by Ross Pennie
The priest looked surprised, then shocked. “That’s terrible, Doctor. But — but, obviously, you’re pressing on.” A warmth seeped into his eyes. “God bless you.” He stroked his beard and looked pensive for a long moment, then brightened as if struck by a bright idea. “What about approaching the drug company that Jovan and Dr. Holt were working with? Surely, the company can give you the details you need without putting Jovan and his family at risk.”
“I’ve already thought of that, believe me. But the truth is, the project was done so secretively that it would take months of paperwork, and probably a Freedom of Information request, to worm the information out of them.”
The priest looked skeptical. “But surely, when it comes to issues of safety, drug companies act in the public interest.”
“Their first allegiance is to their shareholders, who are interested in profit, not altruism. This may come as a surprise to you, but pharmaceutical companies have more lawyers on their payrolls than researchers.”
“Blimey.” This was clearly a revelation to a man who, the last time he stopped at the drug store for a bottle of headache tablets, hadn’t thought about patent violations, intellectual property disputes, and exaggerated allegations of debilitating side effects. “Is that really the name of the game?”
“Afraid so.”
“And you’re sure the liver epidemic hasn’t burned itself out?”
Zol shook his head. “No sign of it even slowing down.”
Father stood and swept at the wrinkles in his cassock. Head down, gripping his cross in his fist, he paced the office several times. Suddenly, he stopped and stood erect. He let go of his cross and spread his arms. “The choice is clear. I need pray about it no longer.” His face was aglow. “I will support Jovan in his decision to do what is right, what Our Lord expects us to do.” He paused, fixed Zol’s gaze, and held up his right hand. “But without coercion.”
“Certainly.”
“Let me go and have a private word with him. He’s waiting next door in the sanctuary. Make yourself comfortable.” He opened the door and looked back over his shoulder. “I won’t keep you long.”
Thirty seconds later, the priest came crashing through the door. His face was ashen. Spittle foamed on his lips. “Doctor, come quickly. Jovan has collapsed. I found him on the floor clutching his chest. I think he’s had a heart attack.”
CHAPTER 31
Zol ran out of the office behind the priest and followed him into the church through a side door. On the floor of the centre aisle, about halfway to the altar, Jovan Ligorov was lying on his back. Perhaps he’d only fainted and needed a couple of minutes to recover.
“It’s kind of dim in here, Father. Can you turn on some lights?”
Father Stoyan dashed to the rear of the church, pawed at a bank of switches, and soon had every corner of the church and its gilded icons dazzling from the overhead lights. As Zol approached Ligorov, the first thing he noticed was the terror in the stocky man’s eyes. The second was the large cross around his neck, similar to Father Stoyan’s without the Celtic motif. Ligorov’s face was ashen and his breathing laboured and raspy, but at least he was conscious. He looked late forties, early fifties at most. His grey hair was thinning on top and deep wrinkles slashed his forehead. His jowls wobbled with every gasp, and his nose had grown bulbous on generous doses of alcohol, presumably vodka and slivovitsa.
Zol knelt beside him, touched Ligorov’s arm, and peered into his stricken face. “Mr. Ligorov, I’m Dr. Szabo. Do you have chest pain?”
Ligorov lifted his head from the stone floor and winced. He tried to speak, but nothing came out. He touched the front of his chest, a little left of centre, then winced again.
Zol removed Ligorov’s cross and handed it to the priest. He took the man’s wrist and assessed his radial pulse — it was fast and weak, what the textbooks called thready. This was no simple faint. He was either having a heart attack or there was something seriously wrong with his heart rhythm. Or he was scared out of his mind. There was no indication he was hemorrhaging, at least not externally, another textbook cause of a thready pulse.
“Do you have heart problems?”
Ligorov frowned and shook his head.
A quick look revealed no obvious bruises or abrasions on his scalp. “Did you fall? Hit your head?”
Ligorov squeezed his eyes closed for a couple of seconds, then patted his chest again. Clearly frustrated at being too weak or too breathless to talk, he yanked at the front of his shirt, then extended his left index finger and stabbed it angrily toward his chest.
