“I’m afraid you are not in any position to give orders,” Kurt said mockingly. He glared at Stephanie before breaking off and disappearing back up the corridor.
Stephanie let out her breath and relaxed a degree with Kurt out of sight. She could only see a short distance up the hallway. Unable to look at her watch, she wondered what time it was. Daniel would have to start wondering where she was and start looking for her. In fact, maybe he was already. But then a new fear entered her mind: What if he was so angry at what she’d done that he didn’t care if she’d been locked up?
Kurt Hermann sat down at his desk and put out his forearms. He was quivering from unconsummated desire. Stephanie D’Agostino had turned him on excruciatingly. Unfortunately, the pleasure of having his hands on her firm yet soft femaleness had been all too fleeting, and he wanted a repeat. She’d acted as if she hadn’t enjoyed it, but he knew differently. Women were like that: one minute being provocative and the next minute pretending they didn’t like the consequences. It was all an act, a put-on, a joke.
For a few minutes, Kurt tried to think of ways to put off calling Saunders. What he would have liked most to do was not to call him at all. Dr. D’Agostino could just disappear. Hell, it was what she deserved. But he knew it wouldn’t work. Saunders would know, because Saunders understood that Kurt was aware of everyone who came in and out of the compound. If the woman doctor disappeared, Saunders would know Kurt was responsible or at least knew what had happened to her.
Calling on the discipline of his martial arts training, Kurt calmed himself. Within minutes, his muscles began to relax and his quivering stopped. Even his heart rate slowed to less than fifty beats per minute. He knew, because he frequently checked it. When he was fully in control, he got up and went into the video room.
The clock on the wall said it was twelve-forty-one. That meant that Spencer Wingate and Paul Saunders would be in the cafeteria. Kurt sat down and looked up at the bank of monitors. His eyes went to number twelve. Using the keyboard in front of him, he connected the joystick to minicam twelve and began to pan the room. Before finding his bosses, he found Daniel Lowell. Kurt zoomed in. The man was reading a scientific journal while feeding his face, completely oblivious to his surroundings. Across from him was Stephanie’s untouched tray. A slight sneer played on Kurt’s face. He had the man’s girlfriend locked up in his private jail cell after feeling her up, and the man had no clue whatsoever. What a pompous jerk!
Kurt zoomed back out and continued looking for Spencer and Paul. He found them at their usual table and with the usual bevy of female employees. They were jerks as well, since Kurt knew for the most part whom they were screwing, although more for Paul than Spencer, since Paul lived in the compound. To Kurt, most of the men of the world were jerks, including most of his commanding officers when he’d been in the service. It was a burden he had to bear.
Kurt reached for the phone and put in a call to the cafeteria supervisor. When he got her on the phone, he told her to tell Spencer and Paul there was a security emergency that necessitated their immediate presence in his office. He told her to say specifically, “It’s a major problem.” Within seconds of his replacing the receiver, Kurt saw the woman appear on the monitor. She was frantic. She tapped Spencer and Paul on the shoulder in turn and whispered in their respective ears. Both leaped up and, with worried expressions, made a beeline for the exit. Spencer was slightly in the lead, since he was the first one the cafeteria supervisor had approached.
With a few clicks on the keyboard, Kurt brought up the image of the jail cell on the monitor directly in his line of sight and switched his attention to it. Stephanie was pacing back and forth like a caged cat. It was as if she were purposefully taunting him with her body.
Unable to watch another second, Kurt abruptly stood up. He retreated to his desk to rely again on his training to calm himself. By the time Spencer Wingate and Paul Saunders breathlessly arrived, Kurt was back to his stoic self. All he moved was his eyes, as the two fertility doctors rushed up to his desk.
“What’s the major problem?” Spencer demanded. As the titular head of the clinic, Paul yielded to him. Spencer’s complexion was slightly flushed, as was Paul’s. The two men had run all the way from building three, which was more exercise than they were accustomed to. Both were panicked, because Kurt’s message had been the same one he’d communicated back when Federal marshals had besieged the Wingate Clinic in its Massachusetts incarnation.
