Colonel Packard opened his eyes. The anaesthetic was beginning to wear off. A wave of nausea rolled over him and he groaned. He felt the room wobble and distort.
The light was bright. Slowly, the silhouette of a woman came into focus beside him.
It was Nurse Peterson. She was leaning over him, mopping his brow and smiling.
He smiled back.
"Colonel Packard…Welcome back. How do you feel?" Nurse Peterson asked softly.
"Like a train just hit me…but I'll survive."
"You'll feel a little strange for about an hour, but after that you'll start to feel a lot better. If you don't mind, we'd like to do some tests then?"
"No problem…" The Colonel closed his eyes again. The room span, and he gripped the edge of the bed with his hands, riding out the nausea. Thankfully it passed quickly.
When he opened his eyes again, he felt well enough to look around the room.
He focused on the view of the sea, and the blue sky above. It was a beautiful day outside. A fantastic day.
And if the Orlando Treatment worked, he hoped to spend many more just like it with his wife and grandchildren.
That was the reason he was doing this.
That and the fact that if the Orlando Treatment worked, he would be able to walk again for the first time in thirty years.
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Miami
Florida
Laura sat at her desk, puzzled. She wasn't often puzzled, but there was something in the file in front of her that she didn't quite understand. At least, it wasn't immediately obvious.
It had taken a little bit of leg-work and persuading, a few smiles and sexy looks at hideously ugly men who she would never consider dating in a million years, but it had worked.
She picked up the phone and dialled a number in New York.
"John, it's Laura. Sorry to bother you again so soon, but I have a little question for you."
She didn't like dealing with John. He was a shady character at best. Laura had always suspected that although he was employed by Chymera, he was really working for the government. Almost like her, but in reverse.
"Are we secure?"
"Yes. With the latest 1024 bit key voice encryption."
"Okay, so what's your question?"
"I've just received a copy of a report from the Coroner's office here in Miami. The Coroner was persuaded by someone in the police department to do another autopsy on Henry Roberts. It makes interesting reading. It confirms again that he suffered severe trauma from a suicide attempt, by hanging himself, but it then goes on to say that he didn't have a heart attack as was first believed by the doctors…I was just wondering if your guys had any more involvement with him, after they botched up the initial attempt to kill him?" Her words were pointed. She enjoyed pointing out other people's mistakes.
The man at the other end of the phone seemed relatively unfazed by the blatant dig at his professionalism.
"No. When David Sonderheim called us, we picked Roberts up from Sonderheim's home as requested. Then we took Roberts back to his house, and dangled him from the tree. But not before we got the rest of the information from him that we needed. Anyway, he'd already divulged most of what we needed to know directly to Sonderheim quite willingly on the phone, before we arrived. Seems he'd had a falling out with the rest of the group. They didn't see eye-to-eye on everything…Anyway, after we got the rest of the information we needed from him, we carried out the order to kill him …"
"Well almost, but after your men botched up the fake suicide, did they finish the job in the hospital?"
"No. We knew he was in a coma and not likely to come out of it. I had a man waiting outside the hospital round the clock, just to make sure that if he did wake up, then we could silence him properly before he could talk…but with all that hospital security, it just seemed madness to risk sending someone inside, especially when he was already in a coma, and not expected to pull through. And I resent your reference to a 'botched job'. Please do not refer to it again. If you had provided us with better information, if we had known about the dogs…we would have killed him somewhere else."
"Let's not start throwing blame around like a couple of kids. All I am trying to establish here is whether or not your group were responsible for murdering dear old Henry. According to the coroner's report, someone gave him a lethal injection of a muscle-relaxant, which induced paralysis and death…and made it look like a heart attack."
"That's very interesting…but it wasn't us." John replied, an element of surprise almost breaking through his incredibly boring, monotone voice.
"Are you telling me that someone else beat you to it?"
"Looks that way, doesn't it!"
"If it wasn't you, who the hell was it then?”
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There was no direct flight from Miami to Cape Town, so she would have to fly to Washington first, spend the night in George Town, and then catch the South African Airways flight the next day. It was going to be a long trip.
It was a thirty minute drive to the airport from her apartment by the beach. She hit a button on the dash board, and the roof of her Audi coupé import slid back silently into its awning at the back of the car. She reached up and pulled the pin from her hair, shaking it out and letting it flow freely in the warm air as she sped down the outside lane of the freeway.
With one hand on the steering wheel, she ran her spare hand through her long, auburn curls. The question went round and round her brain, and it was beginning to bug Laura.
"If we didn’t kill Henry Roberts, who did?"
Until this afternoon Laura hadn't quite made up her mind if she would handle this personally or not. She had a few FBI contacts in South Africa who could do the job for her, but this business was beginning to intrigue her.
And besides, after she had ribbed John and his team for messing up the Henry Roberts killing, she had to make sure that there were no mistakes in getting rid of Alex Swinton. If her team messed up, she would be no better than he was.
No, this one definitely called for the personal touch. She would direct the operation herself.
Chapter 19
Day Fourteen
Washington Airport