Perilous Panacea (10 page)

Chapter Fourteen

From where Curt sat at the table, the insistent slap-tap of Surling’s footsteps hammered his brain like a dripping faucet. Every evening the same thing: Surling jogged in place for one-thousand steps, slap-tap-tap…then ten times around the table. In the morning, there were pushups, sit-ups, and more jogging, slowly driving Curt insane.

Curt considered exercise, although jogging was out because of his knee. Three years ago he started rowing and abruptly gave it up—too much to do to waste over an hour a day.

One last time around the table, and Surling collapsed in the chair across from Curt. He peeled off his glasses and wiped his face with a towel. For a moment, the two men dropped into their thoughts. Surling sucked air.

Curt’s mind wandered a path now worn bare. “We’ve got to get out of here,” he said.

Surling’s breath pumped in and out in short explosive bursts. “You ready to admit these assholes have got to be stopped?”

“That, and I want to save my skin. But how do we do it?”

“I figure we’ve got two choices. The first one is straight forward. We make a break for it.” Surling toweled his bald head as he studied Curt. “The second one is trickier. Drafton’s queer, and Derek was his lover. Derek’s all he talks about.”

Curt stared at Surling. Was that why Surling and Drafton seemed so close? It was more than just working together all day, every day. Was Surling bisexual? When did they find the time? Did they do it in the furnace room?

“So how will that help us escape?”

“He’s all torn up about Derek’s death. He told me you remind him of Derek.”

“Me.” That hollow feeling from Miami exploded in his gut, the feeling of being conned.

Surling positioned his glasses on his face and brought it back to life. “I figure you could play up to him, play on his sentiments about Derek, and maybe take Derek’s place. If he gets to like you he will help you—help us escape.”

“No way,” Curt said.

“Just play up to him. That’s all.”

“No way in hell.” Curt bounced up, strode over to the couch, turned and looked down at Surling. “Let’s go with the first choice. How do we do it?”

“If they show up tonight, we’ll wait for an opening and go.”

“There’s no way both of us can escape.”

“That’s right. One of us runs, while the other tries to delay them.” Surling pulled a quarter from his pocket. “I’ll flip you to see who makes the break.”

- - - - -

Applenu sipped scotch and glanced around the Howard Johnson lounge, now filling with women, a few his age, many older, much older. Like Marge Alsop, he thought. Steve Austin joked about Marge and her search for youth: a grandmother hanging out in singles bars with other grandmothers.

Applenu studied a long-legged bit of skirt that strolled past his table. God, this country had a lot of blondes. Or maybe he noticed them more now. This one displayed physical similarities to Patricia Hunter, the bint on Congressman Morgan’s staff Steve fixed him up with. “Her legs reach all the way to her ass,” Austin said. And they did. God, how he would like to see her again—see all of her again.

He recalled his trip to Iran, the streets filled with women in black chadors. What would it be like making it with one of them, pushing up under the long black skirt and getting past the veil to her face? He remembered his mother, who had to go back to it following the Revolution. Her mother had made her wear it when she was a child, but she abandoned it when she got married, because his father did not like it. His sisters hated the costume.

One of the few passages he remembered from when his father read them the Koran: “You are allowed on the night of the fast to approach your wives; they are your garment and ye are their garment. Now, therefore, go in unto them with full desire for that which God hath ordained for you.”

With full desire, he thought, as he watched the blonde join two older women at the next table. His mind wandered back to Patricia Hunter. While he went to her with full desire, Steve Austin took care of the Thornton woman. Not your nice bit of crumpet that one, but you’d never have known by the way he treated her. Steve would do anything to complete the job. While getting into her knickers—not too difficult for him—he somehow sweet-talked her into allowing him to use her computer password for access to government-classified information sources other than those he had access to with the DOE computer. With that access, he simply hacked his way to security clearances for the men subsequently hired to transport the nuclear material they hijacked.

