Chapter Three

Leuters examined the private ten-by-ten concrete room and located a gray track suit folded on a steel table. He picked up the cotton and touched it to his nose. He hadn’t smelled the subtle fragrance of dryer sheets in six months. He had spent the last months of his life smelling feet, varying degrees of body odor and grime in a Mexican federal prison. He stepped out of the worn orange jumpsuit and slipped his naked body into the soft jersey tracksuit, carefully folding the faded orange canvas and placing it on the table. As of today, he was a free man.

The door to the cell opened.

“Are you ready, Dr. Garcia?” The prison guard stepped into the room.

“Yes.” He nodded and placed his hands in front of his body to be cuffed.

Federal prison in Mexico was worse than he could have imagined, though to be honest he hadn’t spent much of his life as a priest envisioning what prison would be like. His general impression about incarceration was that it was the way beasts would live, if they lived in hell, and he was ready to put it all behind him. He was genuinely relieved when his foot stepped outside the perimeter of the correctional institution.

He was greeted by his protégé and dearest friend.

“Amigo.” Carlos embraced him, speaking in their mother tongue. “You are a free man.”

“Gracias, Carlos.” Leuters fought back tears at the sight of his friend.

“You look like a bear.” Carlos tugged on Leuters’s

facial hair.

Leuters laughed heartily. His appearance had changed while in prison. He had grown a beard that covered his jawline in grizzly black curls, and his six-foot-five frame was, indeed, more burly. He had forgone the razor and picked up the weights.

“I will take you to your casa to get cleaned up.” Carlos patted him on the back and led him to the car. “But brace yourself, brother. The Subsecretaría de Regulación y Fomento Sanitario Secretaría de Salud (SSA) has taken everything.”

Leuters nodded his head and looked out the window. “I will leave that worry for another day.” He rolled down the window and felt the breeze on his face. “This moment will be spent enjoying my freedom.”

***

Leuters stood in the living room of his simple casa in Cancun. The empty space no longer felt like his home. He imagined the raid that led to the desecration of his sanctuary: his treasured artwork commandeered from the walls, wrapped and packed into crates by men in latex gloves; the papers on his desk swept into boxes and carried away by SSA agents; beakers and chemicals packaged into containers with the word evidence stamped on their side in big red letters. Carlos was correct: everything had been confiscated, with the exception of the couch sitting in the center of his living room. Everything of value, either sentimental or financial, was gone.

This catastrophe, handed out by the Mexican government, was in the name of civic safety. Leuters had unjustly been branded a mad scientist and a threat to public health because of information he had discovered that threatened to liberate people from an invisible

order corrupted by greed and control.

He had never been a conspiracy theorist. Being a priest, he believed in the innate goodness of people, a belief he had come to rethink. The day before he went to prison, he had stood in this very room with a corporate spy and championed a plan to irradiate illness on the planet in a foolish and hopeful display of his own humanity. The memory of that last day of his innocence played through his mind . . . .

It had begun with the doorbell ringing.

“Can I help you?” Leuters opened the door to find a gentleman in his forties standing on his porch. He wore an expensively cut suit and held a pristine black leather briefcase.

“Yes, Dr. Garcia.” He handed a business card through the crack in the door. “I am Miguel from Astra Pharmaceuticals. Are you familiar with the name?”

“Indeed, I am.” Leuters opened the door and examined the logo on the card. Miguel was a

representative of one of the largest pharmaceutical

companies in Mexico.

“I have come to inquire about your formula, MFS.”

Miguel smiled.

“Please, come in.” Leuters tried to temper the excitement in his voice. This opportunity was exactly what he had been praying for. “Can I offer you some coffee?”

“I would love a cup of coffee.” Miguel sat on the couch.

Leuters summoned his housekeeper and requested two espressos.

“We have heard claims of extraordinary results from your MFS formula and have taken an interest,” Miguel continued. He retrieved a handheld recording device and, setting it on the table, asked, “Do you mind if I record our conversation?”

“Of course not,” Leuters conceded, oblivious to the detrimental effects of this singular allowance.

“How did you discover it?” Miguel asked as he pressed the Record button on the device.

“I am an ordained priest,” Leuters explained. “Two years ago, I accepted a mission to provide medical relief to a small village in Africa. After only three months of service, I contracted malaria. The fever consumed me, and I was in the throes of near-death delusions. Clinging desperately to life, I begged a young village boy for help. He ran for two days to seek assistance from a shaman in a nearby village.

