"Put a guard outside the ICU, then. Whatever. But security right now is the least of her problems. Do you understand me? The issue is whether she will live through the night."
No, Harry thought, you have it wrong. It"s whether she"ll live through the next six hours. But he didn"t dare explain himself. If he let out how badly things stood, the whole hospital could wind up in a panic.
Just then, the transport team came rolling up with a light ambulance-type gurney.
"You Lewton?" said a tall, slim orderly in an oversized, coffee-stained scrub top. "Sorry, but we were up here an hour ago, and she weren"t nowhere we could find." He pointed to the empty bed. "See? She still ain"t here."
The orderly slouched and rocked on his heels, avoiding eye contact. Harry felt an urge to ream him out. I"ll bet you looked real hard for her. Five-to-one you"ve been on a cigarette break ever since. But he had bigger problems than the orderlies. "Dr. Weiss," he said, turning back to the doctor with a more conciliatory tone, "is there somewhere else we can put her? Somewhere outside the towers? Like the Pine Building, or Children"s Hospital."
"Are you out of your mind? There"s nothing but a maternity unit in Pine. And Children"s ... that"s just absurd. She needs to be in the ICU, here in Tower C. That"s the only chance she has."
"f.u.c.k!"
"Not my specialty. See urology," snapped Weiss. "Anything else, Mr. Lewton?"
Harry took a long, deep breath. "Can I go in to her?"
Weiss pointedly nodded toward the stretcher-bearers. "What about them?"
"You two can split," said Harry, with a wave of his hand. "The transfer"s off for now."
Weiss remained stubbornly silent until the orderlies had left the unit. "Yes, you can see her," he said. "She"s heavily sedated, and she can"t speak because of the ventilation tube. But she"ll know you"re in the room, and it"ll probably do her some good."
Harry pushed his way through the door of the Intensive Care Unit. The lights were so low inside that it took his eyes a minute to adjust enough to make out his mother in the far corner bed. The room was filled with mechanical noises-hums of respirators, beeping of monitors and IV pumps-but strangely devoid of human speech. Doctors and nurses went about their work in silence. Patients, too, lay fighting for their lives without uttering a word. To Harry it felt like a sacrilege to open his mouth.
"Momma, it"s me," he said in a near whisper. His mother"s constant tremor disappeared for a moment as Harry took her hand and she squeezed back at him. "I just spoke with Dr. Weiss. The pneumonia"s gotten a tad worse, so they need to keep you here a spell. There"s nothin" to it. Don"t be scared, Momma. Luanne"s coming. She"ll be here tonight."
Viola released Harry"s hand. As soon as she did, her tremor started up again, making her look like she was playing with an invisible ball bearing between her thumb and fingers. Harry heard a sucking sound as she moved her lips and tongue.
"Don"t try to talk, Momma. They put a tube in you to help you breathe. Just relax, okay? Don"t you worry about Luanne and me. We"re not on the outs. Just get your rest."
Harry stroked Viola"s forehead, rearranging the silver curls where the doctors had mussed her hair. His touch calmed her immediately. "Listen to me, Momma. Thing"s have gotten kind of dicey in the hospital right now. I tried to keep you out of it, but I just couldn"t. I"m real sorry about that. It"s hard to know the right thing to do. Dr. Weiss ... well, he says one thing, my heart says another, but in this case I think I"m gonna have to listen to him."
Harry looked at his watch. Almost a quarter to twelve. The Feds would be expecting him back.
He picked up his mother"s hand. "I have to go. It"s possible, Momma, that we won"t get a chance to speak again. If it comes to that-" He fell silent for a moment, struck by the enormity of that. "If it comes to ... comes to ... I want you to know that I love you."
He felt her hand squeeze back again at his, this time very hard. Then her fingers resumed their tremor once more, and slipped out of his grip. She closed her eyes. All was quiet except for the soft whoosh as the ventilator cycled in and out.
"Bye, Momma. Go to sleep, now."
Kevin had his eye on the clock. With less than fifteen minutes to go before the payment of the ransom, he knew that this was the most critical juncture of Project Vesuvius-the only part of the operation whose success depended on other people.
"Are you sure the instructions were explicit?" he asked Odin. "Could there be any room for misunderstanding?"
"I HAVE SUPPLIED ACCOUNT NUMBERS TO ALL PAYERS, WITH EXACT AMOUNTS AND TIMES OF DEPOSIT. THE PENALTY FOR NONCOMPLIANCE HAS BEEN STATED UNAMBIGUOUSLY. IT WOULD RESULT IN THE IRREVOCABLE AND INSTANTANEOUS DESTRUCTION OF FLETCHER MEMORIAL MEDICAL CENTER."
