Perilous Panacea (21 page)

She hurried across the room to the phone and dialed Sarah Eberhard and asked her to take care of Beth for a couple of hours. On her way to the closet, she instructed Beth to go next door by way of the back door. She felt a cramp start; the pain nucleated deep in the abdomen and halted her in her tracks. When it eased, she pulled on a white blouse. Back at the window, she saw them getting into their car.

By the time she got her car out of the driveway, the big black car with out-of-state license plates was at the end of Wilden Lane, turning left onto Outer Drive.

“Where to, bastards,” she asked, her loud voice suddenly making her aware of her cursing, remnants of summers working with Dad in the fields, his infrequent outbursts inducing her to quiet laughter and infrequent imitations, unlike Curt, embarrassed by his father’s obscene language. A hell of a time to wonder about all that, she thought. They escaped from Iowa, but for what? This?

The big black car, headlights now on in the dusk, followed West Outer to Newridge, then to Nebraska and onto the Turnpike. She had no plans beyond finding out where they went: to a hotel or the airport. Maybe they just flew in for their mission, their sport. She would follow them to hell if she could deal with them.

When they turned right on Vanderbilt Drive, she figured they made a wrong turn, wanting to turn at the next right onto Illinois Avenue to take them to a hotel or the Knoxville Airport.

Up ahead, they turned left into a parking lot for one of the many Garden Apartment buildings along Vanderbilt. She and Curt lived in an apartment farther down Vanderbilt when they first got to Oak Ridge. The appearance of the apartments hadn’t improved in the past five years—a series of long, sand-colored brick boxes on both sides of the street.

She followed and parked in front of a fire hydrant just inside the road leading to the parking area for two of the buildings set in an L-shape. From there she watched the two men go up the outside stairs to a second floor apartment of the building that paralleled the far side of the parking area.

Why were they in Oak Ridge? Were they really watching her? For the first few weeks, she had searched for them and never saw any indication that anyone followed her. She had driven both directions on Outer just to see, but nothing. So why did they have an apartment in Oak Ridge?

A pain jolted her abdomen, and she gripped the steering wheel. It began like a hard menstrual cramp and built from there until she felt she had to scream. Then it broke.

She sighed and tried to relax back onto the seat and let the numbing pain drain slowly away. What now? Wait? Wait for what? What could she do? She needed a gun. She started the car. “I’ll be back, bastards! You can count on it.”

- - - - -

Lori rubbed her burning cheek and wondered where she could buy a gun. She remembered the sign for guns on the front of a pawn shop and sports equipment store on the Turnpike. Before she could get out of the car at the shop, the most powerful cramp yet seized her midsection and doubled her up against the steering wheel. She held on and waited for it to run its course. Sweat beaded her forehead as the pain built to a peak and drained away, slowly, the pain as excruciating as when she had Beth. Got to lie down, check for spotting. With the pain came an awareness of wetness between her legs, forgotten during the last half hour. She glanced down at her shorts, soaked through. “Bastards!”

In the mirror she saw the mess of her face and hair. She brushed her hand through her hair and debated whether to forget about the gun and go home to Beth. Her head ached.

Just inside the dimly lit store, another cramp hit, momentarily inducing dizziness, the lights flickering as she gasped for air. Confused, slightly nauseated, a cool wetness tickling her thigh, she stood next to piles of half-off orange University of Tennessee T-shirts on a display counter. Where are the guns?

When Lori saw the young woman behind the counter eying her, she glanced down at the wetness and remembered that she had forgotten to put on underpants. What would she do if she ran into someone she knew?

She glanced back at the clerk and decided she didn’t know her. Her mind wouldn’t stop: Haven’t you ever seen anybody that’s just been raped, lady? If you lived in the world I do, you’d know it happens all the time.

Her thoughts were interrupted by another pain starting to build. Or was it a remnant from the last one that never quite faded away? Get out of here and go home, she told herself.

Across the room to the left, she saw a display case filled with bows and arrows. Hunting equipment. Guns.

With her eyes staring straight ahead, her mind trying to ignore the pain and the nausea, she shuffled forward. She wove her way through racks of hunting jackets, baseball caps, and equipment bags, everything exuding a sickening odor of newness, of plastic, rubber, and fabric. Behind it all, she found a display case filled with all kinds of pistols.

“May I help you, ma’am,” the young woman asked as she stepped from behind the counter to follow Lori to the front of the case, her eyes wide as he looked Lori over.

Lori swallowed, trying to beat back the revolution in her stomach. What must she think of her? Had she seen her before? “I need a gun, a pis…” The cramp threatened to pound her to her knees, and she grabbed the glass display case to steady herself. She needed to vomit. She saw a trickle of blood inching down the inside of her thigh.

The clerk saw it, too. “You okay, ma’am?”

Lori sucked a deep breath. “May I…may I use your restroom?”

Inside the cramped quarters, she dropped to her knees and hung over the commode. After much gagging, she threw up, a cloudy, viscous liquid that clung to her throat and ran down her chin when she tried to spit it out. She gagged again, but nothing emerged.

