When it ended, there was raucous cheering, and out of the darkness a white beam cut a small round spot. Over the loudspeaker a deep male radio announcer’s voice said, “Ladies and gentlemen, we have with us this evening a special surprise guest.” The spotlight moved up the dark curtains and stopped, and then the white circle of light gradually grew bigger and the curtains pulled back to reveal the old man himself, Conrad Kimball, standing there in his customary navy suit over black collared shirt. It was a look I’d seen in all of his publicity photos.
“Doctor Conrad Kimball!”
The extraordinary thing was how Kimball looked twenty or thirty years younger. The white hair cut short, the pale gray eyes, the suntan, or maybe it was makeup: he looked vigorous and healthy, a man in his prime, a man of power and prowess.
He smiled broadly. “My friends!” he said.
The crowd got to its feet, applauding their chairman, cheering the unexpected guest, the boss.
The spotlight drew in closer and then softened. “My fellow warriors!” He extended his arms like a benediction. “With all the lies out there about Oxydone, all the propaganda, all the crazy protests and the vilification, all the fake news—I think it’s worth stepping back for a moment and remembering what we are doing. What our mission is. And why I built this company.”
He shifted his gaze from straight ahead to his left, looking directly at the sales reps seated right in front of him. “Hundreds of millions of people around the globe live with pain every single day. Right now. Pain that’s untreated. Pain that’s so bad that millions of them can’t go to work. Or go to school.”
Looking straight ahead now, he said, “I know a man named Jake. Jake has cancer, and he was living in unimaginable agony. Burning, stabbing torment. His life wasn’t livable. His marriage had fallen apart, he’d lost his friendships. He told me that it was like being tortured every day, with no means of escape. Tortured! He was on suicide hotlines several times. Because chronic pain drives people to suicide. He saw five practitioners before he finally got help. And then a wise doctor prescribed Oxydone.” He paused. “It was a godsend. For Jake, Oxydone was a miracle. He was given his life back.” He raised his arms in the benediction pose again.
“Now, has Oxydone been abused in the substance-use community? Undoubtedly. Just like they abused opium a hundred years ago and still do. Just as some people are allergic to penicillin, some have these susceptibilities to opioids. But penicillin has spared multitudes. And so has Oxydone.”
He turned to face another segment of the audience. “But that must never stop us from bringing the miracle of pain relief to the lives of millions of sufferers. People like Jake. People with arthritis or migraines, with neuropathic pain or fibromyalgia or back pain or any other chronic discomfort.” He bowed his head, and after a beat, he looked up. “What I want you all to remember is that we’re not the villains here. We’re the ones who treat the pain. We’re the ones who do so much to alleviate suffering around the world.
“This medicine that’s derived from poppies, it’s a gift from nature. A gift that we bestow upon the hundreds of millions of afflicted people who need it so desperately. Ultimately, that is what we are giving the world. A gift.”
The spotlight faded, and the house lights came up, and everyone had gotten to their feet to cheer the old man.
“My friends,” he said over their cheers, “let’s go out there and save lives.”
I applauded, along with everyone else, and meanwhile I was thinking. The fact that Conrad Kimball was here had suddenly changed everything.
68
By the time the session had broken for dinner, I had located Dr. Zubiri. He was a tall, spindly man of around sixty, with silver hair and wire-framed glasses with thick lenses. He was wearing an aquamarine polo shirt and neatly pressed chinos, and he was seated up front, in what I realized was the VIP section.
“Excuse me, Dr. Zubiri?” I said.
“Yes?”
“A moment?”
Wary. “What’s this about?”
I lowered my voice. “It’s about the lovely country of Estonia and its beautiful capital, Tallinn.”
He blinked a few times. “Do I know you?”
“No, but you might want to. Why don’t we talk in private?” I pointed to an unoccupied spot off the path by the amphitheater wall.
“Who are you?”
“Just a guy who’s doing some investigation into Oxydone.”
“Get the hell out of here. I don’t have to talk to you!”
“You’re right, you don’t have to talk to me,” I said. “You don’t have to. You want to. You want to talk to me the way a drowning man wants a life preserver. Look, you want me to walk away from you right now, I’m gone. And then you’re going to have fifteen to twenty years in federal to think about whether you made the right call. Because you’re the one person the family is going to hang out to dry.”
“The—family?”
“The Kimballs. Let me assure you of one thing: the family will look after its own. And that means that you, my friend, are going down.”
“If you’re some kind of activist shareholder or something, you can forget it. I am absolutely loyal to this company.”
“Oh, I respect your loyalty. And they’re banking on it. You are taking the fall for the Tallinn study.”
Zubiri’s expression was frozen, but I could see the facial muscles twitching, a blood vessel pulsing. He said nothing.
I went on. “Is it too late for you? I’m not sure. There might be a play.”
“What exactly do you want from me?” he said feebly.
69
I want the Tallinn study,” I said.
“I don’t— That was on a portal that’s been shut down. I never kept a copy. I wasn’t allowed to.”
I was afraid he’d say that. Another strikeout.
But I wasn’t done with him. “One more thing,” I said.
