Never Say Die

Chapter 14

Dr. Quentin Radcliff took pride in his self-control. No matter what went wrong or how he seethed with anger inwardly, he cultivated an ability to put the best face on the worst of situations, show subordinates that he was always in control. It was another mark of the superiority that set him apart from common men. As the commercials frequently advised, he never let them see him sweat.

Not even when his life’s work had been jeopardized by idiots.

He stared across his spacious desk, regarding his unwelcome visitor with thinly veiled contempt. Althea Bliss was silent, knowing anything she volunteered could easily be turned against her, used to make her seem incompetent, a liability. She shot a furtive glance at Warren Oxley, seated to the left and slightly behind her, but otherwise she sat and waited for the other shoe to drop.

“You’ve disappointed me, Althea,” Radcliff told her, swallowing an urge to grab a paperweight and fling it at her pale, round face.

“I understand.”

“You do? I wonder.”

“What I meant to say—”

Dr. Radcliff interrupted her. “Do you recall what you were doing when I found you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You had about fun out of luck, as I remember, at the women’s prison down in Talladega. Three distinct and separate charges of brutality before that ugly business with the eighteen-year-old girl.”

The woman’s doughy face showed color for the first time Radcliff could remember, anger and embarrassment combining to suffuse her cheeks with crimson.

“Those were lies,” she said defiantly. “No case was ever filed. I’m innocent.”

“On paper, anyway,” said Radcliff, giving her no respite from his glare. “Your resignation kept the state from filing charges, I believe.”

“I’m innocent,” Bliss insisted, but there was no conviction in her voice.

“Aren’t we all?”

In better times, the former prison guard could be a grim, imposing figure. Five foot, seven in her stocking feet, she tipped the scales around 190 pounds, some of it muscle. Any softness in her face was strictly flab. Her eyes resembled flakes of granite, set above a nose that always put Radcliff in mind of dorsal fins. She overcompensated for her thin slash of a mouth by using too much lipstick, but it didn’t help. Her knuckles bore the scars of punches thrown in fits of rage.

“It’s not my fault,” she told him, sounding desperate. “You have to see that.”

“What I see,” he answered, “is that we have lost our primary facility—a quarter-million dollars for the land and renovations when we moved in, seven years ago—and risked exposure that could cost us everything. If I’ve missed anything, Althea, please be good enough to fill me in.”

“I’ve never lost a girl before,” she said, as if that somehow mitigated the disaster.

“No, I’ll grant you that.” Radcliff believed he was a reasonable man. “You had a perfect record up until last night.”

“It’s not my fault!”

“Please, please, Althea. Don’t be tiresome.”

“But Mahoney and Gutierrez—”

“Are no longer with us,” he reminded her. “At least they saved me severance pay, whereas the girl—what was her name again?”

“Joy Patton, sir.”

“Whereas the girl has simply vanished. Gone kaput.”

“She didn’t kill those two gorillas by herself,” Bliss said.

“Is that supposed to reassure me? Knowing she has allies is supposed to put my mind at ease?”

“I only meant—”

“The background check was very thorough. Mr. Oxley?”

Oxley cleared his throat, referring to a slim manila folder. “Surviving family of Joy Patton consists of a stepmother and half-brother, out in Bakersfield. The brother started trying to molest her at age twelve, apparently succeeded on the day she turned fourteen. Stepmother took his side when Joy complained. Girl headed for Los Angeles and hit the streets. If she has any friends worth mentioning, we couldn’t find them.”

“So.” The tone of Radcliff’s voice was neutral now, dispassionate. “Who could have followed her halfway across the continent and met her in the middle of the night, just when she needed help to get away?”

Althea Bliss could only shrug. “If I knew that—”

“Then you would have some value,” Dr. Radcliff finished for her. “As it is…”

“You can’t blame me for this!”

“The home was your responsibility. You’ve let me down. Althea.”

“No. No, sir!”

“You censor correspondence, I believe.”

“Damn right. Girl writes a letter, we get rid of it and tell her it was mailed. No answer comes, she figures it’s a brush-off.”

