Seizure (40 page)

“Come on!” Daniel said. “Tell me this definitive proof!”

Stephanie continued to stare at Daniel. Now she was trying to decide if he had changed during the last six months or if he'd always been so dispassionate about everything but his work. She looked away for a moment to reprogram her emotions and get herself under a semblance of control. It wasn't going to solve anything if she stalked off or they sat there and bickered. Turning back to Daniel, she took a deep breath and described everything she had seen, particularly the details about the ledger book that had laid it all out in black and white. When she finished, they stared at each other across their unfinished dinners. It was Daniel who finally broke the silence.

“Well, you were right. Does being right at least give you some satisfaction?”

“Hardly!” Stephanie said, with a sarcastic laugh. “The question is: Can we proceed at this point, knowing what we do?”

Daniel looked down at the table and fiddled absently with his silverware. “The way I see it is that we accepted the oocytes before we knew the details of their origin.”

“Ha!” Stephanie scoffed. “That's a mighty convenient excuse and a world-class example of fair-weather ethics.”

Daniel raised his eyes to meet Stephanie's. “We are so close,” he said, solemnly enunciating each word. “Tomorrow, we'll start differentiating the cells. I'm not stopping now because of what is going on at the Wingate Clinic. I'm sorry you were manhandled, mistreated, and molested. I'm also sorry I got beat up. This has not been a picnic, but we knew treating
Butler was not going to be easy. We were well aware from the outset that the Wingate principals were unethical, venal idiots, yet we decided to proceed in spite of it. The question is: Are you still with me or not?”

“Let me ask you a question,” Stephanie said, leaning closer to Daniel and lowering her voice. “After Butler has been treated, and we go home, and CURE has been saved, and everything is hunky-dory, can we somehow anonymously alert the Bahamian authorities to what is going on at the Wingate?”

“That would be problematic,” Daniel responded. “To get you out of Kurt Hermann's private jail cell immediately, which I thought was of prime importance for all concerned, I signed a confidentiality agreement that precluded doing what you just suggested. These people we are dealing with might be crazy, but they are not stupid. The agreement also spelled out what we are doing at the Wingate, meaning that if their secret is revealed, they will reveal ours, which could undo everything we've tried to accomplish by treating Butler.”

Stephanie absently twirled her wineglass, which she had otherwise not touched. “What about this idea?” Stephanie said suddenly. “Maybe once Butler is cured, he won't be so emphatic about secrecy.”

“I suppose that's a possibility,” Daniel offered.

“Can we then say we will at least leave the issue open for discussion down the road?”

“I suppose,” Daniel repeated. “I mean, who knows? Things might happen that we have not anticipated.”

“That seems like a fair description of the whole affair to date.”

“Very funny!”

“Well, nothing has happened exactly as we've planned!”

“That's not quite true. Thanks to you, the cellular work has progressed exactly as we planned. By the time Butler gets here, we could have ten cell lines available, any one of which could cure him. What I need to know is whether you are with me, so we can complete what we need to do and get out of Nassau.”

“I do have one more demand,” Stephanie said.

“Oh?”

“I want you to make it clear to Spencer Wingate that you're not happy he is making inappropriate overtures toward me. And while we're on the subject, why have you been so passive about it? It's humiliating. You've never even brought it up between us.”

“I'm just trying not to make waves.”

“That's making waves! I don't understand! If Sheila Donaldson was making equivalent overtures to you, I would certainly support you however you wanted me to.”

“Spencer Wingate is a self-centered blowhard egotist who thinks he's a gift to womankind. I was confident you could handle him without turning the situation into a bad scene.”

“It's already been a bad scene. He's become progressively and offensively insistent, even to the point of touching me, although after today's flap, maybe he'll be less so. Anyway, I want some support from you about this. Okay?”

“All right! Okay!” Daniel said. “Is that it? Can we just move on and finish this whole Butler affair?”

Stephanie nodded. “I suppose,” she said without a lot of enthusiasm.

Daniel ran his fingers through his hair several times, puffed up his cheeks, and then let his breath out like a balloon deflating. He smiled weakly. “I'm sorry again for what I said a little while ago. I've just been beside myself since hearing you were locked up in that jail cell. I thought for sure we were going to be kicked out of the Wingate because of your nosing around, just when we were in sight of success.”

Stephanie silently wondered if Daniel had any inkling of how self-centered he was himself. “I hope you are not leading up to saying I shouldn't have gone into the egg room.”

“No, not at all,” Daniel admitted. “I understand that you did what you felt you had to do. I'm just glad that ultimately our project hasn't been derailed. But this episode has made me realize something else. We've been so busy and preoccupied that we haven't taken a moment to ourselves other than to eat.” Daniel put his head back and looked up through the palm fronds at the star-speckled sky. “I mean, here we are in the Bahamas in the middle of the winter, and we haven't taken advantage of it in any way or form.”

