Shadow of Eden (40 page)

Irene,
his girlfriend at Columbia, the one with the dazzling smile and cheerleader energy. He had proposed to her one night when he was drunk and horny, and she had wisely ignored it. Ultimately, they broke up. Painter shook off the melancholic spell and opened the book to the first dog-eared page and read the underlined words:

“War is a matter of vital importance to the state; a matter of life or death, the road either to survival or to ruin. Hence, it is imperative that it be studied thoroughly.”

Right, war is hell, thought Painter. He turned to the next marked page.

“All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must seem inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near. Hold out baits to entice the enemy. Feign disorder and crush him.”

Painter caught his breath.
Feign disorder
, he thought about all that randomness the Chinese were showing them. Painter stared at the page. If China didn’t act now to invade Taiwan, they would pretty much forfeit all future claims. But how does all this disorder come together? Painter closed the book and leaned back on the couch. How?

It all pivoted on China’s ability to land their huge army. If they managed to do that, Taiwan would be lost. It all came back to knowing China’s tactics and strategy, which they had, so far, successfully managed to hide.

Chapter 84

V
alenti showed up at Steve’s room late the next day to greet an impatient and stir-crazy client. He waved an envelope at Steve. “Special delivery from your wife and offspring.”

Snatching it out of Valenti’s hand, Steve sat on the unmade bed and tore it open. By prior arrangement, it was a printed email sent to one of Anne’s Phoenix friends for Valenti to pick up. He had dropped off a message from Steve to send back to Anne. His message was, by necessity, positive, but also neutral, avoiding specifics and bad news; there was plenty of time for that later. The important thing was that they knew he was fine.

Reading and re-reading the printout, Steve absorbed the words on the page. They were generic, meant for semi-public consumption, but it was still a link. There was even a section from Johnnie asking when they could come home. A lump rose in Steve’s throat. He didn’t want to put it down and break the connection.

“I also got you a laptop,” Valenti said, handing Steve a box with HP written all over it. “That’ll keep you amused while I’m not here. I pre-loaded it with anonymous surfing software, an industrial strength version, so you can visit all sorts of porn sites and nobody will be the wiser. You don’t even have to tell me.”

“As if.” Steve needed the computer for all the research he wanted to do.

“Let me catch you up on the latest gossip,” Valenti began, sitting down at the small dining table and pulling out a white legal pad with the bottom edges curled and bent.

Steve reluctantly put the email in the drawer of the bedside table and scratched at his unshaven whiskers.

“First, the ad. The Republic took camera-ready copy from an agency in California, paid in advance. I called the agency’s number and got a fax machine squeal. Reverse look-up showed it to belong to a Subway sandwich shop in Irvine.”

“Dead end?” Steve stood up to walk near the window and looked out at the swimming pool through the sheer curtains.

“Pretty much. I talked the woman at the newspaper into giving me a copy of the paid bill. It was paid by a credit card: a Gold American Express.”

“That should be easy to trace.”

“It was,” Valenti said. “It was yours.”

Steve stared at him. “They paid for this thing with my credit card?”

“Yep. Makes it look like you’re setting yourself up as a falsely injured party. The newspaper wants to interview you about it and about a hundred other things.”

“I bet they do.”

“They’re slick, I have to give them that. Now then . . .” He consulted his notes, turning a page on the legal pad. “The letters sent to the Arizona Medical Board are deemed privileged and cannot be released except with a subpoena. We won’t be able to investigate them, not yet anyway. They took a dim view to my suggesting they were forgeries.”

“Figures.”

“And I checked with your attorney about your house. The insurance company declared it a total loss, including your wife’s car in the garage.”

“I expected that.”

“The investigators found the valve that piped the gas into your house.”

“Valve . . .?”

“A piggy-back jobbie screwed onto your hot water heater gas line.”

“And?”

“Arson.”

“Right,” Steve said, “we knew it was arson. So?”

Valenti glanced at Steve and then back down at his paper. “Insurance doesn’t pay for arson. At least when it’s suspicious.”

Steve stared at Valenti, not comprehending. “Even when it’s a criminal act?”

Valenti shook his head. “According to them,
you
might have set it.”

Steve couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Bullshit! Someone tried to kill me and my family—I can’t believe they would be so stupid.”

He stopped. Of course they would think that—too many funny things had happened to him, a pattern of unusual events, with no one else to identify as the cause.
Damn, damn, damn.
He would lose the total value of his house. How could they recover financially from that?

“Cheer up, it’s a preliminary finding. They might change their mind or something.”

