His father had not involved Ahmed when Gamal facilitated the hand-off of the country’s largest cotton fabric company to Masud ownership, but he knew about the sweet deal.
And now Gamal had sent his plane to Philadelphia to collect him?
Ahmed had plenty of questions for this Gamal Mubarak minion, but a whimper distracted him. Could he let Alex wake up or should he give him another dose of ketamine?
Ahmed returned to his seat to find his son rubbing his eyes. He reached into his pocket for a pre-filled syringe. Best to keep him quiet. As gently as he could, he plunged the needle into his son’s arm, delaying for as long as possible Alex’s realization that Mommy was not part of the family anymore. Unless he could convince his parents to let her come, live in the compound, maybe even help in the medical practice. She’d not be happy to live in Egypt, but to be with Alex, Ahmed knew she’d do anything. And appeased at that thought, he arranged the blanket over Alex, reclined his seat, and let himself sink into sleep.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
When Nicole stepped outside the operating room, she had no idea that her husband and little boy were two-thirds of the way across the 5,700 miles between Philadelphia and Cairo, Egypt, on the northeastern corner of the African continent. But she did know something was wrong.
The chairman of surgery had scrubbed in three times to enter her operating room during her facial fracture repair surgery, to look over her shoulder, ask questions about her progress. He had never done this before. Harold Templeton had ultimate confidence in her, she knew. So why was he hovering? At his last entry, she’d completed the bony part of the facial reconstructive, but still had to close multiple layers of tissue. Peering at the surgical site, he’d said, “Nicole, I can close for you. There’s something that requires your attention outside the OR.”
“But …” Harold Templeton was an excellent vascular surgeon so he was proficient at close, precise work, but why—
“I can handle this,” he said.
“Yes, but why?” she asked, pausing, scalpel in hand.
“You should go,” he said, holding out a gloved hand for her instrument. “Head directly to my office.”
“Okay.” She passed Templeton the scalpel and he took her place. “If you think I should.” But why? Her imagination failed her in this bizarre situation. It can’t be good. But what?
She tried to catch Templeton’s eye on the way out, but his focus already was on the patient and the status of her handiwork. She felt her heart rate accelerate as she turned to leave, glancing back to see the rest of the operating room team follow her with their stares. Something terrible must have happened …
She made an effort to breathe as she raced to the women’s locker room, ripping off her gloves and mask on the way. She’d pulled off her cap and yanked the green gown over her head by the time she flung open the door of her locker. She never locked it, but it did have a tendency to jam. As it did this time. With a kick, she dislodged the latch and the door flew open, exposing the interior of the oblong metal box. Now out of her scrubs, she grabbed her blouse, managing two buttons before pulling on the skirt of the suit she’d worn that morning. Still in her sturdy white nurse’s shoes, she sprinted to Templeton’s office suite. Whatever awaited her, she’d find there.
His assistant stood at the door of his conference room, warily motioning her to enter. Nicole’s head was spinning, her stomach roiling. Something must be horribly wrong. Ahmed? She had been treating him like shit, and he’d seemed depressed recently—except for this morning—Oh, God, had he killed himself?
Get yourself together.
“Dr. Nelson, your family … in here …”
“Thank you,” Nicole heard herself say. She stepped inside the familiar room. Had the woman said “family”?
Then her heart stopped pounding. She felt it stop beating altogether.
Nicole and Rob, Kevin and Mike, stood facing her. Not so much as a hint of color on any face.
“What’s wrong?” she breathed. “Ahmed?”
Natalie rushed to embrace her, then led her over to the table, eased her into a chair.
“Why are you all here?” Her voice sounded to her as if she were whispering from outer space. Why wasn’t anyone saying anything?
She was the only one seated. All four hunched over her, waiting for what?
Mike was the first to speak. “Nicole, I know you don’t like when people beat around the bush, so I’m going to tell you straight out.”
Nicole put up her hand for him to halt. Maybe she did not want to know. She started to get up. She needed to get out of here. Kevin put an arm on her shoulder, restraining her. She saw him nod to Mike to continue.
