by Robin Cook
Lieutenant Hector Salazar and Sergeant Ronald Hunt were standing behind three blue-and-white Miami police cars parked in the Forbes parking lot directly across from the entrance to the Forbes research building. The squad cars were parked in the form of a letter U facing away from the building. In the heart of this U they’d set up a mini-command center with a couple of phones and a radio on a folding card table.
The police presence at the site had swelled considerably. Initially there had only been four officers: the original two uniformed patrolmen who’d answered the call, plus their sergeant and his partner. Now there was a small crowd. Besides dozens of regular uniformed police, including Hector, there was the two-man negotiating team, a five-man bomb squad, and a ten-man SWAT team dressed in black assault uniforms. The SWAT team was off to the side warming up with some jumping jacks.
In addition to the police, Forbes was represented by Dr. Deborah Levy, Margaret Richmond, and Robert Harris. They had been allowed near the command post but had been asked to keep to the side. A small crowd, including local media, had gathered just beyond the yellow crime scene tape. Several TV vans were parked as close as possible with their antennae extended. Reporters with microphones in hand and camera crews at their heels were scouring the crowd to interview anyone who seemed to have any information about the drama transpiring within.
While the crowd of spectators swelled, the police tried to go about their business.
“Dr. Mason says that Murphy flat out refuses to get back on the phone,” Ron said. He was clearly offended.
“You keep trying,” Hector advised him. Turning to Sergeant Anderson, Hector said: “I trust that all entrances and exits are covered.”
“All covered,” Anderson assured him. “No one is going in or coming out without our knowing it. Plus we have sharp-shooters on the roof of the hospital.”
“What about that pedestrian bridge connecting the two buildings?” Hector asked.
“We got a man on the bridge on the hospital side,” Anderson said. “There aren’t going to be any surprises in this operation.”
Hector motioned to Phil Darell to come over. “What’s the story on the bomb?” Hector asked.
“It’s a little unorthodox,” Phil acknowledged. “I spoke with the doctor. It’s a flask of nitroglycerin. He estimates about two or three hundred cc’s. It’s sitting in an ice bath. Apparently Murphy comes in every so often and dumps ice into the bath. Every time he does it, it terrifies the doctor.”
“Is it a problem?” Hector asked.
“Yeah, it’s a problem,” Phil said. “Especially once it solidifies.”
“Would slamming a door detonate it?” Hector asked.
“Probably not,” Phil replied. “But a shake might. A fall to the floor certainly would.”
“But can you handle it?”
“Absolutely,” Phil said.
Next Hector waved Deborah Levy over.
“I understand you run the research here.”
Dr. Levy nodded.
“What do you think this kid is doing?” Hector asked. “He told our negotiator he wanted time to work.”
“Work!” Dr. Levy said disparagingly. “He’s probably up there sabotaging our research. He’s been angry that we haven’t allowed him to work on one of our protocols. He has no respect for anyone or anything. Frankly, I thought he was disturbed from the first moment I met him.”
“Can he be working on that protocol now?” Hector asked.
“Absolutely not,” Dr. Levy said. “That protocol has moved into clinical trials.”
“So you think he’s up there causing trouble,” Hector said.
“I know that he is causing trouble!” Dr. Levy said. “I think you should go up there and drag him out.”
“We have the safety of the hostages to consider,” Hector said.
Hector was about to confer with George Loring and his SWAT team when one of the uniformed patrolmen got his attention.
“This man insists on talking with you. Lieutenant,” the patrolman said. “He claims to be the brother of the guy who’s holed up inside.”
Brian introduced himself. He explained that he was a lawyer from Boston.
“Any insight into what’s going on here?” Hector asked.
“No, I’m sorry,” Brian said. “But I know my brother. Although he’s always been headstrong, he would not do anything like this unless there was a damn good reason. I want to be sure that you people don’t do anything rash.”