“Yes, I understand,” Zol said. “You have severe, stabbing chest pain. We’re calling an ambulance.”
Ligorov grabbed Zol’s wrist. His face filled with frustration as he pointed again to the front of his shirt.
Zol looked closely at where Ligorov was pointing. There was a rip in the cotton near the left front pocket of his shirt. There was a small stain there too. Zol touched it. It was wet. And sticky.
He opened the buttons and exposed Ligorov’s hairy chest. A dark spot of fresh blood was glistening on a groove in the skin, halfway between the left nipple and the breastbone. Zol dug a tissue from his pocket, dabbed at the blood, and saw it was oozing from a laceration — a hole in the skin that was fresh, deep, a centimetre long, and startlingly surgical.
Could it be? He felt foolish even asking, especially after suggesting to the man he had stabbing chest pain. “Did somebody jab you with a knife?”
Ligorov relaxed his shoulders and nodded, relieved at finally being understood.
“When?”
He tried to speak, but when the most he could manage was a harsh whisper, he shrugged his shoulders and widened his eyes in exasperation.
“In here? In Saint Naum’s?”
Ligorov nodded.
Zol scanned the cavernous church. The assailant could still be inside, hiding in the shadows behind a banner or crouching behind the high altar.
“Doctor, I think it’s high time we call 911,” said Father Stoyan, striding toward the side door.
Terror lashed at Zol like a rogue wave. The guy with the stiletto could pounce again any second. “Father, don’t go. Please.” Safety in numbers. Zol tossed him his phone. “Use my cell.”
As Father Stoyan was dialling, Ligorov began pawing at his pant leg, struggling to reach below his right knee.
“Your leg hurts?”
He shook his head and made stabbing motions at his shin.
“They stabbed you there too?”
“N-no,” Ligorov rasped.
“But something’s bothering you there? They hit you?”
“L-look.”
Zol examined the fabric of Ligorov’s pants. No rips, no blood. He cradled Ligorov’s entire right lower limb and rocked it back and forth, testing the integrity of the ankle, the knee, the hip. The joints moved smoothly, the bones felt solid, the muscle tone seemed normal, and Ligorov didn’t grimace with the movement.
Why was he so fussed about a leg that seemed perfectly normal? What was the man trying to say? He might do better in his native tongue, but Father Stoyan was still talking to the 911 dispatcher.
Ligorov tried to stab at his right leg once more, but he quickly lost steam, and his arm flopped to the side. His neck muscles tightened as he made a supreme effort to lift his head. He took a deep breath, but what he mouthed was unintelligible.
“Say again?” Zol said, putting his ear to Ligorov’s mouth.
“L-look. Un-under.”
Under what? His back? His butt?
“Where do you want me to look?”
“Un-under s-s-sock.”
“Okay, but if it’s not hurting there . . .”
Zol grabbed the bottom of Ligorov’s chinos and tugged the hem up toward the shin. Ligorov was a big man, the chinos were tight, and his leg was a d
ead weight. Zol pulled on Ligorov’s black sock and noticed the edge of something white wrapped around the shin higher up the leg. At first it looked like a large bandage, but no, it was a piece of paper with something printed on it. He pulled the pant leg up higher still, and more of it came into view.
“What’s this, Jovan? Should I —”
Father Stoyan swooped in, and crouching low, dug into Zol’s right shoulder with his thumb.
“Father? I was only —”
The priest elbowed Zol firmly in the ribs, put his finger to his lips, and shook his head. Then he straightened his back and made a stop and freeze motion with his right hand. When he appeared satisfied that Zol wasn’t going to move a muscle, he slowly scanned the church. After completing the full 360°, he leaned forward and whispered in Ligorov’s ear, then cupped his own ear in front of Ligorov’s mouth. He listened, then nodded as if understanding Ligorov’s Macedonian mumblings and pulled the man’s trouser leg higher, exposing more paper. The priest peeled the sheets away from Ligorov’s shin and slipped them inside his cassock without looking at them.
Father fixed Zol with his gaze, then cleared his throat and said pointedly in a strong voice, “The ambulance is on its way. They promised it would be less than six minutes in coming.”
