Descent from Xanadu (12 page)

Judd thought for a moment. “Let’s find out more about it first. Tell them we’ll arrange something with him as soon as I can schedule Brazil. But make sure that he understands we plan only a discussion. We’re not yet interested in the project.”

“Yes, sir,” Merlin said. “The government’s approved our proposed merger of the South and Western Savings and Loan Association into Crane Financial Services. That brings us one hundred and fifteen bank branches and a billion in assets that we can transfer to net worth. It means eight hundred million can be turned into cash within thirty days, if we want, sir.”

“Good,” Judd said. “Any answer yet from our proposal to the Mexican government? The peso is worth shit and unless they guarantee to build a laboratory and factory for thirty million dollars for Crane Pharmaceuticals, we will not begin production in Mexico.”

“We haven’t heard anything from them yet.”

“Goose ’em a little. Tell ’em how much Brazil is interested in a discussion with us.”

“Will do it,” Merlin said. He changed the subject. “How are you feeling?”

“Like shit,” Judd said. “But don’t worry about it. I’ll be out of here in a few days.”

“I’m glad,” Merlin said.

“Thank you,” Judd said, putting down the phone. He pressed for a nurse. A new girl came into the room, one he hadn’t seen before, red-haired like a flame over soft blue eyes. “What’s your name?”

“Bridget O’Malley,” she said with a hint of a brogue.

“Irish?” he said. “And right off the boat?”

“The airplane, Mr. Crane,” she said. “I was recruited especially for this job.”

“You must have fulfilled very special requirements for my people to bring you over here for this job,” he said. “What are they?”

A faint blush swept across her face. “I’d rather not discuss them,” she answered, her brogue thickening.

“I’m thirsty,” he broke off without warning. “Bring me a Coca-Cola.”

“Sorry, Mr. Crane, orange juice or water. That’s all you are allowed.”

“Orange juice, then,” he said, looking at the faint blush still visible on her face. She began to turn away. “Bridget,” he called.

She came back to the bed. “Yes, Mr. Crane?”

He looked up at her eyes. “Did they tell you that I’ve got a temporary problem of priapism?”

Her eyes fell and she looked at the sheet across his legs. “Yes, Mr. Crane.”

“Was one of the special requirements you filled the taking care of priapistic patients?”

She nodded silently.

“Where did you get your experience?”

“I was four years at the Veterans Hospital in Devon.”

“What treatments were prescribed there, Bridget?”

She looked down at his face. “Certain drugs, acupressure, electromyograph (EMG) recording of biofeedback muscle relaxation—”

“Very interesting,” he said, interrupting her. “Thank you, Bridget, for the information. I’d like my orange juice now.”

He waited until she returned with the glass of orange juice. His erection was rock-hard and throbbing painfully. He sipped at the juice. “I’ve heard there is an operation that can correct this.”

“Yes, Mr. Crane,” she said impersonally, “but you won’t want that, because once it’s done it cannot be reversed. You’d never have an erection again. That operation’s performed only in case of a perpetual and painful priapistic erection.”

He looked up at her face. “Right now, it is very damned painful, I assure you. What am I supposed to do, Bridget? Masturbate again? My penis is beginning to be sore and burning. By the time I orgasm I’m in agony.” He kept his eyes fixed steadily on her.

She picked up the chart at the foot of the bed and made a notation on it. “Let me check with the doctor,” she murmured.

“Why wait for the doctor?” he said. “I thought you were brought in especially for your experience, know-how and method.”

“I’m just a nurse, Mr. Crane,” she finessed. “I am not able to do anything without the doctor’s specific orders, sir.”

“Fuck the doctors!” he said angrily. “I own this goddamned hospital and everything in it, including the doctors. Now, if you can help me, you’d better damn well do it.”

“The doctor will discharge me,” she said.

“We won’t tell them,” he said.

She pointed to the television monitor on the wall behind the bed. “You’re monitored on the screen and videotaped around the clock.”

He threw a towel at the monitor. It caught across the monitor and covered the camera lens. “Now, no one will see,” he snapped harshly. He pushed the sheet down across his knees. His phallus sprang free like a wild beast flushed from a cage, red and throbbing. “Now, goddamnit!”

