F Paul Wilson - Novel 04 (25 page)

“Hey, Doc. You don’t
look so hot.”

“A virus. Bob. But I’m
getting over it.” He started to point to the door of the Oval Office and
noticed his hand shaking. He dropped it and gestured with his head. “He
in there?”

“Yeah. Said he was expecting
you. How’s he doing?”

“That’s what I’m
here to find out.”

John waved and hurried to the end
of the hall. He stepped up to the door, then stopped. I can’t do this.

But he could. He’d found a
way to get himself through the act: Blame it all on Tom. It was Tom’s
fault. If he hadn’t put forth this idiotic decriminalization program,
Katie would never have been kidnapped. Katie would be safe at home right now
watching her Saturday morning cartoons.

Katie would still have ten toes!

That’s right, Tom. Your
godchild, the little girl who calls you “Uncle Tom,” has been
mutilated. Not because of something she did but because of something you did.

He stared at the presidential seal
on the door and thought. Whatever happens to you is your own fault, Tom. This
is not my doing… it’s yours. You set all this in motion. What goes
around, comes around, and you can’t escape the consequences.

That was how he’d do it. Get
angry. Stoke that rage to the point where he was capable of anything.

Setting his jaw, he knocked on the
door, then stepped through. And stopped.

He’d been in the Oval Office
before, and every time it was the same. Seeing Tom there behind that desk with
the light filtering through the tall windows behind him, the royal blue rug
with its huge presidential seal, the flags of the U.S., the presidency, and the
armed services arrayed around him, never failed to awe John, move him.

Seeing him here, he could truly
believe that Tommy Winston was president of the United States.

Tom glanced up, smiled, then
frowned. “Hey, Johnny boy. You look like shit.” And it’s all
your fault.

John stumbled through the virus
explanation again but he could tell Tom was barely listening.

“Guess who’s crowding
in here at noon,” Tom said, tapping a sheet of paper on his desk. He
seemed excited, wound up, full of barely contained enthusiasm.

“Floyd Jessup and the
Reverend Whitcolm to offer their support.”

He laughed. “No, but almost
as good.” He tapped the paper again. “Almost the entire southern
delegation—at least those from the tobacco states.”

“What are they afraid
of—marijuana hurting cigarette sales?”

“You kidding? They want to
grow it—although they insist on referring to it as’hemp.‘ No,
they see the writing on the wall. With tobacco consumption falling steadily,
they need a new crop, and’hemp’ fills the bill.” Do you see?
Do you see? This is why Katie was stolen from me and mutilated! Because of your
wrongheaded, egomaniacal plan!

“So they want to sell reefers
instead of coffin nails. Great.”

“To tell you the
truth,” Tom said, “I think they’d be just as happy if someone
developed a flowerless hybrid that produced nothing smokable. We’ve been
trying our damnedest to educate them on the commercial uses of cannabis hemp.
Looks like they’ve finally come around to seeing that it’s in their
interest to support a change in the laws. They’re just the first.
It’s going to happen, John. The snowball is starting to roll.” I
hope you’re proud and happy that Katie’s suffering because of you.

Tom kept rattling on as John
inserted the stethoscope’s earpieces, muffling him. He inflated the cuff,
watched the needle sweep up, then begin to bounce down. He listened to the
blood forcing its way back into the artery beneath the diaphragm, and it seemed
so loud, so vital, each whispery thump driving home the consequences of what he
had to do and how it would effect that blood, cutting off its supply of
platelets and red and white corpuscles, thinning it, wasting it, choking it to
a trickle that could no longer supply the tissues it served.

He cut off the thought, cut off all
thought. He couldn’t allow himself to think, to be himself, to feel
anything but anger. For the next ten minutes he had to be an empty shell, an
automaton following a hardwired program:

Take the blood pressure, lie about
it, give him the pills, and then get the hell out.

Tom’s blood pressure now was
140/88. Better than Wednesday. High normal.

“Well, how’m I
doing?” Tom said as John unwrapped the cuff.

“It’s higher.” A
lie. See that? You’ve made me a liar.

“Higher? I’m surprised.
I’m so much less stressed than last time. I thought for sure it would be
better.”

“Let me try the other arm,
just to double check.” John went through the motions, and got 138/88 on
the “opposite side.

