Margaret Truman's Deadly Medicine

by Margaret Truman

  They eventually reached her father’s acreage. She knew they were close because of the acrid smell of recently burned plant life; an occasional wisp of smoke still wafted into the oppressive air. Although she had never visited the site before she felt as though she knew it intimately based upon her father’s frequent descriptions of it, and photographs of the plants and herbs growing strong and tall in the jungle heat. Now it was all gone, wiped out by someone.

  “Who did this?” she asked her companion.

  “Blue eyes,” he said. “Many blue eyes.”

  Jayla was surprised. She’d assumed it might have been a neighboring tribe that had destroyed the acreage.

  “White men?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said, flashing his vampirelike smile.

  “Who were they?”

  “Big men,” he said, indicating their height with his hand.

  She stepped into the field and picked up pieces of charred plants. Why? She asked herself. Who would benefit from destroying the field?

  A machine with large tires had gouged deep, wide troughs in the earth.

  She stared at the destroyed field for what seemed a long time before turning and starting back along the path leading to the village, the taxi driver and the young man with the red mouth falling in behind. A dozen native men joined them. As she walked she wondered where Walter Tagobe had gone. Her father had often spoke of him with fondness: “He’s a good man, Jayla, slightly better educated than most of the men in the village. He understands enough English that I can communicate with him.”

  Had Tagobe fled because of the field’s ruination, embarrassed that he hadn’t protected it? Or had he been told to leave by those who had destroyed the field, perhaps paid to disappear?

  She handed the young man some kina banknotes, and stopped to purchase from an old woman a beautiful necklace made from shells and colorful cassowary feathers, a gift for her nanny, Tabitha. She climbed into the car and her driver delivered her back to the Wewak airport. Her flight back to Port Moresby was considerably less bumpy than the earlier flight had been, and she filled the time consumed with questions, each delivered to her brain only to be replaced by the next, and the next, a jumble of jarring mysteries.

  She took a taxi directly to her father’s house where to her surprise Tabitha was in the kitchen preparing herself a late dinner. The old woman immediately broke into tears upon seeing Jayla, and wrapped her pencil-thin arms about the child she had helped to raise.

  “I am so sorry about your father.”

  “I know how much he meant to you,” Jayla said, disengaging. “He’s left you money in his will.”

  “I know, I know. The lawyer, he called me. Dr. Preston was such a good man, a saint. He wanted me to call him by just his first name but I could not do that.”

  “He loved you very much,” Jayla said.

  She guffawed. “Loved me? Perhaps. But his great love was you. How proud he was of you, your education, your big important job in America.”

  “How are you, Tabitha? You’re feeling well?”

  She lowered her eyes, as well as her voice. “No, I am not well,” she said. “I have the cancer.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry. Are you being treated?”

  “Yes, by a fine doctor, a friend of your father. But your father, he helps me with the pain.” Her face brightened. “No pain when I take his medicine. Your father makes special medicine for me. When I take it, the pain is gone.” She clicked her fingers. “Like magic,” she said. “Like that.” Another click of her fingers.

  “The medicine takes away your pain but doesn’t make you sick in other ways?”

  “No, no, it is good medicine. Your father, he makes it himself in his laboratory.”

  Jayla sat at the kitchen table and processed what the sickly old woman had said. As far as she knew her father’s quest to create a more effective pain reliever was still in the formative stage. But here was anecdotal evidence that he’d progressed beyond theory and had succeeded.

  “Tabitha,” she said, “do you know whether my father also used the medicine with other people?”

  “Oh, yes,” she said. “My friend has terrible pain in the arms and legs. She comes to the clinic and your father gives her the medicine. No pain when she has the medicine. Others, too.”

  “I was in the laboratory yesterday with Eugene,” Jayla said.

  Tabitha’s expression turned sour. “Mr. Eugene,” she said disparagingly.

  “You don’t like him, do you?”

  “I should not say that,” she said. “It is none of my business.”

  “Eugene told me that my father’s notes, and packages of his medicine that you and your friend took, are missing from the laboratory.”

  “I don’t know about that,” she said quickly. “I didn’t take anything.”

  “Oh, no, Tabitha,” Jayla said, patting the older woman’s hand. “I know that you didn’t. But someone did. Did father have any visitors recently, men you hadn’t seen before?”

  Tabitha thought before saying, “No, no one. But your father, he was—well, he was different lately.”

  “How was he different?”

  “He was worried. I could see it in his eyes and on his face. I knew that he was worried when he gave me the package for you.”

  “A package for me? What package?”

  Her answer was to walk from the kitchen, returning minutes later carrying an 8x10 manila envelope sealed with tape. She handed it to Jayla. “Your father, he told me that if anything happened to him I should give this envelope to you, only you and no one else.”

  Jayla weighed it in her hands. “Do you know what’s in it?” she asked.

  Tabitha shook her head.

  Jayla removed the tape and withdrew the envelope’s contents, a letter addressed to her from her father. She fanned through the nine single-spaced pages handwritten in her father’s recognizable tight, small script, and looked at the four small plastic packets of seeds that accompanied the letter.

