Ancient Echoes

CHAPTER 20



New York City

JENNIFER VANDENBURG STOOD at the window of her corner office on the PLP building’s forty-third floor, and looked out over Central Park. The lights of the city burned bright. She found Manhattan more beautiful at night than during the day.

She should have been home now, but she couldn’t face being there. She couldn’t face her own daughter.

Vandenburg had achieved much in her life, more than she ever thought possible. Now, if she could succeed once more, she would finally be happy.

She glanced at the clock. Her visitor was late.

The phone rang, startling her. On her personal line was the investigator employed by PLP’s lobbying firm in Washington D.C.

“We found a student in Lionel Rempart's condo gathering information,” the private eye announced without introduction.

“Did you check him out?” she asked, irritated at the bizarre intrusion.

“So far, all we know is his I.D. was a fake. We’re working on finding out more.”

She didn’t like the response, but she could do little about it. “Keep me posted.” She hung up.

When Rempart and his students dropped off the face of the earth in Idaho, she immediately suspected him of something underhanded. He might have found the book and decided to keep it, or had gotten sick of the hardships of life trekking around the woods. She had his home watched in case he went back there for something, such as his passport. Her plan depended on him being a reputable anthropologist, and he had taken her money. But she still didn’t trust him.

If he couldn’t be found in Idaho, and he hadn’t snuck back home, where was he? Had something truly happened to him and the students?

A tentative knock on the door, the one she had been waiting for, interrupted her thoughts. “Come in.”

Milt Zonovich, Phaylor-Laine's first vice president, entered. He was a small man, with short gray hair, horned-rimmed glasses, and a nervous habit of excessive blinking.

Zonovich had hoped to get the CEO position ten years ago, but it went instead to the young Jennifer Vandenburg after she'd resurrected a chain of home improvement stores from the doldrums into one of the country's top retail businesses. She'd campaigned hard for the position and eventually the executive board offered her a fortune to make sure that Phaylor-Laine maintained its hold as the world's premier pharmaceutical company, despite numerous lawsuits stemming from side effects from the latest “super-drugs” that do everything short of curing the common cold, but have an unfortunate tendency to be fatal to a small number of the population.

Cure or kill...that was the question in twenty-first century medicine.

So far, Vandenburg had managed to keep the Phaylor-Laine name surprisingly positive in the mainstream press.

That didn't mean, however, that Zonovich either liked or respected her.

“Milt, thank you for joining me. Would you like a drink?”

He looked at the well-stocked bar against the wall, and his lips thirstily rubbed together before he forced himself to say, “No, thanks.”

They sat on the sofa, one at each end. “Fifteen years ago,” she launched directly into her reason for calling him, “the company began an inquiry into an ancient text on alchemy. Do you know about that?”

Surprise flickered across Zonovich’s face.

Blink. Blink. “Yes. It was Calvin Phaylor’s idea,” he explained, then nervously bit his bottom lip before continuing. “He had interest in many strange things he thought might provide possible pharmacological breakthroughs. It was a lark, nothing more. I think he hoped to spend some time in Idaho at company expense. He loved sports fishing, salmon, steelhead—”

“I’m curious about a team sent into the area,” she interrupted. “The reports don’t say what happened to them. That troubles me.”

His blinking sped up and he rubbed his chin. “Kohler. Thad Kohler. He led the group. They were supposed to be experts. All ex-military. Supposed to know how to take care of themselves in the wilds.” He stopped speaking suddenly.

“I'm surprised you remember his name after all these years,” she said. She not only knew about Kohler, but knew the others’ names as well: Ben Olgerbee, Will Durham, Gus Webber, Sam Black, Arnie Tieg.

“I remember only because the whole thing turned so very bizarre,” Zonovich exclaimed, his voice too high now. “We never heard back from them. We made inquiries, did some searches. We couldn't do too much in the way of publicizing our activity—we didn't exactly want our stockholders to know that PLP paid to investigate alchemy.” He laughed nervously.

Vandenburg didn't join in.

“The money we paid Kohler”—blink, blink, blink—“had been distributed by him to his team before they left. Some of the families made a fuss when the men didn't come home, but we pointed out that they were paid by PLP for work that wasn't, as best as we knew, accomplished. We compensated them out of the goodness of our hearts, I might add, and simply asked that they remained silent. There's not much more I can tell you.”

“Was there any follow-up? Were all six men truly lost out there?”

“I'm sorry to say Mr. Phaylor wasted quite a few resources trying to find those men. As far as we could tell there was never any trace of them. Not anywhere.” Beads of perspiration appeared on Zonovich’s forehead. “How did you find out about all this?”

Did the idiot really think she would tell him? “Thank you, Milt,” she said. “You've been most helpful.”

“You aren't thinking of reopening that inquiry now, are you?” He glanced longingly at the scotch on the wet bar. “It's all nonsense, but with us pushing to get the FDA to approve our new 'healthy bones for all women drug,' rather than targeting only the post-menopausal group, we don't want to do anything to make them look askance at us. That pill will make us tens of billions of dollars. With no competition.”

“Yes, I know,” she said, trying to keep the bitterness from her voice. She had pushed the concept, trying to get the numbskulls in R&D to come up with something that would undo the damage Felicia's bones had suffered. All they developed was a way to maintain strength and suppleness in already healthy bones, not repair damage to weak ones. PLP would make it so that taking one little pill every day would enable thirty-year old women to bounce up from falls like eight-year olds. Unfortunately, it also had a tendency to destroy their livers.

She walked to her door and opened it. “Good-day, Milt.”

He quickly exited.