of his shift. For one thing, there was a good deal of money awaiting him. And for another, there would be many fewer orders coming in from the dining room tonight.

  The call came into the emergency room of Good Samaritan Hospital at 9:47. Four Priority Two patients were being transported by rescue squad from a Chinese restaurant twenty blocks away. Preliminary diagnosis was acute food poisoning.

  Priority Two. Potentially serious illness or injury, non-life-threatening at the moment.

  It was a typically busy Friday night. The nurses and residents of the large teaching hospital were already three hours behind The twenty available treatment rooms were full, as was the waiting room. The air was heavy with the odors of perspiration, antiseptic, and blood. All around were the sounds of illness, misery, and pain—moans, babies crying, uncontrollable coughing.

  “Ever eat at a place called the Jade Dragon?” the nurse who took the call from the rescue squad asked.

  “I think so,” the charge nurse answered.

  “Well, next time you might want to consider Italian. One rescue is on the way in with two probable food poisonings. Two more will be leaving shortly. Altogether, two men, two women, all in their forties, all on IVs, all vomiting.”

  “Vital signs?”

  “The numbers are okay for the moment. But according to the crew on the scene, none of them are looking all that good.”

  “Fun and games times four.”

  “Where do you want them?”

  “What do we have?”

  “Seven can be cleared if you can talk Dr. Grateful Dead, or whatever the hell his name is, into writing a few prescriptions.”

  “Perfect. Put whoever looks worst in there and the rest in the hall. We’ll move them into rooms as we can. Might as well order routine labs and an EKG on each of them, too.”

  “Chop chop.”

  Ron Farrell grunted in pain as his litter was set on the emergency bay platform and telescoped up into transport position. He was on his side in a fetal position. The pain boring into his stomach was unremitting. Jack Harmon, who had quickly become even sicker than Susan, had been transported in the ambulance with him. Now, Ron saw him wave weakly as the two of them were wheeled through the automatic doors and into the commotion and fluorescent glare of the intake area.

  The minutes that followed were a blur of questions, needles, spasms of pain, and examinations from people dressed in surgical scrubs. Ron was wheeled to a small room with open shelves of supplies and a suction bottle on the wall. The staff had addressed him courteou
sly enough, but it was clear that everyone was harried. Ron’s personal physician wasn’t affiliated with Good Samaritan, as far as he knew. There was really nothing he could think of to do except wait for the medication he had been promised to take the pain away.

  “You are feeling better, yes?” a man’s voice said in a thick foreign accent that Ron could not identify.

  Still in the fetal position that gave him the least discomfort, Ron blinked his eyes open, and looked up. The man, dressed in blue surgical scrubs like most of the ER staff, smiled down at him. The overhead light, eclipsed by his head, formed a bright halo around him and darkened his face.

  “I am Dr. Kozlansky,” he said. “It appears you and the others have developed food poisoning.”

  “Goddamn Jade Dragon. Is my wife all right?”

  “Oh yes. Oh yes, I assure you, she is most fine.”

  “Great. Listen, Doc, my stomach’s killing me. Can you give me something for this pain?”

  “That is exactly why I am here,” he said.

  “Wonderful.”

  The physician produced a syringe half full of clear liquid and emptied it into the intravenous line.

  “Thanks, Doc,” Farrell said.

  “You may wish to wait and thank me when … when we see how this works.”

  “Okay, have it your—”

  Farrell was suddenly unable to speak. There was a horrible, consuming emptiness within his chest. And he knew in that moment that his heart had stopped beating.

  The man continued smiling down at him benignly.

  “You are feeling better, yes?” he asked.

  Ron felt his arms and legs begin to shake uncontrollably. His back arched until only his heels and the back of his head touched the bed. His teeth jackhammered together. Then his consciousness began to fade. His thoughts became more disjointed. His dreadful fear lessened and then finally vanished. His body dropped lifelessly back onto the bed.

  For a full minute the man stood there watching. Then he slipped the syringe into his pocket.

  “I’m afraid I must leave you now,” he whispered in a voice free of any accent. “Please try to get some rest.”

  1 YEAR LATER

  CHAPTER 1

  Harry Corbett was on his fifteenth lap around the indoor track when he first sensed the pain in his chest. The track, a balcony just under an eighth of a mile around, was on the top floor of the Grey Building of the Manhattan Medical Center. Ten feet below it was a modestly equipped gym with weights, the usual machines, heavy bags, and some mats. The fitness center, unique in the city, was exclusively for the hospital staff and employees. It had been created through the legacy of Dr. George Pollock, a cardiologist who had twice swum the English Channel. Pollock’s death, at age ninety, had resulted from his falling off a ladder while cleaning the gutters of his country home.

  At the moment of his awareness of the pain, Harry was actually thinking about Pollock and about what it would be like to live until ninety. He slowed a bit and rotated his shoulders. The pain persisted. It wasn’t much—maybe two on the scale of one to ten that physicians used. But it was there. Reluctant to stop running, Harry swallowed and massaged his upper abdomen. The discomfort was impossible to localize. One moment it seemed to be beneath his breastbone, the next in the middle of his back. He slowed a bit more, down from an eight-minutes-per-mile pace to about ten-and-a-half. The ache was in his left chest now … no, it was gone … no, not gone, somewhere between his right nipple and clavicle.