* * *
• • •
A quick stroll through the hotel confirmed that Conrad Kimball was staying, of course, in the presidential suite, on the third floor. Room 322. Which was on the other side of the building from the suite Sukie and I were in. I walked along the third-floor corridors, noted the room numbers on either side of the presidential suite, outside of which a security guard was sitting, even when the old man wasn’t there. In short order I had a fairly good mental map of the main resort building.
I glanced at my watch. I had to keep track of time, because I didn’t have much of it. I had until Conrad Kimball finished his dinner. Which could be forty-five minutes, or it could be longer. Or it could be less.
Back in Sukie’s suite, I called room service.
“Yes Mr.—Kimball?”
“I’m doing a surprise birthday celebration for Megan Kimball. I’m going to want a bottle of Dom Pérignon, if you have it, delivered to her room—actually, I forgot her room number, I believe it was room three oh—”
“Ms. Megan is in room two-twenty,” the woman said.
“Two-twenty, right. One bottle of Dom Pérignon to— No, actually, you know what, deliver it to my room and we’ll bring it to her directly. Yeah, let’s do that. Thank you.”
Room 220 was, unfortunately, on the floor below the presidential suite. But I could work with that. It was directly below, which was useful. Now all I needed was a key to 220. I changed into a pair of jeans and sneakers, a small backpack slung over my shoulder, and went down to the front desk, where I noticed with relief that the shift had changed. The woman with the dreadlocks and the orange-sherbet blouse from this afternoon was gone. In her place was another woman, chubby with a spray of freckles across her dark face.
“Excuse me,” I said. “I’m such an idiot, but I left my key in my room. It’s under my wife’s name, Megan Kimball in Room 220?”
“Yes, sir,” she said. “Could I
bother you for a driver’s license?”
I patted the side pockets of my jeans. Shook my head.
She smiled. “No worries.”
She tapped at her keyboard and put a plastic blank into the machine, then handed it to me.
“Thank you,” I said.
I knew that Megan Kimball was at dinner in the restaurant, sitting at her father’s table. That meant there was no one in her room. I took the elevator to the second floor and found 220. Stood for a moment outside the door, listening. Then I tapped my key card against the sensor. The green light clicked on, and I pushed open the door.
Room 220 was a suite, the same size as Sukie’s. I knew its layout already. I noted the sliding glass doors to the balcony off the living room. The floor-length drapes were half drawn. A crescent moon suspended in the dark sky shone watery light into the room.
And then I heard an electronic beep and the room door coming open.
I slipped behind the drapes and tucked my body in against the glass of the window. Was it housekeeping, with the evening turndown service? At night they would probably draw the drapes all the way. I stood there breathing silently and then heard a woman’s voice saying, “Lactaid, Lactaid, Lactaid.”
It was Megan. She’d forgotten something.
I waited. If she decided to pull open the drapes, or close them, I’d be caught. It would not be easy for me to explain what I was doing in her room. Hiding behind the drapery.
About another minute went by, and then I heard the door shut again. She had probably just left, though I couldn’t be sure. I waited for another full minute and then emerged from behind the drapes.
She wasn’t there.
I’d left the black backpack on the floor a few feet away. Had she come into the living room she would surely have noticed it.
I grabbed the backpack, slung it over my right shoulder, and returned to the balcony. Slid open the glass doors. The air outside was noticeably warmer than the air-cooled inside. The water was a thousand feet away, down a gentle sandy slope, but at night it seemed closer. A soft breeze was blowing. Then I looked up and saw the balcony of the room directly above: the presidential suite.
Less than ten feet above my head, but more than I could reach, even if I jumped. From the backpack I took out a nylon rappelling rope and all the rest of the equipment: some carabiners, a waist harness, and a titanium overhead anchor, proof tested to twenty-two hundred pounds. I’d set it all up in advance in Sukie’s suite. I tossed the anchor up, and on the second try it hooked over the steel railing on the balcony above with a metallic clang.
I waited a moment, just to make sure that sound hadn’t been heard within the presidential suite—if anyone was in there, which I doubted. Conrad, I knew, was downstairs in the restaurant.
Sliding the ascender up the rope, I stood up and then moved the second ascender. With two healthy pulls, I was hanging on the rope, dangling up in the air, nearly level with the balcony railing. Now I was looking directly into the presidential suite, into a room with a large table. I grabbed the railing and swung my legs over, landing on the balcony.
As far as I could tell, I hadn’t been seen by anyone on the ground. I decided to leave the rope in place. It was risky, but it was my only way out of there. I couldn’t leave the presidential suite through its front door, outside of which sat the security guard.
There was a good chance, I knew, that the sliding doors here might be locked. That would have been unfortunate.
I would have had to climb down and abandon the plan.
But they weren’t; they slid smoothly open, and I was inside.
70
The room was dark and quiet.
I stood listening for a moment. I heard no one in the suite, just the breeze from outside, some distant music from down the beach. The slight hum of the honor-bar refrigerator. I pulled the glass doors closed, and it got even quieter. Most of this room was taken up by a coffin-shaped conference table. Would Conrad sit in here? Or elsewhere in the suite? I had to assume this room was one possibility. I had enough devices.
