Placebo

by Steven James

  “If I were able to effect change,” the vice president said, “if I were ever to become president, I would never unfairly target pharmaceutical firms or the important work they do in improving the life and health of the American people.”

  So.

  Yes.

  Cyrus had what he’d come here for. The reassurance that the VP would promote legislation that was in line with RixoTray’s goals.

  “If you were ever to become president.”

  Vice President Pinder looked at him knowingly, said in his eyes much more than he said with his words: “If that were ever to happen. Yes.”

  Cyrus rose, warmly thanked the vice president for his time and his cognac.

  “Have a safe flight back to Philadelphia,” Vice President Pinder said as they were walking toward the door. “I hope we’ll be able to speak again soon.”

  “I’m confident that we will.”

  Riah got the call from Daniel sooner than she thought she would. He asked her to meet him and his brother at 10:45 just off the I-76 Belmont Avenue/Green Lane exit. “Darren will call you with the exact location as soon as possible. Bring everything you’ll need.”

  “I will.”

  And then she began to gather her things.

  Departure

  10:04 a.m.

  51 minutes left

  Our hulking escort leads us to Dr. Riah Colette’s office and announces that we’re from the FDA and would like to speak to her. She appraises us, notices the official-looking documents attached to our clipboards, invites us into her office, and closes the door.

  Gotta love those clipboards.

  Her purse is on the desk. Her car keys and folded-up laptop beside it. Either she’s just arriving or she’s on her way out. But if she was following the schedule Fionna had pulled up earlier, I knew that Dr. Colette was not just coming in to work.

  “My name is Jevin Banks.” Time for the truth all the way around. “This is Charlene Antioch.”

  “Dr. Riah Colette.” She’s an attractive woman, dressed respectively but not pretentiously. She doesn’t look the least bit intimidated to see us or to have heard from the guard that we’re inspectors from the FDA. I have the sense that most people in her position would, at least to some degree, be nervous or defensive. Not her. She doesn’t ask why we’re here or how she might help us.

  How to do this.

  Don’t jump into talking about an assassination conspiracy. Find out what you can first. Find out if she’s involved.

  “We have a few questions,” I tell her, “and we think you’re the right person to answer them.”

  “I’m afraid I’m in a bit of a hurry. I have an appointment I need to be preparing for. Perhaps you could talk with one of my assistants?”

  Charlene speaks up. “It really needs to be you, I’m afraid.”

  “What is it concerning? Exactly?”

  I take a breath. “The twins.”

  She gazes at Charlene, then at me.

  “You’re not from the FDA.” It’s a statement, not a question.

  “No, we’re not. Yesterday at the Lawson Research Center in Oregon, we were investigating Dr. Tanbyrn’s research for a television documentary. A man named Glenn Banner started the building on fire. We barely escaped. Dr. Tanbyrn got out with us, but died this morning from complications caused by smoke inhalation.”

  She takes a seat on the edge of her desk.

  “I had not heard that.”

  I don’t detect any sense of loss in her words, but there’s no coldness either. It’s as if the news is informative to her, that she’s acknowledging how tragic it is but isn’t in the place right now where she’s ready to mourn for the dead doctor.

  Charlene lowers her voice. “A woman was also killed in the fire. One of Tanbyrn’s research assistants.”

  Dr. Colette is quiet. “I’m not exactly sure how I can help you.”

  From doing cold readings while emulating the tricks of professed psychics, I’d gotten good at reading people and I catch no sign that Dr. Colette isn’t being straight with us.

  She isn’t involved. Trust her.

  I go with my gut. “The man who started the fire, Glenn Banner, had been in touch with Dr. Arlington.”

  “And how do you know this?”

  “Banner’s cell phone. We know you’re in charge of the division that has a connection to Dr. Tanbyrn’s research. The Pentagon is involved as well.”

  She studies me carefully. “You’re doing a documentary?”

  “Right now we’re just concerned with stopping more people from being killed.”

  A moment passes. “Is there anything else?”

  Get to the assassination plot.

  The twins.

  “There’s a connection to the video that you, Dr. Arlington, Undersecretary of Defense Oriana Williamson, and the twins watched last night.”

  “Well.” She seems more impressed than taken aback. “You have done your homework.”

  Charlene steps forward. “Dr. Tanbyrn told us he was studying the negative aspects of the twins’ special abilities. His research points to using avenues of quantum entanglement to affect another person’s physiology in a negative manner.”

  Dr. Colette doesn’t seem surprised by that. “Nonlocally.”

  Man, she’s not hiding anything.

  I nod. “Yes.”

  “Anything else?”

  The plot. Tell her what you suspect.

  “The suicide bomber didn’t kill himself. He was shot by a sniper.” I take a stab at this, go for it: “We think the president of the United States might be the next target.”

  “The president?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And why do you think that?”

  I tell her about our line of reasoning about the telomerase research, Tanbyrn’s murder, the press release, the proposed legislation, the phrase the twins used about the eagle falling at the park, the Brennan Sacco email. The more I explained it, the more everything seems to fit together in a pattern of gossamer threads.

