by Robin Cook
Misha put down his soldering iron when he saw who had entered. It was Darko Lebededev, who appeared mildly indisposed, with red-rimmed eyes. He was dressed as usual in a hospital security uniform, as he had been advised to wear on the rare occasions he came calling. Misha made a point of staring at his watch for a beat before speaking in Russian: “Where the hell have you been? I’ve been trying to contact you all fucking morning.”
Darko lowered himself onto a workbench stool next to Misha, wincing, as if he had a headache or a sore back. Like Misha, he spoke in Russian. “It was a late night and a lot of vodka at the Vendue. Leonid and I met up with those Russian babes you people brought over to keep tabs on the two male anesthesiologists. They have been complaining about their charges, claiming they are boring boneheads. Leonid and I felt it was our patriotic duty to show them a proper good time, and a good time it was.”
“According to Sergei Polushin you and Leonid are supposed to be available twenty-four/seven. It is not that we have been overworking you two.”
“I’m here now,” Darko said sardonically. Confident of his reputation and of the demand for his services, he was not about to be intimidated by the likes of Misha. Darko considered the guy a mere apparatchik programmer who sucked up to Fyodor.
“How did it go last night?” Misha demanded. “Needless to say, we need to know.”
“Taking out the anesthesiologist went like a dream. No problems whatsoever.”
“I know about the anesthesiogist,” Misha snapped. “I’m referring to the damn medical students. I talked with Timur Kortnev, and he filled me in about their strange activities last night and that she ended up in Vandermeer’s house. I need to know if you think what you did was adequate so I can tell Fyodor, who wants to brief the hospital CEO.”
“I suppose I’d have to say it went reasonably,” Darko said.
“Reasonably doesn’t sound adequate, my friend, especially coming from you. Did she get the message?”
“I warned her. I even slapped her around a bit, but I never got to scare her as much as I planned.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Her friend showed up in the middle of things and got the jump on me. To make matters worse, she got ahold of the gun, and I had to get the hell out of there before I had the chance to do her.”
Misha stared at Darko with his mouth agape.
“I didn’t have any choice. If I had stayed, I would have had to kill at least one of them, if not both. I left for the good of the program.”
“Maybe it would have been better if you had killed them.”
“I wasn’t going to do that unless I knew that was what Sergei or Fyodor would have wanted. Anyway, we know she got the message.”
“How do we know?”
“Because they didn’t call the police. I told her we’d do her sisters and mother if she did, and obviously she didn’t. We would have heard.”
“Do you have any idea why she was at Vandermeer’s house?”
“She and Vandermeer were lovers.”
“Shit!” Misha snapped. “Security should have found that out before we chose him as a test subject. Getting one of our goddamned medical students involved is a fucking big-ass mistake. Now she and her friend may have to be eliminated like Wykoff to clean this up.”
“No problem, if that’s what you and Fyodor want.”
“The trouble is that eliminating a couple of socially connected medical students will ignite a hell of an investigation, something we don’t want or need.”
“That’s why I didn’t kill them last night,” Darko said.
“I’ll talk it over with Fyodor,” Misha said irritably. “But for now we will just need to keep a close eye on them. I’ll leave it up to you and Timur. She will not recognize you, will she?”
“What do you think I am, a fucking amateur?”
41.
Wednesday, April 8, 12:38 P.M.
There’s a bunch of free tables back against the far wall,” Michael said, nodding his head in the general direction. He and Lynn had just met up in the cafeteria after she had texted him to meet there. She had just come from parking Carl’s Cherokee in the garage. He had come from the ophthalmology clinic. Once again he could tell she was juiced about something.
“I see it,” Lynn said. “Let’s take it! We’ll have some privacy.” She was carrying a large manila folder under her arm while holding on to her cafeteria tray with both hands. The cafeteria was in full swing with the usual lunchtime crowd. Just getting through the cafeteria line had taken almost a quarter of an hour. Surrounded by people, some of whom they knew, they hadn’t talked about anything serious. Lynn had had to bite her tongue to keep from telling him what she had done.
Just as Michael and Lynn were sitting down, Ronald Metzner appeared out of nowhere, having spied them from the checkout. “Hey, guys,” he said, sliding his tray onto the table. It was a four-top. “You are both in luck. Wait until you hear the joke of the day. Did you ever hear the one about . . . ?”
“Ronald,” Lynn said, interrupting. “I know this is going to come as a surprise to you, but maybe later for the joke. Michael and I have something private to discuss. Would you mind?”
“It’s a quickie,” Ronald said, almost pleading. “It’s really funny.”
“Please,” Lynn persisted.
“Okay, okay,” Ronald said. He hoisted his tray back up and scanned the room for a more receptive audience. “Catch you later,” he added, and walked off.
“I hated doing that,” Lynn confessed, watching Ronald head to the sitting area outside. “There is something forlorn about Ron.”
“I know what you’re saying,” Michael offered.
