by John Farrow
“Some people are passionate. Others have an office on the top floor.”
“Passion can be an asset in our line of work, no matter what floor you’re on.”
“Really?” she responded dully, still sceptical.
“The world’s confronted with a crisis, Lucy. In Africa alone, millions die every year. Here, thousands.” He gestured while he spoke, stabbing at the air with his fingers, ardent. “We’re the people—me, you, Camille, others—who’ve been charged with finding a cure, and finding it fast.”
“Well,” Lucy attested, taken aback, “you—maybe. Others—perhaps. But not me. All I do at Hillier-Largent is separate plasma from blood.”
“You could play a more important role, if you wanted.”
“You mean, if I left Hillier-Largent and worked at BioLogika?” She assumed that whatever job he had in mind included stepping out of her clothes.
He swatted the notion of changing jobs aside. “Here. Hillier-Largent. Where is not important. Just join the fight. Save people’s lives, Lucy.”
She was tempted to blurt out, “What do I have to take off to save these lives?” but instead she asked, “How?” The word was no sooner uttered than she realized that she had both created an opening for him and altered the direction of her life.
When Lucy departed BioLogika later that day with Camille, she nudged her new friend with an elbow. “Are you sleeping with him?”
“Well, duh, wouldn’t you?” Camille hadn’t dressed up. She was wearing a white blouse and blue business slacks.
“Not if he’s sleeping with my best friend already.”
“I got him first. At least, I’m first in line after his wife.”
‘That’s okay. He’s not my type.”
“Yeah, right”
Some weeks later, Camille informed Lucy that her relationship with Honigwachs had ended. She offered no details. After that, Lucy wondered if she might be his next move, but it never materialized, although her work with the special project—which she considered to be fas special project, although Honigwachs was careful never to attest to personal involvement in any direct way—intensified.
Camille was Lucy’s immediate superior and her principal contact. Sometimes she talked to Randall Largent about general things, but when a project was underway her marching orders came through Camille. How, and via what source, Camille received her information was not known to Lucy, but she accepted the importance of a covert chain of command. All part of the fun. She accepted that she was not to know what even Camille seemed to know, ever, and she was not to ask questions. She had her job to do, an important one integral to their operation—administer advanced, untested drug therapies to the ill—but how they came into Camille’s hands, and subsequently hers, had to remain a secret.
What lab prepared the drugs, which scientists were assigned to the project, who in the administration of BioLogika or Hillier-Largent Global was aware that drugs were to be tested on humans—for reasons of security, the information was privileged, and she was not in the loop. Similarly, she presumed that many of the people higher up the ladder were totally unaware that she was the one who undertook the distribution south of the border. The right hand was not to know the business of the left. So be it.
Naturally, she and Camille made assumptions about the chain of command, and they knew that Werner Honigwachs and Randall Largent were involved. And yet, as far as Lucy knew, there was no direct communication or shared activity between the men and the women. Anyone tracing the activities of the women would be unable to follow any direct line to the men, and any investigation from the top down would similarly find a muddied trail.
Now the truck was just about finished. Lucy wanted plywood flooring installed, as walking on the corrugated aluminium had proven awkward. A proper floor would also benefit those who arrived on wheelchairs or on gurneys.
While Camille was inspecting the refurbished vehicle, a mischievous thought seemed to cross her mind, and she smiled in an insinuating manner.
“What?” Lucy demanded.
“Do you like this guy?” The truck was parked outside. They were shivering under their coats in the cold.
“Who?”
“Who. The King of England, who. Andy!”
“I like him,” Lucy grudgingly admitted. “I’m not crazy about him. He’s fun. He’s—I don’t know—”
“What?”
Lucy shrugged. “Private. You know? Secretive. We’ve made out at my place, but he’s never taken me to his place. He won’t even tell me where he lives. I asked if he was hiding a wife and kids at home. He tells me no, only a mother. Camille! He’s been to jail, but he lives with his mother! Weird, you know?”
“Good in bed?” Camille pressed her.
Lucy blew out a gust of air.
“Really?”
“He’s handled women before. He’s rough. Use your imagination. Trust me, Andy will be done with me, sooner or later, he’s that kind of guy. When the time comes, take him for a trial run. I won’t mind.”
“I’m off the market.” Camille let her voice trail away.
Lucy gave her a long look. “You’re getting serious with your cop buddy?”
Camille’s smile confirmed the assessment. “I know what you’re thinking. Charlie’s the runt of the litter, but he’s a sweet guy. That counts, right? He’s good with my kid. Carole wants him to be her dad. Maybe I do, too.”
Lucy kissed her cheek. “I hope it works out.”
They both opted to jump down from the truck-bed rather than use the tailgate’s hydraulic lift, and together they strolled away from the garage. Lucy had lent her car to Andy for the day and had phoned her friend for a lift. Of the two, Camille was older by about five years, and she was the stern one, taut and circumspect, with her short brown hair and chiselled bone structure. Lucy’s loose gait and long, bouncy black hair announced her as the free spirit. Whatever their disparities, their zeal for this project united them.
“How’s your end coming along?” Lucy asked, as she climbed into the car.
