Sao Paulo, Brazil • Inflight • Sitto da Veiga, Brazil
Eduardo snapped his gaze from the glittering view of Sao Paulo and swivelled his chair back around to face the six men seated on the other side of the massive conference table. 'I hate to disappoint you, gentlemen,' Eduardo said.
Their smug expressions turned to shocked disbelief.
He looked from one of them to the other. 'If you think a hostile takeover of Machado S.A. is such a good deal, then by all means.' He spread his hands in a gesture. 'Go ahead and do it. But I'm sorry, gentlemen. Grupo da Veiga will not get involved in any phase of it. Nor will I allow our banking division to help finance your project.'
The men stared at each other, feeling outraged and mocked.
'My decision is final.' He pushed back his chair, signifying that the meeting was over.
When he returned to the office he maintained on the penthouse floor, MIrtia, his secretary, looked up. She said, 'Senhor Machado arrived ten minutes ago. He and his two attorneys are waiting in the inner office.'
Eduardo had started past her when he stopped and said, 'One more thing, MIrtia, place a call to Sitto da Veiga. I want to speak to Ms Monica Williams.'
'I'll get on it right away.'
'As soon as you have her on the line, buzz me. Otherwise, I don't want to be disturbed.'
'Yes, sir.'
Eduardo continued on into his office. 'I'm sorry to have kept you waiting, gentlemen,' he said to the three men.
'That is no problem,' Jorge Machado, the older of the men said, it gave us the opportunity to read through the contracts once more.'
'I take it you find everything satisfactory.'
The old man looked at his lawyers, who nodded imperceptibly. 'Yes,' he said.
Eduardo didn't waste any time. 'In that case, let me get my lawyers in here to witness the signing.'
Eduardo took a seat and crossed his legs casually and made small talk. Neither his face nor his body language gave away the triumph he felt. By coming to him, the consortium had alerted him to Machado's real worth, and his own subsequent studies had borne their information out. By stringing them along, they had done half the work for him. And by going behind their backs and cutting them out of the deal completely, he had not only saved a fortune and gained control of Machado, but even more important, he had no partners to answer to.
The men from the consortium had forgotten the cardinal rule of the de Veigas. They never went into partnership with anybody.
It was less than a half-hour later when Senhor Machado and his attorneys left Eduardo's office. Then he pressed down on his intercom button. 'Mirtia, have you tried to get hold of Ms Williams?'
'Yes, sir,' his secretary's disembodied voice replied. 'She is not in her quarters, nor does anyone know where she is at the moment.'
He sat back. 'All right. Keep trying.'
'Yes, sir.'
The sleek silver Learjet streaked high above the clouds. Colonel Valerio had pulled the curtains over the eight large portholes. He preferred to sit in the dark. It made it so much easier to concentrate on Stephanie Merlin without visual distraction. He didn't need to consult his watch to know how much flight time remained. One more hour.
The pain in his loins was almost unbearable.
In some ways, it was like any hospital anywhere. It even smelled like hospitals the world over, with that combination of alcohol and disinfectants.
What was different, however, was the lack of people. The waiting room was empty. The nurses' station was deserted. There was no receptionist. And where were the doctors? The patients? The nurses and the nurses' aides? Why did no gurneys squeak on casters? No children squall?
It was positively eerie, this silence, overwhelmingly creepy, as though the world had suddenly been put on hold or aliens had beamed everyone up. Stephanie stayed close behind Johnny. She felt helpless and out of her element, and was unable to suppress the sensation that she, like Alice, had slid down a rabbit's hole and would find events were beyond her control. She couldn't shake off the feeling that this wasn't a real hospital, so much as a hospital set.
The hallway seemed interminably long, lined by grey doors on both sides. Signs above some of them, which she would normally have found reassuring, only seemed to add to the surrealistic aspect of this place. Angiography. In three languages. Neuroradiology. Also in three languages. Same with Pathology.
And still they didn't see a soul.