She hesitated for a moment, then moved to the side of the bed. She placed one of her knees on the bed next to him, then clasped his phallus tightly in her left hand. With the fingers of her other hand, she began digging into the nerves located in his scrotum, just above his testes. She looked down at his eyes. “It might hurt a little,” she said gently.

His cobalt-blue eyes were impassive. He nodded assent silently.

Slowly she began exerting pressure on the nerves with her fingers, at the same time opening and closing them against his phallus, forcing the blood to return to the base of the phallus toward the scrotum. After a moment, she seemed to pick up a rhythm. Her hand continued grasping downward, fingers digging deeper and deeper.

She looked down at him for a signal that the pain was more than he could bear, but he held his lips tightly clamped against the agony. “I’m sorry,” she said. “But it will only be a moment more.”

He nodded understanding, a faint perspiration like dew formed on his forehead. Suddenly a knifelike thrust seemed to tear through his groin. An involuntary groan escaped from his lips.

She stepped up quickly. “It’s over now, Mr. Crane.”

He caught his breath for a moment, then looked down at himself. His penis was shrunken to its normal, relaxed size. He turned to her. “You really did it,” he said in faint disbelief.

“Yes, Mr. Crane,” she said quietly.

“I’m grateful,” he said, and drew a deep, contented breath. “However, I don’t think it will replace sucking and fucking.”

For the first time she smiled. “Neither do I, Mr. Crane,” she added.

***

He sat up in bed and looked at Dr. Zabiski. “What went wrong?” he asked.

“Nothing much,” she said dryly. “Only that millions of years of evolution don’t agree with our computers.” She glanced down at the printout in her hands. “We do have one small success though. Your temperature is now fixed at 98.4. That’s two tenths of a point less than normal.”

“What would that give me?”

“Ten or fifteen survival years on normal. And according to the PerScan and SonarScan examinations, the implantations program has been successfully tolerated by your body. If we continue with that program that should add approximately another twenty-five more survival years. Based on the average life span of a man in your social and economic class, which is eighty years, you’ve already extended the possible survival life span to one hundred and twenty-five years.”

“That’s not immortality,” he said in a voice as dry as sand.

She was silent.

“Do you think we should try again with the nuclear laser procedure?” he went on.

“No,” she said flatly. “We were lucky this time. The next time we may destroy the hypothalamus and you’d become cold forever.”

His eyes were blue as night. “Genetic engineering then, that’s where we look.”

“It will take much time before we know enough about the genetic code to make any use of it, I’m afraid,” she said with a sigh.

“I have time. After all, haven’t you already told me I have one hundred and twenty-five years?” He looked at her and smiled. “Okay. Now when can I get out of here?”

“Tomorrow morning,” she said. “Physically, you are in perfect health. Even better than when we met. If you want to measure this in terms of years, you have gone from forty-two years of age to forty instead of from forty-two to forty-six.”

“That’s better than we had expected, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” she said. “But you’ll have to take better care of yourself. Food, drink, rest, drugs. You should try another life style.”

“You didn’t mention sex?”

“The priapism should be temporary,” she said. “After that, don’t overdo it.”

“I don’t know,” he said with a smile. “Maybe I should keep it. I find the idea exciting of having it ready whenever I want it there.”

She didn’t smile. “If you do, you’ll shoot your life away through your penis.”

“Then how do you propose to control it?” he asked.

“I won’t,” she said. “You will master it yourself. EMG biofeedback and yoga. How’s that sound to you?”

“Like witchcraft, Doctor,” he said.

“Better than saltpeter.” She stood up. “You know, Judd, I’m beginning to like you and I want you to take care of yourself. I dream your dream, too, and I don’t want anything to hurt the man who has custody of it for both of us.”

17

The scrambler telephone on Merlin’s desk rang twice. He picked up the receiver. “Merlin here.”

“John D., Security,” the man’s voice began.

“Yes, John?” Merlin said.

“Our agent followed her on the flight to Mexico City,” John D. went on. “She transferred to Aeromexico to a flight to Havana, where he lost her because he wasn’t visa’d for Cuba.”

