The Devil's Banker

Chapter 33

“What time is the flight leaving?” Claire Charisse demanded for the second time. She held the phone to her breast, and motioned with her free hand in an emphatic manner for her assistant to hurry up.

“Two, I think,” he answered, flinching as if she were going to hit him. He was a shy, lumbering Liberian whose first name was Samuel and last name was unpronounceable. She hadn’t meant to scare him, but it was either that or swear, and Samuel was a born-again Christian.

“I don’t want your opinion,” she railed. “I want a simple fact. Look up the schedule and tell me what time the flight is supposed to take off. Global Trans can’t have too many cargo flights leaving Geneva for Angola on a Friday afternoon.”

Lips pursed in desperation, Samuel flitted through the flight company’s brochure. They’d sent it along with the reams of documentation the World Health Organization was required to fill out when shipping medical supplies across borders. “It is here, Madame Charisse. I am sure.”

“Look it up on the Net, damn it!”

Samuel froze as if he’d been slapped, and Claire was sorry that she’d lost her cool. It wasn’t like her, but then again these were hardly ordinary times.

“Two forty-five,” came the proud reply, thirty seconds after he’d sat down and punched in Global Trans’s web address.

“That’s better.” Claire exhumed the phone from the folds of her crimson pashmina wrap and placed it to her ear. She was petite and fine-boned, with skin the color of porcelain and raven black hair that fell in perfectly orchestrated layers to her shoulders. She had a temper and knew how to use it when necessary. She also had charm by the loads and knew how to use that, too. Both were requisite skills for her job.

“Hugo,” she purred into the phone, twirling a lock of hair with her finger. “We’ve got loads of time. If you could manage to have the cartons at the Global Trans desk at Cointrin by one, that would be perfect. Really, I don’t know how to thank you enough. Or Novartipham. You’re both wonderful. You’re saving lives and that’s the point of this, isn’t it?”

Claire hung up. Spreading her arms wide enough to embrace the entire world, she turned to face Samuel and the trio of secretaries huddled in the anteroom. “Mr. Hugo Luytens of Novartipham has generously donated two thousand doses of Coartem to today’s emergency flight. Who says the Swiss don’t care about anybody else but themselves? Three cheers for Helvetia and here’s to eradicating the last vestiges of malaria!”

Samuel applauded enthusiastically. The secretaries less so. Coartem was the newest and most effective antimalarial ever to combat the illness. Known as an ACT, an artemisinin-based combination therapy, the drug had recently been added to the WHO’s essential medicines list. It worked by localizing and killing the malaria parasite rapidly, allowing the patient a prompt and side effect-free recovery. With any luck, the drug would go a long way to saving the lives of the eight hundred thousand children who died of malaria each year in sub-Saharan Africa.

Claire bowed from the waist, doing her Sarah Bernhardt bit. “Isn’t getting any easier, is it, dears?” She coughed loudly and pretended not to see the concerned faces staring back. Opening a desk drawer, she snatched a cigarette and lit it. “Every girl deserves a reward,” she offered.

But Samuel wasn’t buying. “Claire, you are not to smoke,” he said, plucking the cigarette from her mouth with his long, tapered fingers. “Even you have to follow doctor’s orders.”

“Oh, damn you.” Claire Charisse caught herself. “Sorry, Sammy-blast you,” she said with the same mock despair. “I hate it when you’re right.” Instead, she handed her chipped coffee mug to him, the one her boyfriend had given her with the picture of the United States Capitol Building decaled on the side. “Another cup, if you please. They’ve yet to prove that caffeine keeps your white count down.”

Claire patted Samuel on the back and retreated to her office, where she collapsed into her chair. The workload was enough to bow the shoulders of a coolie. Somewhere lost in the riot of memos, files, and Post-its was a plaque bearing her name and title: “Director, Drug Action Program.” It was her job to keep in close contact with aid agencies in developing countries around the world and do what was necessary to see that they were able to maintain sufficient stores of what the WHO defined as essential drugs and medicines. Today that meant responding to a malaria outbreak in Angola and pestering her contacts at the major pharmaceutical companies to come up with the thousands of doses of the drugs needed to combat it.

With Hugo Luytens’s last-minute donation, she’d surpassed her target.

