by Jay Begler
“Just so I understand the time frames, how long to develop it and how long to test it.” Morales didn’t particularly care about testing, except to see that the drug worked in over twenty percent of the users. If the people who took the drug became addicted and didn’t die, that was enough for him. Testing whether drugs were lethal was routine for the organization. He knew that would only take a few months.
“Well, they go hand in hand. My guess is that if we pulled out all the stops, brought in some top researchers and added staff, maybe six months to a year. Then, on an accelerated basis, it would take two plus years to test. Why do you ask?”
“I think it’s important for my pharmaceutical investors to know this,” he lied
“Thank you, Hector, but why would you want to help me?”
“Part of my helping you and Daniel would be for your father’s sake, to whom I owe a lot. Part of it would be financial. If you are successful, the drug you develop would be very important and I would be an investor in a company that might own an interest in a miracle drug; the payout would be enormous.
Before she could continue, a chime showing an incoming text rang. She looked and said, “It’s from Daniel. He wrapped up his meeting and is wondering if he could join us for dessert.” Morales thought, “Shit,” but he replied with an upbeat “Terrific.”
The trio sat sharing a Chateau Yquem and chatting initially about their lives. At a point where it was apparent that they would end their evening, Rebecca said, “In broad strokes, I’ve told Hector about our situation and what we think we can accomplish. He thinks he may have some investment resources that could help us.”
Daniel replied, “Hector that would be a lifesaver. May I ask who they might be?”
“There is one group, Rio Sonora Pharmaceutical.”
“I’ve read about them, a large manufacturer of basic generic products like aspirins, and now have received a license from the Mexican government to manufacture Amoxicillin.”
Morales said, “Well, I wouldn’t call it large, at least not by American standards. The physical plant is on the ground floor and about 80,000 square feet. We probably will need to use some of the second floor for the Amoxicillin. Right now, we have a small research facility and library on the second floor, and the third floor. The top floor, is our cafeteria and some administrative office. It’s modest, but efficient.” He thought he’d like to see the expression on their faces if he said, “But underground, there are six floors, each 100,000 square feet, where we make heroin, ecstasy, crystal meth and counterfeit Fentanyl.”
Instead, he said, “The Company is now actively looking for new molecules. And I’m thinking that testing your molecule in Mexico will be faster and far cheaper. If successful, you could attract many more investors.”
Daniel, excited and pleased, replied. “Now I know why you are such a successful businessman. When we see each other tomorrow, I’ll bring you all the information you’ll need.”
As he walked back to the St. Regis, Morales replayed the evening. The revelation about the potential use of Clarity excited him. If Aztec could make the drug work and made it highly addictive, it would be the answer to the problem facing the Cartel. It would blunt the impact made by the augmented AR technology, perhaps totally. To achieve this goal, however, he would need Rebecca to supervise the development of the drug. But how could that happen? He walked through the door of the St. Regis, and whispered under his breath, “Holy shit.” The Cartel would have to abduct Rebecca. He entered the hotel’s elevator, put the key-card in for the concierge floor, smiled and said, “Brilliant.”
Shapiro had a third heart attack early the following morning. No one at this point regarded him as “lucky.” When Morales entered his private hospital room, he saw an oxygen mask covering most of Shapiro’s face, but even with the aid of oxygen his breathing was labored. Shapiro lifted an arm whose skin seemed to sag, and waived Morales towards him. When he spoke, it was if he had water in his mouth. At first Morales could not hear him, then a feint and gargled, “Tell everyone to leave the room.”
Morales stood and went to Rebecca, touched her arm and whispered, “Rebecca, your father asked to speak to me privately.”
When the room was empty, Shapiro said in gasped breaths, “Adjust my bed so I can sit up.” As the back of his bed raised Shapiro to a sitting position, Morales said softly, “How are you feeling?”
Shapiro laughed and coughed at the same time and replied, “Like someone who is dying, but I’m ready. Hector, I didn’t ask everyone to leave the room for a confessional. I wanted to tell you that when I returned from the meeting where Isabella told us about digital heroin, I looked through most of the research by Rebecca’s company. I think what they developed so far will be the key that will unlock the door for your super-drug.”
“I thought the same thing myself when I had dinner with Rebecca, but have no idea of how we can accomplish that.”
“Obviously, the best person for that would be Rebecca. She has more knowledge about the drug than anyone else, but I don’t want her mixed up in drugs.” He reached and took hold of Hector’s arm and pulled on it, raising himself slightly, “Promise me Hector, that you won’t tempt her to work on the drug for the organization.”
“You have my word.” Morales continued the sentence as an unspoken thought, “at least until you pass.”
“Now, I need to lie back down. You go. Goodbye, Hector. I wish you well.”
“And you.” Then Morales did something uncharacteristic. He kissed Shapiro on the head and walked to the door, and as he did so shed a few tears. He tried to remember the last time he did that and thought it was the time he saw Rebecca getting on the helicopter with her father.
Rebecca and her twin daughters stood just outside of Shapiro’s room. After some pleasantries and her daughters walked off, he said, “It’s remarkable that one looks just the way you did when we met at the hacienda.”