He shook his head. “Nope.
Even higher over here.” Another lie.

“Damn,” Tom said.
“I’m watching the salt. What else can I do?”

“I think maybe I should start
you on a medication.”

“Aw, John, I’d rather
not. You know that.” Don’t fight me on this.

“Yeah, but you’re going
to that international conference next week and you know it’s going to be
a pressure cooker. I don’t want your BP going through the roof while
you’re over there.”

He shook his head. “I
don’t know…” Do it! Take your medicine like a man!

“I’ll put you on a
small dose of an ACE inhibitor, something so mild you won’t even know
you’re taking anything.” Tom hesitated, then shrugged.

“All right. If you say so.
I’ll trust your judgment. If I can’t trust you, who the hell can I
trust?” Please don’t say that.

John didn’t trust himself to
look at Tom. He covered by reaching into his jacket pocket.

“I was afraid it might come
to this, so I came prepared.”

Tom laughed. “Like the Boy
Scout you never were.”

“Yeah. Right.”

His fingers were so sweaty and
shaky he had difficulty grasping the pill bottle. Finally he got it out and
fumbled off the lid.

“Hold out your hand.”

“Here?” Tom said.
“Now?” John somehow maneuvered a grin to his face. “I know
you, Tom. I’ll write out a prescription and you’ll get it filled,
and then you’ll put off taking it. ‘I’ll start next
week.’ Am I right?”

“You know me too well.”

“Yes, I do. And I know next
week never comes.” Somehow he managed to shake two capsules into
Tom’s palm. Don’t think. Don’t feel anything but rage.
“So here you go. I figure once I get you started, you’ll keep
going. So I want to watch you take both of these right now.” John stepped
over to a side table where a pitcher of water and glasses sat, and managed to
half fill a tumbler.

He turned and handed it to Tom.

Tom took the glass and stared at
him. “You sure you’re all right? You’re shaking like a
moonshiner with DT’S.”

“The virus. I guess I’m
not over it yet.” Fearing he might vomit, John turned away and stared out
the windows at the south lawn. He couldn’t watch.

In half a minute it would be done.
The gelatin capsules would be dissolving in Tom’s stomach acid, releasing
their contents. The antibiotic within would begin making its way into his
bloodstream, triggering the suicidal antibodies, releasing them to begin their
kamikaze run on Tom’s bone marrow. And soon it would begin to die.

Soon— “No!” John
spun and leaped toward Tom. “Stop! Don’t take those!” But Tom
already had the glass to his lips. John knocked it from his hand and sent it
flying across the room to smash on the floor. He clutched at Tom’s throat.

“Spit those out! For
God’s sake, don’t swallow!” Tom’s eyes bulged in shock.
He staggered back, knocking over the chair, but John stayed with him.

“Spit them out, dammit! Spit
them out!” Tom wrenched free, turned, and spat on the floor. John saw
both capsules on the carpet, then felt himself grabbed roughly from behind.

“Mr. President! Are you all
right?” John recognized the voice: Bob Decker.

Tom leaned against his desk,
rubbing his throat, and staring wide-eyed at John.

“I’m all right. But he
isn’t. In God’s name, John, what’s wrong with you?” The
Oval Office seemed to shrink around him. Decker was here… the Secret
Service was involved now… and Snake said he’d kill Katie…

And suddenly he could pretend no
longer. Three nights with no sleep, slowly dying inside as he tried to shoulder
the entire burden on his own—he slumped in Decker’s grasp.

“Katie… they’ve
got Katie!” Suddenly Tom was in front of him, gripping his shoulders.

“Katie? Who’s got
Katie?”

John shook his head. “I
don’t know. They took her Wednesday morning.”

“Kidnapped?” Tom said.
“Oh, shit! Oh, Christ! Not Katie!” John felt Decker’s grip
loosen. “If this is a kidnapping I’d better—”

“No!” John cried.
“No, please! They’ll kill her.”

“Shut the door. Bob,”
Tom said, “and let’s find out what this is all about.”

“But—”

“This is my godchild
we’re talking about.” There was a sudden sharp edge on Tom’s
voice. “Shut the goddamn door.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Her toe?” Tom slammed
his fist on his desk.

His face had gone pasty white.
“They sent you her toe?” John nodded.

