Miracle Man

by William R. Leibowitz

  43

  Several weeks later when Bobby failed to show up at Tufts or the Manzini lab, Susan was relieved. He was overdue to go incommunicado. She knew he was close to a breakdown from the combined stress of working continuously on the malaria project and his lack of sleep due to the escalation of the nightmares. Every day she’d check his apartment to see if he had crash-landed. Finally, after six days, when she walked through the door, she saw from the disarray that he was back. But there were two things different this time that caught her eye in the apartment. First, there were a large number of sketch pad pages that had been torn out and were strewn haphazardly around the living room. When she examined them she saw that they all bore horrific images that Bobby had drawn. Many of the pages were intact, but others had been crinkled up, and the pictures on those were exceptionally disturbing. Secondly, in the middle of the living room, there was a trunk that was turned over on its side. Susan recognized this trunk as the one that usually sat in a corner of the room, piled high with books. Scattered around the trunk in a large perimeter were piles of magazines, newspapers and clippings.

  Bobby was asleep in his bedroom. An empty bottle of vodka was on his nightstand. Happy to see him getting some sleep, she went back into the living room intent on not disturbing him. She stood in the midst of the fallout from the trunk. Unable to resist, she decided she wasn’t snooping because the items had been left out in full view. She sat down among all the materials and read for over an hour. Rollie Carter’s report wasn’t in the pile. She then cleaned- up the living room, loaded the dishwasher, emptied the ashtrays, placed the sketches in a neat stack, arranged the sofa cushions in place, and then righted the trunk and placed its contents back inside.

  When Bobby finally stumbled into the living room, she said, “The prodigal son emerges. You look awful. I’ll make a pot of coffee.”

  As hung-over as he was, Bobby instantly scanned the living room and realized that not only had Susan tidied up, but the contents of the trunk had been touched.

  “Susan, thanks for cleaning up the place,” he said, trying to sound matter of fact. “You really shouldn’t have. I guess you just threw those papers into the trunk?”

  Susan looked at Bobby. She could read him so well. He was uptight. “Yeah, I just threw the papers into the trunk after I read them.”

  Bobby inhaled quickly. “You read them? Why would you do that? They were my private papers.”

  “If they were so private, you shouldn’t have left them strewn all over the room for all to see.”

  “All to see? This is my apartment. Nobody was supposed to see anything here. Damn it, Susan. That was my private business. Just because you have a key doesn’t mean that everything is open to inspection.”

  “Bobby, I’m sorry. But I was curious. I couldn’t help it. Anything that’s important to you is important to me. And I’m always worried that something or someone is going to hurt you and I want to know what’s going on. Blame it on my maternal instincts.”

  “This is just not how I wanted you to find out. I’m really pissed.”

  “I’m sorry, Bobby.”

  “Well, it’s done. You read it. So what did you think? Were you surprised?”

  “The story was pretty terrible and shocking, but these things do happen,” said Susan.

  “That’s all you have to say?”

  “About what?” she asked.

  “About me.”

  “What do you have to do with it, Bobby?”

  “What are you talking about, Susan?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve lost the plot. What’s going on?” she asked.

  “What’s going on? I can’t believe you read all that stuff and missed the whole point. Susan—I’m #2764. I’m Dumpster Baby.”

  Susan’s pale face drained completely of color as she collapsed into one of the living room chairs. She stared at Bobby. “What did you just say?”

  “I’m the baby in the garbage bag. I’m the kid you were reading about. Alan Gottschalk saved my life. He was the guy you hired the PI to find.”

  “I never knew his name. I never looked at the stuff you gave me for the investigators, or their report, because you asked me not to.”

  “Well now you know. That’s who I am.”

  “Why didn’t you ever tell me?” she asked.

  “I’ve never told anyone.”

  There was silence as Susan and Bobby looked at each other forlornly. Susan put her arms around him. She hugged him tightly and sensed the tension in his body. As she pressed her head against his chest, he could feel the wetness of her tears penetrating his thin undershirt. “I wish I could take away all the hurt from you Bobby. I wanted to be your Anna. I wanted to protect you like she protected me.”

  “I just can’t understand why they did it to me. To leave me alone to die like that. What was wrong with me?” Bobby said.

  Releasing her grip on Bobby, Susan stood straighter, took a few steps back and commanded, “Sit down.”

  Bobby sank into the couch obediently. He looked like a lost teenager. Sitting close to him, her knees touching his, she said, “Bobby, people do terrible desperate things for all sorts of reasons, and if they are fueled by drugs or alcohol or have mental problems, horrible things happen. But one thing’s for sure— a baby who’s a few hours old, didn’t do anything wrong. You have nothing to feel ashamed or guilty or embarrassed about. They were defective —not you.”

  Bobby got up and began to walk around the room aimlessly. Shaking his head, he said, “But there’s too much that’s unexplained, Susan. Look at what I am. How did that happen? What are the odds that a newborn who’s thrown into a dumpster is going to turn out like this? It’s too weird. Sometimes I think that what’s been said behind my back all these years is true.”