He did. “This morning Ahmed left on a private plane from Philadelphia to Cairo … with Alex.”
“No. No, that can’t be.” Nicole felt her body slump and the life drain out of her. She tried to grasp the edges of the chair, Kevin’s arm now needlessly holding her down.
Natalie had knelt in front of her. “We found out almost by accident. My boss casually mentioned he’d seen Ahmed and Alex at the airport, at Atlantic terminal. Rob confirmed it—Nicole, it’s true. Ahmed left for Egypt with Alex. Rob and I have been here—waiting for you to come out of the operating room.”
“No, no,” Nicole said. “Ahmed took Alex …”
Natalie squeezed both her hands. “We called Mike and Kevin. Patrick’s on his way.”
“I don’t understand,” Nicole said, looking from face to face, seeing confirmation, seeing support, but not seeing hope. “I left the house this morning. Ahmed said he’d take Alex to school.” She spoke as if in a trance. “He never did that before. I was happy. That he was stepping up. Taking an interest. He seemed normal. How could I have been so stupid, so trusting?”
No tears. No hysteria. Nicole felt numb. Like she was a corpse. Her family gathered at the viewing. She had no life without Alex. Had they said that Alex was gone. That he’d been taken?
She must have been silent for some time because Natalie said, “Nicole, you have to tell us what’s going on so we can intervene.”
“The flight to Cairo will land in about three hours,” Mike said. “We’ve already contacted the American Embassy in Cairo.”
“You have?” Nicole asked, the first wave of reality hitting her. Could what they were telling her be true? That her husband had left with her son. Unilaterally? With no discussion? Total secrecy?
“They can’t do much,” Mike explained. “They will send someone to meet the plane, to document the arrival of Archy and Alex, but no laws have been broken. They can’t intervene.”
“Can’t intervene!” Nicole found the strength to jump up now, despite Kevin’s attempt at restraint.
“They have to stop Ahmed. He can’t just leave with Alex. I never gave my consent to take Alex out of the country.” She faced Mike, pounded on his chest. “How can he do that?”
“Look, Nicole, I’m just telling you. I’ve had my law firm double check me on this. He can do that. And he did. So we have to concentrate on getting him back. Getting him back right away. Okay?”
“Let’s all sit down and review the facts,” Kevin said, taking Nicole by the hand, seating her next to him at the table, not letting go of her hand. The others now sat down, as well, filling the circle of chairs at the round table.
“Okay. Nicole, we haven’t seen much of you for a few weeks.” Kevin’s voice was level. “What’s been going on?” Nicole looked at Natalie, who nodded slightly. So Natalie had told their brothers.
“Things have not been good with us,” she began. Her voice a quaver, she told them without tears how Ahmed had hit her. How it all started—about Alex’s school. About the malpractice lawsuits, how humiliated Archy—she’d slipped and called him that—had been about the string of suits filed against him.
As she told the story of Ahmed’s abusive behavior, she saw Mike and Kevin react. Her brothers had always been protective to a fault. Both of them got that restless male look
, faces reddened, hands balled into fists.
“Had he threatened to leave? To take Alex with him?” Rob asked as if to break the tension, but in effect causing more.
“No,” Nicole said, finally allowing a few tears to fall. “No. Never.”
Natalie got up, went to her purse, came back with a package of tissues.
“You should have told us,” Mike said. “We could have talked to him.”
“Scared the shit out of him for what he did to you,” Kevin said.
And they would have, too, Nicole knew. So why hadn’t she told them? The answer: stupid pride. Not wanting to ask for help. Her weakness. She must do everything on her own. Had that caused a problem with Ahmed? Her senseless stubbornness?
“Natalie, you knew,” Kevin said. “Why didn’t you call Mike or me? You knew we would have stepped in.”
“Yes,” Natalie said. “But …”
“Hey,” Rob said. “Let’s face the current situation. Archy—Ahmed—left Philadelphia at nine a.m. The flight to Cairo is about eleven hours. Do you think we can assume that he’ll take Alex to the Masud family home? They have—like, a compound there, right, Nicole?”