“Did the Patton girl write any letters?”

“Not a one.”

“You’re positive?”

“Yes, sir.”

“She could have smuggled something out, presumably.”

“Nobody ever has.”

“That you know of,” said Dr. Radcliff.

“Well…”

“I mean, the orderlies were in and out. There were occasional deliveries. Young women can be most persuasive when they’re motivated.”

“No, sir, you can put your mind at ease on that score. Everyone on staff, I had a private chat the day they joined the program. We were crystal clear about the rules, and what would happen, if they didn’t toe the line.”

“You trusted them?”

“Let’s say I had them covered. On deliveries, we always had them scheduled in advance and kept the girls away from any strangers. There’s no way Joy passed any notes to a deliveryman, no sir.”

“To recap the event, she slipped out of her room—”

“The locks were no great shakes,” Althea told him, interrupting. “You’ll remember we discussed that, and you said it was enough to put the fire alarms on outside doors.”

“Which brings us to her manner of escaping from the house,” said Radcliff.

“Basement window, like I told you. One way or another, she got through the burglar bars and made her way outside.”

“Where we assume she met the orderlies?”

“Mahoney and Gutierrez, right. Joy had the early kitchen shift, like I explained, and when she turned up missing, I sent everybody I could spare to check the grounds. The bodies were a hundred yards east of the buildings, give or take. No sign of Joy. That’s when I called you to report.”

The doctor turned to Warren Oxley with a frown. “Mahoney and Gutierrez. Do we know how they were killed?”

“No hard specifics,” Oxley told him, “but it looks like they were beaten.”

“Is there any way to tell—”

“How many people were involved? We haven’t got a clue.”

“All right.”

It wouldn’t have been the police; that much was obvious. The law arrived with badges, warrants, fanfare. Sound bites on the evening news. It was conceivable that one or more policemen might have helped the girl escape, in hopes of making her a witness, but they wouldn’t beat two men to death and leave their bodies in the forest.

No. It must be someone else.

But who?

The FBI had started asking questions several days ago, about Eugenix and the Thomas Hardy deal…if it had been them. Dr. Radcliff knew how cheaply false credentials could be had. These days, with the desktop technology available, a high-school freshman could present himself as King Farouk, complete with sterling credit references, passport—the works. But if the Feds were not his enemies, who was? Someone had questioned the mortician in Nevada, interrupted Jasper Frayne’s assassination down in Florida and turned up just in time to help one of his subjects vanish from Ideal Maternity. It added up to major trouble, and the less he knew about his enemy, the more Radcliff was bound to worry. Calm down, he told himself. You have to keep your wits about you.

“Have the girls begun to settle in?” he asked Bliss.

“More or less,” she said. “There’s not much room, you understand.”

“It’s temporary. We should have a larger place available within a day or two.”

“All right.”

“I’m sending someone out to help you with security. You understand, of course.”

The matron’s voice was stiff, but she did not resist. “Of course.”

“That’s all.”

Dismissed, Althea Bliss rose and left the room. She had a plowman’s walk, whatever femininity she once possessed eradicated by her years in uniform. She was a plodder, but efficient in her way—until last night.

“Shall I get rid of her?” asked Warren Oxley.

“No. Not yet. Let’s wait and see the final damage estimate.”

“She could have been involved,” said Oxley.

Radcliff frowned, considered it, then shook his head. “She doesn’t have the nerve or the imagination,” he replied. “Much less the sympathy. What could a girl like this one offer that would make Althea risk her life?”

“You never know.”

Oxley was thinking of the fourth complaint in Talladega, with its allegations that Althea Bliss had used her office as a prison matron to coerce one of her female charges into sex. Radcliff assumed the charge was true, and he had warned Bliss on the day of her employment that any misbehavior endangering Project Lazarus would be severely punished. She had known exactly what he meant and didn’t argue. For the kind of money Radcliff paid, she could restrain herself—or find some method to indulge her twisted passion that did not affect the project.