“Anyway, I want to show you what I got.” Lynn slipped the copies of the building plans out of the folder. They had been reduced to standard paper size, eight and a half by eleven inches. “I went down to the Charleston Building Commission to see if I could find plans of the Shapiro. I hit pay dirt.”
Michael took the sheaf of printouts, which was stapled in the upper left-hand corner. He glanced at the first page. “My God, you need a damn magnifying glass.”
“It’s small but legible,” Lynn said. “You have to hold it close. They couldn’t copy them without reducing them.”
Michael did as Lynn suggested. “Okay, what am I looking at?”
“The first six pages are the floor plans of the Shapiro. From the outside the building looks like it’s a bit more than two stories tall, but actually it is six, with four floors under grade. The floor you went in on and the one connected to the hospital is actually the fifth floor.”
“That’s odd. I wonder why.”
“I guess the designers felt the inmates wouldn’t be interested in a view,” Lynn said, making a stab at humor. “I suppose from the standpoint of heating and cooling, it is a lot more efficient. Maybe they also didn’t want the institute to stand out too much. I mean, it looks big enough the way it is, especially with so few windows, but no one can imagine how big it really is.”
“There’s more than six pages here,” Michael said, leafing through the entire collection before going back to the first page for a closer look.
“There are twelve pages,” Lynn explained. “The last six are the HVAC plans.”
“HVAC plans?” Michael asked with a crooked smile and an exaggerated quizzical expression. “Now, that’s going to come in handy.”
“Don’t be a wiseass,” Lynn snapped. She snatched the plans out of Michael’s grasp and put them down on the table. “You can be as sarcastic as you like, but mark my words: this little treasure trove is going to be a big help when we get in there.”
“If we get in there,” Michael corrected. “There’s still the hurdle of the thumbprint touchscreen.”
“I’m going to work on it right after lunch.”
“The hell you will!” Mi
chael said. “You were assigned patients today in the ophthalmology clinic. I had to see mine and yours this morning. I’m not going to cover for you this afternoon in dermatology. I hate dermatology. We’re lucky you weren’t missed this morning.”
“Okay,” Lynn said soothingly. “We can talk about it.”
“Bullshit!” Michael said. “We decided you’re going back to being a medical student. That means coming to the lectures and the clinic. You know what I’m saying?”
“Okay! All right,” Lynn said. She put her hand on Michael’s forearm to calm him down. “Don’t get so bent out of shape.”
“I won’t get so bent out of shape if you hold up your end of the bargain. We have a lot of powerful people who are on our case.”
“Okay, okay, enough already,” Lynn said. She motioned back at the floor plans and pointed out the two relatively large rooms labeled CLUSTER A and CLUSTER B. “That’s where I think the patients are kept on each floor.”
“How do you figure?”
“You told me that on Ashanti’s Shapiro electronic medical record it said Cluster 4-B 32. I think it’s her in-house address, seeing the size of those rooms. I think she’s on the fourth floor, in Cluster B, bed thirty-two.”
“Maybe so,” Michael said. He picked up the plans again, holding them up almost against his nose. He was studying the first floor plan.
“Do you notice the huge room in the center that is labeled recreation?”
“It’s hard to miss, even at this scale. What the hell is it? There’s nobody getting recreation in the Shapiro Institute.”
“The clerk in the building department and I were trying to figure that out.”
“Is it on every floor?
“No, only on two floors, one and four, but the ceilings are three stories tall. The clerk thought they might be gyms for the staff. He said that they were about the right size for a men’s and a women’s basketball court.” Lynn gave a short, glum laugh. “He wasn’t being serious. Whatever they are, we’re going to have to check them out.”
Michael nodded in agreement. “Can we eat now? I’m famished.”
For a few minutes they ate in silence. Lynn was hungry, too, but after wolfing down her sandwich she said, “When I came out of the Charleston Building Commission I realized I was in the neighborhood of Carl’s father’s law firm. I decided to drop in and see if he was available.”
Michael put down his sandwich and stared at Lynn in disbelief. “Did you see him?”
“For a few minutes. He was off to a business lunch, which was good, so there was no trouble breaking it off.”
“What the fuck did you say? You do know we could be in a shitload of trouble for not reporting the break-in at Carl’s house and messing with the evidence.”
“I know, I know,” Lynn repeated. “I’m not an idiot. I told him that you and I had gone down to Carl’s house around midnight to feed the cat, and we found the cat was nowhere to be found and the front door was worse for wear but that nothing else was missing except the cat. That’s all I said. Well, I also let him know I have been using Carl’s car. I thought he should know about the door so he can have it fixed.”
“That’s hardly justification for taking the risk of talking with him and telling him we were there. What if he reports the front door to the police, and the police want to question us? That could be trouble. It could be more than trouble, because we are going to have to lie.”
“I played down the damage to the door, and even suggested it was probably one of Carl’s friends who was worried about the cat and didn’t know I was feeding it. I seriously doubt he’s going to be calling the police. There is too much on his mind, considering Carl’s medical situation.”
