Endorphin Conspiracy, The (23 page)

Chapter 42

“What the hell’s going on up there, Papa Bear? Have you lost control of your senses?” Bluebird was fuming, his usual controlled demeanor fallen by the wayside.

Balassi’s hand squeezed the receiver tightly, his jaw tense. “Quite the contrary, Phillip. I’ve just taken into my own hands what you and your team obviously couldn’t handle. Things are under perfect control now, let’s cut the fairy tale code names. I’ve had enough of this game.”

“You’re not paid to take
anything
into your own hands, Balassi! You’re paid to do research. Rather handsomely, I might add. That’s all! You should have stuck to your lab work and left the rest to us.”

“I would have if I could trust you’d have handled it, Phillip, but obviously that didn’t happen. I refuse to let thirty years of brilliant research go down the drain as a result of sheer incompetence!”

“Research you could never have done without our help, you fool. You scientists think you know everything about every fucking thing! Well, let me tell you what you’ve done. That pathologist you tried to have killed, Gibson, she was an agent working for the CIA Inspector General’s Office. The Inspector General! Do you know what that means?”

Balassi moved the receiver away from his ear as Lancaster raised his voice.

“We were watching her so closely she couldn’t change a tampon without us knowing about it. She hadn’t conveyed anything to the IG’s office, Balassi, not a goddamn thing. We were damn close to recruiting her to the project, and you had to have her sliced and diced.

“Now I have the boss looking into every crack and crevice, my asshole included, trying to find out who tried to knock her off! He’s been rattling cages like a mad gorilla, and someone’s gonna’ talk. It’s just a matter of time. The Sigma Project, your ass included, is in jeopardy, you idiot.”

No one calls me an idiot!

Balassi moved the earpiece closer. He could hear Lancaster panting heavily on the other end, visualize his jowls quivering. He smiled to himself. “She knew more than you think, Phillip. She passed some very incriminating evidence to the one she had recruited as her courier, Dr. Geoffrey Davis. He was becoming as much a loose cannon to the project as Kapinsky was before.

Balassi thought back to what Geoff had told him about Suzanne’s background, her father, her obvious motivation. How could Lancaster not have known? “Do you know who she really—”

“I know what she
did
, Balassi.”

“Then you know who her father—”

“—I don’t care if her father was the goddamned pope! That Davis boy called me, and we tracked him down. We had him followed and were about to pick him up and reclaim the information when you interfered.”

“You don’t have to worry about him anymore,” Balassi said triumphantly.

“Oh?”

“He’s been eliminated. One of my associates took care of it.” His thin lips formed a self-satisfied smile.

“I’m sorry to disappoint you, good doctor, but my sources tell me he’s alive and in the emergency room of your very own medical center as we speak. And the information you speak of is still not accounted for. Our man at the scene combed the area and couldn’t find a fucking thing.”

“It’s impossible, I—”

“That’s right, Balassi. Alive. You fucked up big time. So big, I have no choice. It’s really a shame I have to do this. For forty years the—”

“I, it’s, it’s impossible.”

“There’s no way out now, Balassi. I have no choice but to pull the plug like I did forty years ago. Only this time, it’s for good. As of now, the Sigma Project is shut down. Forever. Too many careers, too many lives, are at stake. You know how high up this thing goes.”

Balassi sat in stunned silence. He thought of 1962, Cameron Daniels jumping to his death, the cablegram to Dr. Schmidt, ordering him to shut down MK Ultra. “You can’t do that, Phillip.”

“There is no other way, Balassi. My advice to you is to keep a low profile. Take some time off. Pack up today and go to your house in the country for a couple of weeks.”

“You can’t—”

“It’s over. Keep clean, or I’ll bring your head in on a silver platter and serve it to the IG myself.”

A loud click, and the line went dead.

Balassi continued to hold the phone to his ear, staring off into space. He had invested his entire adult life in this project. He
was
the Sigma Project. No one could take it from him.

Chapter 43

“Where are those goddamned units of whole blood?” barked George Spiros, Director of the Trauma Unit. “The patient was typed and crossed over twenty minutes ago. Doesn’t the blood bank realize we have a doctor’s life on the line here?”

“They’re on the way, Dr. Spiros,” answered Jan Creighton.