Kurt enjoyed their anxiety as payback for the scant recognition they gave him for all his efforts with getting the new clinic’s security in line. He gestured for his bosses to be silent, then motioned for them to follow him as he led the way down to the video room. Once they were inside, he shut the door. He gestured for them to sit down in the two chairs present while he remained standing. He eyed them while basking in their anxious, undivided attention.
“What the hell is the emergency?” Spencer demanded, losing patience. “Out with it!”
“We had a break-in involving the egg room,” Kurt said. “An obvious espionage situation that has compromised the egg-procurement program.”
“No!” Paul exclaimed. He sat forward in his seat. The egg program was pivotal in his plans for the future of the clinic and his reputation.
Kurt nodded, enjoying drawing out the moment.
“Who?” Paul demanded. “Was it an inside job?”
“Yes and no,” Kurt responded ambiguously without elaborating.
“Come on!” Spencer complained. “This isn’t a goddamn guessing game.”
“The perpetrator was caught perusing the Oocyte Register and apprehended.”
“Good God!” Paul blurted. “This person was actually looking at the Register?”
Kurt pointed to the central monitor just above the counter. Stephanie had retreated back to sit on the iron cot. Unknowingly, she was looking almost directly into the minicam. It was clear she was distraught.
For a few minutes, silence reigned in the video room. All eyes stared at Stephanie.
“How come she’s not moving?” Spencer asked. “She’s all right, isn’t she?”
“She’s fine,” Kurt assured him.
“Why is her cheek bleeding?”
“She fell en route to the cell.”
“What did you do to her?” Spencer demanded.
“She wasn’t being cooperative. She needed a bit of encouragement.”
“Good Lord!” Spencer exclaimed. All in all, this was less of an emergency than he had feared, but it was still bad enough. “How come her arms are behind her back?” Spencer asked.
“She’s handcuffed,” Kurt said.
“Handcuffed?” Spencer questioned. “Isn’t that a bit heavy-handed? Although, with your history, we should be thankful you didn’t shoot her on the spot.”
“Spencer,” Paul said. “We should be thankful for Kurt’s vigilance, not critical.”
“It is standard operating procedure to cuff an individual when they are apprehended,” Kurt snapped.
“Yeah, but she’s in a jail cell, for Christ’s sake,” Spencer said. “You could have taken the handcuffs off.”
“Forget the handcuffs for the moment,” Paul suggested. “Let’s worry about the implications of her behavior. I don’t like the fact that she was in the egg room, much less having her looking at the register. She’s been less than complimentary about our operation, particularly in regard to our stem-cell therapy.”
“She is a bit high and mighty,” Spencer admitted.
“I don’t want her upsetting our oocyte program, not that there’s a lot she can do here in the Bahamas,” Paul said. “It’s not like we’re back in the States. But she could still make waves and get us some bad publicity, which might impinge on our uterine-rental recruitment efforts and then our bottom line. We’ve got to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
“Maybe that’s why Lowell and she are here,” Spencer suggested. “Maybe this treatment rigmarole they are doing is all an elabo
rate ruse. They could be industrial spies, intent on stealing our thunder.”
“They’re for real,” Paul said.
“How can you be so sure?” Spencer said, looking away from Stephanie’s image on the monitor and directing his attention to Paul. “You’re rather gullible when it comes to dealing with real researchers.”
“I beg your pardon!” Paul snapped.
“Oh, don’t be so sensitive,” Spencer responded. “You know what I mean. These people have real Ph.D.s.”
“Which might account for their lack of creativity,” Paul responded. “You don’t need a Ph.D. to do groundbreaking science. But, be that as it may, I can assure you that these people are not faking what they are doing. I’ve seen with my own eyes that this HTSR is impressive.”
“They could still be fooling you. That’s my point. They are professional researchers, and you’re not.”
Paul glanced away for a moment to keep from getting mad. Spencer was the last person in the world who should be suggesting he was an authority on who was and who wasn’t a researcher. Spencer knew nothing about research. He was a mere businessman in doctor’s clothing—and not even that good a businessman.
