Harvest (42 page)

She took a step towards him. At once he backed away. "I won't hurt you," she said. '! just want to talk to you."

A frown flickered across his forehead. He shook his head.

"I promise. I won't hurt you."

The boy said something, but his answer was incomprehensible to her. Now it was her turn to frown and shake her head.

They looked at each other in shared bewilderment.

Suddenly they both glanced upwards. The ship's engines had just started up.

Abby tensed, listening to the rattle of chain, the squeal of hydraulics. Moments later, she felt the rocking of the hull as it cut through the water. They had left the dock and were now underway.

Even if I get out of these bonds, out of this room, there's nowhere for me to run.

In despair, she looked back at the boy.

He ',was no longer paying any attention to the sound of the engines. Instead, his gaze had dropped to her waist. Slowly he edged sideways and stared at her bound wrists, tucked close to her back. He looked down at his own arm. Only then did Abby see that his left hand was missing, that his forearm ended in a stump. He had held it close to his body, concealing the deformity from her view. Now he seemed to be studying it.

He looked back at her and spoke again.

"I can't understand what you're saying," she said.

He repeated himself, this time with an edge of petulance in his voice. Why couldn't she understand? What was wrong with her?

She simply shook her head.

They regarded each other in mutual frustration. Then the boy lifted his chin. She realized that he had come to some sort of decision. He circled around to her back and tugged at her wrists, trying to loosen the bonds with his one hand. The cord was too tightly knotted. Now he knelt on the floor behind her. She felt the nip of his teeth, the heat of his breath against her skin. As the lightbulb swayed overhead, he began to gnaw, like a small but determined mouse, at her bonds.

"I'm sorry, but visiting hours are over," said a nurse. "Wait, you can't go in there. Stop!"

Katzka and Vivian walked straight past the nurses' desk and pushed into Room 621. "Where's Abby?" demanded Katzka.

Dr. ColinWettig turned to look at them. "Dr. DiMatteo is missing."

"You told me she'd be watched here," said Katzka. "You assured me nothing could happen to her."

"She was watched. No one came in here without my express orders."

"Then what happened to her?"

"That's a question you'll have to ask Dr. DiMatteo."

It was Wettig's flat voice that angered Katzka. That and the emotionless gaze. Here was a man who revealed nothing, a man in control. Staring at Wettig's unreadable face, Katzka suddenly recognized himself, and the revelation was startling.

"She was under your care, doctor. What've you people done with her?"

"I don't like your implications."

Katzka crossed the room, grabbed the lapels of Wettig's lab coat, and shoved him backwards against the wall. "Goddamn you," he said, "Where did you take her?"

Wettig's blue eyes at last betrayed a flicker of fear. "I told you, I don't know where she is! The nurses called me at six-thirty to tell me she was gone. We've alerted Security. They've already searched the hospital but they can't find her."

"You know where she is, don't you?"

Wettig shook his head.

"Don't you?" Katzka gave him another shove.

"I don't know!" gasped Wetfig.

Vivian stepped forward and tried to pull them apart. "Stop it! You're choking him! Katzka, let him go!"

Abruptly Katzka released Wetfig. The older man swayed backwards against the wall, breathing heavily. "I thought, given her delusional state, she'd be safer in the hospital."Wettig straightened and rubbed his neck where the collar of the lab coat had left a bright red strangulation mark. Katzka stared at the mark, shocked by the evidence of his own violence.

"I didn't realize," said Wettig, 'that she might be telling the truth after all."Wettig pulled a slip of paper from his pocket and handed it to Vivian. "The nurses just gave that to me."

"What is it?" said Katzka.

Vivian frowned. "This is Abby's blood alcohol level. It says here it's zero."

"I had it redrawn this afternoon and sent to an independent lab," Wetfig explained. "She kept insisting she hadn't been intoxicated. I thought, if I could confront her with undeniable evidence, that I could break through her denial..."

"This result is from an outside lab?"

Wetrig nodded. "Completely independent of Bayside."

"You told me her alcohol was point two one."

"That was the one done at 4 a.m. in Bayside's lab."

Vivian said, "The half-life of blood alcohol ranges anywhere from two to fourteen hours. If it was that high at 4 a.m., then this test should show at least a trace left."

