For the first time since she’d entered his domain, she saw his eyes give a spark of amusement to match the ever-ready pleasantry of his mouth, and she at last started to feel a bit more at ease. “Flaky?” she said, playfully cocking an entire side of her brow at him.
“Not that I think you are, of course,” he quickly countered, the merriment still in his face. “It’s the impression the media gave.” Then his visage darkened. “Of course, Richard Steele’s fiasco didn’t help you any. If he hadn’t gotten himself in such a scandal, the press probably would have handled your story with more respect. I apologize for foisting him on you. Obviously the man’s judgment is still in the toilet.”
The sudden criticism caught her off guard. “What do you mean?” she said, finding herself rising to Steele’s defense. “His judgment at the conference seemed fine.” Surprised at how protective of him she felt she added, “Hell, if one tenth of your profession caught on to the issues as fast as he did, we might finally have some medical organizations speaking out officially in support of our concerns, instead of the shameful silence that’s been the norm so far. And what that poor woman did, along with his being with her, had nothing to do with poor judgment—” She abruptly checked herself, seeing a look of astonishment on Stanton’s face at her outburst. “Sorry, it’s just that he did a fine job with us, and the way they attacked him in the media seemed so unfair. I figure the last thing the poor guy needs is someone else bad-mouthing him.” She paused. “What’s his story, anyway, I mean besides his heart attack?” She tried to sound offhand.
“His wife died nearly two years ago, and he doesn’t seem able to get over her death.”
“Oh!” she exclaimed, somehow not having expected that answer. Divorce, maybe; that he’d become a workaholic and driven his family away, yes; but not that the woman in his life was dead. He seemed so close to her own age that the possibility he’d already suffered that kind of loss hadn’t crossed her mind.
“I thought the conference and the issues would be the perfect opportunity for him to make himself useful again,” Stanton continued. “Have you talked with him since you got back?” His voice sounded pained.
“No. He left a message on my machine, apologizing for causing so much embarrassment for everyone, but when I tried to reach him—a dozen times at least in the last week—to tell him he’s got nothing to apologize for, he didn’t take my calls. How is he?”
“Who knows? The man won’t speak with me, either.” He sighed, and studied her as if making a calculation in his head. “Are you interested in him, by any chance?”
“No!” she countered far too quickly, feeling her face redden. And what business is it of yours if I am, she very nearly added, but held her fire. She’d begun to sense more to Stanton than his being worried over a troublesome staff member. “Dr. Steele seemed a nice man, but sad,” she continued, retreating into formality. “I felt sorry for him is all, and still do, even more so, now that you’ve explained what he’s been struggling through. But why do you ask? Is he your friend?”
“He was. I don’t know what we are now. To make matters worse, Aimes also seems determined to make an even bigger example of him.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s demanded Richard be fired outright, and he’s not offering him a way out the way he did to you.”
“What? I can see Aimes coming after me, but why take such a hard line with Steele?”
“Because he can get away with it, for starters. The board is already furious at Richard for all the sordid headlines he generated. In practically every article or news item the reporters stressed his affiliation with the university and New York City Hospital, and that kind of negative publicity boils down to fewer endowments. For that reason alone, they’re more than ready to carry out Aimes’s demand.”
“The creeps!”
“But Aimes’s real motive, I suspect, is to provide a warning shot to any other high-profile medical authority who may be thinking of adding his or her voice to a call for controls on genetically modified foods. No offense, but while everyone has gotten used to environmentalists and geneticists raising a ruckus from all the fuss they’ve made in Europe, respected American physicians starting to sound the alarm—now that would be a whole new order of PR problem for Aimes’s clients. People listen to doctors, especially homegrown ones. That’s why Aimes wants him dismissed for his part in making ‘unsubstantiated, unscientific slander.’ So you see, poor Richard is in more trouble than you are, given the mood the board’s in.”
She felt aghast. “Can’t you protect him?”
His posture seemed to crumple inside the snappy clothes. “Who knows?” He shrugged, looking defeated. “Even if I could save him from those jerks, which I don’t know is possible anymore, I can’t protect the man against himself.”
“Pardon?”
“Before his heart attack, his staff found him increasingly difficult to work with. They only tolerated him because’s he’s such a brilliant clinician. But even if he’s found medically fit, he can’t go back to ER and continue to behave the way he has.”
Her incredulity grew. “You mean he could actually lose his job even without Aimes’s help?”
“Oh, God, I hope not, but it looks bad—” He stopped and drew himself erect. “I really can’t discuss this with you,” he coolly announced.
“Sorry, it’s just that during the bit of time Dr. Steele and I talked, he gave me the impression—well, that his work seemed all he had.”
Stanton now appeared uneasy, perhaps even embarrassed in front of her. “Do we have an understanding about your keeping me informed of your test results or not?” he asked, his take-charge tone back in full force.
“Of course,” she answered politely.
“Good. But three to four weeks—that’s a long time for me to stall the board. You can’t hurry up those people in Hawaii any?”
