'Glaucon.'
'Polemarchus.'
'The meeting is called to order,' Laertes said. 'I have heard from Aspasia. The operation on A has been a complete success. The match was twelve out of twelve, so only minimal drugs will be required, if any at all. Aspasia expects A to be back at work within two weeks. His prognosis is for a full recovery and unimpaired life span.'
'Well done.'
'Marvelous.'
'Other cases?'
'Polemarchus here. We might as well start with me. This coming week we have two kidneys, one liver, and one heart scheduled. The recipients have each already been certified as worthy of our services, and all necessary arrangements — logistical and financial — have been taken care of. In the case of kidneys, the procedure would usually result in the transplantation of both kidneys into our recipient. The liver would result in transplantation of the largest organ segment anatomically possible. Let's consider the kidneys first. Twenty-seven-year-old male laborer, Mississippi, United States.'
'Approved,' all five called out in unison.
'Forty-year-old female restaurant owner, Toronto, Canada.'
'What sort of restaurant?'
'Chinese.'
'Approved,' they all said as one, and laughed.
'The liver, a thirty-five-year-old male teacher from Wales.'
'Glaucon, here. I thought we agreed no teachers. Have we any options?'
'None that I know of,' Polemarchus said, 'although I can check again. This is a perfect twelve-point match for L, number thirty-one on your lists. As you probably know, he is one of the wealthiest men in Great Britain. I do not know what he has agreed to pay for this procedure, but knowing the way Xerxes negotiates, I would guess it was substantial.'
'In that case,' Glaucon said, 'approved, but let us not make this a precedent.'
'Approved,' the others echoed.
CHAPTER 12
A State…arises…out of the needs of mankind.
AIthea Satterfield bustled around Ben's small kitchen to the extent that her years allowed.
'Would you like lemon with your tea, Mr. Callahan? You don't have any in your refrigerator, but I do in mine.'
Ben was impressed that his neighbor chose not to remark on those other food items that he also did not have in his refrigerator — virtually all, in fact. It had been three days since his return from Cincinnati, and the octogenarian had interpreted his two blackened eyes as a call to action, along with his swollen nose — 'Just a crack at the tip,' Dr. Banks had said. 'Nothing to do for it but don't get hit there again' — and unremitting pain in his chest — 'Just a crack in one of your ribs. Nothing to do for it but don't get hit there again.' The truth was that as frustrating as the woman could be sometimes, Ben was grateful for the help. The headaches he was experiencing, which Banks was attributing to a concussion — 'Nothing to do for it but don't get hit there again' — had diminished from an eight to somewhere around a four, and from present all the time to present only when he moved. He had never been very macho when it came to dealing with any sort of pain, and at the moment he was exhausted from coping with his various discomforts, and more than a little annoyed at being inactive. There were things he needed and wanted to do.
'I'll take the tea straight up, Mrs. Satterfield. I really appreciate your help. I only wish I could find a way to repay you.'
'Nonsense, dear. Just wait until you're my age. You'll be desperate to matter to somebody.'
Don't bank on it, Ben thought.
The quixotic dedication of Alice Gustafson, the draining week in Florida, the remarkable encounter with Madame Sonja, the surprisingly lucid Schyler Gaines, the close call on Laurel Way, and finally the identification of Lonnie Durkin — granted each had made a dent in his armor of detachment and ennui, but he saw those dents as insignificant. He had done what he had been hired to do, and mostly he still planned to crawl back into his cocoon until the next call came along. Before he did that, however, there was one final loose end he wanted to tie up — this one involving a family in Conda, Idaho.
'Well, Mrs. Satterfield,' he said, 'if you really mean that, I could use another favor.'
'Just name it, dear.'
'I have to go away again. I need you to feed Pincus and water my — what I mean is I need you to feed and water Pincus.'
'Pardon me for saying so, Mr. Callahan, but you're in no condition to travel.'
'Probably not, but travel I must anyway.'
The continuous, stabbing pain in his side, made worse by even minor movement, he could handle. But until today, the headaches had made a trip to Idaho impossible. After his return from six hours with Dr. Banks and the radiologists, a concerned Alice Gustafson, bearing a vase of wildflowers, had visited him at his apartment. Over tea and Danish, courtesy of Althea, he recounted in minute detail the findings and subsequent assault in the garage on Laurel Way.
'I knew it!' she exclaimed when he had finished. 'I knew that woman in Maine was telling me the truth. You can tell these things.' Her grim expression held an odd mix of vindication and toughness. 'The guns worry me greatly,' she went on, 'but they do not surprise me. Where there is illegal organ trade of any kind, there is very big business, with very high price tags. Many of those involved in the trade are little more than gangsters.'
'Most of the gangsters I know would be envious of the weapons in that garage.'
'There is really no estimating the money involved. In certain countries, those who go abroad to receive illegal kidneys are reimbursed up to one hundred thousand dollars by their health ministries. They ultimately save the system much more than that in dialysis fees and other medical costs, and also make the transplant waiting list for kidneys that much shorter, thereby lowering the dialysis expenses even more.'
'I would imagine those needing a bone marrow transplant would be in even more desperate medical straits.'
'Exactly. It's always under the sword of life and death that the procedure is done. And of all the organs, the one demanding the closest tissue match between donor and recipient is bone marrow. I can't help but wonder if these people are dealing with other organs as well.'
'I wouldn't be surprised. Whatever they are into, those guns I saw say they're deadly serious about it. Speaking of deadly, why do you think the RV people didn't just kill Lonnie and the woman from Maine?'
Gustafson shrugged.
'Maybe they draw the line at murder,' she said. 'Or maybe they keep these people alive in case they have to repeat the procedure. Remember, the woman said she was blindfolded or drugged most of the time. She recalled few details of what happened to her, so maybe there was just no need to kill her.'
'Or maybe they purposely choose people whom the authorities aren't likely to believe.'
'That's a theory, except that if these RV people know what they're doing, the completeness of the tissue match is all that matters.'
'How many perfect matches does each person have?'
'Perfect, not very many — especially if the recipient has type O blood and an unusually rare protein or two on their white blood cells.'
Initially, Gustafson wanted to call Lonnie Durkin's family on the spot, but Ben insisted he be allowed to go