“Taking hostages at gunpoint and threatening them with a bomb is more than headstrong,” Hector said. “That kind of behavior puts him in an unstable, unpredictable, and dangerous category. We have to proceed on that basis.”
“I admit what he’s done here appears foolhardy,” Brian said. “But Sean’s ultimately rational. Maybe you should let me talk to him.”
“You think he might listen to you?” Hector asked.
“I think so,” Brian said, despite still feeling the effects of the episode at the Masons’.
Hector got the phone away from Ronald Hunt and let Brian try calling. Unfortunately no one answered, not even Dr. Mason.
“The doctor has been answering until a few minutes ago,” Ron said.
“Let me go in and talk with him,” Brian said.
Hector shook his head. “There are enough hostages in there as it is,” he said.
“Lieutenant Salazar,” a voice called. Hector turned to see a tall, slender Caucasian approaching, along with a bearded, powerfully built Afro-American. Sterling introduced himself and Wayne Edwards. “I’m acquainted with your chief, Mark Witman, quite well,” Sterling said after the introductions. Then he added: “We heard about this situation involving Sean Murphy so we came to offer our services.”
“This is a police matter,” Hector said. He eyed the new-comers with suspicion. He never liked anyone who tried to bully him by saying he was bosom buddies with the chief. He wondered how they’d managed to cross the crime scene barrier.
“My colleague and I have been following Mr. Murphy for several days,” Sterling explained. “We are in the temporary employ of the Forbes Cancer Center.”
“You have some explanation of what’s going on here?” Hector asked.
“We know that this dude’s been getting progressively crazy,” Wayne said.
“He’s not crazy!” Brian said, interrupting. “Sean is brash and imprudent, but he’s not crazy.”
“If someone does a string of crazy things,” Wayne said, “it’s fair to say he’s crazy.”
At that moment everyone ducked reflexively as a helicopter swept over the building, then hovered over the parking lot. The thunderous thump of the rotor blades rattled everyone’s ribcage. Every bit of dust and dirt smaller than medium-sized gravel became airborne. A few papers on the card table were swept away.
George Loring, commander of the SWAT team, came forward. “That’s our chopper,” he yelled into Hector’s ear. The noise of the aircraft was deafening. “I called it over so we can get to the roof the moment you give the green light.”
Hector was having trouble keeping his hat on. “For crissake, George,” he screamed back. “Tell the goddamn chopper to move off until we call it.”
“Yes, sir!” George yelled back. He pulled a small microphone clipped to one of his epaulets. Shielding it with his hands he spoke briefly to the pilot. To everyone’s relief the chopper dipped, then swept away to land on a helipad next to the hospital.
“What’s your take on this situation?” Hector asked George now that they could talk.
“I looked at the floor plans supplied by the head of security, who’s been very cooperative,” George said, pointing out Robert Harris for Hector. “I think we’d only need a six-man team on the roof: three down each stairwell. The suspect’s in the fifth-floor lab. We’d only need one, but we’d probably go ahead and use two concussion grenades. It would be over in seconds. A piece of cake.”
“What about the nitroglycerin in the office?” He
ctor asked.
“I didn’t hear about any nitro,” George said.
“It’s in a glass-enclosed office,” Hector said.
“It would be a risk,” Phil interrupted, having overheard the conversation. “The concussive waves could detonate the nitroglycerin if it’s in a solid state.”
“Hell, then,” George said. “Forget the grenades. We can just come out of both stairwells simultaneously. The terrorist wouldn’t know what hit him.”
“Sean’s no terrorist!” Brian said, horrified at this talk.
“I’d like to volunteer to be with the assault team,” Harris said, speaking up for the first time. “I know the terrain.”
“This is not amateur hour,” Hector said.
“I’m no amateur,” Harris said indignantly. “I trained as a commando in the service and carried out a number of commando missions in Desert Storm.”
“I think something should be done sooner rather than later,” Dr. Levy said. “The longer that crazy kid is left up there, the more damage he can do to our ongoing experiments.”