“Why take the risk at all?”
“Because there were two other things I seriously wanted to talk to him about. First was about Carl. I wanted to know if anything was said about Carl having an early serum blood protein abnormality.”
“Had they been told?”
“No, it had not been mentioned, which I find strange, since there had been a formal consult by a hematologist to look into it. Obviously it is now part of his EMR. I also wanted to ask if he and his wife were going to visit. I said that if there was any way I could be included, I would like to be.”
“What was the second reason you wanted to talk to him?”
“I wanted to ask him what we should do if we find out that Sidereal Pharmaceuticals is doing unethical drug testing on patients without their knowledge. I didn’t mention anything about the Shapiro Institute, for obvious reasons, or about the anesthesia looping and all that. But I thought he would be the best person to ask this general question since he had been a district attorney in his early career and is well connected with law enforcement above and beyond the local police. I thought he would know what we would need to do. If we find out something significant by going into the Shapiro, we might not have a lot of time to sit around on our asses deciding what to do. If this is the kind of conspiracy we think it might be, they probably have a lot of contingency plans in place if a couple of gadflies like us get in the way.”
“I wish you had asked me first what I thought about talking to him. I think it was premature and taking a risk, especially after last night.”
“Okay, sorry. I was in the area, and I thought we should be prepared.”
“I believe you,” Michael said. “But we’re in this together. Keep that in mind. So what did he say?”
“He said if we found something serious to come to him! Since Sidereal is a multinational company based in Geneva and doing business in all fifty states, he’d feel comfortable going to both the FBI and the CIA.”
42.
Wednesday, April 8, 11:38 P.M.
What’s your take?” Lynn asked Michael. They were sitting on the same, semi-secluded park bench in the inner courtyard garden where they’d sat the previous afternoon, when Lynn bawled her eyes out after learning that Carl was going to be transferred. On this occasion, it was in deep shadows, thanks to being boxed in by trees and shrubbery. There were Victorian-style street lamps placed at wide intervals along the walkway from the hospital to the dorm, but none close enough to shed much light on the bench. From where they were sitting, they could see the door into the Shapiro Institute that Vladimir had used when he had taken Michael on his brief visit.
Michael checked the time, using his phone. Its illumination briefly lighted his face before he quickly turned it off. “We’ve been here now for more than forty-five minutes,” he said. “I think that’s it. I don’t think we are going to see any more people coming out or going in.”
“That wasn’t much of a shift change,” Lynn said. Just before eleven P.M. they had seen six people go in. A quarter of an hour later six people came out. All were wearing the Shapiro coveralls. They could hear conversation, but not individual words. They couldn’t even tell if they were speaking English.
“I’m shocked there weren’t more people,” Michael agreed.
“I wonder if some of the Shapiro staff come and go via the connection to the main hospital,” Lynn said. “It’s hard to believe that there are only six people working during the evening and the night shifts. That would mean only one person per floor.”
“Some must use the hospital,” Michael said. “There’s no way six people could take care of all the vegetative patients, even with automation. That’s absurd.”
“Absurd or not, it can’t be good care. It is all the more reason I hate the idea of Carl being put in there, above and beyond the possibility he’s being used as a guinea pig for clinical drug trials.”
“The only good aspect is that if there are only six people on the night shift, we might actually get away with going in there. If I had to guess, with only one person per floor, that one person is probably minding the automation and not concerned about possible intruders. So if you are still committed to
giving it a try, this is the time.”
“You’re not getting cold feet, are you?” Lynn asked.
“No more than I’ve had from day one. Let’s go get our stuff and get it over with.”
They stood up and stretched. They had been sitting there now for almost an hour. Both briefly eyed the Shapiro as they joined the main paved pathway. The dark, massive building was, if anything, more intimidating at night. It could have been a tomb or mausoleum. What they didn’t see was that another figure had emerged from the shadows and followed them at a significant distance as they headed back to the dorm.
The afternoon had been difficult, almost painful, for Lynn. If she thought the ophthalmology lecture was humdrum, then the dermatology talk was worse. Yet she persevered. At one point she thought seriously about bagging it, but Michael had somehow sensed it and whispered, “Don’t even think about it!” So she had stuck it out. Same with the clinic after the lecture.
Later that evening, at dinner, Lynn and Michael had made it a point to eat with a group of friends as a way of pretending they were acting normally. At the table Lynn had voiced her negative reaction to both ophthalmology and dermatology. A few people, Michael included, felt as she did. Others had different ideas. Two of their dinner partners mentioned they were soon heading off to dermatology residencies, so Lynn didn’t belabor the point.
After dinner, Lynn and Michael had excused themselves and headed back to the dorm. There they had spent more than three hours following the instructions Lynn had downloaded from the Internet for fooling fingerprint scanners in general, and thumbprint scanners in particular. Lynn had already gotten the necessary gear, which included a high-resolution digital camera, which she had borrowed, super glue, wood glue, a good laser printer, and transparency film.