If Austin or Hearn was here today, they would have women. He worked hard and played hard: twelve hours of work, six hours of play. Then get up and do it again. Seven days a week. He had to admit that they accomplished a lot while Hearn was around and had fun in the bargain, even though he would like to be any place else but in the situation he found himself.

With Hearn gone, there was nobody even to have a drink with, much less to party with. Lormes and his men dealt with him on a business only basis. That pouffe Drafton pursued other interests. Old Mustafa Mohammad, alias Perk Simmons, was out of the question. He was Sherbani’s man all the way, not someone to have a drink with without Sherbani hearing about it—assuming Simmons drank, which wasn’t likely, given the fact that he dragged his prayer rug around with him and used it at the appropriate five times a day for Salat. Sherbani used Simmons as his messenger to let Applenu know there would be a call.

Across the room, the band was getting ready with someone on a guitar running up and down the scales. The blonde glanced his way, and he momentarily caught her eye. He glanced at his Rolex: 8:58. The couple-thousand dollars he spent on the watch was essentially the only thing he’d spent any of his millions on. He had seventy thousand cash with papers for two other identities in a knapsack in his apartment ready for an emergency escape, the rest in a safe-deposit box in a Princeton bank. He didn’t need any of that money because Sherbani, through Lormes, provided expense money—five-thousand dollars a month, some of which wound up in the knapsack. The only other outlay was the money he wired his sister and uncle for their plan when the rest of the family got out of Iran. Family: he needed to bring that up to Sherbani again.

At 8:59:30, he strolled into the hall off the hotel lobby, moving toward the bank of pay phones. Was all this necessary? he wondered. Hearn had set up a sequence of public phones for Sherbani to call, so he never had to call the same phone twice. Even though the U.S. government said they were not monitoring phone calls, Sherbani did not trust the security of cell phones. Thank God for that. Without having to go out to a phone booth, he might never get a drink or meet any women.

The phone on the end of the row rang. He picked it up. “Brian here.”

“Yes, Brian.” Sherbani’s accent seemed stronger on the phone, his voice choppier. “How is the enterprise going?”

“First we need to talk about my family. I want them flown to Amsterdam as we agreed.”

“It is being taken care of. I will know something definite next week. Tell me about the enterprise.”

“Everything is on schedule to deliver a competitive product by September.”

“The reason I called was to tell you we decided to go ahead with the diversion.”

“Why? Nothing has been made public about the product.”

“The lack of publicity is politics. One faction of our competitors is keeping knowledge of the problem from other factions in their organization, because those others will want to know why the problem occurred, what is being done to fix it, and who is responsible for the problem. If you have watched the organization on other problems, you know that those left in the dark always like to fix blame.”

“So you are going to give it to the media.”

“We have a saying, Hassan, ‘Don’t get between two fighting dogs, you might get bit.’ We also know that fighting dogs bite each other.”

Chapter Fifteen

A nasal voice shoved country music from a CD player on the table next to the green-vinyl couch. For Curt, the songs conjured up a bitter taste of home.

Back roads, I’ve traveled them all,

In summer’s heat, spring, winter, and fall.

You’re never where you were.

I can’t replace you with her.

Tonight’s the night, Curt thought, as he studied his hole card. He called tails and “won” the right to try to escape.

For the last three nights their guards, Beecher, Markum, and Maxwell, the older fat one they called Max, showed up for poker. At other times, one of them was camped on the portable cot or chair they kept outside the door to their quarters.

Sitting at Curt’s left, Markum said, “Bet a dollar.”

Max: the name nagged at Curt’s brain.

Sitting next to Markum, Surling called. Maxwell called and reached for a cigarette. At Curt’s right, Beecher flipped his cards, stood, and headed for the refrigerator. “Anybody want a beer?”

Curt called the bet and glanced at Beecher, who bent to reach into the refrigerator, his tan shoulder holster popping from under his left armpit like a misplaced erect penis. Although Curt knew he was drinking too fast, he called for another beer.

Markum raked the pot and blew cigarette smoke onto the table as he collected the cards and shuffled. Beer, cigarette smoke, and country music, just like Friday nights at home eleven years ago in Dref, Iowa, after the accident.

