Джозеф Файндер - House on Fire

When it ended, there was raucous cheering, and out of the darkness a white beam cut a small round spot. Over the loudspeaker a deep male radio announcer’s voice said, “Ladies and gentlemen, we have with us this evening a special surprise guest.” The spotlight moved up the dark curtains and stopped, and then the white circle of light gradually grew bigger and the curtains pulled back to reveal the old man himself, Conrad Kimball, standing there in his customary navy suit over black collared shirt. It was a look I’d seen in all of his publicity photos.

“Doctor Conrad Kimball!”

The extraordinary thing was how Kimball looked twenty or thirty years younger. The white hair cut short, the pale gray eyes, the suntan, or maybe it was makeup: he looked vigorous and healthy, a man in his prime, a man of power and prowess.

He smiled broadly. “My friends!” he said.

The crowd got to its feet, applauding their chairman, cheering the unexpected guest, the boss.

The spotlight drew in closer and then softened. “My fellow warriors!” He extended his arms like a benediction. “With all the lies out there about Oxydone, all the propaganda, all the crazy protests and the vilification, all the fake news — I think it’s worth stepping back for a moment and remembering what we are doing. What our mission is. And why I built this company.”

He shifted his gaze from straight ahead to his left, looking directly at the sales reps seated right in front of him. “Hundreds of millions of people around the globe live with pain every single day. Right now. Pain that’s untreated. Pain that’s so bad that millions of them can’t go to work. Or go to school.”

Looking straight ahead now, he said, “I know a man named Jake. Jake has cancer, and he was living in unimaginable agony. Burning, stabbing torment. His life wasn’t livable. His marriage had fallen apart, he’d lost his friendships. He told me that it was like being tortured every day, with no means of escape. Tortured! He was on suicide hotlines several times. Because chronic pain drives people to suicide. He saw five practitioners before he finally got help. And then a wise doctor prescribed Oxydone.” He paused. “It was a godsend. For Jake, Oxydone was a miracle. He was given his life back. ” He raised his arms in the benediction pose again.

“Now, has Oxydone been abused in the substance-use community? Undoubtedly. Just like they abused opium a hundred years ago and still do. Just as some people are allergic to penicillin, some have these susceptibilities to opioids. But penicillin has spared multitudes. And so has Oxydone.”

He turned to face another segment of the audience. “But that must never stop us from bringing the miracle of pain relief to the lives of millions of sufferers. People like Jake. People with arthritis or migraines, with neuropathic pain or fibromyalgia or back pain or any other chronic discomfort.” He bowed his head, and after a beat, he looked up. “What I want you all to remember is that we’re not the villains here. We’re the ones who treat the pain. We’re the ones who do so much to alleviate suffering around the world.

“This medicine that’s derived from poppies, it’s a gift from nature. A gift that we bestow upon the hundreds of millions of afflicted people who need it so desperately. Ultimately, that is what we are giving the world. A gift.”

The spotlight faded, and the house lights came up, and everyone had gotten to their feet to cheer the old man.

“My friends,” he said over their cheers, “let’s go out there and save lives. ”

I applauded, along with everyone else, and meanwhile I was thinking. The fact that Conrad Kimball was here had suddenly changed everything.

By the time the session had broken for dinner, I had located Dr. Zubiri. He was a tall, spindly man of around sixty, with silver hair and wire-framed glasses with thick lenses. He was wearing an aquamarine polo shirt and neatly pressed chinos, and he was seated up front, in what I realized was the VIP section.

“Excuse me, Dr. Zubiri?” I said.

“Yes?”

“A moment?”

Wary. “What’s this about?”

I lowered my voice. “It’s about the lovely country of Estonia and its beautiful capital, Tallinn.”

He blinked a few times. “Do I know you?”

“No, but you might want to. Why don’t we talk in private?” I pointed to an unoccupied spot off the path by the amphitheater wall.

“Who are you?”

“Just a guy who’s doing some investigation into Oxydone.”

“Get the hell out of here. I don’t have to talk to you!”

“You’re right, you don’t have to talk to me,” I said. “You don’t have to. You want to. You want to talk to me the way a drowning man wants a life preserver. Look, you want me to walk away from you right now, I’m gone. And then you’re going to have fifteen to twenty years in federal to think about whether you made the right call. Because you’re the one person the family is going to hang out to dry.”

“The — family?”

“The Kimballs. Let me assure you of one thing: the family will look after its own. And that means that you, my friend, are going down.”

“If you’re some kind of activist shareholder or something, you can forget it. I am absolutely loyal to this company.”

“Oh, I respect your loyalty. And they’re banking on it. You are taking the fall for the Tallinn study.”

Zubiri’s expression was frozen, but I could see the facial muscles twitching, a blood vessel pulsing. He said nothing.

I went on. “Is it too late for you? I’m not sure. There might be a play.”

“What exactly do you want from me?” he said feebly.

“I want the Tallinn study,” I said.

“I don’t— That was on a portal that’s been shut down. I never kept a copy. I wasn’t allowed to.”

I was afraid he’d say that. Another strikeout.

But I wasn’t done with him. “One more thing,” I said.

A quick stroll through the hotel confirmed that Conrad Kimball was staying, of course, in the presidential suite, on the third floor. Room 322. Which was on the other side of the building from the suite Sukie and I were in. I walked along the third-floor corridors, noted the room numbers on either side of the presidential suite, outside of which a security guard was sitting, even when the old man wasn’t there. In short order I had a fairly good mental map of the main resort building.

I glanced at my watch. I had to keep track of time, because I didn’t have much of it. I had until Conrad Kimball finished his dinner. Which could be forty-five minutes, or it could be longer. Or it could be less.

Back in Sukie’s suite, I called room service.

“Yes Mr.... Kimball?”

“I’m doing a surprise birthday celebration for Megan Kimball. I’m going to want a bottle of Dom Pérignon, if you have it, delivered to her room — actually, I forgot her room number, I believe it was room three oh—”

“Ms. Megan is in room two-twenty,” the woman said.

“Two-twenty, right. One bottle of Dom Pérignon to— No, actually, you know what, deliver it to my room and we’ll bring it to her directly. Yeah, let’s do that. Thank you.”

Room 220 was, unfortunately, on the floor below the presidential suite. But I could work with that. It was directly below, which was useful. Now all I needed was a key to 220. I changed into a pair of jeans and sneakers, a small backpack slung over my shoulder, and went down to the front desk, where I noticed with relief that the shift had changed. The woman with the dreadlocks and the orange-sherbet blouse from this afternoon was gone. In her place was another woman, chubby with a spray of freckles across her dark face.