"
W
hatta you think you're doing with that
thing?"
Dr. Shiller
asked, looking at the ten-pound weight that Herman was cradling against his
chest like a
lead blankie.
Herman was back in the cardio unit at Cedars wearing one of their
fashion-ugly, balloon-decorated backless nightgowns. Susan was standing next to
his bed. Jack was out of sight behind the open door.
Shiller glowered. He'd definitely had enough of the Strockmires.
He took the lead weight off Herman's chest. 'This is for a weight
machine."
"Doctor, I'm ready for the procedure now," Herman said.
Doctor Shiller looked down at him as if he were deciding whether
to hit him with the weight in his right hand or the metal clipboard in his
left. "The nurse said your heart was fine when she took your vitals. She
saw the sutures above your groin, so it looks as if you've already had the
procedure. This is a busy hospital, Mr. Strockmire. Believe it or not, there
are people in this cardio unit who are in actual medical danger."
Herman looked at Susan. "You tell him. He won't listen to
me."
"Okay, Doctor, you're right, we think an operation was
performed," she admitted. "Dad was kidnapped yesterday, and he was
taken to . . ." she stopped. "He went out to . . ."
She couldn't say Area 51. He'd throw
them out.
"Yes?" Shiller was seconds away from calling security.
Herman took over. "Somebody did an operation on me. They may
have implanted a radio transmitter inside me. A bug. Now they're following us,
tracking me via satellite."
"You people are wonderful," Shiller said, shaking his
head. "From outer space is it? Nice twist."
"Okay, you don't believe me? Take an X ray."
"I'm not wasting any more time on you." Shiller started
to leave, but Susan jumped up and blocked his exit.
"Doctor, listen, please! My father has been involved in a
very treacherous lawsuit. I told you about it before, remember?"
Nothing from Shiller. No reaction at all.
"Yesterday Dad came into possession of some very sensitive
material that in the wrong hands could embarrass some very high-ranking
Pentagon officials, maybe even the President. Because they wanted the material
returned, my father was drugged and kidnapped. But Dad didn't have it on him.
He'd given it to an expert to decode. They knew Dad would lead them to the
material, so they planted a bug inside him to follow him until they got their
hands on it. After the operation they let him go. Now they've got the material
back. But they're still chasing us, because they want to kill us. The lead
weight was to mask the bug and keep it from transmitting. . ." She stopped
because Shiller's look had shifted from anger to one of psychiatric concern.
"If you will just open the incision and put a scope up there
you'll find the transmitter, then you'll know we're telling the truth,"
she finished softly.
"Please leave the hospital immediately," he finally
said. "Otherwise, I'll call security and have you removed."
Jack had been sitting quietly, unobserved in a folding chair
behind the heavy door. As Susan explained her ridiculous story, he was trying
to decide just how much deeper into this gunnysack he was prepared to go for no
money—and then as soon as he asked that question, he knew he was in all the
way. He also knew he was in love with Susan Strockmire.
"Hey, Doc," Jack whispered from behind the door.
"What?" Shiller spun around, surprised to find him
there. "Who are you?"
"I'm Dr. Wirta, with the Wirta Eye Clinic."
"An eye
doctor?"
He nodded. "A private eye institute. I've been consulting on
this case, and I'll have to insist that you do exactly as the lady just
instructed."
"Oh, really?" Shiller was giving him an angry little
smile that barely turned the corners of his mouth up. "Well, Doctor,
unless you're a cardiologist or have some pretty good juice with the Physicians
Review Board at this hospital, it's not going to happen."
Jack pulled out his revolver and pointed it at Shiller. "Dr.
Smith and Dr. Wesson are also consulting. You don't want to argue with these
guys unless you're wearing Kevlar."
"You can't be serious."
"I'm dead serious—excuse the pun—and unless you want to
decorate that wall you're standing next to, you better get this man into
pre-op."
"I'm not gonna perform surgery at gunpoint."
"Yeah? Why not?" Jack asked.
"Well. . . well, just because . . ."
Jack brought the S&W up chest high. " 'Just because' only
works in third grade. I'll need something a little more substantial."
"I. . . I don't have an operating theater. I don't have an
anesthesiologist."
"They got all that stuff in the ER. Do it down there."
"You know all about it, huh? You know what it takes to do one
of these?"
"It's an outpatient procedure. How tough can it be?"
"This is outrageous."
Jack thought that was a bit of an overstatement. It wasn't
outrageous, at least not compared to the North Hollywood Bank Shootout. Next to
that, this was only highly unusual.
The procedure took about forty minutes.
On Jack's instructions, Shiller only gave Herman a local
anesthetic, because Jack wanted to leave with him immediately after surgery.
A probe and chip camera were fed into Herman's upper thigh, then
threaded up through the vein to his heart. After a few minutes of searching,
Shiller said, "There's where they fixed the arrhythmia. See on the scope.
. . the little burn mark?"
Jack couldn't see it; the video screen looked like a plate of
spaghetti to him, so he took Shiller's word.
