Spielmann took the long cardiac needle and drove it down beside the patient’s sternum, keeping suction on the plunger. There was an immediate jet of dark, almost black blood into the syringe. She injected the contents into the left ventricle of the heart.
“Nothing. Straight line.”
“BP zero.”
“Pupils fixed.”
“I cannot see anything to be gained by going to the final level and opening this man’s chest. Anyone feel differently?” There was only silence from the room. “Okay, then. Time of death ten thirty-one A.M. Thank you, everybody. I appreciate your efforts. I’m very sorry this happened.”
The overhead camera showed the deceased man’s face, staring sightlessly upward at the saucer lights. Nick hit Pause and held the image in the center of the screen.
“My God,” Nick said. “While they were doing all that work on Umberto’s face, they must have taught him Arabic so he would be ready for the pre-op interviews.”
“It’s just like when I heard Manny speak in Arabic. Billy Pearl said that Manny had been brainwashed. I bet the same thing was done to Umberto,” Jillian said.
“Did your sister speak Arabic?” Mollender asked.
“No. But as Nick said, the Arabic Umberto spoke was mixed in with Spanish.”
“Okay. So, did your sister speak Spanish?”
“She was almost fluent,” Jillian replied. “We both were.”
CHAPTER 41
Nick was dazed when he shut off the TV. Witnessing Umberto’s gruesome death held him spellbound, capable only of staring at his own reflection in the black television screen. He ached at the irony that Umberto’s final words had been a chilling cry for help-a cry to him.
With the man’s agonized screams echoing in his head, Nick tried to make sense of the almost inconceivable events that had occurred in the operating room three years ago. First, though, he had to begin to deal with the fact that his search was finally over. Don Reese had been right. The reason Umberto’s and Manny’s captors had not bothered issuing them new Social Security numbers was that both men were slated to die. Manny Ferris’s escape had spoiled their plan. The secret mission that was to be Umberto’s passage out of his PTSD hell had been anything but that. It had been the doorway to another, more ferocious nightmare, and ultimately the invitation to his grave.
“Umberto,” Nick murmured, feeling intense anger searing the back of his neck.
He stared at the screen as if the ghost of his friend was trapped inside it, marked for eternity by a video epitaph. Jillian placed her hand gently upon his shoulder.
“Nick, I’m so sorry.”
“What was it he said, Jill? I mean exactly.”
“Just what you would imagine-for the Spanish part, anyway. ‘Help. Help me. Get me Dr. Fury. Get me Dr. Nick Fury.’ Even though the words were jumbled in with Umberto’s screams and with the Arabic, Belle heard and understood them, although not the meaning behind them. Later on someone must have told her about the comic book character, and she set out to understand more. Belle was all about understanding-getting to the bottom of things.”
Jillian’s voice sounded distant-barely audible. Nick could not respond. He was already weighed down with guilt over Sarah’s death. Now this. Was there anything he could have done? It didn’t matter. The line between grief and guilt was often a very fine one. As long as the two didn’t paralyze his life, he thought now, there was no reason he couldn’t live with them.
Eventually, the fog enveloping his thoughts began to lift.
“Now we know,” he managed to say.
“Now we know,” Jillian echoed softly.
She wrapped her arms around him. At first, Nick thought he was trembling, but soon he realized that it was she. Jillian pulled away, her hands still on Nick’s shoulders.
“I am so sad and so damn angry,” he said.
“I know what finding Umberto alive meant to you. But you didn’t let him down. Something terrible is going on here-a secret that somebody desperately needed to keep hidden-a secret Belle paid for with her life.”
“Who would have done this?” Nick asked aloud. “It’s hard to believe his death was unexpected. There was no damn cardiac tumor. What we witnessed was an execution-a lethal charade that amounted to the ticket to freedom for Aleem Mohammad. I’ll bet that bastard was thousands of miles away when Umberto died.”
“A very public execution,” Mollender said. “The ultimate witness protection hoax.”
“That’s horrible,” Noreen said.
“Belle must have been unable to let matters lie,” Jillian said. “Maybe she’s the only one who heard and understood what Umberto was screaming. Maybe she said the wrong thing to the wrong person.”
“What we just saw ties Umberto to the Singh Center,” Nick said. “Poor Manny Ferris, too. Maybe Manny was the one who was supposed to be on that operating table, but something about his plastic surgery didn’t work out. They couldn’t make him look enough like Mohammad to pull off the switch.”
“Possible,” Nick said. “If he were partway through a sequence of surgeries, that would explain Manny’s appearance. Listen, I know it’s painful to watch, but we might have missed something important in the initial viewing. I need to watch the operation again and maybe again. You guys don’t have to.”
“I’m in,” Jillian said. “I’m feeling stronger than I have since Belle died.”
“Noreen?” Mollender asked.
“I don’t know what help I could be, and I’m really shaken up,” she replied, “but if the solidarity will help, I’ll try.”
Noreen and Mollender stood beside Nick and Jillian, forming an arc in front of the television. Then they took their seats and Nick pressed Play. Out of the corner of his eye, Nick observed Mollender take hold of Noreen’s hand as the first images of the operating room appeared. They watched the video twice through, until Jillian broke down crying and Nick felt his own eyes begin to well. Finally, Jillian excused herself from the room-to clear her thoughts, she explained. Noreen decided to go with her. Of the four of them, Mollender seemed to be the most composed, although it was clear that he too was affected.
“You okay to see it once more?” Nick asked.
“It’s easier to take if I keep telling myself it’s only a movie.”
This time, at the moment just before Umberto’s death, Nick paused the disc. Using the remote control, he advanced the video a single frame at a time, then back and forward once more.
“Umberto grabs his head here,” Nick said, tapping his finger against the television screen. “It’s as though something erupted in his brain. I haven’t actually witnessed an aneurysm bursting in someone’s head, but a rupture like that is accompanied by a sudden, massive increase in volume within the skull. The victims experience a blinding headache, which he showed signs of having, but he wasn’t vomiting from the huge increase in intracranial pressure. A seizure is typical, too, but he didn’t have one of those either. The whole thing with Umberto took no more than a couple of minutes from beginning to end. I don’t know what else it could have been besides a ruptured aneurysm, but something seems off to me.”
“Are you suggesting that someone might have done this to him?” Mollender asked, just as Jillian and Noreen returned.
“I don’t know. All I keep thinking is that the surgeon could never have been allowed to open Umberto’s heart
