Second Opinion (16 page)

CHAPTER 28

'Doc, over here!'

The man's gravelly whisper, from the shadows to her right, nearly stopped Thea's heart.

'Sean?'

Still she couldn't see him.

'Here, to your right, by the corner of the building.'

Thea took a few seconds to allow her vision to adjust and then moved toward him. She was dressed in black, as was he, and as instructed, wore a black watch cap pulled low and a pair of black cloth gloves. She guessed him at thirty, but it was only an estimate because his narrow face was covered in black greasepaint. In seconds, he had covered hers as well. His touch wasn't very gentle.

Thea had been well prepared for the industrial spy by Hayley, who made it clear that, as much as it grated against her morality, anyone with a serious interest in manufacturing, technology, and industry who didn't take pains to keep current with what their competition was up to wasn't in the competition for long. Thea was embarrassed at how easily she embraced the notion, but she also knew that much of her attitude sprang from her admiration of the woman who gave the orders.

'Black face paint, black clothes,' she said. 'This is serious.'

In fact, Hayley had already told her, based on the reports Flowers had relayed to her, that it was going to be.

'Sean has been all over the hospital campus, and through as much of the Cannon Building as he dared,' Hayley had told her. 'He's studied blueprints, heating-duct diagrams, maps of the tunnel system, and even the sewers. Earlier today, he actually chanced going into Dr. Thibideau's office, allegedly to find out how to make an appointment. There are security problems everywhere, but he thinks he has figured out a way to get you in.'

'Terrific. I'm ready. Hayley, I'm very excited with what Master Fang found in his examination of you, but I'm also very confused and bewildered.'

'He's for real, though, right? He seemed so sure of himself, but I'd hate to get my hopes up on this one.'

'What can I say? Just as he speaks a different language and comes from a society with different customs, he practices diagnosis and healing in a way that is foreign and unfamiliar to most Westerners.

'But you've seen enough to trust him.'

'I've seen enough to believe in what he does, but I was brought up around a brilliant Western physician and I studied physiology and anatomy and the scientific method as taught by more Western physicians. There was no discussion of
Qi
in our classes. No acupuncture points. No deep wrist pulses.'

'This ain't easy, sister.
Qi
is no easy concept for a poor little ol' farm girl like me.'

'I know. But I will tell you that most of the time, we Western doctors carefully avoid any head-on collisions with the power of the mind-body connection because we have all seen enough to respect it. Patients recovering nicely from an illness tell us they are going to die, and then later that night they do. Autopsy negative. People who have no right to survive their illness spend days on end in prayer with their loved ones, and suddenly they're better. We've all experienced such things.'

'If you were me?'

'I would keep doing what you're doing. We've got some tests that will validate what Master Fang found. We'll get them run as quickly as possible.'

'Perfect.'

'If I found myself seriously ill, I would try to take advantage of both Eastern and Western treatments. Western, so-called allopathic, doctors often get quite pompous about how far we've come and how much we know about the mechanism of disease, but I promise you there is much more we don't understand than what we do. I am going to go through with whatever your Sean Flowers has planned because I need to know about Jack Kalishar. I need to know why my father connects the man with what happened to him. At the same time, I intend to learn about your cancer as well and about as many other of Dr. Thibideau's experimental patients as I possibly can.'

'And you know there may be trouble along the way.' I know.

'I have told Sean to take care of you at all costs, but that's the most I can do.'

'I understand.'

'There's one more thing. Sean tells me that this whole business could be much easier if you would involve your friend, the security guard.'

'No, Hayley.' Thea was firm. 'I would call the whole thing off before I'd involve him. I'm certain about that. He's had some really tough things happen to him. I don't want to add to it by having him lose his job because of me. Flowers and I are going to find a way into that office ourselves, or we're simply not going to do it.'

'Well said. I'm with you a hundred percent.'

'Great.'

'In that case, I only have one other question for you.'

'Shoot.'

'You have any fear of heights?'

CHAPTER 29

The night was largely overcast, and above the clouds was a new moon. Thea and Sean Flowers were pressed against the ancient Veteran's Memorial Building on the southeast corner of the massive Beaumont Clinic campus. Veteran's was essentially a dormitory housing students, house staff, and visiting faculty members. Thea herself had stayed there for a time during her specialty rotations through the clinic.