“I wish I were back there now.”
He wondered if she meant the present or the past.
Daniel greeted them. He was holding a small leather pouch bearing his company’s logo. “Hector, in this pouch are thumb drives that contain all of our research and all the research conducted by Actalmar. It’s extremely proprietary and I’m embarrassed to ask you this, but would you mind signing a confidentiality agreement?”
Daniel removed a two-page agreement from the folder and handed to Morales. Rebecca felt an undercurrent of anger provoked by the request but before she could protest, Morales responded, “I fully understand. If our positions were reversed, I would request the same thing.”
He signed the agreement, looked at his watch and said, “Sorry, I need to catch my plane. I’ll let you know what the hospital and the pharmaceutical company have to say in two months after they go through all the material. I think that it will take them that long to analyze your data. Can you hold on for that long?”
Daniel answered, “We’ll be ok until we hear from you.”
“Good. I hope I can bring you some good news, but now I really have to go. Keep me posted on your father, Rebecca.”
Rebecca insisted on waiting with Morales outside the hospital until his Uber driverless cab, five minutes away according to his iPhone, arrived. When it did, she said, “Thank you Hector for your interest. I’ll let you know about my father.” He hugged her, kissed her on the cheek, took in the slight aroma of her skin which on reflection he thought was even more evocative than her My Sin, and entered into the Uber car. He had no doubts about the plan he was formulating. The Cartel would abduct Rebecca and get her to work on the super drug. He would have her back in his life permanently, though he knew that success on this score was probably more problematic than creating the drug. Still, he thought, “It’s now or never.”
Seventeen
•
The Contrarian
Headed up by a PHD and former professor of pharmacology and known only as Johnson, the Cartel’s research and development department was simil
ar in structure to those found in large public pharmaceutical companies. Two hundred scientists, physicians, chemists and pharmacologists all with strong academic credentials and work experience comprised its core group. Under Johnson’s leadership the Cartel developed several new types of illegal drugs, including a new ultra-cheap form of heroin, widely distributed in the United States at low prices in impoverished neighborhoods. This accomplishment prompted Johnson to say proudly, “We’ve become the Wal-Mart of illegal drugs.” Counterfeit pharmaceuticals such as Fentanyl, ten times more potent and lethal than the original version, were the fastest growing part of his department.
When Morales returned from Manhattan, he and Isabella met with Johnson and a handpicked team of twenty of Johnson’s best people. Their purpose was to give Johnson and his team a pep talk and to have the team determine whether it was possible to create a super drug by modifying Rebecca’s molecule. Isabella explained the problem posed by digital heroin.”
Exactly two months later, they met again. Morales cut to the chase immediately, “So, Johnson, what do you and your group think?”
“Well, Rebecca’s and Actalmar’s research is very impressive. We don’t know for certain if we can make a breakthrough and get it to be effective say in over twenty to thirty percent of the users, but we believe that we have at least the slightest ghost of a chance of being successful. This assumes that Rebecca is supervising the development of the drug, and I rather doubt that she would willingly do so.”
Morales replied, “Don’t concern yourself with Rebecca’s willingness on this project; that’s my problem.”
Johnson’s conclusion was what he had hoped for. It gave him a rationale for the abduction of Rebecca. Patting Johnson on the back, he said, “Thank you, Johnson. Both of us appreciate the speed at which you attacked this problem and thank your entire research team for us.”
Johnson replied, “Of course,” but then an idea struck him. “Hector, perhaps you should recruit a few of Rebecca’s American colleagues, people she knows and respects to work on the project. That might give her a greater comfort level.”
“That,” Isabella interjected, “is an excellent idea. I will look into it.”
A month later, Morales and Isabella met with Aztec’s directors and several high-level functionaries in the Cartel, one who would supervise Rebecca’s abduction, and one charged with framing Daniel for her murder. Morales opted to framing Daniel rather than killing him. He reasoned that the conviction of Daniel for Rebecca’s murder would end attempts by law enforcement to find her. The third person had the most challenging task of all, that of turning Rebecca into someone who would willingly help the Cartel develop its wonder drug.
Morales opened with: “Sadly, we learned this morning that at 2:30, our dear friend and colleague, Meyer Shapiro, passed quietly in his sleep. He was a great man and we will all miss him. Now that he’s gone, we can take steps to abduct Rebecca.”
The man in charge of the abduction team made a brief presentation showing where and when the abduction would take place and the safeguards in place to avoid detection. Morales turned to the second man and nodded. The second man, using an app on his iPhone, projected several photographs onto the wall.
“These are photographs of Daniel and Rebecca. Before we go further, I want you to watch this video. It’s a presentation Daniel and Rebecca made a few months ago to potential investors. Listen carefully to what they say and how they say it. Focus on what their voices sound like and the manner in which they speak. I will only play about two minutes from each presentation. The first is Daniel, and the second is Rebecca.”
After the video, the man said, “And now I want you to meet two of our chameleons. Samantha and Gordon, please come forward.” A man and woman walked from the back of the room. Their resemblance to Daniel and Rebecca was so uncanny that Morales said spontaneously, “My God!” His view reflected the sentiment of all those present. Gordon, dressed exactly like Daniel was in the video, stood by a lectern and repeated what Daniel had said verbatim. His body language, voice and inflection were identical to Daniel’s. The same held true for Samantha.
