Transhuman (25 page)

Standing her ground in front of the oversized FBI agent, Shannon said stubbornly, “You go ahead and do what you have to do. I won't willingly allow you to search this facility.”

“We know he's here,” Novack said, in his rasping, almost snarling voice. “If you're hiding him, that makes you an accessory to kidnapping. We could arrest you right here and now.”

“Arrest me?”

“That's right. Put the cuffs on you and take you downtown to be arraigned.”

Shannon blinked several times. “You're trying to frighten me,” she said, her voice fluttering slightly. “You're bullying me.”

“Ma'am,” said Hightower, playing the good cop, “we just want to find that little girl and return her to her parents.”

“You can't do that. She's under treatment.”

Hightower glanced down at Novack, then said, “You mean she's here.”

“I didn't say that.”

“She's here,” Novack snapped. “And that means Abramson's here, too.”

Shannon looked from Novack to Hightower, her mind churning.

Before she could think of what to say, Hightower explained, almost gently, “Look, ma'am, we're not going to take him away from here.”

“You're not?” Novack snapped.

“No. If the little girl is under treatment here, we won't move her. But we've got to see Abramson for ourselves and make sure that he'll stay here until we can get this situation straightened out.”

Shannon wavered. “You're not going to arrest him?”

“My orders are to keep him here. Somebody from Washington wants to talk to him.”

Trying to sort it all out in her head, Shannon asked, “Can you wait here for a few minutes?”

Hightower nodded. Novack looked as if he wanted to object, but he remained silent.

Shannon turned and hurried back toward her office. Hightower sat down on the curved couch.

Plopping down beside him, Novack demanded, “What the hell's this business about keeping him here?”

“Orders,” said Hightower. “From the top.”

“Washington?”

“Yeah. Washington.”

Novack's brows knit. Then he turned from Hightower to look at the door Shannon Bartram had gone through.

“Ten to one, she's going back to tell Abramson we're here,” he grumbled. “He'll scram out the back door while we're sitting here like a couple of chumps.”

Hightower almost smiled. “If you feel that way, go out to the car and watch for anybody trying to leave. There's only one road up here.”

Novack gave him a sour look, but he didn't move.

*   *   *

L
UKE WAS LYING
on his stomach, his pants and briefs removed, while a male surgeon and his two female nurses bent over his bare buttocks. To get a tissue sample from his prostate, they were going to insert a plastic catheter into his anus.

Luke made no secret of his distaste for the procedure, but the surgeon—a youngish man with a pale blond pencil-thin mustache, an air of self-confidence, and a seemingly endless supply of urinary tract jokes—assured him the job would be practically painless.

“Not like the old days, with those hard catheters,” he said cheerfully, as he slipped on his mask. “Patients would crap blood for a week afterward.”

Luke grit his teeth. At least the nurses seemed quite professional. And serious.

Shannon burst into the little room, looking distraught.

“Luke, the FBI is here!”

The surgeon straightened up, his eyes glaring at her over his mask. “Mrs. Bartram, you're not scrubbed or gowned.”

Luke wanted to throw a towel or something over his bared butt.

“I'll stay here, by the door,” Shannon said, paying no attention to the view. She closed the door and leaned against it. “Luke, they know you're here.”

“They're guessing,” he said.

“They know!” Shannon insisted. “They threatened to arrest me!”

The surgeon threw the catheter to the floor. “I can't work like this! We'll have to reschedule.” To the nurses, he commanded, “Clean him up.” And he stamped out of the room, past Shannon, and into the hallway beyond the door.

“What should I do?” Shannon asked, her voice edgy.

She looked distraught, Luke saw, not at all the woman who last night had confidently promised to protect him.

“They want to search the place,” she went on. “They said they'd bring a squad of police who'll turn everything upside down!”

“They'll need a court order. That'll take a little time.”

“They said they won't take you away. You can stay here. They just want to talk to you.”

“They didn't come all the way out here just to talk to me,” Luke said.

