Day 50 (The DMT Series Book 2) (14 page)

“Severely incapacitated?”

“Bedridden or in a wheel chair.”

“Why don’t you just call the hospital and ask if he’s there?” Hugo asked.

“He won’t be there under his real name. It will either be a fake one, or a John Doe,” Cameron said.

“John Doe?”

“A patient without an identity.”

“Uh hum,” Hugo nodded.

“All you need to do is to deliver a postcard. Cameron will do the rest.”

Hugo nodded. He wasn’t nervous. He had been pulling tricks at the hotel in Mexico for the last three years. The hotel had been popular among drug dealers and shady businessmen, and there had often been people willing to pay for information about the guests. Hugo had always delivered. He had never been spotted before that CIA agent caught on to him outside the cabin.

“We’ll be back shortly,” Hugo said, before leaving with Cameron.

“Stick to the plan,” Adam called out after them.

Stick to the plan, Hugo thought, as he parked the van outside the hospital. He needed to show Adam that he was more than a dumb Latino. And more importantly; he needed to show Cameron that he was a real man, someone she could rely on. She was the reason he had agreed to help Adam back into the US. He had known the second he saw her; she was the woman he would one day marry.

He still had a limited understanding of what Cameron and her dad had actually done, and why that fake or rogue CIA agent had been chasing them. But that was OK. Cameron didn’t know his entire past either, and she didn’t seem to care either, didn’t seem to judge. Even when he had told her that he had dropped out of school and lived on the street when he was twelve years old, she hadn’t raised an eyebrow. It was almost as if she had respected him even more for it.

He pulled his cap down on his face, pulled up his collar, and opened the car door. Adam had bought him a new outfit, and although he felt like an idiot wearing it, it was appropriate for the task. He checked his watch, before crossing the parking lot and entering the reception of the hospital. Adam had asked him to be on the lookout for cameras. Not just because he should avoid being caught on film, but because Adam would also have to avoid them when he returned. Hugo spotted two above the main entrance, and there had been three or four cameras in the parking lot. They didn’t go easy on the security in the US, Hugo mused.

“Can I help you?” one of the receptionists asked when Hugo approached the counter.

“I’m not sure,” Hugo answered. “I have a delivery for a patient here. But I don’t have a name. It just says John Doe.”

“Let me have a look,” the receptionist said.

Hugo handed her the postcard. It just read: “Happy birthday my love, I know you can’t read this, but know that I’ll always love you. Your loving wife.” The postcard wasn’t stamped.

The receptionist studied the postcard for a moment, before facing Hugo. “I think I know who it might be for,” she said.

Hugo nodded. “Then my work is done,” he said, and turned to leave.

Hugo could feel the stare on his back as he left the reception, but he didn’t turn around. He just proceeded straight to the van in the parking lot.

Cameron was sitting in a corner of the reception, paying close attention to the receptionist’s next move. If Adam was right, she would probably pick up the phone and the alarm bells would go off somewhere. The receptionist didn’t seem to be in a rush to make any calls though. Instead she sat back down and finished the sandwich she was eating. Cameron sat patiently waiting for another twenty minutes, and she was just about to call it quits when a doctor arrived in the reception. The receptionist grabbed the postcard before calling him over. They were too far away for Cameron to listen in on their conversation, but she could clearly see the doctor’s face light up when the receptionist handed him the postcard. He immediately turned around, and started walking down the hallway. Cameron got up from the chair and followed.

39

Alejandro was standing inside the large walk-in-freezer, studying the plastic box containing DMT. It had cost him a small fortune. It was almost easier to procure uranium than DMT these days. It didn’t matter though. The DMT was priceless as far as Alejandro was concerned, and money wasn’t an issue – it kept pouring in from the various overseas chapters. Marconi had been a moron, but no one could claim he hadn’t possessed an exceptional flair for business, always looking for creative ways to make money. Alejandro had managed to soak up as much knowledge as he could during those seven years he had served as Marconi’s assistant. Codyism was a true innovator in the way it raised money from its followers. It wasn’t just a religion anymore - it was a business, a hugely profitable business.

