Panacea

by F. Paul Wilson

  “That doesn’t mean he wasn’t bleeding to death,” Laura said.

  He raised an I-swear hand. “I did not injure him in any way. I left him in the same condition as you saw him—facedown on the floor, alive, breathing, not bleeding. I just … moved him.”

  Laura wasn’t sure she wanted to hear this.

  “Where to?”

  “That worm playground.”

  She didn’t see what that accomplished. Why would he…? Oh?

  “You didn’t happen to bang that hammer, did you?”

  Clotilde had worked her way from the transom to the co-captain seat. “You called the worms?” she said.

  Laura looked between the two of them. “What will that do?”

  “It will bring the worms to the surface,” Clotilde said.

  “I know that. But, well, it’s not like they’re going to eat him, is it?”

  The old woman shook her head. “That is impossible. They will crawl all over him, but they cannot harm him.”

  Laura couldn’t imagine what that had to feel like and didn’t want to try.

  Then she saw Clotilde’s eyes narrow. “Unless…”

  Just then the island exploded behind them.

  At least it seemed to. Laura watched a huge fireball mushroom into the air. Bits of the camo fabric—from tiny rags to full sheets—swirled and fluttered like angry birds. Bit and pieces of the struts that once anchored them pinwheeled from the sky and rained on the water astern, peppering the waves with splashes big and small.

  The missiles Fife had mentioned … Hellfire missiles that would launch when his heart stopped. This meant …

  Rick whooped. “Made it! Far enough to be safe from the shrapnel, close enough to the cliff to be shielded from the shock wave!”

  Laura only stared at him. So did Clotilde. Finally he noticed and sobered.

  “What?”

  Laura shook her head. “Didn’t you promise—?”

  “I did. I regretted it almost immediately, but I held to it.”

  “That explosion means Fife’s heart stopped.”

  “Yeah, that’s what he told us, but I didn’t stop it.”

  “But you knew the worms would…” Laura glanced at Clotilde. “What? Choke him?” She couldn’t imagine any other way it could happen.

  Clotilde nodded, looking angry. “To use the All-Mother’s creatures like that … you had no right.”

  “Hey, if the worms did it, they were only doing what comes naturally. I couldn’t know they’d—”

  “But you hoped!”

  “Well, yeah, I thought it was a possibility, but, you know, remote. Hey, really. Why am I getting all this heat? The guy was going to kill us all in cold blood and cremate us with those missiles. Turnabout is fair play, don’t you think?”

  “I don’t know what to think, Rick.”

  And that was true. Fife had been the leader. Apparently he’d been giving the orders all along, which meant he’d ordered Mulac’s torture and murder.

  She couldn’t say he hadn’t had it coming to him, she simply didn’t like being a party to the three deaths back there.

  “Well, think about this,” Rick said. “The worms may have done him in, but if he hadn’t synched those missiles to his heart, his two buddies would still be alive. So maybe we should thank him for being so paranoid. Because of that, you won’t have to be looking over your shoulder every moment now.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know how much these 536 guys network, but you heard him say he’d kept this operation pretty much under his hat. The passing of him and his team has probably knocked you off the 536 radar. And that’s a good thing, don’t you agree?”

  “One of his crew said you used your zip ties on someone named Miguel. What did he mean by that?”

  “I wouldn’t pay too much attention to crazies like that.”

  “Who is—or was—Miguel?”

  Rick was silent a moment, then he sighed. “A Company man.”

  “CIA?”

  He nodded. “A 536er too, just like Fife, only Fife was in charge. Miguel and a hired hand from Mexico City tortured Mulac. And burned Mulac. And hung Mulac. And they were waiting to see if you learned anything they missed. If you had, they planned the same for you. Oh, and they ripped out that little girl’s fingernails too.”

  A blast of hate suffused Laura. A child … doing that to a child.

  “And you…?”

  He shrugged. “I just did my job.”

  “You killed them?”

