Miracle Drug

by Richard L. Mabry M. D.

  “What did he say?” Rachel asked.

  “Paré’s original quote was in French, but a rough translation is, ‘I dressed his wounds. God healed him.’ I think that’s true in a lot of cases . . . including this one.”

  ***

  Agent Jerry Lang perched on the edge of a chair in a small, unused office in Madison’s home. His cell phone was on the desk in front of him. He’d done a lot of things in his years in the Secret Service, but this one might have the most riding on it of any of them. He took a deep breath, then another.

  Detective Stan Warren, sitting to Lang’s right, said, “He gave you a number to call?”

  “Yeah, and I’ve already checked. It’s a prepaid cell phone. Probably picked it up at Radio Shack or Best Buy. Use it and toss it. No identity associated with it.”

  “What about using cell towers to triangulate his location?”

  “We’ll try, but if he’s smart enough to use a ‘burner’ phone, I’d be surprised if he stays still long enough for us to do that.” Lang looked at his watch. “It’s time for me to call him. Ready?”

  Warren nodded. He reached to turn on the small recorder that sat next to Lang’s phone, connected to it by a thin wire.

  The speaker of the cell phone buzzed with the rings. One. Two. Three. Four.

  Lang’s throat felt dry. Was Chavez playing a game with them? Would he call back later with more demands? Or had he changed his mind?

  “Hello.”

  The voice was slightly muffled, probably due to either equipment or a network flaw. Surely Chavez wasn’t trying to disguise his voice. It didn’t matter, though.

  “Doctor, this is Agent Lang. Let’s finalize the details and get this transfer made.”

  “And we are in agreement on what I suggested?”

  “Let’s say we can put our hands on fifty thousand dollars tonight. We’ll talk about the balance you want when we’re face to face.” Lang looked at his notes. “We have to have the RP-78 within the next hour. You know how important giving it on time is.”

  “Actually, there’s no hurry. In our small study, the medication was often administered as much as two hours late, and sometimes more than that. After the first few doses, it didn’t seem to matter that much.”

  That was good. Lang relaxed a bit as his fears of the time constraint eased. “Nevertheless, let’s set up a meet so I can give you the money and you can turn over the drug.”

  “What do you propose?”

  “The Foundation Board will provide fifty thousand dollars for you but insists that you personally hand the drug over to me before I give you the money.”

  Lang noticed Warren’s eyebrows go up, but he didn’t want to stop and explain.

  “Agent Lang, I’m sure you’re trustworthy, but in my home country we’ve learned to be suspicious of police and others with authority. I’d feel more comfortable if you rewarded me with the cash, after which I told you where to find the drug.”

  About five minutes into the conversation, a police officer tiptoed into the room and placed a note on the table. Can’t triangulate. He’s in a car, moving at a high rate of speed. Goes from cell tower to cell tower too quickly.

  Lang cursed under his breath. The negotiations went on for another ten minutes, but at the end of that time Chavez had agreed to meet him at Reverchon Park in a half hour and make the exchange there. “The place I described is wide open,” Lang said. “You can confirm I’m alone. It will still be daylight, and that’s good, because I need to take a cell phone picture of you handing over the drug. That’s the only way the Board will authorize payment.”

  “I still don’t like that.”

  “I’ll explain it when I see you.” Lang scrabbled on the desk for his notes, and they fell to the floor. “But we need that RP-whatever . . . the drug.”

  “I’ll see you in twenty-five minutes . . . alone,” Chavez said. Then the line went dead.

  ***

  Rachel sat on her bed, enjoying the sensation of breathing through her nose and mouth. Her tracheotomy tube had been removed only recently, but with closure of the residual defect with butterfly strips, the hole in her neck had already almost healed over. A small adhesive bandage covering the site was the only external evidence of what she’d experienced.

  The door to her room opened, and Rachel turned so that she sat with her legs hanging off the side of the bed. What were Josh and Allison doing here again? “Not that I’m unhappy to have you both visit twice in one evening, but I’m betting something’s up. What is it?”