“Are you suggesting something in particular?” Stephanie asked. Occasionally, Daniel surprised her.

“I am,” he answered. He took his napkin off his lap and plopped it onto his dinner plate. “Neither of us seems particularly hungry, and we're both stressed. Why don't we take a moonlit stroll up through the hotel's formal garden and visit that medieval cloister we saw from a distance on our walk our first morning here. We were both curious about it, and it would be awfully appropriate. In the middle ages, cloisters were shelters from the turmoil of the real world.”

Stephanie lifted her own napkin and put it on the table. Despite her current aggravation with Daniel and the further questions it raised about her future relationship with him, she couldn't help but smile at his cleverness and razor-sharp intellect, traits that had had a lot to do with her initial attraction to him. She stood up. “That might be the best suggestion you've made in six months.”

 

This looks promising!
Gaetano said to himself as he saw Stephanie's head and then Daniel's appear over the top of the oleander that blocked his view of their table. He'd seen Stephanie's for a moment earlier, but she had apparently sat back down. Gaetano hunkered down in his chair, lest Daniel chance to look up at the ensemble on the balcony. Gaetano fully expected the couple to make their way in his direction and pass the hostess desk directly below on their way back to their suite. But they fooled him. They started off in the opposite direction and never looked back.

“Crap!” Gaetano mumbled. Every time he thought he had everything under control, something unexpected happened. He glanced over at the lead musician, with whom he'd made eye contact during the time he'd been waiting. The man had been demonstrably appreciative of Gaetano's attention. Gaetano smiled and gave a little wave as he got to his feet.

At first Gaetano walked at a normal pace along the balcony to avoid giving the impression that he was hurrying. But once he was far enough away from the musicians, he upped his pace while keeping a hand on the gun in his pants pocket to keep it from banging against his leg. In the
courtyard below, the professor and the girl had already disappeared into the spa that occupied the first floor of the eastern end of the building.

At the opposite end of the balcony, Gaetano skidded to a stop at the head of the stairs. He descended rapidly, still clutching the gun through the fabric of his slacks. When he arrived at the spa door, he stopped, briefly composed himself, made sure he wasn't being observed by anyone in the restaurant, and then slowly opened it. He had no idea what to expect. If the professor and the girl were in sight, signing up for a treatment, he'd just back out and rethink what he should do. But the spa was shut for the night, as evidenced by a sign on the empty reception desk illuminated by a single votive candle. All at once, Gaetano remembered having passed through the same area on his first visit when he had been searching for the hotel's pool. Guessing the pool was the professor and his girlfriend's destination, he hurried across the empty room and out the other side.

Gaetano was now in the section of the hotel grounds composed of individual villas. Splotches of dim light defined each entrance, but the area was otherwise dark beneath a canopy of palms. Gaetano walked briskly, remembering the route. He was pleased. Guessing the pool and its snack bar would also be closed and deserted, he'd have his choice of appropriate locations to do what he needed to do.

As he rounded a sharp right-hand turn in the walkway, Gaetano caught a glimpse of the professor and Tony's sister before they disappeared down a short run of stairs beyond a baroque limestone balustrade. Gaetano picked up his pace again. Reaching the balustrade, he looked out over the pool area. As he had expected, it was closed for the night, and the surrounding buildings were dark. The pool itself was illuminated with underwater lights and appeared like a huge, flat emerald.

“I don't believe this!” Gaetano whispered to himself. “It's so perfect!” His excitement was palpable. Daniel and Stephanie had walked around the edge of the pool and were now starting off into the extensive, dark, and deserted formal gardens. In the darkness, Gaetano couldn't see many of the details beyond some isolated suggestions of statuary and
hedges. But what he could see clearly was the lighted medieval cloister. It stood gleaming in the distant moonlight like a crown capping a series of rising, shadowy garden terraces.

Gaetano's hand slipped into his left pants pocket and wrapped itself around the handle of the silenced automatic. He shivered from the sensation the cold steel caused, and in his mind's eye, Gaetano could see the red laser dot on the professor's forehead, which would precede his pulling the trigger.

9:37
P
.
M
., Monday, March 11, 2002

 

“I recognize this
statue from somewhere,” Daniel said. “Do you know if it's famous?”

Daniel and Stephanie were standing on a manicured patch of grass, gazing at a white marble reclining nude that appeared to glow in the humid, misty semidarkness of the Ocean Club's Versailles-inspired garden. A silvery blue illumination washed over the formal landscape and contrasted sharply with the deep purple shadows.

“I think it's a copy of a Canova,” Stephanie replied. “So, yes, it's reasonably famous. If it is the one I'm thinking of, the original is in the Borghese Museum in Rome.”