“We have agents in Havana?”

“Yes, sir. Six men.”

“I want three of them waiting for her arrival in Havana. I want twenty-four-hour surveillance. Bugs all around her, inside and outside. Got that?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I want reports every three hours,” Merlin said.

“Will do,” John D. said. “We have a report that Li Chuan is arriving in Havana via Air Canada. Chances are they’ll rendezvous there.”

“Put a cover on him, too,” Merlin said.

“Okay,” John D. Said. “Have you already received the lude report from Hong Kong?”

“Yes,” Merlin said. “Three million ludes a year. That’s a lot of Quaaludes.”

“Fifteen million dollars,” John D. said. “Transferred from the Crane Pharmaceuticals account to banks in the Bahamas and Switzerland. We’re working right now to discover who owns those accounts.”

“I have a hunch that one account is Li Chuan’s own, the other is probably held for the Red Chinese government,” Merlin said. “Our interferon account with them is under a million dollars.”

“We’ll find out everything,” John D. said. “Anything else, sir?”

“Not right now,” Merlin said. “Thanks.” He looked down at the computer printout on his desk. Everything registered completely normal. He took a deep breath. That alone seemed wrong to him. Usually he caught numerous small computer errors. This was the first time to his knowledge that the computer was perfect.

He picked up the telephone and called Computer Central in California. A moment later he was on the line to the director of the Computer Services. “I want a recheck of every transaction over the last three years. Also, check the computer for taps and see whether anyone might have tampered with it and been able to dip into our storage banks.”

“We run a routine check every day,” the director said.

“I know that,” Merlin snapped. “This time I want you to develop another form of checkout other than the usual one. Put that one on the scrambler when you figure it out.”

“Mother is not going to like that,” the director said. “You know how annoyed she gets when her routine is changed.”

Merlin fell into the director’s jargon, speaking of the computer as he would a person. “Tell the lady to stop bitching or we’ll switch some of her favorite microchips on her.” He put down the telephone and lit a cigarette.

“Damn mothers!” he swore silently to himself. He picked up the telephone to call Judd, then put it down without using it. He was going to be in the office in one more day in any case, he thought. And by that time they might have more information for him to work on before laying the problem out for the boss. He put out his cigarette. Another day couldn’t hurt. Whatever damage has been done has already been done, Merlin concluded.

***

Havana was hot and humid despite the waning afternoon sun. By the time she arrived at the hotel from the airport her clothing was sticking to her skin. Her room was preregistered and the room clerk called a bellboy to bring her to it without delay. “The air conditioning is not working yet,” the boy said as he put down her luggage. He crossed to the sliding windows to the terrace. “It will be cooler as it gets dark,” he added, opening them to the day’s furnace outside.

She gave him a five-dollar bill for which he thanked her too profusely as he left the room. She waited until the door closed before she went out on the terrace.

The wide boulevard between the hotel and the beach was empty of traffic. The hot air was already growing somewhat cooler from a breeze that was beginning to blow in from the ocean. Even as she stood there, the broad promenade beside the beach came alive with people taking a late afternoon stroll.

She went back into the room and opened her valise. Quickly she hung her linen suit and two dresses in the closet and tossed her lingerie into a drawer. She snapped the valise shut and dropped her dressing gown on the bed. She took her small cosmetic case into the bathroom and placed it beside the sink. She turned on the water into the tub and squeezed a tube of perfumed gel into the rushing flow. She waited a moment until the perfume reached her, then went into the bedroom and began to undress. Neatly she hung her dress next to the others and dropped her lingerie into another drawer of the dresser. Naked, she turned toward the dressing gown and began to pick it up when she heard a key clicking in the door. The door opened before she could put on the gown.

She saw Nicolai, tall, heavy-set, black hair now shot with gray. He looked at her silently as he closed the door behind him.

The dressing gown still in her hand, she made no effort to cover herself. “You’re early,” she said in Russian.

“Four years, Sofia, was too long,” he said. “I saw you when you came through the lobby and decided I could wait no longer.”

“I didn’t want to meet you sticky and smelling of sweat,” she said. “I was running a tub with perfume.”