“She’s not that stupid,” Radcliff told his chief lieutenant. “She’d be cutting off her nose to spite her face.”

“And what a nose, at that.”

In other circumstances, Radcliff might, have smiled at Oxley’s joke, but he had lost his sense of humor when he got the news about Ideal Maternity. There was no time for joking, not when his life’s work was at stake.

“We need to find out who’s behind this,” he told Oxley. “Cutting out potential leaks is no damn good if they’ve already tracked us down.”

“I’m working on it, Quentin.”

“So, work harder, Warren. And remember what’s at stake, for all of us.”

“As if I could forget.”

“See that you don’t,” said Radcliff. “If Lazarus goes down, we go down with it. I mean everybody.”

“Understood.”

“In that case, you have work to do.”

“I’m on my way,” said Oxley, sounding chastened.

Radcliff watched him go and wished he felt more confident about his aide’s ability to sort the problem out. A part of him, however, feared things might have gone too far already—that they might have passed the point of no return.

To hell with that. He couldn’t give up.

The best part of his life had been devoted to the dream he labeled Project Lazarus. Not only had he managed to succeed beyond his wildest dreams, make fools of those who mocked him back in school, but it had paid off well enough to leave him set for life, whatever happened next. Those who had failed to recognize his genius would eventually see the light. They would come crawling to him on their hands and knees, to beg for immortality.

The trick in being set for life, though. Dr. Radcliff knew, was managing to stay alive. From this point on, survival had to be his top priority.

No matter what the cost.

Joy Patton caught the ten-fifteen from Louisville, on Northwest Airlines, bound for JFK. She said goodbye to Remo at the gate and surprised him by standing on tiptoe for a parting kiss.

Before the 727 lifted off, Remo was halfway to the parking, intent on getting back to the motel. Chiun was staring out the window watching the passing cars when Remo came in. He wore a bored expression on his parchment face.

“Smith is waiting for your call,” Chiun told him, eyes locked on a red Buick.

“How long ago?” asked Remo.

“Eight minivans.”

He lifted the receiver, entered the special CURE code and got an answer midway through the first ring.

“What’s the word?”

“I ran the names you gave me, with the information from your source. It is not encouraging.”

“Go on.”

“Regine Miskele, age nineteen, from Kansas City—the Missouri side. She has been arrested twice, for shoplifting and drug possession. Marijuana, I believe. A chronic runaway, dropped out of high school in her sophomore year. There is nothing to suggest how she made contact with Ideal Maternity, but no one in her family has heard from her in thirteen months.”

“She left the home nine weeks ago,” said Remo.

“Altogether possible,” Smith said, “but I cannot trace her. If she has a bank account or driver’s license in the States today, she used another name.”

“That’s one.”

“On Karen Woodruff, I confirmed her age as seventeen, born in Muskegon, Michigan. Another drop-out—there appears to be a pattern here—but no arrests on record. It has been eleven months since she touched base with any friends or relatives. She has vanished, too.”

“Are you sure?”

“As sure as can be,” Smith said. “The closest match, age-wise, turned out to be a black girl in Miami.”

“Two for two,” said Remo.

“Make that three,” Smith told him. “Sheila Stroud is on the record in Seattle, as reported. Turns nineteen next weekend.”

“If she’s still alive,” said Remo.

“This one almost graduated, but her parents split in January of her senior year and she unraveled. Got in trouble with a boyfriend, and dropped out to have the baby, then miscarried. One way or another, she decided no one wanted her around.”

“What is it with these parents?” Remo asked.

“I do not know. In any case, she left home about a year ago. The family says she kept in touch the first few weeks, then nothing.”

“That would be when she hooked up with Radcliff’s people,” Remo said.

“Presumably. The CURE mainframes flagged three Sheila Strouds, but none of them match up. Two women over forty, and a six-year-old in Birmingham.”

“Adoption records?” Remo prodded.

