Michael Palmer - The Last Surgeon

“So far we’re just feeling our way along, but we’re not taking any chances,” Jillian replied, smiling inwardly at the recent events in the Singh Center. “We don’t have all the facts yet, so we’re not ready to make any claims, but Belle’s death might be linked to the disappearance of Nick’s close friend, a soldier named Umberto Vasquez.”

“So, what can I do to help?”

Jillian withdrew a folded piece of paper and handed it over.

“I need to know where Belle might have been on that date.”

“Three years ago?”

“She was a senior nursing student back then. I think that date might be very important somehow, but I can’t be sure.”

“Let me check. Our record keeping for student schedules is a bit haphazard, so this could be tough. I’ll start by pulling up her transcript from student services.”

Lane crossed the office and settled in at her desk. Jillian took the black spindle-backed chair catty-corner to her. The search did not take long.

“Well, I may have something here,” the dean said after no more than two minutes.

Lane motioned for Jillian to look at her computer screen. Seeing Belle’s school photo in the upper right corner of her digitized nursing school transcript brought a now familiar mix of sadness and intense anger to her chest. Intuitively, Lane took hold of Jillian’s hand.

“Your sister was a beautiful woman,” Lane said. “Inside and out. We have all her awards, faculty recommendations, and certifications listed here. She was a standout member of our community, admired by her peers and revered by our faculty.”

“Anything on or around that specific date?”

“No, not on the date you gave me, though I thought it reminded me of something. Then I saw this here.” Lane pointed to an entry in Belle’s transcript. “It was an honor we gave Belle for being one of our top students. She was allowed to observe, as part of her rotation in surgery, the operation for Aleem Syed Mohammad.”

Jillian drew a blank on the name, though it sounded familiar.

Sensing her former student’s puzzlement, Lane helped her out. “Mohammad was a terrorist-one of the highest ranking we have ever captured. Our troops found him in a cave-somewhere in Pakistan, I think. I don’t remember the exact details, but I recall that his men defended him to the death. He was turned over to the CIA and was brought back here.”

“Of course. I remember now. Belle told me about what happened. I was away, but she saved me the newspaper articles.”

“Exactly. Not long after he was captured, Mohammad became progressively ill, and was found to have a rather large tumor in his heart-quite a rare tumor as I recall, although I’m blocking on the name. He needed major open-heart surgery to remove it. Our hospital was selected for the operation because of our proximity to where he was being held in Virginia. Plus, we’ve handled this sort of high-profile thing before.”

“As I said, I was away at the time. Friends and I were climbing in the Rockies. Belle was the only nursing student in the OR, yes?”

“There was also a medical student.”

“She told me the operation, what there was of it, was a nightmare.”

“Mohammad was the second-most-wanted terrorist in the world behind Bin Laden himself. Capturing him was quite a feat. I’m glad I don’t know what methods were being used to interrogate him, but that all came to a halt when he became ill. A team of experts was assembled from around the country to perform the surgery. Then, as they were transferring Mohammad from the stretcher to the operating table, he had a cardiac arrest. Never made it to the surgery.”

“How was Belle chosen to observe the case?”

“It was very last-minute who got picked because we weren’t sure right up until the day of the operation if the government folks were going to allow it. As I recall, there was no doubt about choosing her.”

Jillian was truly dumbfounded by the news. The day after Umberto disappeared, after he had been delivered by ambulance to Shelby Stone Memorial Hospital, Belle witnessed the operating room death of one of the world’s most feared and reviled terrorists. There had to be a connection. But what? And were those events in any way tied to Belle’s murder three years later? No matter how she twisted that thought in her mind, Jillian could not see how they could be.

At the moment, though, Umberto Vasquez, Aleem Syed Mohammad, and Dr. Nick Fury were all they had. Despite the lack of an obvious scenario that connected the three, this was going to be exciting news to share with Nick.

“Do you have any idea who else was in the operating room that day?” she asked finally.

“I don’t have a clue. I’m sure some of the names are in the man’s hospital record. We could check there, or we could see if the case was recorded.”

“Recorded?”

“Yes. Did you know about the cameras hooked up in the operating rooms?”

“No, I didn’t. Do you record every operation?”

Lane shook her head. “We don’t have the resources to do that because each operation has to be edited down to a manageable length and then transferred to DVD for storage. But selected cases-the ones of teaching or legal or historical importance-are recorded now.”

“Where do we get the funding for that?”

“As part of a grant-federal, I think. Shelby Stone was one of the first metropolitan hospitals to install video equipment in all twenty-four of our operating rooms. We use the videos in our teaching curriculum, and so do the medical school and residency programs. In addition, I’ve heard of a couple of malpractice suits that have been squashed because of the recordings.”

“Do you think Mohammad’s operation was filmed?” Jillian asked.

“Well, I suppose if they’re going to record any case, they’d have done that one.”

“Then there should be a DVD of his operation archived somewhere,” Jillian said.

“I think you’re right,” Lane said. “We request them by the surgical procedure or even by the surgeon, and the record room transmits it to us or maybe sends a disc over. I could ask one of our instructors how it all works.”

“Don’t worry about that,” Jillian replied. “You’ve been an amazing help already.”

“But how will you find out?”

Jillian flashed on the Mole. “I have someone I can call,” she said.

Phillip MacCandliss knew the Jericho people would come to their senses. Given the level of exposure and risk thrust upon him following the Manny Ferris breach, they had actually gotten off easy. In addition to Vasquez and Ferris, he had delivered three other worthless vets to them over the last four years. The three, like Vasquez and Ferris before them, were near duplicates for the photos Jericho had provided him-seven-out-of-ten-point matches for the facial characteristics they had insisted upon, one of them an eight.

Five hundred thousand for that kind of judgment, resourcefulness, and loyalty was a small price to pay, especially when he revealed the precautions he had taken to back up his demand for a bonus. Jericho was CIA, and it would have been foolish to make demands of them without some sort of protection. Despite Jericho’s reassurances, the hacking of the computer system at the VA had him edgy. If he needed to bolt suddenly, he would need a solid escape plan and the money to make it work.

True, he could not come up with that much incriminating evidence to put in the safe-deposit box he told them about. But they had no way of knowing. True, he had no idea who Jericho was, but he did have the photos and the names of the men he had turned over to them, as well as the reasons for his suspicions that Jericho was a unit within the CIA. A tape of the conversations with his contact would have been nice to have, but assuming it was the CIA, they had ways of telling when they were being recorded. The bottom line was that his Jericho contact seemed impressed enough with the steps he had taken to ensure they didn’t mess with him, and that was all that mattered.