The King

by Steven James

  We ended the call, and I slowly lowered the phone.

  While Officer Young’s information reassured me, I seemed to feel worse than I did before I’d spoken with him.

  I was sorting through my feelings about the whole thing when an e-mail came in, forwarded to me from Margaret.

  The results of the chemical analysis of the pills.

  Both FDA and PTPharmaceuticals confirmed it—the pills we’d found in Montana were counterfeit versions of Calydrole.

  And they were remarkably good ones—the packaging, the imprinting on the pills, the shape, color, size, everything looked legitimate, and even a cursory chemical analysis established that the active ingredient of Calydrole was present, not in the right dose, but with enough of it present to avoid initial detection that the pills were counterfeits.

  But there was something else there too: a neurostimulator most commonly known as Proxictal.

  Evidently, it wasn’t possible to tell from the analysis they’d done so far, but taken in conjunction with the active ingredient in Calydrole, the Proxictal could very likely contribute to the disorganized cognition and downward-spiraling thought process that led some people to consider taking their own lives.

  The FDA proposed that if this pill were taken for seven to ten days the effect could be “exaggerated.”

  An excipient is the inactive substance in medication that helps deliver the active ingredient, and not only was the active ingredient found in the wrong amount, but the excipient was one that helped deliver the Proxictal rather than Calydrole.

  The combination of chemicals that constituted this drug made it appear that it had been designed for one purpose: to make depressed people seriously consider suicide.

  However, despite all of that, remarkably, PTPharmaceuticals was holding out on recalling Calydrole or warning consumers about the tainted versions of the drug that were evidently already on the market.

  They said that it was because there was no evidence yet that this wasn’t just an isolated case, since only one pack had been found to contain the counterfeit drug. But the real reason wasn’t all that hard to deduce. Making an announcement like that, recalling their number one pharmaceutical product, would be devastating to their stock prices. Market shares would drop. They could lose millions on Monday alone when the markets opened again.

  According to the e-mail, however, Margaret had convinced the FDA to put out a public health warning, and they were going to release the details at a joint five-o’clock press conference.

  I’d just gone back to my notes when I got a call from Agent Kantsos.

  Things were finally starting to come together.

  He found out that two local businessmen in Kadapa had been admitted to the hospital last week with “grievous injuries including amputations of several of their extremities.” After quoting the person he’d spoken with, Kantsos added, “One of the men was missing both ears.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No. They’re not giving anything up and there’s no indication yet who did this to them. According to the local authorities the men were terrified of what would happen to them if they did.”

  I thought of the amorphous connection to Valkyrie and what they’d already been through. “I can understand why.”

  Through a couple of factory workers in the area, the police had, however, located a business site in Kadapa where the two men worked.

  “The place was cleared out when they inspected it,” Kantsos told me, “but there was evidence that pharmaceuticals may have been manufactured there until very recently. That’s how they put it, ‘may have been.’ But they’re just hedging their bets. It looks like we found our facility.”

  I wondered how much this information had cost Kantsos—well, the taxpayers, that is.

  He explained that ICE wanted to be involved, and he was trying to navigate through the convoluted maze of overlapping jurisdictions.

  “Talk to FBI Director Wellington,” I told him. “I have a feeling she’ll do everything she can to help move things along.”

  “Because of Corey.”

  “Yes.”

  I remembered the red-haired woman in the photo of Tyree. “Any chance those workers in Kadapa can remember if a couple had visited the plant? I’m guessing that a red-haired Caucasian woman would be memorable.”

  “I’ll see what I can find out.”

  I gave him Margaret’s cell number and a few moments after I ended the call, a car cruised up the driveway and Tony shouted to his mother that Eric and his mom were here.

  After Brin had given him a few motherly instructions about how late he was allowed to stay up and how he needed to listen to Eric’s mom just like he would listen to her, he grabbed his sleeping bag and duffel bag and was out the door.

  He left the video game paused mid-alien-explosion from a rather nice shot across an expansive crater.

  • • •

  Tessa and Lien-hua were a little later getting back from the dress shop than we’d expected and they entered the basement through the lower-level entryway before I could greet them or take a look at their purchase.

  Ralph arrived home, and with Tony gone and Lien-hua and Brineesha downstairs helping Tessa get ready for prom, he and I had the living room to ourselves.

  He was eyeing the television screen and looked like he was ready to pick up the game where his son had left off.

  “That was a good shot,” he muttered.

  “How’s that scratch on your arm?” I asked, pointing to the bandages covering the pit bull bite.

  “It’s fine. I can hardly feel it.”

  “You’re as bad a liar as I am.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment. I think.”

  He bypassed the video game, and at five we watched the press conference with Margaret and the FDA commissioner.

  They announced that the two agencies, by working in close conjunction with each other, had identified a potential national health threat and were calling for the recall of Calydrole, after “tainted samples of the drug were found in the national pharmaceutical supply chain.”