'What's this place staffed by?' Stephanie wanted to know. 'Ghosts?'
Johnny smiled. 'I know it must seem that way. But actually, the clinic on level one is kept pretty busy. You know, minor cuts and bruises. Burns and scrapes. Sprains and sore throats. All the usual walk-in emergencies. But down here it's normally pretty quiet.'
They turned a corner and headed down yet another high-gloss corridor. Although she wouldn't admit it in a million years, she was glad she had Johnny beside her as a guide. For without windows, or landmarks of any kind to refer to, these door-lined halls were a maze, while the disconcerting silence would have made her skin crawl.
She was acutely aware of the squeaking of their rubber soles on linoleum and the sounds of their breathing in the unnatural hush of this subterranean maze.
' What was that?' Her head whipped sideways and she stared at Johnny.
'Shh.' Whatever it was, Johnny had heard it too. He'd stopped walking, and cocked his head to listen.
Then, from somewhere up ahead, they heard it again, as if someone - or something - were in great pain.
Thank God! Stephanie thought, offering up a silent prayer of gratitude. So we're not alone down here after all!
Johnny was hurrying now, heading towards the sound, and she was walking swiftly beside him to keep up. Every so often, just as they were sure they'd imagined the cry, it came again.
They turned a corner, and there was the sign, in Portuguese, French, and English:
Paediatrics
'It's coming from there I think,' Johnny said.
As they moved towards it, the cry came again. Stephanie frowned. From here, it no longer sounded like a cry of pain so much as a moan of despair.
No longer considering any personal danger they might be in, Johnny pushed on the swinging door to Paediatrics with the flat of one hand and stepped aside 'Ladies first,' he said.
Stephanie hesitated only fractionally. Her eyes met his, and then she hurried past him and he followed her inside.
Looking around, Stephanie could see that this was another small waiting room. Moulded plastic chairs were lined up against the walls. And on one sat a weary-looking woman holding a hand over her mouth, as though to hold in her sobs. Stephanie recognised her immediately. She had been on the Fairy Godmother flight. The woman who'd accompanied the brave little girl with the doll named Lourdes, she remembered.
Then Stephanie realised that the woman was staring straight ahead. Right at us . . .no - through us!
Stephanie glanced at Johnny. Doesn't she see us? she enquired with her eyes.
Johnny shrugged.
Just then, another half-muffled sob came from behind the woman's hand. Embarrassed, Stephanie looked away, and took the opportunity to survey the surroundings. Her inspection showed five doors, one of which was open, and one whose sign proclaimed it to be a toilet.
'Tell you what,' Stephanie said. 'This woman could use some company. Stay with her while I check out these rooms.'
First Stephanie went over to the open door and looked in. She saw a large empty crib with mussed covers; the doll named Lourdes lay on top of them.
Now for the closed doors.
She knocked softly on the first one. Receiving no reply, she opened it and looked inside.
The light was off, but she could tell it was empty and unused.
She closed the door again and knocked on the one right next to it. She heard a man say, 'A pessoa a porta sera o medico,' and was surprised when it opened instantly. 'Sim?'
The voice belonged to another familiar face from the plane. The man who, with his wife, had accompanied the young boy who'd been brought aboard on the stretcher, hooked up to the IV.
Craning her neck to see past him, Stephanie caught the eye of his worried wife, who was seated on a chair beside the bed holding the hand of her four-year-old son. He was hooked up to another IV.
'Desculpe me,' Stephanie said guiltily, relying on the little Portuguese she had retained from her lessons and hoping it was the suitable response.
The man nodded and shut the door quietly.
The next door led into the toilet.
Now for the door directly on the other side. Stephanie rapped on it with her knuckles.
'Sim?' a woman's voice called out.
Stephanie opened it part way and looked in. It was the uniformed nurse who'd been on the plane; her charge, the emaciated, premature baby had been transferred from the temporary incubator to a regular one.
'Desculpe me,' Stephanie murmured again, and quickly ducked back out and closed the door.