"But there's no alcohol in her system," said Katzka.

"Which tells me that either her liver is amazingly fast at metabolizing it," said Wettig, 'or Bayside's lab made a mistake."

"Is that what you're calling it?" said Katzka. "A mistake?" Wettig said nothing. He looked drained. And very old. He sat down on the rumpled bed. "I didn't realize . . . didn't want to consider the possibility..."

"That Abby was telling the truth?" said Vivian.

Wetfig shook his head. "My God," he murmured. "This hospital should be shut down. If what she's been saying is true."

Katzka felt Vivian's gaze. He looked at her.

She said, softly: "Now do you have any doubts?"

For hours the boy had slept in her arms, his breath puffing out warm whispers against her neck. He lay limp, arms and legs askew, the way children do when they are deeply, trustingly, asleep. He had been shivering when she'd first embraced him. She'd massaged his bare legs, and it was like rubbing cold, dry sticks. Eventually his shaking had stopped, and as his breathing slowed, she'd felt that flush of warmth that children give off when they finally fall asleep. She, too, slept for a while.

When she woke up, the wind was blowing harder. She could hear it in the groaning of the ship. Overhead, the bare lightbulb swayed back and forth.

The boy whimpered and stirred. There was something touching about the smell of young boys, she thought, like the scent of warm grass. Something about the sweet androgyny of their bodies. She remembered how her brother Pete had felt, sagging against her shoulder as he slept in the back seat of the family car. For miles and miles, while their father drove, Abby had felt the gentle drumming of Pete's heart. Just as she was feeling this boy's heart now, beating in its cagelike chest.

He gave a soft moan and shuddered awake. Looking up at her, recognition slowly dawned in his eyes.

"Ah-bee," he whispered.

She nodded. "That's right. Abby. You remembered." Smiling, she stroked his face, her finger tracing across the bruise. "And you're � . .Yakov."

He nodded.

They both smiled.

Outside, the wind groaned and Abby felt the floor rock beneath them. Shadows swayed across the boy's face. He was watching her with an almost hungry look.

"Yakov," she said again. She brushed her mouth across one silky blond eyebrow. When she lifted her head, she felt the wetness on her lips. Not the boy's tears, but hers. She turned her face against her shoulder to wipe away the tears. When she looked back at him, she saw he was still watching her with that strange, rapt silence of his.

"I'm right here," she murmured. And, smiling, she brushed her fingers through his hair.

After a while his eyelids drifted shut and his body relaxed once again into the trusting limpness of sleep.

"So much for the search warrant," said Lundquist, and he kicked the door. It flew open and banged against the wall. Cautiously he edged into the room and froze. "What the fuck is all this?" Katzka flipped on the wall switch.

Both men blinked as light flooded their eyes. It shone down with blinding intensity from three overhead lamps. Everywhere Katzka looked, he saw gleaming surfaces. Stainless steel cabinets. Instrument trays and IV poles. Monitors studded with knobs and switches.

In the centre of the room was an operating table.

Katzka approached the table and stared down at the straps hanging from the sides. Two for the wrists, two for the ankles, two longer straps for the waist and chest.

His gaze moved to the anaesthesia cart, set up at the head of the table. He went to it and slid open the top drawer. Inside lay a row of glass syringes and needles capped in plastic.

"What the hell is this doing here?" said Lundquist.

Katzka closed the drawer and opened the next one. Inside he saw small glass vials. He took one out. Potassium chloride. It was half empty. "This equipment's been used," he said.

"This is bizarre. What kind of surgery were they doing up here?" Katzka looked at the table again. At the straps. Suddenly he thought of Abby, her wrists tied down on the bed, tears trickling down her face. The memory was so painful he gave his head a shake to dispel the image. Fear was making it hard for him to think. If he couldn't think, he couldn't help her. He couldn't save her. Abruptly he moved away from the table.

"Slug?" Lundquist was eyeing him in puzzlement. "You OK?"