Walking around the room, I selected the device I wanted to plant on the ceiling above the conference table. It looked like a smoke detector, but it contained a GSM bug. So as soon as it detected sound, it recorded and stored it, compressed it, and then sent it out in a burst every thirty minutes. I climbed onto the conference table, squeezed a little Superglue, and the thing stuck firmly to the ceiling, right above the head of the table. Underneath the table I plugged in a power strip that also contained a GSM bug. The strip looked like it belonged there.
I paused, listened again. Conrad was downstairs at dinner. Was there anyone here? Did he travel alone, or had Natalya accompanied him? What if she was asleep in the master bedroom? Was there security inside the suite as well as out?
I had no idea what to expect: I saw only the deep darkness of a hotel suite. I switched on my little Maglite and ventured farther down the corridor and came upon a living room with a large TV. This looked like a comfortable place to have a conversation. Another spot where Conrad might confer, either on the phone or in person. Here I planted two devices, the fake smoke detector on the ceiling and an electrical plug converter, a white cube, the kind you see in Europe. This too had a SIM card inside, was powered by the electrical current it was connected to, and worked the same way as the fake smoke detector: triggered by ambient sound, it would start recording and would send compressed sound files every half hour. I plugged that in between the lamp plug and the wall outlet. It was unobtrusive and looked like it belonged there, even though the lamp plug, of course, didn’t actually need a converter.
When I was finished, I switched off my flashlight, stopped, and listened. I heard a cart pass by in the outside hallway, and I froze.
I waited, listening.
Then a doorbell chimed, a knock at the door and a voice: “Housekeeping!”
She was here for turndown service, which meant turning down the bed linen and preparing the bed, maybe leaving a chocolate on the pillow. I almost called out, “Not now, please,” until I realized that the security guard outside the room would take notice that someone was inside a suite that was supposed to be unoccupied. And that would not be good.
But the door she was knocking on was thirty feet from where I was standing, and she was about to open it.
Noiselessly, I raced across the carpet out of the room, down the hall, toward the conference room that opened onto the balcony. I pulled closed the drapes, then slid open the glass doors behind them and slipped out to the balcony, closing the door behind me.
I looked out, looked down and to either side. I didn’t see anyone out there. Not yet. Nobody had seen me climbing up the rope from the second floor. Probably no one would see me climb down the same rope. Kimball Pharma had taken over the hotel, and nearly everyone associated with the company was downstairs at dinner.
The problem was that I couldn’t leave the ropes and titanium anchor and carabiners in place once I returned to Megan’s balcony. If I did, they’d be spotted by hotel security and/or management at some point in the night. In the morning light, for sure. That would raise questions about the security in the presidential suite. It would send up an alarm. And rappelling down, using the rope, necessarily meant leaving the rig in place. So I had to take the rope with me, in the backpack, and climb down some other way.
The ground floor of the hotel had high ceilings, so I estimated the height at three stories to be around forty-five feet. Directly below was hard stone. Would I survive if I jumped? Probably, if I rolled right. But I’d probably also break some bones. Which I preferred not to do.
I unfastened the anchor from the railing and put it with the rope and all the other gear into my backpack. Then, grasping the steel pipe, I swung my legs up and over. Climbing down the railing, my feet dangling, I swung my feet around and then touched down on the steel rail of the floor belo
w. Megan’s balcony. I gripped the bottom rung of the third-floor railing as I swung my feet again, torqueing in toward the glass doors, and then I let go, landed on the second-floor balcony.
The drapes were drawn—I’d drawn them myself—and I could see that the lights in the room were on.
I’d left them off.
Someone was in Megan’s suite. Turndown service? Or was it Megan herself?
For at least the time being, I was trapped outside. I went over to the sliding doors and gently, slowly, tried to pull them open.
They were locked. I definitely hadn’t done that. Either the housekeeper had done it or Megan had returned early from dinner again because the Lactaid hadn’t done the trick, and for some reason she had locked the balcony doors. And now I was definitely stuck here.
I’d known this was a possibility, so I’d thought it through, the worst-case scenario.
I looked out the balcony, eyeballed the drop at fifteen to twenty feet. Onto hard stone. Maybe fifteen feet from the bottom of the second-floor balcony. Definitely doable. To parkour champions, this was nothing.
I didn’t have time to overthink it. I swung my legs outside the railing, grabbed the top rung, then dropped rung by rung until my feet were dangling in the air—and then I let go. Spun and crouched and dropped, landing, hard.
I sprang to my feet, wincing a bit. I did a survey: legs okay, knees relatively okay.
A minute later, I pulled out a mobile phone and called Dr. Zubiri.
“Ready,” I said.
71
I was fairly certain no one had seen me climb or descend the hotel’s exterior. Hotel security was what I worried most about, and I hadn’t seen any of them. But as I was stuffing the ropes and carabiners and such back into my backpack, a florid-faced, thick-set guy strolled past. He didn’t seem to notice me, but something about him got my attention. He looked like a retired soldier.
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