Daniel shot an awed glance in her direction, which she missed. She was absorbed in lightly touching the woman's thigh. “It's amazing how much like skin the marble appears in the moonlight.”

“How on earth did you know it is a copy of a Canova, whatever the hell that is?”

“Antonio Canova was a renowned eighteenth-century neoclassical Italian sculptor.”

“I'm impressed,” Daniel said, with continued awed
disbelief. “How do you happen to have such arcane facts at your fingertips? Or are you pulling my leg from having read about this garden in the brochure in the room?”

“I didn't read the brochure, but I saw you reading it. Maybe you should be giving us a tour.”

“Not a chance! The only part I read carefully was about the cloister up on the hill. Seriously, how did you know about Canova?”

“I was a history minor in college,” Stephanie said. “That included a survey course in art history, which I remember more about than most of my other classes.”

“You amaze me sometimes,” Daniel commented. Following Stephanie's example, he reached out and touched the marble cushion on which the woman reclined. “It is uncanny how these guys were able to make marble appear so soft. Look at the way her body indents the fabric.”

“Daniel!” Stephanie said with sudden insistence.

Daniel straightened up and tried to read Stephanie's expression in the darkness. She was staring back toward the pool area. He followed her line of sight but saw nothing out of the ordinary in the shadowy moonlit landscape. “What's the matter? Did you see something?”

“I did,” Stephanie said. “I saw movement out of the corner of my eye. I think there is someone over there behind that balustrade.”

“So what! There's bound to be people wandering around out here, as beautiful as this place is. It's not as if we can expect to have this huge garden to ourselves.”

“True,” Stephanie agreed. “But it just seemed as if whoever I saw ducked away as soon as I turned my head. It was like they didn't want to be seen.”

“What are you trying to suggest?” Daniel questioned, with one of his scornful laughs. “Someone is spying on us?”

“Well, yeah, something like that.”

“Oh, come on, Stephanie! I wasn't serious when I suggested it.”

“Well, I'm serious. I really think I saw someone.” She raised herself up on her tiptoes and strained to see in the darkness. “And there's someone else!” she said excitedly.

“Where? I don't see anybody.”

“Back by the pool. Someone just disappeared from the light into the shadows of the snack bar.”

Daniel reached out and gripped Stephanie by both shoulders, making her turn to look at him. She resisted initially. “Hey! Come on! We're out here to relax. We've both had a hell of a day, and you in particular.”

“Maybe we should go back and take a walk on the beach, where there are always people. This garden seems too big, too dark, and too isolated for my current taste.”

“We're going up to that cloister,” Daniel said authoritatively, pointing up the hill. “We've both been intrigued by it, and as I said earlier, our visiting it is metaphysically apropos. We need some shielding from our current turmoil. And nighttime is the best time to visit ruins. So pull yourself together and let's go!”

“What if I really did see someone duck behind that balustrade?” Stephanie went back to craning her neck to see over the bougainvilleae.

“Do you want me to run back there and check? If you do, I'll be glad to go to put your mind at ease. You're being understandably paranoid, although paranoid nonetheless. We're on the hotel's grounds, for Christ's sake. They have security all over this place, remember?”

“I suppose,” Stephanie reluctantly agreed. A fleeting image of Kurt Hermann leering at her passed through her mind. She had a lot of reasons to be on edge.

“What do you say; do you want me to run back there?”

“No, I want you to stay here.”

“Well, come on then! Let's go up to the cloister.” Daniel took her hand and guided her back to the central promenade that led through a number of terraces and up widely spaced flights of steps to the crest of the hill where the cloister was sited. In contrast to the dark garden, the cloister was illuminated with hidden ground-level lights to highlight its gothic arches and give it a jewellike quality in the distance.

As they gained each terrace and skirted a central fountain or statue, they noticed additional statuary to either side within shadowed arbors. Some of these side statues were marble, while others were stone or cast bronze. Although tempted to take a look at them, they avoided any more detours.

“I had no idea there was so much art out here,” Stephanie commented.

“It was a private estate before it was a hotel,” Daniel said. “At least according to the brochure.”

“What did it say about the cloister?”

“All I remember is that it's French and was built in the twelfth century.”

Stephanie whistled in wonderment. “Very few cloisters have ever left France. In fact, I only know of one other, and it's not that old.”

They climbed the last flight of steps, and when they reached the top, they found a paved public road cutting across their path and isolating the cloister from its formal gardens. When they had viewed the cloister from below, there was no way to see the road unless a vehicle had gone by, and none had.

“This is a surprise,” Daniel said, looking up and down the road. It ran east to west along the spine of Paradise Island.

“I guess it's the price of progress,” Stephanie said. “I bet it goes out to the golf course.”