Now she tried the fifth and last door. That room, too, was empty.
Johnny was looking at her, eyebrows raised questioningly.
'We've found the children,' Stephanie said. She paused and added, 'At least, I can account for two out of three.' She looked at the sobbing woman and then went over to her and squatted in front of her. 'Senhora,' she said softly, taking the woman's hands.'Senhora'
The woman sniffed, pulled one hand loose, and wiped her eyes.
Stephanie said, 'Fala ingles?'
The woman shook her head.
Stephanie sighed. 'Eu nao falo portugues: she said. Then she had a sudden inspiration. She turned to Johnny. 'You wouldn't happen to speak any Spanish, would you?'
'Yes,' he said. 'A little bit.'
Stephanie had remembered that if you didn't speak Portuguese, a knowledge of Spanish, although certainly no substitute, could come in handy.
Stephanie urged Johnny, 'Go ahead, ask her in Spanish where her daughter is.'
'Donde esta la pequena?'
The woman frowned and Johnny repeated the sentence slowly.
'Ah.' The woman nodded. 'Tem havido discussoes em torno a uma nova operacao.'
Johnny frowned. 'Operacao,' he murmured to himself. ' . . . Operacao . . .' Then he said, 'Ah!' and clicked his fingers. 'Operaciones in Spanish, operacao in Portuguese.' 'Which means what?' Stephanie asked urgently. 'The girl's in the operating room.' Stephanie felt suddenly sick.
'Johnny -' She found it difficult to speak. 'We've got to get to O.R. Now! Before it's too late!' Before he could reply, Stephanie was already gone.
At six o'clock, Eduardo pressed down on his intercom and asked Mfrtia to come into his office.
The door opened silently, and Mirtia stood in the doorway. 'Senhor?' She had her dictation pad and pencil in hand.
He looked over at her and shook his head, then gave her a questioning look. 'Did you keep trying to reach Ms Williams?'
'Yes, Senhor. And I left several messages.'
'I see.'
She stood there, waiting, is there anything else I can do?' she asked.
'Yes. Call down to the garage and tell the chauffeur to have my car waiting out front. Then call the pilot and tell him to have my plane ready for takeoff. I'm flying back to Rio.'
Mirtia nodded. 'I'll get on it right away.'
'Thank you. As soon as you've made the calls, lock up and go home. It's already an hour past quitting time.'
'Thank you, Senhor.''
Ten minutes later, Eduardo was in his limousine, heading to the airport. He tried to call Stephanie twice from the cellular car phone, but no one answered in her room. And an hour later, streaking northeast to Rio aboard his company jet, he tried calling her twice more. Still to no avail.
She must have a thousand things to do, he kept telling himself, but it didn't help. He was beginning to worry. All afternoon long, I left messages for her to call me. Surely she's had the opportunity?
It was all Stephanie could do to keep up with Johnny; he was literally racing down the corridor. Past him, at the far end, she could make out the signs above a pair of swinging doors. The sign both drew and repelled her.
Operating Rooms
Salas de Operacoes
Salles d'operation
They were moving so fast the doors to either side of them virtually flew past in a blur, and when they were halfway to the operating room -
-Thunk!-
-double doors just ahead of them banged noisily open.
Stephanie froze in her tracks, unable to move, her body still poised in a run. Breathing had suddenly become impossible, and everything inside her had gone numb. Her circuits had shorted out, her systems shut down.
Then Johnny snatched her by the arm and jerked her into the nearest shallow doorway. Once he made sure she had flattened herself beside him inside the foot-deep niche, he slid his head cautiously around the doorway, just enough so he could get a glimpse of what was going on.
Three doors down the hall, rough voices cursed and laughed as a stainless steel gurney rolled out of a room, presumably self- propelled, its rubber wheels squeaking on the linoleum. Just before it crashed into the opposite wall, two burly orderlies in green scrub suits chased after it; one caught it and spun it playfully to the right, expertly lining it up with the operating room doors at the far end of the hall. Without the gurney propping them open, the doors swung shut on their own, flapped several times, and were still.