Everyone ducked again as another helicopter made a low pass over the parking area. This one had “Channel 4 TV” on its side.
Hector yelled for Anderson to call the complaint room to have them call Channel 4 to get their goddamn helicopter away from the scene or he’d let the SWAT team have a go at it with their automatic weapons.
Despite the noise and general pandemonium, Brian picked up one of the telephones and pressed the redial button. He prayed it would be answered, and it was. But it wasn’t Sean. It was Dr. Mason.
SEAN HAD no idea how many cycles he should let the thermal cyclers run. All he was looking for was a positive reaction in any of the approximately one hundred and fifty wells he’d prepared. Impatient, he stopped the first machine after twenty-five cycles and removed the tray containing the wells.
First he added a biotinylated probe and the enzymatic reagents used to detect whether the probe had reacted in the series of wells containing Helen Cabot’s cerebrospinal fluid. Then he introduced these samples into the chemiluminescence instrument and waited by the printout to see if there was any luminescence.
To Sean’s surprise, the very first sample was positive. Although he fully expected it to be positive eventually, he hadn’t expected a reaction so soon. What this established was that Helen Cabot—just like Malcolm Betencourt—had contracted St. Louis encephalitis in the middle of the winter, which was strange since the normal vector for the illness is a mosquito.
Sean then turned his attention to the other wells where he would be searching for the presence of oncogenes. But before he could start adding the appropriate probes, he was interrupted by Dr. Mason.
Although the phone had rung intermittently after he’d spoken with Sergeant Hunt, Sean had ignored it. Apparently Dr. Mason had ignored it too, because on several occasions it rang for extended periods. Sean had finally turned the ringer off on his extension. But apparently it had rung again and apparently this time Dr. Mason had answered it because he’d gingerly opened the door to tell Sean that his brother was on the line.
Although Sean hated to interrupt what he was doing, he felt guilty enough about Brian to take his call. The first thing he did was apologize for striking him.
“I’m willing to forgive and forget,” Brian said. “But you have to end this nonsense right now and come down here and give yourself up.”
“I can’t,” Sean said. “I need another hour or so, maybe two at the most.”
“What in God’s name are you doing?” Brian asked.
“It’ll take too long to explain,” Sean said. “But it’s big stuff.”
“I’m afraid you have no idea of the hullabaloo you’re causing,” Brian said. “They’ve got everyone here but the National Guard. You’ve gone too far this time. If you don’t come out this minute and put a stop to this, I won’t have anything to do with you.”
“I only need a little more time,” Sean said. “I’m not asking for the world.”
“There’s a bunch of gung ho nuts out here,” Brian said. “They’re talking about storming the building.”
“Make sure they know about the purported nitroglycerin,” Sean said. “That’s supposed to dissuade them from heroics.”
“What do you mean, ‘purported nitroglycerin’?” Brian asked.
“It’s mostly ethanol with just a little acetone,” Sean said. “It looks like nitroglycerin. At least, it’s close enough to fool Dr. Mason. You didn’t think I’d make up a batch of the real thing, did you?”
“At this point,” Brian said, “I wouldn’t put anything past you.”
“Just talk them out of any commando action,” Sean said. “Get me at least one more hour.
Sean could hear Brian continue to protest, but Sean didn’t listen. Instead he hung up the phone and turned back to the first thermal cycler tray.
Sean hadn’t gotten far with the oncogene probes when Janet came through the stairwell door trailing computer printout sheets.
“No problem finding the Forbes travel file,” she said. She thrust the computer paper at Sean. “For whatever it’s worth, Dr. Deborah Levy does a lot of traveling, but it’s mostly back and forth to Key West.”
Sean glanced at the printout. “She does keep on the move,” he agreed. “But notice all these other cities. That’s what I expected. What about Margaret Richmond?”
“No travel to Key West,” Janet said. “But moderate travel around the country. About once a month she’s off to another city.”
“What about that automated program we saw?” Sean asked.
