Michael Palmer - The fifth vial

Winded from her dash, and certain the men could hear if they but listened, Natalie pulled her shirt up over her mouth and breathed into it, forcing herself to pause for a few seconds after each breath. She pushed herself tightly against the back of the sofa as they walked past, less than ten feet away. From what she could make out, they were angrily trying to sort out who might have taken a shot at the hospital's security electronics. Once, she heard Luis's name, but she had no idea of the context.

The lights in the dining room were still off, but she could see both men clearly, and she knew that if they turned in her direction, they could see her as well.

Please, no…Don't look…Don't look.

Barbosa was an absolute bull, short and solid with a surprisingly high-pitched voice. Santoro was as she remembered — smooth, slightly built, with glasses and a prominent forehead. He motioned the policeman to the lounge, and to Natalie's horror, Barbosa sank down onto the sofa behind which she was hiding. Fortunately, her breathing had begun to slow, and the policeman's respirations, by virtue of his size, were grunting and noisy. Natalie pressed her shirt even more firmly against her mouth. There was no way she could move to get at her gun.

"Who would dare shoot at us?" the bull asked.

"Probably whiskey," Santoro responded around words Natalie couldn't make out.

She had drawn herself into a fetal position. Barbosa's backside, through the sofa, was no more than a foot from her. The large pistol in her waistband drove painfully into her already injured hip.

Go. Please go.

There was more conversation, which Natalie could not completely decipher. Then finally, after what seemed an eternity, the two men stood.

"Tomorrow will be fun," Barbosa said. "I like this place when there is action."

"There should be plenty of that very soon."

"Tell me, Xavier, have you heard anything from Vargas? He was due here late today."

"Nothing."

"Must be another woman. Single, married, young, old, virgin, whore, willing, reluctant. They dot his landscape like cow plop. I tell you, Santoro, someday, one of those women is going to be the death of him."

Moving as little as she could, Natalie waited for two more agonizing minutes before she stretched out and, with no little difficulty, crawled to the pantry. Half expecting to be surprised by someone, she made her way back through the tunnel, past the pool, and into the forest, wondering if Luis would still be waiting for her on the hilltop north of the hospital. As best she could recall, she retraced her steps around the building, and then started up a rather steep incline. After a short while, perhaps halfway up the hill, she gave in to the altitude, her hip, the slope, and the tension of the past hour, and sank to the ground, hungry for air.

Luis had probably gone back to the village anyway, she reasoned, suddenly feeling immeasurably sorry for herself. The whole business of the hospital at Dom Angelo had been nothing but a scam — an organ-theft operation with a high-tech component thrown in. It had been her misfortune to have flagged down the wrong cab at the Jobim airport. As usual, pure and simple evil was purely and simply about money. An O-positive lung? Well, you're in luck. We're running a special on those this week. Next week, livers. The quartet of military policemen, now a trio, were into gemstones and organs — emeralds and kidneys, opals and lungs. Pay for one, pay for the other. Disgusting.

Natalie pushed herself to her feet and trudged upward, not really caring if she met up with Luis or found Dom Angelo or not. At the top of the ridge, with no sign of Fernandes, she turned and gazed back downhill at the hospital, glowing beneath the spotlights and what was now the first blush of dawn.

How many lungs? she wondered. How many hearts? How many deaths?

This wasn't trading in organs, this was simply stealing them — stealing them and implanting scenarios in the poor victims minds. When Luis was describing burying the bags containing the bodies of donors, she had wondered why that wasn't her fate as well. Now, she knew. She was being kept alive as a test subject for the product and technique being developed by Donald Cho and Cedric Zhang — a new cottage industry for the enterprising military policemen to support, and ultimately, more money for their coffers. In all likelihood, someone had been checking up on her in Boston, maybe by rifling the records of her therapist.

It all hung together perfectly.

"Did you run into trouble?"

Startled, Natalie whirled. Despite the dense undergrowth, Luis had come up behind her soundlessly.

"God, do not sneak up on me like that — especially when I have a gun."

Luis's wry expression made words unnecessary. There was no way she would have ever gotten a shot off.

"Come," he said, "there is a better place for us to sit and talk."

In silence, they walked north and west, rising up into some of the densest forest Natalie had yet encountered. This time, Luis seemed more mindful of her physical limitations, and actually helped her through some of the more difficult parts. At the top of a particularly steep rise, the forest suddenly opened up, revealing a solid granite plateau, fifteen feet across and eight feet deep, tucked against a hillside. To the south and east was a clear view of the hospital and the land beyond it. The spectacular vista, with the early morning sun washing across it, belied the evil that resided there.

"I nearly got caught," she said after her breathing had returned to normal.

"I thought that you had, and actually said a prayer for you. Do you need to lie down?"

"No, no, I'm okay."

Natalie quickly recounted her close call in the hospital.

"So, you were brainwashed into thinking you had been shot," Luis said when she was done.

"The techniques they are developing could be a source of great profit when they are fully perfected. I don't know the exact details of how it works, but I suspect that first they used hypnotic drugs to open my mind to suggestion. Then, using a visor that's like a TV directly over my eyes, and a scene recorded as I would have viewed it, they implanted a reality in my brain. They even used electrodes to add the sharp pain in my back as the bullets hit me."

"That is impressive."

"It is terrible. I wonder how many poor souls have lost organs there."

"They perform maybe one procedure every two weeks."

"How frightening."

"So, Vargas is dead, and you have the answers you were seeking. I guess we are finished, you and I."

For a time, Natalie sat, arms folded around her knees, gazing out at the lush panoply below, sorting through her feelings. Luis was right. She had battled her depression and her demons and come to Rio again because of unanswered questions. Now, there was nothing left but to return to Boston, continue with her pulmonary rehab, and await her position on the lung allocation Scoreboard.

She had been at the wrong place at the wrong time, and as a result, life as she knew it had been destroyed. Still, the fire to end her life had, at least for the moment, been quenched by a sense of pride over what she had accomplished over the few days since her return to Brazil.

"Luis, what do you think would happen if I contacted the American embassy or the Brazilian police about what is going on here!" she asked.

"The truth?"

"The truth."

"There is an enormous amount of money supporting this hospital. You can destroy the building, but unless the people behind it are dead, it will simply be built up again. Besides, I don't know how you do things in America, but here we need proof that a crime has been committed before people can be convicted. Right now the only proof we have is that Jeep you rented and the dead body of a policeman in the stream below it. Oh, yes, I also believe you have the policeman's car."