  “I’m supposed to protect you, so…”

  “When?” She could think of only one occasion when he would have had the time. “Sunday night? When you went for that ‘reconnoiter’?”

  He nodded. “They gave themselves away earlier in the day when they were spying on you.”

  Spying on me … dear God.

  “And you did it with zip ties?”

  “Um, yeah, but don’t ask for details. The details don’t matter. What matters is they won’t be torturing curanderos or little girls or deputy medical examiners or anyone else ever again.”

  “Good.”

  Rick’s head snapped around. And Laura herself was surprised she’d said that, but she wasn’t about to take it back.

  “Anyone who can torture a little girl is capable of anything. They have to be stopped.”

  “Well, we finally agree on something.”

  “I guess we do.” She wasn’t exactly overjoyed with that idea. “But just that one thing.”

  When she thought about it, Rick was one scary guy. He’d come out and told her that he’d killed this Miguel and whoever was with him. And he’d done it with zip ties. She couldn’t imagine how, but it didn’t sound like he’d been fighting for his life. It sounded more like an execution. And then he’d returned all cool and calm like he’d been out for a quiet stroll. What sort of man could do that?

  Yeah. One scary guy. So why didn’t he scare her? Why wasn’t she appalled?

  She realized with a pang that she wasn’t the same Laura Fanning who had left Long Island on Sunday morning. And what day was today? God, she actually had to think about it. Friday? Yeah, Friday. Six days on the road, as that old song went. Six days over which she felt like she’d lived six years. It would be so good to get home.

  Wait.

  “Clotilde,” she said, turning to the old woman. “Did you save a dose of the ikhar?”

  She nodded and patted a pocket of her robe. “I did not know how long we would be gone so I grabbed some on my way out.”

  “And you’ll let me bring a dose back to America?”

  “I said I would, did I not?”

  Laura gave Rick a look. “Well, sometimes you can hold to the letter of a promise while circumventing its spirit.”

  Rick only smiled.

  But the important thing was she’d be home with her Marissa by tomorrow.

  5

  “Nurse!” Steven called from Marissa’s bedside. “Nurse!”

  He’d just arrived and the Marissa in the bed now was nothing like the Marissa he’d left earlier.

  His shock must have been obvious because a nurse he’d never seen before hurried to his side. Her name tag read H. Sayers, RN. She had chocolate skin and glossy black hair pulled straight back from her round face.

  “What’s wrong?” she said.

  “Look!” He bent over the bed. “Marissa? Marissa?”

  She opened her eyes but they didn’t seem to focus. “Mommy?” she said in a slurred voice.

  “What’s wrong with her?”

  “I called Doctor Franks. He’s going to talk to you.”

  “Franks? Never heard of him.”

  “He’s a neurologist.”

  “Neurologist? She’s got pneumonia.”

  Nurse Sayers looked uncertain.

  He heard his voice rise on its own. “Tell me what the hell is going on!”

  “She … she’s developed meningitis.”

  “What? Oh, no! Ho
w can that be?”

  “As Doctor Franks will tell you, it’s not that uncommon in a post stem-cell transplant with CMV.”

  Marissa’s lids had slipped closed again. He couldn’t take his eyes off her waxy face. He tried to speak, failed, tried again.

  “Is she going to die?”

  Sayers didn’t answer.

  “Is she going to die?” he repeated, managing with supreme effort not to scream.

  “That is not for me to say, Mister Gaines.”

  He wanted to throttle her, then realized the hospital probably had rules about how much a nurse could say—hierarchies and protocols and all that shit. Not her fault. Spare the messenger.

  “All right, who will say or who can say?”

  “That would be Doctor Franks. I expect him back shortly.”

  “What can you tell me?”

  “I can tell you that she’s comfortable. She’s not in any pain.”

  Because she’s dying, he thought, the inescapable realization shredding his heart. My little girl is dying.

  And where was Laura? Where the fuck was Laura?

