Silent Treatment

by Michael Palmer

  “There,” Harry whispered, pointing.

  Ray nodded and led the way. They reached the trees and moved through them carefully, keeping low. The guest house, a miniature version of the mansion, was itself spectacular. It was almost all glass, built on steel girders that thrust up from the cliff so that its deck was cantilevered out perhaps a hundred feet above the Hudson. Harry peered over the precipice. There was a shoreline of boulders extending out ten or fifteen feet from the base of the cliff. And directly across the still, black river, glittering like the Milky Way, was Manhattan.

  Against the cliff, beneath the main floor, was a set of rooms not visible from the front of the guest house. Through one window, which was barred, they could see Maura alternately sitting on the edge of a bed and pacing. She appeared worn and tired, but reasonably steady. Santana put a finger to his lips and pointed toward the house. Moving closer, they peered in through a massive picture window. The expansive space—living room, dining room, and kitchen—was tent-shaped, gleaming hardwood and glass with a cedar ceiling and a center pole fifteen feet high. French doors opened onto the deck, and half a dozen large windows offered stunning views of the city. A guard, his weapon in a shoulder holster, was pouring coffee. Behind him, reading at a table, sat The Doctor.

  At the sight of him, an unnatural, guttural noise emerged from Santana’s throat—the sound of hatred. He picked up a shot-put-size rock and motioned with his gun for Harry to follow him. They stopped just outside the glass door.

  “Me first,” he whispered.

  Before Harry could respond, Santana hefted the rock and hurled it face-high through the door. The thick glass exploded inward. Ray was inside at almost the instant the rock hit the floor.

  “Don’t!” he barked as the gunman reached for his weapon.

  Harry stepped through the empty door frame and took the man’s gun. Anton Perchek, who had not even lowered his book, looked up first at him, then at Santana. His smile was one of bemusement. The irises of his eyes were so pale as to appear almost white. His pupils were wide, black holes in the snow. There was not a hint of fear in the man that Harry could see—or of any emotion at all, for that matter.

  “Down on your face!” Santana ordered the gunman.

  When the man hesitated, Ray dropped him with a pistol butt behind the ear, all the while keeping his attention fixed on Perchek. The gunman was moaning but awake as Harry bound him with the technique he had perfected on the gatekeeper. Santana pulled a chair away from the table. With his silenced revolver still aimed at Perchek, he helped Harry lift the semiconscious man into the chair. Harry tied him there. Then he stepped back, closer to Santana.

  The Doctor eyed the two of them curiously. He was certainly the man Harry had seen outside of Evie’s room, the man Maura had drawn. But in some ways he wasn’t. He looked like all of the computer renderings, but none of them. He would have fit in perfectly behind the counter of a convenience store or beside an operating table, sweeping streets or piloting a jet. He was nobody and everybody. When he spoke, his voice was mellow, hypnotic, and totally devoid of emotion.

  “Well, Ray. It’s been a while, hasn’t it,” he said.

  Santana pushed the table away from Perchek with his foot. Even through the black greasepaint, Harry could see the tension in his face. Clearly, Perchek sensed it, too.

  “You don’t look so good, Ray,” he said, as Santana was taping his wrists to the wrought-iron arms of the chair. “The muscle wasting in those hands. That twitch by your eye. What is it—drugs? Some sort of disease?”

  Harry noticed that The Doctor’s arms, especially his forearms, were thickly muscled. His biceps stretched the sleeves of his sky blue polo shirt. Santana checked him for a weapon, but found none.

  “The key to Maura’s room,” Ray demanded.

  Perchek shrugged as if the business was too mundane for him to bother with.

  “No key,” he said. “Just a dead bolt on this side.”

  Santana motioned Harry down the short flight of stairs. In half a minute he was back with her. She was hollow-eyed from strain and her lip was swollen and crusted with blood, but otherwise she seemed unharmed.

  “The big guy hit her when they kidnapped her,” Harry explained;

  “Anything else?” Santana asked.

  “Except for forcing the booze down me, they haven’t really hurt me. I managed to spit a lot of it out, and after they left me alone I made myself throw up. I was drunk for a while, but I’m sober now. They thought I’d start begging them for more, but I hated the feeling and even the taste.”

