by John Shaw
Craven stared at Ryan through his good eye and, with all the coolness of a man in complete control, said, "I am."
"A corporate warrior, maybe, but nothing more than that. You're sure as hell no patriot."
Craven's grin was made even more sinister by the blood running out of his mouth. "I like the way that sounds. Yeah, that's what I am, a corporate warrior. I used to fight my country's battles on the battlefield. Nowadays, I'm fighting on the corporate battlefield."
Jordan stared at him in disbelief. "That's a sick philosophy."
Craven turned his beaten face toward her. "Not that I expect you to understand, missy, but there are as many enemies to our way of life that want to destroy our country from within as there are foreign. Without our wealth, would we be as great as we are?"
"Maybe, maybe not," Jordan responded.
"But how are you defining greatness? And are you defining our wealth as a people strictly by how much money we have?"
Ryan interrupted. "Jordan, let's not dignify this piece of shit with the notion that his philosophy, whatever it is, has any relevance to human beings."
Ryan felt good drawing a distinction between people like himself, a dedicated scientist and researcher, and the corporate thugs he was battling. Of course, Craven only did the dirty work for the real corporate thugs. Guys of Craven's ilk were sadistic robots who got a perverse joy out of following cruel and merciless orders from men like Stedman, who were even more vile and despicable. They were evil men who would never give human lives more value than the almighty dollar. Profits had always trumped ethics in big business, and they probably always would. A large automaker would rather pay $100 million in legal claims for dead drivers than spend $300 million to recall a car with faulty brakes, just as a major pharmaceutical company would rather hide possible grievous side effects and risk hundreds of millions in lawsuits rather than pulling a multi-billion dollar per year blockbuster maintenance drug off the market. Ryan was glad he had never sold out his soul for a buck. The business end of things never had taken precedence over the scientific. Yes, he'd made money from his research—but at least he could live with himself.
Craven wasn't finished. In fact, he seemed eager to talk. "Listen, I'm no business genius, but the way I see it, it's simple. Sure, it sounds good on the surface to have a cancer cure to sell, and at first, the company might make a nice profit. But think about it, Matthews, Americans never have and never will pay for good medicine. They turn to the insurance companies to foot the bills, and do you think the insurance companies are going to pay what Tricopatin is really worth? Hell no. Tricopatin is worth millions of dollars per patient, but who's going to pay for it? Not the insurance companies, and certainly not your average Joe."
Ryan stared at him, dumbfounded.
"There would be a public outcry. The lobbyists for the major health insurance companies would pressure their bought-and-paid-for politicians, and before you know it, they'd be practically giving Tricopatin away. Poor Aunt Betty shows up with cancer and no insurance. What do you think would happen to the company if they didn't give her the miracle cure? No, my bosses are not about to let that happen. Not only would they take a bath on Tricopatin, they'd lose billions on the other cancer treatment drugs that they sell today. Why do you think they were willing to pay so much for your old company to begin with? They weren't going to allow you to cure ovarian cancer and rob them of the billions they make selling maintenance drugs to treat the same cancer. No, they bought Immugene with the sole intention of burying Tricopatin. A couple hundred million is nothing compared to the billions they would have lost if Tricopatin had hit the market."
"Incredible," Ryan said. "So that's it. Why cure people when you can soak them with maintenance drugs for the rest of their lives? I guess healthy people don't buy drugs, huh?"
"Hell's bells. You finally got it!"
"Yeah, I get that, asshole. But why peddle the drugs in Mexico?"
Using his shoulder, Craven managed to wipe some of the blood dripping down his chin. "By killing the FDA approval and selling it outside the U.S. for millions a pop, we get the best of both worlds. Hell, Matthews, this is done all the time. Your cure just happened to be a blockbuster cancer cure and not one for minor ailments. Do you really believe that the best the top research scientists in the world can come up with is a pill you need to take every single day just to get a hard-on?"
Ryan leveled the gun at Craven's head. "Are you done?"