“Good! We’ve run up a solid booking. You’ll be in New York, Philly, Baltimore for sure. We’re still working on Newark and Atlanta.”
“Newark I can do without.”
“People get sick and die in crummy cities, too,” Camille pointed out. “Anyway, I got the word today. You leave Monday night.”
“What? Yikes! That soon?”
Camille started the ignition of her Mazda 626 and spoke in a hushed voice, as though to muffle her secret below the engine’s rumble. “The cocktails will be ready tomorrow, Saturday at the latest. The code name for the project is Darkling Star. Put Sunday aside for orientation. I had a look. It’s complicated this time.”
“How come?”
“Different strokes for different folks. Dosages, combinations change. It all depends on the stage of the illness. You’ll be playing doctor this time around.”
Lucy nodded, determination firing her eyes. “I can do that.”
Camille smiled. “We know you can,” she assured her.
“We?” Lucy asked.
Oddly, her friend seemed flustered. “You know,” she said. “Everybody.”
“Who’s everybody?” Lucy grilled her. The one thing about all the secrecy that irritated her was not understanding Camille’s importance to the operation. Was she merely an intermediary, a dutiful soldier like her, or did she have a hand in the strategic planning? Usually, Camille came across as a peer, and certainly she presented herself that way, but at times it was obvious that her knowledge of the entire operation was at least somewhat more thorough and perhaps more intimate than Lucy’s. Camille had initially recruited her, evidence that she was entrusted with sensitive responsibilities. She had been sexually involved with Honigwachs, and maybe still was, despite her announcement to the contrary. Lucy was not boundlessly curious about these issues, but they were ongoing irritants, and she was a tad jealous that after all this time, after all the risks she had taken for their project
, she was not permitted to know things that Camille seemed to take for granted. She felt that Camille betrayed confidences sometimes, to her, and that if she were given a higher station she’d be better at keeping secrets than her pal.
“You know.”
“No, I don’t. Who’s everybody?”
Camille looked directly into her friend’s eyes.
“Werner knows I’m going? He’s on top of this?”
“Lucy—”
“Who else? Who’s everybody?”
“Randall Largent,” Camille said in an agitated tone, trying to come up with names.
“Of course, but who else?” Lucy pressed. While, intellectually, she accepted the need for secrecy, she also believed that she should be trusted more.
“Andy.”
“You talked to Andy? He thinks I’ll be a good doctor?”
“Lucy—”
“What?”
“You know how it is.”
“I don’t, actually. Andy knows more than me now? Explain it to me, Camille.”
Camille closed her eyes and gave them a gentle rub with the thumb and forefinger of her right hand. “Lucy, if there’s something I can’t tell you, then there’s something I can’t tell you. Just leave it at that.”
Lucy thought about it. She nodded, reluctantly conceding ground. Truth be told, secrecy was one of the seductive attributes of the operation. She was a sucker for clandestine thrills. She was, after all, the point man, or point woman, the first one to put herself on the front lines. The only one, really, who stuck her neck all the way out. She’d have to continue to satisfy herself with that. “Okay. Let’s go.”
“Oh, now don’t be pissed off.”
“I’m not pissed off. Let’s go, all right?”
“Lucy—”
“Drive!”
Five days later, Monday night into Tuesday, January 11, 1999
They had no choice but to drive by night. Once again, Luc picked Lucy up outside her place, as the route along the back roads successfully avoided weigh stations, truck stops, and any significant police presence that might compromise the anonymity of their vehicle. The truck had a good solid feel on the road. Its prior use, transporting cigarettes, had put little strain on the suspension, which was sound, or the brakes, which were trustworthy. Yet it raitled.
Neither Luc nor Lucy talked very much on the way down to the border. Lucy was tired. As usual, she had worked through the weekend, testing decongestants on cold-sufferers this time. The lab rats had rested all day Sunday, though, which had given her the opportunity to study the regime for the drug cocktails she was taking south. That morning, after a breakfast of coffee and donuts, she’d discharged the sniffly, sinus-clogged lab rats, and during the day she’d catnapped amid bouts of worry and intervals of study.
Luc remembered the route through Indian land down to the waterside. The instructions were different for a night crossing by truck. Of all vehicles, a truck was the most likely to be intercepted on the ice by border patrols, so it had to move fast, lights extinguished, and aim for a pale-blue beacon on the opposite shore. No one except law enforcement had any business on the river at night, and therefore any presence had to be outrun or, in extreme circumstances, run over.
Lights out, Luc waited on the shore. He could just make out the pale blue beacon. “Don’t run anybody down,” Lucy whispered to him.
“I don’t need for my life to end in prison.”
“These Indians just talk tough. There’s no need to run anybody down.”
“I do my best not to. If they chase me, I will run. If they shoot me, I will die.”
“Nobody’s asking you to be a freaking martyr. Just get us across the ice.”
“You are ready?” Luc put the floor-shifter in gear.
“As ready as I’ll ever be.”
“You can see the blue light?”
“Yeah. You? You’re lined up.”
“I see it for now. Let’s go.”