  Susan put her hands on Bobby’s shoulders, giving them a squeeze for emphasis.

  “The only way you’ll find the answers you’re searching for is to look to your faith. I believe you were given your abilities for a reason. I believe you were saved for a reason. Everything that has happened in your life has happened for a reason. You are not alone. And you’re worthy of being loved, and you have been loved. Edith and Peter loved you, Joe loved you, and I love you.”

  Bobby interrupted, “And I worry about that every day when I see you. Everyone who’s ever loved me is dead. So what does that say about your prospects? When people get too close to me, they die.”

  “That’s crazy,” Susan said, smiling, as she brushed a strand of hair away from Bobby’s eyes. “To get rid of me, you’ll have to tie me up and put me on a boat to Shanghai. Otherwise, I’ll be around to badger you until you find a special woman to build a life with. And I don’t mean a bimbo. I mean someone I approve of.”

  “Fat chance on that.”

  “And believe me—when you find her, she’ll love you back. But first you have to let go of these demons from your past. You have to put them in that trunk and close the lid tight. You can’t keep looking over your shoulder. You have to move on Bobby.”

  44

  Calvin Perrone sat in his small office at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia and gazed out his narrow window at a vast parking lot, which was now beginning to accumulate snow as the flurries escalated. He answered the phone and was informed by an officious female voice that the director wanted to see him immediately. He couldn’t believe it. The director of the CIA was summoning him, a plain talking guy from a blue collar background, with a Puerto Rican mother and Black father, who grew up in the Bronx and graduated with a B average from St. John’s College in Queens. Hired at a time when the agency had fallen into such disfavor that it had no choice but to expand its recruiting practices to include ‘types’ like him that it had previously shunned, Calvin Perrone was now being invited into the director’s inner sanctum. The director knew he existed. Calvin
had made the big time. In the ten year period during which Calvin had been a CIA agent, there had been three directors of the CIA, none of whom Calvin had ever met or been permitted to communicate with. The individual who currently held that position was new to the Office, having been confirmed by the Senate only six months previously.

  Calvin pulled out the mirror he kept in his desk drawer. He spread his lips into a broad clown’s smile so that he could examine his teeth to be sure that no remnants from his lunch were discernible. From his waste basket, he fished out the napkin he had discarded with his food, and wiped his face so it didn’t look oily. Holding the mirror up, he straightened his necktie and then maneuvered the mirror so that he could see how his suit looked, or at least how segments of it looked. Walking out of his office, he headed to the far left elevator bank, over which a sign indicated, “Restricted Access.”

  “I presume you are Agent Calvin Perrone?” The woman in the director’s private reception area who asked the question spoke in a voice that was simultaneously authoritative and condescending. “The director will see you now.”

  As Perrone entered the director’s office, the director was standing with his back to him, gazing out his wall of windows onto the CIA campus below. Perrone quickly estimated the size of the director’s office as being at least ten times the size of his. The director wasn’t a tall man, but he was extremely broad shouldered. Good guy to have on your side in a bar room brawl, thought Perrone. “You can sit down, Agent Perrone. Make yourself comfortable,” he said without turning around.

  Perrone took a seat as the director slowly paced alongside his wall of windows. “So tell me about your meeting with Austin.”

  Perrone’s mind raced. So that’s what this is all about? The lousy little cat and mouse game I played with that crazy scientist.

  “What would you like to know, sir?”

  “I want to know everything. Spare no details.”

  Perrone told the director the minutiae of the fake shooting, bombings and food poisoning, and how that ultimately resulted in an agreement for the design and implementation of a security system for the Prides Crossing premises. The director was silent throughout Perrone’s recitation.

  “And how did he look? Did he seem healthy?”

  Perrone responded with agent learned exactitude. “Since I had never met him previously, I have no prior to compare his current appearance to, but he looked okay. Perhaps a little tired around the eyes, but he’s trim and his overall appearance is healthy, although I can tell you that he’s not a particularly strong man.”

  “Oh really—and how can you tell that?”

  “He’s too thin, and when I grabbed his forearm, he had no real muscle mass or tone there.”

  “And how was his frame of mind?”

  “He’s cut from a different piece of cloth, sir. He’s very intense, but at the same time, there’s something detached about him, like not all of him is present. Sometimes when he’d look at me, it was as if his eyes were searing right through me. I never had anyone look at me the same way. It was definitely odd.”

  “So why aren’t we installing the security system. How did you let that slip by?”

  Perrone felt the jab of criticism as if it had been a hard right to his jaw. So this wasn’t a congratulatory, ‘job well done’ kind of meeting. My first and probably only contact with the director and he’s going to tell me I fucked up. Perrone shifted uneasily on his feet and his posture became rigid. “It wasn’t an option, sir. Austin was emphatic about there being no government involvement in his operation. It took a huge effort on my part to get him to agree that the Agency could design the security system and that he’d use a firm on our recommended list to install it and patrol his grounds. Believe me, he has a deep felt suspicion about government. He’s very negative on the subject.”

