“Come on,” he begged. “Pick up. Be there.” But at the end of the third ring, an answering-machine message came on.
“You’ve reached Dr. Arthur Marryshow. If this is an emergency, please call my service at 212-555-9239 or you may leave a message at the beep.”
The number Frik had dialed was Arthur’s personal one at the midtown Manhattan apartment where he’d lived for the last few years—when he wasn’t away on some mission or another. Had it been on voice mail, which Arthur refused to use because he felt it was too impersonal, Frik might have left a message. But he didn’t want to go through the service—not unless he had to. The less anyone knew about this the better.
There was, however, another number he could try, one Arthur had asked him not to use except in dire circumstances.
He dialed Arthur’s cell phone number.
The phone clicked and rang.
“Yes.”
“Arthur?”
“Who else would it be, Frik? You dialed my number.” Arthur sounded annoyed at the interruption. Still, Frik had never been so glad to hear someone pick up. “This had better be important.”
“It is. I need help. I need it fast and discreet. There’s been an accident at the lab—and—”
“Frik, where are you?”
“Trinidad. Look, I need you to get here fast. Right away. You can use the Oilstar jet. It’s at Kennedy.”
Excellent chess player that he was, Frik automatically considered multiple options before embarking on any action, like the tone best used in this call. “Could you please” had been easy to discard because it left Arthur with too much of a choice. Offering recompense was out. Arthur, a plastic surgeon who had specialized in burn medicine, years before had pioneered grafting and reconstruction techniques that gave disfigured victims a chance at a normal life. It had made him loved, almost worshiped. It had also made him wealthy.
Of the two alternatives left to him, Frik had chosen the imperative. If that failed, he would take the I-scratched-your-back, you-scratch-mine mental leap which generally got him what he wanted. You owe me, Marryshow, he thought, picturing the prison escape in Grenada and the half dozen times he had saved his fellow Daredevil’s life in the intervening seventeen years and conveniently dismissing the equal number of times the roles had been reversed.
“What is this about, Frikkie? What happened?”
Frik sighed with relief and outlined a carefully edited version of the night’s events.
“You must get Paul and yourself to a hospital. You—”
“No.” This was the hardest part: telling Arthur only enough so that he’d come and help with their wounds—especially Paul’s. The scientist’s skin was dotted with great blackened patches, as though someone had taken a brush laden with tar and swiped at it. “I can’t.”
Frik could hear Arthur’s fury. “Call the hospital, get an ambulance, and…I’ll…”
Frik took a deep breath and chugged Lagavulin straight from the bottle. A friend had sent him the bottle of his favorite single-malt scotch from Argyll, Scotland, and he’d kept it for a rainy day.
As far as he was concerned, it was storming.
He couldn’t tell how bad his own burns were, but he could see only hazy fog through his left eye, and the left hand felt like it was being prickled by a hundred poisonous black sea urchins. His whole body was an archipelago of pain, the little islands only occasionally blurring together. A flash here, a flash there.
The alcohol was keeping the isles from connecting into a continent of agony, but it was also getting him drunk. He had to stay clear enough to make Arthur understand.
“We found something, Arthur. And if Paul spoke about it, at the hospital, under drugs, it would be bad—”
“You are one stubborn bastard. I should hang up. What have you done for him?”
Saaliim, Frik’s assistant, a native of Honduras who wore a perpetually thoughtful look, stood by the door, waiting to see what would happen. Frik relied on Saaliim for everything and anything. He was about the only person in the world, other than the members of the Daredevils Club, that Frik fully trusted.
“I gave him morphine from one of the kits. He’s either asleep or unconscious, I’m not sure which. I think he’ll be okay for the three, four hours it would take you to get here.”
“Sooner. I’m in Grenada. Your call was transferred here.”
Thank you, Lady Luck, Frick thought.
“If I cancel tomorrow’s appointments, if I drop everything and run to you, I could fly myself over and be there in an hour, maybe less,” Arthur continued.
Being the man of integrity that you are, you’ll do exactly that, Frik thought. “Thank you,” he said, without waiting for Arthur’s full agreement. “There’ll be a car waiting for you and I’ll be sitting at the window, watching the road.”
“You expect me to work in your house?”
“I can get you anything you need.”
“Right. Like a burn center?”
“Mount Hope Medical Center has an HBO chamber but nothing for burns.” Frik had to make his friend understand. “You have to trust me, Arthur. What we found, it’s too important to risk having anyone learn about. It could change the world.”
“And changing it could use. All right, Frik, I’ll come. But I’m warning you, this had better be damn good.”
7
To Frik, the next hour seemed like a lifetime. Arthur had called on his way to the airport and issued instructions for what would be needed. Frik jotted them down and repeated each one, a slur creeping into his voice. When he put down the phone, he handed the list to Saaliim and told him to go out and collect everything Arthur wanted.
Saaliim was also given a second mission.
After showing Saaliim the piece of the artifact that he’d rescued from the fire, Frik ordered his assistant to search the remains of the lab and Trujold’s house and car for the three missing components of the strange object.
Reluctant to leave Frik alone for long, Saaliim returned in less than an hour. He had gathered everything Arthur needed, but he’d found nothing that in any way resembled the pieces of the artifact. Maybe he’d made the wrong choice, not taking Paul directly to the hospital. Chances were, they would have ignored his babblings there, but they could have done something to keep him alive—at least long enough for Frik to extract from him the whereabouts of the missing pieces.
Then again, he’d learned to trust his first instinct, which in this case was to keep things under tight control.
Leaving the matter of the artifact to be dealt with later, Frik settled down to wait for Arthur. Every car he saw on the road had to be his…until it was swallowed by the balmy night. He cursed himself for not arranging to have a helicopter waiting for Arthur at Piarco. The airport was only forty or fifty kilometers from the house. Marryshow, an accomplished pilot, could have been here long ago. Christ, how he hated inefficiency, especially his own, he thought, as the pain came back and he gulped more scotch. He couldn’t risk taking morphine and losing control of this situation. Have to make Arthur help me, he kept telling himself.
Car lights cut through the darkened room.
Paul, finally knocked out by the drugs, didn’t stir. Frik turned on a light. Seconds later, Arthur came into the house.
“Frikkie, I’ve just sent Saaliim to get some more things. I need you to tell me exactly what happened. By the way, you look like hell.”
Frik realized that he hadn’t done anything to clean himself up. “Like I told you, there was a fire. I—”
Arthur was already standing beside Paul. He pulled back the sheet exposing the black splotches where fire had seared the skin. “My God. If you’re up to it, hand me my bag.”
Frik handed him a medical bag that looked more like an oversized attaché. “We have to talk,” he said.
“Let me check him first. I’ll listen to what you have to say later.”