After a calming breath, Paul looked back at his titular boss and said, “I know they are doing real, honest-to-goodness, goal-directed cellular manipulations, because I took some of the cells into which they had patched some of Christ’s DNA. The cells are amazing and extremely viable. I’ve used them myself to see if they work, and they do.”
“Wait a second,” Spencer said. “You’re not going to sit there and say you’ve proved these cells have Christ’s DNA.”
“Of course not.” Paul struggled to keep his composure. At times, discussing biomolecular science with Spencer was like talking with a five-year-old. “There’s no test for ‘Christness.’ What I’m trying to tell you is that they brought with them a culture of fibroblasts from the person with Parkinson’s disease whom they are planning on treating. Within these cells, they have swapped out the defective genes with genes they have been able to construct from DNA they’ve extracted from their sample of the Shroud of Turin. They’ve already done all this, and now they are on their way to make the actual treatment cells. It’s true. There’s absolutely no doubt in my mind this is what they are doing. I’m one hundred percent certain. Trust me!”
“All right, all right,” Spencer repeated. “Since you have been in the lab with them, I suppose I have to take your word they’re here for a legitimate therapeutic mission. But that accepted, it begs the issue of the patient’s identity, about which I also took your word. You said you were going to find out who the patient is. Here we are a little more than a week away from our visitors’ scheduled treatment D-day, and we’re still in the dark.”
“Well, that’s another problem.”
“Yeah, but it is associated. If we don’t have a name soon, we’re not going to have a financial windfall in this affair, that’s for damn sure. What’s the problem with finding out the identity? That’s not asking that much.”
Paul looked at Kurt. “Tell him!”
Kurt cleared his throat. “It’s been a more difficult assignment than I had anticipated. We had their apartment and place of business searched before they even got to Nassau. While they have been here, we’ve gotten ahold of their laptops and had our computer nerd check their hard drives: nothing. On the positive side, just today I got a bug in the woman’s cell phone. I’ve been trying to get ahold of it from day one, but she has been uncooperative. Never once did she let it out of her sight.”
“You planted the bug while she’s been in your custody?” Spencer asked. “Aren’t you worried she’d be suspicious?”
“No,” Kurt said. “The bug went in before I apprehended her. Today, for the first time, she left her cell phone in the lab when she went to the cafeteria. I’d just finished when she returned unexpectedly to break into the egg room. I was following her when she entered.”
“Then why didn’t you stop her before she got in?” Spencer asked.
“I wanted to catch her flagrante delicto,” Kurt said, as a lewd smile formed at the corners of his mouth.
“I suppose I wouldn’t mind catching her flagrante delicto myself,” Spencer said, with an equivalent smile.
“With the bug in the cell phone, we should be in good shape,” Paul said. “From the beginning, Kurt felt monitoring the cell phone was going to give us the patient’s identity.”
“Is that true?” Spencer asked.
“Yes,” Kurt said simply. “But we have another option. With her in our custody, we could demand she tell us the name as a condition of her release.”
The two Wingate Clinic principals eyed each other while they pondered Kurt’s suggestion. It was Spencer who responded first with a shake of his head: “I don’t like the idea.”
“Why?” Paul asked.
“Mainly because I don’t think they would tell us, and it would tip our hand about how much we want the name,” Spencer said. “Obviously, keeping the patient’s identity a secret is mighty important to them; otherwise, we’d know it already. At this point, with as much progress as you’ve said they’ve made in the lab, they could possibly pack up and go somewhere else for the final treatment. I don’t want to jeopardize their second twenty-two-and-a-half-K payment. It’s hardly a windfall, but it’s something. Besides, they’ll know we’re bluffing. We can’t keep her in jail unless we throw him in there as well, which we can’t do, and he’ll be yelling bloody murder as soon as he finds out where she is and how she’s been treated.”