  Orin Varneys stared at Perrone with his shark eyes for what seemed like an eternity to Perrone. Finally, he nodded in acknowledgment that it could be possible for Austin to hold such a view. “It is what it is. We’ll put our people into whatever firm he selects. We need to have control of the situation.”

  “Understood, director. Any way I can help, please consider me. I think I have a relationship of sorts with Austin at this point.”

  When Perrone got back to his office, he loosened his tie, took off his jacket and Googled “CIA director’s Senate Confirmation Hearings.” He then read the transcripts and learned that Orin Varneys, then director of the OSSIS, had garnered appointment and confirmation as CIA director six months earlier, predominantly on the strength of his connection to Robert James Austin. As Varneys said in the course of his testimony before the Senate, “I can say, without hesitation or qualification, that by virtue of the programs and procedures that I established and executed at the OSSIS, Robert James Austin was discovered, recruited, nurtured, developed and educated, and that without this, Dr. Austin would simply not exist as we know him today.”

  In the history of the CIA, no prior director candidate had ever been able to associate himself with anything even beginning to approach the appeal and visceral impact of claiming personal responsibility for giving the world an asset like Bobby. The fact that Varneys was responsible for cutting-off Bobby from the Institute’s resources because Varneys opposed medical research, was an irony that didn’t come to light in the confirmation proceedings. The Senate quickly and unanimously approved him as CIA director, and praised him in the Congressional Record for his “extraordinary service to a grateful nation during his tenure as director of the OSSIS.”

  45

  Several months before the results were published in the medical journals, rumors were already sweeping through the academic community. Bobby’s “Sentry Virus,” as he had named it because it was always ‘on guard and ready to act,’ was said to do exactly what it was designed to. The scourge of malaria would soon come to an end. But when Bobby’s analysis and lab reports were published, the reality was much bigger than vanquishing this age-old killer. The methodology behind the “Sentry Virus” was also applicable to any “vector” transmitted disease—meaning any disease that is spread to humans by mosquitoes, ticks, lice, fleas or other insects. Bobby’s formulas and solutions were there in detail, just awaiting application to diseases such as encephalitis, typhus, sleeping sickness, plague, dengue and leishmaniosis. Additionally, the “Sentry Virus” could be engineered to combat other diseases, such as amoebic dysentery that infect the human body by way of protozoa and other one-celled parasitic organisms. The implications were staggering in scope. As had been the case with Bobby’s other breakthroughs, his findings were tested and verified in scores of hospitals worldwide and then in the field.

  These discoveries, more than any of his prior achievements, embedded the name Robert James Austin into the vocabulary of tens of millions of people throughout the most populous and economically underprivileged places in the world.

  For Bobby, however, the struggle to reach this breakthrough had taken its toll on both his physical and mental health. He was in a severe state of exhaustion that he couldn’t pull himself out from under. He looked haggard and beat-up, he was alarmingly thin, and his facile wit had dimmed.

  The world media was apoplectic in their determination to find him. They descended on Tufts, but were not satisfied with what they got so they fanned out, frantically looking for the Manzini lab. Susan holed up Bobby, moving him around like a fugitive between the Prides Crossing guest house and his city apartment. But she realized that he was burned-out and needed a complete change of environment, so when Calvin Perrone showed up on the doorstep of the Prides Crossing lab and offered a secure and private “safe house” vacation escape for Bobby to any destination desired, she made the decision that this was an offer that needed to be accepted.

  “Just tell me where the good doctor wants to go, and we can provide a perfect absolutely private setting,” Perron
e said.

  “Bobby told me about you, Calvin, and you know his feelings. We’re not looking for any freebies from the government. The foundation is perfectly capable of paying for this. Dr. Austin hasn’t had a holiday in years and I don’t think anyone would begrudge him that.”

  “Completely understood. We’ll work that out later. But no one can give you the privacy and security that we can. Just tell me where.”

  “You understand that he can’t be disturbed or intruded upon in any way by anyone —including you guys?” said Susan.

  “That’s the whole point, isn’t it?”

  “And why is your organization doing this?”

  “It comes from the very top—it’s bigger than my firm. People are concerned about the doctor.”

  Susan went to Bobby’s apartment and began to pack his suitcase. “Where are your bathing suits, shorts and casual clothing for the summer?”

  “All I have is what’s in the closet and drawers.”

  “Forget it. We’ll do some shopping in St. Thomas. ”

  “St. Thomas?” asked Bobby.

  “Yes, We’re leaving tomorrow morning. It’s all arranged. It’ll be totally private. You’ll love it. I’m bringing Anna. She’s the best security you’ll ever have.”

  “How private can it be when the check-in people see my ticket and passport, and we go through customs in St. Thomas?”

  “We’re not flying that way. We’re hitching a ride. Trust me. Just relax.”

  The next morning a taxi swung by to pick up Bobby. Susan and Anna were already inside.

  “What time’s our flight?” Bobby asked.

  Susan ignored his question and instructed the driver to take them to Hanscom Field in Bedford.