Spiros was tense. Jan had known him for seventeen years and rarely had she seen him lose his cool during a trauma.
After
, maybe, but not
during
. Not since the assassination attempt on the governor had she seen him in a state like this.

“Run in both bags of normal saline full bore. Let’s get a third IV line going for the blood. Stat!” He turned to Flynn, the trauma doc, who had just tapped the peritoneal cavity with a large syringe. “How bad’s he bleeding?”

Flynn held up the syringe filled with dark blood. “Pretty badly. Probably ruptured his spleen. If we can keep up with it and maintain his blood pressure while we’re waiting on the OR, we’ll be okay.”

Beads of sweat formed on Spiros’ upper lip. His gaze darted nervously back and forth between his patient and the monitors. Geoff’s heart rate had reached 120, his blood pressure was 90/50 and dropping. Spiros knew he was hemorrhaging faster than they could replace the lost volume. It was a race against death, and it was pretty tenuous.

“Don’t breath him so fast,” he barked at the respiratory tech squeezing the black ambu bag. “Turn up the oxygen, six liters. Somebody get another blood gas!”

The tech nodded, slowed down the respiratory rate.

“Jan, what’s holding up the OR?”

“The room’s almost ready, Dr. Spiros. Anesthesia said they need about five more minutes—”

“Tell anesthesia if we have to wait five more minutes, we won’t need the OR!”

“Yes, sir.”

“Choy, how’s his neuro status?”

Karen Choy had just finished the most difficult neuro exam of her short clinical career. She had seen worse: mangled car accident victims, the cop, Smithers. But she had never had to work on someone she knew so well.

She looked at Geoff, his battered, swollen face, the raccoon-like dark circles around his swollen shut lids. She couldn’t believe it was the same living, breathing, handsome Geoff Davis she had worked with.

“Well, uh, the patient’s—Dr. Davis’—deep reflexes are intact, and he responds to pain.”

“His pupils, Choy, how are they?”

“His pupils, yes, sir. His pupils are small, about two to three millimeters. They react equally. The small pupils seem a little unusual given the extent of the head injury. Eye movements are intact, too, Dr. Spiros. That’s good, isn’t it?”

“That’s very good, Choy. A good assessment by you, even better for our patient. At least his neurons seem intact.”

Karen Choy nodded.

“And the PET scan?”

She hesitated. “Well, it wasn’t really a good study, Dr. Spiros. They, didn’t have much time because—”

“I don’t care how good it was, Doctor Choy. Just tell me what you found!”

“It was consistent with mild to moderate coma, prognosis good—”

“Blood’s here!” came a voice from the doorway. The tech carrying two bags of dark blood held them up triumphantly.

“Dr. Spiros, Dr. Pederson’s on line two,” yelled the ward clerk.

“Tell him Dr. Davis’ neuro status is stable.”

A moment passed while the message was communicated to Pederson.

“He wants you to make sure the OR knows he’s coming down himself to put an intracranial bolt in when the surgeons finish working on his belly.”

Spiros glared at the clerk. “Jesus Christ! My patient’s hanging on by a thread and Pederson’s worrying about drilling a hole to put a fucking monitor in his head? Tell him to call the OR himself. We’re busy trying to save a life here.”

“BP’s dropping, seventy over palp, pulse thready. Hang the other unit of blood, stat!” Flynn blurted out.

Then the monitor sounded its high-pitched alarm. “He’s in V-tach!” Karen Choy yelled.

Spiros rushed to the crash cart. “Give me a gram of epi!”

All eyes were on the monitor as he squirted the ampule of epinephrine through the IV line.

They watched and waited.

“No change.” He turned to Flynn. “Give me those paddles!”

“Shouldn’t we give the epi a few more seconds to work?”

“I said give me those goddamn paddles!” Spiros grabbed the paddles from Flynn and put them on Geoff’s chest. “Ready at two hundred. Stand away!”

Geoff’s body arched violently upward, then fell back on the bed board with a thud.

Jan Creighton covered her mouth with her hand.

Nothing.

“Again! Get back.”

Spiros readied the paddles again, then fired.

The monitor was eerily silent for what seemed like forever. Nothing. All eyes remained fixed on the screen. Then a blip.