"Yeah." Katzka turned and walked out the door. "I'm fine." Back outside on the sidewalk, he stood in the gusting wind and looked up at the Amity building. From street level, one saw nothing unusual about it. It was just another rundown building on a rundown street. Dirty brownstone facade, windows with air conditioners jutting out. When he had been inside it the day before, he had seen only what he'd expected to see. What he was supposed to see. The dingy showroom, the battered desks piled high with supply catalogues. A few salesmen listlessly talking on telephones. He had not seen the top floor, had never suspected that a single elevator ride would bring him to that room.

To that table with its straps.

Less than an hour ago, Lundquist had traced the building's ownership to the Sigayev Company- the same New Jersey company to whom the freighter was registered. That Russian mafia connection again. How deep into Bayside did it reach? Or were the Russians merely allied with someone inside the hospital? A trading partner, perhaps, in black market goods?

Lundquist's beeper chirped. He glanced at the readout, and reached into the car for the cellular phone.

Katzka remained in front of the building, his thoughts shifting back to Abby, and where he should look next. Every room of the hospital had already been searched. So had the parking lot and the

HARVEST

surrounding areas. It appeared that Abby had left the hospital on her own. X;here would she go? Whom would she have called? It would have been someone she trusted.

"Slug!"

Katzka turned to see Lundquist waving the telephone. "Who's on the line?"

"The Coast Guard. They've got a chopper waiting for us."

Footsteps clanged on the stairway.

Abby's head snapped up. In her arms Yakov slept on, unaware. Her heart was thundering so hard she thought it would surely wake him, but he didn't stir.

The door swung open. Tarasoft, flanked by two men, stood looking in at her. "It's time to go."

"Where?" she said.

"Only a short walk." Tarasoft glanced atYakov. "Wake him up. He comes too."

Abby hugged Yakov closer. "Not the boy," she said. "Especially the boy."

She shook her head. "Why?"

"He's AB positive. The only AB we happen to have in stock at the moment."

She stared at Tarasoft. Then she looked down atYakov, his face flushed with sleep. Through his thin chest she could feel the soft beating of his heart. Nina Voss, she thought. Nina Voss is AB positive...

One of the men grabbed her arm and hauled her to her feet. She lost her grip on the boy; he tumbled to the floor where he lay blinking in confusion. The other man gaveYakov a sharp prod with his foot and barked a command in Russian.

The boy sleepily stumbled to his feet.

Tarasoffled the way. Down a dim corridor, then through a locked hatch. Up a staircase and through another hatch, to a steel walkway. Straight ahead was a blue door. Tarasoft started towards it, the walkway rattling under his weight.

Suddenly the boy balked. He twisted free and started to run back, the way they'd come. One of the men snagged him by the shirt. Yakov spun around and sank his teeth into the man's arm. Howling in pain, the man slapped Yakov across the face. The impact was so brutal it sent the boy sprawling.

"Stop it!" screamed Abby.

The man jerked Yakov to his feet and gave him another slap.

Now the boy stumbled towards Abby. At once she swept him up into her arms. Yakov clung to her now, sobbing into her shoulder.

The man moved towards her, as though to separate them.

"You stay the fuck away from him!" Abby yelled.

Yakov was shaking, whimpering incomprehensibly. She pressed her lips to his hair and whispered: "Sweetheart, I'm with you. I'm right here with you."

The boy raised his head. Looking into his terrified eyes, she thought: He knows what's going to happen to us.

She was shoved forward, across the walkway, and through the blue door.

They passed into a different world.

The corridor beyond was panelled in bleached wood, the floor was white linoleum. Overhead glowed a haze of softly diffused light. Their footsteps echoed as they walked past a spiral staircase and turned a corner. At the end of the passage was a wide door.

The boy was shaking even harder now. And he was getting heavy. She set him down on his feet and cupped his face in her hand. Just for a second their gazes met, and what could not be communicated in words was now shared in that single look. She tookYakov's hand and gave it a squeeze. Together they walked towards the door. One man was in front of them, one behind them. Tarasoft was in the lead. As he unlocked the door, Abby shifted her weight forward, every muscle tensing for the next move. Already she had released Yakov's hand.

Tarasoft pushed the door and it swung open, revealing a room of stark white.

Abby lunged. Her shoulder slammed into the man in front of her, shoving him against Tarasoft, who stumbled across the threshold to his knees.