“Afraid not. The testing procedure is long and complicated, and they have their regular work to do besides.”
“Remember I don’t need a finished study with every i dotted and t crossed. I suggest you check every few days, and whatever they find, however insignificant you might think it is, let me see it right away.” He broke into another of his polished smiles. “I’ll argue that it’s promising.”
She nodded and smiled back, extending her hand to say good-bye. He took it, but seemed distracted by something behind her. She turned and saw through his corner window a magnificent view of the East River, the molten colors of the rising sun advancing over its slick black surface like liquid fire. To the southwest were the World Trade Towers, already aflame in the early light.
“That’s quite a sight,” she commented appreciatively. “We have a view of the towers from my offices, but this is fantastic.”
“Yes, I never tire of it,” he told her, continuing to stare at the spectacle.
The wheels of the subway squealed like a half-slaughtered pig as Kathleen hurtled toward her stop, the noise adding to the headache she’d been nurturing since saying good-bye to Stanton. She’d been so upset over Steele’s predicament that her own situation—the fact that she could lose her laboratory if she lost her appointment at the medical school and university—had only just started to sink in. Because while private funding from industrial contracts and media revenues paid part of the rent, the harsh reality remained: She’d never be able to fund the overall operation on her own.
She took the steps leading to the street in pairs and strode the three blocks to her offices overlooking Washington Square at a record pace. But the exertion, normally a remedy for whatever pain the tense muscles of her scalp and neck could muster, failed to help her today. As she passed the stone arch and cut through the treed park toward the science building, she rotated her shoulders trying to win some relief, also to no avail. Instead, whenever she jostled elbows with the many students on the stone paths who were rushing to classes, new spasms shot up and over her skull. Even her usual friendly wave to one of the cops
who staffed the park’s permanent police station—a silver trailer that some wag had once christened the Doughnut—left her grimacing.
Taking the elevator to the top floor, she arrived to find Azrhan Doumani standing at her desk, excitedly speaking French to someone on the phone.
The minute he saw her he broke off whatever he’d been saying, exclaiming, “Excusez-moi, Monsieur, mais elle est ici,” and handed her the receiver. “It’s an Inspector Racine from the south of France,” he said. “In a little town called Rodez they found the body of a man, a geneticist named Pierre Gaston, who’s been murdered, and among his papers there’s a letter addressed to you.”
Chapter 11
“Good morning, Dr. Sullivan. I take it your assistant explained who I am and why I’m calling.” He had only the slightest trace of a French accent.
“Yes, but I never knew anyone of that name—Pierre Gaston, you said?”
“That’s right. We found his body in an aboveground crypt at the Rodez cathedral. Workmen were doing renovations in the place, and about a week ago they accidentally shifted the stone cover while lifting the tomb with a winch. The stench immediately alerted them that something much riper than a mummified, centuries-old priest lay inside. We identified Gaston using dental records, and autopsy confirmed that whoever killed him had snapped his neck like a stick.”
A ghostly face wrenched to one side in the darkness flashed through her mind. “Oh, my God!” she uttered in a whisper, her throat constricting.
“Pardon, Madame?”
“Nothing,” she answered, quickly recovering her voice. “But I don’t understand what it has to do with me.”
“We’re not sure, either, Madame, except that he left a letter with his notary to be forwarded to you ‘in the event of his arrest.’ It got turned over to us along with all his papers, including his will, after the discovery of his body.”
“In the event of his arrest?”
“Yes, those were the exact written instructions. But we have no idea what he meant, nor can we find any indication he’d done anything that he’d be in danger of being arrested for. I had hoped perhaps you could tell us what it’s all about.”
“I’m sorry, Inspector, but as I said, I never knew the man, at least not that I can recall. I meet a lot of people at conferences whose names I never remember.”
“This man we think has been dead since New Year’s Eve, so any personal contact would have been before that. And he may only have known you through your publications, Docteur.” His accent drew the title out and seemed to give greater homage to her profession than she’d been in the habit of hearing on her side of the Atlantic. “When we opened his computer files, both at his place of work and in his apartment, we found that he had flagged many of your articles on the Internet. According to his log, the site he visited most recently involved a feature on you by a group called Environment Watch just before Christmas. In it you called on biotechnical companies to cooperate with testing for genetic vectors in plant life around their laboratories. This interests us, because it also relates to the contents of his letter. Shall I read aloud what he wrote to you?”
Her pulse quickened. “Please.”
“The note itself is dated December twenty-third,” said the inspector.
Dear Dr. Sullivan,
You’re on the right track. Now I suggest you test around our plant. There’s a secret there related to well-known events in Taiwan and Oahu that will shock you. Then get me out of jail, and I’ll show you something even deadlier.
Merci!
Pierre Gaston
By now she could barely contain her excitement. “Where did this man work?” she demanded.
“At an agricultural research facility called Agriterre Incorporated. But as I told you, when we first interviewed his superior there, a Dr. François Dancereau, he assured us that nothing about Pierre Gaston’s professional activities seemed amiss.”