“But they'll arrest me! They threatened to handcuff me and drag me away!”

Luke recognized defeat when he saw it. “Okay,” he said, pulling himself up to a sitting position while keeping both hands cupped over his groin. “Let me get my pants back on and I'll go out and see them.”

“I'll go tell them that.” And Shannon bolted out of the room. One of the nurses handed Luke his underpants and trousers.

*   *   *

A
S SHE WALKED
back toward the lobby, Shannon tried to compose herself. I should call my lawyer, she thought. I can't let the FBI bully me.

But when she reached the lobby and the two men rose to their feet, she said to them, “Professor Abramson will see you in my office. In a few minutes.”

Hightower nodded. “Thank you.”

“Please wait here. I'll send someone to bring you to my office once Professor Abramson is ready.”

Another nod. “Okay,” said Hightower.

They sat down again as Shannon left the lobby.

“We shook her up,” Novack said, almost smirking about it.

“Yeah.” Hightower pulled his cell phone from his jacket pocket.

“Who're you calling?” Novack asked, fishing for his own phone.

“The kid's mother. She'll be happy to hear we found her daughter.”

“What about the father? He's in Portland someplace.”

Hightower shrugged. He recalled how distraught Mrs. Villanueva had looked, back in her home in Arlington. Tight as a bowstring, worrying herself half to death about her daughter.

He saw Novack peck a single key on his phone. “Who are you calling?”

With a sardonic smile, he said, “The man who pays the bills.”

Hightower wasn't surprised. Quenton Fisk would want to know that they'd found Abramson, just as badly as his own chief and the big mucky-muck from the White House did.

 

Shannon Bartram's Office

L
UKE SAT DOWN
gingerly; even though they hadn't gone through with the procedure he felt vulnerable.

They were sitting around the circular conference table in a corner of Shannon's office: Luke, Shannon, and the two FBI agents. Hightower's partner, sitting next to him, was wiry, high-strung. Hightower had introduced him as Edward Novack. They made an odd couple. Hightower looked as imposing and impassive as a monumental statue. Novack was narrow-eyed, suspicious, somehow crafty-looking.

Shannon appeared outwardly calm, but she seemed paler than Luke had ever seen her before, and her sea green eyes darted from Hightower to Novack to Luke and back again.

“I did not kidnap my granddaughter,” Luke said, by way of starting the discussion. “I legally checked her out of the hospital.”

“And took her across the country,” Novack countered, “without telling the kid's parents.”

Hightower looked down at the smaller man. “The charge is kidnapping,” he said to Luke. “You can argue about it with a judge. Our job is to find you.”

Shannon spoke up. “You said Professor Abramson could remain here.”

“For the time being.”

“My granddaughter's undergoing treatment. She shouldn't be moved.”

“The treatment has killed off the child's brain tumors,” Shannon said, forcing a smile.

Hightower nodded. “That's good. I'll have to see the little girl.”

“Certainly.”

“And there's a Dr. Minteer involved, too, isn't there?”

Luke said, “I dragged her along with us. She's Angela's physician. She's been looking after Angie since before we left Massachusetts. You can't charge her with anything except taking care of her patient.”

Hightower studied Luke. The professor looks a lot younger than he did a few weeks ago, he realized. Maybe he's dyed his hair, but his face looks younger, tighter, as if he's had a really good plastic surgery job.

Carefully, he said, “It seems this case has attracted the interest of the White House. One of their people is on his way here to talk with you, Professor.”

“The White House?” Luke asked.

Novack looked surprised, too. “Not the Justice Department?”

“The White House,” Hightower repeated.

For a moment they were all silent. Then Luke asked, “So what do we do now?”

“You go on treating your granddaughter,” said Hightower. “I'm going to ask the Bureau office in Salem to send a few men here to make sure you don't try to leave.”

“I won't,” Luke said.

With a nod and an utterly serious expression on his face, Hightower murmured, “Trust, but verify.”