Craven spat. "Yeah, I'm done."
"I'm more than happy to send you to hell with a bullet. Hell is where you belong."
Though he was no sadist, Ryan nonetheless took delight in watching Craven's face morph with its first outward sign of fear. Or perhaps it was with his realization that he had been outsmarted and overwhelmed by amateurs. Ryan knew that this bothered Craven even more than the prospect of losing his life.
Craven watched Ryan's finger on the trigger, analyzing every nuance. As Ryan began to squeeze, the bound man shouted, "If you kill me, there will be hundreds more on your tail. I burned the last shred of evidence and killed the last witness. The company is untouchable, but you're not. If you kill me, you'll be going to jail for the rest of your very short life. It'll be tough to claim self-defense with me tied to a chair. Even if you untie me afterwards, the forensic guys will determine I was tied up when you shot me. Why don't you just let me go? There is no more evidence against Stedman, the company, or me. We have no reason to come after you. Hell, I won't even tell anyone you and the girl are still alive. You can just disappear." Craven was speaking with the desperation of a man who knew he was playing his last card.
Ryan became thoughtful, his rage subsiding. He looked at Craven and then, turning to Jordan, said, "Cut him loose."
"What? You can't mean that. Let this monster go?"
"Do it, Jordan. I know what I'm doing."
She grabbed a scalpel off of the countertop and slashed Craven's bonds, inching back beside Ryan.
Craven stood slowly. He stretched his arms over his head and, lightning fast, dove behind a shelf, making a half roll to the left and then to the right. With a lunge, he reached for his ankle holster and came up with a .38 aimed at Ryan. Craven squeezed the trigger, but nothing happened. Ryan opened his fist and flipped his hand over. As the bullets to the .38 clattered harmlessly onto the floor, he asked Craven one final question: "Looking for these?"
Craven's eyes went flat. His gun hand lowered and his mouth fell open as he waited for his own death.
Three shots rang out and Craven's body slumped to the floor, his cold blue eyes staring upward.
Chapter 41
"What a mess."
Jim Crawford was staring at Craven's bloodied body on the file-room floor. His gaze shifted a dozen feet to Dr. Huggins's dead body, still crumpled in a heap in the doorway. "Tell me something," he said. "How come the guy you shot looks like he was put through the ringer but you don't have so much as a scratch on you?"
Ryan grimaced. He did not feel an ounce of guilt for what he had done, but the evidence told a different story. "I got a little forceful with him while I was interrogating him," he said. "But what I learned more than made up for—"
"Evidence gained through physical interrogation doesn't stand up in court," Crawford said, cutting him off.
"I wasn't planning on taking him to court."
"We know who's been trying to kill me!" Jordan interjected, her voice laced with urgency.
"And that's only half of it," Ryan said. "We've got proof—or at least we had proof—that Fisher Singer Worldwide, along with orchestrating the attempted hits on Jordan, paid our dead friend there"—he nodded to Dr. Huggins—"to fudge results from the Tricopatin tests. My drug worked, and now they're selling it abroad under the name Serapectin."
"You had the evidence?"
"We had the test results, both the original ones that never saw the light of day and the altered ones that FSW fed me and everybody else."
"Where are they now?"
Ryan pointed with his eyes to the charred remains in the trash can. "Burnt to a crisp."
"Uh huh."
Ryan studied the look in Crawford's eyes. He couldn't tell if he was skeptical, frustrated, angry, or all three. What was obvious was that he'd had enough.
"You have to stop these people," Jordan said, clearly not ready to cede an inch.
Ryan knew they were out on a limb, but it was obvious she harbored no such doubts.
"Look, this is what I know so far," Crawford said. "I've got two dead bodies. I've got destroyed evidence. And I've got two witnesses—both of whom are officially dead, both of whom I've gone to a great deal of trouble to shield, and both of whom seem determined to make my job a living hell. In case you two haven't noticed, I actually have to report to someone, who, I might add, is this close to sending me packing. There's this little thing called the law, and every time you two get a wild hair and go off half-cocked, I'm the one who has to do damage control."