  Allison looked at Josh, but remained silent. Finally, he answered. “Nothing, really. As I said before, Allison is giving me a ride home. We’re just finally getting away, and I wanted to stop by one more time.”

  “Ordinarily, I’d accept that explanation, but I’ve learned to read you pretty well,” Rachel said. “My advice is never to play poker, especially with me. You’re hiding something. So what is it? What aren’t you telling me?”

  “Allison here suggested that perhaps Dr. Lambert left something that would help me understand why I was chosen to take over the care of David Madison. I told her that made all this sound like a novel, and—”

  “And she pointed out that’s exactly what it sounds like,” Rachel said. “And she’s right. So, where are you going to look for this message?”

  “Since Allison is giving me a ride home, she suggested we stop by the clinic and both look through Ben Lambert’s office. I doubt that we’ll find—”

  “I’m coming with you,” Rachel said. She slid off the bed and opened the room’s tiny closet. “Where are my clothes?”

  “When you went into quarantine, most of them were incinerated,” Allison said. “But you can’t come with us.”

  “I’m going stir-crazy here in this room,” Rachel said. She looked at Allison, guessing that she’d be more sympathetic than Josh. “Please, please go to the nurses’ locker room in surgery and bring me a scrub dress. Maybe the loafers I had on when I was admitted are still here.”

  “That’s—,” Josh started to say.

  “Please,” Rachel said. “Let me go with you.”

  “It’s okay with me so long as we bring her right back here,” Allison said. When Josh nodded his grudging approval, she said, “I’ll be right back with a scrub dress. I’ll try to borrow a pair of rubber clogs for her to wear, too.”

  “Why would you insist on going with us?” Josh asked Rachel after Allison had left.

  “Because I’ve been right in the middle of this whole thing since I left for South America with Madison’s expedition. Because I was one of the people who tried to revive Ben Lambert when he died. Because I’ve had an infection that took me to death’s door until you managed to figure out how to save me.” She drew herself up to her full five feet six inches. “So if you’re looking for something to explain what’s going on, I think I should be a part of it.”

  ***

  “I don’t like this. We’re too far away.”

  Jerry Lang heard the words clearly through his earpiece. Keeping his lips as immobile as those of an accomplished ventriloquist, he spoke into the microphone concealed under the lapel of his jacket. “This is the only way not to spook Chavez. You can be here in less than a minute, but it has to look like I’m alone.”

  He squirmed in a vain attempt to get more comfortable on the wooden bleacher seat. Lang sat on the bottom row along the third base side of the Reverchon Park baseball diamond. Often there was a high school or pick-up game in progress, but today the area around him was deserted, partly because there were no games scheduled for that Wednesday afternoon, in part because the rain that had fallen for most of the day was continuing in the form of a light shower.

  Lang had changed out of his usual suit into jeans, a dark blue tee shirt, and a Land’s End waterproof jacket. His Texas Rangers baseball cap was pulled low over his eyes, not only to shield his face from the rain but also to make it more difficult to read his expression.

  “Here he come
s,” Lang almost whispered as a car pulled up and joined his own vehicle in an otherwise empty parking lot.

  “Ready,” Warren replied.

  “Ready,” came the response of the second team.

  Chavez wore brown slacks, a white dress shirt open at the neck, and a tan windbreaker. His head was bare. He looked left and right as he hurried to join Lang.

  “Can we get this done?” Chavez asked as soon as he sat down. “The longer this goes on, the more it reminds me of something that might happen back in my native country.”

  “I have the money in my pocket,” Lang replied. “And you have the medicine?”

  Chavez reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a tiny, unlabeled vial containing a small amount of a clear, faintly amber liquid.

  “First, I have to take a cell phone picture of you and the drug,” Lang said. He pulled a cell phone from his jacket pocket. “Hang on a second.”

  “This is ridiculous,” Chavez said, but he moved his hand to display the vial next to his face.

