Andrew Grant - Even

I undid the canvas satchel and took out the body bag. I held it up so he got a good look, then gripped one end and flicked the roll toward him so it unraveled across the width of the table. The final eighteen inches cascaded off the far side and dangled down onto his lap.

“Your buddies brought it for me,” I said. “But it looks more like your size.”

Taylor sat in silence, mesmerized by the strip of black rubber as if it were a giant tentacle about to grab hold of him. Then he snapped his eyes away, shoveled the end back onto the table, and reached across for the photo.

“They were organs, going for transplant,” he said. “But we weren’t bringing them in.”

“Who was?” I said.

“Nobody. We were bringing them out.”

“Out? Where to? The U.S.?”

“Obviously.”

“So back in your office. You talked about being a principled operator. Giving back to the people. But behind it all, you’re just a bunch of organ smugglers.”

“Don’t lay your tabloid-headline morals on me. Yes, we make money. Yes, what we do is technically illegal. But, hey, what we do saves lives, and that’s good enough from where I’m sitting.”

“Save lives? Wake up, Taylor. You steal people’s organs.”

“We don’t steal them.”

“You buy them then. Who from? How much? What happens if they say no?”

“We don’t buy them.”

“So what do you do? Make them?”

“You’ve got no idea what state that country’s in. Bizarre as it sounds, there are spare organs literally lying at the side of the street. Back here, people are dying because there aren’t enough. So we put the two together. No one loses. Innocent Americans win.”

“What do they win? Someone else’s body parts? Who had no choice about donating?”

“They get to stay alive. And I’m not apologizing for that to anyone.”

“These spare organs. They’re not still encased inside people’s bodies, by any chance?”

“You’re an asshole. This is how it works. We don’t just protect that hospital. We provide surgeons and doctors. Pro bono. Patrols scoop up the victims. Our guys save as many as they can.”

“And the rest you tear apart? Carve up for spare parts?”

“You’ve got to be realistic. You can’t save them all.”

“So, the unlucky ones. You just help yourselves to their innards. Like vultures.”

“What would you do? Leave the organs to rot? Do you know what life on dialysis is like? And that doesn’t always work, anyway. Ten thousand Americans die every year from kidney failure as it is.”

“How do you get them back here? The organs.”

“By plane.”

“What about customs?”

“We’re licensed government contractors. They’re our planes. No one looks twice.”

“Once they’re here, how do you sell them? On eBay?”

“We don’t just sell them. It’s like I said. We do this to save lives. We only work with our own patients. We do the diagnosis, the treatment, the convalescence. Our approach is completely holistic.”

“Don’t the hospitals blow the whistle? Or do you bribe them to look the other way when you wheel in your crates of meat?”

“We don’t use hospitals. We have our own facilities.”

“What kind of facilities?”

“Private clinics.”

“Private. Pandering to line-jumpers.”

“No. Mothers. Fathers. Normal people who just want to stay alive and see their kids grow up. The regular channels let them down, because the fact is-and this is truly sad-the system can’t deliver. It’s inadequate. So they turn to us. And for every one we help, a space is freed up on the list for somebody else. Everybody wins. There is literally no downside.”

“How many clinics are we talking about?”

“Five.”

“In New York?”

“One is. Around the corner, on Sixty-sixth Street. It was our first.”

“And the others?”

“Boston.”

“All of them?”

“No. One in Chicago. And Washington. And Miami.”

“All dedicated to saving lives.”

“Yes. If you ask me, it’s the only good thing to come out of the whole war.”

“So why do the FBI have five ex-Tungsten guys in their morgue?”

“You should talk to James Mansell about that. The asshole. He was new to the hospital detail. Strayed somewhere he shouldn’t have. We didn’t know how much he’d seen. Obviously we couldn’t take the chance.”

“So you canned the whole team. Clinically excised them. Brought them home, paid them off, sent them on their way.”

“Right.”

“Then how did five of them end up on the slab?”

“That’s Mansell’s fault again. He sent us a copy of this picture. Wanted more money. A lot more.”

“One guy tried it on, and you wiped out the whole team. That’s a pretty holistic approach, I guess.”

“It wasn’t my call. I wouldn’t have done it that way.”

“No. You’d have just killed Mansell. Or had him killed.”

“If it was necessary. As a last resort.”

“You’re like a saint, in comparison. So, who made the call?”

Taylor didn’t answer.

“Don’t go shy on me now,” I said. “I’m in no mood to compromise.”

“OK,” he said, “but this is hard for me. Because the Tungsten you see today, it’s not the way I set it up. Things have changed.”

“In what way?”

“I have new partners, is the easiest way to say it.”

“Since when?”

“Three months ago.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know their real names. Iraqis.”

“You employ large men with automatic weapons. Why let anyone muscle in?”

“It’s not that simple. They found out what we were doing. We thought they’d try and shut us down. It’s happened a couple of times before. And you’re right. We’re well placed to deal with that. But these guys were different. They didn’t want us to stop shipping organs. They wanted us to ship more. And they were ready to help.”

“And you let them.”

Taylor shrugged.

“They’re well connected, locally. Tripled the supply of suitable donors. Even sent their own surgeons over here, to pick up the slack. We’re averaging one transplant per day, per clinic, since they came on board. Mainly kidneys. Some livers. Now we’re talking about diversifying. Into corneas, that sort of thing. All in all, it’s ninety percent good.”

“And the other ten?”

“Day to day isn’t an issue. It’s how they deal with problems that sucks. They overreact. Have different ideas about what you can and can’t do.”

“I know all about that. So who are they?”

“I told you. I don’t know their names.”

“Where can I find them? The bosses. Back in Iraq?”

“No. They’re here. They work out of the clinic on Sixty-sixth Street.”

“Hamad’s one of theirs?”

“Yes. Their fixer. He came over a month after they did. Most of the wild stuff is up to him.”

“And you stood back and let him get on with it.”

“What could I do? I’ve had my concerns from day one. But the other directors…”

“Head down, mouth shut, take the money.”

“Exactly. Why kill the golden goose? And be honest-would you have done it differently?”

“Oh, yes,” I said. “Pretty much all of it.”

We didn’t return to our barracks straight after the fire incident.

Instead, we were sent to an army base in Wiltshire for a hostage rescue exercise. None of us could see why. If anyone was being held captive in an embassy it wouldn’t be our job to get them out. Blowing holes in walls and smashing through windows isn’t up to us. But that kind of speculation is pointless. In the navy, you go where you’re told. And besides, it sounded fun.