Ryan opened his mouth to plead his case, but Crawford cut him short.
"Don't say another word," he said, holding up his hand. "You two are coming with me."
"Where?"
"FBI headquarters in D.C. We're going to debrief you. We're going to get statements. We're going to make damned sure your story holds up. And we're going to—"
"Give it a rest, Jim." This time it was Ryan doing the interrupting. "We know the drill."
***
Ryan sat slumped in his chair in an interrogation room at FBI headquarters as Crawford paced on the other side of the table.
"So let's recap one last time," Crawford said, stifling a yawn. "You're browbeating Dr. Huggins at the lab when this Craven character shows up. Craven torches the evidence. Huggins tries to make a break for it. Craven puts a couple of bullets in his back. A struggle ensues, and Craven nearly takes you out, but Jordan saves your ass when she knocks the thug cold with a fire extinguisher. From there, you tie him up, hurt your hand on his face as soon as he wakes up, and pry an unrepentant confession out of him. Then, just when you're about to call me, he busts loose and goes for his hidden pistol, which you, despite your FBI training, somehow missed. You kill him before he kills you. Do I have it all?"
"More or less." Crawford had gone from supportive friend to bristly FBI agent. Ryan couldn't say he blamed him. He had pushed their friendship to the limit, and he wasn't done yet. "I want to go after him."
"Who?"
"Stedman. Somebody needs to take him down, and we're just the ones to do it." "We. . . ?"
"We've come this far together. Why not finish the job?"
"Christ, you want all one hundred and fifty reasons?" Crawford shook his head, the corners of his mouth forming an exhausted frown. "I'll give you two for starters. One, I can't afford any more dead bodies on my watch. Two, neither of you are on the FBI payroll as far as I can tell."
"Let us help then," Ryan said.
Crawford ignored the request. "I'm still not clear on something."
"What?"
"I get why FSW is trying to off Jordan. They see her as a competitor, someone with scruples no less, who could seriously mess with their bot tom line. But why bury the cure for ovarian cancer? Why not make a shitload of money from it? If I were Jacob Stedman, I'd make a mint from the cure, retire early, and head for the driving range."
"You don't think like these people," Ryan said. "That used to be my problem, too. I underestimated them—or overestimated them, depending on your perspective. They're not like us. It's not enough that they have wealth and power and everything money can buy. Stedman and his ilk want to rig the system so they'll always be needed, no matter what discoveries are made in the future. They're not trying to make people healthy. They're trying to keep them sick so they can treat their symptoms forever."
Crawford nodded thoughtfully. "A cure for cancer eliminates customers. But drugs that help people manage their illnesses, those you can sell for decades."
"Exactly."
"So in Stedman's ideal world, he strings patients along for years at a stretch, keeping them out of the grave and on the hook for more medicine, while selling a real cure off of U.S. soil, only to the mega-rich who can afford the multi-million-dollar price tag. It's a win-win situation."
"The man's a monster," Ryan said. "Which is why we need to nail him."
"I agree, but we're going to do this legally and by the book, which means you and Jordan are going to keep a low profile and give us room to do our job."
"But—"
Crawford held up both hands. "If you really want to nail Stedman, you won't risk jeopardizing the case further. Besides, I've got a hunch this goes deeper than one crooked CEO."
"Deeper?"
"Jacob Stedman is a powerful man with powerful friends. Who knows who he has working for him, or who he's working for? You took out his chief of security. My guess is that he already knows you and Jordan are back from the grave, which makes you a threat to his existence. He's going to do whatever he has to to eliminate that threat."
"How could he possibly know we're alive?"
"As I said, he is a very powerful man with powerful connections. Your escapades today have made it unlikely that your status remains covert. And the more people who know, the greater risk of a leak. Moving forward, I think it is best to operate under the assumption that he knows you and Jordan are alive."
