Michael Palmer - The Last Surgeon

“So you checked into this hotel last night. Brought only a few of your things, which you’ve already seen here. Nobody is going to question why Phillip MacCandliss jumped out the seventh-story window of the Crescent Hotel. The sux will already be metabolized, so your autopsy won’t show any drugs. ‘And he had two little girls,’ everyone will say. ‘Such a shame.’ ”

Nearly effortlessly, Koller lifted MacCandliss off the floor and turned so that his mark could get one last look at the money.

“Easy come, easy go,” Koller said. “My advice is to just relax and enjoy the ride.”

Phillip MacCandliss felt himself being maneuvered over the windowsill. For a moment, as he hung down, his lids fell open, giving him a view of the scene seven stories below. Then he felt hands pushing on his bottom, and he began to slide forward.

It’s not going to happen , he thought.

But it was.

He slid off the sill and was instantly airborne. The wind whipped past his face as the world rose up to meet him. Despite what he had read on several claim filings from vets who had near-death experiences, his demise wasn’t painless and beautiful, or filled with a warming, beckoning light. There was only pain, brief and beyond excruciating. Nearly every bone in his body shattered at once. His skull erupted against the hood of a parked car. Fragments of his brain exploded onto the windshield like a spattering of bugs.

Seven stories above, Franz Koller mussed the bedspread, scattered the pornographic photos about, set the toiletries on the sink, and left Room 727 through Room 725, pausing only to check that the door between them was locked.

Nicely done.

“If there ever was a DVD recording of the Aleem Syed Mohammad operation, it’s gone now.”

Saul Mollender sounded bewildered, but also more energized than Nick had ever heard him.

It was nearly half past midnight, and the Mole had just returned the call Nick had left on his machine at seven, giving him details of Jillian’s meeting with the nursing school dean. Patient volume on the four-stop Baltimore loop had been unusually light, and Nick and Junie were already parked on the street by her house, nearly done cleaning up the RV.

“Does that make any sense?” Nick, now slouched in the driver’s seat, asked Mollender. “We’re talking about one of the most high-profile cases that Shelby Stone has ever had. Since they had the capability to do so, how could it not have been recorded?”

“I don’t have any record of the surgery in my database either.”

“That’s crazy.”

“But there’s more. When can we meet?”

“Now?”

“Of course now. Do you want to know what’s happened here or don’t you?”

Nick rubbed at the gritty fatigue stinging his eyes. The day had started early, and the ecstatic exhaustion from his time with Jillian had never gone away.

“You can’t tell me over the phone?” he asked.

“If I wanted to tell you over the phone, I would have told you over the phone,” the Mole said, suddenly sounding like his old testy self.

Junie, who had finished restocking, waved that she was done, and motioned Nick to lock up.

“Jillian won’t be off duty until one,” he said after Junie had left. “I want her to be there.”

“Does she have my plaque?”

“If she does, she’ll bring it.”

“I don’t want to meet in or near the hospital.”

Are you going weird on me? Nick came close to asking.

“Okay, we’ll meet wherever you want,” he said instead. “But remember, I have to drive in from Baltimore.”

“Should be fun without any traffic for a change. There’s an all-night coffee shop, Mike’s, on South Dakota near Eighteenth. One thirty?”

“Make it two,” Nick said.

Just as he hung up, Junie startled him with a knock on the passenger side door.

“This folder was on the kitchen table with a note from Reggie for you,” she said, passing it over.

“He’s an artiste on the Internet,” Nick replied, “so I asked him to do a little research for me. Thanks.”

“Next time, ask him to do some homework. Good job tonight.”

Junie winked at him and headed to her house. As the quiet closed in, Nick flipped through the articles Reggie had put together, then closed the folder and sat staring through the darkness at nothing in particular. Quickly, his thoughts homed in on Umberto-clear images of the man as he was at FOB Savannah, working in the base clinic during his off-hours, taking vital signs, straightening up the waiting room, smiling and joking with the patients. Always smiling. Always joking.

What in the hell had become of him? Why was Mollender suddenly acting so secretive? What was the connection between Belle and Dr. Nick Fury? Had she really crossed paths with Umberto, or did she hear the name from someone else?

Hopefully the answers to those questions would not remain elusive for much longer.

Finally, with a prolonged stretch and a deep sigh, Nick flipped open his cell phone and called Jillian.

“Hope you can stay awake a little longer,” he said. “We’ve been summoned by the Mole.”

IT SEEMED as if the owners of Mike’s L.A. Diner and Coffee Emporium had tried and failed any number of times to find an identity for the place. There was neon and more neon, framed black-and-white glossies of Bogie, Bacall, and Betty, and a grease-stained menu that was a cross between a railroad car diner’s and Starbucks’. There was also, at almost two in the morning, a decent-sized crowd that included college students from nearby Catholic University, street people, and a few affluent suburbanites, but did not, to this point at least, include Saul Mollender.

While waiting for the man, Nick ordered a black coffee and Jillian an iced tea, fries, and a grilled cheese sandwich. There was no overt discussion about their afternoon lovemaking. Both felt comfortable simply being together, holding hands underneath the table, and proposing Different theories that would fit the bizarre, truncated medical record of Umberto Vasquez, and the absence of any videorecording of the Aleem Syed Mohammad operation.

“Maybe they didn’t record it for security reasons,” Jillian suggested.

“Possibly. But I would think the CIA or whoever was in charge of questioning the dude would have wanted to show the world how enlightened and compassionate we were, even to one of the archenemies of our country.”

“Any idea why Mollender would have said he wanted to meet us out here?”

“I still don’t know him well enough to say. He sounded a little, I don’t know, disconnected on the phone. Sort of squirrelly-sensitive and tuned in one moment, brash and confrontational the next.”

“The keys to everything are the hospital records and the video of that operation, Nick.”

“Then I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what the Mole found.”

“Hopefully we won’t have to wait long.”

She gestured behind Nick. Saul Mollender approached their table with his head down and his gaze shifting from side to side as if he were part of some clandestine operation. He skipped the formality of shaking hands and quickly sat himself down on the empty chair across from them.

“People have been talking,” Mollender said.

Nick thought the man seemed agitated and anxious.

“Talking? Who’s talking? What about?”

“About me,” Mollender said. “One of my two employees noticed I was doing some research for you. He spoke to the other of my employees and they both started asking questions.”

“About our investigation?” Jillian asked.

“Heck no,” Mollender snapped. “My team doesn’t gossip. That’s against my policy. But the two of them are wondering if I’ve turned over a new leaf and decided to become more helpful to people-God forbid, friendly even.”