to operate because he didn’t have anything wrong with it. No tumor. Nothing. If their plan was to have it look like Aleem Mohammad died on the table, it had to happen before his actual operation. That means someone had control of the situation the whole time.” Nick turned to Jillian. “I think Umberto was killed right there. It looks like an aneurysm, but I don’t believe it was. Someone did something to him-to his brain. Otherwise, they would have operated on his heart and found no tumor.”
“But what about the tests?”
“Tests can be faked. The surgeon could have been brought in to do the case on the basis of someone else’s MRI. The people who did this are no amateurs, and I would bet they have technology available to them that the average man or even doctor knows nothing about.”
“So, who do you think is responsible?”
Nick’s anger was pulsing through him now, driving his thoughts. Pieces of the mystery surrounding Umberto were falling into place almost too rapidly for him to integrate them.
“You mean what person is responsible,” he said. “Or what government agency with three letters beginning with a
“Noreen,” Nick asked, more energized perhaps than at any time since Sarah’s death, “do you have a large piece of paper and something to write with?”
She left the room, returning moments later with a flip chart and several markers. Freezing the list of those in the OR, Nick transcribed it to the flip chart in a two-column format.
“What are you doing?” Jillian asked.
“These are the people who were in the OR that day. I noticed something on that last viewing, but I need to confirm it first. Jillian, I have to play some of the video again.”
“It’s okay. I can handle it.”
He located a shot that contained a full view of the room.
“There are ten people in the OR, not counting the patient,” Nick said. “There are nine names on this chart. I noticed the tenth man when he helped wheel Umberto in. There were two of them, actually. One left, and he stayed.”
“I remember,” the Mole said. “The one who left was quite a bit taller.”
“Exactly. I thought maybe the two of them, or at least this guy, were from security. That made sense at the time. But take your eyes off of Umberto and keep them fixed on the tenth man.”
Once again, Nick had the strange feeling of having seen the heavyset man before. He appeared quite a bit in the view from the camera above the foot of the narrow table. Not once during the terrible commotion surrounding Umberto’s death did he move from his spot-not so much as an inch to get a better vantage point or to help. This time through, Nick also noticed that, unlike Belle, the medical student, the perfusionist, or the anesthesiologist, the tenth man was wearing a surgical gown. In addition, he kept his hands inside the gown throughout the grisly ordeal.
Nick’s pulse was hammering. He ran the DVD again, and then once more. His eyes remained fixed on the man. At the instant the team finished transferring Umberto from the gurney to the operating table, Nick paused the playback, backed up a few frames, and then walked it forward again, his focus intensifying with each advance.
“There!” Nick exclaimed. “Did you see it? His hands stay underneath his surgical gown while Umberto is going through whatever it was that killed him. And look at his eyes. He is like dead calm.”
“You think he has some sort of device under there?” Mollender asked. “Something that could fry Umberto’s brain or burst an artery?”
“Maybe they had implanted some sort of radio receiver in there. Poor Umberto had multiple procedures done at the Singh Center. One of them certainly could have been that.”
For a time, there was only silence as each of the other three-Mollender, Noreen, and Jillian-mulled over the awesome possibilities. Finally, Jillian spoke.
“So, why did they kill Belle?” she asked in a near whisper.
Again there was silence. Then the color drained from Nick’s face.
“Oh, God,” he breathed.
“What?”
“Belle wasn’t the only one who heard Umberto. She may not have been the only one who could understand that he was speaking Spanish in addition to his Arabic.”
“What are you suggesting?”
“We’re assuming that Belle was murdered because she said something to the wrong person. What if she wasn’t the only one who spoke up? What if it’s not just Belle they killed?”
Noreen took a few steps backward.
“I’m not sure I can handle this anymore,” she said. “Do we need to call the police?”
“I don’t know yet,” Nick said. “But I do know we need your help, Noreen. If Belle is the only one who has died, then I’m way off base. But we need to check on the rest of the people on that flip chart.”
Noreen was beginning to hyperventilate.
“Look around,” she exclaimed. “There are reasons I work with computers and not people.”
Mollender took Noreen by the hand and walked over to her desk, where she had two computers already set up and running.
“We’ll do this together,” he said. “Noreen, I’ll work off your laptop, you take the desktop. We’ll start searching each of the names on the Web and see what comes up.”
“I’m scared, Saul.”
“We need to do this. Lives may be at stake. Nick, listen, in addition to the other nine who were in the OR, maybe you should put down Annette Furst, the video editor who works for me. She’s very much alive. I saw her yesterday.”
“That might be a good sign. Maybe I’m completely off base here. Or maybe they just haven’t thought to include her. They make mistakes all the time. Cover-up is their middle name.”
“All right.”
“Okay. Start with the surgeons,” Nick directed them. “Saul, take Spielmann, and Noreen, look up what you can on Leonard.”
Noreen sat in her chair, while Mollender had to hunch over the desk to access the laptop. They both opened Web browsers and in near synchronized movements began scouring the Internet. Mollender struck first.
“Jesus!” he exclaimed. “Spielmann’s dead. She died just a couple of weeks ago in her apartment in New York, apparently from an anaphylactic reaction to a bee sting.”
“I think I just found something on Leonard,” Noreen added a few minutes later. “This is just too freaky. I think I might get sick. Leonard was riding his motorcycle when he was killed in a collision with a tractor-trailer. According to this report in the
“It could have been an accident,” Jillian said.
“Or somebody could have sabotaged his motorcycle,” Nick countered. “Keep going.”
Another tense minute passed. The only sound in Noreen’s office was of fingers tapping on keyboards. Nick added the location of each person’s death next to their names. Chicago. New York. North Carolina. There was no
