Michael Palmer - Natural Causes

"I'll be right back!" he lied to the men as he dashed past them.

Head down, he sprinted up the slope to the parking lot. His Legacy, only a year old, was damn quick. But the Jaguar had quickness, power, and a huge head start. If it reached the expressway unseen, there would be no way of knowing whether it had turned north or south. And that, for all intents, would be that. Matt cursed his habit of always activating his Z-loc security system. He deactivated it and then lost several more precious seconds fumbling with the ignition key. Spraying a rooster tail of dust and gravel, he shot past the bewildered attendant, out of the lot, and down the access road. The Jaguar was nowhere in sight. Immediately the guessing game began. The first choice was no contest. Left at the paved road and head toward the expressway.

Matt skidded around the first corner, then cut the next one by speeding across a lawn. The Subaru's engine, usually remarkably silent, was screeching-first gear to fifth, then to first, then back to fifth. Still no Jag. Another intersection. More possibilities. Right. Keep heading toward the expressway. To his left, above the trees, Matt could see the expanding cloud of black smoke, carried up and outward by an offshore breeze-the breeze that Colin Smith, just a few minutes before, was expecting to fill his sails.

"Oh, God," Matt whispered as the horror of what he had just witnessed sank in.

The expressway was just ahead, and the chase just that close to being finished. Then, far to the right, Matt saw the Jag. It was already up on the elevated highway, speeding north toward the city. But by the time Matt had cut off half a dozen cars and a tractor trailer and darted out to the left-hand lane of the expressway, the XJS was gone again. He flashed past one off-ramp, then another. There was nothing he could do now but keep heading north and pray they were still both on the same highway. The traffic slowed as he approached the Mass. Ave. exit, and beyond it, the South Station tunnel. The distance between cars quickly narrowed. A vintage midday central artery tie-up. The chase was over. Matt slammed his fist against the wheel. He would have to find some way to backtrack from the distinctive Jag to its owner. Difficult, perhaps, he thought, but certainly not impossi-

Then, once again, Matt spotted the car. It was a hundred or so yards ahead, and three bumper-to-bumper lanes over. But even worse, it had just pulled away from the jam and was now starting on the long circular drive leading down to the Massachusetts Turnpike. Matt leaned on his horn and began screaming "Emergency!" at anyone who looked over at him. Many did not. Inch by inch, he took first one lane, then another, receiving along the way a number of obscene gestures, several of which he had never seen before. Tires screeching, he rode the very edge of control around the sweeping entry ramp and was going nearly sixty by the time he hit the turnpike. The Jag was gone again. But this time Matt was more relaxed. The Back Bay exit was less than a mile ahead. If the driver took it, there was nothing Matt could do. But if not, the Cambridge/Allston tolls would almost certainly bring them close. In fact, Matt was several miles beyond Allston, almost to the Newton tolls at Route 128, before he spotted his quarry.

I guess it was just meant to be. He settled back in the seat, slowed down, and rolled through the automated ticket dispenser nine or ten cars behind the Jag. The trick now was to follow the driver to his-or her-destination without being seen. For a year, he had debated putting a phone in the Subaru. Now, a day late as usual, he decided he would do it. A call to the State Police would have given them a crack at the radio control that had triggered the bomb aboard the Red Ink. As things stood, Matt still had a chance at recovering it-provided the driver felt home free and not pressed to dispose of it.

The Jag left the turnpike east of Worcester. Moving now with no apparent urgency, it headed into the beautiful, rolling countryside of north-central Massachusetts. Matt, still keeping well back, had yet to catch a glimpse of the driver. But with each passing mile, it became less necessary for him to do so. Just a dozen or so miles ahead was Hillsborough, the home of Xanadu and the Ayurvedic Herbal Weight Loss System. And unless Matt was absurdly off base, the man in the jade motorcar in front of him was six feet four, with thick silver hair and an ego the size of Greenland.

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The huge billboard-elegant lettering, overlaid upon a Himalayan sunrise-also included a number to call for an introductory tour and interview. Matt stopped by the sign as the man he assumed was Peter Ettinger drove on down the deserted, newly paved road toward the entrance. Across the street, two endless stretches of seven-foot chain-link fence converged in what was probably one corner of Xanadu.

Xanadu. Matt knew the name came from a mystical, magical land in some poem-one that he had once been forced to study and, it seemed, even memorize.

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure dome decree…

His mind's eye saw the words printed in an even hand on some teacher's blackboard. Milton? Wordsworth? Maybe Coleridge. He simply could not remember the author. Nor could he remember anything else of the poem. The image, though, of Peter Ettinger as Kubla Khan was not a hard one to conjure.

Matt was sorting out his options when he heard a car approaching-the same direction from which he and Ettinger had just come. He ducked behind the Subaru and inspected its right front tire just as a white panel truck flashed past, continuing on along the road perpendicular to the one Ettinger had taken. Having read Ettinger's deposition almost to the point of memorization, Matt immediately honed in on the name painted on the truck. Huron Pharmaceuticals produced the vitamin capsules that were included with the Ayurvedic Weight Loss powder. Assuming the truck was making a delivery, and the billboard was pointing toward the main entrance, there had to be some back way into Xanadu. Matt scrambled into the Legacy and followed the truck.

After half a mile, another newly paved road cut off to the right, as did the chain-link fence. Keeping a safe distance, Matt continued following the Huron truck until it made a right turn onto a dirt road that apparently cut through the fence and into the sprawling compound. He found a little-used path off the opposite side of the paved road, left the Subaru in a concealed spot, and hurried across to where the truck had turned in. The gate in the fence was about a hundred feet up the dirt track. Not surprisingly, it was unlocked. The Huron delivery man clearly anticipated a quick turn-around. Matt glanced about. Then he slipped through the gate and headed into Xanadu.

For about a hundred yards, the dirt road snaked through dense woods. The trees and bushes were well past fall peak, but autumn had been unusually mild, and they were still far from barren. The forest ended suddenly at expansive acreage that had been carved out of the rolling woodland. Straight ahead of where Matt crouched was an impressively large lake, newly landscaped, and probably man-made. Spaced along the far bank were new, sumptuous homes. Merely within his line of sight, Matt could see several that appeared completed and several more that were under construction. In Xanadu did Kubla Khan…

The Huron Pharmaceutical truck was parked behind a complex of low, whitewashed buildings, set in a densely wooded grove a short distance to Matt's left. To his right, perhaps two hundred yards, was a large, two-story farmhouse, also white, with a single-story wing jutting toward the spot where Matt was hiding. Parked on the drive by the farmhouse was the XJS.