Flowers, whom Thea decided was older than her initial impression, was a man of few words, who carried a cat-like edginess, constantly scanning the area around them. It was after eleven, and the walkways crisscrossing between buildings were largely deserted. Thea felt keyed up and more than a little apprehensive. She had been reluctant to ask Hayley what she had meant by asking if she was afraid of heights. If her friend had wanted her to know, Thea reasoned, she certainly would have said something.

Thea's response to the question, which was, 'a little, I guess,' was not completely accurate. As a child, she'd had a major meltdown on a chairlift, and for whatever the cause, she had gotten sick on her first ride on a Ferris wheel. She had never again been on either one. More recently, when she looked down from a balcony railing, she inevitably got a queasy feeling, but she had assumed that more or less everybody did.

'Here,' Flowers said, handing her a black canvas military backpack, identical to the one he was wearing. 'Adjust the straps if you need to. Is it too heavy?'

In fact, the knapsack did have a fair amount of heft.

'I work in the African jungle,' she said. 'It may not look it, but I'm pretty strong… and tough.'

'That's good to hear. You might need both.'

Thea looked at the man and tried to gauge how serious he was, but the only visible cue, the whites of his eyes, gave her nothing.

'What's in here?' she asked.

'Not much. Some rope, a decent-sized pocketknife, a notebook, a couple of pens, a two-way radio set to the same frequency as mine, the sort of camera you might need if you don't want to stay in the lab to read, a pair of top-of-the-line night vision goggles, pocket flashlight, larger flashlight. I'm not sure we're going to be able to turn the lights on up there.'

Up there.

The words fanned her curiosity.

'Sean,' she said, 'when Hayley told me you had found a way into the office, she asked me if I was afraid of heights. What's that all about?'

'She didn't tell you?'

'The truth is, I didn't ask. I guess I had decided I would be going through with this no matter what.'

'Well, the office you want is on the fifth floor of the Cannon Building.'

'I know. I've been there.'

'Well, then, you might know that after five o'clock, the elevators don't stop on that floor without a key card. One way around that would be to freeze the elevator on the fourth floor, go up through the emergency hatch, and take a pry bar to the door on the fifth. But

I wasn't sure you could handle all that, plus there's more security around the door into the office.'

'So what did you decide?'

'I decided we're going up the outside of the building and through the window.'

'Through the window? I was up there. They don't open.'

'That did present a problem,' Flowers said. 'So I turned my attention to the outside.'

'It's sheer glass.'

For the first time, Thea detected a faint smile.

'Sheer glass is always a challenge.' Flowers checked the time. 'Let's roll. Stay against the building, and don't cross a walk until I say it's okay. You know what an aerial bucket is? It's also called a boom truck bucket.'

'The kind they use for pruning trees?'

'Or electrical work. Exactly.'

'I know what they look like.'

'Well, in just a couple of minutes you're going to feel what one is like to ride on. Think you can handle that?'

Thea immediately envisioned herself riding up Loon Mountain on her first—and last—chairlift ride.

'I can handle it,' she said. 'But what about the window?'

'That's my job,' Flowers replied, patting his backpack.

The other thousand or so questions Thea had went unanswered. They turned onto the walkway that went between the Cannon Building and another modern building that seemed to have popped up in just the two years since Thea had last been at the clinic. There was a sawhorse at the entrance to the passageway, on which was nailed a sign that read
CLOSED.

A finger to his lips, Flowers led her around the sawhorse, checking behind and ahead of them continuously. There were no trees or electrical wires along the concrete walk, but there was a truck—an aerial boom truck—parked to the Cannon Building side, but taking up three-quarters of the passage. Thea scanned five stories up from the ground and sensed a churning in her gut. She leaned close to Flowers's ear.

'Where did you get the truck?'

'I moved it from the other side of campus where they were doing some tree work,' he whispered back, seeming too proud of his ingenuity to keep silent. 'In this world, all you ever have to do is look like you know what you're doing, and nobody ever stops to question you unless they happen to be the person who's supposed to be doing it. If that happens, it's just plain lousy luck. I waited until the crew had left for the day, hot-wired the truck, put the 'closed' signs on the back, and drove it around to here simple as you please.'

Thea flashed on Dan possibly saving her father's life by taking the time to check the average-looking orderly's ID—an act he could just as easily have let pass. He must have been a terrific policeman.

'Have you ever worked one of these?' she asked.

'It's just a few buttons and levers. I can do buttons and levers.'

