“So it was as simple as money for drugs,” I said to Jim, my voice depressed. I had lost Ron so someone could make a bonus so drugs could be bought.
“Unfortunately, that’s the way it looks.”
“What’s Alison Montgomery’s take on all of this?” Marilena asked.
“She’s devastated. She thought she knew her staff. She told me that she is almost ashamed to call you.”
“I’ll call her. It wasn’t her fault. No one can fully know what subordinates are all about no matter how long they work together,” I responded.
“Do you have the data she told me about? Is it safe?” he asked.
I got up and went to the den. I returned with the USB stick. “This is where April got involved,” I said.
April looked at the little piece of plastic and said to me, “I never saw this before.”
“It was in the helicopter.”
Jim’s face got a puzzled look, and he asked, “What helicopter?”
“Ron had April keep one of his radio controlled helicopters. He told her to give it to me if something happened to him. The memory stick was in a firefighting, water-drop bomb bay. April didn’t know about it. Canfield must have learned of Ron’s discovery and wanted the data so badly that she almost killed April to get that information. It would have made it difficult to get donations if the word got out about a cure. If she could have prevented the return of the data by killing the three of us, and possibly securing the only copy, then she could go on raising money and getting her share. A cure would have put her out of a job.”
O’Dale’s eyes opened wider, and his mouth hung open. After a moment he put into words something no one wanted to speak much less believe, “It’s pretty disgusting that someone working to cure a horrible disease would prevent the cure for personal gain. Jesus Christ, just when I think I’ve seen and heard it all!”
INVITATION
After O’Dale left, I called Alison. She answered her cell phone on the second ring.
“Hello.”
“Alison, it’s Tom Briggs.”
“Oh, Tom. I’m glad you called. I have so wanted to talk to you but am incredibly ashamed about what two members of my staff have done to your family that I have actually dreaded speaking with you!”
“I don’t see how any of this is your fault.”
“I can’t tell you how much it means that you are not angry with me.”
“Alison, again, there is no reason to be. Now that this is over, we need to meet and talk about how to handle Ron’s research data. I’m tempted to just send it to Caroline Little at the Marklin. She seemed to be on the ball, and her shop is very impressive.”
“Oh, no. That would be a mistake. We need to disseminate it to a wider audience after we complete some preparatory work. It is imperative that we don’t offend any of the academic research facilities. We don’t want enemies.”
“What are you worried about?” I asked, thinking that we were about to make Caroline Little an enemy.
“Have you ever read about the how the cure for polio came about? About the rivalry between Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin?”
“No.”
“You must. There is a book about it called Polio: An American Story, and it will make you sick about how close we came to not having a cure for polio. The medical and scientific community must be properly managed, or all of Ron’s work will be for nothing! This is something I am very familiar with, and you need to trust me.”
“OK. What do you want to do?”
“I have been preparing the research community, using our own research advisory board since you told me of Ron’s findings. This is important. Have you given the data to anyone else?”
“No. I have the only copy.”
“Excellent. Let’s keep it that way. I’m very anxious to see it. And speaking of that, I would like to extend an invitation to you and Marilena. I absolutely must get out of New York and imagine that you may feel the same way. I have access to a wealthy donor’s vacation villa in Barbados. How would you feel about joining me there for some rest and relaxation? I’ve been there many times before. It’s a fantastic place right on the beach with a big sport fishing yacht and a pool and all the luxuries you could imagine. There is no house staff, but the kitchen is always well stocked, and there are great restaurants nearby if we get tired of grilling steaks. I think that some undisturbed time to talk about Ron’s work and a plan to continue his work would be the best for everyone. Also, I understand that there was a young lady who was injured by Sylvia. According to Captain O’Dale, she was terrified and was almost killed. Please extend an invitation to her to join us. Some beach time might help her recover as well. The society will pay for her travel expenses.”
“OK. I’m in, and I’ll talk to the ladies. If they agree, we’ll come down in the next day or two. I’ll email you our travel info.”
