Robin Cook - Mindbend

Adam went into the hospital through the medical school entrance and headed up to the periodical room at the library. He wanted to look up pregdolen in the recent journals. Percy’s comments had made him curious, and he did not like the idea of selling a drug with really bad side effects.

He found what he wanted in a ten-month-old issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. It would have been hard for a practicing OB man to have missed it.

Just as Percy had suggested, pregdolen had proved inefficacious when tested against a placebo. In fact, in all but three cases the placebo had done a better job in controlling morning sickness. More importantly, the studies showed that pregdolen was often teratogenic, causing severe developmental abnormalities in fetuses.

Turning to the Journal of Applied Pharmacology, Adam found that despite the adverse publicity, pregdolen’s sales had shown a steady increase over the years, with an especially impressive surge in the last year. Adam closed the journal, wondering if he were more awed by Arolen’s marketing abilities or the average obstetrician’s ignorance.

Putting the magazine back, he decided it was a tossup.

Percy Harmon felt like he was on top of the world as he drove out of the parking area of his favorite Japanese restaurant with a fabulous meal of steak sukiyaki under his belt. The restaurant was located in, of all places, Fort Lee, New Jersey, but at that hour of the night, ten-thirty, it wouldn’t take more than twenty minutes to return to his apartment in Manhattan.

He did not notice the nondescript man in a blue blazer and tan slacks who’d stayed at the bar the entire time Percy had been in the restaurant. The man watched until the blue Chevy disappeared from sight, then made for the nearby phone booth. “He’s left the restaurant. Should be at the garage in fifteen minutes. I’ll call the airport.”

Without waiting for an answer, the man cut the connection and dropped in two more coins. He pushed the buttons slowly, almost mechanically.

Driving down the Harlem River Drive, Percy wondered why he had never thought of going to Bill Shelly before. Not only had the man welcomed Percy’s observations, he’d been downright friendly. In fact, he’d taken Percy to meet the executive vice-president, and making those kinds of contacts within an organization like Arolen was invaluable. Percy felt that his future had never looked so promising.

Percy stopped in front of the garage Arolen had found for him just four blocks from his Seventy-fourth Street apartment. The only time it was inconvenient was when it was raining. It was in a huge warehouselike structure that dominated the potholed street. The entrance was barred by an imposing metal grate. Percy pressed the remote control device that he kept in the glove compartment and the grate lifted. Above the entrance was a single sign that said simply “Parking, day, week, or month,” followed by a local telephone number.

After Percy had driven inside, the metal grille reactivated and with a terrible screeching closed with a definitive thud. There were no assigned spots, and Percy made a hopeful swing around before heading down the ramp to the next level. He preferred to park on the ground floor; the ill-lit spaces of the substreet levels always made him nervous.

Because of the late hour, Percy had to descend three levels before finding a spot. He locked the car and walked toward the stairwell, whistling to keep his spirits up. His heels echoed against the oil-stained cement floor and in the distance he could hear water dripping. Reaching the stairs, he yanked open the door and almost fainted with shock. Two men with old-fashioned crew cuts and wearing plain blue blazers faced him. They didn’t move, they didn’t speak. They just stood blocking his way.

Fear spread through Percy’s body like a bolt of electricity. He let go of the door and stepped backward. One of the men reached out and with a bang sent the door crashing against the wall. Percy turned and fled, racing for the stairwell at the opposite end of the garage. His leather-soled shoes skidded on the concrete, making it hard for him to keep his balance.

Looking over his shoulder, he was relieved to see that neither of the two men was in pursuit. He reached the door of the far exit and tried to pull it open. The handle didn’t budge. His heart sank. The door was locked!

All he could hear was the rasping sound of his own breath and the constant drip of water. The only other way out was the ramp and he started toward it. He was almost there when he saw one of the men standing immobile at the base of the sloping driveway, his arms at his side. Percy ducked behind a parked car and tried to think what to do. Obviously the men had split up; one was watching the stairwell, the other the ramp. It was then that Percy remembered the old automobile elevator in the center.

Keeping low, he moved toward it stealthily. When he reached it, he raised the wooden gate, ducked under, then lowered it after himself. The other three walls of the elevator were enclosed with a heavy wire mesh. The only light came from a bare overhead bulb. Percy’s shaking finger pushed the button marked “ 1.”

The elevator activated with a snapping noise, followed by the high-pitched whine of an electric motor. To Percy’s relief, the platform jolted, then slowly started to rise.

The elevator moved at an agonizingly slow rate, and Percy was no more than six feet from street level when the two men materialized beneath him.

Without haste, one of them walked over to the elevator control and, to Percy’s horror, reversed its direction. Panic-stricken, Percy repeatedly pushed the button, but the elevator relentlessly continued its descent. Gradually, he realized that they had planned for him to use the elevator. That was why they had not chased him. They wanted to trap him.

“What do you want?” he shouted. “You can have my money.” Desperately, he pulled out his wallet and tossed it through the wooden lattice to the garage floor. One of the men bent and picked it up. Without looking through it, he pocketed it. The other man had pulled out what Percy first thought was a gun. But as he drew closer he realized it was a syringe.

Percy backed to the rear of the elevator, feeling like a trapped animal. As the machinery ground to a stop, one of the men reached out and raised the wooden gate. Percy screamed in terror and slid to the floor.

Just over an hour later, a blue van pulled onto the tarmac at Teterboro Airport and rolled to a stop in front of a Gulf Stream jet. Two men got out, walked to the rear of the van, and hefted out a sizable wooden crate. Silently, the cargo door on the plane slid open.

There must have been more than a hundred people in the conference room. All had come to watch their friends and relatives graduate the Arolen sales course. Arnold Wiseman, the man who’d been in charge of the course, sat in the front of the podium next to Bill Shelly. To their right was a large limp American flag.

Adam was somewhat embarrassed by the ceremony, aware that Arolen was making more of a production than the four weeks of classes deserved. Yet it was fitting, since Adam had learned that nine-tenths of what the drug rep sold was pure show.

When he thought about it, Adam was amazed at how quickly those four weeks had gone. From the first day, he had realized that his two and a half years of medical school put him ahead of everyone else. Half of the other twenty students had degrees in pharmacology, five had master’s degrees in business administration, and the rest were from various departments of Arolen Pharmaceuticals.

Adam searched the crowd for Jennifer, thinking she might have changed her mind at the last minute and come, but even as he searched he realized it was a vain hope. She’d been against his working for Arolen from the beginning, and even if she had overcome her distaste for his new job, her morning sickness had become so severe that she could rarely leave the apartment before noon. Still, he couldn’t keep himself from staring at all the dark-haired women in the audience in case by some miracle she had arrived.