by John Mackie
“This man is Nikolay Kuzmenko. He is a colleague of Maxim Legenko. You may have heard of him.”
“Indeed.”
“Kuzmenko was the mugger. From something he said to me, I believe Legenko was the one who used the device.”
“Not his wife?”
Interesting. Seemed Ruscan was known to the Sun Consulting folks.
“Uh – is there some history here that I should know about?”
“No, not at all. We’ve never spoken to them. But they have a bit of a reputation.”
“Other than the trial?”
“Trial? Oh, yes. No, separate from that. More to do with the wife. Elana?”
“Elena.”
“Yes. She had a bit of a reputation in her home country.”
OK. Seemed like there were major undercurrents here. I opted to stay at the surface, hoping that by treading water I could avoid being sucked out to sea.
“Well,” I sensed a courteous boot out the door coming my way, “thank you very much for your help. And please extend our best wishes to Clay. I must say you went way beyond the call of duty here, but we appreciate it.”
“My pleasure.”
I took two steps, then paused. Curiosity, I suppose, though we know what happened to the cat. I turned and faced them.
“If you don’t mind my asking... why were you lending it out?”
Quinn seemed to mull that over for a moment, then answered in a soft voice.
“Missing children. Once a year, one family. I wish we could do more, but the device would be worthless if we overused it.”
Imagine that. Something good might have come out of all this nonsense.
“Well, I’m glad we were able to help.”
We exchanged a few more pleasantries before I exited the room. As we headed out to the elevator bank, Emory and Helen huddled briefly, his voice carrying just enough for me to overhear.
“Let’s open a file on the Legenko company. I’ll ask one of the interns to do the usual background research.”
Seemed like Ruscan had managed to get itself on Sun’s radar screen. Whether that would gain them accolades, or a torpedo aimed at their starboard side, remained to be seen.
CHAPTER 27
While I was meeting with the Sun Consulting folks, Ted was at the hospital with my mother. She had insisted he accompany her to visit Clay, and he had complied. No idea why. He wasn’t the one working at Arcane. But with Mom, your role is not to question why.
A few days later, when things had calmed down, he recounted to me what went down that afternoon.
Ted eyed the monitors warily. He hated hospitals. Hated the smell of antiseptic, the whispers and empty hallways. Had for as long as he could remember.
“Get some ice and fill this up.”
He took the Styrofoam beaker and stepped out in the hall. Maybe he would spot a hot nurse with fishnet stockings and a uniform that could barely contain her luscious bod.
No such luck. One old fellow duck-walking down the hall with an intravenous stand in one hand and his wife holding the other. Really ought to have full coverage hospital gowns. The guy’s butt looked like a shriveled peach.
Ice around the corner, water from the fountain.
“Here you go.”
“Thank you, Theo.”
Old Mrs. Jarvis. She was one of about three people on the planet who had managed to call him Theo or Theodore without getting a shot to the head.
“No problem.”
“Harper and I are going down to the coffee shop to get some drinks and a snack. We’ll be back in fifteen minutes. If he wakes and asks for anything, just call one of the nurses.”
“Grab me a muffin and a pop?”
The look on her face suggested that there was no food heading his way.
A few moments later, Ted found himself alone in the semi-private room, watching over Clay’s sleeping form. The old fellow didn’t look too bad, all things considering. Seemed to have decent color in his face, and based on the volume of his snoring he appeared to have achieved a decent state of rest.
Flopping into one of the two visitors’ chairs, he leafed through the stack of magazines resting on the side table. Country Living, Chatelaine, People, Oprah. He couldn’t figure out if the last one was the actual name of the magazine. Seemed a little pretentious. You didn’t see Bill Gates calling Windows “Bill”.