Sliding closer to the desk, she sifted through the storm of papers until she found the one she was looking for. It was hard to get too enthusiastic. There were too many wildfires burning in Africa, Southeast Asia, and more and more in South America, too, to grow complacent. Just getting the WHO to act in a rapid manner was hard enough. To her mind, they spent too much time advising countries about what drugs they needed, how to distribute them, how to oversee the proper dosages, so on and so forth, and too little time procuring and supplying the drugs themselves.

Spinning in her chair, she stared out the window. A calm expanse of lawn rolled down to the shores of Lake Geneva. Water lapped at the sandy banks. A few sailboats were out on the lake, and she wished she could take a long lunch, maybe drive to Ouchy and sip a balon of the local rouge along with a salade niçoise on the terrace of the Beau Rivage. She had a ravenous appetite, but she was not allowed to eat too much. It was paramount that she remain thin.

Samuel’s gleaming bald head rounded the doorway. “Madame Charisse. I have Global Trans on the phone. They say there is a problem with the paperwork for some of the drugs. The Larythomine and Erythronex. They need your signature.”

“At the airport?”

“Yes.”

Claire grimaced. There was always such a hassle with the newer palliative drugs, many of which relied on radioactive isotope therapy to lessen the pain caused by rapidly growing tumors. The drugs wouldn’t cure you, but they would make the last months of your life bearable. Anything, however, involving nuclear medicines raised eyebrows and demanded extra scrutiny.

“Tell them I’ll be right out. And next time, we use DHL!”

Claire Charisse slowed long enough to open her desk drawer, grab a few cigarettes, and stuff them inside her purse. Camel with no filters. It was her bones, not her lungs, that were supposed to be the death of her. With a brief wave, she set out down the hallway. The headquarters of the WHO was as large as the Louvre. It took her ten minutes to negotiate the sterile hallways and cross the parking lot to her battered Ford. She’d wanted an Audi, but Glen insisted she drive American.

It was a straight shot on the highway to the airport. Midday traffic was light. Ten minutes later, she was nosing her car through the entry to the cargo terminal, rolling down her window, and extending her WHO pass to the security guard. Recognizing her, he waved her through. He was not so slack, however, as to neglect calling Global Trans to advise them of her arrival. She made it her business to notice such things.

Parking the Ford in front of the office, she nodded a frosty hello and walked through the door. “Gentlemen, I trust there is a problem of mammoth proportions that requires my personal presence.”

Bill Masters, the British office manager, answered with a no-nonsense glare. “Can’t ship your Larythomine and Erythronex.”

“What do you mean?”

“New regs. Sorry.”

Claire planted herself on the desk. “New regs, sorry?” she repeated. “We’re talking about medicine that will prolong the lives of a good many boys and girls who are suffering from leukemia, myelogenous myeloma, Hodgkin’s disease, and about a dozen other ailments I can’t even pronounce.”

“Terrible, I know, but look, you can read them yourselves.”

Claire accepted the memorandum and eyed it cursorily. “It’s a crock of shit. Medicine is medicine. What? Does someone think the stuff is going to explode?”

Masters shrugged. “Don’t know, ma’am.”

“I don’t want to be melodramatic, but lives are at stake.”

Masters lowered his eyes. “Look, Claire, we just fly the stuff for you. We’re already giving you a preferred rate. All it says is that you have to have a representative of the local government examine the cargo and sign off on it.”

“I’m with the WHO. The world’s a helluva lot bigger than Switzerland. I’d say that’s good enough.”

“ ’Fraid not. We need a Swissie.”

“Where are the papers?”

Masters handed over a clipboard with a sheaf of forms attached.

Claire leafed through the pages, licking her thumb every so often. Finally, she snatched a pen from the desk and signed a name to the forms.

“Hey!” Masters protested, jumping out of his chair and taking the clipboard. He read the name. “You are not Dr. Robert Helfer.”

“You wanted a signature. I gave you one. Helfer’s the local in charge. Who’s going to know the difference?” She stepped close enough to Masters to see that he needed a shave and that he’d had more than orange juice for breakfast. “Screw the regs,” she whispered through a conspiratorial smile.

Masters shook his head, laughing, then turned. “Load it up, boys. There’s a new boss in town, and her name’s Claire.”

Claire Charisse stood on her tiptoes and gave Masters a peck on each cheek. “Doesn’t it feel nice to do something correct, instead of correctly?”