Michael Palmer - The fifth vial

"Go to hell, Doug," she said, barely able to keep herself from leaping at him in an effort to claw his eyes out before the Arab soldiers cut her down. "You're a goddamn murderer — a killer."

Her mind was racing. Over their years together as mentor and pupil, then as friends, she had developed a strong sense of the man. Now, she struggled to integrate what she knew of him with his involvement in this place. There was little chance, she reasoned, that she was going to survive — no, she immediately corrected, there was no chance at all. But somehow she had to get at him. Somehow she had to take advantage of his arrogance, his love of power, and his enormous ego. Somehow she had to rattle him — ridicule and goad him into making a mistake. No matter what, she was not going to die passively.

"George Washington killed for a cause," he was saying. "So did Eisenhower, and Truman, and Moses, and Mandela, and Simon Bolivar. And Lincoln sanctioned the deaths of hundreds of thousands in the cause of what was right."

"Oh, please, spare me your feeble justifications for being an amoral monster."

The surgeon's eyes flashed, and she knew that she had stung him. It wouldn't be the last time, she vowed.

Berenger turned from her to the director of the hospital.

"Santoro, where's Oscar?"

"My stomach. I'm sick…so sick."

The surgeon began sputtering and coughing up bile and acid.

"Damn it, Xavier, where is he?"

"Don't…know."

"He's dead," Natalie said matter-of-factly. "I shot him. Right here." She pointed to her eye. "He was a pig and a murderer, just like you."

"And you, my dear lady, are an irritating, self-serving little bug, a gnat, aptly named and certainly not deserving of the status of a Guardian."

"Not deserving of what?"

"Tell me what you poisoned these people with."

"I don't know. A little shaman I met in the forest put together a special something for me." She glanced around the room. "He should have listened to me, though. I told him to make it a lot stronger."

Berenger crossed to where the silver-haired woman lay moaning and clutching her middle. He glanced down with some disgust at the body lying next to her and then carefully stepped around it.

"Dorothy," he said without a word of sympathy for her condition, "can you work?"

"I…I can't stop getting sick," she managed. "It feels like my stomach is about to tear in two. It was something in the food at lunch. I'm sure of it. I've been hallucinating, too. Poor Tony couldn't stop throwing up, either. How's he doing?"

"Not so well. Dorothy, I need you. I was counting on you to do the anesthesia for both cases. Is that the woman over there?"

At Berenger's gesture in her direction, Sandy began to shriek hysterically.

"No! Please no! I have a little boy. He needs me. Please! I beg you. Don't hurt me!"

"Oh, that's just sweet, Doug," Natalie said. "She has a little boy. Aren't you proud of yourself?"

"Shut up!"

Berenger quickly whispered something to the man in the regal robe, who then nodded in the direction of two of his men, and issued a quick order. With Sandy continuing to scream piteously, the soldiers wheeled her away and into the farthest operating room. In moments, there was silence.

With Berenger's help, the anesthesiologist managed to get to her feet. There was no way to keep her from seeing Tony's corpse.

"Oh, dear," she gasped. "Poor man."

"Dorothy, listen," Berenger said, "we'll take care of Tony's family. Real good care. Now, you've got to pull yourself together. The prince will be here any minute. He's gone into congestive heart failure and may be in early cardiogenic shock. We need to move quickly, and to do that, we need you. When this is over, when you have helped give one of the most enlightened and powerful rulers in the world back his life, you will never have to work again if you don't want to. You will live in luxury for the rest of your days. Can you do it?"

"I…I can try."

As the woman headed unsteadily out of the dining room, holding her midsection and shaking her head as if trying to clear it, Natalie noticed that Luis, white as a sheet, had shifted position and was working his hand underneath him toward his gun. She shook her head in sharp warning, but he either did not notice, or else did not care.

"So," Natalie said, anxious to distract her mentor, "the paper I was supposed to deliver, the international transplant meeting — it was all calculated to get me down here."

"If there wasn't a meeting here, I modestly admit I would have found another way. You see, it wasn't mere chance and a passion for long-legged track stars that led me to connect with you when you were at Harvard. It was — "

"Let me guess. It was a blood test that was drawn on me at a White-stone lab. A green-top tube, to be specific."

Berenger looked genuinely surprised.

"It appears that when the procedures here are concluded, you and I will have to have a little discussion as to who knows what about green-top tubes."

"I know that you are a murderer — a serial killer, no better than any of the rest of them."

"Think what you wish," Berenger said. "We prefer to think of ourselves as involved physicians who are righting a serious wrong in the system."

"Oh, please."

"You were a twelve out of twelve tissue match with a person we knew would one day need a new lung — a person whose work is about to revolutionize medicine as we know it. Twelve out of twelve, Natalie. That means almost no nasty anti-rejection drugs to slow him down. All mankind will be the richer for his work. Without your lung he well might have died."

"So you took me out to lunch and acted as if you actually cared about me."

"We needed to keep you on a fairly short leash. I ask you, who deserves that lung of yours more, you or him?"

"That's not your decision to make, Doug."

"Isn't it? You know, until recently, I actually tried to stick up for you. There was another candidate — a laborer, who was an eleven out of twelve match for our man. But then, when you showed how crass and arrogant you were by trying to stab Dr. Renfro in the back and subsequently getting kicked out of school and your residency, it was clear you had denigrated yourself, and lowered yourself far beneath any Guardian."

"Guardian? Guardian of what?…What in the hell are you talking about?"

"I wouldn't expect you to know."

"What kind of guardian?…Hey, wait a minute, are you talking about guardians as in Plato's guardians? The philosopher kings? Surely you don't think that you…oh, but you do, don't you? You consider yourself a philosopher king." Natalie knew that in her campaign to disrupt and rattle the man, she had just been given a weapon. "How many of you are there, Doug? How many philosopher murderer kings? Are you part of some sort of secret society — a Plato club?"

Berenger's expression left no doubt that he had been gored.

"You are in no position to be mocking," he said. "The Guardians of the Republic are among the greatest, most talented, most enlightened men and women on earth. By taking over the decision-making relative to the allocation of organs, we have done more good for mankind than you could ever imagine."

"The Guardians of the Republic! Oh, this is too much! Do you have an anthem, Doug? A password? A decoder ring? How about a secret grip and merit badges?"

"Enough!"

Berenger took a single step forward and slapped Natalie across the face with all his strength, dropping her to one knee.

Natalie, her eyes watering from the blow, ran her tongue over the corner of her mouth and tasted blood.

"That was brave, Doug," she said, standing. "I hope you broke your hand."

"No such luck."

"Too bad. So, tell me, what harm did that poor woman in there ever do to anyone that would cause your precious Guardians to sacrifice her?"