Gary Braver - Elixir

"I know what they're saying, but I also know this guy. I hired him. He's a dedicated scientist, not a mass murderer."

"Well, then, who did it?"

Ross felt a prickly sensation in the back of his neck. "I don't know."

"Well, they've got the best people looking for him."

"That's what I want to talk to you about," Ross said, and he described the Elixir project while Reagan listened intently.

Ronald Reagan tipped his head and smiled. "Boy, could I use some of that."

"So could the republic," Ross said. "Consider the economic impact. Health care for the aging baby-boomers could bankrupt the government in twenty years. If we work out the bugs, Elixir could prevent that."

Reagan thought all that over. "How close are you?"

"Maybe a couple of years, but the problem is that he took it all with him. Cleaned us out of all the science and the compound itself."

"How come?"

"That's what I'm not yet sure about, but he's out there someplace with the secret of eternal youth."

Ross's guess was that Chris had acted on fears for his own life. What bothered Ross was Quentin. He was too anxious to pin the murder and sabotage on Chris. A man wanted for murder does not steal the world's hottest pharmaceutical secrets to set up shop elsewhere. First, he'd need unlimited resources to reproduce Elixir. Second, he'd be nabbed in no time since his face had been broadcast around the world. Besides, it wasn't in Chris's character.

Maybe Quentin's.

"Ron, I'm asking that you do what you can to bring him in alive. If you think your drug war is bad now, this would be Armageddon if the stuff fell into the wrong hands."

When they were finished, Reagan called Buck Clayman, FBI Director, and asked him to use every means necessary to bring in Christopher Bacon unharmed. It was a matter of national security.

"What does this mean for you?" Reagan asked. "Aren't you retiring next week?"

"I'm putting that off. He left us pretty high and dry with debts up to here."

The president walked Ross to the door. "Has this stuff been tried on people yet?"

"Not yet, but the effect on primates was incredible."

"Well," smiled the President, "I know a couple of higher primates who'd happily volunteer."

Every morning Quentin would drive his daughter to the Sunny Vale Day School about a half-mile out of Lincoln center. He would then proceed down Main Street which narrowed to a lovely tree-lined road that took him to Route 2 and Darby Pharms just off of the Lexington exit. This morning began no differently.

He had just dropped off Robyn when a school van closed on his rear, flashing its lights. In the mirror the driver waved him over. Quentin pulled into a clearing. Maybe Robyn had forgotten a book or something. Or maybe his rear tire was low.

The man came up to Quentin's door. He was wearing sunglasses and a parka.

"Is there a problem?" Quentin asked.

Without answering, the man swung the door open. Before Quentin knew it, two other men pulled him out of the car and hustled him into the van.

"What's going on? Who-who are you people?" They strapped him in place. "Where're you taking me?"

Nobody answered him.

The driver turned the radio to an oldies station. While the Bee Gees sang "I Started a Joke," Quentin peered out at Lincoln's Norman Rockwell-like center with its country store and white steepled church and red brick library-and he thought how this was the ideal little suburban town where nothing ever happened, and that this was the last time he would see it.

Quentin had never laid eyes on these men before, but he knew why they had been sent. He just didn't know how they'd do it. His only wish was to pass out or have a cardiac arrest first.

For half an hour they rode through back roads until the driver, talking into a radio phone, turned down an abandoned lane lined with dark evergreens. Soon the trees gave way to a frozen marshland. Quentin's eye fixed on a section of ice that had not frozen over, where reeds stood up. He thought about how cold that water was and what the ice looked like from underneath.

The door slid open and Quentin was pulled outside. He was cold and numb, hoping it would be quick. The men rubbed their hands and waited. The man with the sunglasses removed a pack of gum and thumbed out a stick for Quentin. A few chews of Juicy Fruit to make him feel better about being shot in the head and dumped into a frozen swamp.

Then from nowhere came a fluttery sound as a small helicopter dropped to a nearby clearing. The pilot Quentin didn't recognize. But the passenger was Vince Lucas in muffler phones. If they wanted him dead, they would have done it by now.

The cockpit door opened and Juicy Fruit rushed Quentin inside behind the pilot, then pulled beside him. A moment later they were over the treetops and heading full throttle toward Boston.

Quentin settled in place. He didn't know why, but he was going to be spared.

As they approached the spires, the pilot cut over the North End. But instead of tilting toward Logan, he pulled to a thousand feet over the bay to open water. After a spell, Vince poked the pilot who nodded and zipped up his jacket. Then Vince put his hand on Quentin's door latch and began to jiggle it.

My God! Quentin thought. They were going to push him out. Everybody was harnessed in but he. They were going to bank hard at the same time Vince would throw open the door so Juicy Fruit could push him out.

It all happened with such a blur that Quentin could barely process the final moments: The pilot's hand pressing the steering mechanism, Quentin's body suddenly shifting to the door, his hands grasping for something to block the fall, the bright blue sea rising up in his face, the sudden plunge that sent his organs up his throat, the sudden frigid blast. The long agonizing scream in a final expulsion of air…

The chopper landed with a thud.

Very little had registered in Quentin's mind: Not Vince double-checking the lock on Quentin's door, nor the pilot's protest about a Cessna appearing from nowhere and sending them into a sharp turn, nor the fact that they had landed on the heliport of an eighty-five foot ocean cruiser, nor the fact that he had wet himself. All that registered through Quentin's gasps was the face staring at him through the hatch that Vince had swung open.

Antoine Ducharme.

Ross knew very little about computers, including the fancy new system installed a year ago. When he wanted to check financial records, he turned to Quentin to whom Accounting and the Legal Department answered directly. But Quentin was out, so he called his secretary Sally to access the quarterly earning reports for the last two years on his own terminal. She wrote out the access codes and called up the files.

Ross scrolled through tables of numbers and spreadsheets. He took note of certain figures, particularly losses in accounts with foreign pharmaceutical houses. Because Sally might say something to Quentin, he went to Accounting to check backup files with Helen Goodfellow, a confidante whom Ross had hired long before Quentin married his daughter.

She was riffling through folders when she remembered something. "Actually, they're not here. Mr. Cross took them. He was working on those personally and had a deadline, so he just gave me the numbers and said it was okay to sign." She looked at the empty file slots. "I guess he forgot to return them."

"I see," Ross said. "Helen, I'd appreciate it if you didn't mention this to Quentin. He's got a lot on his mind right now."

"Certainly, Mr. Darby."

At 10:30 Ross dialed the number for Werner Ackermann, president of Alpha-Chemie in Geneva, Switzerland where the time was 4:30 in the afternoon. They had been associates for years.

Luckily Werner was in. Ross made small talk, then said, "Werner, I have a favor to ask. Our records are a little off." He explained something of the problem. "I'm wondering if you'd check the first- and second-quarter earnings last year and let me know what you have for a net loss on the R-and-D report." Twenty minutes later Werner called back with the requested figures. Werner asked if things were good, and Ross lied.