“He’s in sinus rhythm!” Flynn yelled. “His heart’s stabilized!”

“Thank God,” said Karen Choy.

“Dr. Spiros, the OR is ready,” said the clerk.

“It’s about fucking time. Let’s go!”

Chapter 44

The orange glow of the sun faded quickly, giving way to darkness much earlier than usual for a mid-summer night. A billowy layer of black storm clouds had rolled in late in the afternoon, and a nasty summer storm drenched the streets of New York.

Inside the protective walls of the Neurosurgical ICU at the New York Trauma Center, however, all was quiet. Two patients had been discharged to the floor earlier in the evening, and only one remained. Jill Aker, the rookie nurse on nightshift had just received report from Cathy Johannsen. The ICU was required by law to have at least two RN’s on duty, even if there was only one patient. Jill had met Geoff only once, on his first day as chief resident. She was sure he had barely noticed her, but here she was with his life in her hands. It made her more than a little nervous.

“Eight hours in surgery? Jeez,” Jill said.

“Takes a long time to do what they had to do. Ruptured spleen, lacerated liver, shattered thigh bone, fractured cheek, not to mention various lacerations that needed suturing. Oh, yeah, the head bolt—the pressure monitor.”

“Isn’t that important?”

“Depends who you ask. I think they put them in way too often around here. Supposed to be just for comatose head injury patients to monitor their level of pressure around the brain, their level of consciousness and all that, but Geoff was responsive to pain even in the ER. He hasn’t fully awaken yet, opened his eyes or said anything, but he’s definitely not in a coma. I don’t get it.” Cathy stared over in Geoff’s direction, frustration in her voice.

“Aren’t they doing a study on that? That’s probably why they all get the head bolts put in,” Jill said.

“There’s a study, all right, but he’s no guinea pig!”

Jill wanted to ask Cathy what she thought about the murders. Did she really think he was guilty? She was dying to know, Cathy being his friend and all and the announcement this morning that the charges had been mysteriously dropped. It all seemed so bizarre. But she sensed this was the absolute wrong time to ask.

“They must be treating him overcautiously. It happens all the time, because he’s a doctor.” Jill put her hand on Cathy’s reassuringly. “Listen, I know you’re upset about this, that you’re a friend of Geoff’s. Why don’t you go get something at the snack bar.”

She looked at her watch then reached into her purse. “Look. It’s midnight, cheeseburger time at Randy’s Bar-B-Q pit. I think we could both use a good greasy burger and a shake to take our minds off things. My treat.”

Cathy forced a smile and took the money. “Sure. Thanks for the words of encouragement, Jill.” She stood to leave. “Keep your eyes on our VIP. Anything, I mean
anything
, seems out of the ordinary, page me.”

“No sweat, Cath. Trust me. He’s in good hands.”

The doors of the NSICU closed with a whoosh. Jill sat alone at the nursing station, the eerie stillness of the room pierced only by the constant beeping of the monitors. She couldn’t believe she’d sent Cathy off like that. She was jumpy enough about the whole situation with her around, let alone by herself in this big, dark, empty ICU.

But she wasn’t alone. Geoff was there. Maybe he’d wake up on her watch. She decided she’d keep him company until Cathy got back.

The phone rang, just about sending her through the ceiling. Jill jumped on the receiver before the first ring was half-way through, her heart racing.

“NSICU!”

“Jill?” It was Cathy. “Everything okay?”

Silence. Jill took a deep breath. “Of course everything’s okay. Your call just about gave me a heart attack, that’s all,” she said with a nervous laugh. “Our patient hasn’t stopped talking since you left.”

“Very funny. How do you want your burger?”

“You mean how well done? I’ve never seen a Randy burger anything but charcoal broiled!”

“Guess you’re right. I’ll tell him to make it crisp. See you in a few minutes.”

Jill put down the phone and walked over to bed one. She stood at the bedside for several minutes, simply staring at Geoff, the casted leg suspended by a wire from the frame above the bed, the shaved and bandaged head sprouting a bolt and accompanying tubing, the swollen and bruised face, his handsome features blunted but recognizable.

