by Ruth Harris
Nicky, knowing he was trapped, took out the fountain pen given to him by Willy Cranford, uncapped it and signed.
“The cashier’s check will be deposited to your account tomorrow morning,” he told her.
“Yes,” she said with a wisp of a smile, as she folded the lawyer’s document and put it back into her briefcase. “I imagine it will—”
Nicky was reluctantly impressed that he had been out maneuvered, something that rarely happened. He also could not get over the fact that Adriana had apparently discovered the fountain of youth.
“I can’t believe how wonderful you look,” he said. “I don’t believe in miracles but you’ve transformed yourself. What happened? Who helped you? How did you do it?”
“Why do you ask?”
“As you can see, I’ve aged in the past year,” he said. Then he confided in her as only a man can with a former still-admired mistress. “I’m not as mentally sharp. I’m sexually fatigued. Just now, you out maneuvered me. For years, no one could. Not even you, Adriana. I want to be young again. Like you—”
“It’s easy,” Adriana said, smoothing back the thick russet hair, revealing the full strength and beauty of her face. She handed him Ames’s kit — the one she had taken from his bathroom at the Imperial Hotel in Vienna. It was still full, its ampules, vials and syringes undisturbed. “It just takes a few shots—”
“And that’s it?”
Adriana nodded. “You can use as much as you want,” she said. “You’ll feel wonderful again. Just like your old self—”
“So this is your miracle?” he said, holding the kit with suddenly trembling hands. “As simple as this?”
She nodded. “Yes, Nicky,” she replied. “As simple as this. You’ll see—”
She was right. Within a week, Nicky felt his energy return along with sexual desire and the ability to do something about it. His erections were those of a young man.
“What’s your secret?” Gail asked after a long bout of love-making. “You can go for hours—”
“No secret,” Nicky smiled. “All I need is the right inspiration. You—”
With that he pushed her head down to his penis, once again hard.
Later, he asked her about the President’s decision about whether or not to rescind the oil shale concessions.
“Has he made up his mind?” he asked.
“Not until he returns from Hillside,” said Gail.
“You mean his vacation, don’t you?” Nicky asked, puzzled.
“His press secretary called it a vacation and that’s what the press is reporting,” replied Gail. “But It’s no vacation. He’s in detox—”
Nicky, worldly and extremely cynical, looked, if not shocked, then at least surprised. “He’s a drug addict?”
“That’s what his doctors say,” said Gail. “He’s been under a lot of stress, Suzanne says.
He was going to cave in to them, Nicky thought. James Santana was President but he was also a political animal responsive to special interest groups, and now, according to Gail, he was a drug addict, more erratic than ever, prone to lashing out and making impulsive decisions.
Nicky did not intend to have his next fortune rest on the whims of an unstable man. He turned, as he had in the past, to his only trusted associate.
The Soviet Secret Service had noticed Rudy Sarvo’s violent proclivities when he was a child guarding the tobacco warehouses in Izmir. At the age of twelve, Rudy had been taken to Moscow where he had been given the name Akardy Boukarev by the KGB and assigned to the Volga Commissariat, the division specializing in murder and assassination, where his skills were honed.
Akardy took part in massacres in Ukraine, Belarus and Poland and finally escaped his hated KGB minders in Krakow. Moving mostly at night, he had made his way across Eastern Europe to Turkey.
“Rudy,” said Nicholas Kiskalesi, breaking into tears at the sight of his younger brother and embracing him. “I thought you were dead—”
But he wasn’t.
Rudy had changed his name from Kiskalesi to Sarvo when he was being hunted by the Izmir police for killing the Chinese tobacco buyer with an ice pick to the brain. Now that the two orphans were united again after so many years, they vowed that forever after they would defend and protect each other. A blow to one was a blow to both.
Later, Rudy had murdered for his brother again — on the island of Cilek, in Cairo and in Chile. Now they were going to make sure James Santana did not cancel Nicky’s oil shale concessions.
Rudy had the advantages of KGB training and contacts in Moscow, the Ukraine and Bucharest. From Gail, Nicky possessed secret details about the President’s route unavailable to the public. The brothers, pooling their advantages, planned to strike and laid out a detailed plan. They chose their method, their weapon, their means of escape. They would not permit their next fortune to rest in the hands of a weak, drug-dependent man, even if that man was the President of the United States.
The President’s campaign trip ended in tragedy with the assassination of James Santana. According to initial press reports and later confirmed by a special governmental commission, the President had been killed by a lone gunman shooting from the window of an office building. The assassin, alleged to be an alienated Russian defector living in Mexico City, had subsequently died in the basement of a Texas police station as a result of what a lengthy internal investigation cited as “unknown causes.”
Gavin Jenkins was secretly spirited out of the country by the CIA in the hours immediately following the assassination and, in a nation distracted by a lengthy period of public mourning, the Kiskalesi oil concessions remained in place. For Rudy, though, riches turned to ashes when he found Nicky’s body, the syringe still hanging from his arm, on the floor of Lydia’s master bedroom.