“Nothing. I can tell you Dr. Radcliff and Ideal Maternity have no official link with any recognized adoption agency in the United States or Canada. Data on the black market is not definitive, of course—it changes every day—and Radcliff could be operating independently. His clinic there in Brandenburg, for instance, could provide him with a hard-core clientele, and word of mouth would do the rest. For all we know, infant adoptions could be written off as births, with Radcliff altering the paperwork. I will need his patient files to check that angle out.”

“Good luck.”

“Precisely.”

“What about Althea Bliss?”

“One scrap of good news.” Smith replied. “I found her right away.”

“So, tell me.”

“Althea Delaney Bliss was born in 1946 in Dothan, Alabama. Her father was a member of the KKK, but he got drunk one night and set himself on fire while he was lighting up a cross outside a synagogue. He was unemployable from that point on, and drank himself to death. He apparently lived long enough to pass his racist attitudes on to his teenage girls. Althea was youngest of the three. She graduated high school with a D+ average. She spent one year in business school, but did not do well. As soon as she turned twenty-one, she found a civil service job—as a matron at the Talladega women’s prison.”

“Sounds about right,” Remo said blandly.

“As you might guess, she. had some trouble on the job. There were a number of complaints about excessive force, though none were finally sustained. An eighteen-year-old inmate charged that Bliss coerced her into, er, ‘unwilling and unnatural relations’ in the laundry room. That case was pending when she finally decided to quit. She turned in her resignation and disappeared.”

“And showed up managing Ideal Maternity for Dr. -Radcliff.”

“Apparently so.”

“Instead of getting canned and sent to jail, she winds up with her own house full of living dolls.”

“It is still no proof of murder,” Smith reminded him, “but I am inclined to agree with you. I will be watching out for Bliss and company if they resurface in the neighborhood.”

“Twelve pregnant girls and all that staff, they can’t just disappear,” said Remo, but he knew they could and maybe had. If nothing else, he knew that Dr. Radcliff and his cohorts planned ahead.

“I am working on it,” Smith replied. “It may take time.”

“I can’t see any way around a face-to-face with Radcliff,” Remo said.

“What is the approach?”

“I’ve overdone the Bureau angle,” Remo said. “Let’s try a freelance journalist, reporting on advances in fertility research.”

“Sounds good,” Smith agreed. “At least to get you in with a minimum of fuss.”

“I can do a little snooping this way.”

“You are still going with the soft approach?”

“As far as possible. I don’t expect Radcliff to break down and confess.”

“Too much to hope for, I suppose. You will keep me posted?”

“Don’t I always?”

“Well.” Harold Smith seemed uncomfortable, at a loss for words. He settled for a brusque “Good luck” and severed the connection.

Remo glanced at the Master of Sinanju who was still at the window and told him, “I’m going out again.”

“Of course. To meet with Smith’s amazing doctor who makes dead men walk again.”

“See if he’s home, at least.”

“Does he use sorcery, this man?”

“I doubt it very much,” said Remo.

“Does Smith the insane think so?”

“No I think it’s scientific. Little Father.”

“In another time, before my youth, the scientists were sorcerers. It is all the same. They play with Nature and attempt to change the way men live.”

“Is that so bad?” asked Remo.

“It depends,” Chiun told him, “on the method and the goal. Why should an old man in a coma be connected to machines that do what his own flesh cannot? Is he so great that we must keep him with us always? Or are men so afraid of what may follow death that they delay its call, regardless of the cost?”

“This life is all we have,” said Remo.

“Then by all means, live it!” Chiun replied. “If you spend all your days evading death, where is the time for life?”

“What is this? Today’s freaking inspirational sermon?”

“I am bored. You continually stuff me away in hotel rooms like some deranged spinster aunt. I must do something to while away the time. Are you going to kill Smith’s doctor?”

“Most probably.”

“It is for the best,” Chiun said. “We can end this wild-duck chase and go home.” He turned back to the window.

It’s for the best.

Could be, but Remo had to find his target first, and make some sense of what was going on. A simple hit on Dr. Radcliff would not end the story if important questions still remained unanswered. Remo had to know^-what he was up against before he could destroy it.

So get on with it, he thought.

And closed the door behind him, moving swiftly toward his car.