*
Two days later we traveled to Teterboro airport in northern New Jersey. I had made arrangements for us to fly to Barbados in a private business jet. Ricardo dropped us off at a hanger where the air taxi operator had his business.
“I could get used to this,” Marilena commented with a smile as she looked at the mid-sized jet, in this case a Hawker 800XP.
After a little paperwork with the manager, we were led to the aircraft. Our bags had vanished, taken by helpful people as we climbed a short flight of stairs into the plane. Four of the suitcases were new and contained clothing that Marilena had described as resort-wear for ladies. The bags and their contents had been acquired yesterday in a shopping spree that I had managed to avoid, having the legitimate excuse that I needed to finish reading Ron’s research. My singular suitcase remained unchanged and without new apparel. My boring khaki trunks and Marine Corps tshirts would suffice. We each had a small carry on, mine containing my normal traveling doctor gear. My Beretta and spare clips were in a side pocket. I assumed that Marilena’s Glock was in her bag, but with her you just never knew. Once inside, we met the flight attendant, who showed us to our seats. The seating was arranged more like a living room than the typical row-by-row seats in commercial aircraft.
April’s eyes were wide open as she looked around. “Wow. I mean really wow!” she said as she settled into a recliner that faced a plasma screen television. My reaction was more reserved as I had been in private jets many times, using them whenever I could because no matter how good first class is, this is better. Marilena sat next to me, cocked her head to one side, and studied her surroundings.
We were briefed on the safety equipment and procedures as the plane was towed out of the hanger. After startup and taxi, we were shortly airborne for our direct, six-hour flight to the southeastern Caribbean.
“You know, this indulgent and luxurious life could be habit forming,” Marilena said. I could see April listening in. She had become more and more curious about our relationship. Marilena told me it was a girl thing.
I looked back at Marilena and said, “It’s been a habit for me for a long time. I was just keeping it a secret being the humble guy that I am.” April rolled her eyes and leaned over, not missing a word.
“Well, it’s a secret no more. Never let it be said that I can’t pick a boyfriend. Boston mansion, Central Park West condo, luxury jets, designer clothes from trendy dress shops. You actually do know how to treat a girl!”
“Let’s not forget, run down by crazed killers pretending to be cabbies, cheap pizzas in lieu of fancy dinners, boring, high-society fund raisers, pompous charity board meetings, and late night rooftop interventions with more crazed killers.”
“All such little things that I will gladly endure to be with you. By the way, anytime you want company while being forced to endure a flight somewhere in one of these, will you remember to invite me, your lowly civil-servant girlfriend whose employer pays only for discount airfare?”
“You and no one else.” This got me the big smile.
“You guys are so cute!” This from April. Marilena laughed. I grimaced and stuck my head in
a newspaper. Having a girlfriend was tough enough. I didn’t need her to have an irritating little sister.
*
After eating an exceptional lunch, April drifted off to sleep. I used our temporary privacy to talk about a couple of items that had been bothering me.
“I’m still not sure about what to do with the society?”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“No matter how well meaning Alison is, she runs a screwed up organization. I’m torn between supporting a cause that was important to Ron without saying anything and demanding that some changes get made or we turn off the tap.”
“I think you need to talk to Alison about that. I’m just glad she’s out of the country.”
“Oh? Why is that?” I asked, my internal alarm bell started to rattle, not quite ringing, but getting ready to.
“Something’s not finished about this. If there is another player in this multi-murderer game, Alison could be in danger.”
I hadn’t thought about that.
TRIGGERS
I estimated from the amount of time that we had been airborne that we had flown south of Florida and were well into the Caribbean; still over a thousand miles to go as Barbados was way south, just northeast of Granada and almost to South America. We had finished lunch served by our own personal flight attendant, whose duties were limited to all of three passengers. Our young and female flight attendant had very nice legs that emerged from a very short skirt. I worked hard at ignoring them. Marilena pointedly ignored my less than successful efforts at visual restraint.