  “You say that my father told you to give this to me in case something happened to him. He must have been fearful that something would. Do you know why he felt this way?”

  She shook her head again. “No,” she said, “but he had that worried look on his face, so worried.”

  Tabitha offered to make tea or coffee, but Jayla insisted on doing it. When she’d served them tea, and had broken open a package of sugar cookies, she asked what the old woman intended to do. “The house will have to be sold, I’m afraid,” Jayla said.

  “I have already arranged to live with my daughter in Koki. She is a good girl.”

  “I remember her well,” Jayla said. I’m glad that you spoke with the attorney. He will take care of everything.”

  “He is a good man, like your father. You take care, my lovely Jayla. Be well, and find your happiness.”

  Jayla and Tabitha rode together in a taxi to Tabitha’s daughter’s house, where Jayla gave Tabitha the necklace she’d bought for her and spent a few minutes catching up with the daughter’s family.

  “You can’t stay longer?” the daughter asked when Jayla said that she had to leave.

  “No, but thank you. The taxi is waiting for me, and I leave tomorrow for the States. I’m glad that your mother will have a good home with you.”

  “She is very sick,” the daughter said as she walked Jayla to the waiting cab.

  “Yes, she told me. I wish there was something I could do for her.”

  “The medicine your father gave her for the pain is so good. There is no pain when she takes it.”

  “Maybe I’ll be able to make that medicine myself one day,” Jayla said.

  They embraced, and Jayla rode back to the Grand Papua Hotel where she had dinner in her room and pored over the contents of the envelope Tabitha had given her. The letter was long, and filled with terms of endearment. Professionally, he was ebullient about the advances he’d made in the lab to concoct an effective painkiller. Unlike his missing documentation th
at traced every aspect of his research in scientific terms, the letter provided a more informal narrative about the progress he’d made and what it might mean to millions of men and women suffering pain.

  But there was also an undercurrent of concern about what the future held for him personally. He wrote that in the event something were to happen to him she was to take his notebooks in which he chronicled every step of his research, as well as the myriad packages containing the medicine he’d formulated, and carry on his work. “You know where to find my notebooks in the lab,” he wrote.

  “But the notes are gone,” she said aloud, as though speaking to him. “They’re gone!”

  Eugene Waksit had insisted on driving Jayla to the airport the following morning for her flight to Sydney, and then on to Washington.

  “What will you do now that the clinic and lab are closed?” Jayla asked as they sat in his Range Rover in front of the terminal.

  “I haven’t figured that out yet,” he said. “I’ll be leaving here, of course, maybe go back to Australia. No definite plans yet. Maybe I’ll take a trip to Washington someday. If I do I’ll call and you can show me the sights.”

  “I’ll be happy to do that, Eugene.”

  “It was good seeing you again, Jayla, even though you had to come home under such sad circumstances,” he said as he opened the door for her. As she stepped from the vehicle he kissed her cheek. Travel safe, Jayla.”

  She turned and strode into the terminal without looking back.

  CHAPTER

  5

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  A FEW DAYS LATER

  U.S. senator Ronald Gillespie was in a foul mood when he left his home in Falls Church, Virginia. He and his wife, Rebecca, had fought bitterly the night before, the genesis of the argument lost in the flurry of harsh words. The senator had little patience—no, make that no patience—with his wife. Of course he was all sweetness and light with the voters back in Georgia. For them, he was a savvy, caring, wise, gentlemanly politician who had their backs, a man with principles and moral values bucking those in the nation’s capital who were responsible for the Congress’s dismal approval rating. That he was divorced and remarried to a much younger woman mattered to only to a zealous few.

  He’d stayed up late after Rebecca had gone to bed, sipping bourbon and reading memos prepared for him by his staff in preparation for the next day’s meeting. At times like this he found himself questioning his decision to have married Rebecca following his divorce. He was sixty-four; Rebecca was thirty-three. He’d come to the conclusion that her only bankable attributes were her stunning figure, long red hair, and ability in bed. Other than that she was an intellectual embarrassment and he kept her away from gatherings at which she might be asked a question about—well, about anything aside from choosing drapes.

  He peeled out of the driveway in one of a matching pair of red Mercedes convertibles and drove down I-295 for five miles until reaching the exit for the National Harbor Marina in Snoots Bay on the Potomac River, where the lobbyist Eric Morrison docked his thirty-three-foot Aquariva yacht. Morrison was on the boat with a hired hand and preparing to cast off when the senator arrived.

  “Sorry I’m late,” Gillespie said as he climbed aboard.

  “Late night?” Morrison said.

  “Unfortunately.”

  Morrison refrained from asking whether the senator’s lack of sleep had to do with Rebecca. He was well aware of the ongoing tension in the Gillespie marriage because the senator frequently used him as a sounding board, bemoaning the state of the relationship in a quest for understanding and approval. Male bonding it was called. While Morrison found those confessional moments painful to sit through, he was a willing listener. Gillespie was, after all, chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee (HELP), in whose hands legislation impacting the pharmaceutical industry rested. Morrison had been cultivating the relationship with the powerful senator for years. Lending a sympathetic ear to his marital woes was a small price to pay for his support, a much smaller price than the millions of dollars Morrison’s client, the Pharmaceutical Association of America, the PAA, funneled into the crusty senator’s campaigns.

