Side Effects (32 page)

"Hello?"

"John? Redding here."

The voice brought a painful emptiness to Becker's chest. For several seconds, he could not speak.

"John?"

Becker cleared his throat. "Yes, yes, Cyrus. I'm here."

"Good. Fine. Well, I hope I'm not disturbing anything important for you."

"Not at all. I was just ... doing a little reading before bed." Did his voice sound as strained, as strangled, as it felt? "What can I do for you?" Please, he thought, let it be some problem related to their myasthenia. Let it be anything but ... "Well, John, I wanted to speak with you a bit about that business at the Omnicenter." Becker's heart sank.

"You know," Redding continued, "the situation with these women having severe scarring of their ovaries and then bleeding to death."

"Yes, what about it?"

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"Have you learned anything new about the situation since we spoke last?"

"No. Not really." Becker sensed that he was being toyed with.

"Well, John, you know that the whole matter has piqued my curiosity, as well as my concern for the safety of our testing programs. Too many coincidences. Too much smoke for there not to be a fire someplace."

"Perhaps," Becker said, hanging onto the thread of hope that the man, a master at such maneuvers, was shooting in the dark. For a time, there was silence from Bedding's end. Becker shifted nervously in his chair.

"Cyrus?" he as ked finally.

"I'm here."

"Was there ... anything else?"

"John, I won't bandy words with you. We've been through too much together, accomplished too many remarkable things for me to try and humiliate you by letting you trip over one after another of your own lies."

"I ... I don't understand." "Of course you understand, John." He paused. "I know who you are. That is the gist of what I am calling to say. I know about Wilhelm Becker, and even more importantly, I know about Estronate Two-fifty."

Becker glanced over at his manuscript, stacked neatly atop the printer of his word processor, and forced himself to calm down. There was little he could think of that Redding could do to hurt him at this stage of the game.

Still, Cyrus Redding was Cyrus Redding, and no amount of caution was too much. Stay calm but don't underestimate. "Your resourcefulness is quite impressive," he said.

"John, tell me truly, it was Estronate Two-fifty that caused the problems at the Omnicenter, wasn't it?"

"It was."

"The hemorrhaging is an undesirable side effect?"

Becker was about to explain that the problem had been overcome and that his hormone was, to all intents, perfected. He stopped himself at the last moment. "Yes," he said. "A most unfortunate bug that I have not been able to get out of the system." "You should have told me, John," Redding said. "You should have trusted me."

"What do you want?"

"John, come now. It is bad enough you didn't respect me enough to take me into your confidence. It is bad enough your uncondoned experiments have put my entire company in jeopardy. Do not try to demean my intelligence. I want to extend our partnership to include that remarkable hormone of yours. After all, it was tested at a facility that I fund."

"Work is not complete. There are problems. Serious problems."

"Then we shall overcome them. You know the potential of this Estronate of yours as well as I do. I am prepared to make you an on-the-spot offer of, say, half a million dollars now and a similar amount when your work is completed to the satisfaction of my biochemists. And of course, there would be a percentage of all sales."

Sales. Becker realized that his worst possible scenario was being enacted. Redding understood not only the chemical nature of Estronate, but also its limitless value to certain governments. How? How in hell's name had the man learned so much so quickly? "I ... I was planning eventually on submitting my work for publication," he offered.

Redding laughed. "That would be bad business, John.

Very bad business. The value of our product would surely plummet if its existence and unique properties became general knowledge. Suppose you oversee the scientific end and let me deal with the proprietary."

"If I refuse," Becker said, "will you kill me?"

Again Redding laughed. "Perhaps. Perhaps I will.

However, there are those, I am sure, who would pay dearly for information on the physician whom the Ravens briick prisoners called the Serpent."

For a time there was silence. "How did you learn of all this?" Becker asked finally.
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"Why don't we save explanations, Dr. Becker, for a time after our new business arrangement has been consummated.

"

"I need time to think."

"Take it. Take as much as you need up to, say, twenty-four hours."

"The intrinsic problems of the hormone may be insurmountable."

"A chance I will take. You owe me this. For the troubles you have caused at our testing facility, you owe me. In fact, there is something else you owe me as well."

"Oh?"

"I wish to know the individual at the Omnicenter who has been helping you with your work." Becker started to protest that there was no such person, but decided against testing the man's patience. In less than twelve hours a messenger would deliver the Estronate paper and slides to The New England Journal of Medicine, making the hormone, in essence, public domain. He had already decided that exposure of his true identity and the risk of spending what little was left of his life in prison was a small price to pay for immortality. "Forty-eight hours," he said. Redding hesitated. "Very well, then," he said finally.

"Forty-eight hours it will be. You have the number. I shall expect to hear from you within two days. The Estronate work and the name of your associate. Good-bye." He hung up.

"Good-bye," Becker said to the dial tone. As he drew the receiver from his ear, he heard a faint but definite click. The sound sent fear stabbing beneath his breastbone.

Someone, almost certainly William, was on the downstairs extension. How long? How long had he been there?

In the cluttered semidarkness of his study, Willi Becker strained his compromised hearing. For a time, there was only silence. Perhaps, he thought, there hadn't been a click at all. Then he heard the unmistakable tread of footsteps on the stairs.

"William?" Again there was silence. "William?"

"Yes, Father, it is." Zimmermann appeared suddenly in the doorway and stood, arms folded, looking placidly across at him.

"You ... ah ... you surprised me. How long have you been in the house?"

"Long enough." Zimmermann strode to the bookcase and poured himself a drink. He was, as usual, immaculately dressed. Light from the gooseneck reading lamp sparked off the heavy diamond ring on the small finger of his left hand and highlighted the sheen on his black Italian cut loafers.