Thea glanced at the small bucket, then upward again, and felt an involuntary chill.

'No, seriously,' she said.

'Okay, I tried it out.'

'And?'

'No sweat. Except that we have to keep the truck running in order to make the boom work. It's a little on the noisy side, but at this hour I don't think anyone's in any of these labs. And even if they are, I doubt they'd think the truck was anything other than what it seems.'

'You enjoy doing this sort of thing?'

'When it all works, I do. In fact, sometimes I enjoy it even when it doesn't work. I guess I'm just not cut out for
Do you wantjries with that, ma'am?
Well, ready to go?'

He motioned to the bucket, then slipped into the cab of the flatbed truck and turned on the engine. Her heart pounding, Thea scrambled up next to the folded boom on the flatbed, then climbed into the bucket. Moments later, Flowers was standing beside her.

'Is there a weight limit?' she asked, battling back another wave of queasiness.

'I'm sure we're not close to it. But there is one thing. With the boom fully extended, the bucket doesn't quite reach the fifth floor.'

The wave grew large enough to surf on.

'That sounds like it could be a bit of a problem,' she said.

'I laugh at such problems. Seriously, don't be worried. Once I've taken care of the window, you'll have to stand up here on the edge of the bucket to get through. It should be easy.'

'You want fries with that?' Thea asked.

The rumbling engine noise reverberated between the walls of the two buildings as Flowers pushed a lever forward and the bucket glided up one floor, then another, with just enough bounce and sway to mentally propel Thea back to the chairlift on Loon Mountain.

'Just don't look down,' Flowers said.

'I'll try not to.'

Thea wasn't sure until she heard her voice that she would be able to speak.

'There's some sort of file cabinet inside, yes?'

'Yes,' she managed. 'I know right where it is.'

'I'll come in after you, then I'll open the cabinet in a way that won't leave any scratches and return to the truck so I can turn the engine off. You take care of business as quickly as you can, then call me on the radio and I'll bring the bucket up.'

'Got it.'

They jounced up another floor. Inside the third-story window, Thea could make out the glassware and other equipment of a lab. Over her years with Doctors Without Borders she had been in many odd and often dangerous situations. But this… She risked a look at the specter who had taken control of her life. Even through the black greasepaint she could sense his exhilaration. A pull on the lever, and they advanced past the fourth-story windows up toward the fifth. Then, with a final bounce, they stopped. One of the huge plate-glass windows of Thibideau's laboratory was still a foot or so above the top of the bucket.

Don't look down.

There was no obvious way through the windows until Flowers opened his backpack and extracted a pair of heavy-duty disc-like clamps. With simian movement, he hopped up onto the top edge of the bucket, set the clamps on the window pane and, using some sort of implement taken from his pocket, quickly drew a rainbow arc, two feet high, beginning and ending at the sill. The next cut was across the sill itself. The whole maneuver, end-to-end, took less than a minute. Then, with a few well-placed taps from a cloth-covered mallet, the thick semicircle of glass came free.

Amazing,
Thea thought, as Flowers lowered the glass to the floor inside and slithered face-first through the opening. According to Hayley, this sort of thing went on all over, every day, with an equally inventive industry devoted to preventing it. People got caught, people got arrested, people got away with whatever they were after, people kept trying.
Absolutely amazing.

'Psst! Quick, through here. Don't look down.'

The bucket was swaying with each movement. Once again, Thea began to feel ill.

Don't look down
… Don't look down…

Chewing on her lower lip, she pulled herself up onto the edge of

the bucket, bracing herself against what remained of the window. She passed her knapsack inside, put her hands on the sill, and dove, more than slithered, through the new opening. Her landing, assisted by Flowers, would have won few points from the judges, although the medical team standing by would have been pleased that he had moved the glass plate aside, and that none of her bones were broken.

Seconds later, they were standing in front of the locked door to Lydia Thibideau's office, and seconds after that, thanks to some sort of strange-looking tool Flowers carried on his belt, they were inside. The lock on the file cabinet was no more of a challenge.

'That what you're after?' Flowers asked, gesturing to a drawer completely full of perhaps a hundred yellow files. The drawer just below held an equal number.

Even before she slid one out, Thea knew that, as Hayley had promised, she was dealing with the dinosaurs of American medical care—paper printouts and actual X-ray photographs.

Nonelectronic medical records.