Michael Palmer - The fifth vial

"I truly hope not, Professor."

"Why, thank you."

"So why Florida? I thought your interest was focused on Third World countries."

"Mostly because that's where the action is right now. If we can come up with something organized in this country, anything at all, I suspect we wouldn't have to worry nearly so much about funding. And even though having bone marrow taken might not be as debilitating as losing a kidney, or liver, or heart, it's still organ theft."

The woman's story and flimsy evidence didn't leave Ben any more taken with Organ Guard or its mission, nor did he believe there was anything more sinister surrounding the young man's death in Florida than the grille of a tractor-trailer, but he was absolutely impressed with Alice Gustafson, and in truth, jealous of her passion as well.

"I'm afraid the foundation grant we have is not very large, Mr. Callahan."

"That sounds ominous."

"Would you be willing to go to Florida and see if you can find the identity of the unfortunate man in that photo, and perhaps piece together what happened to him?"

"I'm not licensed in Florida."

"That shouldn't get in your way. I'm sure at one time or another, you have followed people into other states."

"I have."

"Besides, my former student, Stanley, knows the police in his area well. He has promised to put me in touch with them. I don't think he'll have trouble doing the same for you."

"Haven't the police been working on the case?"

"Technically, there hasn't been a crime committed, so I don't think they are devoting too much energy to identifying the victim. Besides, they have many cases going on at the same time. You will have only one. Are you interested?"

Ben was about to say something about how busy he was, but there was nothing about this woman that suggested she'd believe him in anything but the truth.

"How long do I have?" he asked instead.

"We can afford your plane fare — coach — and eight days at one hundred and fifty dollars a day, plus expenses. Make that reasonable expenses."

Ben tried to keep his black humor in check. Katherine de Souci had been paying him a hundred and fifty an hour.

"I understand why you're having trouble getting someone," he managed. "I would think that anyone who would work for that little wouldn't be someone you'd want."

"You are someone I want," Gustafson said. "You have the honesty to tell me you don't care for our cause and the intellect to have succeeded, at least by my standards, as a teacher."

"What if I need more time?"

"I doubt the Organ Guard committee on enforcement would authorize any further expenditure on you."

"Who's the committee on enforcement?" Ben asked.

Alice Gustafson grinned modestly.

"That would be me."

The St. Clement's High School track, a quarter-mile banked cork oval, was Natalie's favorite in the city. Because it was neither near her apartment nor the medical school, she didn't run on it as much as she would have liked. Today, though, re-experiencing the pleasures of working out on such a near-perfect surface, she promised herself that situation would change.

From as far back as she could remember, she had known that she could run fast, and at times over the year before she entered Newhouse, when she was putting herself in one unsafe situation after another, the ability was lifesaving. A gym instructor at the school timed her at several distances, and quickly referred her for training to a friend who just happened to coach track at Harvard. By the time she was accepted into the college, she had broken several high-school records, and had established herself as a star at the middle distances.

Sometime in her junior year, following publication in the Globe of an article about her, Doug Berenger came to watch her train. He had been a decent runner at Harvard, though far from a record-breaker. After lunch together the following week, he invited her to work in his lab, provided she could do so without interfering with her running. The two of them had been a team of sorts ever since.

At eleven in the morning the air was warmer than she would have preferred, but the track seemed to absorb the heat and hold it at bay. After just ten minutes of easy jogging, her Achilles was already thanking her for the relief from running on the roads. Wearing maroon warm-up pants, a narrow-strapped tee, and a white sweatband around her forehead and ebony hair, she loped effortlessly through a turn, searching for Terry Millwood.

She was almost three weeks into her four-month suspension from school — an unmerited punishment, she believed, that effectively moved her back a year from the class with which she started, and ended her residency appointment at White Memorial. Not a day had passed without recurrent sparks of anger directed at Cliff Renfro, his surgical chief at White Memorial, or Dean Goldenberg. At thirty-five she had precious little time to waste getting to where she wanted to be professionally. Now, thanks to them, she had no choice but to hurry up and wait.

Up ahead, Millwood slipped through the gate and onto the track, waving when he saw her. At six feet, he was four inches taller than she was, but whereas her physique was willowy — wiry, many would say — his was burly and almost overly muscled. Millwood was a better than decent tennis player, and good at most other sports as well. But what he really excelled at was surgery. At Doug Berenger's urging, Natalie had begun hanging about the OR even before she entered medical school. Her mentor was urbane and composed in almost every circumstance, and was respected and revered as a cardiac transplant surgeon. But during especially tense times in the OR, he could be a madman — hyper and quite tough on the surgical crew.

Millwood, Berenger's protege on the transplant team, was quite the opposite — calm and positive even in the most critical, gut-wrenching crises. Natalie's first case observing the man was the twelve-hour replacement of a leaking aortic aneurysm and dysfunctional aortic valve. He sang opera softly throughout the grueling, eventually successful procedure, not once raising his voice or losing his composure. In her heart, Natalie knew she wanted to emulate Millwood when — make that if now — it was her turn in the number one position at the table, but in her head, she suspected she would be more like the flamboyant, volatile Berenger.

"So, how goes it?" Millwood asked, moving in next to her midway down one of the straight-aways.

"Ever had road rage?"

"Maybe once."

"Well, I have it all the time now, whether I'm in a car or not, and it's directed at virtually everybody. It's a wonder I haven't ground my teeth down to nubs."

"Have you seen someone?"

"You mean like a dentist?"

"At least you're still funny."

"I love that you appreciate that I'm funny. You're like the only one. If you mean am I seeing my therapist, Dr. Fierstein and I are having mini-appointments almost every day. Ten or fifteen minutes. They're all the same. I tell her I feel like I'm going to kill someone, anyone, and she tells me that would probably only make matters worse. Sadly, I'm not sure she's right."

"When it's appropriate, Doug and I will go to bat for you with one of the other surgical programs. I promise you that."

"But first I've got to come to peace with what I've done wrong in school, and what I did wrong in the Metro ER." She held up her hand to keep him from reiterating that, in fact, if she had done nothing wrong she would still be in school. "I know. I know," she said.

"Used together like that, those are two of my least favorite words," Millwood said.