  Ralph shook his head. “PTPharmaceuticals isn’t going to be too happy about that.”

  “Neither is someone else.”

  “Whoever designed this drug.”

  “And smuggled it in from India. That’s right.”

  When the press conference was over, Ralph shifted topics. “So that boy is picking Tessa up at six?”

  “Six thirty.”

  “That gives us just about an hour. Let’s see if we can dig up anything else on whether or not Valkyrie is behind this by the time that kid arrives.”

  I took a moment to evaluate things. “Earlier, I was looking into flight manifests, but let’s try a different angle and check to see if the airports in Chennai and Hyderabad have any security cameras that might have recorded Tyree checking in or boarding a flight. And also, look more closely at his military record, see if we can find anything that might connect him to Valkyrie.”

  “Good call. I’ll take his military background, you look into the surveillance footage.”

  We pulled out our computers, but as we got to work I couldn’t help but think of Aiden and how Officer Young had nothing but good things to say about him. Calling in for the information still didn’t sit right with me. I’d done the very thing Tessa asked me not to do, even though I’d done it because I loved her.

  I felt trapped. Had I not made the call to Young, and Aiden had turned out to be a bad kid, I never would have forgiven myself, but now that I’d checked up on him, I felt guilty about it. A catch-22.

  I wondered once again if I should say anything to my daughter about it.

  And I decided I would not.

  ++

  As Vanessa brushed her hand across the table, she let the paper clip she’d brought with her sli
de out from under her fingers. It passed across the table and Richard covered it with his own hand.

  “The rest is up to you,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “We’re on the level below the FBI Headquarters’ underground parking garage. It’s not going to be easy getting out of here.”

  “What can you tell me about the number of agents out there?”

  She informed him where agents were stationed, which hallways would take him to the parking garage, and the best route to the elevator.

  “That’s pretty specific. Are you sure?”

  “Yes. I’m a rather observant woman.”

  “I’m glad to hear that. And you said earlier that your employer would like to meet me?”

  “He would.”

  “How about later tonight? At ten?”

  “Will that be enough time?”

  “If what you just told me is accurate, I believe it will.”

  “It was accurate.”

  “Then tell him I’ll see him at ten.”

  She gave Richard an address and a phone number to call to confirm things if he really was able to get out, then she left him alone with his paper clip.

  66

  Less than fifteen minutes ago on the television in his hotel suite, Valkyrie had watched the press conference finish up.

  Since then he’d been considering his options.

  Seventy thousand counterfeit Calydrole pills were about to arrive at the distribution warehouse across town. If the drug was recalled, those pills wouldn’t be shipped out from there at all.

  The FBI and FDA must have gotten their hands on some of the initial samples, the ones Keith and Vanessa had been using on the test subjects.

  How, Valkyrie wasn’t sure. But that wasn’t what mattered most right now.

  Yes, PTPharmaceuticals’ stock prices would still drop when the markets opened on Monday, but he wasn’t sure if he would be able to sell his options for anywhere near the profit he’d been expecting.

  Vanessa and Keith had just become loose ends.

  Valkyrie called her and told her that he wanted to chat with the two of them. He caught her right after she’d left her consultation with Basque.

  “How did that go?”

  “It went well. He’s planning on meeting you tonight at ten. I told him where you’d be.”

  “Tonight? He’s that confident?”

  “It appears that he is.”

  Valkyrie explained that he wanted to see her and Keith at the distribution warehouse at eight thirty.

  He would take care of them right after connecting with the Chechens at seven thirty on the yacht.

  A busy night.

  “Is there a problem?” Vanessa asked him.

  “There’s a state of affairs I would like to discuss with you.” He decided that if she hadn’t already heard about what was going on with the drug recall, the odds were pretty good she would hear about it by the time of their meeting, so he summarized the press conference to her.

  “I’m not sure how that could have happened,” she muttered. “How they could have gotten samples, found out about them.”

  “We’ll discuss it at eight thirty. Park behind the warehouse, by the freight loading docks.”

  “Alright. We’ll be there.”

  ++

  When Vanessa informed Keith that Valkyrie was here in the city, and that he wanted to see them tonight, he knew something was wrong, very wrong.

  “A state of affairs,” Vanessa told him, that’s how Valkyrie had put it. She didn’t elaborate, but Keith got the sense that she knew more than she was telling him.

  His heart squirmed into a tight knot.

  Meeting with Valkyrie in person was rare, and there were no guarantees that you wouldn’t leave the room in plastic baggies.

  “And he didn’t specifically say why he wanted to meet?”

  “He did not.”

  Keith had worked with her long enough to know when she was not being completely forthcoming with him. And if she was lying to him right now, that meant the “state of affairs” was probably a worst-case scenario.

  If they were supposed to meet Valkyrie at eight thirty, that gave him just over two and a half hours.

  There were some things Keith definitely needed to think through.

  He could try to run, but Valkyrie would find him.