He dropped the stack back on the side table, then pulled the drawer open. Kleenex, a few pill bottles, glasses case. Vital signs monitor? Pulse rate 83. Blood pressure 142/86, if he was reading it right. He stood and peered at the screen. Systolic 142, now 139. Diastolic. 86. Resp. 17. Respiration? 17 seemed low to him. He glanced at Clay, but the old guy seemed to be sleeping just fine. Temperature, one of those goofy EKG lines, bunch of ports, Start/Stop, Print, Auto/Standby. Who the hell was he kidding. It was all gobbledygook to him.
He stepped around the chair and peeked past the curtain into the other half of the room. Clay’s roommate was younger. Maybe mid-forties. Wasn’t looking so hot. Had on one of those Darth Vader breathers, with one leg raised above the bed in a cast and bandages around his forehead. Car accident, probably.
Ted opted to take a quick leak before stooping to read Clay’s charts. If Mom didn’t get back soon, he was going to go crazy.
He was just finishing when he heard heels clack across the linoleum into the hospital room. He stepped on the flush lever, and winced as the toilet roared. Christ, it was like one of those airplane toilets. Quick rinse under the tap, and out.
Ted was drying his hands with a paper towel as he stepped into the room.
What the—? Two people in the room that he had never seen before. One a huge greasy guy, and the second a weasely looking guy in a suit.
“You are not Donnie Elder. His brother, perhaps?”
Ted frowned. Why did people always think he and Donnie looked alike? He was by far the better looking of the two.
“Maybe. Who’s asking?”
“I am Maxim Legenko. And this is my colleague, Nikolay.”
He stared at Ted as though waiting for a reply.
“Man, I have no idea who—.” Wait a sec. Russian business guy and a massive greaseball. Legenko. And the guy who mugged Donnie?
“No matter. You and your colleagues will not interfere with our business again.” He glanced at the greaseball, then turned to Clay’s sleeping figure on the bed.
In two quick steps the big man was on Ted, one callused hand squeezing his windpipe. Ted was knocked off balance and stumbled back into the wall, but his opponent went with the movement, not loosening his grip an iota. He pulled at Niki’s wrist with one hand and pressed his head away with the other, desperately trying to break the man’s grasp.
A glimpse of movement and Ted could see that Legenko was now leaning over Clay, reading from a book he had pulled from his pocket. A small white cloud was forming in the air before him, as though a tiny cumulonimbus had formed out of thin air.
“Huhhhnnnnn!” Niki staggered back, hands to his face. Ted had thumbed him in the eye, opting to forgo any rules of civility. Niki moved in again, hands up to protect his face, in particular the one eye which he still could not open. Still gasping, Ted stepped into him, wrapped his lower leg around the back of the man’s knee, and pushed. The two of them went down hard, with Niki’s head smacking off the bed frame like a pumpkin on concrete. Ted rolled off the man, whose eyes were fluttering, unfocussed.
Getting back to his feet, Ted grabbed the bed rail and stepped towards Legenko.
“Get away from him, asshole.”
Legenko spun towards Ted, hands raised in front of him like a doctor entering surgery, but with the palms facing out. Slim wrists and wicked long fingers gathered the small white cloud that had been over the bed.
Ted instinctively drew back from the man, but Legenko reached out and grasped his face with both hands, the cloud now enveloping Ted’s face.
Cold. G-goddamned cold. He tried to pull away, but Legenko back
ed him up against the wall. His eyes stared vacantly past Ted, a rapturous smile stretching blood red lips.
After the first shock of the cold of his hands, Ted began to relax.
“No offense, but I go for girls.”
Legenko staggered back as though he had slapped him, the smile disappearing from his face in a comical evolution from ecstasy to shock to horror and then to raging fury.
“What is this? You have no power. I can see you have no power!”
“Speak for yourself, asshole.”
The monitors began beeping furiously. Ted looked past his attacker and saw that three of the numbers were now flashing red. On the bed, Clay was gasping for air.
“Hey, what the hell did you do to him?” Ted pushed Legenko aside and went to Clay’s aid. His eyes were open now, but unseeing, darting back and forth. Flushed cheeks, rasping breath. Ted turned and ran into the hall.