"And if they f.u.c.k up, what then? What if they"re late?"
"THE OPTIMAL WINDOW BETWEEN PAYMENTS MUST BE BETWEEN FOUR AND SIX MINUTES. DEPENDING UPON THE SPECIFIC CHARACTERISTICS OF EACH PAYER"S SECURITY FIREWALL, ANY OTHER INTERVAL RISKS SIGNIFICANT FALL-OFF OR ABORTION OF ONE OR MORE REVENUE STREAMS."
"Well, we"ll have to just pray that we"re not dealing with any r.e.t.a.r.ds today." Kevin leaned down to desktop level to look at Loki. The monkey was pacing back and forth along the edge of the desk, stopping only to scratch his ear with his hind leg, like a dog. "We don"t want to have to blow up the hospital, Loki. Big pile of monkey s.h.i.t. Ka-Boom!" He wriggled his fingers in the air, to which Loki responded with a screech and a leap to the safe distance of the sink countertop.
"KEVIN, MAY I DIRECT YOUR ATTENTION TO THE FACT THAT THE HOSPITAL PATIENT CENSUS NOW STANDS AT 1,727. THIS IS A 12 PERCENT DECREASE SINCE 08:00 THIS MORNING."
"Can that be accounted for by routine morning discharges?"
"NEGATIVE. AT THIS TIME OF DAY, THE POPULATION HAS AVERAGED 1,855 PLUS OR MINUS FORTY-THREE OVER THE PAST MONTH. THE PROBABILITY THAT THIS IS A RANDOM OCCURRENCE IS LESS THAN 0.05 PERCENT."
"Are they evacuating?"
"NOT ON A FULL SCALE. HOWEVER, SINCE 10:15 THERE HAVE BEEN NO NEW ADMISSIONS FROM THE EMERGENCY ROOM."
"Harry Lewton! It"s gotta be his doing. He"s diverting the ambulances. He"s a smart little f.u.c.ker, I give him that."
"THIS IS A VIOLATION OF THE TERMS OF THE INSTRUCTIONS TO THE FBI. SHALL I DETONATE THE PRIMARY BOMB IN RESPONSE?"
"No, for G.o.d"s sake, Odin! No! This is just ... just mischief. I expected them to try something like this. Let"s not overreact. Just send them a warning and tell them to cut it out. If I know Harry Lewton, he"ll back off."
Kevin did know Harry Lewton. Although the two had never met, Kevin had studied Harry"s personnel file and eavesdropped on quite a few conversations in his office. He had learned not to underestimate him. Lewton only looked like a dumb s.h.i.t-kicker. He had grown up in Southwest Houston, a gang-infested neighborhood where smarts were something you kept in reserve, like a switchblade in your boot.
Three months ago, Harry had been running security for an oil terminal down South that had been a showcase for a prototype of the Cerberus system. When Fletcher Memorial decided to invest big-time in their own security upgrade, he was brought in on the recommendation of the Cerberus CEO. This was welcome news to Kevin at the time. Harry and Cerberus were linked by an umbilical cord, which meant that Harry could be trusted to depend on its fancy automated protocols instead of his own resources. By the time he realized that Odin had co-opted Cerberus, the game would be over.
As for the new arrivals-the FBI and the cops-Kevin didn"t worry about them at all. Odin had identified each one by name or facial match upon arrival, and dutifully provided Kevin with background files hacked from the personnel databases at the FBI and Chicago Police Department. They were a conventional lot. Avery had commendations for bravery, but none for brains. Scopes was good at investigating craters and burned-out vans, but he had little experience with live bombs. Lee was too smart for his own britches and, like all self-important people, could be easily manipulated.
Ali was Kevin"s Achilles" heel. She was smart and he had taught her to think outside the box. She knew a h.e.l.l of a lot about Odin. And once she set her mind on something, she would swim through fire and ice to see it through. Kevin"s insurance was the fact that this was SIPNI day. Ali would be so focused on the Winslow kid that she would shut out everything else. Not even a bomb threat would sway her from her patient.
