Michael Palmer - The Last Surgeon

Why?

Nick was about to abandon the CT scans and move on when Reggie leaned over and exclaimed in his ear. “Dang! That dude is just as messed up as the first poor sucker we saw.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know. I’m good at figuring out patterns, and those pieces of bone look almost exactly like that first guy you showed me.”

“That’s it!” Nick exclaimed.

“That’s what?” Jillian asked.

“Why I’ve been feeling like Price’s record was familiar. Let’s go back to that twenty-eight-year-old Caucasian male we looked at first.”

“Giuseppe Renzulli?”

“That’s the one.”

Jillian pulled up Renzulli’s file.

“Can we see both side by side?”

She opened a new window and soon had the two patients’ three-dimensional CT scans displayed next to each other.

“Well, I’ll be…” Junie’s voice trailed off.

“They’re identical,” Jillian said.

“Told you,” Reggie boasted.

Nick studied both pictures intently, his brow knit.

“I’m not a statistician,” he said. “But I’m willing to bet the RV that two identical bone fragment dispersals from a shotgun blast to the face is a statistical impossibility.”

“Are the procedures done on the men the same?” Junie asked.

“Doesn’t look like it to me,” Nick said. “Renzulli had some pretty significant complications that Paresh attributed to his anesthesia and local infection.”

“There’s something else we’re missing,” Jillian said. “I can feel it.”

Nick went back through Price’s and Renzulli’s notes and films. The only thing in common between the two records was the CT scan.

“Didn’t you just say that these procedures cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in hospital billing?” Junie asked.

Nick’s focus was locked on trolling through Price’s file, such that he almost missed the question.

“Yeah,” he said absently. “Why?”

“Well, take a look here,” Junie said, tapping her finger on the screen.

“Hey! Fingers off the monitor,” Reggie scolded.

“Well, I’ll be…” Nick had to blink to make sure he was reading it right. “Jillian, as a joint venture with Shelby Stone, doesn’t that mean Singh operates his medical practice himself, but combines his purchases and billing for supplies with Stone?” Nick asked.

“I think so. That way he gets the benefit of Stone’s purchase power. He probably sends Stone a percentage of his collections for the procedures he performs.”

“Well, according to this, Edwin Scott Price had almost a million dollars of reconstructive work done.”

“And? What am I missing?” Jillian asked.

She turned around in the chair to face both the others.

“What you’re missing and what Junie just pointed out,” Nick said, “is that none of Singh’s profits that were shared with Shelby Stone from Edwin Scott Price’s million-dollar new face came from an insurance company.”

“That would mean Singh didn’t want Price’s insurance company to even know he was doing the work. Why would that be?”

A devilish smile crossed Nick’s face.

“I don’t know. But let’s give our little implanted rootkit a rest and then when Reggie tells us it’s safe, we start looking to find other identical CT scans and take a real close look at Singh’s billing practices when it comes to fixing shotgun wounds.”

Franz Koller sat on one of the recently installed benches at Poplar Point and watched the moonlight dance across the Potomac. The plan was for his client to take the bench directly behind his, facing toward the woods, so they could keep their backs to one another as they talked.

The cloak-and-dagger bullshit was cumbersome, Koller thought, but he had done business with the Agency before, and like the golfing gorilla who hit a four-hundred-yard drive and then followed it with a four-hundred-yard putt, this was the way they operated. He knew whom he was dealing with and they knew that he knew, but that made no difference to the way they did things. The only question that remained unanswered for him, and in truth he didn’t really care whether he ever knew, was the precise identity of Jericho, the individual or group within the Agency who had the resources and clout to authorize the cancelation of at least six people. And at the going rate for the master of the non-kill, that was some serious clout.

There was a chill in the air, a bit unusual for this time of year, and Koller was glad he had opted for his heavy jacket, not only for warmth, but for concealing his favorite direct-kill weapon-a Ruger bull-barrel.22 with an integrally suppressed silencer. The gun provided him with an emergency escape option, and given that this meeting breached several protocols he lived by, he considered the precaution a wise one.

Koller wasn’t bothered by the meeting place so much as he was by the time. Late at night, in a public park, any passing patrolman worth the tin on his badge would be wise to question any bench sitter.

I just want to ask you to be very careful, sir. Muggers like to hang out here late at night. …

Koller grinned at the notion. For a time, he closed his eyes and indulged himself, imagining what it might be like to have a mugger actually approach him here. The direct kill his mind created was swift and silent-one hand up, through the flesh of the throat, and fully around the larynx. After the initial thrust, before death, his imagination allowed him to pluck the would-be assailant’s eyes out with his thumbs.

Somewhat messy, but nicely done , he decided. Nicely done, indeed.

Koller suspected that he was about to meet Jericho the person, or else the head of the organization calling itself by that name. He was curious why this client was so insistent on rendezvousing with him in person. A face-to-face meeting was potentially dangerous for each of them-lethal for one of them if it were Jericho’s intention to kill him. But killing him at this point-at any point for that matter-made no sense. It had to be that once again, as was the case when Jericho elected to burn down Jillian Coates’s condo, established protocol was about to be broken. Only this time, his client had wisely decided it was easier and safer to ask permission than it was to seek forgiveness.

The killer sensed movement and sound, and slid the Ruger onto his lap. A full minute passed before he actually heard the voices of a man and woman, approaching along the walk to his left. Koller inhaled through his nose and began the process of slowing his pulse. They sounded harmless and intoxicated, but professional killers would. He followed the couple out of the corner of his eye as they emerged from a dense grove and approached along the walk from a hundred feet away. At the same time, he scanned to his right. Nothing. If the couple were good enough to fool him, it was going to be a hell of a fight.

He buried his pistol beneath his jacket.

“Hey, there, buddy. How’re you doing?” the man said.

He was an absolute house, six five, two-eighty or more, and if he had anything less than a 0.2 blood alcohol level, he deserved an Oscar. The girl on his arm was petite and quiet.

“Have a good one,” Koller said, still on red alert, but now for anyone whose presence the couple might have masked.

“You betcha,” the bear said.

He hiccuped, stumbled once, and then proceeded on.

Koller holstered the Ruger and checked his watch. Always arrive late. Another unnecessary CIA gorilla shtick. In exchange for the tax-free million or more they were paying him for each kill, he’d give them five more minutes. The Jericho contract had already brought him millions. With luck this meeting would end up adding to that haul.