Johnny remained absolutely motionless; only trails of perspiration, creeping down his forehead and trickling back behind his ears, gave evidence of his tension. All of his senses were heightened. He was aware of the cold smooth steel of the door at his back, felt Stephanie's elbow quivering beside him, could hear her teeth chattering, as though reciting an unsteady mantra. Her body was shuddering with terror. Her fear moved him. He had the urge to calm her, to murmur soothing confidences and reass- urement - hold her hand - anything.
But now was not the time; his body and mind had to be alert.
The burlier of the two men bellowed something to the other, who uttered what was unmistakably a curse in Portuguese. Johnny gnashed his teeth with frustration.
The cursing man pushed his way back inside the swinging doors while the other looked up and down the corridor, waiting.
There was another bang on the swinging doors and, again, they swung partly open. It was the second guy, pulling something heavy along behind him. The burly guy helped his partner pick up the other end and, together, they swung it aboard the gurney.
It was a small white coffin.
By this time, Stephanie, too, was leaning forward to look, and the sight of the small coffin caused her body to go rigid. With the chill of dead certainty, she knew precisely for whom that small coffin was intended, and she could only pray that there was still time to intervene.
Down the hall, the men whistled as they pushed the gurney along. There was a bang as they shoved it through the swinging doors to the operating rooms, and then the doors flapped shut.
Once again, the hall was shrouded in silence.
Stephanie stayed slumped in the doorway, her mind swirling in horror. A child's coffin! Oh, God! she thought. Back in Paediatrics, a worried mother is waiting, while on the rumpled bedsheets lies a doll named Lourdes . . .
She pushed herself away from the sheltering doorway and turned to Johnny.
Please, God, she prayed. Let us be in time.
The Learjet was beginning its descent. Colonel Valerio could hear the engines in the rear change pitch, and could feel his ears begin to pop. He pulled the curtain over his porthole open. It was dark out now; night had fallen with that abrupt pitch darkness with which it comes in the tropics. On the ends of the swept-back wingtips, the navigation lights blinked steadily, and below, as far as the eye could see, the jungle was one huge void. Except for what few scattered Indians remained, this entire region was uninhabited by humans.
His eyes searched the darkness far to the front of the plane, but it was still too soon. However, he knew it would not be long before he would be able to see the haze of light from Sitto da Veiga.
Another half-hour, and he would be there.
This time, Stephanie led the way. Slipping inside the O.R. door, she darted sideways and stayed in a low crouch in order to avoid being silhouetted against the bright hallway behind her. Then she waited, stock still and trembling, like a sprinter waiting for the starting gun to go off, her fingertips touching the white vinyl floor tiles.
After the bright fluorescents in the hall, the dim light in here was eerie, threatening, preternatural. Every nerve in her body seemed to twitch and thrum, and her heart pounded so fiercely that she had to strain to hear anything above it.
With heightened senses, she did a slow 360-degree eye-sweep. Set into three of the walls were two doors each, but there was neither hair nor hide to be seen of the burly orderlies, nor of the gurney they'd wheeled in. Perhaps, she thought, they had wheeled it into the scrub room, or one of the ancilliary rooms between what she guessed must be three operating rooms. But all the windows set into the six doors were dark, save one - and coming from that one, she now thought she could hear the steady murmur of muffled voices.
Rising from her crouch, she held the door open for Johnny; after he slipped inside, she shut it soundlessly.
As he glanced around, she whispered, 'This looks like the O.R. receiving area.'
'Figures.' Johnny nodded, and looked around.
Stephanie crossed silently to the door from which the bright light emanated. Flattening herself against the tiled wall beside it, she took a deep breath, assailed not so much by a sense of danger, as by the long chain of events which had brought her these many thousands of miles to this very spot, right here and now.
Slowly, she inched towards the reinforced glass and looked inside.
It was unmistakably an operating room, and under the harsh dazzle of the lights, a surgeon, appropriately gowned, capped, gloved, and masked, was bent over the operating table, assisted by a single nurse.