36
Gavin Jenkins had been in Switzerland for over a year and was settled into a regular routine. He woke at precisely five o’clock A.M. and spent the first moments of his day looking out the window of his room toward the snowcapped Alps in the distance. Their physical beauty and the pleasures of living and working in the mountains delighted him endlessly.
He got up, his bed a thin mattress on top of a wooden pallet and put on a pair of black pants and a black shirt that comprised his entire wardrobe. He had two identical sets and washed one every evening in the small basin in his room and let it dry for a day before putting it on again. He could have given his things to the laundry that handled the clothes and the bedding of the patients but found it satisfying to do the washing himself.
He slipped into his surgeon’s clogs and walked outside with a porcelain basin and filled it with clean, fresh snow that had fallen overnight. He brought it back into his room, waited a few moments until it began to melt, and then washed his face with it and shaved. He kept his head shaved too, so he did not have to groom himself. It saved time and made life simpler.
After he had cleansed himself, it was time for his morning workout. Each day he did exactly twenty-four exercises from a series he had devised from yoga and succeeded in exercising every muscle.
Then it was time for his daily breakfast of a single thin wheat wafer, which he washed down with melted snow water. His austere diet had resulted in the loss of fifteen pounds — once lean, now he was gaunt. He was pleased with his skeletal appearance, because he believed that being fifteen to twenty pounds underweight helped prolong life. The masses of civilization, he thought, were committing themselves to an early death by overeating.
Once he was finished with his morning meal, he left his room and walked three-eighths of a kilometer to the building that housed his office. There each morning he found a plain lined white pad left by his assistant. Written on it were any unusual matters pertaining to the next twenty-four hours and any overnight developments that might require his attention.
His practice was now as simple as his life. He limited himself to two dozen patients, and they each paid one hundred dollars a day. He refused to accept less or more, altho
ugh many individuals were willing to pay millions to receive his treatments. He selected each patient himself from a large list of applicants. His practice was international now, with patients coming to him from Guyana, Syria, India, Brazil, and Indonesia.
His patients had a number of things in common. They were all rich: not merely millionaires, but men controlling assets in the billions of dollars. They were powerful and influential; some were rulers who governed countries; others controlled international cartels in gold or copper or precious earth minerals. They were men whose decisions affected the population and the energy resources of the world.
His patients all had one other thing in common: each of them depended on his doctor.
On the lined pad this morning, there were two items written in his assistant’s familiar block printing. The first was about the recent, unexpected death of the Turkish tycoon, Nicky Kiskalesi. From an amphetamine overdose, according to the attached newspaper clipping.
The second item on the pad informed him of the arrival that afternoon of a new patient at two P.M.
His name was Akardy Boukarev.
***The End***
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BRAINWASHED
By the authors of HOOKED, the bestselling thriller with multiple appearances on Kindle’s prestigious Movers & Shakers List.
Zeb Marlowe, the scarred, tormented survivor of a top secret CIA brainwashing experiment, has begun to remake his life when Jai Jai Leland, the beautiful, intelligent widow of a man who didn’t survive, asks his help in uncovering the mystery of her husband’s violent death.
Marlowe, struggling to resist his attraction to Jai Jai, is pulled into her quest against his better judgment. As they search for psychiatrist Victor Ressid, creator of the experiments that turn test volunteers into slaves, they uncover a deadly conspiracy at the heart of government.
Meanwhile, obsessed by his own strange sexual appetites and sudden, unexpected access to unimaginable wealth, Ressid is consumed by fantasies of revenge against Marlowe, the only volunteer to defy him.
Against a background of murder, political intrigue and global terrorism, Marlowe and Jai Jai must risk their lives to stop a nuclear threat that will destroy the security of the entire world even as they wonder if Marlowe, too, has been turned into a slave.
With a plot that hurtles forward at electric speed and written with a contemporary feel, BRAINWASHED is set during the paranoid 1970’s of Vietnam and the Watergate scandals. The novel takes place on the beautiful islands of the Caribbean, in Mexico and Ireland, the Philippines, Canada, Washington, DC and in a buried underground torture chamber located on Victor Ressid’s secluded private estate near the Belize border.
BRAINWASHED is based on real-life psychiatric experiments conducted by the CIA in American universities and known by the code name MK-ULTRA.
“BRAINWASHED delivers the goods: thrills, gut-churning suspense, nightmarish terror. Ruth and Michael Harris have delivered another great read and sure bestseller. I dare you to put it down!”
—Bob Mayer, former Green Beret and million-copy bestselling author of AREA 51
BRAINWASHED, A Thriller, by Ruth and Michael Harris, is available as an e-book and as part of a boxed set, KILLER THRILLERS, which includes HOOKED.
About the Authors
Ruth Harris is a million-copy New York Times bestseller and Romantic Times winner for “best contemporary.” Her critically-acclaimed fiction has been published by Random House, Simon & Schuster and St. Martin's Press. Translated into 19 languages and sold in more than 30 countries, Ruth's bestsellers are now available in e-editions.