Which made it troubling that the FBI had pulled her in so quickly. Kevin knew that Homeland Security had a file on her. Somehow it must have gotten flagged. Kevin had listened in on her interrogation through a microphone embedded in the monitor of Harry Lewton"s computer. He was relieved, of course, that his name failed to come up. But from the audio alone he couldn"t really get a fix on what was happening inside Ali"s head. Had the Feds scared her enough to knock her off the safe and reliable SIPNI rails? Only seeing her face and body language would tell him that. And, ironically, Harry"s office, the receiving end of over a hundred cameras throughout the hospital, had not a single security camera inside itself.
Kevin turned to the big wall monitor. "Odin, have you come up with any more video of Ali"s interrogation?"
"NO. THE ONLY ACTIVE VIDEO SOURCE IS FROM THE MINI-CAMERA ON HARRY LEWTON"S COMPUTER MONITOR. THIS HAS A VIEW ONLY OF THE SECURITY DIRECTOR"S CHAIR AND OF THE WALL BEHIND IT. I HAVE TRIED RE-PROCESSING A REFLECTION OF ALI"S IMAGE ON ONE OF THE MONITORS ALONG THE WALL, HOWEVER EVEN WITH 144 ITERATIONS OF EDGE ENHANCEMENT IT IS TOO PIXELATED FOR INTERPRETATION."
"I wish to G.o.d I could see her face."
"I WILL CONTINUE WORKING ON THE PROBLEM. IT MAY BE POSSIBLE TO RECONSTRUCT THE IMAGE USING A HIDDEN MARKOV MODEL WITH A NON-GAUSSIAN DATA DISTRIBUTION."
"Okay, try it. In the meantime, use Cerberus to track her in the hospital. I want to know where she is at all times."
In the end, Kevin thought, it probably won"t matter. By the time they put the pieces together, I"ll be long gone. They can sift through the rubble ten times over and still never know if I am dead or alive.
Back in the Neuro ICU, Ali set about performing Jamie"s spinal tap, drawing out a sample of the fluid that bathed the spinal cord and brain. Ali had done so many of these taps that she did not have to think about how to do it. With Jamie lying in a fetal position on his side, and with his knees drawn up, Ali painted the skin of the small of his back with reddish-brown Betadine antiseptic, then positioned a sterile blue drape over his spine. A small cutout window exposed the Betadine-stained skin.
After switching to a new pair of sterile gloves, Ali felt the small b.u.mps that projected from Jamie"s spine, and counted up from the bottom, until the index and middle finger of her left hand straddled the s.p.a.ce between the fourth and fifth lumbar vertebrae. In her right hand, Ali held a four-inch-long needle, which she inserted into this s.p.a.ce, exactly in the midline. At this level, she knew, the spinal cord had ended in a plume of small nerves called the cauda equina, or mare"s tail, where the needle would be unlikely to cause any damage. She inserted the needle slowly through the tough straplike ligaments that held the spine together. It felt like pushing the needle through leather. When she had gone in about two inches, she felt a sudden give, or "pop," and knew that she had broken through into the intrathecal s.p.a.ce, the fluid-filled area immediately surrounding the spinal cord.
Ali pulled out the fine stylet that plugged the shaft of the needle, and watched a drop of clear fluid emerge. She was relieved to see that the fluid wasn"t b.l.o.o.d.y. She quickly attached a manometer, a graduated clear plastic tube, to the stopc.o.c.k on the needle, and watched the fluid slowly rise into the tube. When it stopped, she read an opening pressure of fourteen millimeters of mercury, close to what the ICP monitor had shown. She then removed the manometer, and let the needle drip into four vials, ten drops to a vial. These would go to the lab for a.n.a.lysis.
While Ali was capping the last of the tubes, Jamie suddenly jerked his legs.
"Hold still, Jamie," said Ali. "Let me take the needle out." She reached for the needle, but as she touched his skin, she felt his body vibrating. It was not a natural movement. His feet were rubbing against each other, with a rapid, polishing kind of motion.
"Stephen!" she called out to the intensivist. "He"s having a seizure." While Brower and one of the nurses rushed to the bedside, Ali pulled out the needle and slapped a small sterile Band-Aid over its entry point into the skin. She then turned Jamie onto his back, just as Brower began hooking up an infusion pump to the IV. Jamie"s legs immediately straightened, but his hands remained suspended over his chest, shaking with a fine tremor. His eyes were darting about crazily under his eyelids.
Brower turned to the nurse, who had wheeled up a tall red crash cart. "Ginnie, we need a thousand milligrams of Dilantin in a ten-cc syringe." Ginnie filled a syringe from a vial in the cart, discarded the needle, and popped the syringe into a receptacle in the infusion pump. "Set the rate to half a cc per minute," said Brower.