  He could meet with Valkyrie, but if the man was disappointed in Keith and Vanessa, that was not going to turn out well at all.

  However.

  There was one other option, a way that he might never have to fear—or work for—Valkyrie ever again.

  According to what Vanessa had just told him, he knew where their employer was going to be and when he was going to be there.

  It was a risk, yes, of course, but what were the options?

  Run and die. Meet with Valkyrie and discuss a “state of affairs” and very likely end up dead.

  Or . . .

  He evaluated everything. The FBI would almost certainly have an anonymous hotline, a way of keeping the identity of the caller secret, but what if they didn’t? What if there was a way for them to find out who it really was?

  Still, of all the options, that was probably his best bet. Off the top of his head Keith didn’t know how much of a reward they would be offering, but it had to be in the millions.

  He might make out with the money and with his freedom, but even if he didn’t, he would fare much better falling into the FBI’s hands than into Valkyrie’s.

  Keith decided what he was going to do.

  But he would need to be alone—somewhere away from Vanessa—to make the call.

  67

  6:01 p.m.

  Brineesha finished winding the red ribbon into Tessa’s hair and carefully tied it off.

  They were in the basement bedroom; Tessa stood in front of the dresser mirror with Brineesha beside her. Lien-hua rested on the bed, leaning against a pile of pillows, her crutches angled against the wall. Two elegant flower arrangements sat on a bedside end table.

  Since coming back from the dress shop Tessa had been getting more and more anxious that Aiden wouldn’t think she was pretty at all, no matter what Brineesha did with her hair.

  She was fretting about that when Brin mentioned how impressed she was with Lien-hua’s recovery so far.

  “I guess God’s not done with me yet,” Lien-hua said softly.

  Brineesha made eye contact with Tessa and winked.

  “What is it?” Lien-hua eyed them curiously.

  Brineesha answered, “On the night you were attacked, when we were all at the hospital, Tessa mentioned to me that she was praying for you.”

  “You were praying for me?”

  “Yeah.” Tessa couldn’t help but think of her mom, when she was dying, how prayer hadn’t helped at all that time around.

  “That means a lot.”

  Unsure how to respond, she simply said, “Okay.”

  “Well”—Brineesha fussed with Tessa’s hair—“you told me that you didn’t know if God was listening to your prayers. Remember?”

  Yes, and you told me how Tony was premature and how you’d prayed for him and nothing happened, Tessa thought, but didn’t say it; she didn’t really want to be talking about any of this at all, it only made her think of losing her mom, and that wasn’t what she needed right now. “I remember,” she told Brineesha. “What do you think? Is my hair gonna be okay?”

  But even though Tessa was trying not to think about the inscrutable nature of prayers—answered or unanswered—she couldn’t help but recall her speech ideas, the things she’d been considering saying: If God wasn’t there, if there was just a vast, sweeping, empty universe, then prayer wouldn’t mean anything at all.

  Meaningless, meaningless, all is meaningless.


  But if God is there and he really does care about his hurting, questioning race of dreamers and fools, then praying would matter—even if it didn’t happen on their time frame or in the ways they expected or wanted.

  After all, if we could understand God, then his wisdom would have to be equal to or smaller than ours, and that was logically impossible if he’s all-knowing and we aren’t. The very definition of God required that people would be unable to understand his ways.

  Your mom never gave up on believing, even when it didn’t seem to be helping her at all.

  “I guess prayer is sort of a rune,” Tessa said.

  Brineesha finished up with the hairbrush and set it down. “A rune?”

  “A mystery.”

  “I think maybe that’s not so bad,” Lien-hua reflected.

  “No. Maybe it’s not.”

  Brin patted Tessa’s shoulder. “You look fantastic, dear.”

  Tessa stared at herself in the mirror and said nothing, because deep down she was trying to convince herself that what she’d just heard was right.

  Then Brineesha gave her a small spray bottle of perfume to take with her and Tessa slipped it into the red clutch purse she was going to use for the night.

  ++

  We were discovering that the airports in India didn’t have the level of video surveillance we needed.

  Working with Angela and Lacey, I reviewed the footage, while Ralph compared Tyree’s military assignments with the known terrorist activity that Alexei Chekov, now known as Valkyrie, had been involved with at the time of Tyree’s service, seeing if there was any overlap.

  But so far none of us had made any progress.

  While Ralph and I were contemplating what to look into next, Kantsos called me back and told me one of the factory workers in Kadapa remembered seeing a “trim and fit” young man and a red-haired woman at the facility.

  I contacted the other two agents whom Margaret had assigned to this case and told them what Kantsos had learned. “We need to identify that woman in the photo with Tyree. Cybercrime came up empty on a facial match, so let’s try a different tack. Contact Corey Wellington’s and Natalie Germaine’s neighbors. See if any of them might have seen this red-haired woman or Tyree in the vicinity in the days leading up to the suicides.”