“Doctor – we need a doctor!”
There was a flurry of action as first a nurse, then a second nurse and a doctor raced into the room. It was like a NASCAR pit crew, though there was more at stake than a car race. Ted tried once or twice to ask what was going on, but the medical staff were focused on the patient. So he stood by the door, trying to stay out of the way.
He noted Niki and Legenko had disappeared. Just as well – Ted wasn’t feeling too well himself. He tried to clear his throat, wondering whether that weird cloud had done something to his lungs.
“Oh my! What is going on!”
The doctor turned from his ministrations in response to Harper’s outburst.
“His blood pressure spiked suddenly, but we seem to have it under control thanks to this fellow’s assistance.”
“But why would it happen now?”
“Well, it could be a number of things. Was he conscious, do you know?”
“No.”
“Well...” The doctor and Harper moved down the hall for some privacy. Ted could see he was trying to reassure her. In the room behind them, the nurses were rearranging Clay’s sheets, apparently satisfied that all was well again.
“What happened?”
Ted coughed and rubbed at his throat. He could see now why strangulation was so effective. Ted nodded for his mother to move down the hall out of earshot of the doctor and his staff, then told her of the visit by Legenko and his thug friend.
“What on earth were they doing?”
“Just a sec.” Ted’s throat was killing him now. Felt like the strep throat he had experienced in high school. Scratchy and dry. He stepped down the hall and took a sip from the fountain, but the scratchiness would not go away. And worse, now he was getting the spins.
“Are you OK?”
“Yeah, just a bit too much excitement, I guess.”
She took Ted’s arm and started to lead him to a bench at the doorway to Clay’s room, but Ted didn’t make it. With one whistling breath he dropped face first to the floor.
I arrived half an hour later, having just left Sun. My mother’s voice had made it pretty clear that something serious was going on, so I had left the van off King and ran to the Hospital.
At the Emergency Ward I went straight to the triage nurse at the desk.
“Ted Elder?”
She looked to the board behind her, then referred me to Room 114. As I marched past the waiting area, I could see that things were a lot busier than they had been the night Clay and I were mugged. Two police officers sat on either side of a fellow who appeared to have been in a nasty fight – his left eye was swollen shut and he had a gap in his mouth where two or three teeth had been knocked out.
At the room I found my mother sitting by Ted’s side, my brother on a respirator.
“What the hell happened?”
My mother turned, and for a moment, I had a horrible thought that Ted wasn’t going to make it. Her eyes were red from crying.
“I’m not sure. He was watching Clay, and something happened. He had some difficulty breathing, and he fainted.”
“What is the doctor saying?”
“I can answer that.”
I turned to see a tall slim fellow in a white smock. The tag on his lapel read Dr. Aminpoor.
“You are the brother?”
“Yes.”
“I am Dr. Aminpoor. As I said to your mother a few minutes ago, your brother gave us quite a fright. Anaphylaxis, we believe. When we got to him he was in severe respiratory difficulty. Wheezing with swelling around his neck.” The doctor moved to Ted’s side and shifted the respirator mask and tube slightly so that we could see. Ted’s neck was swollen. And an angry red.
“We immediately put him on a respirator for oxygen and injected epinephrine.”
“Adrenaline?”
The doctor nodded. “It seemed to help a bit, but we had to repeat the dosage. Whatever he is reacting to, it is quite severe.” He pointed to two IV bags hanging at Ted’s side. “We’ve put him on chlorphenamine and hydrocortisone, which should reduce the swelling and irritation, allow his breathing to return to normal. For now, though, I’d like to keep him on the oxygen.”
“Que dit il?” My mother looked to me for a moment, then to the doctor.
Fortunately he seemed to recognize the need to spell it out for both of us using a more basic vocabulary.
“He should be okay. As far as we can tell, he is suffering from anaphyl... he is having an allergic reaction to something. We’re not sure what. The drugs we are using should counteract the reaction and allow his body to fight back. I’d like to talk to him when he wakes, but I feel we have things under control.”