  When I finish, rather than sticking to the topic of the potential assassination plot, surprisingly, Dr. Colette focuses instead on the footage in Kabul. “How do you know it was a sniper?”

  I pull out my laptop. “I’ll show you.”

  Dr. Cyrus Arlington was in the helicopter on his way to Philadelphia when he got the text from Caitlyn telling him that the police were waiting for him at the landing pad. “It has something to do with a man named Glenn Banner.”

  Not a surprise.

  He texted her back a word of thanks.

  Then rehearsed what he would tell the officers about his relationship with the dead arsonist.

  Riah carefully evaluated what the two people who’d been imitating FDA inspectors told her. They had all their facts straight, that much was true, but how could the enemy of the state mentioned by the twins be the president of the United States?

  It wasn’t possible to tell for certain whether or not a sniper had been involved in detonating the suicide bomber’s vest in Kabul, but after reviewing the footage she had to admit that it was certainly possible.

  The sniper might explain why the twins were so adamant that you help them.

  But sniper or not, they had affected Adrian Goss’s neural processing abilities on their own, so the president could still be in danger. After all, what if they were able to do the same thing to one of the Secret Service agents guarding the president?

  But some things just didn’t compute. Did the twins know that they’d been unsuccessful in Kabul? If there was a sniper, who hired him? The twins? Oriana? Cyrus?

  What if they all did? What if they’ve just been playing you ever since the beginning?

  Less than forty-five minutes ago, she’d agreed to help the twins eliminate a national security threat, but there was a lot more going on here than met the eye, a lot of currents flowing beneath the surface, and she wasn’t sure she was in the right position at the moment to trace where they all
came from or in which direction they were flowing.

  The man who’d introduced himself as Jevin Banks was watching her closely, waiting for her response.

  Honestly, she had no reason to doubt anything he or Ms. Antioch had said, especially considering the risk they’d taken getting this information to her, the effort of creating fake IDs and documentation, of working their way past three security check—

  “Who are the twins, Dr. Colette?” I ask her.

  She hesitates only slightly before answering. “Darren and Daniel are military-trained assassins.”

  Oh.

  Well, that made sense.

  Darren, ending with an N; Daniel, ending with an L. Is that it? The reason for the initials?

  I couldn’t be sure, and right now it didn’t matter.

  But why would they target the commander-in-chief? Why, if they worked for the military? What possible motive could they have?

  I realize that at the moment that doesn’t matter either. Their plan, whatever it consisted of, did.

  “We need to stop them,” I tell her. “Do you know where they are?”

  “No. But I’m supposed to meet them at 10:45. They told me we needed to move on it this morning.”

  “Before the president’s speech,” Charlene notes.

  “It would seem so. It won’t take long to send the electrical impulses to the electrodes once I get there. I’m not sure how long it would take for them to focus their thoughts, but I’m guessing not too long. Are you certain that it’s the president they’re trying to kill?”

  “No,” I admit, “but—”

  Her desk phone rings, startling all of us.

  “Excuse me.” She picks up the receiver, listens to someone on the other end, acknowledges that she understands, then hangs up.

  “There are two Secret Service agents at the front gate. They’re asking about you.”

  Oh, not good.

  Somehow they’d tracked us after all.

  And now they were here, and undoubtedly, they were going to bring us in for questioning.

  For a moment Dr. Colette stares out her office window at the trees surrounding the property, then picks up the phone again, taps in a number, and speaks into the mouthpiece. “Yes. Those two agents? Send them in.”

  She hangs up.

  So.

  That’s how it’s going to go.

  “If the Secret Service goes after the twins,” she explains, “there are going to be a lot of dead Secret Service agents out there. Daniel and Darren are that good. But they’ll listen to me, and they’re going to wait for me. I think I can stop them, stall them at least. And you know more about this than I do. I want you to come along.” She snatches up her purse and a small daypack. “We’ll take my car. By the time those agents get here to my office, we’ll be off the property. Let’s go stop the twins.”

  Oh yeah.

  That’s what I’m talking about.

  “I could really grow to like this woman,” Charlene whispers to me as we hurry out the door behind her.

  “Me too.”

  The Embalming Room

  10:27 a.m.

  28 minutes left

  Darren snapped the man’s neck as his brother took care of the woman just a few feet away.

  Both of the targets died quickly and with very little struggle.

  Darren let go and the man’s body thudded to the carpet. Daniel was more considerate, lowering the woman’s corpse gently to the floor.

  Both the male funeral home director and his female embalmer lay staring unblinkingly at the ceiling.

  They had, appropriately enough, died in the building where they’d prepared and then displayed so many other bodies. Dying in this place dedicated to the dead.

  Darren closed the shades of the funeral home’s west-facing window.

  The Schuylkill River flowed swiftly past the edge of the property, providing a panoramic view of the late autumn trees lining the other bank. A prayer garden and flower bed lay in the funeral home’s yard, but the lawn stretched fifty feet beyond them to the six-foot drop-off to the river.