The man continued. “Using doubles is often helpful if we want to incriminate someone or embarrass them. Their use here is particularly important. They will be key players in our efforts to create an image of Daniel as delusional, someone who has no memory of things he’s done including murdering his wife. People will testify about meeting our chameleons thinking they are Daniel and Rebecca and Daniel will vehemently deny the meetings occurred. Their testimony will be so compelling that his credibility will be destroyed”
Isabella said, “Excellent. Let’s get started. The sooner the better.”
Morales turned and spoke to a woman standing off to the side. “Louisa, you are undoubtedly the most important person in the room for this project. What if Rebecca refuses to cooperate?”
Louisa Martinez, a PHD in psychology, headed Aztec’s small team of psychologists. Her department had no official name, though when asked, she’d say “it’s the mind games” department.” She and her team manipulated people via various psychological ploys to make them act in ways beneficial to the Cartel. Louisa had the task of turning Rebecca from an unwilling to a willing participant in the development of the super-drug. Morales and the directors knew that she was superbly qualified for this task.
Her PHD thesis, “The Psychological Failures of Abu Ghraib” evoked kudos from her academic peers at Georgetown and caught the interest of the Central Intelligence Agency, who offered Louisa something akin to a research fellowship. She accepted its attractive offer and for the next eight years spent most of her time researching, writing papers and lecturing her colleagues at the Agency on prisoner manipulation. Part of her learning experience was to spend many months in Israel with Mossad observing their techniques on turning prisoners.
At various detention locations, Louisa would observe and occasionally take part in what was sometimes euphemistically called “rough Interrogation.” She soon realized that as important as it was for an operative to fully understand the mindset of the person he or she was manipulating, it was equally important for the Agency to understand the psychological make-up of the operative attempting to turn a prisoner. Her classified paper, The Mind of a Torturer, led to the adoption of a database with psychological profiles of prisoners and operatives, and to a search engine designed to match an operative with the person the Agency was attempting to turn. The Agency referred to the search engine sardonically as “Match.com.”
After eight years with the Agency, she felt that life at the CIA was wearing thin, and though it might have seemed odd to those on the outside, she became bored with the work. Several months after her co-workers gave her a small but lavish birthday party, Louisa decided to ply her skills in the private sector. Fully expecting multiple job offers with lucrative salaries, Louisa sent out over a hundred resumes and only received twelve lukewarm responses. While looking through Craigslist, however, she found a blind advertisement that intrigued her.
The advertisement read: “Interesting, challenging and high paying position for the right person. Work closely with the chief operating officer of a major enterprise. Background in psychology required; some expertise in group motivation and group psychology very helpful. This is a unique opportunity for the right individual. Send us your resume, a recent photograph, and a short description that tells us the essence of who you are, 100 words at most. And, please don’t try to impress us with what you say. We are looking for a very special person. So, please be totally honest about yourself. Send to Job Opportunity, Box 3434, Mexico City.”
Louisa needed far fewer than 100 words to comply with the request: “I am a contrarian, possibly to a fault. When people see good, I often see bad and vice versa. When they see ugly, I see beautiful. I think for myself and always have and always will.” She wondered if her statement seemed too brusque, but two weeks later, she received a voice mail. “Hello, Louisa. My name is Sanford Lazarus of La
zarus Personnel Associates. Thank you for sending your very impressive resume. Would you be available to come in to meet with us early next week? We are on the twenty-fourth floor of HSBC building next to the Angel de la Independencia. If so, please call my secretary, whose contact information is below.”
Louisa was peering out of the floor to ceiling windows of Lazarus’ elegant conference room when she heard a man say, “Louisa, thank you for coming.” She turned to see a distinguished-looking man in his mid-sixties, and a tallish, exceptionally thin, almost gaunt, woman with a sallow complexion. The woman, dressed in a fashionable Chanel suit, was wearing ultra large sun-glasses, and a thick dark veil which made it impossible to discern her features. Lazarus continued, “I’d like you to meet Isabella Morales. She is the chief operating officer of the organization that posted the job and will talk to you about it.” With that, he rose and exited.
Isabella removed her glasses and began the interview. “Louisa, I appreciate that you took the time to come here today. I’m a very straightforward person and say what I feel, and hope for this interview you will be perfectly honest with me as well.”
Louisa replied, “of course.”
“Most people wonder why I wear a veil. They look curiously at me. But you didn’t.”
Louisa’s answer surprised Isabella. “I assumed you covered your face because you don’t want people to see you, possibly because you are disfigured, burned or think you’re ugly.”
There was no tinge of sadness or resignation in Isabella’s reply. She replied, “Louisa, I am quite ugly; some say repulsive.”
Without asking permission and moving so swiftly that Isabella had no time to protest, Louisa lifted her veil and appraised her for just a moment. “I don’t find you ugly at all. You are different looking, that’s all. I find you striking, meaning you stand out. And, as far as the word repulsive, you are the opposite.”