Stephanie's eyes involuntarily rested on the patient. Surprisingly, no part of the young girl's body was draped, and along her sternum, from neck to groin gaped a deep incision.
Stephanie felt a wave of dizziness and battled against throwing up. Oh God! she thought. The undersides of the clipped-back flaps of skin were yellowish with fat and the open flesh itself seemed covered with an almost milky, cellophane-like membrane. Part of it had been cut through, and what she could glimpse beneath it looked like an abstract painting of purples and reds and pinks and silvers and blues.
Stephanie broke out in a cold sweat and quickly looked away. I'm going to be sick, she thought, feeling a smothering wave of dizziness. Oh God - what a hell of a time to throw up!
She was glad when Johnny came and stood beside her.
'Looks normal enough,' he whispered into her ear.
'I'm not so sure . . .' Stephanie said very softly. Then she heard the surgeon demand in English, 'Syringe.'
The nurse slapped one into his palm and he held it up to the light.
Stephanie gasped. It was empty, but looked unbelievably huge. But what are they doing? she wondered. Taking blood?
The surgeon said, 'Now for the tricky part.'
'Don't worry,' the nurse said, her eyes, above the mask, sliding him a sideways look. 'We've always got the two backups.'
The surgeon laughed. 'Yeah, but it doesn't look good if we need more than one a day.'
Stephanie couldn't believe she could be hearing correctly. This can't be happening, she thought, instinctively reaching for the comfort of Johnny's hand. They're mad! Certifiably mad! She cringed as though she herself felt the stab of pain as the needle pierced the girl's open abdomen. Then the surgeon released a clip and tossed it into a discard pan.
Almost instantly, the syringe began to fill with a cloudy pale fluid.
'Perfect every time!' the nurse said admiringly. 'I don't know how you doit.'
The surgeon laughed. 'You know what they say about practice.' The syringe kept filling. 'And didn't I tell you she'd make a great donor? Bet the other two wouldn't have had half the enzymes. There.' Smoothly he pulled the syringe out; almost instantaneously, the EKG's sonarlike beeps became one long monotonous sound and the spiky green graphs traced a flat horizontal line.
Stephanie expected the surgeon and nurse to spring into immediate action like a crack drill team. Instead, the nurse reached casually back and flicked a switch, shutting the EKG monitor off. 'Can't stand that damn noise,' she said.
What-
Time contracted into this one interminable, horrifying moment. Her eyes darted to Johnny, searching for an answer, but all he could do was stare helplessly back at her.
'Flasks,' the surgeon said.
The nurse got a stainless-steel holder which kept two glass flasks secure.
And Stephanie suddenly remembered where she'd seen flasks identical to these. That day on the Chrysalis, when I followed Lili, Ernesto, and Dr Vassiltchikov to the ship's hospital, where the doctor hooked them up to those robotic IVs.
Carefully, the surgeon squirted exactly one hundred CCS of the fluid into each flask. On the operating table, Stephanie could see that the little girl's colour had already changed to greyish-blue. She thought: How quickly life becomes death.
'Procaine.'
The nurse slapped a vial, then a syringe into the surgeon's palm. He drew precisely eighty CCS up into the syringe and squirted exactly forty into each flask.
'Magnesium.'
The procedure was repeated.
'Now the mutated zygote, and we're done for the day.'
She handed him a tiny bottle, and he used an eye dropper, adding a mere droplet into each flask. Then the nurse sealed them. As she worked, she said, 'You know, I still keep wondering what this stuffs for. Makes no sense to me.'
The doctor shrugged. 'All I know is, losing our licences to practice is the best thing ever happened to us. Who else pays five grand a day for twenty minutes'-worth of work, no questions asked? No malpractice insurance to worry about? And Christ, everything around here's free! Now hurry up and sterilise those flasks and pack them in the carrying case so they can get outta here. Meanwhile, I'll sew her back up.'