Marconi had always claimed psychedelics were the best products in the world to peddle. “Limited supply and somewhat addicted customers, what more can you ask for? It’s a no-brainer,” he had laughed. The market had changed since Marconi’s days though. Almost overnight governments around the world had changed their stance on psychedelics. Lengthy prison terms for simple possession, constant raids on premises suspected of dealing. The market had practically evaporated in a few years. But it had left Alejandro with other opportunities, new opportunities. There were other ways of reaching the heights of psychedelics. Meditation was now the biggest revenue earner for Codyism. People were willing to hand over exorbitant amounts of money to Codyism-instructors in the hope that they would be able to connect with the wider universe. And every time someone was given a meditation lesson Alejandro collected a fee. Marconi had been so wrong. The risks with dealing psychedelics had always been disproportionate to what the rewards had been. With the meditation business there were hardly any risks. It was a franchise model; people paid Alejandro to be allowed to teach his courses. People paid him to do business. Idiots, he laughed.

Alejandro’s laugh was interrupted by a light knocking on the door. Alejandro’s mouth curled up and a tint of red flushed through his cheeks.
What was it now?
He had left quite specific instructions for no one to ever interrupt him when he was inside the freezer. The freezer was his sanctuary, the place where he alone ventured. No one else was allowed.

He walked over to the door and let himself out. After having made sure the door was properly locked, he turned to face the staff member who had knocked on the door.

“I’m very sorry, Mr Vasques. I am aware of your instructions. But this couldn’t wait.”

“What it is?” Alejandro asked. He didn’t want to admit it, but the face of his underling caused him a slight worry.

“You instructed me to advise you if there was any development in the hunt for the girl.”

“Yes?”

“We have just received news that the girl and her father have been observed in America.”

“In the US? Are you sure?”

The man nodded. “We have the information from a reliable source. They crossed the border from Mexico more than a week ago.”

“And where are they now?”

“We don’t know. We only know that their entry point was Texas, and from there they headed north.”

Alejandro took a deep breath. Adam and Cameron had returned to the US. Why on Earth would they take such a risk?

40

Cameron took a step to the side and crouched down behind a lamp in the hallway of the hospital. Her heart was racing. She hadn’t considered that entering a hospital would bring back all the memories of the airplane crash and her mum dying, but it had. The building was brand new, and the interior didn’t resemble the building that had housed the death row prisoners, Cody and her at all. But still - she knew it was the same place, and it made her more anxious than she had ever anticipated. She waited behind the lamp for ten seconds before daring to continue. When she did, she immediately started heading in the direction of the room the doctor had disappeared into. She memorised the various room numbers as she passed them. The room the doctor had vanished into was the second last in the long narrow hallway. She glanced into some of the rooms as she passed them. Most of them contained only a single bed. And by the looks of the patients - they were all older men and women, probably close to seventy and eighty years old - this wasn’t a hospital at all; it was an aged care facility.

As she passed the room the doctor had walked into she snuck a peek through the half-open door. Just as she did, the doctor looked up. For a brief moment they stared right at each other. Cameron turned her head forward and sped up the pace.

The doctor thought there had been something off about the way the young woman had stared at him, so he got up from his chair. He placed the postcard on the nightstand, next to the bed of the patient without a name, before proceeding out into the hallway. He looked to the left, then the right. He couldn’t see her anywhere though. Whoever she had been, she was now gone.

“It’s him,” Cameron said excitedly.

“You’re certain?” Adam asked.

“One hundred percent.”

“And nobody spotted you?”

Cameron shrugged her shoulders. “One of the doctors may have. But he had no idea who I was. He’s not in on it.”

“How do you know?”

“Everything just felt strange. I had expected the receptionist to sound an alarm or something when Hugo delivered the postcard. Instead she seemed totally indifferent. There was no rush. She even finished her sandwich. Then a doctor arrived in the reception. She had a quick chat with him and handed him the postcard. I don’t think the doctor even knows that the patient is Dr Drecker. I think he saw the postcard as an opportunity to find out something more about the John Doe he has in his ward.”