Her gaze shifted to the monitors: heart rate seventy-five and regular, BP 120/80, normal cardiac rhythm, brain pressure normal at sixteen. Every system was being monitored, everything under complete control. Amazing. If she was ever in an accident, the NYTC was where she’d want to be.

She could see Geoff’s eyes darting rapidly back and forth beneath his closed lids. He must be dreaming, maybe lightening up. REM sleep was lighter than deep, stage four sleep.

Carefully, she placed her thumb and forefinger on his upper lid and tried to gently open it. She met some resistance.

“Geoff,” she whispered. She moved in closer. “Geoff, can you hear me?”

A sound. A deeper breath. Perhaps a grunt? She forced his eyes open. More resistance, she was sure of it this time. His eyes continued to dart around, taking no particular notice of anything, let alone her. It gave her the creeps, so she let go. She tried another strategy, pinching his arm, squeezing it hard, hard enough to make any conscious person complain.

A movement. He moved his head. A moan. He was waking up!

“Geoff, this is your nurse, Jill. You’re in the NSICU at the Trauma Center, Geoff. Everything is okay. You’re going to be okay. You’ve been in an accident, a bad accident, and you had surgery—”

A word came softly from between his dry, sticky lips.

Jill reached down to squeeze his hand. She leaned in closer.

“What, Geoff? What did you say?”

“Oma...”

“Oma? What’s Oma? Geoff, try to open your eyes. Look at me. Say it again, please.”

His puffy lids twitched, then parted, not fully at first, the room light overwhelming his eyes.

Geoff clamped them shut, then slowly tried to open them once more. Again he spoke. “O’Malley. Call O’Malley.”

A whooshing sound was heard, the sound of the NSICU door opening. Jill could barely contain her excitement. She continued to hold Geoff’s hand, gazed at him as she called out, “Cathy, over hear, quick! Hurry up, girl. Drop those burgers! Geoff’s awake, and he’s trying to say something! Something about someone named O’Malley.”

Their gazes met. Jill leaned in closer, her eyes studying his. What she saw in those crystal blue eyes was not pain, but fear. Mortal fear.

“Nurse Akers, why don’t you go take a break. I’ll keep an eye on your patient for a little while.”

Jill startled, turned around to see where the authoritative voice came from. “Oh, Dr. Pederson, it’s you!” She took a deep breath, tried to relax. “Are you sure? There’s always supposed to be a nurse on duty in here. Medical center rules—”

Pederson held up his hand, smiled, spoke in tones so soft Jill had to strain in order to hear him. “Don’t worry about it. How could our patient be any better off than with the chairman of neurosurgery and the director of research at his bedside?”

Jill looked toward the doorway, saw Joseph Balassi enter the NSICU, approach the bedside. “Well, whatever you say, Dr. Pederson. You should know. Is fifteen minutes okay?”

“That would be perfect.”

Jill Akers left the room.

Pederson and Balassi stood over Geoff, glanced down at him. Pederson looked at the ICP monitor, turned to Balassi. “He seems to be rousing. You can take it from here. Call me when you’re done.”

Pederson left the NSICU.

Geoff’s eyes widened. Was he still dreaming, or was this a hallucination?

“Geoffrey, Geoffrey, so good to see you again. I heard you were in the hospital, so I thought I’d pay you a visit,” Balassi said. “You and I have been through so much together lately.   “Balassi approached the bedside, stood directly over Geoff, casting a shadow on his face. “Roles are reversed this time, aren’t they?”

Geoff tried to muster whatever strength he had. He shifted his position, attempted to roll out of bed to his right, but a searing pain shot from his right leg and jolted his spine. Then he realized why. His leg was tethered to the frame above the bed. He was dead in the water, trapped. This couldn’t be happening, not here, not now after all he’d been through. He hadn’t survived so much for it to end this way.

Fear transformed to hatred. “Asshole,” he mumbled hoarsely.

“I see illness hasn’t changed you, Geoff. Here let me help you out,” he said as he released the wire holding up Geoff’s leg, sending the cast crashing to the bed. Geoff let out a scream and was momentarily blinded by the excruciating pain.