The nurse looked at him. 'Didn't you forget something?'
'Like what?'
'Christ!' she hissed, rolling her eyes. 'Will you get with it? She was supposed to have undergone brain surgery!'
'Oh, yeah.' The surgeon laughed. 'All right, hand me a razor. All I have to do is shave the top of her head, drill a hole in her skull, and saw part of it away with the craniotome. Two minutes, tops.'
The nurse carried the flasks to one of the steel tables by the back wall. On it was various equipment, including the steriliser.
It was then that Stephanie saw it. Right there, next to the steriliser: the by-now familiar red thermoslike container!
The memory of Eduardo's words burst through her mind like an electronic emission.
'On a trip through the Amazon, my mother and father caught a very rare opportunistic infection. It is incurable . . .'
That was what he had told her. Yes. But that was not what was going on here!
Even before the skull drilling began, Stephanie staggered away from the door. With a convulsive sob, she stumbled blindly across the white floor, hit the swinging doors running, and burst out into the hall, gasping for air. For a moment, she slumped against the cool tile wall and wrapped her arms around her chest, rocking backwards and forwards in a futile attempt to control her keening.
But the oppressive, demonic weight of the horrors she had witnessed continued to rack her.
I didn 't try to stop them!
The thought rocked through her like a bomb blast.
I stood by and watched!
How can I ever live with myself after allowing them to murder a child!
Hurried footsteps caught up with her.
'Stephanie?' It was Johnny.'Steph!'
At his familiar voice, her heaves died down. She raised her head and stared at him.
'Hey,' Johnny said softly, taking her into his arms. 'It's okay . . .'
'It's not!' she half whispered. She was aware of her hysteria, felt smothered by helpless guilt and mounting rage.
Those fairy godmother flights. Oh, the obscenity! Her cheeks were streaked wih wet rivulets and she could feel more silent tears forming, blurring her vision. Lives were not being saved here - they were being takenl And if she knew, then surely Eduardo knew also! He couldn't be blind to it . . . could he? He couldn't believe that cock-and-bull story he'd dished out - COULD HE?
Rare and incurable infection!
His words burst inside her like a hideous pustule.
How casually he'd said them!
My lover! she spat mentally with a blaze of disgust and self-loathing. How could I ever have let him touch me? How could I have allowed him to . . . to . . . soil me!
A fresh flood of gut-wrenching tears burned down her face. She wanted to scream and scream and never stop screaming.
Day in, day out, they were murdering - just to stay young! That's what Dr Vassiltchikov formulated! Some damned concoction which relied on enzymes from young donors to retard ageing!
Opportunistic infection, my ass!
'Hey, Steph . . .' Johnny said softly, gently thumbing away her tears.' . . . it's all right. We're going to make it all right -'
Right -
She stared daggers at him. How could anybody make this right?
Then, swiftly, her self-pity and hysteria converted into cold, calculating rage. She would destroy. Annihilate. Make the walls of de Veiga come tumbling down!
With the same icy clarity with which she reached that decision, she knew the means were at her disposal. The two tools were right there, in her pocket.
Slowly, she reached in and pulled them out.
Her plastic key card and her address book. My avenging swords.
She wiped away her tears with the palms of her hands and then looked at Johnny. Her face shone like a polished blade of steel.
'You know your way around here,' she said in a voice so softly flat, and so utterly emotionless and coldly sure of itself that it chilled him to the bone. 'I need to get to a computer. One that's hooked up to the mainframe. It has to be someplace where I can't be disturbed. Where nobody will be looking over my shoulder or asking any questions.'
His heart swelled with a symphony of relief. That's my Steph! he thought. I know that look. She's getting her old fight back!
'Well?' she demanded coldly.
He frowned for a moment, and then snapped his fingers and grinned cockily. 'I know just the place!'
'Then let's go, now for God's sake, take me there nowV
A mile away, the Learjet swooped out of the night and touched down on the runway like a screaming bird of prey. Colonel Valerio had arrived.