  “You need your sleep, Ron,” Morrison said. “You’re not a kid anymore.”

  Gillespie laughed. “You don’t need to remind me. My brain tells me I’m still a twenty-year-old-stud but the bones tell a different story.” He looked up. “Good weather for a day on the water.”

  “Any day on the water is a good one,” Morrison said as he took the helm and guided the sleek craft away from the dock and headed up the Potomac.

  To the casual observer it was an idyllic scene, an invigorating breeze off the water, the bright sunlight, the engine’s muffled drone. Senator Ronald Gillespie was, however, anything but relaxed. He’d been summoned to this last-minute cruise because Eric Morrison, one of the premier lobbyists in Washington, D.C., was not happy. Morrison appeared to be in good spirits while at the wheel, but when he turned it over to his helper and joined Gillespie on the rear deck in the yellow-and-white webbed deck chairs his smile had evaporated.

  “I know what’s on your mind, Eric, but I don’t have news for you, good or bad,” Gillespie said.

  “I suppose I should believe that no news is good news,” Morrison said, sipping from a container of coffee provided by his deck mate.

  “Not a bad way to view things,” said Gillespie in his southern drawl that became more pronounced when under pressure. “The legislation isn’t dead yet.”

  “You’ve been saying that for a long time.”

  Gillespie shifted in his chair and looked out over the water, avoiding the lobbyist’s hard gaze. Lately Morrison had been ratcheting up the pressure concerning a pending bill in the Senate to tighten the rules on the importation of cheaper prescription drugs from Canada and Mexico. Gillespie had explained more than once that the Department of Homeland Security, charged with matters pertaining to the country’s borders, was the lead agency in that effort and had been dragging its feet.

  “Look,” Morrison said, “I understand that you’ve been doing what you can to get legislation passed to tighten up the borders, but my people are getting tired of the excuses. The way it stands now any U.S. citizen can import medicine from Canada and—”

  “Provided certain conditions are met,” Gillespie said gruffly, defensively.

  “Yeah, some conditions,” Morrison said. “As long as it’s for personal use, there’s a prescription from a U.S. doctor, no more than a three-month supply, yada yada yada. Look, Ron, my clients pay me and my firm big bucks to protect their interests. They’re the top pharmaceutical companies in the world. They pay for action, and all they hear is how the border with Mexico is broken. Everything is pouring in. They want to hear about congressional action to keep prescription drugs from being brought in over the borders, and they’re entitled to some positive results.”

  Gillespie said, “Don’t forget that there’s a law on the books that prohibits drugs manufactured here in the States from being sold to Canada and resold back here. That’s something. In case you hadn’t noticed the Senate is fractured. You can’t get bipartisan support for anything these days other than a new post office opening.”

  Morrison snickered. “When was the last time anybody was prosecuted for reimporting drugs from U.S. manufacturers—thirty, forty years ago?” he asked snidely. “There’s no teeth to that law.”

  Gillespie changed the subject. “By the way,” he said, “your clients will be happy with the legislation my staff is drawing up to prohibit the importation of drugs from Third World countries, and from Canada when the drugs they’re selling are actually manufactured elsewhere. I’m moving ahead on that front, too.”

  “Good to hear it, Ron,” said Morrison. He changed his tone, something he was adept at doing. “Look,” he said, “you’ve been a champion of Big Pharma ever since you won your seat in the upper house. Your work on their behalf has always been appreciated. But t
hey’re putting pressure on me to get some bang for their bucks where Canada and Mexico are concerned. You can’t blame them.”

  “No, no, no, Eric, I understand. My staff has also drawn up new legislation to tighten rules on Canadian manufacturing. It’s not easy getting support from my colleagues. Restricting the importation of cheaper drugs from Canada and Mexico means higher prices for our citizens, hardly popular with constituents. But I’ll do everything I can to garner support on both sides of the aisle. You can count on it, and so can your people.”

  Gillespie knew it was empty talk. He was running for reelection and he counted on Morrison’s clients to fill his coffers. But it seemed to have appeased the lobbyist.

  Morrison stood and slapped the senator on the back. “Glad we’ve cleared the air,” Morrison said. “I’m meeting with representatives of my client firms this afternoon and I’ll assure them that you’re on the case and doing everything you can.”

  They spent the next hour anchored in a cove where Morrison’s deck mate broke out booze and a cold lobster lunch. Conversation was no longer contentious. They swapped racy stories about government and media people they knew in common, most of the stories coming from Morrison, who made it his business to know as many people in Washington and their dark secrets as possible. Scandalous stories about lawmakers were capital for the lobbyist, and no one had a bigger file of them than Eric Morrison.

  They returned to the dock at two.

  “Where are you headed?” Morrison asked.

  “The Hill. Committee meetings, a fund-raiser tonight.”

  “How’s your campaign shaping up?”

  “Fine, just fine. My opponent is playing dirty, no surprise. Every time a new poll is released showing him falling further behind he pulls another dirty trick out of his sleeve.”