We had a home, our home.

Then you started to roam,

Back roads that took you from me,

Back roads from what used to be.

Curt remembered. “Max. Maxwell, you’re the one.”

“Huh?” Maxwell blinked; his flabby face wore a hound-dog sleepiness enhanced by his gray walrus mustache. Behind the gold-rimmed, purple-tinted glasses, everything appeared a faded blue-gray.

“You were with my wife when I talked to her from Miami.”

“So?” Maxwell straightened his thick body and swiped a hand across his puffed face that was as rumpled as his gray jacket.

“So why aren’t you watching her now?”

“Just let it go, Reedan,” Beecher said quietly as he set a Sam Adams in front of Curt and lowered his large frame into his chair. Beecher’s face displayed no emotion, the same expression as when he pounded Curt’s stomach in the machine room.

Curt turned back to Maxwell and wondered what kind of pounding he would get if he didn’t escape. “If you’re here, that means she’s so scared you know she won’t go to the police.”

“Goddamn you, Reedan,” Beecher growled, his gaze straight ahead. “I thought that shot in the stomach showed we mean business.”

“My family is my business.”

“We can tell him, Beech,” Markum said, his accent thicker than that of the other two.

“Huh?” Beecher’s head snapped left as he looked past Curt at Markum.

Short and stocky with a coarse, freckled face with blue eyes, Markum, like Beecher, appeared to be in his mid-thirties. His long red hair seemed to have slipped from the top of his head onto his collar, leaving an elongated forehead. “What’s to tell?” he asked, glancing at Curt and Beecher. “We got somebody else watching her.”

“That’s not it,” Beecher said. “He’s a goddamned wise ass, and he’s going to fuck around until we have to knock the shit out of him.”

Curt felt Surling watching him and sensed his irritation. If they picked up and left, there would be no escape attempt. “Bet a dollar on the pair of fives,” he said, letting his mind wander back to the escape attempt. What would happen to Surling if he escaped?

Conversation dried up, leaving cards, beer, smoke, and country music. The music died unattended.

Curt peeked at his hole cards, ace-three, then sipped at his second beer, his limit, a lesson from watching Dad embarrass himself. He slipped up once in high school and puked his guts out. He didn’t try alcohol again until grad school. Tonight he needed an extra beer to get through the next hour.

“This is a goddamned wake,” Beecher said, flipping his cards over. He went to his jacket on the couch and rummaged through the pockets, rattling keys. When he returned, he dropped a gray pipe and a clear plastic bag of green leaves on the table. “Since we don’t have any women, maybe a little weed will liven up this party.”

Curt called the bet and glanced at Surling. This was something new.

“Professor Surling, do you play cards as well as you fuck?” Beecher asked as he filled the pipe with crumpled green leaves. “Or is fucking your academic specialty?”

“What?” Surling asked, glancing at Beecher, then grabbing Markum’s package of cigarettes.

Beecher turned to Markum. “Let’s look at them pictures I took up in Philly.”

Markum roared into a laugh, tossed in his hand, and stood.

“Maybe we could get Lormes to bring Marti and Carol down here for you two,” Beecher said. “Even you scientists have got to get fucked once in awhile. Maybe it is more often for you, Professor.” More laughter

Maxwell dealt another round up, and then he and Curt called Surling. Beecher lit the pipe and filled the table with smoke that smelled like burning rope. Maxwell dealt another round.

Curt glanced at Beecher. Was this the time? Was there a right time to challenge three men with guns?

Maxwell and Curt called Surling, and Maxwell dealt the last card face down.

Beecher handed Curt the pipe. “Take a puff.”

Curt hesitated. Got to stay alert, he thought. No way would he challenge those guns with his head messed up with booze and drugs.

“Go ahead, try it.”

