The Syndrome

by John Case

  Brave?

  McBride shivered, and glanced at his watch. 2:48. Twelve minutes, and counting, he thought, though why it should take so long… she should be out by now! Unless Opdahl had a picture of her—which he wouldn’t—unless he did. McBride looked at his watch a second time. 2:49.

  Fuck it, he muttered, and launched himself toward the Institute.

  He was halfway up the walk when the door opened. Putting on the brakes, he drew himself up, tried to look casual. Adrienne was standing in the doorway, smiling, dipping her head toward a woman in green. The woman peered around Adrienne, stared at McBride. Adrienne dipped her head again, made an explanatory gesture. He could see the animation on her face, the flash of her eyes, the white gleam of her teeth. And then she was turning, her hand ascending in a little wave as she came down the steps. The door closed. “What’s wrong?” Adrienne asked.

  “Let’s get out of here,” McBride said.

  He wanted to know whether Opdahl was in the Institute. Because he wanted to kill him. But not with Adrienne at his side. He hustled her off toward the tram stop.

  When they reached its puny Plexiglas shelter, he finally asked her: “Was he there?”

  She frowned at him, didn’t answer. “You look really spooked,” she told him.

  “Was he there?”

  “Lighten up. What’s the matter with you?”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve had a rough ten minutes.”

  She grimaced at the sarcasm. “No,” she said. “He wasn’t there.”

  “But he’ll be back,” McBride suggested, his voice hopeful.

  “Not until Tuesday.”

  His disappointment was palpable.

  “Not to worry” she told him, sounding a little smug. “I found out where he is: he’s at the clinic in Spiez.”

  McBride nodded as a tram rumbled toward them through the lightly falling snow.

  “So?” Adrienne asked.

  “So… what?” McBride replied.

  “How far is Spiez?”

  Chapter 40

  Spiez was only seventy miles through the mountains, but there were a lot of mountains, and there was a lot of ice. The landscape was ferociously beautiful, with evergreen forests flocked with snow, and the Alps brooding under a leaden sky. It took their rented BMW nearly three hours to get there, so that it was well past dark when they arrived.

  Even so, they could see that the town was a special one, with its own castle hard by the lake, an elegant marina, and a view toward the Jungfrau. The streets above the lake were narrow, winding, and hilly, and they had to stop twice to ask directions—once at a Gasthaus, and then at a restaurant that specialized in wild boar.

  Their hotel, the Belvedere, was in a residential area overlooking the marina. They’d picked it out of a guidebook in the lobby of the Florida, ignoring the high rack rate in favor of its proximity to the Prudhomme Clinic. Unless the street numbers were very misleading, the hotel was only a block away from the clinic, and on the same street.

  And, in fact, it was even closer than that. The buildings were side-by-side, the one a mansion in the Beaux Arts style, with cupolas and spires, the clinic a fortress of poured concrete—gray, severe, and minimalist. “Let’s see what kind of security they have,” McBride suggested, and turned into the clinic’s courtyard, where the gravel crunched beneath the tires in a way that was both familiar and unpleasant. Suddenly, the night exploded in a flood of light, and a man appeared in the doorway. “Pretty good,” McBride concluded, looping back to the street and into the parking lot next door.

  “But they saw us!” Adrienne said.

  McBride pulled into a parking slot, and shook his head. “They’ll think we made a wrong turn.”

  And then they were in Room 252 with a view across the lake, and the mountains silhouetted against the night. Adrienne sat on the large and comfortable bed, and took in the plush surroundings, while McBride stood at the window, gazing at the lights across the lake.

  “Let’s get some dinner,” he suggested, and Adrienne readily agreed. Going to the lobby, they stopped at the front desk to drop off the gigantic key that opened the door to their room. “I’m curious,” McBride told the stylish woman behind the desk. “The building next door—is that a hospital, or… what?”

  “The Prudhomme Clinic? Mostly, it is for young people.”

  “What’s the matter with them?” Adrienne asked.

  The woman shrugged. “I think they are having eating problems. So they are very skinny.”

  “You mean, they’re anorexic,” McBride suggested.