"Then he also knows we are on to him and may have evidence to put his ass away. Which is why I need to finish it."
"Ryan, we've been over this already. You need to lay low. I'm going to put you up in a safe house here in town, and I'm going to put a couple of agents outside your door. But just in case . . ."
He nodded to somebody through the oneway glass, and an agent entered and handed him a bulky black plastic case. Crawford swung the case up onto the table and opened the latches, revealing a standard-issue revolver, plus ammunition. "It's not as powerful as the gun you took off Craven— and used on him—but it'll get the job done."
"A little unorthodox, no?"
"If you weren't a former Company man, you'd be on your own. But the boss seems to have taken pity on you. Not much. But a little."
"It's no fun being a marked man."
"Yeah," Crawford said. "But you're still breathing."
***
Senator McNally entered the private club in New York City alone. No assistant. No chaperone. He spied Stedman seated at a table in the corner and took his time closing the distance between them.
The senator had known Jacob Stedman for the better part of two decades—nearly the length of his political career. Though Stedman was his elder by a good fifteen years, the two had risen through the ranks simultaneously, him through the political establishment and Stedman through its corporate counterpart. Throughout that time, McNally had considered Stedman a close associate. Not a friend, per se. But someone who could be trusted and someone whose opinion was worth seeking. Of course, since Fisher Singer World-wide's rise to the top of the pharmaceutical world, Stedman had come to occupy a more prominent perch. A valuable contributor to the campaign coffers, he possessed the ability to raise significant funds on short notice and without scrutiny.
But he wasn't simply a cash cow. He was, for lack of a better word, an ally. At times, McNally wasn't sure who had the upper hand, and there had been moments, especially recently, when the senator had regretted their association, if for no other reason than the hefty price tag that came along with it. Stedman's support meant taking risks and embracing unsavory solutions, and the senator knew that by running with Stedman he was running with a dangerous crowd. But it was too late for regrets. Too late to back out. He needed to take control of the situation. And there was no time like the present.
"Two emergency meetings in one week," the senator said as he took a seat across the table from Stedman. "This is unprecedented."
"As are the circumstances," Stedman said.
"What's up, Jake?" The informality was a deliberate ploy and
one intended to knock his ally down a few notches.
Stedman replied without hesitation, either overlooking or refusing to humor the use of his shortened first name. "It's Matthews again."
"Yes, I heard." The senator had enough friends at the FBI, not to mention in Stedman's own company, to know what was going on most of the time, although he wasn't always privy to the details. "I'm sorry to hear about William Craven. He was a great asset."
"I suppose he was," Stedman said coolly.
McNally was surprised at the detachment in Stedman's voice. He knew if he'd just lost his chief of security he'd be feeling awfully vulnerable, whatever his feelings for the man. "Do you have someone in place to take over for him?"
"Not at the moment," Stedman said. "That's why I called. I need your help."
"My help?"
"I want that SOB."
"I presume you're speaking of Matthews."
"Yes," Stedman replied, brandishing a menacing frown.
"My people aren't killers," the senator said. "You'll have to look elsewhere for that sort of help."
"I've been in touch with another team. But these guys will need time, up to forty-eight hours, to get here. And who knows how long it will take to track them down now that they're under federal protection."
"Them? I hope you're not including Dr. Carver."
"She knows as much as Matthews. Maybe more. She's a liability." Stedman leveled a cold gaze at the senator. "And not just for me."
McNally did his best to look unfazed. "This is the last time I'm going to tell you to steer clear of the Carver girl."
"Is that a threat, Senator?"
"Of course not," he answered quickly. "People in our position don't need to make threats. What I will tell you is that this quest of yours—to make Matthews and his cure for cancer disappear from the U.S. market—barely factors into a much bigger picture. You're trifling with more than you know."
Stedman opened his mouth to protest but the senator waved him off and kept talking.