Nano

CHAPTER 17

For the rest of the day, Pia found it almost impossible to concentrate on her work. Mariel’s evasiveness under her questioning had certainly made Pia more interested in what she’d witnessed. And Mariel’s reaction to Pia’s mention of the Chinese government definitely seemed significant. China frequently competed with the United States in commercial interests, including the medical arena. From her time growing artificial human organs with Dr. Rothman in New York, she knew that the best work being done outside the United States was in China. And in China there wasn’t always the same level of respect for the binding nature of patents in general, and medical patents in particular, as there usually was in the United States.

For an hour, Pia played devil’s advocate, taking the opposite point of view and trying to bolster the case that Mariel wasn’t dissembling or hiding anything significant and that the runner’s ailment could easily be explained away. The man certainly didn’t want to be treated by Paul Caldwell, that had been clear, and he seemed to want to go with the Chinese men and the guards who came to pick him up, even if they did come armed to a civilian hospital ER. And by the time he was discharged, the man appeared against all the odds to be in decent health. He was weak, to be sure, but otherwise reasonably okay. Pia remembered he had the presence of mind to acknowledge her help.

And what about those guards? Pia thought. If they were employed by Nano, they represented a much higher level of paramilitary security than she’d seen before. Their uniforms were different from the regular security personnel Pia encountered downstairs in her building and at the vehicular entrance to Nano’s grounds. And who were the two Chinese men in business suits? Were they part of the Chinese contingent currently visiting Nano? The more Pia pondered the situation, the more questions she had.

But what puzzled Pia the most were the runner and his medical issues. As Pia thought back over the episode, she was convinced that he had been in full cardiopulmonary arrest when she had came upon him on the road and had probably been in that state for a considerable length of time. But by the time he left the ER two hours later, mostly under his own power, he didn’t seem impaired in any way. He certainly was a medical curiosity, if not a total anomaly. She also recalled seeing the numbers tattooed on his right forearm as well as the puncture marks on his left arm when she went to take his blood. The blood!

Pia reached into her pants pocket and found Paul Caldwell’s card. She dialed his number on her cell phone, but Caldwell didn’t answer. She cursed and declined to leave a message. She wandered into the kitchen but realized there was no food in the house, as if that were ever not the case. Then the phone rang.

“Pia, it’s Paul. Sorry, I put the phone down and couldn’t find it for a second. I do it all the time.”

“Thanks for calling back,” said Pia.

“Sure. Did you find anything out at work? ”

“No, I found nothing. I couldn’t find out anything about a medical facility, or the Chinese man, or anything. What I’m calling about is to ask if you ran any tests on the blood.”

“Yes, I sent a sample out to the lab late in the day. We won’t hear anything till tomorrow at this point. I’ve been thinking about the runner, and I wonder if we were totally off base right from the beginning. Can he have been truly as ill as he appeared when you came upon him? Because the symptoms and signs, as meager as they were, don’t add up to anything I’m familiar with. And he walked out of the ER under his own steam with only a little help, which would seem impossible if he’d been in cardiac arrest for God knows how long.”

“I know, it doesn’t add up,” Pia agreed. “I’ve been thinking about the whole affair since you dropped me off. But I’m about as sure as I can be that he had no pulse and wasn’t breathing when I came upon him.”

“So what are you going to do? Let it drop? It was pretty clear that woman who showed up was in charge of the situation. If she’s your boss, it puts you in a difficult position, I’d imagine. Then again, I guess we should wait and see what the blood tests show, right?”

The symptoms and signs didn’t add up. Caldwell was entirely correct, Pia thought, the clinical history didn’t make sense at all. But she was sure he was wrong in thinking they were totally off base from the start. She was 99.9 percent certain the runner had been clinically dead when she happened upon him. And now, miraculously, he had all but totally recovered and seemed to have suffered no ill effects.

Pia corrected herself. She couldn’t be 100 percent certain the runner had not suffered any ill effects since she could not talk to the guy to find out, or find anyone at Nano who would tell her. Maybe he wasn’t doing so well now. But if he was, then there had to be some medical Lazarus program running within the four walls of Nano that enabled a man to survive a massive, normally lethal medical crisis apparently unharmed.

“Pia, we’ll have to wait and see, right? Pia, are you still there?”

The fact that she was on the phone with Paul Caldwell had slipped from Pia’s mind entirely. She ended the call without saying another word and sat on the arm of her rented couch. It was suddenly obvious to her what she had to do to find out what was going on at Nano. There was one person who undoubtedly knew everything. That was Zachary Berman.

Although she had been avoiding it, she was going to have to get closer to Zach Berman. With security at Nano as tight as it was, as evidenced by iris scanners and armed guards, his house was possibly the weak link. She assumed he had a home office, even if she hadn’t seen one when she’d visited with George. A few minutes in his home office could probably answer all her questions. The question was, how to arrange it? Pia felt her pulse quicken as her mind shifted into high gear. There was a way to do it, but it involved considerable risk.