  “Yes. And I think some drug problems, too—though I hope you don’t worry—”

  McBride shook his head. “No, no—I’m sure the security’s excellent.”

  “Absolutely. The clinic is very discreet. A good neighbor—if you don’t mind the architecture.”

  McBride reassured her that they didn’t and, with Adrienne at his side, wandered into the hotel’s four-star dining room. Though they felt underdressed, the hostess didn’t give their clothes a second glance, but led them to a table overlooking the lake.

  “You are staying in the house?” she asked, handing each of them a huge menu.

  “Yes.”

  She smiled. “Well, enjoy your stay.” Then she lighted the candle and stood back a moment, as if to admire the crisp white linen and gleaming silverware. “You would perhaps enjoy a complimentary glass of Swiss wine?”

  They glanced at each other. “Delighted,” McBride said.

  She returned a moment later. “It’s called Fendant,” she told them, setting a glass before each of them. “I think you’ll find it refreshing. Now, if I may recommend something? The lake fish is… “ She bunched her fingers into a bouquet and kissed them. “The best.”

  Before long, their first dish came. It was a cream soup of some kind, smoky and delicious, with bits of mushroom and ham. Then the fish arrived in the company of tiny white potatoes and a plate of asparagus, all of which went down wonderfully with a bottle of cold Muscadet. It was, they agreed, one of the best meals they’d ever eaten—and they lingered over it, finishing with cognac and espresso.

  When the waiter had gone, McBride held his glass out toward Adrienne.

  “To us,” he said.

  She managed a little smile, held out her glass to his and touched it. They sipped their cognacs. “I wish this was real,” she mused, meaning their dinner together, and the night in the fancy hotel. “I wish we were just here together.” She looked down, as if she were studying the tablecloth.

  “Hey,” he said. “It is. And we are.”

  “I keep wanting to say ‘forget it, let’s just go somewhere—Indonesia. Madagascar. Disappear.’ Maybe nothing would happen—with Jericho, I mean. And maybe they wouldn’t even come after us. Maybe… “ She looked up at the ceiling and held the tulip glass of brandy against her cheek. He could see the tears glinting in her eyes.

  “Adrienne…”

  “And what are the chances, anyway—that we’ll pull this off? It’s not like the plan is so great. I mean, it’s not even a plan, really.”

  “Yeah, it is,” McBride insisted, sounding defensive even to himself. “It’s just… “ He didn’t want to say “simple.” “Elegant,” he decided.

  She replied with a funny look, and took a sip of Rémy Martin.

  In point of fact, McBride thought, the plan was neither simple nor elegant. It was just basic. They’d gone over it in the room—though only for a minute, because that’s all it took to explore the scheme’s every nuance. Adrienne was to wait in the hotel while McBride went into the clinic, posing as a workman with a box of curtain rods for the director’s office. Asking to use a telephone, he’d call Opdahl and, speaking as Lew McBride, tell him he was in Switzerland and on his way to kill him. That would flush the security team from hiding, and focus their concern on the clinic’s exterior—from which the threat would be thought to be on its way. In the confusion, McBride would make his way to Opdahl’s
office, and put the gun to his head. If he got what he wanted, he’d call the police, and then Adrienne. If he didn’t—and if she didn’t hear from him within an hour—Adrienne was to call the police, tell them what she knew, and ask for protection.

  “It’s really just a mugging,” Adrienne remarked. “Not so much a plan as an information stickup.”

  McBride didn’t want to argue with her. “Yeah, well, it’s all I’ve got,” he said.

  She ran her finger around the rim of her glass. A clear bell-like tone emerged, so loud that she clapped her hand over the rim and looked around guiltily. “I know.”

  “So?”

  They sat there for a long time. Finally, she said, “Let’s just go upstairs.”

  Polar Bears.

  Every March at Bowdoin College, a contingent of crazies drove out to Popham Beach, a motley caravan of Saabs and Jeeps and junkers winding through the winter landscape. Once at the beach, they’d build a bonfire, toss back a shot of Jaegermeister and hurl themselves into the freezing surf. It was an homage to the school’s mascot, and also, as someone put it, a chance to “give the finger to winter.” There was only one way to do it—and that was fast, without thinking about it too much.