  6

  “Always wanted to try haggis,” Rick said.

  Laura looked at him over the top of her menu. “Really? Why?”

  “Because it sounds so awful I want to be able to say I’ve eaten it.”

  “From what I’ve gathered, it doesn’t sound like you’ve led a life devoid of things to talk about.”

  “That’s just it—Can’t talk about them. But nothing to keep me from talking about haggis.”

  “If you survive it.”

  “Well, there’s that, isn’t there.”

  It had taken them a while to find their way back in the fog. When they spotted a ferry heading west, they figured the odds favored Kirkwall as its destination and they were right.

  For most of the trip she’d been watching her Droid like one of those smartphone-obsessed dweebs who annoyed her so much back in the real world. As soon as she had service she tried to call, but still couldn’t get through. So she texted that she’d be home tomorrow, and would follow up with her exact time of arrival after she was booked. She heard back almost immediately from Steven that Marissa couldn’t wait to see her.

  As soon as they’d settled up the fees on the cabin cruiser, Laura had wanted to head straight for the airport and back to Heathrow. But Clotilde was still weak from her dose of poison and needed to rest. She didn’t feel right leaving her—she’d brought trouble to the old woman’s door and they owed her big-time for getting them out of it.

  Oh, well, she’d still be home tomorrow, just later than she’d hoped.

  She and Rick already had rooms at the Ayre so they booked Clotilde one too. While she hit the sheets for a rest, Rick and Laura hit the pub for a meal. She hadn’t eaten since last night. Food had been the last thing on her mind all day, but now that they’d completed their quest, she realized she was famished.

  “You know,” she said, closing the menu, “I’m hungry enough to eat haggis myself.”

  “Dare ya.”

  “You’re on. You eat it, I’ll eat it.”

  Rick tried to order them each a glass of Champagne but they sold it only by the bottle. So he ordered a bottle. Neither of them knew much about Champagne and the pub didn’t have any selection to speak of, but they’d both heard of Moët so they settled on that.

  “To bringing home the panacea,” he said, lifting his flute and extending it toward her.

  She didn’t know if she could drink to that. And besides …

  “I thought you were on board with keeping its existence under wraps … refusing to play their game.”

  “I am. But it’s only one dose, so it remains out of sight.”

  “How about ‘to bringing home what we came for’?”

  He smiled. “Doubting Thomasina. But fair enough.”

  They clinked glasses.

  “Still refusing the panacea Kool-Aid, huh?” he said after he’d downed half his glass in one gulp.

  “I’ve seen some cures—or what look like cures—that I can’t explain, but accepting the existence of a panacea…” She shook her head. “I still can’t go there.”

  “Then what are you bringing Stahlman?”

  “Exactly what he sent me for.”

  They finished the Champagne—Rick downing two glasses for every one of hers—before the haggis arrived, so Rick ordered a Burgundy to go with dinner. He called it a French Pinot Noir and said Pinot Noir went with everything, even haggis.

  Turned out he was right. The haggis itself looked awful but she found it edible if she kept sipping Burgundy with it and didn’t think about the ingredients.

  They ate and talked about where they would go and what they would do once they got back home. Rick had a feeling Stahlman would keep him on or at least on retainer, while Laura figured she’d stay with the ME’s office and watch over her suddenly wealthy daughter.

  Rick finished his meal first—naturally—and helped clean her plate when she’d reached the bursting point.

  “We’ve got nearly half a bottle left,” he said. “We can polish it off upstairs.”

  Seriously? What was this?

  She remembered the kiss on her forehead a few hours ago. Just a quick peck, really, but it presumed a familiarity that she didn’t share.

  Or did she?

  She’d grown comfortable with Rick. And why not? They’d been through a lot. Despite all his secrets, all the things in his past he couldn’t or wouldn’t speak of, she knew he had her back. How many other men could she say that about? She couldn’t name one. Oh, Deputy Lawson might go to bat for her, but only as far as the law allowed. Rick, on the other hand, seemed a law unto himself.

