Tuesday, April 7, 2:41 P.M.
For a few minutes after Dr. Sandra Wykoff had left, silence reigned in the Clinical Engineering supervisor’s office. The only noise came from out in the service area and was the muted whine of various electric tools combined with a hint of classical symphonic music. The two Russian expats regarded each other while immersed in their own thoughts. Both were not happy, but for slightly different reasons.
Fyodor Rozovsky had been in Charleston for several years before he had recruited Misha Zotov. The men had known each other since childhood, having both grown up in Saint Petersburg. Also, both of them had attended the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. Fyodor had been brought to America almost a decade earlier, when Sidereal Pharmaceuticals had agreed to fund the Shapiro Institute. With Fyodor’s knowledge of computer coding and robotics, he had been clearly essential to the project’s success. His contributions had been such that after the Shapiro was successfully up and running, Middleton Healthcare happily offered him the opportunity to run Clinical Engineering for the entire medical center. The company felt that progressive automation was key for hospital-based medicine.
“I don’t like this,” Fyodor said. He was now speaking Russian, and his irritation was apparent. “Sergei Polushin is going to be as angry as a bear if this blip becomes a subject of general discussion in the Anesthesia Department.”
Sergei Polushin, a financial genius, was reputed to be the closest confidant to Boris Rusnak, the billionaire Russian oligarch who had created Sidereal Pharmaceuticals. Living in Geneva, Rusnak, with Sergei’s help, had aggressively merged a number of small drug firms by a series of rapid, hostile takeovers to build one of the world’s largest. More important, the company was poised to become the dominant player in the newest pharmaceutical gold mine: making and marketing biologics, or drugs made by living systems, not by chemistry. Sergei Polushin had been the force behind the Shapiro Institute, and continued to treat it as his personal fiefdom.
“I need to have a frank discussion with my team of programmers,” Misha said. Gone was any hint of the fawning facade he presented to Sandra. He was clearly as angry as Fyodor. “A frame offset like that is just sloppy programming. The trouble is I didn’t see it myself.”
“I don’t need to tell you, but Sergei will undoubtedly hold you responsible if this thing causes trouble.”
“You don’t need to tell me,” Misha said. “I will see that it is eliminated immediately. When is the next case scheduled?”
“Not until next week, so you have plenty of time. But it is important to get it fixed. The schedule is to do a case a week in all the Middleton Healthcare hospitals. There cannot be any bugs. Is it possible this same phenomena occurred with either of the two previous test cases?”
“I don’t know,” Misha said. “Let’s check the pilot case!” He grabbed a chair, sat, and used the terminal on Fyodor’s desk to pull up Ashanti Davis’s anesthesia record. When it was on the monitor, he magnified the central portion just as Sandra had done with Vandermeer’s.
“There it is,” Fyodor said. “That’s not good. Let’s check Morrison.”
Misha quickly did the same with Morrison’s anesthesia record as he had done with Davis’s. “Shit! There it is with Morrison as well. Sorry about that!”
“Fix it!” Fyodor said gruffly.
Misha exited the screen. “Luckily, no one has noticed the offset on either of the previous test cases.”
“Are you suggesting that it not be fixed?”
“I will see that it is fixed today. My point is questioning whether we should go back and try to eliminate the offset in all three documents.”
“Can you do that?”
Misha shrugged. “Actually, I don’t know. Probably, but then again we could make it worse, meaning leaving a fingerprint that it had been altered after the fact. I could have someone try before actually executing and show you in an hour or so what it would look like.”
“All right. But, most important, fix the bug itself.”
“Certainly. But that leaves the issue about Dr. Wykoff and whether she is likely to enlist the help of anyone else in explaining the frame offset.”
“That question has occurred to me, too. We know that both the chief of anesthesia and the hospital lawyer have urged the parties involved against loose talk. Talking about even a minor blip in the vital sign tracings would certainly qualify as loose talk.”
“That is true, but is it worth the risk? I’m afraid she has become a major liability. It seems to me that this is a circumstance where the services of Darko and Leonid are called for and sooner rather than later.”
Both Fyodor and Misha had met Darko Lebedev and Leonid Shubin. They knew the two had been members of the Soviet Special Forces and had served a number of years in Chechnya, tracking down and eliminating people Moscow deemed terrorists. They knew that Boris Rusnak had hired the two men away from the army early in Boris’s meteoric rise in the rough-and-tumble business world of post-Soviet Russia, where people of Darko and Leonid’s abilities and mind-set were a necessity. Fyodor and Misha were well aware that both killers had seen a lot of action. They also knew that Sergei Polushin had sent them to Charleston as a potential resource to support Sidereal’s considerable US investment.
Easing back in his chair, Fyodor let his eyes roam up to the ceiling and allowed his mind to wander. Misha had a point, and a good one. Dr. Sandra Wykoff represented a very weak link in what was otherwise a strong chain. She could set the program back, maybe even stop it for a time. It would be irresponsible for Fyodor to let such a risk continue, especially when it could easily be eliminated. Wykoff had been selected as one of the test cases specifically because she was a loner, as were the two other anesthesiologists that had been chosen before her. Misha had been tasked to try to get close to her, although that tactic had fallen flat. They had used Russian call girls with the other two male anesthesiologists to keep tabs on them, and that had worked well. But Sandra Wykoff had been different and now presented a real problem. There was no way to find out what she was thinking.
Fyodor tipped forward in his chair. He’d made up his mind. “I don’t like this woman,” he said.
“She is a high-and-mighty bitch,” Misha agreed. “I tried to be nice to her. Trust me! She thinks she is something special. She is going to be trouble.”
“All right,” Fyodor said. “She’s got to be taken care of. Do you want to talk with Darko and Leonid, or should I? I know they have been eager to be useful.”
“It will be my pleasure,” Misha said, getting to his feet. “I’ll call Darko as soon as I get my team of programmers busy.”
“Keep me informed,” Fyodor said.
“I will,” Misha promised.