  Harry put his arm around her and held her tightly.

  Santana glared down at Perchek.

  “Who in the agency helped Garvey disappear so cleanly?” he asked.

  Perchek continued smiling at him benignly.

  “Ray, you look terrible. Absolutely terrible.” His speech was as sterile as his eyes. “You know, I keep thinking that back in Nogales I never had the chance to give you the antidote for my hyconidol. That’s what’s wrong with you, isn’t it. My Lord, Ray, what an oversight. I am so sorry. So truly sorry.”

  “Shut up and tell me who sent Garvey out with a new identity.”

  “There is an antidote, you know. And a damn effective one it is, too. The biochemical process is quite simple, actually. It’s called competitive inhibition. The antidote just floods the bloodstream and replaces those nasty little molecules that have been locked onto those nerve endings of yours all these years, and Bingo, you’re cured. No more pain, Ray. Think of it. Why … why, just look at your eyes. You’re addicted, too, aren’t you. Oh, Ray. I can just imagine what you’ve been through all these years. Why, it’s a wonder you haven’t done yourself in before now.…”

  Santana listened as if transfixed. Perchek was soothing, seductive, hypnotic—and totally believable, Harry wanted to say something, anything to break the spell of The Doctor’s rhetoric. Instead, he too stood motionless. It was Santana’s pain.

  “… Well, now you don’t have to hurt anymore, Ray. Those horrible pain flashes you keep having? I can make them go away for good. I promise you. No more need for narcotics. You’ll feel the difference in only a few minutes, Ray. Just think of it. No more pain ever again. Guaranteed. You can keep me tied up while you try it. Then you can leave. I promise no one will touch you. All I want is him.” He nodded toward Harry. “In exchange for the antidote, all I want is half an hour with him.”

  Perchek looked over at Harry and for the first time, Harry could see emotion in the man’s eyes—a consuming, contemptuous loathing, focused directly and completely on him. Harry glanced back at Santana and saw a flicker of uncertainty. Perchek saw it, too, and was again smiling benignly.

  Santana set his pistol on the table. Then he whirled and stretched two-inch-wide adhesive tape tightly across The Doctor’s mouth. Next he pulled out a contraption from his pocket—an arcane metal frame with five finger rests and pointed screws over each. Perchek stiffened momentarily, but made no move to resist as Ray locked the fingers and thumb, of his right hand in place.

  “I don’t have a pain drug,” he said, “but I do have this thing I’ve been hanging on to for years. A friend brought it back from China. I’ll bet you’ve used something like it yourself from time to time. First nail, then flesh, then bone, then through the other side. Eight fingers, two thumbs, millimeter by millimeter. I’ve been saving it, and I didn’t even know why … until now.”

  He tightened the screws down so that each nail blanched. Perchek reacted not at all.

  “Ray, don’t let him make you into him” Harry begged. “There’s no antidote for that drug. And even if there were, you know he’d never give it to you. I need him, Ray. They want me for murders he committed. Let’s just take him in and get him locked up. Don’t sink to his level.”

  “You don’t understand, Harry,” Santana said icily. “Siempre estaba yo a su nivel. I was always at his level. Now get out!” He snapped the words like a whip.

  Harr
y started to protest, but he knew it would serve no purpose. He took Maura by the arm.

  “We’ll be right outside,” he said. “We only have-about ten minutes before Garvey starts wondering why I haven’t called.”

  They left as Santana was tightening the first screw.

  “Who did Garvey own at the agency?” he asked. “Who’s protecting him now?”

  Perchek smiled beneath the tape. Santana tightened the screw through the nail. Blood spurted out around the metal. Perchek stared ahead.

  “Pain or answers,” Santana said. “You’ve got a choice to make.”

  “No, Ray. It’s you who have the choice.…”

  Sean Garvey spoke to him from just outside the front door. He held a gun to Harry’s head. They stepped into the room. The huge thug followed, roughly dragging Maura by the arm, then shoving her to the floor. His gun was leveled directly at Ray.

  “… And you don’t have a lot of time.”

