"Who are those people?"
"Friends of a friend. We'll be safe as long as they're here." At least from outsiders, I thought, but didn't say so.
Tears sprang to the psychiatrist's eyes. "I. . still don't know how to thank you for all you've done-what you're doing."
"I'll share all my neuroses with you when this matter is resolved. That should be enough for a research paper or two."
She smiled. "Promise?"
"Promise."
I waited until she'd left the office, closing the door behind her, then picked up the phone and called Felix MacWhorter to see if he'd picked up the package I'd left him. He had, and the DA's office was already busy building a case against Punch and Judy. Interpol had been notified, and the information on the tape recording had been passed along to a variety of government offices in Washington. I was betting the Chill Shop had been shut down five minutes after the CIA had found out Punch and Judy had been caught, and they would already be busy preparing denials that BUHR had ever existed. It was even possible any more Company or Lorminix hunting patrols left in the city would be called back, but I wasn't going to count on it. The police captain wanted me to come in for another chat, but I said I had other, more pressing things to do at the moment. He didn't argue with me.
Step Seven.
It was time to get my brother into the act. It was almost midnight in Switzerland, and Garth and Mary had probably been asleep for hours after a day on the slopes, but I figured Garth wouldn't mind being awakened when he heard what I had to tell him and what I wanted him to try to do. I dialed the number of his hotel, thought about what I was doing while the phone rang, then abruptly hung up when somebody answered.
Cancel Step Seven.
I no longer had any qualms about disrupting my brother and sister-in-law's holiday, for the circumstances now certainly warranted it, and they would be the first to agree. Indeed, Garth was going to be more than a little upset with me when he found out I hadn't brought him into the situation immediately, and heard about what I'd been up to while he was gone. It wasn't disrupted vacation plans, but Garth himself I was worried about. My brother was absolutely fearless, and a bullet between the eyes was the only thing that would stop him once he had committed himself to a certain course of action. He was a quiet warrior whose actions spoke very loudly, and who took no prisoners if he thought his cause was just; and I had no doubt that he would think getting more medication for the patients from Rivercliff was the right thing to do. If I involved Garth, I was going to have a lot of explaining to do; once he found out about the drug a certain company with headquarters in Switzerland had been manufacturing for the CIA, and once I told him that somebody in said headquarters might be able to provide information that could save the lives of a dozen people who were otherwise going to die in a few days, he was going to be out the door and on his way to Berne. The one thing predictable about Garth was that he could be unpredictable, and very dangerous to anybody he considered a bad guy. He was in a foreign country, one that went to great pains to protect the privacy and interests of the corporations that were headquartered there. If I told him about Lorminix and asked for his help, he would be working alone and blind, without any franchise or weapons, in what could quickly turn into a very hostile environment. His wife wasn't going to be too pleased with me if Garth ended up in a Swiss prison, or dead, and I wouldn't be too happy myself.
Besides, I might not need Garth. Thanks to my very informative chat with Punch and Judy, I could probably take care of the business I wanted done with Lorminix myself, or at least accomplish as much as my brother could in person.
My alarm woke me at four in the morning. I got up and put on my thick terry-cloth robe. Stepping over the figure of Michael Stout, who was in a sleeping bag in the middle of the floor in the living room, I went into the kitchen to make myself a cup of coffee. Then, wanting to make sure that Michael didn't overhear any of my conversation, I padded downstairs to my office, taking along with me the notebook in which I had jotted down the salient details of Punch and Judy's story. I consulted my notes, then dialed the office number of one Heinrich Muller at Lorminix headquarters in Berne. "Ja?"
"You speak English, Herr Muller?"
"Who is this?" the man on the other end of the line asked in English that had a thick German accent. "How did you get this number?"
"My name's Robert Frederickson, and since this is my nickel, I'll do most of the talking."
"I'm not interested in anything you have to say. Goodbye, Herr Frederickson."
"I got your name and this number from Punch and Judy, Muller. They also let slip the fact that Lorminix occasionally acts as a CIA asset, and that you're the liaison. You're also the cutout. Those two assassins are paid through a Swiss account that belongs to Lorminix. Right now your two hired hands are sitting in a New York City jail cell spilling their guts out. Now do I have your attention?"
The silence on the other end was broken only by the sound of heavy breathing; Heinrich Muller even breathed with a German accent.
I let some more time pass, then continued, "This is your lucky day, Herr Muller. I suspect you've already received a report on me, maybe even have it in front of you right now, so I won't bore you with all my credentials. I'm a private investigator, somewhat to the left of center politically, but I have a special place in my heart for big companies like yours, and I tend to be very sensitive to their needs. Very shortly, the needs of Lorminix will be great. I can not only directly link your company to the CIA, which isn't going to please a lot of your other customers around the world, but I can also prove that you developed and manufactured a very dangerous drug to CIA specifications, and then shipped it to them for illegal experiments on humans. Shades of Nazi Germany, Herr Muller. I can prove that your company bears at least some responsibility for producing a serial killer who's loose on the streets of New York City and probably killing somebody even as we speak. I know all about Rivercliff, Punch and Judy, BUHR-all of it. Your company's ass and your personal ass are fried anyway; if the courts in this country don't kill you with criminal charges and civil suits, the bad publicity will. Luckily for you, I'm here to offer you a measure of corporate and personal redemption. You can help save the lives of some of the people whose heads and bodies you've been helping the CIA mess with. Cooperating in that way could prove advantageous to you, providing a bit of an umbrella in the shit storm that's about to come down on your head. If you help me, I'll do what I can to help you contain the damage, including offering testimony in any court about the way in which you cooperated. If you don't help me, Herr Muller, I'm going to start banging the publicity drums the minute I hang up this telephone, and I'll make sure that you get personal credit for the deaths that are going to occur if you don't help. Now, here's the deal. It's very simple. I want a case-a big case, all you've got-of that mystery drug in the black-and-yellow capsules delivered to my doorstep within the next forty-eight hours. I don't care how you do it, just get it done. If it arrives, you get a friend in court; if it doesn't, I use this same phone to call a friend of mine at The New York Times. Now, I want to hear you tell me that you understand."
The response was more guttural breathing.
"Muller? Let me hear it. If I don't, I hang up and call my reporter friend. She'd kill for a story like this."
"Ja. I understand."
"Good," I said, and hung up.
I sat for a few minutes, sipping at my coffee, which had gone cold, thinking. I finally decided to give my performance a favorable review, reasoning that my move on Muller had been as good as anything that Garth could have done-and a lot better than a few things he might have done. The next two days would tell whether I had been able to shake loose a supply of the drug, but I wasn't going to count on it. For one thing, there was always the possibility that Lorminix had destroyed any existing supply of the drug after the patients escaped from