It rang hollow. Steve could see Valenti didn’t believe it. The insurance company would make a case for Steve setting his own house on fire. Except for Rich next door, nobody had seen any arsonist and Rich could be a false witness. As far as the insurance company was concerned, it was a set-up by a desperate man who needed sympathy and money. They wouldn’t pay. Not unless they had a confession or a conviction of someone else. They might even bring charges against him.

Steve took a deep breath. It was a chess game and he had missed the rule changes and given them the first three moves. He stood at the window and looked out at two fully clothed women lounging by the pool in the cool afternoon December sunshine, not a care in the world.

“They hold all the cards don’t they?” His stomach churned with frustration and anger. He wanted to hit something, anything. The killers were probably sitting back laughing at him right now.

Kirk Mallis slammed his fist on the table. “Goddamn you, James!”

Mallis and Joe sat in the Soma café, not far from where Dr. James had lived. His credit card charges indicated it was a frequent haunt and they had parked themselves here in the hope he would come in. Mallis had just checked VeriFone’s web page on his notebook computer and had done so every three hours, at least, to see if James had any new credit card activity—only to come up blank. He did find that James’s bank and investment accounts had been drained, giving him almost two hundred thousand in cash. He could hole up for a long time with that kind of money.

“Still nothing, huh?” Joe said, looking up from his
Men’s Journal
magazine.

“Not a goddamn thing.”

He tried to think of something he had overlooked, a place to locate James or someone’s phone to monitor, but James hadn’t made any amateur mistakes—even calling his wife at her parent’s home. Mallis doubted James would attend the medical board hearing in the morning, although he still planned to watch the building. He wasn’t even sure if James was still in town. Mallis, to his utter frustration, had reached a dead end. Unless they got a break, they would have to wait the three more days for the meeting with Secretary Castell.

“Should we pay his attorney a visit?” Joe asked. “She might know where he is.”

“I’d like to, but no.” Mallis shook his head. “James’s vanishing has fucked up everything. With the police watching Sheridan’s house and lab, they’re probably monitoring his attorney, too.”

“So, we’ll clean-up later?”

Mallis’s eyes narrowed. “Maybe not . . . I’ve got an idea. It depends on if they give tours.”

Chapter 85

V
alenti watched Steve pace restlessly around the room digesting all his bad news. He changed the subject. “If Eden is so bad for people, how did it get past the FDA and onto the market?”

Steve took some time before answering, his anger and frustration balled up like a lump of dry bread caught in his throat that wouldn’t swallow. He allowed himself the self-pity only a short while before he shifted his mind back into problem solving mode. Doctors were good at that. He was still learning the rules, and had just learned another one, but he now had a little time to plan their next move.

“They had to know. The pre-clinical package is quite extensive with multiple laboratory, cell-based and lab animal testing. Unless Eden’s disease is species specific.”

Valenti didn’t say anything for a full minute. Then he announced, “I know you used English and I actually understood your words, so speaking slowly won’t help. But to save my sinning soul, I didn’t understand a damn thing you said. Can you please explain all that in plain English?”

“Okay, umm. It begins when a new compound is made in the lab. Testing begins in test tubes, followed, if it looks promising, by testing in cell culture for specific toxicities, which is then followed by lab animal testing. They test for everything you can think of, including cancer, reproduction problems, organ toxicity, heart conduction, and stuff like that. They get an idea how it’s absorbed and metabolized and what doses have some effect and what doses are lethal.”

“Basically, you’re telling me I never want to come back as a lab rat.”

“Probably not.”

“What then? Say it passes all the guinea pig stuff. People?”

“Right. You file with the FDA and then you start phase one. That’s the first time in man. You are looking at safety and tolerability of the drug. You give a tiny dose to a group of normal people, usually poor college students who get paid for it, and see how they react. If they do okay and their EKGs and blood tests are all normal, you increase the dose and see what happens.”

“Do you keep going up and up?”

“Until they reach maximum tolerated dose.” Steve grinned. “That’s when they puke their guts out.”

“Sounds fun. Where do I sign up?”

“Drop by our office.”

Valenti made a face. “Maybe not.”

“Phase two and three are where they pretty much prove the drug works the way it is supposed to and that it’s safe.”

“Why didn’t anyone get this Eden’s rot during the trials?”

“Long latency.”

“What’s that?”

“The disease might take a year or more to show up after first exposure. Remember the New Guinea natives who got a prion disease by eating humans?”

“I’m trying to forget it.”

“A Dr. Carlton Gajdusek figured it all out after spending years living among the affected tribes there. He taught them to stop their cannibalism. Even so, the last woman didn’t show the disease until over forty years after her last human meal.”

Valenti whistled. “If I understand you, people who take Eden may not show any signs for a long time, years even.”