  He slowed still more. Then, finally, he stopped. He bent forward, his hands on his thighs. It wasn’t angina, he told himself. Nothing about the character of the pain said cardiac. He understood his body, and he certainly understood pain. This pain was no big deal. And if it wasn’t his heart, he really didn’t give a damn where it was coming from.

  Harry knew his logic was flawed—diagnostic deduction he would never, ever apply to a patient. But like most physicians with physical symptoms, his denial was more powerful than any logic.

  Steve Josephson, jogging in the opposite direction, lumbered toward him.

  “Hey, you okay?” he asked.

  Still staring down at the banked cork track, Harry took a deep breath. The pain was gone, just like that. Gone. He waited a few seconds to be sure. Nothing. The smidgen of remaining doubt disappeared. Definitely not the ticker, he told himself again.

  “Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine, Steve,” he said. “You go ahead and finish.”

  “Hey, you’re the zealot who goaded me into this jogging nonsense in the first place,” Josephson said. “I’ll take any excuse I can get to stop.”

  He was sweating more profusely than Harry, although he had probably run half as far. Like Harry, Steve Josephson was a general practitioner—“family medicine specialists,” the bureaucrats had decided to name them. They were in solo practice, but shared night and weekend coverage with four other GPs. It was just after six-thirty in the morning— earlier than usual for their run. But this would be a busy and important day.

  At eight, following morning rounds and an emergency meeting of the family medicine department, the entire MMC staff would be convening in the amphitheater. After months of interviews and investigation, the task force charged with determining whether or not to reduce the privileges of GPs in the hospital was ready to present its findings. From the rumors Harry had tapped into, the recommendations of the Sidonis committee would be harsh—the professional equivalent of castration.

  With a portion of Harry’s income and a significant chunk of his professional respect on the line, the impending presentation was reason enough for the ulcers or muscle spasms, or whatever the hell had caused the strange ache. And even the committee report was not the foremost concern on his mind.

  “We’ve been running together three or four times a week for almost a year,” Josephson said, “and I’ve never seen you stop before your five miles were up.”

  “Well, Stephen, it just goes to show there’s a first time for everything.” Harry studied his friend’s worried face and softened. “Listen, pal, I’d tell you if it was anything. Believe me I would. I just don’t feel like running today. I’ve got too much on my mind.”

  “I understand. Is Evie going in tomorrow?”

  “The day after. Ben Dunleavy’s her neurosurgeon. He talks about clipping her cerebral aneurysm as if he was removing a wart or something. But I guess it’s what he does.”

  They moved off the track as the only other runners in the gym approached.

  “How’s she holding up?” Josephson asked.

  Harry shrugged. “All things considered, she seems pretty calm about it. But she can be pretty closed in about her feelings.”

  Closed in. The understatement of the week, Harry mused ruefully. He couldn’t recall the last time Evie had shared feelings of any consequence with him.

  “Well, tell her Cindy and I wish her well, and that I’ll stop by to see her as soon as that berry is clipped.”

  “Thanks,” Harry said. “I’m sure she’ll appreciate hearing that.”

  In fact, he doubted that she would. As warm, bright, and caring as Steve Josephson was, Evie could never get past his obesity.

  “Did you ever listen to him breathe?” she had once asked as Harry was extolling his virtues as a physician. “I felt like I was trying to converse with a bull in heat. And those white, narrow-strapped tees he wears beneath his white dress shirts—pul-leese.…”

  “So, then,” Josephson said as they entered the locker room, “before we shower, why don’t you tell me what really happened out there.”

  “I already—”

  “Harry, I was halfway around the track from you and I could see the color drain from your face.”

  “It was nothing.”

  “You know, I spent years learning how to ask nonleading questions. Don’t make me regress.”

  For the purpose of insurance application forms or the occasional prescription, Harry and Josephson served as one another’s physician. And altho
ugh each persistently urged the other to schedule a complete physical, neither of them had. The closest they had come was an agreement made just after Harry’s forty-ninth birthday. Harry, already obsessive about diet and exercise, had promised to get a checkup and a cardiac stress test. Steve, six years younger but fifty pounds heavier, had agreed to have a physical, start jogging, and join Weight Watchers. But except for Josephson’s grudging sessions on the track, neither had followed through.

  “I had a little indigestion,” Harry conceded. “That’s all. It came. It bothered me for a minute. It left.”

  “Indigestion, huh. By indigestion do you perhaps mean chest pain?”

  “Steve, I’d tell you if I had chest pain. You know I would.”

  “Slight correction. I know you wouldn’t. How many men did you lug back to that chopper?”

  Although Harry rarely talked about it, over the years almost everyone at the hospital had heard some version of the events at Nha-trang, or had actually composed one themselves. In the stories, the number of wounded he had saved before being severely wounded himself had ranged from that his doctor had killed a three—which was in fact the number for which he had been decorated—to twenty. He once even overheard a patient boast hundred Vietcong while rescuing an equal number of GIs.

  “Stephen, I am no hero. Far from it. If I thought the pain was anything, anything at all, I’d tell you.”

  Josephson was unconvinced.

  “You awe me a stress test. When do you turn fifty?”

  “Two weeks.”

  “And when’s the date of that family curse?”

  “Oh, come on.”

  “Harry, you’re the one who told me about it. Now, when is it?”

  “September. September first.”

  “You’ve got four weeks.”

  “I … Okay, okay. As soon as Evie’s situation is straightened out I’ll set one up with the exercise lab. Promise.”

  “I’m serious.”