“When he returned to my tent a few days later, I was at death’s door. He was successful in retrieving the medicine but, being a young boy, he had forgotten the specific measurements to administer. There was no time to seek clarification, so he mixed the ingredients to the best of his ability, poured the liquid into my mouth, and hoped for the best. The next day, my health had been completely restored; it was as if I had never been ill. In fact, I felt better than I had in twenty years.” He clapped his hands once with triumph. “That was my first experience with MFS.”

“Can you walk me through the process from that initial experience to deciding to manufacture MFS?”

“It was an easy decision. Without a moment of hesitation, I gave up my position with the Church and focused exclusively on developing MFS. Spiritual health is important but physical health is the vehicle that provides the opportunity for spiritual growth. If you don’t have health, you don’t have anything.”

“And what of your medical research?” Miguel asked, as he wrote a few notes on a pad of paper.

“I experimented with the applications of the solution myself. It had a positive effect on everything from rashes to tooth infections, allergies and common colds.”

“Have any other experiences been quantified?” Miguel set his pen on the tablet and picked up his coffee.

“A few of the tribe members with terminal diseases volunteered to try the formula. We found that in many cases both cancer and HIV could be eradicated from the body with the use of this solution, as well. That is why I have dedicated my efforts to further exploring its capabilities. With the proper funding, we have the potential to completely transform the current plight of insufficient healthcare on the planet. And the best part is that the ingredients are so common that it can be produced and distributed for pennies to everyone on the planet.”

“That is quite a claim.” Miguel smiled.

“I assure you, it is more than just a claim. Would you like to try a little for yourself?” Leuters offered.

“Oh, no thank you,” Miguel declined politely. “I’m here strictly on a fact-finding mission.”

“Is Astra Pharmaceuticals interested in purchasing this formula for development?” Leuters leaned forward in anticipation.

“Among other things. But before I get ahead of myself, I must admit that we are merely in the investigation stage.” Miguel cleared his throat and stood. “I think that I have enough here. We will be in contact to let you know the next step.” He smiled disingenuously and shook Leuters’s hand.

The next day, a warrant had been issued for Leuters’ immediate arrest. He went to trial in front of a judge the same day and was sentenced to six months in prison. There was no jury of his peers. In the following months, his medical license was stripped, and he was demonized in the press with misconstrued half-truths about his endeavors.

Leuters had replayed that fateful meeting in his mind a thousand times while imprisoned. The subtle clues of his imminent damnation were present in the meeting, but his impassioned enthusiasm for world-wide progression compelled him to ignore that whisper of intuition. He had vowed never to make that mistake again as long as he lived.

“We’ll have to start all over again,” Carlos said, sitting beside him on the couch.

“There is nothing to start,” Leuters despaired, looking around the empty room.

“But we have to finish your work,” Carlos protested.

“Illegally producing MFS carries a penalty more severe than distributing street narcotics. It is finished,” Leuters told his old friend with finality.

“There are many people counting on you, brother.” Carlos touched his shoulder.

“It causes me great remorse to tell you that we must cease our work,” Leuters said quietly. “You have no idea what it was like in there.”

“But the world needs MFS,” Carlos protested.

“The government has made it clear that our efforts would be dealt with harshly.” He sighed. “We have made very powerful enemies.”

A spirited knock at the door was followed by multiple rings of the doorbell in a jolly rhythm. Leuters opened the door and was met with a crowd holding balloons and cakes, escorted by a mariachi band playing a hearty tune. Two young boys held a sign that read, Welcome Home, Hero.

Tears touched Leuters’s eyes. Carlos put his hand on his shoulder again.

“The people of our village have pooled their money so that you may begin again.”

Leuters looked at the hopeful faces of his greatest supporters in the community and his heart, which had closed during his incarceration, opened again. He remembered the reason that he had been eager to share MFS far and wide in the first place. It was the people. He stepped aside and waved the party into his house.

“Come in, come in!” he laughed.

“Have you changed your mind?” Carlos asked after the sea of people had passed.

“If we do this, it is at great risk. If the SSA finds out . . .”

“It is a risk worth taking,” Carlos assured him.

“We must go back to my village in Teotihuacán and consult with my father. The continuance of this mission isn’t one to accept lightly, my friend. Six months in prison was a warning to a foolish idealist. If we proceed, we will be sending a message of defiance that will provoke the wrath of a very powerful group of people,” Leuters promised, closing the door behind them.