  He seemed to sense her hesitation. “I’m not gonna try to jump your bones. You should know that by now.”

  Would that be so bad? said a voice somewhere inside.

  No, no, no. Don’t go there.

  “I guess I do. My room. Let’s go.”

  7

  “Well,” he said, raising a couple of fingers of Burgundy in one of the room’s squat tumblers, “if you won’t toast to the panacea, will you toast to ‘intellects vast, cool and unsympathetic’?”

  She raised the glass he’d poured for her. “Why not your Dark Man? At least you saw him.”

  Any warmth that had grown in his eyes over dinner vanished as if it had never been.

  “Don’t joke about that. Don’t ever joke about that.”

  His cold vehemence struck her like a blow.

  “I’m sorry. I was just—”

  He started to rise. “I’d better go.”

  “No. Please.” She pushed him back, not believing she did that. “I was just trying to get you talking about yourself.”

  “The me that existed before I became Rick Hayden is gone. Nothing to discuss.”

  “Then what about the cult?”

  “No! They were … I want to say animals but that’s not fair to animals. Human monsters is more like it. They’re best forgotten.” He started to rise again.

  “Oh,” she said, making one last desperate try. “That’s too bad. Because I think I can explain that total blackness you saw.”

  “Not that dark matter idea.”

  “No. It has to do with how we see.”

  He sat back down. “I’m listening.”

  She gathered her thoughts. She was going back to medical school classes for this. She hoped she remembered right.

  “Light is part of the electromagnetic spectrum. We perceive less than one percent of the wavelengths—the so-called ‘colors.’ The color we see is the wavelength the object reflects. A lemon is yellow because its skin reflects the yellow wavelength. Black is black because it reflects none of the visible spectrum. What you’re seeing then is a lack of color.”

  “But this was beyond black.”

  “Okay. So imagine a surface that absorbs not only all the visible but all the invisible as well: ultraviolet and infrared and X-rays and gam
ma rays. It reflects absolutely nothing. What would that look like?”

  Rick’s eyes had lost focus, as if he were looking into the past.

  “Like a hole in reality.”

  Laura’s chest tightened. Yes … she hadn’t thought of it that way, but she imagined that would be exactly what it looked like.

  “Do you think what you saw might have been one of the vast, cool and unsympathetic intellects?”

  He shook his head. “Doubt it. Maybe just a manifestation, maybe just its pinky fingernail, maybe a trick of the light.”

  She didn’t want to mention the Dark Man again so she said, “Was that what this cult thought it was after? A hole in reality?”

  “They found an old book from the early nineteenth century by some crazy German. It’s a description of the practices of obscure religions all around the world—all the continents and lots of isolated islands. They let me take a look at a copy they’d Xeroxed off. I got through a couple of pages and”—he shuddered—“that was it. I couldn’t go any further.”

  “Like what?”

  He waved a hand. “You don’t want to know. Like you said the other day, there’s some things you can’t unsee. Well, there are some things you can’t unread.”

  “But you stuck with them?”

  “Last thing I wanted, but I felt I had to. They had explosives and combustibles. They hated everything, Laura. They had this crazy idea that if they could raise this Dark Man or bring him across, he could be their WMD. I was cool with that sort of wild-goose chase. As long as they were chasing phantoms, they weren’t making bombs.”

  “So this evil book was actually serving a good purpose.”

  “Wait,” he said. “Around this time the Company decided to pull me out. Since the group had dropped Wahhabism, Langley didn’t think they were a threat to the U.S., but lemme tell you, they were a threat to everybody. I flew home to make my case for continued surveillance but I might as well have been talking to myself. They pulled me.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “I flew back on my own … and I saw what they’d been up to while I was away.”

  “What?”

  “Children … they’d found something in that damn book and they were doing things to little kids.”

  Did she want to hear this? She didn’t think so. But she had to ask.