He’d told them the whole
story. A disjointed telling, but he didn’t think he’d missed
anything important.

He glanced up from his seat at
Decker, who stood to the side, hands behind his back, impassive, then back to
Tom.

“Tom, I’m sorry. I
didn’t… I don’t know what I was thinking… but I
didn’t see that I had a choice…” I’ve doomed Katie. The
thought kept hammering at him. Why couldn’t I have let Tom swallow those
pills? What kind of a father am I? Snake will find out. And then he’ll…

“You didn’t have a
choice,” Tom said, “but you still couldn’t go through with
it. Even with poor Katie’s life at stake you couldn’t. Honestly,
John, if positions were reversed, I’d have done the same.” He slammed
his fist on the desk again. “The soulless bastards! I can’t believe
this has happened.” He looked at Decker. “What do we do first. Bob?”

Decker rubbed his jaw, looking
uncomfortable. “Well, the first thing I think we need to deal with is the
crime that was committed a few moments ago.”

“What?”

“An attempt on the life of
the President of the United States. That’s…”

Tom held up a hand. “Stop
right there. As far as I’m concerned, nothing happened.”

“I’m sorry, sir, but
I’m not permitted to ignore an…”

“Ignore what? Did you see
anyone do anything to me, or attempt to do anything to me?”

“I heard his own statement
about giving you those pills.”

“And you now have my
statement that he didn’t. And without corroboration from the alleged
victim, you don’t have a case. So we will drop that subject and move on.
What do we do now?”

Decker sighed. “All right,
first thing is to call in the FBI. They’re the kidnap experts and
we’ll need access to their crime lab. Next—”

“No!” John said, rising
from his chair. “You can’t do that. Once I’m exposed,
I’m of no use to them. And if I’m of no value, neither is Katie.
They’ll kill her!”

“We can keep it all under
wraps,” Decker said. “We’ll—”

“No!” John could hear
his voice rising but he didn’t care. He had to make them see. “They’ll
know! They’ve got someone inside. Maybe right here in the White
House.” He turned to Tom. “If they can find out about your
chloramphenicol reaction, they can sure as hell find out that I didn’t
give you those pills and I’ve told you what’s going on! Please!
There’s got to be another way!”

“He’s right.
Bob,” Tom said. “They must have one hell of an information
pipeline. And by the way, any ideas about this ‘they’ we’re
talking about?”

“Well, we know it’s
drugs,” Decker said. “They told Dr. Vanduyne flat out they
don’t want you showing up at The Hague conference. It’s probably
Colombians, or maybe Mexicans.” He rubbed his jaw. “And I think
you’re right about that high-level leak. They picked up the little girl
the morning after your speech.”

Tom nodded. “Which means they
knew what I was going to say and had the plan in place, ready to go.” He
swiveled in his chair and spoke toward the windows. “Who is the son of a
bitch? I swear, if I ever find out…” He swung back.
“We’ll find him eventually. Question is, what do we do now?”

Decker said, “Let me
think.” John watched the Secret Service man wander around the Oval
Office, staring at the floor, at his shiny brown wingtips, then at the ceiling.
John wished he could come up with his own plan, but his mind was numb, dead, empty.

Finally Decker returned to
Tom’s desk.

“All right. Here’s an
idea. It’s not perfect, but it’s the best I can do on such short
notice. Why don’t we try a two-tier approach? Only three people know for
sure you didn’t take those pills. Let’s keep it that way. We three
will make up that first tier.”

“Who’s on the second
tier?” Tom said.

“A small task
force”—he glanced quickly at John—“a tiny task force
consisting of select members of the Secret Service, the FBI, and the DEA that
will—”

“They’re going to find
out!” John said, feeling close to panic. “As soon as they find out
there’s a task force, Katie’s dead!”

“Not if I limit it strictly
to people I’ve known for a long time, and not if the President himself
puts them on special assignment and forbids them to discuss the details with
anyone, even their superiors.”

“Consider that done,”
Tom said.

John didn’t know what to say.
Did Decker know people who were absolutely trustworthy? Was anyone absolutely
trustworthy? Maybe it could work. Maybe. But if it didn’t…

“But there’s one big
point you haven’t covered,” John told Tom. “They’re
expecting you to get sick. If you don’t…”