After lunch, while April explored the programming offered on the television, Marilena reviewed the PowerPoint presentation and the executive summary that Ron had written on the genetic basis for CID. She closed the binder holding the documents that I had assembled, looked down at the closed tome on her lap and sighed, “A lot of this was over my head. I know it’s stereotypical, but this girl avoided science and math classes. I would hate to have to read the material not intended for executives allegedly as science-challenged as I. I looked at a couple of the documents that you had read, the ones you made notes on. Now I know how people feel when I speak with someone else in a foreign language. I still need to fill in some blanks. Maybe you can help me? Let’s see if you can focus in light of the exceptional visual stimuli present.”
“If I can. Don’t be surprised if what was over your head has me standing on my toes. Ron was the geneticist. I had to work at a lot of this and do some research along the way to stay in the game.”
Marilena began with, “OK, Ron believed that CID had two parts: a genetic change that happened 70,000 years ago to some people in Eastern Europe and then a triggering action more recently. I understand a little about the first event and the Out of Africa model causing, what was it? Genetic drift?”
“That’s right. The bottleneck causes genetic drift and founder effect. At some place in Eastern Europe, a change took place in Homo sapien DNA that was a time bomb waiting to be triggered.”
“I haven’t gotten to the triggering event yet,” she said, “and I don’t know if I’m up to another fifty pages of this. Have you read that part yet?”
“Yes. I’ve finished a first pass at everything and studied some of it in depth.”
“Then please, do your girlfriend, who by the way is far sexier than that child serving us, a favor and summarize the triggering event. I will see to it that you are properly rewarded.”
“I think that would disturb April.”
“Down boy!” she said quietly but with a smile. “Educate me now. I will entertain you later.”
Suddenly and sufficiently motivated, I organized my thoughts and began, “Volcanoes played a big part in Ron’s understanding of CID. You read about the DNA groundwork that was laid because of the genetic bottleneck caused by the Lake Toba eruption 70,000 years ago.”
“Yes.”
“Well, Ron believed that a second eruption in 1815 indirectly triggered CID the following year. A year that was known as The Year Without Summer.”
“Did this Year Without Summer affect Europe? I’ve never heard of it,” she said with surprise.
“Yes, it did and in a big way. The year after the eruption, 1816, was also known as the last great subsistence crisis in the Western world. Civilization as a whole had a tough time with the basics like eating. The days were dark, the temperature dropped, and the crops failed.”
“This lasted for a whole year?” she asked.
“Actually a little longer.”
I started in on my hastily crafted lecture about CID’s triggering event, the pieces of which had only just settled in my mind.
“At the time, no one knew what was going on with the weather and the reduced amount of sunlight. Some people blamed Benjamin Franklin because it was popularly known that he was experimenting with lightning and electricity. Maybe he had screwed up the atmosphere. He was bailed out by an American climatologist William Humphreys. Humphreys was the first guy to figure out what happened, but unfortunately for Franklin, who continued to get heat, it wasn’t until 1920. Humphreys postulated that The Year Without a Summer may have been caused by volcanic activity and the ejecta pumped into the air by an eruption. Ironically, his work was somewhat based on a paper written by none other than Benjamin Franklin. Franklin’s premise was that the cold weather and gloomy days in 1816 were the result of a volcanic eruption in Iceland in 1783. Wrong year, wrong volcano, but Ben was on the right track.
“What caused The Year Without a Summer was the eruption of Mount Tambora on the island of Sumbawa in what is now Malaysia from April 5 to April 15, 1816. Like the Lake Toba eruption 70,000 years earlier, it generated tremendous amounts of ejecta — the stuff the volcano spits out. The chemicals inserted into the upper atmosphere by the Mount Tambora volcano caused much of the sun’s light to be reflected back into space.