  Lang aimed the phone at Chavez. Sure hope this works. He took a deep breath, held it, and pressed the button. The cloud of gas released by the device was brief, but appeared to achieve the desired effect. The doctor slumped forward, forcing Lang to lunge to rescue the vial before Chavez tumbled to the ground.

  “He’s down,” Lang yelled into his microphone. Not far away, car engines started and tires squealed as police responded.

  Warren was first on the scene, followed by another car from which emerged two officers, one male, one female. While the two officers handcuffed the still stunned Chavez and drunk-walked him to their patrol car, Warren said, “I thought devices like the one you just used only existed in James Bond films.”

  Lang managed a smile. “Where do you think they got the idea? We had them first.”

  Warren pointed to the vial Lang held in his hand. “So, is that stuff really worth a million dollars?”

  “Maybe, maybe not,” Lang responded, “depending on whether it’s really the drug we need or just colored water.” He stood slowly. “And, of course, if it’s genuine, we have to persuade Chavez to tell us where the rest of it is.”

  19

  Dr. Ben Lambert’s office at the Preston Medical Clinic had been closed and locked since shortly after the doctor’s death, but Josh had no problem convincing a custodian to unlock it. “I might be moving in here,” he said

  Rachel stood with Josh Pearson and Allison Neeves in the middle of the office and looked around her. “Do you have any idea what we’re looking for, or is this a fishing expedition?” she asked.

  “I guess the latter,” Josh said. “We may come up empty, but I’m looking for something that can tell us why Ben chose me as his successor if something should happen to him. Did he suspect he might not make it back alive from the South America trip? I don’t know—I suppose I’m depending on our recognizing a clue if we see it.”

  The obvious place to begin the search was the desk, and Josh started there. Allison began pulling textbooks from the shelves that lined one wall of the office, shaking them to dislodge any loose papers before replacing each volume. Rachel went through the file cabinet that stood in the corner.

  After fifteen minutes, they’d discovered nothing except that Ben Lambert hadn’t considered dusting his office to be a major priority.

  “All I’m finding in these books are a few notes, most of them a year or two old,” Allison said.

  “The file cabinet is filled with itineraries and receipts from professional trips, his continuing education certificates, some professional correspondence. Nothing that tells us what we want to know,” Rachel said.

  “And the desk drawers are almost empty,” Josh said. “I suppose I could have guessed that as soon as I started searching and found none of them locked. You’d think that if Dr. Lambert had something important, he’d at least keep it in a locked drawer.”

  Rachel opened the closet door and pulled aside the three white coats hanging there. “No, I’ll bet he put it here,” she called. “There’s a small safe on the floor of the closet.”

  “Why would he need a safe in his office?” Josh said as he and Allison crowded in behind Rachel. “You’d think he’d keep anything really valuable in a safety deposit box.”

  “Or a safe at home,” Allison said. “But what would he keep here?”

  The safe was a squat metal box, perhaps a foot and a half wide, about that tall, and perhaps two feet deep. The lock was controlled by a numeric keypad. Rachel figured the safe was not only secure from break-ins, but fireproof as well. “I would guess that what Lambert has in the safe is something he wanted to safeguard, but didn’t want his wife to see,” she said.

  “If we can get a look inside, we may be on our way to that clue we were talking about,” Josh said.

  “Does anyone have an idea about what he might use as a combination?” Rachel asked.

  “Maybe it’s his birthday or wedding anniversary,” Josh said. “I guess we could try the Internet or maybe the personnel office. I don’t think I want to call his wife and ask her, though.”

  “I have an idea,” Rachel said. She went back to the filing cabinet, pulled out the top drawer, and shoved the papers in it back until she could see the bottom. Nothing. She repeated the procedure with the middle drawer, and sure enough, there was a piece of white paper taped to the bottom front of the file drawer. On it were six digits she was willing to bet represented the combination to the safe. “Try these numbers,” she called to Josh, who was kneeling in the closet, still fiddling with the keypad.