When the doctor left, I turned to my mother. She was holding Ted’s hand as though he was hanging off a cliff.
“What happened?”
“I went downstairs with Harper for a few minutes. When we got back, the doctors were fussing over Clay, and Ted told me he wasn’t feeling well. Then he passed out.”
“But they don’t know why?”
“Ted said those people did it. The Russians.”
“The Russians? Kuzmenko? The guy who robbed us?”
“And his boss.”
What the hell? I stared at Ted, with intravenous lines running into both arms and a breathing mask pumping air into his lungs. The marks and swelling around his neck were reduced but still looked painful. They must have used magic. Ted stepped in to stop them, and now he was having a reaction.
“The Russians.”
“Yes. It sounded like they were trying to hurt Clay, and Ted tried to stop them.”
This was about the cube. Legenko must have been pissed about losing it, and decided to take it out on Clay. Having Ted there was just a bonus.
Behind me I heard a gasp, and Harper hurried into the room to sit by my mother’s side. She wrapped an arm around my mother’s shoulders.
“Oh, Huguette. The doctors told me about Ted. I’m so sorry. I was watching Clay to make sure he was OK.”
“Is he?” I felt a throbbing start in my temple.
“Yes. The doctors said he had a spike in his blood pressure. Very sudden. Someone was apparently in the room?”
“The mugger. Again. And his boss.”
“Animals. These men are animals.” My mother was staring at Ted, but her face was wrought with pain and anger.
“Yes they are.” I gave her a kiss, and squeezed Harper’s arm in sympathy. Then I turned and headed out the door. “They’re rabid, and they need to be put down.”
CHAPTER 28
I was pissed off.
Legenko and his henchman had gone after Clay and my brother, intent on hurting them, maybe even killing them. That just doesn’t work for me.
But traffic moves for no man. Like it or not, at this time of day it was going to take a half an hour or more to get from the hospital to Ruscan Industries’ head office. So I used the time as best I could, calling Amy, then e-mailing a file to her. She in turn had a great suggestion, which resulted in another call, and a second e-mail of the same file. I also took a few minutes to s
top off at the University, which just happened to be on the way.
By the time I arrived, I had done what I could.
I parked just off St. Clair, grabbed my bat from the space between the two front seats, and marched over to the Ruscan Industries offices. Straight up the front stairs and through the doors into the reception area. At least I was calm enough to slip the bat into my pants, between my right thigh and pant leg. With a wrench of my belt, and the use of a notch I hadn’t used in several years, I was able to secure the weapon in place.
Ms. Plastic Receptionist didn’t have a chance to even flash her picture-perfect teeth at me. I stalked straight over to the stairwell and began to climb. I was already on the mezzanine, heading to the stairwell that lead up to the offices, before one of the security guards took notice of me.
“Hey!”
Despite his eloquent statement, I elected to press on. As I turned into the second stairwell, he sprinted with surprising speed across the atrium floor.
Still, he was a good floor and a half behind me when I stepped out onto the executive floor, again with an unoccupied reception station. This time, however, all heads were turned in my direction. Reception must have called ahead.
“Uh, sir. Do you have an appointment to see one of the executives?”
Joe College again. He strode up, taller and likely stronger than me, but not used to aggression. His eyes were just a bit too wide, and his voice quavered.
“I’m here to see the Legenkos again. Which way?”
His quick glance at the large office along the back wall told me all I needed to know. I slid past him, and marched down the lane between cubicles to the open door at the back. As I moved, I pulled the bat free, holding it tight to my thigh. A bewildered assistant stood, hands clutched to her chest.
“Relax. I’m not here for you.”
As I passed she backed up against the far wall of the cubicle, staring at me as though I was a madman. And in a way she was right, because I had just spotted Niki, standing in the open doorway and awaiting my arrival.
I made a beeline for him, no doubt invading the notional work boundaries of several more Ruscan employees. I was past basic courtesies.