She stood, pulled down her blue shorts, and found dark-red liquid covering the crotch of the shorts and streaming down the inside of her thigh. A powerful cramp, then another smashed into her midsection, doubling her up. Somewhere down inside, a dam broke. She collapsed onto the toilet and watched as blood gushed into the bowl, clots splashing like pebbles into a pond. Another prolonged cramp, and a couple of large chunks splashed into the bright-red pool.

Exhausted, eyes blurred with tears generated by the pounding pain, she leaned back, closed her eyes, and listened to the stream of liquid subside to an occasional drip.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

“Ring, bloody phone, ring,” Applenu mumbled to himself. He rubbed a hand across his scraggly beard and wondered what he was doing in broad daylight next to another phone booth in another car park of another of the numerous combination petrol stations and grocery stores in the city. Car park, petrol, bloody, he thought; got to change that. Think and talk American. He changed his speech patterns once, he could do it again. No more playing Michael Caine. He had not shaved for two days, uncertain what to do about his beard, since there was now an artist’s sketch of an unshaven Applenu, although he didn’t think it resembled him any more than the bearded one.

After his visit with Lormes, Simmons gave him the message that Sherbani would call at seven. How did he get his messages to Simmons? Applenu had not spoken to Sherbani recently, as Hearn was now working through the problems that Sherbani had once handled.

As he waited, he wondered if Sherbani had found out about his family’s relocation. At least part of his day was looking up. BahAmin’s e-mail said their family relocation project went as planned. When would Sherbani find out about that? Was that the reason for this call?

Applenu glanced at the sports page of the newspaper he’d been reading, full of stories of the local college football team and the Yanks’ bloody baseball scores. He avoided the front page, where the sketch of his bearded and shaved face now appeared regularly. Similar sketches of Drafton were there next to his. Up to now, all they had were the sketches, and the stories indicated they were digging up more on them. One thing they would never dig up was Drafton. At least they better not. Lormes was supposed to be jolly good at making sure of something like that.

When the phone rang, Applenu looked around before he got out and answered it. “You’ve got to call the apartment or my cell phone from now on,” Applenu said after the usual greetings. “Somebody’s going to recognize me. With all this news media stuff, maybe we should stop work and cut away.”

“I say again, do not worry, my friend. We will finish what we started and walk away, and they will never find us. Mr. Lormes called to say he was taking care of your personnel problem. Mr. Lormes said it would be solved by tomorrow morning. He also said you were worried about the fate of our employees when the project is completed. It is not your job to worry about such things.”

Applenu thought of Reedan and Surling in their quarters back at the factory celebrating their success. What was Beecher doing? How was he going to fix the problem? Would he be making a call on them this evening? “I was worried that…”

“I repeat, that is not your job,” Sherbani said, obvious anger in his voice. He cleared his throat. “The reason I called concerns the photos and videos you sent our colleague. He said this is the third time you sent it, and although it is close to what we need for the next phase, it is still not right. He wonders if you are dragging your feet and whether we should have Mr. Lormes talk to you. I assured him you were probably busy with other things and did not consider the pictures that important. They are important, and we need them quickly, because arrangements are being made for the presentation.”

“I thought I sent what he wanted.” The colleague he referred to was Hearn, a name they no longer spoke since it was revealed in the news media. Austin/Hearn had a new name, but he had not told Applenu what it was. He told Applenu to just call him Al.

After clarifying what was needed, Sherbani said, “At this moment, we are making arrangements for the first international shipments of the product you manufactured. We are applying for the export license,” When Applenu did not speak, he said, “That is a joke, my serious friend.”

“What is the video for?”

“It will be a commercial to confuse our competitor. When your enemies are searching two-thousand hills, you will be safe in one-thousand valleys.”

- - - - -

Though round, the oak table separated them like a fence, Applenu and Beecher on the side nearest the door, Surling and Reedan on the opposite side. Beecher tossed a brown envelope onto the table and set a laptop computer with a large screen in the center.

Curt held his gaze as steady as Applenu’s. Inwardly, he smiled. Once he and Surling had made their play to Applenu, he felt his confident self re-emerge from the shadows of his mind. Though bombs would be built, he and Surling would live. And just maybe, they could help the FBI stop them.

Curt flashed his businessman’s smile, ready to begin some more selling. “Bob and I figured a way we can all get what we want. You can have your men take us to an airport, say Saint Louis or Chicago, a city in the middle of the country and…”

Beecher roared into a loud, mocking laugh. He turned to Applenu, who sat to his left and stared across the table. “You hear that, Doc, they figure we can all get what we want.”

Applenu continued to stare across the table at them, his mind seeming to be elsewhere.

Next to Curt, Surling’s leg began a nervous 200 jiggles per minute.

Smiling directly at Curt, Beecher snapped on the laptop and grabbed the brown envelope, from which he pulled out a packet of photos and tossed two of them into the center of the table: pictures of Lori and Beth; a third picture followed, a picture of them together. God, he thought, I just want to get back to them.

Beecher typed at the keys of the laptop, and then he turned the screen toward Curt and Surling. “I want you to take a look at this video we made on our visit to your home.”