  In a moment, the three were crowded together for a look at the inside of the safe. Most of the interior was taken up with hanging file folders in a rolling rack. Josh pulled it forward and flipped through the tabs. “Here’s his current narcotics license, his most current Maintenance of Certification from the American Board of Internal Medicine, some other important papers I guess he wanted to protect in case of fire.” He pulled the rack out further and gave a low whistle. “Here’s something.”

  “What?” Rachel asked.

  “This last file folder—it doesn’t have anything written on the tab.” Josh reached in and extracted several pieces of paper. “This is about a bank account in the Cayman Islands.”

  “I remember Ben saying he and his wife vacationed there last year,” Dr. Neeves said.

  “Well, he must have made a note of this bank while he was there,” Josh replied. “There’s only been one deposit to the account. It was made about a month ago.”

  “How large?” Rachel asked.

  Josh scanned the pages he held. “Four weeks ago, the account was opened with a deposit of half a million dollars.”

  “Can that transaction be traced?” Dr. Neeves asked.

  “Maybe the police or the Secret Service can shake loose the information,” Josh said. He closed the file drawer. “I think we’d better tell them what we’ve found and let them get a warrant to do an official search.”

  Rachel pointed to the small shelf above the file folders. “Is there something on that shelf? Something shoved all the way to the back?”

  Josh reached in and, using his handkerchief, extracted two small, maroon plastic-covered booklets with a complex design stamped in gold on the front. He held them up so Rachel and Allison could read the writing on the covers: British Passport Cayman Islands.

  “What are the names on the passports?” Dr. Neeves asked.

  Josh eased the passports open. “One is in the name of Byron Lester,” he said. “But the picture is Ben Lambert’s.”

  “And the other?” Rachel asked.

  “I don’t recognize the name, but the picture certainly isn’t of Ruth Lambert, unless it was taken when she was twenty years younger and had red hair.”

  “Wow,” Dr. Neeves said. “This certainly raises some questions.”

  “And this raises more,” Josh said. He reached to the back of the shelf, and once more using his handkerchief to avoid leaving fingerprin
ts, pulled out a vial labeled Tetanus-Diphtheria Toxoid. “I think this is the vial from which you and Madison received your immunizations. And unless I miss my guess, what it holds isn’t the active toxoid. I imagine it’s sterile saline.”

  “I don’t understand,” Rachel said. “This is evidence about Lambert’s role in the plot. Why didn’t he get rid of it as soon as it served its purpose?”

  “I imagine Dr. Lambert put it here for safekeeping, intending to dispose of it as soon as he got back from the trip,” Josh said. “Unfortunately for him, he returned in a coffin.”

  ***

  The small room at police headquarters was stuffy because the air conditioning unit had gone out earlier that day. Warren was actually happy about that, because if he was sweating, he knew Dr. Andres Chavez had to be even more uncomfortable.

  Warren looked to his left and gave a small nod to Jerry Lang, who returned the gesture of affirmation. The detective reached forward and punched a key on the small recorder sitting on the table in front of him. “This is Detective Stan Warren, conducting an interview with Dr. Andres Chavez. Also present is Special Agent Jerry Lang of the Secret Service.” He added the date and time and once more read Chavez his Miranda rights. “Doctor, do you understand these rights?”

  The doctor nodded, and Warren said, “Please give a verbal response.”

  “Yes, I understand them, but I maintain that I have done nothing wrong.” Despite being in an interrogation room, one wrist handcuffed to a metal loop in the center of the table, Chavez was the very picture of calm. His guayabera—the short-sleeved South American shirt he wore—showed not the slightest trace of perspiration.

  Warren’s coat hung on the back of his chair, revealing his empty shoulder holster. His tie was at half-mast. Lang still wore his coat, and Warren wondered idly if the Secret Service agent slept in a suit. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him wear anything else. Oh, wait. He was in casual clothes when he met Chavez . . . and I almost didn’t recognize him.