The name François Dancereau sounded vaguely familiar to her, but she didn’t pause to dwell on it now. “And is this company involved in engineering crops using genetic vectors?”
“They claim only to be an ‘agricultural research laboratory developing products which facilitate crop yields.’ ” He sounded as if he were quoting the company’s official line, but with a sarcasm that would have done a bistro waiter on the Champs-Élysées proud. “They refused to provide details, citing confidentiality agreements between themselves and the clients they work for. We didn’t force the issue.”
“But the letter—”
“We only just got court clearance to read it, well after our interviews with Dancereau and others at Agriterre, so at the time we had no grounds to consider that any of them had anything to hide or were connected to Pierre Gaston’s death. Now it’s entirely a different story, and we’ll be going over the place with a microscope, but before we showed our hand, I wanted to hear if you could make anything of what he wrote. For instance, do you have any idea what he means when he says Taiwan and Oahu have something in common?”
Her imagination had already leaped into overdrive, making connections she hardly dared voice aloud even to herself. “I don’t know,” she said guardedly. “Let me mull it over awhile.”
His answering silence suggested deep discontent with her reply.
“But I could do tests on samplings of plants from the grounds around that laboratory,” she added, “looking for evidence of genetic vectors as he suggests. I’d explain to you how to take the cuttings, but you’d have to courier them to me immediately. I’d prefer to do the analysis in my own lab using my own team rather than come to you.”
“Magnifique, Madame! I prayed you would offer us your services. I know you’re a world-respected leader in this field—I took the liberty of looking you up on the Internet.” He spoke so loudly she had to hold the phone away from her ear. “As you can understand, we’re most anxious to find out this secret he’s referring to, and obviously it has something to do with the genetic vectors you’ve been so vocal about. I’ll have the specimens you require in New York by tomorrow afternoon.”
His Gallic enthusiasm sparked her own scientific caution. “I have to warn you, without knowing the specific vectors involved, I’m liable to come up with negative results. Which makes me wonder, if your Pierre Gaston had really wanted me to find out what they were using, why all the cat-and-mouse stuff? Why didn’t he just tell me outright, the way all the other scientists who responded to that article did?”
The line remained so quiet that for a moment she feared their connection had been severed. After a few seconds, she said, “Inspector Racine?”
“I am here, Madame, thinking over your very good question, and perhaps have even struck on an answer.” She heard him suck in a breath, then exhale long and hard. He must be smoking a cigarette, she thought, instantly conjuring up her image of a French gendarme— based, she had to admit, on Claude Rains’s performance in the movie Casablanca. “Despite the denials from the CEO at Agriterre that a crime has been committed against the company,” he went on, “it’s obvious that Gaston had done something which he knew could land him in prison. Maybe, when he wrote this letter, he only wanted to use the threat of you looking for whatever vectors are there as leverage against whomever he feared could send him to jail. The promise to show you ‘something even deadlier’ he probably added as an additional hook, intending to snag your actual help in setting him free, in case his first plan failed to keep charges from being brought against him.”
Maybe you’re right, thought Sullivan, except he’d got his neck wrung instead.
The inner gloom of the downstairs bar at the Plaza seemed unusually crowded that afternoon, the noise level suited more to a waterfront tavern than a decorous watering hole for pampered guests of a luxury hotel. At four-thirty Steele shoved back from the darkened oak table that had become as familiar as his desk at the hospital, gathered up his pile of newspapers, and folded the wad of journalistic wisdom under his arm for the stroll home.
“Hey, Doc, you barely touched your drink again today,” said the waiter, a burly stump of a man who also seemed out of place. He appeared more the type to sort out brawls and dispense draft by the tableful than serve up a champagne cocktail. “Why not just order a club soda? You still get the peanuts,” he suggested. His lips and eyebrows, both thick as ropes, curved to bracket his puffy cheeks from above and below.
Steele took it as a smile. “I’ll do that,” he replied, and made his way through a maze of revelers getting a jump on happy hour.
Outside, a light drizzle felt cool on his forehead as he strode briskly along Fifth Avenue. Pulling his raincoat around him, he started passing the others in the crowd, weaving between their umbrellas by using a syncopated zigzag step that took all his concentration. The aroma of franks and pretzels carried far through the humid air, filling his nostrils and perking his appetite long before he reached the dozens of vendors’ carts that populated the street corners ahead. He liked how their gay, candy-striped canopies punctuated the gloom in white and red contrast to the more sober, darker marquees of Saks, Gucci, or Wempe. He found himself using them as markers to measure his progress.
But within a few blocks the exhaust of the stop-and-surge traffic had burned the pleasant smells and tastes from the back of his throat, and it was the cumulative noise of horsepower, marching feet, and a thousand conversations, constant as an urban rapids, that filled his head. Tuning out the din, he turned his thoughts to the person who’d been most on his mind since his return.
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