Harlan Coben: Miracle Cure

"Michael does not have AIDS."

Her heart constricted in her chest. She could barely breathe.

"What?"

"Role reversal, Sara. Think about it a second. In order to make it look like Trian, Whitherson, and Martino were cured, I switched their HIV-positive blood with healthy blood. In Michael's case I did the opposite I exchanged his healthy, HIV-negative blood with someone's who was HIV-positive. He was diagnosed with AIDS, but he never had it."

"But what about his symptoms? What about the stomach pain and the jaundice?"

"Oh, Michael does have hepatitis," he said.

"Do you know how easy it is to give someone hepatitis? All you do is jab him with a contaminated needle. Remember when he came to see me when he had the flu a few months back? The flu shot I gave him came from a contaminated needle..."

"You sick son of a bitch..."

"Then all I had to do was wait for the symptoms to crop up.

If they didn't that happens sometimes I would have found some other way to make him think he was sick with something that could preclude AIDS.

And even though Michael was neither gay nor a drug user, his blood transfusion in the Bahamas gave me the excuse to test him without raising too many eyebrows."

His words bombarded her from every direction, but there was no way to fend off the blows.

"How could you?" she screamed.

"What was the point. Why "

" did I pretend Michael has AIDS?" he finished for her.

"Isn't it obvious?"

Her vocal cords would not work. She could only shake her head.

"Do you remember when we first diagnosed Michael as being HIV positive?" he asked.

"I told Michael that he had a responsibility to go public. I told him that he could make the disease real to the millions of people who ignored the threat because they saw AIDS as just a gay disease. A healthy, handsome, popular basketball star like Michael could bring it out in the open, focus the world's attention on this tragedy like no one before him. To the world he is a fairy-tale prince. To me, he was Rock Hudson and Ryan White rolled into one. He could educate the world. His name alone could finance my research for years."

She gripped the cane ever tighter, her rage mounting.

"He was your friend."

"But don't you see? I was right, Sara. Michael accomplished all of that and more. The fact that he was straight and married to the beautiful and famous Sara Lowell made it all the better even though Sanders tried to take some shine off the apple by dragging out Michael's stepdad."

"You callous bastard," she shouted.

"Then what? Were you going to 'cure' him and make yourself a godamn hero?"

"Not me," he said.

"Never me. It was all for the clinic. It was all in pursuit of finding an AIDS cure."

"How could you?" she hissed.

"Michael loved you."

Harvey looked at her strangely.

"And I love him. I would rather have torn off my own limbs than hurt Michael, you know that. But what good would it have done? I needed someone like Michael. And think about it, Sara: what was the big sacrifice?

He never had AIDS. Hepatitis caught early is not very dangerous.

His life was never in any real danger. Yes, he would have been out of basketball for a while, but so what? He was on his last legs anyway.

And even if he wasn't, it was such a small price to pay for so much good."

"You're insane."

"You're not listening to me."

"I don't want to listen to you. I want to rip your eyes out of your head. I want to crush your skull with my cane."

He raised the gun.

"Sara..."

"My father was right about you."

"Huh?"

"You are just like him only worse. Blinded by your passion.

I don't want to hear any more about how you murdered people and turned lives upside down. I want to know where my husband is."

His face clouded over.

"I never planned on having George kidnap Michael. I thought I could keep him as a patient at the clinic for a month or two and then make him an out-patient so that he would lead a fairly normal life. In a year or so, when the AIDS vaccine became a reality, I would take an HIV test and declare him cured. But someone got in the way."

"Who?"

"Sanders and his co-conspirators."

"What do they have to do with Michael?"

"After the Newsflash broadcast, Markey visited me in the clinic, remember? The government wanted proof that SRI worked. So they came up with the idea of making Michael a test case and monitoring his progress from the very beginning.

Remember how upset I was? I screamed about how the government was trying to stall my progress. But in truth "

"You were afraid they would learn you were a fraud."

He nodded.

"All they had to do was run one HIV test on Michael and all my work would have collapsed around my head.

And worse, Markey was sending in his men the next day. What choice did I have? I had to get rid of Michael. So I had George kidnap him."

"Where is he now?"

He did not answer the question. Instead, he stared down at his gun.

"I have to kill you, Sara. I'm sorry."

"What is your plan this time, Harvey? How are you going to explain away my death? Or Eric's?"

"It won't be very difficult. Eric killed you because you discovered the truth about him. Then he ran away. Disappeared."

"What truth?"

"That Eric was the man behind the Gay Slasher plot. First, I'll blow the lid off Sanders' conspiracy. Cassandra will be so outraged by your murder that I am sure she will cooperate. From there it won't be any problem to convince the media that Eric worked for the conspiracy. The media will eat it up, make it sound like the Goliath right-wing government was picking on the little David clinic. The money will come pouring in."

Harvey cocked the gun's hammer.

"The police will search for Eric. They may even find him wherever I dump him, I don't know.

If they do, everyone will figure his co-conspirators murdered him to keep him quiet. The media loves that kind of stuff."

Sara stared at him with a look that was nearly palpable.

"You'll never be able to tie the conspirators to the murders."

"I don't have to. The speculation will be enough."

"Max will figure you out."

"You give him too much credit, Sara. All the evidence is gone.

I killed Martino with the cyanide injection. The blood samples in Bruce's package have been destroyed. There's nothing left to tie me to the murders... except you."

A million questions ran through her mind, but the same one kept surfacing.

"Where is Michael?"

Harvey stepped toward her.

"When I found out that Lieutenant Bernstein knew about George, I realized that it was just a matter of time before he got caught. I had to cut my losses.

So I told George to burn down the storage house in Bangkok something else I could blame on the right-wing conspiracy."

His smile was back, his eyes bright and maniacal.

"Don't you see the irony, Sara? Everyone thinks that the patients were murdered by fascists who wanted to stop me from proving there was an AIDS cure. But actually, it was the opposite the murders made it impossible to prove that there was no cure."

Sara's eyes bore into his.

"What happened to Michael?"

Once again the smile left his face. He lowered his gaze.

"He's dead, Sara. George killed him. I begged him not to, but he hung up on " There was a sudden knock on the lab door.

"Dr. Riker?"

A nurse.

Harvey turned to Sara, his face suddenly panicked.

"If you call out, I will kill her too."

The nurse knocked again.

"Dr. Riker?"

"I'm in the middle of an experiment," he said, his voice cracking.

"Is it important?"

"Yes, Doctor."

"Hold on a minute."

He turned back to Sara. Her big green eyes were tear-filled now. There was no longer confusion or horror in them just devastation and pure hatred.