then why have you helped me in my work all these years? Why?'
Zimmermann gazed blandly at his father. 'Because of your connections, of course. Your friend Redding triples what the hospital pays me. You suggested my name, and he arranged for me to get my professorship. I know he did.'
'He got you the position on my say-so, and he can have it taken from you the same way.'
'Can he, now.' Zimmermann held up the Estronate manuscript. 'You lied to him. You told him there were still flaws in the work.
Why?
Are you thinking that once he finds out you have sent this off for publication, he will just walk away and leave us alone? Do you think he vvon't find out who I am? What I have been helping you do behind his back? Do you? ' He was screaming. 'Well, I tell you right here and now, Father, this is mine. I have paid for it over the years with countless humiliations. Cyrus Redding will have his Estronate, and I shall have my proper legacy.'
'No! ' Even as he shouted the word, Willi Becker felt the tearing pain in his left chest. His heart, weakened by disease, and sorely compromised by amphetamines, pounded mercilessly and irregularly. 'My Oxygen, he rasped. 'In the bedroom. Oxygen and nitroglycerine.' The study was beginning a nauseating spin. For the first time, William Zimmermann smiled. 'I'm afraid I can't hear you, Father, ' he said, benevolently. 'Could you please speak up a bit?'
'William… please…' Becker's final words were muffled by the gurgle of fluid bubbling up from his lungs, and vomitus welling from his stomach. He clawed impotently in the direction of his son and then toppled over onto the rug, his face awash in the products of his own death. Stepping carefully around his father's corpse, Zimmermann slipped the Estronate paper into a large envelope, then he removed the disc from the word processor and dropped it in as well. Next he copied a number from the leather-bound address book buried under some papers on one corner of the desk. Finally, he stacked the three worn looseleaf notebooks containing the Estronate data and tucked them under his arm.
He would phone Cyrus Redding from the extension downstairs. The pharmaceutical magnate evinced little surprise at Zimmermann's call or at the rapid turn of events in Newton. Instead, he listened patiently to the details of Willi Becker's life as the man's son knew them. 'Dr. Zimmermann, ' he said finally, 'let us stop here to be certain I fully understand. Your father, when he was supervising construction of the Omnicenter, secretly had a laboratory built for himself in the subbasement?'
'Correct, ' Zimmermann said. 'On the blueprints it is drawn as some sort of dead storage area, I think.'
'And the only way to get into the laboratory is through an electronic security system?'
'The lock is hidden and coded electronically. The door is concealed behind a set of shelves.'
'Does anyone besides you have the combination?'
'No. At least not as far as I know.'
'Remarkable. Dr. Zimmermann, your father was a most brilliant man.'
'My father is dead, ' Zimmermann said coolly. 'Yes, ' Redding said.
'Yes, he is. Tell me, this bleeding problem, it has been eliminated?'
'Father modified his synthesis over a year ago. It was taking from six to eighteen months after treatment for the bleeding problem to develop.
The three patients you know about were all treated a year ago last July.
There have, to our knowledge, been no new cases since. Keep in mind, too, that there weren't that many to begin with. And most of those were mild.'
'Yes, I understand. It is remarkable to me that you were able to insert your testing program into Carl Horner's computer system without his ever knowing.'
'As you said, Mr. Redding, my father was a brilliant man.'
'Yes. Well, then, I suppose we two should explore the possibility of a new partnership.'
'The terms you laid out for my father are quite acceptable to me. I have the manuscript and the notebooks. Since the work is already completed, I would be willing to turn them over to you, no further questions asked, for the amount you promised him.'
'That is a lot of money, Doctor.'
'The amazing thing is that until I overheard your conversation with my father, I had not fully appreciated the valuable potential of the hormone.' Zimmermann could barely keep from laughing out loud at his good fortune. 'Are you a biochemist, Doctor?'
'No. Not really.'
'In that case, I should like to reserve my final offer until my own biochemist has had the chance to review the material, to see the laboratory, and to take himself through the process of synthesizing the hormone.'
'When?'
'Why not tomorrow? Dr. Paquette, whom you know, will meet you at your office at, say, seven o'clock tomorrow night. My man Nunes will accompany him and will have the authority and the money to consummate our agreement if Dr. Paquette is totally satisfied with what he sees.'
'Sounds fine. I'll make certain the side door to the Omnicenter is left open.'
'That won't be necessary, Dr. Zimmermann. Paquette has keys.'
'All right, then, seven o'clock… Was there something else? '
'As a matter of fact, Dr. Zimmermann, there is. It's this whole business with the Omnicenter and that pathologist.'
'You mean Bennett?'
'She has proven a very resilient young woman. Do you believe she was convinced by her conversation with our man at the Ashburton Foundation?'
'No. Not completely. She said she was going to continue investigating.
The woman currently hospitalized here with complications from Estronate treatment is a close friend of hers.'
'I see. You know, Doctor, none of this would have happened if you and your father hadn't conducted your work so recklessly and independently. by His voice had a chilling edge. 'Don't you feel a responsibility to this company for what you have done?'
'Responsibility?'
'If we are to have a partnership, I should like to know that the millions I have spent on the Omnicenter will not be lost because we were unable to neutralize one woman.'
'But she has been neutralized. A serious mistake on a pathology specimen. She's been put on leave by her department head. Isn't that enough to discredit her?'
'I am no longer speaking of discrediting her, my friend. I am speaking of stopping her. You heard my conversation with your father. You know the importance of keeping Estronate a secret. It has been bad enough that Dr. Bennett is threatening, by her doggedness, to bring the Omnicenter tumbling down about our ears. If she uncovers Estronate, we stand to lose much, much more.'
'I'll see to it that won't happen.'
'Excellent. But remember, I don't handle disappointment well. Until tomorrow, then, Doctor.'
'Yes, tomorrow.'
William Zimmermann made a final inspection of the house, taking pains to wipe off anything he had touched. The precaution was, in all likelihood, unnecessary. The houseboy was due in at eight in the morning, and the death he would discover upstairs would certainly appear due to natural causes. As he slipped out the back door of his father's house, a fortune in notebooks and computer printouts under his arm, Zimmermann was thinking about Kate Bennett. The nightmare was a juggernaut, more pervasive, more oppressive it seemed with each passing hour. Its setting had changed from the clutter of her office to the deep-piled, fire-warmed opulence of Win Samuels's study, but for Kate Bennett, the change meant only more confusion, more humiliation, more doubt. I know what it looks like, I know what it sounds like. But it isn't true… I don't know who did it… I don't know… Dammit all, I just don't know. Jared's return earlier in the evening had started on a positive note — an emotional hug and their first kiss in nearly a week. For a time, as they weaved their way through the crowds to the baggage area, he seemed unable to keep his hands or his lips off her. It seemed he was reveling in the freedom of at last truly acknowledging his love for her.
I accept you, regardless of what you are involved in, regardless of what the impact might be on me. I accept