Another minute or two of searching and they found the bug.
"I got something," Dr. Shiller said through his surgical
mask.
After carefully unhooking one small suture, he grasped the tiny computer
chip with the microscopic pincers on the surgical probe and withdrew it. They
all watched on the TV monitor as it made a fascinating journey from Herman's
sternal region, down the subscapular vein, through the thoracoepigastric vein,
to the umbilical region, then into the great saphenous vein and out.
Shiller dropped the tiny chip on a metal tray. The bug was about
one-quarter of the size of an aspirin tablet. Jack had never seen a satellite
transmitter that small.
"What is it?" Shiller asked.
"Transmitter," Jack said, then reached over and smacked
it with his gun butt, turning it to powder.
"You mean all that stuff was true?" Shiller seemed
amazed.
But Jack was a student of human nature, and he could still read
anger and defiance in the doctor's eyes. Shiller was just the type of guy who
would try to get Jack to put the gun down and then either jump him or call
security.
"How long until he can be moved?" Jack asked.
"That's up to him. Depends on how he feels."
"Herm?"
"I'm a little woozy, but I can make it."
"Okay, then we'll get you a wheelchair and leave." He
opened the OR door and looked out at Susan, who couldn't bear to watch and was
waiting in the hall. "Get a chair."
"How's Dad?"
"He's fine. We got it out," Jack said.
A few minutes later she rolled the wheelchair into the OR. Jack
instructed Shiller to lift Herman off the table and settle him into the
wheelchair. All five of them trooped out of the hospital. Susan led the way,
carrying Herman's clothes. Jack brought up the rear, strolling casually behind
the doctor with his S&W in his sport coat pocket, feeling like a character
in a Scorsese movie.
Zimmy, Carolyn, and her muscle-bound boyfriend had picked up a car
for them at Rent-a-Wreck and left the keys on the top of the right front tire.
Then they all decided to get lost, promising not to return to their homes.
Jack retrieved the keys and loaded Herman into the backseat of an
old Chrysler Imperial. Then Dr. Shiller, Susan, and Jack stood awkwardly next
to the passenger door and searched for a way to say good-bye.
"I'm sorry it had to happen this way, but thank you,
Doctor," Susan said earnestly. Jack thought Dr. Shiller thawed about two
degrees, but he didn't choose to say anything, so Jack got behind the wheel.
Susan sat beside him, and with Herman sprawled in the back, they pulled away
from Cedars-Sinai Hospital, fairly confident that nothing was beeping or
flashing on a screen anywhere. No satellite tracks or Octopus tails, just three
frightened people on the run in a beat-up car that barely ran.
T
hey stopped at a gas station, and while
Jack filled the tank Herman changed out of the hospital gown and placed a call
from the pay phone to Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen's Hollywood office. They
had donated money to the Institute in the past and were fierce
environmentalists who worried about the destruction of the ozone layer, global
warming, and the pollution of the oceans.
He didn't expect to actually get them on
the phone, because when they weren't in production they were at their home on
Martha's Vineyard. Their secretary, Louise, answered.
"It's Herman. How ya doing?" he said as soon as she
picked up.
"Jeez, Strock, we were just talking about you. Mary wanted to
invite you to a Memorial Day party on the Vineyard, but we didn't know where to
reach you."
"Send the invite to the office in D.C. I'll be sure to make
it if I can," he said. Then he told her that he wanted to borrow Ted's
fishing boat for a few days because he needed a quiet place to work. Louise put
him on hold while she got her bosses on the phone.
She came back a few minutes later. "Ted says okay. Just be
sure to lock up when you leave, and reset the alarm." She told him where
the Hide-a-Key was and gave him the alarm code.
Minutes later they were back in the rented Chrysler heading to
Lido Island in Newport Beach.
As he rested in the backseat new strategies and plans
were forming in
Herman's head. He was considering filing a temporary restraining order against
the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. A TRO was only good for ten
days, renewable for an additional ten. Twenty days just might be enough time to
do what he needed to do. There were federal laws already on the books
prohibiting genetic cloning, and, although those laws were rarely enforced,
Herman could still file under them.
He made a mental list of things to do. He needed to retrieve his
computer that was still at the beach house and download the gene map that Zimmy
had e-mailed. He also had to contact Sandy Toshiabi, his animal-rights expert.
He would need to talk to his secretary, Leona Mae, get her to pull together all
the background material, legal precedents, and any other laws restricting
genetic research or genetic engineering. There was a helluva lot to do and
almost no time to do it.
Also hovering in the back of his mind was what Dr. Adjemenian had
said. This new animal, this chimera, was 99.1 percent human—only nine tenths of
one percent different from
Homo sapiens.
His preliminary strategy was simple yet compelling. Animal-rights
activists had been trying to achieve legal standing in the courts for gorillas,
chimps, and other primates for a long time. Legal "standing"
currently only applied to
Homo sapiens
under the U.S. Constitution.