Robin Cook: Cure

In the wake of such significant life changes, Ben began to pride himself on being a “doer” rather than a “spectator.” When he’d come in contact with Satoshi Machita and the researcher’s story, he’d jumped at the chance to become involved. Soon Ben had come to consider Satoshi’s lab books as potential manna from heaven. If what Satoshi had said about being the first person to make iPS cells from his own fibroblasts was even half true, Ben was confident the books’ contents were going to shake up the biotechnology patent world by supplying the foundation of iPS USA’s intellectual property.

From then on, over a period of many months, Ben had personally taken responsibility to recover them. Even so, he’d not considered participating in the actual theft from Kyoto University until the Yakuza mob boss he’d met in Tokyo, in a meeting set up by an equivalent Mafia mob boss in New York who was supplying Ben’s seed capital, convinced him how easy it was going to be. “I doubt the door to the lab will even be locked,” the nattily dressed man in his Brioni suit had said when he’d met him at the bar of The Peninsula in Tokyo. “At two o’clock in the morning there might even be students working at their benches. Just ignore them, get whatever belongs to your employee, and walk out. There will be no problem, according to my sources. I have you set up with one of our finest Yamaguchi-gumi enforcers, who will meet you at your Kyoto hotel. You don’t even have to go into the lab yourself if you don’t care to. Just describe what you want him to get and where you think they will be found.”

At that point the new “doer” Ben had thought there was poetic justification for him to actually participate in the final step of what had been a months-long process. As important as the books were, he wanted to be one hundred percent certain the right lab books were taken. And on top of that, the rightful owner had authorized their recovery, so in his mind he was not stealing. Instead, he was acting as a kind of modern-day Robin Hood.

“We’ve got to get the hell out of here,” the panicked Ben squeaked to his co-conspirator, the so-called “real” professional, Kaniji Goto. The two men were crouched behind one of the lab benches. In addition to the jangling keys, they could hear the uniformed guard’s sandals scuffing against the lab’s tiled floor.

With obvious irritation, Kaniji motioned for Ben to shut up. Ben took the order in stride, but what he couldn’t abide was that Kaniji had withdrawn a dagger from somewhere inside his outfit. The sudden light in the room glinted blindingly off the knife’s stainless-steel blade. It was clear to Ben that Kaniji was intent on some kind of violent confrontation instead of getting them the hell out of the building.

As the seconds ticked away and the guard drew closer, Ben upbraided himself for not aborting the mission when the supposedly professional Kaniji had first appeared an hour earlier to pick Ben up at his ryokan, or traditional Japanese inn. To Ben’s horror, Kaniji arrived dressed all in black, as though he was heading off to a masquerade ball. Over a black turtleneck and loose black pajama-like pants he wore a black martial-arts jacket cinched with a flat black belt. On his feet were black cross-trainers. Clutched in his hand was a black balaclava. To make matters worse, he spoke only limited English, making communication difficult.

But the combination of poor communication, the foreign locale, and the excitement of getting hold of the lab books all contributed to Ben’s willingness to let the raid go forward, despite the alarm bells going off in his head. And now, as Kaniji crept forward, brandishing the knife, Ben’s anxiety ratcheted skyward.

Hoping to avoid any confrontation between Kaniji and the guard, Ben quickly duckwalked forward and caught up with Kaniji. In desperation he grabbed Kaniji’s belt and yanked him backward.

Losing his balance, Kaniji fell over onto his buttocks but was up in a flash, spinning in the process like the martial arts professional he reputedly was. Momentarily flummoxed about having been unexpectedly upended by his partner in crime, he still managed to restrain his reflex attack. Instead he confronted Ben with an aggressively defensive stance. The knife tip quivered inches from Ben’s nose.

Ben froze in place, trying desperately to judge Kaniji’s mind-set while fearing that any movement on his part might unleash the attack that Kaniji was actively suppressing. It wasn’t easy. The balaclava Kaniji had donned before they had entered the laboratory completely masked his face, making it impossible to read his expression. Even the eye slits were featureless black holes. A second later both Ben and Kaniji were blinded by the guard’s flashlight.

Kaniji reacted by pure reflex. Spinning away from Ben and letting loose with a scream, he charged at the shocked guard, lifting his knife above his head, holding it like a dagger. Ben also sprang forward and again grabbed Kaniji’s belt. But rather than preventing Kaniji’s forward momentum, Ben found himself yanked ahead. The moment Kaniji collided full tilt with the guard, Ben slammed into Kaniji’s back, and all three plunged to the floor in a kind of writhing sandwich, with the guard on the bottom and Ben on top.

At the moment their bodies collided, Kaniji had brought the knife down suddenly, plunging its tip into the sulcus between the guard’s collarbone and the top edge of his shoulder. When the group hit the floor the blade was driven home, piercing the man’s carotid arch in the process.

Other than the whoosh of air expelled from Kaniji’s and the guard’s lungs as they all collided with the floor, the first thing Ben was aware of was intermittent jets of spouting fluid. It took him a moment in the confusion of the event to realize that it was blood. As Ben scrambled away he could see that the blood was coming in progressively smaller spurts as the guard’s heart extruded the rest of his total of six quarts.

Although Kaniji was now covered with blood, Ben had been hit with only a few large drops, which ran down his forehead when he stood up. He’d feverishly brushed them off with the back of his free hand and then shook the hand.

For a second Ben stared down at the two intertwined bodies awash in red, one still struggling to catch his breath, the other motionless and pale. Without another thought, Ben took off. Clutching the laboratory books under his left arm like a football, he ran headlong back the route he and Kaniji had taken on their way to Satoshi’s old office.

Bursting forth from the building’s main entrance on the ground floor, Ben hesitated for a moment, not sure what to do. Without the ignition keys to Kaniji’s aged Datsun, there was no need to retrace the route to where the car was parked in a small copse of trees. As his mind raced through various but not too auspicious possibilities, he was shocked into action by the distant sound of approaching sirens. Although lost in a foreign city, he was aware of the Kamo River off to the west, which knifed through Kyoto north to south, and was near to the ryokan where he was staying in the old city.

With the stamina of someone who participated in triathlons, Ben struck off using the stars as a guide to get to the river. He ran swiftly and smoothly, trying to be as silent as possible. After only three blocks he heard the police sirens trail off, suggesting that the authorities had already reached the lab. Clamping his jaw shut tightly, Ben upped his pace. The last thing he wanted was to be stopped. Anxious and trembling, he would have trouble answering the simplest of questions, let alone explaining why he was out running at that time of night carrying books taken from a Kyoto University lab. When he reached the river, he turned north and settled into a rapid but consistent stride, as if he was in a race.