“Tambora was a huge event with four times the energy of Krakatoa with tsunamis and an ash column over 140,000 feet high reaching well into the stratosphere. Some 10,000 people on Sumbawa died in the pyroclastic flows with another 50,000 dying from starvation and disease in the months to follow. Mount Tambora’s eruption also carried into the higher parts of the atmosphere a tremendous amount of sulfur. Tens of millions of tons of aerosolized sulfur dioxide. This caused a global climate anomaly because it reflected light from the sun back into space reducing both daytime light and temperatures. I won’t bore you with the chemistry, but the sulfur dioxide became sulfuric acid, and this fell to the ground and on the people. This was CID’s trigger. Ron believed that the conditions and the genetics were just right in an area just north of the Balkan Peninsula for the CID monster to be unleashed. There is historical evidence of brown snow falling to the ground in Hungary during 1816.”
“It is amazing,” she said quietly, “that people have forgotten this.”
“Besides the CID kick start, a couple of other interesting things happened in 1816.”
“Such as?” she asked politely.
“Mary Shelley was vacationing in Switzerland and due to the conditions, stayed indoors and joined a writing competition with some friends. She wrote Frankenstein. The book is full of scenes with terrible weather and cold.
“The crummy weather also motivated the rapid settlement of the American Midwest. There was a considerable famine in New England. The family of Joseph Smith, the eventual founder of the Mormon Church, moved from Sharon, Vermont, to Palmyra, New York, after several crop failures. It was there that he claims to have experienced events that led to the founding of the Latter Day Saints church.”
“Do Mormons appreciate the impact of this one particular volcano on their religion?” she asked with fake seriousness.
“Probably not. It wasn’t much better in Europe. The countries there were still suffering from the aftereffects of the Napoleonic Wars, and the food shortages were especially unwelcome. Food shortages in Switzerland caused a lot of violence, and the government declared a national emergency.
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“And don’t forget, in Eastern Europe, the snow is brown colored as it falls from the sky. Many Hungarians experience illness from exposure to sulfuric acid and were unknowingly the progenitors of CID. The next generations of Hungarians reported symptoms consistent with CID.”
*
Two hours later, we landed at the island’s international airport and reluctantly moved ourselves from the luxury of the Hawker to the Barbados equivalent of a limousine. I transferred my pistol from the bag to its holster inside the waistband of my pants. Some habits are hard to break, and collecting my bags when arriving at an airport always reminds me of this one. A twenty-minute drive on the left hand side of the road from the airport to the west and more developed coast of the island delivered us to our vacation home, courtesy of Alison Montgomery and an unknown CID benefactor.
We rang the bell and were met at the door by Alison Montgomery’s husband, Mark Wilson. “About time you got here!” he said. “Come on in. Leave your bags just inside the door, and we can schlep them to your rooms later.” We followed him into the house stopping in a great room just off the foyer. Wilson called for his wife, and he turned to another entrance into the room from the rear part of the house. Through this passageway, you could see the ocean through the windows at the far end of the house. In walked Montgomery. Stepping in next to her was Jonathan Treece, who must have been out by the pool because he was in trunks and a flowered shirt. He had a beach towel over his arm. I was a little surprised to see Treece. Montgomery had not mentioned that he would be joining us.
“Tom, you look surprised,” she observed the obvious. And then with a voice that was hard, devoid of emotion, “Well, you should be used to surprises by now. Throughout this entire affair, you have been sadly ignorant of just about everything.” With that, Treece quickly produced from under the towel a small caliber automatic and pointed it at my face, his finger on the trigger.
EVIL ADVOCATE
Demonstrating far more intelligence than his wife, Mark Wilson moved off to my right, taking himself out of the line of fire that existed between Treece and me. Marilena slowly started after him, moving sideways while facing the front of the room, trying to go unnoticed, pretending to be focused on Montgomery and not Wilson. April was behind me and a little to one side. The shock of the situation had more than likely anchored her in place. Even though Treece had managed to get the gun lined up on me, and Montgomery had successfully recited her practiced words, working very hard to be cool, they were amateurs, and that was my biggest concern. At least with a pro, the weapon doesn’t go off accidentally. She was a pretender, a poser. She had seen too many TV shows and movies. The shiny automatic pistol with the long barrel in her partner’s hand guaranteed her total authority. Or so she thought.
Death of a Cure Page 29