Curt took the pipe. Dope surrounded him in college, and although he took flack, he never smoked. In high school, Dad convinced him he’d only be great at basketball if he kept his body free of drugs and alcohol. People didn’t believe him when he said he’d never smoked marijuana. Lori tried it in college and tried to talk him into trying it. They argued about it, and after that she never used it again. At least not that he knew.

He inhaled, and the smoke clawed its way down his windpipe like an angry tomcat. He roared into a cough; tears flooded his eyes.

Beecher howled and grabbed the pipe: “Smaller puffs, hold it in.” He demonstrated, hissing and popping noises issuing from his mouth. He handed the pipe to Curt and watched to see that he followed his instructions.

Can’t get high, Curt thought, but he played along. He choked back the cough that tickled his throat trying to escape.

Surling raked the pot. He realized he was smoking and stubbed out the cigarette, three-quarters unsmoked, obviously remembering his pledge to quit.

Markum returned and tossed a packet of color pictures on the table.

Beecher, holding the pipe, grabbed the top picture and handed it to Curt. “Here’s how we got the professor: giving oral exams.” Markum broke into a loud cackle.

Surling lay on his back, glasses off, a naked blonde’s face between his legs.

Beecher handed Curt a close-up photo of the blonde’s face and Surling’s penis. “For you scientists, the technical term for that is fellatio.”

Markum giggled, his face blooming as red as his thinning hair. “You got some great pictures, Beech.” He dug through the stack and laid four of them in front of Curt, pictures of Surling under or over the blonde, but always inside one of her openings. “She really handled you, eh, Professor.”

“Too bad we don’t have the laptop here to show the video you got,” Markum said.

Beecher pointed with the pipe at the picture of Surling being sucked by the blonde and looked at Curt. “Does that sharp wife of yours give good head, Reedan?” He turned to Surling, “If you had a wife like Reedan’s, Professor, you wouldn’t have to screw everything around. I just hope that when I’m eighty-four like you are, I’ll still be able to fuck like a mongrel dog. You’re my hero, Professor.”

Loud laughter from the three goons filled the room.

Maxwell turned to Curt. “I’d go down on your wife in a minute, Reedan. I’d gladly let her wrap those long legs around my neck while I wallowed in it.” Beecher and Markum roared. “Or maybe I’d have her wrap her luscious lips around my cock, while that long black hair of hers tickled my balls. If my wife would have been anything like her, I’d still be married.”

Curt restrained himself from rushing around the table and grabbing the slob.

Beecher loudly exhaled smoke. “So you see, Reedan, we’re definitely keeping our eyes on your wife. We’ve got our eyes on everything from that sweet ass of hers up to those perky tits.”

Curt’s face burned; his breathing accelerated. He figured he could get one swing at Maxwell before they grabbed him. Just hold on for now, he told himself, stick to the plan. He grabbed the gray pipe from Beecher and studied the stem, shiny like a minnow, wet with saliva. Feeling Beecher’s eyes, he inhaled. No more, he thought. It was time to move while everyone else’s mood was mellow.

When Surling got the pipe, his eyes darted to Beecher and Markum; Maxwell kept his head down. Surling went through the motions of inhaling deeply.

“Quite a high, huh, Reedan?” Beecher said.

Curt nodded and smiled; he felt nothing.

Beecher looked at Surling. “You smoked before, Professor?”

“A few times.”

Like dog and master, the pipe followed the cards around the table, clockwise. When his turn came, Curt put a dollar in the pot and took the pipe. One more puff wouldn’t hurt. He inhaled, held it, and passed the pipe.

It hit. Like a TV set with the contrast suddenly properly adjusted, everything in the room flipped into sharp focus: Markum’s red hair blended into a pink scalp that merged into his pink forehead. Beecher’s liquid eyes were pools of scotch with small drops of cola in the center. All light in the room reflected from Surling’s head and flashed off his glasses. A smile rippled Maxwell’s puffed face when he peeked at his hole cards; he quickly smoothed his gray mustache.

Curt shook his head. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Not after five or six puffs. Lori claimed that the first two times she smoked, nothing happened. His body tingled; his arms and legs felt as if they were packed with vibrating springs, his face cold, freezing. Should he call it off? Beecher held the pipe, now empty. A chance to come down.