"You were listening in on my conversation, weren't you?"

"Oh, perhaps." Zimmermann snapped a wooden swizzle stick in two and used one edge to clean beneath his nails.

"Listening was a rude thing to do."

"Me, rude? Why, Father ..."

"Well, if you heard, you heard. It really makes no difference."

"Oh?"

"Just how long were you listening in?"

Zimmermann didn't answer. Instead, he walked to the printer, picked up the Estronate manuscript, and turned it from one side to the other, appraisingly. "A half million dollars and then some. It would seem there is some truth about good things coming in small packages."

"Give me that." Becker was too weak, too depleted by the drugs, even to rise. Zimmermann ignored him. "Wilhelm W. Becker, MD, Phd," he read. "So that's who my father is."

"Please, William."

"How good it is to learn that the man John Ferguson, who so ignored and abused my mother all those years, was not my father. The Serpent of Ravensbriick. That's my real father."

"I never abused her. I did what I had to do."

"Father, please. She knew that you could have come home much more often and didn't. She knew about
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your women, your countless women. She knew that neither of us would ever mean anything to you compared to your precious research."

Becker stared at his son with wide, bloodshot eyes.

"You hate me, don't you?" There was incredulity in his voice.

"Not really. The truth is, I don't feel much for you one way or the other."

"But I was behind you all the way. My money sent you through school. Your position at the Omnicenter, how do you think that came about? Do you think Harold French just happened to drown accidentally at the moment you were experienced enough to take over for him? It was me!" Becker's hoarse, muddy voice had become barely audible. "If you care so little about me, William, then why have you helped me in my work all these years? Why?"

Zimmermann gazed blandly at his father. "Because of your connections, of course. Your friend Redding triples what the hospital pays me. You suggested my name, and he arranged for me to get my professorship. I know he did."

"He got you the position on my say-so, and he can have it taken from you the same way."

"Can he, now." Zimmermann held up the Estronate manuscript. "You lied to him. You told him there were still flaws in the work. Why? Are you thinking that once he finds out you have sent this off for publication, he will just walk away and leave us alone? Do you think he won't find out who I am? What I have been helping you do behind his back? Do you?" He was screaming. "Well, I tell you right here and now, Father, this is mine. I have paid for it over the years with countless humiliations. Cyrus Redding will have his Estronate, and I shall have my proper legacy." "No!" Even as he shouted the word, Willi Becker felt the tearing pain in his left chest. His heart, weakened by disease, and sorely compromised by amphetamines, pounded mercilessly and irregularly. "My oxygen," he rasped. "In the bedroom. Oxygen and nitroglycerine."

The study was beginning a nauseating spin.

For the first time, William Zimmermann smiled. "I'm afraid I can't hear you, Father," he said, benevolently.

"Could you please speak up a bit?"

"Will ... iam ... please ..." Becker's final words were muffled by the gurgle of fluid bubbling up from his lungs, and vomitus welling from his stomach. He clawed impotently in the direction of his son and then toppled over onto the rug, his face awash in the products of his own death. Stepping carefully around his father's corpse, Zimmermann slipped the Estronate paper into a large envelope; then he removed the disc from the word processor and dropped it in as well. Next he copied a number from the leather-bound address book buried under some papers on one corner of the desk. Finally, he stacked the three worn looseleaf notebooks containing the Estronate data and tucked them under his arm. He would phone Cyrus Redding from the extension downstairs. The pharmaceutical magnate evinced little surprise at Zimmermann's call or at the rapid turn of events in Newton.

Instead, he listened patiently to the details of Willi Becker's life as the man's son knew them.

"Dr. Zimmermann," he said finally, "let us stop here to be certain I fully understand. Your father, when he was supervising construction of the Omnicenter, secre tly had a laboratory built for himself in the subbasement?"

"Correct," Zimmermann said. "On the blueprints it is drawn as some sort of dead storage area, I think."

"And the only way to get into the laboratory is through an electronic security system?"

"The lock is hidden and coded electronically. The door is concealed behind a set of shelves."

"Does anyone besides you have the combination?"

"No. At least not as far as I know."

"Remarkable. Dr. Zimmermann, your father was a most brilliant man."

"My father is dead," Zimmermann said coolly.

"Yes," Redding said. "Yes, he is. Tell me, this bleeding problem, it has been eliminated?"

"Father modified his synthesis over a year ago. It was taking from six to eighteen months after treatment for the bleeding problem to develop. The three patients you know about were all treated a year ago last
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July. There have, to our knowledge, been no new cases since. Keep in mind, too, that there weren't that many to begin with. And most of those were mild."

"Yes, I understand. It is remarkable to me that you were able to insert your testing program into Carl Horner's computer system without his ever knowing." "As you said, Mr. Redding, my father was a brilliant man."

"Yes. Well, then, I suppose we two should explore the possibility of a new partnership."

"The terms you laid out for my father are quite acceptable to me. I have the manuscript and the notebooks.

Since the work is already completed, I would be willing to turn them over to you, no further questions asked, for the amount you promised him."

"That is a lot of money, Doctor."

"The amazing thing is that until I overheard your conversation with my father, I had not fully appreciated the valuable potential of the hormone." Zimmermann could barely keep from laughing out loud at his good fortune.

"Are you a biochemist, Doctor?"

"No. Not really."

"In that case, I should like to reserve my final offer until my own biochemist has had the chance to review the material, to see the laboratory, and to take himself through the process of synthesizing the hormone."

"When?"

"Why not tomorrow? Dr. Paquette, whom you know, will meet you at your office at, say, seven o'clock tomorrow night. My man Nunes will accompany him and will have the authority and the money to consummate our

agreement if Dr. Paquette is totally satisfied with what he sees."