  The Faulkner-Kernel Funeral Home was located on River Road, less than twenty minutes from central Philly. The tranquil setting provided “a picturesque, restful setting that no other funeral homes in the city can offer,” according to the brochure the twins had picked up earlier while they were scouting out sites they might use.

  A picturesque, restful setting for families to come and view the embalmed corpses of their loved ones.

  A place far enough from the city center to allow for on-site cremation.

  The brothers had wanted that option available to them for disposing of Dr. Colette’s corpse.

  Out front, the hearse sat in the curving driveway leading to the front doors. Parking was limited, so Darren imagined that during an actual funeral, the people attending would have to park on the side of the narrow road winding along the riverbank. He’d parked their sedan behind the hearse.

  He and his brother had needed a place where they would be isolated and would have equipment that Dr. Colette could use for any medical procedures she might have to do if things didn’t go as planned. So, a place that would have at least a rudimentary operating room.

  The embalming room would work.

  After all, that wasn’t the kind of place someone would be tempted to suddenly walk into, even if for some reason a visitor were to show up at the home. The room offered them everything they needed. Seclusion. Isolation. A private setting where they would be able to relax and focus their thoughts enough to kill the leader of the free world.

  For a moment Darren studied the two bodies on the carpet. Then, for the time being at least, he and his brother laid them to rest in two of the caskets in the funeral home’s small but well-stocked showroom.

  A pair of unfortunate but necessary civilian casualties.

  He checked his watch.

  10:29.

  Twenty-six minutes before they were scheduled to begin with Riah.

  “She’ll be at the exit at 10:45,” he told his brother. “I’ll call her a few minutes beforehand with the address. That should give us just enough time.”

  Last-Minute Revisions

  10:33 a.m.

  22 minutes left

  “Read me what we have.”

  “Mr. President, I would rather—”

  “I want to hear it while there’s still time to change it.”

  Brennan Sacco had only been brought in as one of the president’s speechwriters six months ago, but he’d discovered right away that it was always this way with President Jeremiah Hoult—last-minute changes. Some of which never even made it to the teleprompter.

  Now the presidential limousine caravan turned onto Market Street and passed Declaration House. Five limos so that no one would know which one actually carried the president. Today Brennan was in the fourth, along with the president and two Secret Service agents.

  Yes, it was unusual for a speechwriter to work this closely with the president, but Hoult had always insisted that the most important part of his job was sharing his vision for the future with the American people, and the way to do that was through communication.

  Obviously, he didn’t know that Brennan was being bribed by Dr. Cyrus Arlington to share his own communication with him, leaking the contents of the speeches concerning health care issues.

  President Hoult had a copy of this morning’s speech on his lap, but rather than read along, he studied his reflection in his ornate handheld mirror. Tweaked his hair a bit. “Go on. Read it to me.”

  “Yes, sir,” Brennan said reluctantly. “We’ll pick it up in the middle. ‘The American people are tired of the status quo, tired of politics as usual, tired of Washington insiders and Wall Street millionaires controlling their lives and finances when they’re barely able to make ends meet. And they’re tired of oil conglomerates and giant pharmaceutical firms making record profits while they can barely make their monthly mortgage payments.’”

&n
bsp; “That’s nice. I like the contrast between profits and payments. Nice alliteration there, and also with ‘make, monthly, and mortgage.’”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  President Hoult noticed a few hairs out of place, took a small spot of hair putty, rubbed it between his fingers to warm it, and worked it into his hair. “Plays off class envy too. That works well with my constituents.”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. President.”

  “Go on.”

  Brennan cleared his throat. “‘They want change, and one of the ways we’re going to give that to them is through health care reform. Today I’m pledging to sign an executive order to cut the waiting period in half between the time when drugs are released to the public and when the generic equivalents of those drugs can be made available. That’s the kind of change Americans want. That’s the kind of change they deserve.’”

  Normally it would be Congress’s job to pass new legislation, but a president can bypass all sorts of laws by issuing an executive order, as both Bush and Obama had made eminently clear.

  The limos entered the cordoned-off underground parking garage below the Independence National Historical Park’s visitor center.

  No other cars had been allowed inside it today.

  With the Secret Service’s presence, for the time being at least, this was the most secure parking garage on the planet.

  “Go on. What’s next?”

  “This is the part I’m still not quite happy with. It has a little too much spin, seems to make those who disagree with you sound heartless and cruel.”

  “Let’s hear it.”

  “Yes, sir. ‘This isn’t just a matter of politics, it’s a matter of deep humanitarian concern to all Americans. It’s a matter of the basic human right of every individual to have affordable health care. It’s unconscionable for millionaires and billionaires to keep lining their pockets while letting millions of hardworking middle-class Americans suffer or even die when the drugs that could save them are already available but are prohibitively expensive. This profiteering at the expense of the welfare of fellow Americans in need cannot go on any longer.’”