That sounded like forever, especially as Ligorov was now fading rapidly. Zol took the man’s hand and squeezed it with both of his, willing him to stay alive until the paramedics arrived with their intravenous fluids. By now, Ligorov had lost so much blood from internal bleeding that if his heart stopped, no amount of CPR would save him. He needed large bore intravenous needles, massive infusions of blood and saline, and a talented surgeon who could rip open his chest and sew up the tears in his heart and great vessels. But none of that was going to happen. The man would have to settle for the grasp of a compassionate hand and the comfort of not dying alone.
Father Stoyan knelt down and made the sign of the cross on Ligorov’s forehead. He removed the man’s cross from his cassock pocket, bent his head over the figure of Christ, and began praying.
As Father Stoyan recited his holy ritual, Zol felt Ligorov’s pulse growing weaker and weaker. Soon, there was nothing left to feel. The man’s jowls stopped wobbling as his breathing slowed to a stop and his dry lips took on the colour of cinders.
The wail of sirens shattered the moment. Brakes squealed and gravel crunched under tires. Zol let go of Ligorov’s hand with some reluctance and scrambled to open the church doors.
The paramedics were too late, of course, but it wasn’t their fault. It had been over for Ligorov as soon as the stiletto had pierced his heart. Everyone would do their best, but in the end they’d be returning him to the morgue where he’d worked. Would he be given special attention there, as one of their own?
CHAPTER 32
With the paramedics come and gone, and Jovan Ligorov now almost certainly Dead On Arrival at Caledonian Emerg, Saint Naum’s felt more like a mausoleum than a sanctuary. Zol shivered as he realized how cold he’d become kneeling beside Ligorov on the raw concrete floor.
The flurry of activity — determining that Ligorov’s heart had shown electrical impulses on the ECG but wasn’t actually beating, jabbing him three times and failing to get an IV running, slipping on an oxygen mask that was useless because he’d stopped breathing, deciding he stood a better chance if they stopped fussing and rushed him to Emerg — had given way to the oppressive emptiness of absolute silence.
And overwhelming guilt.
“Oh Father,” Zol said. “I’m so sorry. If only I hadn’t —”
Father Stoyan held up his hand and shook his head. His face was solemn but commanding, his body taut. He put an arm around Zol and led him out of the church.
In his office, Father motioned for Zol to take a seat, then pulled a bottle and two glasses from a drawer in his desk. The bottle was half full of something clear and colourless. The label said sLIVOVITSA above a drawing of two dark plums. Father reached for the bottle, then stopped. He took a pen from another drawer, wrote three lines on a pad, and handed it to Zol.
Careful what you say.
You must be bugged.
How else would they know Jovan was meeting you here?
Father was right, but what was bugged? His house? His office? His car? His phone? His computer? All of them?
He took the glass from the priest and took two gulps of the Yugoslav brandy. It didn’t have the finesse of a Balvenie or a Glenfarclas, but it did feel good going down. Nosing the remainder, he caught a strong whiff of plums, which launched Freddie Mercury and Queen into a high-volume version of “Bohemian Rhapsody.” And dammit if Freddie’s lyrics about killing a man didn’t stab right at the heart.
There was obviously more to this synesthesia thing than random crossed wires. His sense of smell was tapping somewhere deep into his subconscious. Where was it going to take him next?
As Queen faded, he mused about the Badger. How had the bastard done it? Wiretaps? Scanners? Ultra-sensitive microphones? The guy would need a truck full of sophisticated equipment and a team of accomplices.
He grabbed Father’s pad and scribbled a line: Ever heard of Escarpment Cable?
Father shook his head.
Got a phone book?
The priest looked through four drawers before finally fishing it out of the bottom of a filing cabinet. Zol flipped through the white pages. No listing for Escarpment Cable. He pawed at the Yellow Pages until he got to Cable Television Companies. Again, Escarpment Cable wasn’t listed.
“Can I use your computer?”
“Be my guest.” Father jiggled the mouse and the screen sprang to life. It showed fireworks crackling in a dark sky above Niagara Falls.