“If that’s the case it’s excellent news for us. It seems improbable however, that MKULTRA would have placed Drecker in a hospital without any security measures. There has to be somebody at the hospital working for MKULTRA. Maybe you were just lucky.”

“So how do we get him out of there?” Hugo asked. He was eager to be part of the conversation.

“That’s the million-dollar question,” Adam answered. “If Cameron is correct, Drecker is probably in a coma. That’s the only reason MKULTRA would have risked leaving him unsupervised in a hospital.”

“I’ve done a lot of weird things, but I’ve never stolen a coma patient from a hospital before,” Hugo said.

Adam smiled at the comment.

“Maybe the doctor could be of help?” Cameron asked.

“What do you mean?” Adam asked.

“I mean, if the doctor is not in on it, maybe he would be willing to help us get Dr Drecker out of the hospital.”

“That’s too risky,” Adam replied. “We have to assume that we can’t trust anyone.”

Cameron nodded. She agreed, but she had seen something in the eyes of the doctor, when she had passed Drecker’s room. It had been pure fear, as if he had been afraid someone had just caught him doing something he shouldn’t be doing. She couldn’t be sure, but she was almost certain he was acting on his own. He had been genuinely attempting to use the postcard to spark a reaction from Dr Drecker in the hospital bed.

“OK. We’ll have to act fast though. Even if nobody has notified MKULTRA about the postcard yet, it will only be a matter of time before someone does. There has to be an insider at the hospital, and when he or she finds out, they will know.”

“So we move ahead tomorrow?” Hugo asked.

Adam shook his head. “We move now. We move ahead in five minutes.”

Going ahead with an operation like this, without even the slightest amount of planning, went against everything Adam had been trained to do in the army. But he had no choice. Most likely MKULTRA had sent Agent Fowler out on a Black Operation assignment, and although he wouldn’t be required to check in on a regular basis, they would most likely have some sort of system in place to check in on him. If it turned out it was impossible to contact him they could start covering their tracks, to muddy the things that Agent Fowler had knowledge about. And Agent Fowler had known where MKULTRA kept Dr Drecker.

“This will have to be quick and dirty,” Adam said. “You said there weren’t many people inside the hospital?”

Cameron nodded. “It’s not a hospital. It’s an aged care facility. All the patients I saw were bedridden, and there were hardly any staff in the halls. I think we should get up to his room quite easily. The problem will be getting him out.”

“Was he breathing on his own account?”

“It looked like it. He had some tubes stuck to his right arm, and there were things attached to his chest, but nothing covering his mouth.”

“Good. That means he’s breathing by himself. Did you see any other exits?”

Cameron shook her head. “There was an emergency staircase. It was pretty narrow though, and the exit to the street seemed to be closed off. If he’s incapacitated we can’t exit that way anyway. We’ll probably have to use the elevators, and exit through the reception.”

“That’s not going to work.”

“What about the basement?” Hugo asked.

“That could work,” Adam answered. “If we could get the van down in the basement, we could bring him down there.”

“I wasn’t thinking about using our van,” Hugo said. “I noticed there were a few ambulances parked in the basement. I’ve hotwired one before, it wasn’t too hard. It was a Mexican one, but how different can they be?”

“It would be of great help to have access to some medical equipment when we extract Drecker. If he’s incapacitated there might be complications.”

“I know how to hotwire an ambo as well,” Cameron stated, proudly.

“OK. Settled. That’s our plan A. Now let’s move out,” Adam said, and put their old van in gear. “It will be nice to drive something different than this wreck for a change. I still think your cousin screwed us on this deal.”

Hugo laughed. This time he wasn’t embarrassed.

41

A warm gust of wind rushed across the lake. James Carter was sitting at a café skimming the Wall Street Journal. He turned the pages impatiently. Newspapers just weren’t the same quality they had once been. He placed the paper on the table and took another large drink of his coffee, before preparing to get up. He had just noticed the man he was expecting entering the café.