Daniel momentarily debated with himself if he should make an effort to negotiate. A thousand dollars was significantly higher than the original estimate of two or three hundred. But it wasn’t his money, and in the end he told Spencer to make the arrangements.
“Any further information about when we can expect you?” Spencer asked.
“Not at the moment,” Daniel said. “I’ll let you know as soon as I can.”
“Perfect,” Spencer said. “While I have you on the phone, there are a few details I’d like to discuss.”
“By all means.”
“First, we’d like to request half the agreed-upon fees up front,” Spencer said. “I can fax you wiring instructions.”
“You want the money immediately?”
“We’d like it as soon as we have a date for your arrival. It will make it possible for us to begin scheduling appropriate staffing. Will that be a problem?”
“I suppose not,” Daniel responded.
“Good,” Spencer said. “Next, we’d like to arrange for instruction in HTSR for our staff, particularly for Dr. Paul Saunders, as well as the opportunity to discuss with you a future licensing agreement for HTSR and rates for the required probes and enzymes.”
Daniel hesitated. His intuition was telling him he was being pushed for having agreed too quickly to the compensation the day before. He cleared his throat. “I will not have a problem with Dr. Saunders observing, but as for the licensing issue, I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to grant such requests. CURE is a corporation with a board of directors that would have to agree to any such arrangement, with full consideration of the stockholders. But as the current CEO, I can promise you we will visit the issue in the future, and your help in the current situation will be taken into consideration.”
“Perhaps I was asking a bit much,” Spencer admitted amiably. He chuckled. “But as the saying goes: There’s no harm in trying.”
Daniel rolled his eyes, lamenting the indignities he had to endure.
“One last thing,” Spencer said. “We would like to know the name of the patient, so we can start the admission process and the patient record. We’d like to be prepared for his or her arrival.”
“There is to be no record,” Daniel said flatly. “Yesterday I made it clear this treatment is to be done under absolute secrecy.”
“But we will have to identify the patient for lab tests and such,” Spencer said.
“Call him Patient X or John Smith,” Daniel said. “It doesn’t make any difference. I anticipate his being in your facility for only twenty-four hours at most. We’ll be with him the entire time, and we’ll be doing all the lab tests.”
“What if the Bahamian authorities question his admission?”
“Is that likely?”
“No, I suppose not. But if they do, I’m not sure what we would say.”
“I’m trusting that with your experience dealing with the authorities during the clinic’s construction, you can be creative. That’s part of the reason we’re paying you forty thousand dollars. Make sure they don’t question.”
“We’ll need a bribe or two. Perhaps if you were to raise the price by five K, we could guarantee no problems with the authorities.”
Daniel didn’t respond immediately while he controlled his anger. He hated to be manipulated, especially by a clown of Wingate’s caliber. “All right,” he said at last, without camouflaging his irritation. “We’ll be wiring twenty-two and a half thousand. However, I want your personal assurances that this operation will go smoothly from here on out, and there’s to be no more demands.”
“You have my assurance as the founder of the Wingate Clinic that we will make every effort to ensure your association with us meets your expectations and complete satisfaction.”
“You’ll be hearing from us shortly.”
“We’ll be here!”
The screaming jet engines made the walls of Spencer’s office shudder as the Boeing intercontinental 767 passed over the Wingate Clinic at an altitude of less than five hundred feet in preparation for landing. With the building’s heavy insulation, the vibration was more tactile than audible though strong enough to jiggle Spencer’s array of framed diplomas. Spencer was already accustomed to the daily intermittent disturbance and paid no heed other than to absently right his diplomas on occasion.
“How did I do?” Spencer yelled through the open door.
Paul Saunders appeared in the doorway after having listened to Spencer’s conversation with Daniel from his office next door. “Well, let’s look on the bright side. You didn’t find out the name of the patient, but you managed to eliminate close to half the world’s rich and famous. We now know it is a man.”
“Very funny,” Spencer said. “We didn’t expect him to give us the name on a silver platter. But I did get him to up the offer to forty-five thousand and agree to allow you to observe the cellular work. That’s not bad.”
“But you didn’t press him on the favorable licensing issue. That could save us big bucks with our burgeoning stem cell therapy down the line.”
“Yeah, well, he had a point. He’s running a corporation.”
“It might be a corporation, but it’s a private company, and dollars to donuts, he’s the major stockholder by a long shot.”
“Well, we win some and lose some. Anyway, I didn’t scare him off. Remember that was one of our worries-that if we pressed too hard, he’d go somewhere else.”
“I’ve reconsidered that worry, provided he was telling us the truth about his tight time frame. We’re probably the only place that can supply him overnight with a first-rate lab, a hospital setting, and human oocytes with no questions asked. But it doesn’t matter. Our potential bonanza payoff is going to come from finding out the name of the patient. I’m convinced of it. And the sooner we find out, the better.”
“I couldn’t agree more, and to that end, I did find out Lowell was at his office for the day, which was the real purpose of the call.”
“True! And I have to give you credit for that. As soon as you hung up, I called Kurt Hermann to let him know. He said he’d relay the information immediately to his compatriot who’s positioned in Boston, waiting to break into Lowell’s apartment.”
“I hope this compatriot, as you’ve called him, is capable of finesse. If Lowell gets spooked-or, even worse, hurt-the whole thing might be off.”
“I specifically relayed your fears about heavy-handedness to Kurt.”
“And what did he say?”
“You know Kurt doesn’t say much. But he understands.”
“I hope you are right, because we could truly use a financial windfall. With what we’ve spent getting this place up and running, the well is just about dry, and besides our stem-cell work, there’s very little infertility business on the immediate horizon.”
“Dr. Spencer Wingate sounds just like the sleaze I feared,” Stephanie said. She’d come back into Daniel’s office after listening in on the conversation. “He talks about bribery as if it were an everyday occurrence.”
“Maybe it is in the Bahamas,” Daniel said.
“I hope he’s short, fat, and has a wart on his nose.”
Daniel gave Stephanie a confused look.
“Maybe he’s a chain-smoker and has bad breath.”
“What on earth are you talking about?”
“If Spencer Wingate looks as bad as he sounds, maybe I won’t lose complete faith in the medical profession. I know it is irrational, but I don’t want him to look anything like my mental image of a physician. It scares me to think he’s a practicing doctor. And that goes for his partners as well.”
“Oh, come on, Stephanie! Don’t be so naïve. The medical profession, like any profession, is far from perfect. There are good ones and bad ones, with the majority somewhere in between.”
“I thought self-regulation was part of the definition of this profession. Anyway, the real issue is that I wish my intuition wasn’t telling me that working with these people is a bad idea.”