Nicole nodded.
“That bastard,” Nicole said, almost under her breath, but they all heard.
Nicole wasn’t sure she’d truly absorbed this new reality. Her son was gone. All those Sunday phone calls, Ahmed with his family. More intense the last few weeks. Had the Masuds been planning this all along? To take her son?
Mike said, “Someone from the American Embassy will observe their disembarkation in Cairo.”
“Observe, but not act,” Kevin said.
As the four siblings sat in the conference room, their cell phones, although muted, vibrated repeatedly. Except for Nicole, who’d left her phone in her locker in her haste to get to the matter so urgent that her chief was closing her surgical case.
At the next vibration, Mike picked up. “Patrick,” he told the others. “I’ll put him on speaker. Patrick? Nicole’s here with us.”
“Nicole, are you okay?” Patrick, her younger brother, the only one she could boss around as a kid. Now a famous and very wealthy man, still she felt a tinge of dominance.
“No,” she said.
“I’m an hour and a half out,” Patrick said. “I’m not alone. I have Berk, Monica’s head of security with me.” Monica Monroe, the new millennium’s vocalist sensation, had uncompromising security. She—and Patrick and their daughter—lived their lives in paparazzi-land.
Nicole almost said, “No. Just keep this inside the family.” But the thought of Alex, taken, separated from her, not knowing where she was, why she wasn’t with him, altered that narrow-minded perspective.
“Thank you,” she said, accepting her kid brother’s help.
“We’ll have Archy followed once he lands in Cairo. So, we’ll know where Alex is, Nicole.”
Nicole took a breath. At least she’d know her son’s location. “Thank you,” she repeated.
“If there’s a chance, we’ll snatch him, but that’s unlikely. We’ve found out that they are accompanied by an armed bodyguard who’s protected, one of the highest officials in Egypt—Hosni Mubarak’s son Gamal, to be exact.”
“Why would they need a bodyguard?” Nicole asked. “Ahmed’s never had any role in Egyptian politics.”
“Tensions are high in the Middle East now. Egypt, Tunisia, Liberia. More precautions, security ramped up.”
“I need to call Ahmed’s parents,” said Nicole, her thoughts accelerating to Alex’s destination. “Plead with them to send Alex home.”
Nicole sat back, trying to clear her head, as her sister and three brothers and her brother-in-law debated whether or not she should call the Masud compound. Would it do more harm than good? How could the senior Masuds not know that Ahmed and Alex soon would land in Cairo?
“I have to call them,” Nicole decided. “I have to ask them to help me. What else can I do?”
“Nicole’s right,” Natalie said. “She needs to at least communicate with them, as Alex’s mother. Try to win them over to her side.”
“Wati’s,” Nicole whispered to herself.
So it was agreed. Nicole would put through a call to the Masud home in Giza, where the time was almost midnight now.
CHAPTER TWENTY
SINCE NATALIE AND Rob had arrived at Bryn Mawr Hospital, Natalie’s focus had been Nicole—and Alex and Ahmed. She’d shoved into the background Keystone and the attack on Zomera, their billion-dollar drug. Natalie convinced Nicole to eat an energy bar and get a coffee before calling her in-laws in Giza. As her sister headed to the vending machines, Natalie switched on her cell phone. Predictably, messages by the dozens. A mess of texts and e-mails and voice mails from her boss, from her staff. High time to take her medicine. All hell was breaking loose at Keystone Pharma, and she had been AWOL.
The attack on Zomera landed squarely within her bailiwick of responsibility. She took a moment now to sort through her mental file. During her staff meeting, Dan Booker had introduced the problem with “the shit’s hit the fan.” Literally. Zomera’s Phase IV trial results, decoded over the weekend, revealed a nasty surprise: patients were dying—not from the drug—but from treatments of a side effect, constipation—unrelated to Zomera itself, but linked to painkillers also used in cancer cases. At least that had been her take before her absence without leave.