Shannon seemed to have recovered her spirit. “I can't have policemen barging in here.”

Hightower said, “They'll stay outside. I just need to make sure that the professor doesn't sneak away from here.”

Luke snorted but said nothing.

“Now I'd like to see the child,” Hightower said.

*   *   *

A
NGIE WAS OUTSIDE,
walking in the wan sunlight with Tamara. Luke led Hightower and Novack to them. The sky was more than half covered with gray clouds, and the slight breeze felt nippy, but the little girl seemed happy enough, walking alongside Dr. Minteer.

Hightower was taken aback when he got his first good look at Angela. The kid was supposed to be eight years old, but beneath her woolen cap her face looked
old,
wrinkled skin stretched over bones, eye sockets big, prominent. Then he saw that there was a cast covering her left wrist.

“What happened to her arm?” he asked as they approached Angela.

“Hairline fracture of the wrist,” Luke explained. “She fell down chasing a rabbit.”

Novack looked skeptical, Hightower sympathetic.

Luke dropped into a squat beside his granddaughter and introduced the two men. Angela squinted up at Hightower.

“How tall are you?” she asked.

Hightower grinned at her. “Just tall enough so that my feet reach the ground.”

Angela laughed. Tamara, standing beside her, looked him up and down, then pronounced, “Six-four, I'd say.”

“And a half,” Hightower added.

“You're big,” said Angela.

“How do you feel?” Novack asked her.

“Pretty good. My grandpa says I'm getting better every day.”

“That's good,” said Hightower.

“The brain tumors are gone,” said Tamara.

“That's good,” Hightower repeated.

They chatted for a few minutes more, then Tamara said, “We'd better be going back now.”

Angela nodded glumly, and they all started back toward the building.

After they saw Angela and Tamara back to her room and started for the reception lobby, Luke explained, “Angie's suffering from progeria, premature aging.”

“That's what it is,” Novack said. “I was wondering.”

“It's a side effect of the treatment I used to kill her cancer. She's recovering from it, coming back to normal.”

Hightower wondered how true that was, but he said nothing. He left Abramson in the reception lobby and headed back to the parking lot and the rental Chevy, with Novack yapping at his heels.

“What's this White House guy? You didn't tell me about that.”

“My boss back in Boston told me the White House wants to talk with Abramson. That's as much as I know about it.”

“The White House?” Novack wondered out loud. “What the fuck do they want?”

“We'll find out when he gets here.”

Hightower drove partway down the winding road that led back to the highway, then pulled over onto the shoulder and killed the engine.

“If Abramson tries to skip out, he'll have to come past us.”

“So we sit here freezing our butts till your office sends in reinforcements?”

Hightower gestured to the sky. “Sun's trying to come out. It'll warm up soon.”

Novack grumbled and reached for his cell phone.

*   *   *

Q
UENTON FISK BARKED
into his phone, “The White House? What's the White House's interest in Abramson?”

Novack's voice rasped, “Don't know. But I guess you've got better contacts there than I do.”

“That's for damned certain.” He cut off the phone call and told his secretary to get the head of his Washington office on the line.

*   *   *

D
EL VILLANUEVA WAS
not in a happy mood. He had tried three different hospitals this morning, all with zero results. None of the administrators he'd talked with would acknowledge knowing a Professor Abramson. None had an Angela Villanueva on their admissions lists.

This is stupid, Del told himself as he headed for his rental car. They could be hiding Angie from me. She could be in any one of these hospitals and I'd have no way of knowing.

He thought about going to the police for help, but figured that would be a waste of time.

Where the hell is Hightower? He knows where Angie is.

But he didn't have Hightower's phone number, and the FBI agent had threatened to have him arrested if he didn't go home.

Home. His cell phone had buzzed half a dozen times this morning, but he'd ignored the incoming calls while he was talking with the hospital people. Probably Norrie, he thought, wanting to know what I've accomplished. Which is zilch.