Zol called up Google and typed in Escarpment Cable. The top hits were a tourist spot in Portugal, a laundry in Kenya, a documentary TV show out of Toronto, and a vacation rental property in Australia. Next, he called up Canada411.ca and searched under Find a Business. Again, nothing.
Escarpment Cable didn’t exist. At least, not as a legitimate business. But he’d seen their vans everywhere — outside his house, at the Simcoe Health Unit, at the Tim Hortons right here, across the street.
He pulled his phone from its holster and stared at the bloody thing. Not a mark on it, except for the dent from where he’d dropped it at the Detour answering a call while juggling two hot lattes. Yesterday, the cable guy fiddled with it when he’d shown up at the office to fix a privacy issue. Goddamn privacy, all right — bugged his phone and probably added some sort of tracking device. Maybe even a miniaturized video cam.
How could he be so trusting?
He turned the damned thing off and dropped it into the darkness of his jacket, where a video cam would see nothing but pocket lint.
Father Stoyan poured himself a second slivovitsa and swirled his glass. “This is Croatian. Not as good as Macedonian, but easier to get. Hits the spot, eh?” He closed his eyes, took a sip, and relaxed his shoulders. Two seconds later, he sat bolt upright in his chair and threw Zol a look that said I almost forgot. He undid a couple of buttons on his cassock, slipped his hand inside, and pulled out Ligorov’s papers.
He scribbled on his pad: Look at these before the police get here and want to confiscate them.
Without a word between them, Zol took the two sheets of letter-size paper and began reading.
The first page was a typed, single-page executive summary of Tammy Holt’s project entitled “GB Study TZ-4347: Commercial Production of 5-Fluoronornicotine (5-FNN) by Nicotiana tabacum.” The project’s objective was to induce greenhouse tobacco plants (Nicotiana tabacum) to produce a derivative of nicotine (5-FNN) by infecting them with a genetically engineered strain of tobacco mosaic virus. 5-FNN was described as a well-tolerated, non-addictive, nicotine-like substance that caused neither cancer nor heart problems. Its claim as a wonder drug came from its ability to suppre
ss the appetite continuously for twenty-four hours after ingestion. The project summary included the detailed molecular formula of 5-FNN and a schematic drawing of its structure. The final paragraph was printed in boldface type: It is of the utmost importance that the TMV-infected tobacco plants remain confined to a greenhouse. The escape of infected plants into farmers’ fields could have far-reaching negative consequences.
The second page was from Genophy & Browning Pharmaceuticals, headquartered in Chicago. It was a letter to Dr. Tammy Holt dated fifteen months ago. The sender was the company’s vice president of regulatory affairs. In terse sentences that left no ambiguity, he explained that researchers in Indiana had encountered several cases of liver failure and three deaths among university students taking 5-FNN under the controlled conditions of a clinical trial. In the vice president’s words, the project was “hereby and irrevocably terminated and the company reminds all parties involved that it is essential they abide by the confidentiality agreement duly signed before they embarked on this project. Anyone found in violation of said agreement will be subject to vigorous litigation.”
Holy shit. This was exactly what they’d been looking for. The chemical formula of Tammy’s experimental drug and a frank description of its toxicity. The papers trembled in his hands. Three people had been murdered because they knew what was written on these sheets. If the Badger found out Zol knew this stuff . . .
He grabbed Father’s notepad and copied down the formula and molecular structure for 5-FNN. Everything else on those sheets he’d already guessed. He stowed the formula in his wallet and handed the papers back to the priest. Father Stoyan nodded and raised his eyebrows, then pulled a red-leather tome from a shelf crowded with what looked like religious texts. On the front cover was a single word, embossed in gold in a foreign script. Did they use Cyrillic in Macedonia? The only Russian he knew was the CCCP on the hockey jerseys of the teams from the former USSR. This word started with a letter resembling an elaborate lowercase b, and there was another elaborate b in the middle. The priest slipped the two sheets of paper inside, brushed the holy book with his lips, and returned it to the far end of the shelf behind a much larger, black three-volume set.