“You’ve made good points,” Paul responded. “I agree with you, and I’d prefer the condition of her release simply to be centered on a promise of confidentiality, which is reasonable under the circumstances. She can have her own opinions, but she should keep them to herself. My sense is that Dr. Lowell will back us on this. I’ve felt he’s always trying to tone down her arrogance.”
Spencer looked up at Kurt. “So, you’re optimistic about finding out the patient’s identity with the bug in the phone?”
Kurt nodded.
“I think we should stick to that,” Spencer said. “And we’ll press the confidentiality issue.”
“Agreed,” Paul said. “And speaking of Dr. Lowell, where is he?”
“He’s in the cafeteria,” Kurt said. His eyes rose up to monitor twelve. “At least, he was a few minutes ago.”
“I think it is significant that Dr. D’Agostino was by herself when she went into the egg room,” Paul said.
“How so?” Spencer asked.
“My guess would be that Dr. Lowell had no idea what she was doing.”
“You might be right,” Spencer said.
“Dr. Lowell is on his way to the lab,” Kurt said. He pointed to the appropriate monitor, and all eyes went to it. Daniel was walking with a quick, determined gait from building three to building one, with a hand clasped against the collection of pens and pencils in his breast pocket. He reached building one and disappeared through the door.
“Where is the lab monitor?” Paul asked. Kurt pointed. They watched as Daniel appeared stage left. Spencer commented that he appeared to be searching for Stephanie. Kurt used the joystick to follow him. After checking the lab bench area that he and Stephanie used, Daniel looked into their assigned office. He even stuck his head into the ladies’ room. He then made a beeline toward Megan Finnigan’s office.
“I think he would have gone down to the egg room if he knew that’s where she went,” Paul said.
“A point well taken,” Spencer said. “I bet you’re right.”
Paul picked up the phone on the counter and punched in Megan’s extension. “I’ll tell the lab supervisor where Dr. Lowell can find his collaborator.”
“Or whatever the hell their relationship is,” Spencer said scornfully. “I can’t figure it out. By the way, Kurt, how was she able to get into the egg room?”
“She used her Wingate ID,” Kurt said. “Access has yet to be restrict
ed, even though it was on the security punch list I presented to the administration a month ago.”
“That’s my fault,” Paul said, hanging up from his terse conversation with Megan Finnigan. “It slipped my mind getting the clinic up and running. Besides, we never planned on outsiders using the lab, and it didn’t cross my mind when doctors Lowell and D’Agostino got here.”
Spencer got up out of his chair. “Let’s go down and have a chat with the alluring Dr. D’Agostino before Dr. Lowell gets here. It might help smooth the negotiation. Kurt, I want you to stay away for the moment.”
The two doctors stepped out into the hall and started down toward the cell.
“This is a weird turn of events,” Spencer whispered. “But it is certainly a lot better than I feared when we were running over here.”
twenty
7:56 P.M., Monday, March 11, 2002
When push came to shove, Gaetano was a realist. As much as he was looking forward to arriving in Nassau on this second visit to complete what he’d started on his first, he was nervous. Mainly he was nervous about getting a gun, and it had to be a decent gun, because without a good gun, trouble was inevitable. There was no way he was going to club the guy to death or drown him in the bathtub or garrote him, like they occasionally did in the movies. Whacking a guy was not as easy as it was portrayed. It required planning. The method had to be decisive and fast, and the location moderately remote, to expedite a speedy getaway and for quickness, there was nothing better than a gun. A good, quiet gun.
For Gaetano, the problem in the current situation was being dependent on people he didn’t know and who didn’t know him. Somebody was supposed to meet him when he landed on the island, but there was no guarantee it would happen. Since the trip had been patched together so quickly, there was no plan B or contacts to call, except Lou back in Boston, and Lou could be hard to get ahold of after-hours. Even if the mystery man showed up at the airport, there was always the chance he and Gaetano wouldn’t hook up in the inevitable confusion, since neither knew what the other looked like. To make matters worse, Gaetano was supposed to be back in Boston the next day, so it wasn’t like he had the benefit of a lot of time.