  And that was how McBride covered the short distance between the Belvedere and the Prudhomme Clinic. Fast. Sprinting through the swirling snow, up the driveway onto the walk—and suddenly he was there, just outside the double doors. Where a simple chrome plate announced:

  PRUDHOMME

  He brushed the snow from the field jacket he was wearing, and slapped the watchcap against his thigh, as the automatic doors swung open on a skylit reception area. The space was remarkable for its uncluttered expanse, its odd angles, and the sheer minimalist luxury of the appointments: red leather Barcelona chairs, scrubbed pine floors, a scatter of small, jewel-like Persian rugs. He stepped inside, carrying the long brown box marked Vorhang-Stangen. Looked around. Smiled.

  To the right, just past the entrance, he spotted a small hallway appointed with restrooms and a bank of three telephones. These were of the latest, sleekest Swiss design, futuristic cylinders of stainless steel that enclosed the caller in a space reminiscent of a landing pod. He was happy to see them.

  A dour blonde in a soft pink uniform sat behind a circular, brushed chrome reception desk. Seeing McBride in his blue jeans, and watchcap, carrying a box full of curtain rods, she took him for a worker or deliveryman—as he hoped she would. “Bitte?”

  With a boyish smile, he went up to the reception desk and, leaning toward the blonde, showed her the box. “Für Herr Doktor Opdahl,” he told her, speaking in German.

  “You can leave those here,” she said. “I’ll see that he gets them.”

  “Thanks, but—do you mind if I use one of the phones?” He nodded toward the ones in the hallway. “I’m supposed to call in.”

  The blonde didn’t reply, at first. A frown flitted across her face—and then she smiled. “As you like,” she replied, dismissing him with a flick of her fingers.

  McBride glanced at his watch as he strode toward the phones. 10:35. He’d been up since dawn, but had forced himself to wait until the clinic would be busy with deliveries, visitors, staff meetings, sessions. It was, he felt, the most innocent of hours, the most unexpected time for a takedown.

  Apart from the short hall which led to the public telephones and restrooms, he saw that two other corridors gave off the reception area. One led to a bank of elevators. Though he couldn’t see them, he knew the elevators were there because of the noise and activity they engendered: the chimes when they arrived, the whoosh of doors opening and closing, the rattle of carts transitioning to the hall. Signs pointed the way to the pharmacy, a hydrotherapy room, and a gymnasium.

  He could tell nothing about the other corridor. Since this was a residential facility, and patients must be housed somewhere, it was a good guess that it led to patients’ rooms.

  That the clinic was bigger than it seemed, he’d already determined. There were no cars anywhere, which suggested a sizable underground parking area. And from the vents that he’d seen from his room in the Belevedere, he guessed that there was more to the underground than just parking.

  Walking over to the phones, McBride fished a phone card from his coat pocket and slid it into the receptacle. Almost instantly, the liquid crystal display told him that he had 23.7 Swiss francs worth of calling time left. Consulting a slip of paper, he punched in the clinic’s numbers, and listened as the phone began to ring—and ring, and ring.

  Actually, it was more a chirp than a ring—but still annoying. Turning, he saw that the receptionist was busy with a phone call of her own, talking animatedly into the receiver. Finally, her demeanor changed. She punched a button on the phone and said: “Bitte?”

  McBride looked away.

  “Bitte?” she repeated.

  “Doctor Opdahl, please…”

  Down the hall, an older woman in a pink uniform emerged from a doorway, flanked by a pair of severely emaciated young women. Each was carefully groomed, fashionably dressed, and fully made-up—the effect of which was ghastly, as if they were on their way to a fashion show in a concentration camp.

  The phone began to ring in Opdahl’s office as the nurse and her charges disappeared around a corner. Then the clinic’s boss was on the line. “Ja?”

  Opdahl’s voice sent a spike of adrenaline through McBride’s heart. For a moment, he couldn’t speak.

  “Ja—ist wer es?”

  He cleared his throat. “It’s Lew McBride.”

  There was a long silence at the other end. Finally, Opdahl said, “Well, hello!”