Ruth Harris’s novels include Decades, Husbands And Lovers, Love And Money, Modern Women and The Last Romantics (The Park Avenue Series) as well as two standalone books, The Chanel Caper and Zuri: Africa, An Orphan, A Love Story
The Park Avenue Series is available in two boxed sets: Books 1-3 and Books 1-5.
Ruth loves to hear from her readers! Contact Ruth at [email protected]
Connect with Ruth at her blog, on twitter, or at pinterest.
MICHAEL HARRIS was a public relations executive at CBS Television and worked on “The Ed Sullivan Show” for eleven years—he was the first person to welcome the Beatles to America on their initial trip to the United States. He is the author of two critically acclaimed national bestselling memoirs, The Atomic Times: My H-Bomb Year at the Pacific Proving Ground and Always On Sunday: An Inside View Of Ed Sullivan, The Beatles, Elvis, Sinatra & Ed's Other Guests
THE ATOMIC TIMES is the shocking, funny, sad and raunchy portrait of army life on a nuclear Pacific island in 1955 where troops were used as human guinea pigs during 17 H-bomb tests.
Also available in a boxed set: Face To Face with The Beatles and the Bomb
Other Books By Ruth Harris
DECADES
20th Century Series, Book #1
Spanning the years from the post-World War II 1940’s to the rebellious “Make Love, Not War” generation of the 1960’s, DECADES is the emotional story of a marriage, a family and three generations of women facing the challenges of their turbulent times.
“Absolutely perfect.”
—Publisher’s Weekly
Download DECADES for Kindle
HUSBANDS AND LOVERS
20th Century Series, Book #2
Carlys Webber’s lonely and insecure beginnings are in the past but her future is threatened when her loving husband turns into an angry stranger and she is tempted to find comfort in the arms of another man.
“Steamy and fast-paced, you will be spellbound.”
—Cosmopolitan
“A brilliant book. Ruth Harris has all the insight of Joan Didion as she recreates the decades in which her heroines lived.”
—The Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Download HUSBANDS AND LOVERS for Kindle
LOVE AND MONEY
20th Century Series, Book #3
Rich girl, poor girl. Celebrity, outcast. Sisters and strangers. They do not know of each other’s existence and might never have met until their worlds collide when fate—and murder—bring them face to face.
“FAST-PACED, SUPERIOR FICTION WITH A ZINGING SENSE OF STYLE. Skillfully written, highly commercial. A terrifically satisfying ‘good read.’”
—Fort Lauderdale News Sun-Sentinel
Download LOVE AND MONEY for Kindle
MODERN WOMEN
20th Century Series, Book #4
MODERN WOMEN, Chick lit meets the Alpha hero. This million copy New York Times bestseller is the “best book I have read in ages! Laugh-out-loud funny in places, touching in others. So enjoyable it’s no wonder it was a bestseller.” —Customer review
Download MODERN WOMEN for Kindle
THE LAST ROMANTICS
20th Century Series, Book #5
THE LAST ROMANTICS is a passionate and sweeping love story set in the glittering capitals of Paris and New York in the 1920’s. If you loved MIDNIGHT IN PARIS and THE PARIS WIFE, you will love THE LAST ROMANTICS.
“Harris skillfully weaves fact with fiction in the creation of this tale of love, loss, success, failure, war and peace. If you’re looking to bury yourself in a big historical novel full of larger-than-life characters, this is the one.” —Customer review
Download THE LAST ROMANTICS for Kindle
These five books are are also available in two boxed sets, THE 20TH CENTURY SERIES, books 1 through 3, and the complete series books 1 through 5.
THE CHANEL CAPER
James Bond Meets Nora Ephron. Or is it the other way around?
THE CHANEL CAPER, a romcom mystery, is about the ups and downs of long-term relationships and addresses two of the most important questions of our time: 1) Is there sex after marriage? 2) Is sixty the new forty?
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br /> Download THE CHANEL CAPER for Kindle
ZURI
Africa. An orphan. A love story.
ZURI, which means “beautiful” in Swahili, is the story of an orphaned baby rhino and her friends—animal and human. Based on extensive research and current scientific findings about animal intelligence and communication, ZURI is a love story filled with drama and danger that lead to a happy ending.
Download ZURI for Kindle
Other Books By Michael Harris
Always On Sunday
An Inside View of Ed Sullivan, the Beatles, Elvis, Sinatra & Ed’s Other Guests
The Atomic Times
My H-Bomb Year at the Pacific Proving Ground
These two books are are also available in a boxed set, Face To Face with The Beatles and the Bomb.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the authors’ imaginations or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the authors or publisher.
Copyright © 2011 by Ruth Harris and Michael Harris
Second electronic edition, January 2014
Cover design by Stewart Williams at Stewart Williams Design
Cover photo of The White House by Steven Berg
Table of Contents
Get HOOKED! A Medical, Political Thriller
Title Page
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