They crossed the road, the blacktop of which was still radiating the heat of the day, and climbed a few more steps to gain the crown of the hill dominated by the cloister. The ancient structure was merely a square, roofless, double row of gothic-columned arches. The inner row had a bit of tracery in the form of a single foil within each arch.

Daniel and Stephanie approached the edifice. They had to watch their footing, because in contrast to the lower garden, the ground near the cloister was uneven and littered with chunks of stone and crushed seashells.

“I have a feeling this is going to be one of those things that looks better from a distance than close-up,” Stephanie said.

“That's part of the reason ruins are better viewed at night.”

They reached the structure and carefully made their way into the aisle that ran between the two rows of columns. Their eyes, adapted to the dark, had to squint against the glare of the outside illumination.

“This portion was roofed in its former life,” Stephanie said.

Daniel looked up and nodded.

Avoiding the debris underfoot, they stepped over to the
inner balustrade. Both leaned on the ancient limestone handrail and peered into the central courtyard. It was about fifty feet square and filled with flat mounds of stone and shell fragments, plus a complicated interplay of shadows from the display lights and the intervening arches.

“It's sad,” Stephanie commented. She shook her head. “Back when this was the center of a functioning cloister, this courtyard would have had a well and maybe even a fountain, plus a garden.”

Daniel's eyes roamed around the enclosure. “What I find sad is that after lasting almost a thousand years in France, it's not going to last very long here, exposed to the tropical sun and sea air.”

They straightened up and looked at each other. “This is a bit anticlimactic,” Daniel said. “Let's go take that stroll you suggested on the beach!”

“Good idea,” Stephanie said. “But first, let's give this structure the benefit of the doubt and a bit of respect. Let's at least take one walk around the ambulatory.”

Hand in hand, they helped each other avoid the obstacles on the ground. With the glare of the outside lights, it was hard to see details. On the side opposite their hotel, they paused briefly to admire the view out over Nassau's harbor. The illuminating lights made that difficult as well, and soon they were back on their way.

 

Gaetano was ecstatic. There was no way he could have planned things any better. The professor and Tony's sister were now standing in a square of light that kept Gaetano all but invisible as he approached within striking distance. He could have approached back in the darkness of the garden, but he'd correctly guessed their destination, and he knew it would be perfect.

Gaetano had decided it was best for Tony's sister to know without an ounce of doubt where the hit was coming from, so as not to think the professor was a victim of a random act of violence. Gaetano considered this significant, since she was going to be taking over the company. He thought it was important that she knew exactly how the Castigliano brothers
felt about their loan and about how the company was being managed.

At that moment, the couple was on the far side of the ruins, making a slow circuit of the edifice. Gaetano had positioned himself just outside the pool of light along the western side. His intention was to wait until they were no more than twenty feet away before vaulting into the aisle to confront them.

Gaetano's pulse began to race as he watched Daniel and Stephanie round the final corner and start toward him. With growing excitement, he extracted the gun from its makeshift holster and made sure a bullet was in the chamber. Holding it up alongside his head, he prepared himself for what he loved best: action!

 

“I don't think we should be reopening this subject,” Stephanie said. “Not now, and maybe not ever.”

“I apologized for what I said back at the restaurant. All I'm saying now is that I would rather be groped than beaten up. I'm not saying that being groped isn't unpleasant; it's just easier to take than being beaten and physically injured.”

“What is this, a contest?” Stephanie questioned derisively. “Don't answer that! I don't want to talk about it anymore.”

Daniel was about to respond when he gasped, stopped in his tracks, and tightened his grip on Stephanie's hand. Stephanie had been looking down at the ground so she could navigate over a large hunk of stone when Daniel's response shocked her into raising her eyes. When she did, she gasped as well.

A hulking figure had leaped into their path, holding a huge handgun and pointing it at them with an outstretched arm. Daniel, more than Stephanie, was aware of a red dot just beneath the gun's barrel.

Neither Daniel nor Stephanie could move, as the man slowly approached. He had a sneering expression on his broad, flat-featured face, which Daniel recognized with a shudder. Gaetano came within six feet of the stunned and immobile couple. At that point, it was abundantly clear that the gun was aimed directly at Daniel's forehead.

“You made me come back, asshole,” Gaetano growled. “A
bad decision! The Castigliano brothers are very disappointed you did not return to Boston to safeguard their loan. I thought you had gotten my message, but apparently not, and you made me look bad. So goodbye.”

The sound of the shot was loud in the humid stillness of the night. Gaetano's arm holding the gun fell to his side while Daniel staggered backward, dragging Stephanie with him. Stephanie screamed as the body fell heavily, facedown, arms out to the sides. There were a few muscular twitches, but then all was still. A large exit wound on the back of his head oozed blood and gray matter.