Michael Palmer - The fifth vial

Near the taxi queue, a uniformed attendant took her bag, checked her voucher, and led her over to a yellow cab with a blue stripe around it. Her feeling of disconnection intensified as she slid into the backseat.

"Inter-Continental Rio Hotel," she heard herself say.

The driver, a dark man in his thirties, turned and smiled at her, but said nothing. His features were indistinct, and as the cab pulled away, Na-talkie tried unsuccessfully to focus on his appearance. The ride toward the city was also a blur. More than once, she thought she might be close to getting sick. Sooner than she had anticipated, the driver pulled off of the highway. In a short time they were driving through a poorly lit slum. Na-talkie felt a jet of adrenaline drive much of the uncertainty and vagueness away.

"Where are we going?" she asked in Portuguese.

"You said the Inter-Continental," came the reply. "This is the quick way.

"I don't want the quick way. I want to go back on the highway," she demanded, sensing that she had gotten a number of the words wrong.

"You are a very beautiful woman," the driver said over his shoulder in decent English.

"Take me back to the highway this minute!" she insisted.

"Very beautiful."

The man accelerated slightly. The area through which they were passing was even more dilapidated. What streetlights there were had been smashed, and most of the rickety houses and tenements were shuttered. Almost nobody was on the streets except for an occasional furtive shadow, skulking around a corner or down an alley.

Natalie glanced at the cabbie's license. In the gloom she could barely make out anything, and so what if she could? This was serious, serious trouble. She mentally inventoried the contents of her purse. Was there anything there she could use for a weapon? Thanks to airport security, the answer was almost certainly no.

"Goddamn it!" she shrieked, pounding on the thick Plexiglas that separated front seat from rear. "Take me back to the highway!"

"The customers at the House of Love will adore you. You will be very happy there…Very happy there…"

The words echoed eerily. Icy panic took hold. Her dizziness, never really gone, had begun to worsen. The driver's words seemed sharp and clear one instant, thick and repetitive the next. Natalie scanned the dark, uninviting slum. It seemed like they were going thirty or forty. Could she possibly escape by jumping out of the cab then rolling and scrambling to her feet and running? If she could somehow get out and get upright, provided her leg wasn't broken, she could outrun anyone. With the alternative of being made a narcotics whore in some brothel, it had to be worth taking the chance. She slipped her wallet and passport from her purse and jammed them into the pocket of her jacket.

"Money," she pleaded. "I'll give you money to let me out right here. Three thousand reais. I have three thousand reais. Just let me go!"

She inched toward the right-hand door and eased her fingers around the handle, trying to visualize what she should do with her body as she hit the pavement. Around her the scene seemed to fade, then sharpen, then fade again. She shook her head, trying to clear her thoughts.

It had to be now.

At that instant the cab screeched to a jolting stop and Natalie's door was ripped open by two men, both wearing black stocking masks. Before she could react, she was pulled out and forced onto her belly. The cab roared away. A needle was thrust into the muscle at the base of her neck, and the contents of a syringe were emptied into her. A narcotic, she thought — a disabling dose of some sort of narcotic, probably heroin.

Her situation was absolutely terrifying, but she felt oddly detached from it — detached yet at the same time determined not to give in to her attackers without a fight. They each had one of her arms now and were dragging her facedown into what seemed like a narrow, unpaved alley, fetid with refuse. She screamed for help, but sensed that in this neighborhood, such cries happened often, and would nearly always go unheeded. Still on the ground, she twisted her body and pulled her arms. Instantly, the man holding her right wrist lost his grip. Natalie spun that way, pushed herself to her knees, and slammed her fist as hard as she could into the other man's groin. His grip on her other wrist vanished and he dropped to his knees. Before either man could react, she pushed to her feet, this time punching one of them flush in the face.

In a second she was on her feet and sprinting away from the men down the alley. Ahead of her, through dim light, she could make out two rows of darkened buildings, some of them two stories high, some three. Ahead and to the right she thought she saw a light wink on.

From behind her, one of the men cried out in Portuguese, "Tenho uma pistola. Parejd ou eu atiro!" I have a gun. Stop right now or I will shoot! Ahead of her the alley was completely blocked by a pile of trash barrels, boxes, and refuse, propped against some sort of fence, and extending up well over her head.

"Stop!" the voice from behind her cried.

Natalie had scrambled up the trash heap and was reaching for the top of the fence when a shot rang out from behind her. Nothing. She grabbed the coarse wood and swung her leg over. Another shot snapped off, then another. Both times, white-hot pain exploded from the shoulder blade on the right side of her back. She was slammed forward. Her arms flew off of the fence. Grunting against the pain and gasping for air, well aware that she had been shot more than once, she toppled backward and fell helplessly into the pile of garbage.

Yaounde was just four degrees north of the equator. Joe Anson had never handled the heat and humidity of Cameroon as well as those who were born there, but this day, with monsoon season just a couple of weeks away, was the worst he could remember. The air-conditioning units in the hospital were fighting a losing battle? the odors of illness were intensified throughout the building? flies were everywhere? and worst of all, the air was just about too heavy for him to breathe.

If there was a bright spot in the oppressive day, it was the girl, Marielle, who had responded remarkably to her clandestine treatment with Sarah-9, and was now sitting up in a chair by her bed, taking fluids and nourishment. The drug was an absolute miracle, just as he had known from the beginning it would be. Another day, perhaps, and the Whitestone Center for African Health van would bring her back to her mother, along with enough rice and other staples to improve the health and well-being of the village until the monsoons hit. After that, the cycle of malnutrition and illness would begin anew.

"Okay, dear one," Anson said, placing his stethoscope on the girl's back, "breathe in, breathe out…You are doing so well. So well. Maybe tomorrow you will go home."

The child turned and threw her arms around Anson's neck. "I love you, Dr. Joe," she said. "Love, love, love, love, love."

"And I love you, too, dear peanut."

The few words took more out of Anson than he would ever care to admit to anyone. He handed Marielle a picture book and inched away from her bedside to the small office he shared with whichever doctors were on call. What in the hell was going to happen to him? What should he do? After thirty seconds, with his air hunger mounting, he used the emergency two-way radio he always carried to summon help.

"This is Claudine, Dr. Anson," the nurse said. "Where are you?"

"Doctor's office…in the hospital."

"You need oxygen?"

"Yes.

"One minute."

It was half that when Claudine raced in pulling a green 650-liter tank of the precious gas, dropped into a frame on wheels. She was a tall woman nearing fifty, with a regal bearing, caring eyes, and a smooth, richly dark complexion. She had been at the hospital almost since its inception.