  CHAPTER 41

  “Raymond, you were careless seven years ago,” Garvey said. “And you were careless tonight.” Still holding his revolver to Harry’s temple, he shuffled sideways away from the front door, until his back was to the river. “My man Big Jerry, here, called the gatehouse to set up a golf game with his pal. And what do you know? No answer. Now then, get that thing off Dr. Perchek’s hand.”

  Santana didn’t move. “You son of a bitch,” he said. “How many of our guys did you get killed? How did you get paid? By the scalp?”

  Ray glanced toward the door. It was only the slightest movement, but Harry caught it. So did Garvey.

  “Don’t try to pull that shit with me,” he said. “There’s no one out there, and you know it. Face it, Raymond. You tried, you lost. Now take that off Anton’s hand.”

  Santana again glanced toward the door—just a flick of his eyes. Then he reached over and loosened the screw. Perchek flexed his fingers and the device clattered to the oak floor.

  “A lot of the guys you sold out had families,” Ray said. “Kids that had to grow up without a father. We worked for shit pay and took crazy risks because we believed in what we were doing. We all trusted you. And you just handed us over one by one. I can understand him.” He gestured toward The Doctor. “He works for the highest bidder, whoever it happens to be. He’s a machine. But you … you’re something worse. You’re scum—a soulless, gutless traitor.”

  “The tape,” Garvey snapped. “Take it off his mouth.” Santana complied, though not at all gently. “You should have stayed back in Kentucky, or wherever the hell you were, Raymond. Everyone would have been much better off. Now we’ve got to run some sort of damage control in order to keep my pet project up and rolling.”

  “Is that why you broke Perchek out of prison? To work for The Roundtable?”

  “Let’s just say that as soon as I got the hang of my new career in the health insurance business, I appreciated the possibilities. Now, however, I need to find out who among my knights needs to be taught a lesson in loyalty. Fortunately for us, I believe our friend Dr. Corbett can come up with that information. And coincidentally, we have just the man here who can help him do it. You will help, won’t you Anton?”

  Perchek smiled. “It will be a pleasure.”

  “So move aside there, Raymond. Big Jerry will untie The Doctor. Harry, would you be so kind as to crawl over and take Dr. Perchek’s place in that chair?”

  Garvey placed his gun barrel at the base of Harry’s skull and forced him down to his hands and knees. Slowly, Harry moved across to Maura, still on the floor. His eyes were fixed on Santana, who remained crouched beside Perchek.

  For the third time, Ray glanced minutely, almost inadvertently, toward the front door. Harry found himself beginning to believe there actually was someone out there. Sean Garvey clearly felt the same way.

  “Jerry, I’m sure our friend Raymond is running a scam, but just take a quick look outside, will you? Then untie the good doctor.”

  Harry heard the motion behind him as Jerry moved to the front door.

  Then suddenly, snarling with rage and hatred, Santana sprang from his crouch and charged his onetime boss. Garvey shot him from point-blank range—once, then again. Jerry whirled quickly and twice fired into him from behind. But Santana’s unearthly cry only grew louder. He collided chest high with Garvey, driving him backward through the screen door and out onto the deck. Jerry lunged toward them, but Harry could see he was too late. Santana, silent now, had his nemesis in a death grip. His legs were churning like a halfback’s even though life had already left his body. Garvey hit the top of the waist-high guardrail just as Ray pushed off, and the two men flipped over the railing like toys. Garvey’s scream filled the night. Then it stopped with the suddenness of a guillotine.

  Jerry was staring at the spot where the two men had vanished when Perchek cried out his name. He spun around just as Harry dove from his knees for the corner of the table where Santana had placed his gun. Harry grasped the butt of the pistol at the moment the killer fired. The edge of the table shattered. Harry rolled, then rolled again as a shot slammed into the floor behind him. There was pain in his chest, but he was far beyond reacting to it. Then suddenly, he was on his belly, sighting down the barrel of his gun at the chest of a man who was preparing to kill him. It was his recurring Nha-trang dream. This time, though, there was no youthful Asian face, no loud report echoing in his ears—only a soft spitting sound and a flash of flame. The front of the behemoth’s neck blew apart, just above his jersey. He flew backward, exploding through the plate glass window and onto the deck.

