The Orchid Hunter

by Sandra K. Moore

  I guessed I could try breaking up the cabinet back, but half-inch-thick oak would take a heck of a wallop to crack, and I wasn’t sure when the guard might be making the rounds. Knowing my luck, he’d overhear me kicking away and bust me.

  The more I thought of ways to break into the cabinet, the more I became suspicious of that number. The anal-retentive Harrison I knew would have set that number to 0000 every time he closed up his little hidey-hole. He couldn’t help it any more than he could help wearing his lunch on his tie or marinating in his aftershave.

  I pulled a penknife out of my purse and inserted it into the hidey-hole’s seam. Nope, 2317 wasn’t the magic number. But I guessed it wasn’t far off. If I were Harrison and in a hurry not to get caught, I’d have spun the lock a number off and dropped the shelf. The bad guys couldn’t break into the hole if they didn’t know it was there, and keeping the hole a secret would have been the top priority.

  Reaching in to spin the 7 to 6, I paused. Harrison was left-handed. I spun the 2 to 3 and tried to pry the panel off. No good. Okay, turn the 2 to 1. Nothing. In disgust I reset the lock to 2317. Going through all the possible combinations would take a year.

  But maybe I wasn’t being patient enough. If Harrison had been in a hurry, he’d have spun the dial up because that’s the easiest direction to get a good spin. I thumbed the 2 up as far as I could with one stroke. The 2 landed on 7. I pried with the penknife. On 8, the panel popped out and dropped onto the bottom shelf. I maneuvered the panel out of the cabinet and set it aside.

  In a shallow compartment behind the panel, a manila envelope clung to wood by a thin strip of tape.

  Heart pounding, I carefully peeled the envelope from the compartment. Inside the envelope lay two pieces of paper and a microcassette tape.

  I spread the papers out on the floor, then dug my penlight out of my purse and knelt. Down here, the light shouldn’t give me away to anyone watching the office from outside. Like one of Shoemaker’s buddies in uniform.

  The first paper was a summary printout of Harrison’s electronic date book for the past year, detailing dates and times he’d met or talked with Cradion. But two appointments were with von Brutten, both occurring the week before von Brutten called me. On its own, the paper confirmed only that Harrison had had contact with both Cradion and von Brutten. It wasn’t enough to exonerate von Brutten.

  I moved on to the next page. It was another handwritten sheet, torn from a project notebook. A neatly printed chemical formula was written on it, with Harrison’s trademark shorthand notes scrawled to the side. I scanned the margin notes. One read simply:

  With the proper dilution, this formula has exactly the opposite effect—of healing heavily damaged heart tissues.

  I caught my breath. The Death Orchid poison.

  Nowhere were the “proper dilution” specifics mentioned. I checked the back of the page, the envelope, every scrap of paper within reach. No dilution details anywhere.

  Tears welled in my eyes but I squeezed them back. I had the poison here, not the cure. Had Harrison taken the cure to his grave? Scooter didn’t stand a chance unless von Brutten’s lab had the cure formula.

  If von Brutten’s lab really was legitimate. I still didn’t know and couldn’t tell from the limited evidence in my hands. Was von Brutten the good guy?

  I picked up the microcassette tape. My last chance to find out. Harrison’s desk drawer held a microcassette player with, thank my one lucky star, live batteries. I snapped the cassette inside and turned the player on.

  The conversation sounded like the participants were arguing in a bucket. The recorder must have been in Harrison’s metal desk. But no mistaking the voices: Harrison and von Brutten, discussing due dates and timelines. Harrison’s thin voice trembled and broke. The man was terrified. Von Brutten was his usual soft-spoken, austere, vaguely threatening self.

  Then a door shutting and a voice I’d heard only once, two weeks ago. When I’d heard him before, I’d had my hands in Harrison’s sock drawer as he’d said, “I don’t want to pay Noah if I don’t have to.” Soon after that, I’d chased him all over the River Walk. The Brain.

  On the tape he said, “I hope, Dr. Harrison, you’ve made your final decision about retrieving the orchid.”

  “And I told you, Dr. Thompson, I’ll f-find another one.” Harrison’s voice wavered. “Th-That’s not the issue. Another week after I have the plant and I’ll have the cure Cradion’s looking for.”