Keystone would have limited time to evaluate the new data and to validate her hypothesis; the responsibility fell to her to arrange to notify the FDA almost immediately. Translation—Do your professional duty. Starting now.
And yet, Nicole …
She glanced again at the list of text messages. Her boss, CEO Barney Black, the first and most frequent. She took the time to scan only the first few lines. At first, his messages were concerned. Why had she run out of his office? What did she need to tell him? Then, demanding. What was all this about—the Zomera study results? Then, angry. Get the hell back here. We’re in fucking crisis. Where the hell are you? Don’t expect to have a job when you …
Others were from her direct reports. Booker from Medical: We’re trying to triage the serious reactions … Elman from Regulatory: We have to get this to the FDA immediately … From Statistics: You need to okay the data presentation—Booker and I disagree … From the labs: What can we do?
On this worst of all possible days, I’ve gone off the grid? What must they be thinking?
Before she could begin to contemplate a single answer, Nicole shuffled back into the conference room, cardboard coffee cup in hand, shoulders slumped. The word “stricken” came to mind. Natalie never had associated this word with her energetic, overachiever twin sister.
I must be here for Nicole. But I must get back to Keystone.
Natalie motioned for Rob to join her in the corner of the room while Mike and Kevin fiddled with the phone they’d use to call the Masud home in Giza.
Keeping her voice low, she said, “I’ve got some really bad stuff going on at work.” She flashed him her message list. “I need to answer a couple of these. Will you cover for me with Nicole? I should be in here with her, I know, but …”
“Sure,” Rob said. “What’s going on at work?”
With all attention on Nicole’s crisis, Natalie had not even told Rob about Zomera’s problem. “I’ll tell you all about it, once—”
Nicole sat down in front of the speakerphone. Natalie wanted to sit beside her, to support her with anything in her power, even just a hand on her arm. “Rob, I’m so torn,” she whispered.
“Take care of what you must.” Rob’s advice came with a reassuring shoulder squeeze.
Before she could change her mind, Natalie left Nicole, supported by their brothers and by Rob, her husband, to place the phone call that could well determine Nicole’s future.
* * *
Office hours at Keystone were nine to five, but Natalie knew that everyone in upper management and everyone in her scientific departments
would be at their desks late into the night. A medical/regulatory threat to their most lucrative drug would see to that. They’d be in a panic. They needed her leadership. She needed to be there.
She called Barney, was put right through. After enduring a torrent of ire, she explained as calmly as she could that she had a family crisis. She told him her brother-in-law had taken her nephew to Egypt without her sister’s knowledge or consent. She explained that this needed to stay confidential.
“Goddamnit, Natalie, that was ten o’clock this morning. You could have called someone. Shit. The one day we need you here—”
“Barney, I am truly sorry, but let’s move beyond my absence today.”
“Everybody is talking about yanking Zomera off the market, and you don’t seem to give a shit.”
“Zomera will not come off the market,” Natalie made the flat statement. She could only hope that she was right—that she could trust her instincts; she had yet to examine the damning data. She needed to examine it, to study it carefully.
“Easy for you to say,” Barney grunted. “You’re not even goddamned here. I’ve had your people in my office all day long. They’re telling me—”
“I intend to do my job, Barney. My family is in crisis right now, but I will manage this. We’ll change the package insert. Put in a warning—something that you and Marketing can live with—”
“What?” he bellowed across the phone line.
“We will include a warning against—”
“How do we warn against constipation? Everybody gets constipated. We all know that. If we warn against—”
“The warning will focus on treatments for constipation. We warn specifically about the more dangerous treatment forms—put the blame on the opioid painkillers that cause constipation. Advise doctors not to overprescribe laxatives. Assure patients that if they avoid certain treatments, then there is no extra risk. Blame the treatments for constipation, not Zomera. What we’ll come up with is good advice for constipation patients generally, not just cases related to Zomera. It makes public health sense and takes the onus off our drug. In the end, it’ll make good PR.”
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