Ali and Brower watched intently as the Dilantin started coursing into Jamie"s bloodstream.
"Does he have a history of seizures?" asked Brower.
"No. Never," said Ali.
"Was it the tap that did this?"
"I"ve never seen it happen before."
"Then I think you have a problem."
Of course I have a problem. Ali barely restrained herself from lashing out. Fortunately, the convulsions began to subside. "Keep the Dilantin and Ativan going," she said coolly. "And let"s start Solumedrol, 250 milligrams in an IV infusion over one hour-just for insurance. We haven"t ruled out brain swelling."
With Jamie stabilized, Ali took up a chair behind the nurses" station and called the hospital operator to have Dr. Helvelius paged. She heard his name read out on the overhead pager three times. As she waited for his call-back, she tried to clarify how she would present the situation to him. He used to tell her that any good doctor could summarize the most complex case in thirty seconds or less. But how long it took to distill all of the physical findings and lab reports into those thirty seconds!
She was not thinking at her best now. Her interrogation at the hands of the FBI had left her shaken. The bomb was giving her confused, impulsive thoughts. She shuddered every time she felt the rumble of a cart or a gurney rolling by. She wracked her brains for a way to get Jamie transferred out of Fletcher Memorial, even though no other hospital in the world had the expertise to deal with a SIPNI implant. She worried, too, that an explosion might harm the fetus she carried-the fetus she had planned to terminate the very next day!
Could she really do that? She had put off the procedure again and again, and still wasn"t sure if she could get up the nerve. She had already begun to feel that warm, centered feeling that she remembered from her first pregnancy, and she had to fight very, very hard to keep from letting her mind run to the kind of daydreams she had had then-dreams of holding her baby, listening to him coo, rocking him to sleep in those precious midnight hours when she could be totally alone with him, guessing what would be the first word he would ever speak. These thoughts were a torture for her. Fate had cheated her once of these dreams, and she could not bear to let herself be cheated in that way ever again.
Her first pregnancy had actually begun with great promise. Both she and Kevin were on cloud nine, and it seemed like a healing omen for them both after a difficult time in their marriage. After the first ultrasound, she had named the child Ramsey, after the Arabic Ramzi, meaning "symbol." There was no warning of anything wrong. Tests showed a somewhat low-lying placenta, but its position did not seem dangerous. Ramsey appeared well-developed, and in her eighteenth week Ali was astonished with joy when, standing in the OR in the middle of a craniotomy procedure, she felt his first quickening kick. Then one night, in her thirty-eighth week-almost exactly a year ago-she was at a dinner party at the University chancellor"s house in Winnetka, when she felt an excruciating cramp and looked down to find a pool of blood at her feet. She screamed just before pa.s.sing out. When she awoke, she was in the hospital. There had been an abruption, a premature tearing-away of the placenta. Ramsey was born alive by C-section, but had suffered a stroke from the loss of blood. He survived in the ICU for two weeks. During that time, she and Kevin worked frantically to adapt SIPNI to repair Ramsey"s damaged brain, but all was futile. SIPNI was then still only a crude prototype.
After Ramsey died, Ali found herself unable to cry or to express grief in a normal way. Instead, she withdrew into herself. When she and Kevin drove to Waugoshance Point to scatter Ramsey"s ashes on Lake Michigan, Ali scarcely spoke the whole trip. On returning, she sought solace by re-immersing herself in her work. Kevin, whose heartbreak was there for all to see, resented what he called her coldness, and taunted her with increasing cruelty, trying to goad her into an emotional response. Little did he know that she was already in an emotional agony so severe that she was on the verge of killing herself.
She vowed never to go through a h.e.l.l like that again. Even though it meant betraying her principles -her dedication to life and to the protection of the weak and helpless-she couldn"t bear to face those memories that were already beginning to rise up out of the grave. Her risk of another complication was high, the obstetrician had told her. She felt defective, cursed in her womb. Better to abort this new pregnancy and be done with it, than to live once again through the nightmare of watching her child die.