  “And the substance I contracted you to create?” von Brutten asked.

  “Yes, th-that, t-too. The issue is k-keeping the C-Cradion directors in the dark. If they lose credibility, the whole p-p-project falls apart.”

  “Quit worrying about things that don’t concern you,” von Brutten said.

  “I can handle Cradion’s precious credibility,” Thompson snapped. “Just get von Brutten’s formula ready.”

  “I’m d-doing all I c-can.”

  “If that’s true,” von Brutten said in a soothing tone, “your little video collection will remain just between us.”

  Thompson snorted. “Video collection?”

  “The stars are rather…young,” von Brutten breathed. The tape barely caught his irregular, chuffing laugh. “Never mind, Dr. Harrison. We all have our weaknesses.”

  “All right,” Harrison murmured. “I’ll d-do what you want.”

  The rest of the conversation deteriorated into science-speak. I snapped the player off.

  Absolute silence filled the abandoned lab. It filled my head. I breathed, waited for my heart to slow its pounding. I waited for the clenched fist that was my stomach to loosen.

  I’d needed to know whether Harrison was working for two different labs, Cradion’s and von Brutten’s. He was. For Cradion to develop its good medicine, and for von Brutten to develop a biological weapon.

  I’d needed to know whether von Brutten was involved in the bioterrorism lab Shoemaker told me about. He was.

  Cradion hadn’t poisoned Scooter. Thompson had. Thompson working for von Brutten in Harrison’s lab.

  I sat on the floor for a moment longer, letting the grief crash over me. I didn’t cry. I was through crying for a while.

  Time to decide.

  I thought about Scooter, swallowed in blankets, taking his pills. He didn’t belong there. He belonged in his little greenhouse with his orchids, or in the Slapdash’s kitchen standing over a pot of chili, or out on the trailer’s front porch holding a glass of cold grape Kool-Aid.

  I thought about Marcello and that damned green harness tied around his little brown legs. The shapono burning, women wailing in the dawn. Porfilio’s earnestness as he tried to convince Rick to help him stop the colonel. Rick’s strong face in firelight. The shaman’s unreadable black eyes.

  I’d already made this decision once, I realized. That early morning I let Lawrence Daley walk away with the very orchids that could snatch Scooter from the brink of death, I’d turned my back on him and tried to save a village full of people I didn’t know and would never see again. People who meant nothing more to me than what I allowed them to mean. Marcello. Rick.

  Back then I’d thought I could somehow cheat time, change fate, get everything I wanted. And I had, a little. I’d eventually lost Rick, had been betrayed to the core, but I’d brought the orchid back against all odds.

  But there was no cheating fate this time. This decision was for keeps.

  Forgive me, Scooter.

  Chapter 17

  Von Brutten, I learned when I called him the following morning, leased a penthouse condo in San Antonio. It turned out to be a posh place near downtown, where parking sucked because all the money was in office and living space. My rented Lexus squeezed into the last parallel parking spot on the street behind a windowless cable repair van. Hitching my oversize purse onto my shoulder, I tucked a cardboard cylinder containing a Death Orchid under my arm and locked the car.

  I rode the elevator to the twelfth floor, trying not to look at myself
in the mirrored door. Lack of sleep, too many hours worrying. Too many hours grieving. Hank and Marian would have Scooter on the road for home, probably to die. The kiss goodbye I’d given him had felt like forever. I steeled myself to feel nothing. Nothing at all.

  Linus Geraint Newark von Brutten III, you bastard, here I come.

  The elevator hummed open on a black-suited butler. Not Sims. I felt a little sad. I’d probably never see my favorite butler again.

  “Dr. Robards to see Mr. von Brutten,” I said.

  Not-Sims stared down his long nose at my blue jeans and walking boots. “Please wait here. Mr. von Brutten is with another guest at the moment.” Not-Sims glided off to what I gathered was The Study and opened the double doors.

  While he waited to be acknowledged, I studied the foyer’s walls. Abstract art, brightly colored slashes and shapes, hung over a muted and classy wallpaper. A marble-topped antique table sported some kind of china bowl. A Waterford chandelier hung above my head. This ten-by-ten-foot room had cost more than I’d made in my three-year career. What was it like to have that kind of money? Did it make you think you had the power of life and death?