To Curt’s left, Markum rubbed his arms and babbled on about Surling in Philadelphia and the video. “You should see him doing her doggy style,” Markum said amid a roar of laughter. “Beecher’s mongrel dog couldn’t do it better.”

On Curt’s right, Beecher, a perpetual motion machine, jiggled up and down as if in the cab of a bouncing truck. Suddenly, Curt climbed in the truck, legs jiggling, shoulders and head bobbing.

“Feelin’ no pain, boy,” Dad would say when he and Uncle Artie staggered in from the Country Lane Bar, each with a six pack. After Dad put on some records, he and Artie popped a beer and sang along with a scratchy Hank Williams record: “Your cheatin’ heart…” Dad never drank before Curt’s accident.

Maybe feeling no pain would pull him through the next few minutes: no pain from a bullet in the back, a fist in the stomach, or a kick in the balls.

Dad drank and Mom prayed: prayed for Dad to stop drinking, prayed for Curt to make it at Iowa State, then at MIT. I hope you’re still praying for me, Mom, he thought. It was now or never. He tossed in his cards and stood. “Anybody want a beer?” he asked, heading for the refrigerator, his step light and his body ready to float, a giddiness jiggling his brain. Trip the light fantastic to wherever the next few minutes might lead, he thought. May I have this dance?

Beecher and Maxwell called for a beer.

Act natural, he told himself, make them think you’re high, but don’t get lost in the high. Be ready: ready to feel no pain, see no pain, and hear no pain.

He uncapped two Sam Adams and grabbed one for himself, unopened. As he set Maxwell’s beer in front of him, Surling glanced up, his eyes stretched vertically into robin’s eggs by the angle of his glasses. Questioning eyes: You going to do it or not?

He set Beecher’s beer down, saw the gun under Beecher’s arm, and quickly looked at the pictures. Surling and sex. Sex: Surling’s alternative to escape.

“Reedan,” Beecher yelled, “start that CD player.”

“You’ve got it.” Curt said. Was his speech slurred? “Nothing beats country music and beer.”

“And weed,” Beecher said. “Don’t forget weed.”

“And weed.” Curt laughed, a laugh that threatened to transform itself into a giggle. He tried to remember what day it was. Friday? Uncle Artie was dead, and according to Mom, Dad only went to the Country Lane the last Friday of the month, and he usually came home early and sober.

As he punched the button on the CD player, he remembered the jingling keys in Beecher’s coat. He turned up the volume and quickly probed the coat pockets and found the keys.

A minute or two of your time,

That’s not too much to ask.

Once everything you had was mine.

Now it’s behind a mask.

“Don’t deal me in this hand,” he called. “Got to go to the john.” He stumbled. An act, he told himself, as he staggered toward the door, carrying his unopened beer, his weapon of choice. “Feelin’ no pain,” he said.

Time to put their plan into operation. A simple plan: one man would accompany him to the bathroom. Once inside the large room that served as shower room, change room, and bathroom, he’d maneuver to get behind the guard and smash him with one of the metal chairs lined up against the wall. He hefted the Sam Adams club. A slight change in plan. After he clobbered him with the beer bottle, he would run like hell.

The music played on:

It’s all behind a mask,

Hidden behind a mask.

If only I could know,

Your love will once more grow.

From seed behind that mask,

Hidden behind that mask.

Between the alcohol, the drug, and the fear, he realized part of the put-on stagger was real, making it difficult to walk a straight line. He needed to go to the bathroom, bad.

He opened the door and looked back. Nobody moved. Answered prayers? He stepped into the ten-foot wide hall, the door to the change room directly across the hall. Fifteen feet to the right, past the guard’s cot along the wall, the hallway intersected a similar-size hallway that ran the length of the building. All the work rooms were on that corridor. His objective was twenty feet to the left, a large dark-green sliding door with a smaller dark-green man-sized door next to it.