But then there was Jamie. Although she had never thought about it before, Jamie was a kind of subst.i.tute for Ramsey, giving her a second chance to use SIPNI to beat back tragedy. In the weeks before the operation, Ali had often wondered what would become of Jamie if SIPNI actually worked. He couldn"t stay at the Grossman School, of course, since he would no longer be blind. Would his mother take him back? In unguarded moments, Ali had toyed with the idea of taking him home herself. She would imagine cooking his favorite macaroni and cheese, or struggling to keep up with him on the PlayStation, or watching his first Little League game. She kept thoughts like those a secret, since a lack of objectivity on her part might have endangered Jamie"s chances for getting into the SIPNI project. Now, it seemed selfish and irresponsible to have even thought about such things. Jamie needed a doctor, not a mother. His condition was deteriorating, and if Ali didn"t figure out the reason quickly, he could suffer permanent brain damage, or even die.
Still no answer from Helvelius. Ali had him paged again. One of his residents finally called back and told her he was in surgery, covering an emergency spinal cord trauma case. It would take another hour at least.
She tapped her hand irritably on the counter. "Oh, Richard! Richard! What in G.o.d"s name should I do?"
Raymond Lee was in high spirits when Harry returned to his office, and it annoyed Harry intensely. "How did it go with our morning-show princess?" said Lee with an unprecedented smile.
"She"s a peach," said Harry. "Promised to stay off the air for a little while. But just for insurance, I dropped by Dr. Gosling"s office. The president of the TV network is a personal friend of his, as is the governor of Illinois. We set up a three-way conference call, and got New York to agree to hold the story until at least 6:30 P.M. Eastern. That"s airtime for the nightly news program."
"Five-thirty here," said Lee.
"Any luck with the money transfers?" asked Harry.
Lee patted a stack of papers. "Northwest City Bank gave us a little trouble, until the mayor guaranteed to cover their losses from a city slush fund until the hospital"s insurance carrier kicks in. All the other payers are standing by. Fifteen minutes ago, the destination account numbers came through by e-mail. There are twenty different accounts, two for each payer. It"s going to slow us down on tracing the money, but not for long."
Avery looked at his wrist.w.a.tch. "Eleven fifty-eight. Almost showtime."
Scopes was holding the telephone. "I have the mayor"s chief of staff on line. Everyone"s standing by for the transfer."
While Scopes listened for developments on the phone, the others sat in silence.
"Okay, I"m getting a report," said Scopes, placing his hand over the mouthpiece. "The first wave of transfers is complete."
"Good," said Lee. "Now we wait another five minutes. Stay on the line, Terry." Scopes nodded. Lee turned to Harry. "By the way, there"s something in the last e-mail that you need to see."
Lee showed Harry a hard-copy printout. Below a long column of bank routing numbers and account numbers, there was a short paragraph of text: ALL OUTPATIENT CLINICS MUST REMAIN OPEN FOR NORMAL BUSINESS. NO FURTHER APPOINTMENT CANCELLATIONS WILL BE PERMITTED. AMBULANCE DIVERSIONS MUST CEASE IMMEDIATELY. ANY ATTEMPT TO EVACUATE OR TO LOWER THE PATIENT CENSUS WILL HAVE IMMEDIATE AND SEVERE CONSEQUENCES. THERE WILL BE NO FURTHER WARNINGS.
"What the h.e.l.l is this?"
"You"re busted," said Lee with a half-smile. "You"ve been cutting down the number of hostages, and they don"t like it."
Harry could feel the blood damming up in the veins of his face and neck. "f.u.c.king psychos! Who are they to tell us-" It was more than just the hostages. He had lost his last chance to get his own mother out of harm"s way. Now the only way to protect her was to take the offense. Hunt down the sons of b.i.t.c.hes behind this bomb and make them rue the day they had ever heard of Fletcher Hospital. G.o.d, if only I had left her in that nursing home!
Harry shook the printout, half-crumpled in his hand. "How do they even know what the f.u.c.k we"re doing?"
Avery shrugged. "If they"re listening in on emergency band radio-which is not uncommon for criminals of this sort-they could overhear the ambulance dispatchers."
"And the outpatient appointments?"
"Beats me," said Avery. "They could have made appointments themselves, just to see if they would get called."
"That seems awfully convoluted," said Harry.
"Yes, very," said Lee. "More likely someone here in this hospital is observing our operations."
"You guys have been watching the surveillance videos while I"ve been out," said Harry. "Have you noticed anyone suspicious? Someone who looks like he could be casing the place?"
Lee shook his head. "No. Not so far. But actually, I was thinking a little closer to home than that."
"Closer to home? What do you mean?"
"How well do you know your own people, Mr. Lewton?"
"Security? Well, they, uh ... they all went through a strict screening process when they were hired."
"But you didn"t screen them, did you? You"re the newcomer, right? You"ve been here for, what, a few months?"
"Three months."