This time, he understood about speed. A crescent moon appeared and vanished amid scudding clouds, shining on the silver truck whenever it appeared. Luc drove hard, fast, his own vision hampered by the scant light, his eyes fixed on the opposite shore and the beacon.
“How fast?” he asked, not daring to take his eyes off the ice-road.
“Sixty. Sixty-five.” As was the case with his old car, the American truck recorded speed in miles per hour.
The truck continued to accelerate. He could feel the drifts when he went off course, but at least the heavy vehicle was not thrown around by patches of snow. Soon he could feel the worn ruts on the ice and recognize a change of sound if he edged too close to the perimeter.
“Seventy-five, Luc. Oh, Luc. Eighty. God help us.”
Luc hit ninety before it was time to begin slowing down, and he worked through the gears and was doing only about thirty as he charged up the ramp on the opposite shore. He kept the lights off through the dark woods, wending his way up the trail, and stopped at the guardhouse.
Brad came out and stepped onto the running board as Luc rolled down the window. “Hey, Lucy. How are you?”
“Good. You?”
“Super.”
“You’re working the night shift.”
“Doing my part for my people, Lucy.”
“Is that what they call crime these days?”
Brad cleared his throat. “I’d like to see what’s in the back of your truck.”
“We made an agreement. That’s not part of it.”
“Agreements change.”
“No dice.”
“Then turn back.”
They couldn’t see one another well, silhouettes in the dim light.
“Don’t do this, Brad.”
“Just so you know, it’s not my idea. I got orders. I got to check you out.”
In the overall scheme of things, it was not that big a deal. A matter of security and a matter of pride, for both Lucy and the Warriors. Lucy took her time, but she already knew she’d relent. “All right. Come see what you won’t understand.”
Beakers, burners, test tubes and test-tube racks, test-tube rack shakers, fluorescent lights, a fridge, cots, enough file folders to keep a small bank in order and row upon row of glass jars filled with what seemed to be colored beads.
“What are you planning to do, buy back Manhattan?”
“Very funny, Brad. You’re hilarious.”
“Explain it. Why hijack a truck and kidnap the driver—in case you didn’t know, those are the charges—just so you can drive around with a stash of beads? You could be giving us Indians a bad name here.”
Having come around to the rear of the truck with her, Luc was determined to let Lucy do the talking. He didn’t understand anything anyway.
“They’re not beads,” Lucy told Brad. “They’re pills. Drugs.”
“You’re into that shit? I’m surprised at you.”
“Not those kinds of drugs. They’re not recreational, Brad. They’re medical.”
“Yeah? If you say so. So what are you up to?”
“Saving lives. I’m on a mission of mercy. Other people suffer, too, you know.”
“I don’t get it.”
“You’re not supposed to,” Lucy warned him.
Brad kept looking around the truck as though one more clue might clarify everything. “I have to explain it to other people, Lucy. Right now, I can’t.” She saw that he was asking for help.
“These drugs aren’t legal, Brad. Not yet, anyway. The government is holding up approval, pending tests. You’re an Indian, you know about the government. I’m not waiting for the Minister of Health to wipe his bum while men and women die of AIDS. I’m going to help them right now. Can you explain that?”
Brad nodded. “I think so. Maybe.”
“Try. There’s nothing in it for the Warriors except what they already got, the smokes. Now can we go through?”
“Yeah,” Brad said, suddenly subdued. “You’re on your way.”
Luc locked
the tailgate again while Lucy hugged herself warm in the cab, then he climbed in beside her and Brad waved them through. The truck lumbered up the snowy incline that was cut through the trees, slipping a little on the icy patches, gaining traction wherever the rocks were bare.
Later that day, Tuesday, January 11, 1999
From a distance, smokestacks exhaling the dawn’s grey haze, the spectre of New York City was an impressive, odd sight for travellers just down from the state’s north woods, the buttress of skyscrapers an unreal illusion on the grainy horizon.
Lucy asked her driver to pull over. “Let’s wait for the sun,” she said.
Later, she asked, “Isn’t it beautiful, Luc?” But Luc was taking advantage of the respite to sleep, and he stirred uncomfortably behind the wheel.
“Beautiful?” He stretched and yawned.
“I know. Beauty’s hard to measure. We’ve come through rolling hills, and they were beautiful, but this, too, is beautiful.”
“Like the personality of an ugly girl is beautiful,” Luc proposed.
Lucy was too baffled by what he said to bother figuring out what it meant. “It looks nice, Luc.”
“A bunch of buildings?”
“With the sun coming up, and the ocean in the distance, and the lights of the city clicking on and off and the lines of traffic on the bridges. Luc! Look!”
“A bunch of buildings,” he grumbled. “I thought you Indians liked nature.”
“Got us figured out, huh?”
“Don’t get mad. It’s just what I thought.”
She gazed at his profile then. He didn’t see things as she did, and why should he? He had illness in his short-term future, possibly death. For him, the escarpment of buildings might evoke prison walls, not a new, unexplored world. She was young. He was middle-aged, without a future. She was out here to save lives. Luc didn’t have a clue what he was doing with her. Naturally, he saw things differently.
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to upset you, Luc. I’ve been catnapping while you’ve had a long drive.”