Michael Palmer - Extreme Measures

He stepped back a pace and hurled the back with all his strength. The spectacular implosion of glass was accompanied instantly by the wailing of a siren. Eric kicked away a few large shards and stepped into the office.

He grabbed the envelope and hurried to the restroom. Trying to ignore the bloody apparition in the mirror, he carefully used the small knife to scrape as much of the powder as possible from his cheek into the envelope. When he felt certain that Ivor Blunt could make an identification from a fraction of what he had saved, he scrubbed his face with soap, rinsed it, and then scrubbed it again. Still, with his eyes lost in dark hollows and his lower lip split and stiff with clotted blood, he looked very much like precisely what he was at that moment-a man who was dying.

The pay phone behind the desk required a quarter even to get a dial tone. If the wailing alarm wasn't somehow connected to the police, Eric knew there was no telling how much time he would lose waiting for someone to respond. He searched the top of the desk for a coin, but succeeded only in learning from several bills that he was in Bob Kuyper's Country Mobile in Wayland-a rural community twenty miles or so west of Boston. He huddled over the desk, using his knife to work on the lock.

"Okay, asshole, get on the floor!"

The harsh voice, from not ten feet away, drove Eric's heart into his throat. His service revolver leveled, a rugged young officer stepped through the shattered window and motioned Eric away from the desk.

Behind the policeman Eric could see a second officer, undoubtedly this man's backup.

"Wait, officer, please. I'm not a thief, I'm a doctor and-"

"Shut the fuck up and get face down!"

The man, younger than Eric, seemed quite tough but also a bit nervous.

Eric knelt in a spot away from the broken glass and then prostrated himself on the oily floor. The policeman circled him warily, finally positioning himself against a wall, safe from any attack from behind.

"Please listen to me," Eric begged. "It's a matter of LIFE and death, believe me it is."

"Put your hands behind you!"

"You've got to-"

"Do it!"

Eric did as he was ordered. The policeman knelt roughly against the small of his back and expertly snapped a pair of handcuffs into place.

Pain from the knife cuts seared up Eric's arms.

"He's cuffed, Sarge," the man called out.

"Keep him there," the other Man responded. "I'm going to check around out here." The policeman stood up.

"Okay, then," he said. "I'm Officer Carney. That's Sergeant Clarkson out there. You're under arrest. You have the right to remain silent-"

"Please, please," Eric begged. "I know all that. I waive all my rights. You've got to listen to me.", "Sit up. Slowly."

Eric did as he was told.

"Will you listen to me now?" he asked.

The young policeman nodded. For the next three minutes he listened without saying a word. Then he helped Eric to his feet and crunched across the shattered glass to what was once the plate-glass window.

"Hey, Sarge," he called out. "I think you'd better get on in here."

West Valley Regional Hospital was a tiny, fairly new facility located about five miles from the station house where Eric had been taken and booked for breaking and entering, plus malicious mischief It was 3:30 A.M. With Officer Carney keeping watch, a nurse was bandaging the lacerations on Eric's wrists, two of which had required suturing.

The bleary-eyed physician on duty was a moonlighter, a senior surgical resident from Worcester named Jennifer Farrell. Trying mentally to place himself in her Position, Eric had dropped a few names from her training program, and then cautiously and calmly recounted the events of the evening, using enough jargon to convince her that he was, in fact, a physician. Finally he showed her the envelope of powder and begged her to contact White Memorial for verification of his identity, and to get the home phone number of Dr. Ivor Blunt.

The nurse had just finished her work when Sergeant Clarkson and Jennifer Farrell reentered the room.

"apparently you are who you say you are," Clarkson said.

"That's a relief "Tell us again what you want us to do now."

"Well, first of all I want someone to get over to AUston and see if they can find Anna Delacroix."

"That's already being done. We called the Metropolitan Police from the station."

"Thank you. Now I'd like to call Dr. Blunt and have him meet us at White Memorial."

"Who is he again?"

"He's a toxicologist, and probably the only one in the city who has the equipment and know-how to identify this poison."

"Do you agree with that, Doc?" Clarkson asked the resident.

Dr. Farrell shrugged. "I know of Dr. Blunt," she said. "And I know that we can't do a thing with this powder here."

"How does our friend here seem to you right now?"

Jennifer FarreR rechecked Eric's eyes, heart, lungs, and blood pressure.

"No problem," she said. "Dr. Najarian, are you sure you don't want me to sew that lip of yours?"

"I'm sure," Eric said, unable to keep impatience from his voice.

"Okay," Clarkson said after some thought. "Dr. Farrell, do you have a phone with a second extension?"

She nodded. "Dr. Najarian, I'm going to listen while you talk to this Dr. Blunt. If it sounds on the up-and up, I'll drive you in to White Memorial. Just remember, you're still under arrest. Any crazy stuff and you'll be back on the floor."

"I understand."

Ivor Blunt was outraged at the early hour.

Eric quickly found himself squirming in his seat as the crusty toxicologist questioned his every statement.

"Let me get this straight," Blunt said. "You want me to get up, shlep into the hospital, Turn on my equipment, and analyze some dust that was put on your cheek during a voodoo ceremony in downtown Auston?" i(Correci.

"]X. Najm, are you crazy?"

"What I am is poisoned, Dr. Blunt," Eric said evenly. "Please, you've got to help me."

"Doctor, try to see it my way. You come into my office asking if I can analyze a woman's blood for this toxin that's never been found in Massachusetts. Then, not twenty-four hours later, you're calling me from some podunk hospital, claiming to have been poisoned with the stuff."

"That's right, sir."

"You sick now?"

"N'of yet, no."

"If these men wanted you dead. why didn't they just put a bullet between your eyes?" be "I lieve they wanted to" make a point to the people they've been terrorizing, Eric said.

"errorizink with tetrodotoxin."

"That's right." There was a prolonged silence, during which Eric rattled off what prayers he knew.

"I think you're crazy," Ivor Blunt said finally, "but since you've already got me wide awake, and since I'll never get back to sleep over my wife's snoring, I'm going to do what you want."

"Thank you," Eric sighed. "Thank you, sir. We can be at your lab in forty-five minutes."

"Take your time. Bring me your powder and four red-top and one green-top tubes of blood."

"I'll have them drawn here."

"Fine. Do you have a personal psychiatrist on the staff?"

"No. No, I don't."

"That's too bad," Ivor Blunt said. don't like this, Bernard," Laura said, listening as Eric's apartment phone rang a ninth, then a tenth time. "I don't like this at all."

For nearly three hours they had sat in Bernard Nelson's office, drinking coffee, sorting through the material they had brought with them from the Gates of Heaven, and trying to locate Eric. There was a message from him at the Carlisle which had come in some time around ten, but since then, nothing. Five calls to his apartment and one to the hospital had gotten them nowhere.

The nervous energy generated by their break-in at the funeral home and their grisly discoveries was wearing off, and Laura was beginning to feel desperate for some sleep. Bernard Nelson was bearing up even less well, and had already taken a prolonged nap on his couch. They had decided, at least for the night, that she should steer clear of her hotel. If someone had tried to run her down, there was good reason to avoid anyplace she might be expected to be.