Balassi smiled and continued, ignoring Geoff’s writhing. “Often major life events—illness, injury, a death in the family will do that to someone. Change them, that is. It’s true. Really it is. But there are other ways to change a person, Geoff. You know what I mean.
Really
change them, their personalities, their intellect, their abilities. I gave you a chance, an opportunity of a lifetime, Geoff, to be a part of this great discovery, and you turned me down.

“You tried to destroy me. You didn’t understand this discovery is greater than either of us. It will live on, Geoff, be picked up by others, the project passed from one generation to the next as it has been. The seed that was planted forty years ago as Project MK Ultra
has blossomed and become the Sigma Project. Under our care it will be carried to fruition.”

Balassi’s piercing brown eyes danced wildly. “I had no choice but to do what I did, Geoff. I am the agent of mankind’s next great leap in evolution:
neurochemical evolution.
As the guardian of this historical advance, I simply could not let you get in the way.”

“There is someone else who knows, someone who can stop you.” Geoff coughed out the words.

Balassi laughed derisively. “You mean your detective friend, O’Malley? The one you went to all that trouble to get the information to? You must be kidding.”

“You can kill me, but he knows everything. They’ll be coming for you Balassi. You’re insane.”

Balassi continued to laugh. “Detective O’Malley won’t be coming after me or anyone else, Geoff. The ignorant fool came to see me in my office earlier this evening, played me a recording of the conversation you and I had in my apartment. That was good, Geoff, very good! He threatened to take me down to the stationhouse. Can you believe it?” Balassi snickered. “Let’s just say your detective friend is tied up with other business right now.”

Geoff’s eyes narrowed in disbelief. “You’re lying.”

“I’m so sorry, I really am. I know he was your only hope and without hope the human spirit withers away, dies a slow death, Geoff, but it’s true. See.” Balassi held up O’Malley’s badge and I.D.

“So, where do we go from here, hum? I’d still like to give you a chance, a chance to be part of this. I think there’s still a way we can work together.” He reached into his pocket and held up a syringe filled with an amber solution.

“This syringe, Geoff, contains the most powerful sigma endorphin known to man. Oh, we thought that of the other sigma analogs we developed, but the compounds were unpredictable. Their half-lives either too long or too short, their structures unstable, short-circuiting the brain’s neurochemical pathways. Like early LSD, far too crude.”

Balassi rolled the syringe between his thumb and index finger and held it in front of Geoff’s face. Geoff sank back into the pillow, tried to push himself away. Beads of sweat formed on his brow.

“I’ve honed it down, Geoff. I’ve finally identified the exact location of the receptor imbalance that causes schizophrenia. Your patient Smithers helped me with that. Of course he didn’t know it at the time. Do you understand what this means? The elimination of this crippling mental illness from the human race, vaccinating against it like polio or small pox, eliminating it entirely! This is only the beginning, and I have chosen
you
to play a major role.”

“You’re mad,” gasped Geoff.

“Not as mad as you will be shortly.” Balassi unsheathed the needle and leaned over, holding it in front of Geoff. He squirted out a few drops of the endorphin, the drops landing on Geoff’s lower lip. Instinctively Geoff spit, his saliva and the endorphin catching Balassi in the eye.

“Really, Geoff,” he said with disgust. “You needn’t be so crude and ungrateful.” He wiped his face with a handkerchief. “It’s far better than dying, you know. They’ll take good care of you in the institution. You’ll get visits from your friends on the weekends, care packages from the family. It won’t be so bad.”

Balassi laughed loudly, then became deadly serious. “Enough nonsense. It’s time. Congratulations, my friend. You’ll go down in history.”

Slowly, Balassi reached over the top of Geoff’s head and grabbed the tubing that connected to his head bolt. He found the injection site, pierced it with the needle. Geoff felt the pop as the needle was inserted into the transducer. Balassi pinched off the tubing with his thumb.

Geoff looked up at Balassi’s hand on the syringe. Sweat poured down Geoff’s face. His heart was racing, his breathing labored. He could handle the pain, even the thought of death, but the notion of insanity brought unbridled terror. He closed his eyes and prepared for the dazzling lightshow as his brain’s receptors became saturated with the endorphin. Would he know what was happening? Would it be instantaneous, or would he have to live like a human time bomb, insanity ticking away slowly, unpredictably, inside him. That alone might be enough to make him go mad.