  I heard a raised voice from The Study, arguing. Not-Sims stood in the doorway, still waiting. The raised voice was more than familiar. My heart stopped, then painfully jerked into motion again.

  Rick.

  Before I could get a handle on the four hundred thoughts clamoring for my attention, Not-Sims beckoned. “This way.” He took a single step onto The Study’s antique Oriental rug and announced, “Dr. Robards.”

  Inside, a cacophony of colors and shapes exploded over the walls and bookshelves. Every surface in the study held an artifact—cloth, bowl, weapon, pot, parchment, skin, figurine, totem, charm, dried specimen. Blankets and animal skins hung on the walls. An array of arrows from several different cultures weighed down the desk’s glossy surface.

  There was so much to see, in fact, that for an instant I had a hard time separating the men from the stuff. Von Brutten and Rick had squared off against each other in front of the desk, but both stared at me as I stalked inside.

  “Welcome, Dr. Robards,” von Brutten breathed. The doors clicked shut behind me.

  “Am I interrupting?” I jerked my head in Rick’s direction.

  Von Brutten’s goatee quivered with his frosty smile. “Merely a business transaction. I didn’t realize you had yet another competitor.”

  Of course. Thompson had hired Rick to bring back the Death Orchid at the same time von Brutten had hired me. But I wasn’t supposed to know that. “Competitor?” I asked. I shot a hard glance at Rick, who glared back. “You horning in on my territory, Noah?”

  Rick shrugged his broad shoulders arrogantly, sending my stomach to my feet. “Fair play,” he said.

  “He brought me a specimen.” Von Brutten waved a hand toward the desk, where the mangled Death Orchid Rick had salvaged from the shaman lay like a corpse.

  I forced a laugh, my throat tight. “I did a little better than that.” I uncapped my cardboard cylinder and carefully pulled out my Death Orchid still clinging to its raft of bark. It was perfect. Flawless.

  Von Brutten plucked a pair of rimless glasses from his vest pocket and examined my orchid while Rick and I eyed each other behind his back. The lines under his eyes suggested he hadn’t slept in a while. How could Rick be a part of this? This wasn’t the man I knew. Anguish squeezed my chest. Rick’s gaze dropped another five degrees.

  “Very nice,” von Brutten eventually pronounced. “Is this the only one?”

  I broke my gaze-lock with Rick to smile. “Not hardly.”

  “You said you have something else for me.”

  “That’s correct. And I’m more than willing to pass it along to you—” here I glared at Rick “—if you pass up offers by my competitor.”

  “Forget it,” Rick snapped. “I produced the Death Orchid—”

  “After I cut it down for you.” After I trusted you. After I gave myself to you. After I let myself want you again. I cursed inwardly.

  Stay strong, Ladybug, Scooter’s voice whispered.

  Right. Time to get the job done. “Which is it?” I asked my employer. “I have another orchid and Harrison’s formula. Shall I take them to another buyer?”

  Von Brutten’s thin lips parted to speak, but I cut him off.

  “Or should I take them to Homeland Security? They started giving me a hard time after Harrison gave himself up and told them what he was up to.”

  Von Brutten plucked a cigarette from a silver case resting in the arrow cache. “Yes, I always had my doubts about Dr. Harrison. A weak sort. Morally weak.” His pale eyes flickered red as he fired up an embossed silver lighter. He met my eyes, blew a quick stream of smoke. “Unlike you. Unlike me.” He snapped the lighter shut and returned it to his pocket, then gestured to the loosely grouped leather chairs that formed a conversation area. “Please,” he said to Rick.

  “You’re a woman of great loyalty,” von Brutten said as I dropped into a chair and set my shoulder bag on the floor at my feet. He seated himself next to Rick. “I admire that.”

  “You made a promise. About my great-uncle.”

  “Yes. You know I always keep my promises.” His pale eyes slipped to Rick, calculating.

  I pulled a piece of paper from my jeans pocket and handed it to him. “A good chemist should get you where you’re going. This is the formula Dr. Harrison created for you. I found it hidden in his lab.”