  Harry scrambled to his feet, prepared to fire again. But there was no need. The man lay motionless, blood spurting from his severed carotid artery. In just a few seconds, the spurting became a trickle. Maura raced to Harry’s side. He slipped off his rucksack and took out the powerful flashlight. Together, they peered over the railing of the deck. Santana and Garvey, their bodies shattered, lay on the rocks a hundred feet below.

  “Oh, Ray,” Harry murmured.

  Maura quickly turned away.

  “At least Ray’s pain is finally over,” she said, stepping clear of the huge corpse, stretched out on a bier of broken glass just a few feet away. “He told me in the hospital that he didn’t think he could go on much longer. When he got the call about Perchek’s fingerprint, he’d been thinking more and more about suicide.”

  Out of Maura’s line of sight, Harry braced himself on the railing until the boring pain beneath his breastbone began to subside.

  Damn. Not now.

  “Perchek injected him with that hyconidol,” he said finally. “Ray hated him. But Garvey was the one he really wanted. Garvey was the one who handed him and the other undercover agents over. Listen, we ought to get out of here before the other guys at the main house come over. We can call the police from my RV.” He left the railing and followed Maura back inside. “Okay, Perchek, let’s go. Mess with me in any way, and I swear I’ll kill you.”

  “I can see that you are very good at that,” The Doctor said.

  Harry replaced the adhesive tape gag, cut the rope binding him to the chair, and forced him facedown on the floor. Once again he noted that Perchek was powerfully built, especially through the shoulders and arms. And even with his revolver pressed against the man’s spine, Harry still felt at risk.

  “Tightly,” he said as Maura tied Perchek’s hands behind him. “Make sure his hands are relaxed. I don’t want even a little slack. Then take that gun on the floor over there. Be sure the safety is—”

  “I know. I know.”

  Harry pulled Perchek to his feet and forced him through the door. Across the room, bound and gagged, the guard watched them go.

  “Down this way, along the fence,” Harry ordered in a whisper. “Maura, keep your eyes out for the other two guys.”

  They moved carefully through rain-soaked bushes and shrubs. Ten yards. Twenty. The fieldstone wall was easy to see now.

  “There!” Maura whispered urgently.
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  She pointed at a figure moving stealthily toward them across the lawn, gun drawn. Harry pulled the adhesive tape from Perchek’s mouth.

  “Tell him to stop right there,” he said.

  Perchek said nothing. Harry jammed the muzzle into the base of his neck.

  “Dammit, do as I say, or I swear I’ll kill you right now!”

  “It’s me, Perchek. Don’t come any closer. The good doctor has a gun in my back.”

  “Where’s Doug?” the guard called back.

  “Dead. Now just stay where you are.”

  “No, back away!” Harry yelled. “Back away now! But stay on the grass where I can see you. Maura, we’re going to head for the gate. There’s one more of them somewhere, so keep looking.”

  They crossed the lawn. Harry held the rope binding Perchek’s wrists in one hand and Santana’s silenced pistol in the other. Maura kept her revolver poised to fire.

  “You’d best kill me,” Perchek said.

  “Shut up.”

  “Santana didn’t take advantage of the opportunity when he had it, and look how he ended up.”

  They had reached the gate. Harry checked inside the guard house. No one.

  “Keep close,” he whispered. “Is that guy still out on the lawn?”

  “Still there,” she said.

  “Okay.”

  He held his breath, pulled Perchek closer, and guided him through the ornate wrought-iron pedestrian gate, adjacent to the massive main gate. The Winnebago was right where they had left it, fifty yards down the road.

  “Maura, that mobile home is ours. The key is under the right rear tire. You drive, I’ll stay with him. It looks imposing, but there’s no trick to driving it. Just turn it on and go. Until we get there, keep your eye behind us. Shoot anything that moves.”

  “Last chance,” Perchek said.

  Harry did not bother responding. His attention was fixed on the huge mobile home, now no more than thirty feet away.

  “Everything still okay back there?”

  “No problem,” Maura said.