- - - - -

Lori heard Beth’s voice a long way off.

“Get up, Mommy, you’ll be late. You’ve got to take your test today.”

Lori’s body jerked twice; she shrugged her arms, as if trying to get loose from something that pinned her down. She sat up, dazed, out of breath, trying to get her bearings. Then she remembered.

“Mommy, your face is red. One side’s bigger than the other.”

She probed the swollen left side of her face and eye where he hit her. Along with her face and head, every fiber in her body ached.

“When’s Daddy coming home, Mommy? I want to see Daddy.”

Lori reached for Beth and pulled her up on the bed. She kissed her and hugged her to her body and wondered if the three of them would ever be together again.

“Today’s your test, Mommy.”

Nine fifteen on the clock. “What test?” A night in bed, she thought, but still as exhausted as if she hadn’t slept.

“Your test at U-T.”

“Oh, that test. Not today.” More important things to do, she thought, although just then she didn’t know what. Who needs an MBA anyhow?

Her first item of the day remained the same as every other day for the past two months: check herself for blood. When it all began, she checked in the hope her period would start. Once she accepted the pregnancy, she hoped no blood would show. Today, she didn’t know what to hope for. She found the pad only moderately soaked and the blood mostly dark brown and dry. She would decide later whether to call the doctor.

Rest, she needed rest. Anytime she managed to fall asleep, images of yesterday’s waking nightmare cascaded through her mind.

Relax, clear your mind, she told herself. The method got her to sleep after a night of studying, but not last night. Chaos flooded back, her mind reliving every touch, every word: the creeps crawling over her body, squirming their way in and then pounding relentlessly. Beth calling from downstairs. Beecher strutting in front of her, standing there like a rock and ordering her to kneel in front of him. Three-thirty came and went without sleep. Somewhere between then and now, she dropped off, only to thrash around trying to run from the terror.

How would Curt react? Surely, they wouldn’t show him the last pictures and video they took. Regardless, he would see the shorts she wore. Would he think she was asking for it? He knew better. Didn’t he?

By noon, she felt like moving again, and after dropping Beth at the sitter, she headed for the Garden Apartments. By constantly checking the mirror and following the common TV-police-show procedure of making several turns that took her away from the direct route, she convinced herself no one was following. In the mirror, her dark glasses worn to hide the swollen eye and swollen cheek reminded her that she had to do something. What?

As she drove into the Garden Apartments parking lot, she glanced down at the large black-leather shoulder bag that held her revenge.

- - - - -

When she emerged from the bathroom at the pawn shop last night, she asked the clerk for a moderate-size pistol easily concealed.

“What a lot of women are buying and what I personally own, is a thirty-eight caliber,” the clerk said. “Mine is a Rossi Model 88 with a stainless steel handle that won’t rust. If you shoot somebody with a thirty-eight, they’ll stay down. Not like your twenty-two.”

Her face burned and her stomach stirred with a faint nausea. “I’ll take it.”

“Well, we don’t have a Rossi on hand right now, but it’s like this Taurus thirty-eight here in the display.”

“Is that a forty-five?” Lori said pointing at a black pistol in the display case. She remembered shooting targets on the farm with a forty-five and the hole it put into a beer can.

The clerk nodded. “It’s a Taurus 1911B, but it costs $719.95. Maybe you ought to wait for the Rossi, ma’am. It only costs about three-hundred, and…”

“I’ll take the forty-five now. And I’ll need bullets.”

- - - - -

This morning she had to figure out how to carry it. She tried a backpack but then settled on the large shoulder bag that she bought several years ago and rarely used. Next, she spent ten minutes in front of the bathroom mirror practicing how she would grab it from the shoulder bag, aim, and fire. It was heavy—three pounds with a loaded magazine. She decided to wear the handbag on her left shoulder, so she could draw with her right hand. She wanted to take it out in the country and practice, but there wasn’t time. Her stance and aim felt familiar. Maybe you never forgot, like riding a bike.

Parking as far as possible from where Beecher and Maxwell had parked last night, she searched the half-empty lot for the big black car. Not there. She debated whether to wait for them, decided against it, and picked up Beth at the sitter.

They heard the phone from the garage. She didn’t hurry to answer it, because there was nobody she wanted to talk to. Nobody she could talk to. It kept ringing until she got into the kitchen.

“Where’ve you been, Lori?” Beecher asked. “We’ve been trying to reach you for the last hour. You didn’t go to the police, did you?”

His voice ignited a shiver that rattled her body. “No, I didn’t.”

“That’s good Lori. Just don’t get any ideas, or I’ll come out there and live with you every minute of the day…and night.” He laughed.

She didn’t answer, just toyed with the zipper on her leather shoulder bag. What if she invited them out and then used the gun to force them to tell her where Curt was? Impossible.

“Are you still there, Lori?”

She remembered the taste in her mouth and felt ill. “I’m here.”

“What do you say, Lori, should I move in with you? Just you and me?” He began to laugh. “We can have some lovely times. Just like we had yesterday.” His laugh accelerated into a high-pitched cackle.

She hung up.