  He opened the folded paper and perused it. I hoped he hadn’t been a chemist in a previous life because I’d copied Harrison’s poison formula from the original notes and made a significant change. Knowing my luck, I’d just given him the formula for Listerine.

  Rick’s frank hostility cut me to the core. It was bad enough knowing he worked for Thompson, but to find him here, selling the orchid directly to von Brutten? There wasn’t any room left in my heart for more pain. Feel nothing.

  Von Brutten laid the paper on his cluttered desk. “And the other orchid?”

  “It’s in a safe place. I hoped you’d feel a little generosity coming on, especially after what your buddy Dr. Thompson did to my great-uncle.”

  “Unfortunate,” von Brutten agreed. “I was not pleased when I found out. Still. The old man can be saved.”

  “Yes, now he can. Dr. Harrison may not have told you he had more than one iron in the fire. While he was working on your formula, he was working on something else as well.” I fished the shaman’s vial out of my pocket and set it on top of the formula. “I found this in Harrison’s lab. Everlasting life.”

  Rick stared at the shaman’s vial, clearly trying to make sense of what I was saying. The two things, I knew, were not computing. Time to distract him before he asked a pointed question and screwed up my plan.

  I leveled a cool glance at him. “How did you get away from Shoemaker and his boys, anyway?”

  His jaw tensed. “I posted bail.”

  “But customs didn’t confiscate your Death Orchid.” Which they should have, given Shoe’s insistence that no Death Orchid make it into the States. Unless… My brain spun into overdrive.

  “My CITES certificate cleared,” he replied.

  Von Brutten tapped his cigarette into a silver ashtray. “Did you happen upon your old friend in the field?”

  “Daley? I took care of him,” I said. “Did you know someone at Cradion hired him to steal the orchids from me?”

  Von Brutten squinted through the spiraling cigarette smoke as he exhaled. “That’s why I hired you. My confidence was well-founded.” His calculating gaze fell on Rick. “I didn’t realize Cradion had hired you as well.”

  “It wasn’t Cradion. It was Thompson.”

  Von Brutten’s silvery eyes flashed with ire. I gathered Dr. Thompson had his own private agenda.

  Rick went on, “But he doesn’t really understand market need and market pricing. I follow the money. My not liking what you plan to do with the orchid is my problem.”<
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  “And how do you know what I plan to do with my orchid?” Von Brutten’s squint darkened.

  “The natives make a poison out of it,” Rick replied smoothly. “I have to assume you’ll do the same. Kill innocent people.”

  The corners of von Brutten’s silver eyes crinkled in amusement. “I assure you, Dr. Kinkaid, none of the people I intend to kill are innocent. You know as well as I that progress in certain areas can be held back by the unenlightened. Technological progress, biological progress, even environmental progress.”

  “Not to mention political progress,” Rick said dryly.

  “Indeed.” Von Brutten tapped his cigarette into a tray. “The future of humankind depends upon strong leadership. Weak leaders cause chaos. They defend the status quo. They suppress innovation. Progress requires risk. I’m merely making progress possible.”

  Three things occurred to me simultaneously.

  First, von Brutten honestly believed what he was saying. In a sickening déjà vu, I thought of the donos, old Goldtooth, justifying both his attack on the Yanomamo village and his methodical poisoning of the colonel as necessary to “progress.” The difference between Goldtooth and von Brutten was only that of scale.

  Second, if Rick was truly just trying to sell von Brutten a priceless orchid, he wouldn’t know about von Brutten’s plans for the plant unless he’d talked in-depth with Homeland Security. My memory flashed on the cable repair van. Windowless, nondescript. Shoemaker must have talked Rick into setting up von Brutten in exchange for a lighter prison sentence.

  Third, von Brutten would never be so stupid as to voice his intentions unless he knew Rick was trying to compromise him and was now toying with Homeland Security’s freshly recruited errand boy.

  Which meant Rick was in terrible danger. I had to get him out before von Brutten killed him. Shoemaker could handle the criminal side of things.

  “Look, I just want to get down to the financial transaction,” I said to von Brutten. “Have you guys finished your chitchat or should I come back later?”