“You were right about that,” Janet said. “It was running when I got up there, so I copied two of the numbers we thought might have been phone numbers. When I tried to call direct I could tell it was a computer link, so I used the mainframe and its modem to connect. Both of them were insurance companies: one was Medi-First; the other was Healthnet.”
“Bingo,” Sean said. “It’s all falling into place.”
“How about letting me in on the revelation,” Janet said.
“What I’d be willing to bet is that the computer searches for medical insurance companies’ precertification files for specific social security numbers. It probably does it on a nightly basis during the week and on Sunday afternoons.”
“You mean precertification for surgery?” Janet asked.
“That’s exactly what I mean,” Sean said. “In an attempt to cut down on unnecessary surgery, most if not all health plans require the doctor or the hospital to notify the insurance company of proposed surgery in advance. Usually it’s merely a rubber-stamp exercise so it’s pretty casual. I doubt there’s any concern about confidentiality. That computer upstairs is printing out proposed elective surgery on a specific list of social security numbers.”
“Those are the numbers that are flashing on the screen,” Janet said.
“That’s what it has to be,” Sean said.
“So why?” Janet asked.
“I’ll let you figure that out,” Sean said. “While I continue processing these thermal cycler samples, you look at the referring histories on these thirty-three charts we copied. I think you’ll find most will mention that the patient had elective surgery within a relatively short period before their diagnosis of medulloblastoma. I want you to compare the dates of those surgeries with Dr. Levy’s travel schedule.”
Janet stared at Sean without blinking. Despite her exhaustion, she was beginning to assimilate the facts as Sean understood them and therefore starting to comprehend the direction Sean’s thoughts were headed. Without saying another word, she sat down with the charts and the computer printout she’d brought down from the seventh floor.
Turning back to his own work, Sean loaded a few more wells with the appropriate oncogene probes. He hadn’t gotten far when Dr. Mason interrupted him.
“My wife is getting hungry,” Dr. Mason announced.
With his general fatigue Sean’s nerves were raw. After all th
at had happened he could not abide the Masons, particularly Mrs. Mason. The fact that they thought it appropriate to bother him with her being hungry threw him into a momentary rage. Putting down the pipette, he raced back toward the glass office.
Dr. Mason saw Sean coming and quickly guessed his state of mind. He let go of the door and backed into the office.
Sean threw open the office door so that it banged against the doorstop. He flew into the office, snatched the Erlenmeyer flask from the ice bath, and gave it a shake. Some of its contents had solidified and cakes of ice clunked against the sides of the container.
Dr. Mason’s face blanched as he cringed in anticipation of an explosion. Mrs. Mason buried her face in her hands.
“If I hear one more sound from you people I’m going to come in here and shatter this flask on the floor,” Sean yelled.
When no explosion occurred Dr. Mason opened his eyes. Mrs. Mason peeked out between her fingers.
“Do you people understand?” Sean snapped.
Dr. Mason swallowed hard, then nodded.
Disgusted with the Masons and his own temper tantrum, Sean went back to his lab bench. Guiltily he glanced over at Janet, but she’d not paid any attention. She was too engrossed in the charts.
Picking up the pipette, Sean went back to work. It was not easy, and he had to concentrate. He had to put the right probe in the right well, and he had the primer pairs and probes for over forty oncogenes, a rather extensive list.
A number of the first samples were negative. Sean didn’t know if he’d taken them from the thermal cycler after an insufficient number of cycles or if they were truly negative. By the fifth sample he was beginning to become discouraged. For the first time since he’d put this drama into motion, he seriously questioned the conclusions which by then he’d come to view as rock solid. But then the sixth sample proved positive. He’d detected the presence of an oncogene known by the designation ERB-2, which referred to avian erythroblastosis virus, a virus whose normal host was chickens.
By the time Janet finished with the charts, Sean had found another oncogene, called v-myc, which stood for myelocytoma virus, another virus that grew in chickens.