  As soon as he heard the man’s voice, McBride sensed that something was wrong. Or maybe not. “I’m going to kill you,” he said.

  “Are you, really?!”

  “You’re fuckin’ right I am,” McBride told him. “And soon.”

  Opdahl chuckled. “Now, Lew—I don’t think for a second that you mean that. You’re not the type…”

  This isn’t working, McBride thought. There’s something in his voice—or not in his voice. Something missing.

  “… so why don’t we get together—”

  “We’re going to!” McBride promised.

  “—and talk it over?”

  “There isn’t that much to talk about,” McBride began. Then it hit him—what was missing from Opdahl’s voice. There was no surprise in it.

  “Of course there is,” the surgeon continued. “There’s lots to talk about—it’s a very exciting time for the Institute, as I think you know.” He chuckled for the second time. “Why don’t you let Rutger show you the way?”

  Rutger? McBride stood where he was, stock-still, uncertain what was happening, but feeling, somehow, that things were beginning to slip away. Then his eyes drifted toward the ceiling, and he noticed the video camera for the first time, with the winking red diode just above the lens, and the lens pointing straight at him. Turning slowly, he caught a glimpse of the receptionist staring at him from behind her desk, and moving faster now, lunged for the box of curtain rods—

  Only to be slammed against the wall.

  “I see you’ve met Rutger—and Heinz,” Opdahl observed, getting up from his desk to greet McBride as the latter was escorted roughly into his office. “Have a seat.”

  One of the security men shoved McBride into a chair across from the surgeon’s desk, while the second guard tossed the curtain-rod box onto the couch.

  “Gesetzt ihm in eine Zwangsjacke,” Opdahl ordered, then switched to English as one of the guards left the room. “It’s for your own protection.”

  “Fuck you,” McBride spat, and instantly regretted it as the remaining guard clapped him—hard—on the ears, igniting a wall of sparks behind his eyes. Opdahl laughed—“Owww!”—as McBride came out of his seat, only to find the business end of a 9mm pressed against the nape of his neck. He sat back down.

  The first guard came back a moment later, carrying a straitjacket. Seeing i
t, McBride shrank into his chair, but with the Sig Sauer leveled at him, there wasn’t anything that he could do. The second guard yanked him to his feet, and pulled the jacket over his arms. McBride took a deep breath as the guard made him cross his arms, then snapped the buckles shut at the small of his back. This done, the guard pushed McBride into the chair, and looked inquiringly at his boss.

  “Ich nehme es von hier,” he said, dismissing the guards as if he were brushing crumbs from the table. When they’d gone, he came around to the other side of the desk, leaned back against it and crossed his arms. “I said it before, and I’ll say it again: you’re a very brave man, Jeffrey Duran.”

  “Jeffrey Duran’s dead,” McBride told him.

  Opdahl smiled. “My point, exactly.” Finding a packet of Rothmans Silk Cuts, he lighted one, inhaling deeply. Then blew the smoke toward his captive, and said, “You’re going to hate me for saying this, but you know what? This is the first place I’d expect you to come.” He paused. “The receptionist had your picture on her desk.”

  McBride didn’t say anything, just sat there fidgeting in his seat, hating the man in front of him.

  Opdahl shook his head in mock confusion. “What were you thinking of? Did you think you’d take me by surprise? For God’s sake, man, I’ve got a profile on you that’s a foot thick—literally.” He paused. “So there’s really very little you could do—short of breaking into song—that would surprise me.” He laughed to himself, and tapped the ash from his cigarette onto the floor.

  McBride looked on, guts churning, face impassive.

  Opdahl turned his eyes toward the ceiling. “So now what do we do?” He lowered his eyes to McBride. “I’m taking suggestions.”

  “Good. I’d suggest you go fuck yourself,” McBride told him.

  Opdahl roared his approval with a big, hearty laugh. Then wagged his finger. “That’s funny, but bravado isn’t going to get you anywhere. Then, again, nothing will, so—why not?” He paused, and scrutinized McBride. Nodded toward the box on the sofa across the room. “What are you supposed to be? A workman?” When McBride didn’t answer, the surgeon’s lips puckered in an effigy of awe. “How imaginative!”