They were out of the danger zone. He ran his hands over his own fit, lean body, checking for traces of the fluids of coitus. Not that Helen ever got close enough to him to smell another woman on his person, but even so. He was always meticulous about hygiene. Came from being a surgeon, no doubt. He ignored Diana’s complaining and went into the adjoining bathroom.
Strange, he thought, as he set the shower running, how an isolated incident could change a man’s life. One turn to the right or left affected one’s destiny forever. What was happening now had started at a medical convention in Paris, when he was an emerging thoracic surgeon with several brilliant successes to his name. He went out to sample Parisian nightlife, relieved to be away from Helen’s moods and headaches and the constant noise and chaos of his young daughters.
His adventures on that dreamy night had been lubricated by large quantities of alcohol and cocaine, and extravagant sums of money. He’d ended up in a luxurious apartment, entertained until dawn by two beautiful and uninhibited Parisiennes. He’d awakened in the rumpled bed, sticky with sex. Head throbbing.
A tidy, graying man with a pinstriped suit and an English accent was sitting by the bed, waiting for Richard’s eyes to open. He introduced himself as Nigel Dobbs.
It had taken a long, disoriented moment for the reason for the unusual stickiness to sink in.
Blood against the white sheets. He turned, looked. Gaped.
The girls’ wrists had been tied to the posts of the wooden bed. Their throats had been cut. They sprawled, naked, eyes wide and staring. Blood, everywhere. The room was doused with it.
It had felt like a dream. He blinked gummy eyelids, staring from Dobbs back to the girls, as a business proposal was made to him.
He had been very startled, but he had remained cool. His brain had always been that way, functioning superbly in situations that others would consider high stress. Compartmentalized. He would have been a good commander on the battlefield, he had often mused.
On the one hand, he was angry at being manipulated. On the other, he was fascinated to observe his own reactions to this shocking tableau. Amid the constant white noise of daily life, a man seldom got a chance to peer into the depths of his own soul. And what, after all, could possibly be more fascinating than the depths of his own soul?
Nigel Dobbs laid out the situation in a cool, clipped voice, as if they were in a boardroom, not an abbatoir. A wealthy Ukrainian businessman who had to remain nameless was suffering from an acute heart condition. He wanted an immediate transplant. He wanted the surgery conducted by the celebrated young surgeon Dr. Mathes. Cost was immaterial.
Mathes told Dobbs that money was not the issue so much as the availability of a healthy and well matched organ, thinking that he knew exactly fuck-all about how organ donation was organized in the Ukraine—
“Not a problem, Doctor. The tissue typing has already been done.” The man’s tight mouth twisted in a thin, smug smile. “We have a number of potential donors. You need not trouble yourself about that.”
“But how…but that’s not…but you can’t just…”
A number of potential donors? Richard had floundered, until the truth sank in. And the bottom of the world fell away, to an abyss of nameless possibilities that made his soul quail.
And his pulse quicken.
Nigel Dobbs studied Richard’s face with neutral gray eyes for a long moment and nodded, as if Richard had passed a test.
“Anything is possible, Doctor. For a price. And while we are on that subject, my client will make available to you the sum of five million American dollars in a numbered Swiss account, as a thank you gift. In the event of a happy outcome, of course.”
“And if something goes wrong?”
Nigel Dobbs smiled again. “An unhappy outcome is not an option my client is willing to consider,” he said gently. “That’s why he wants you. Your reputation is that of a miracle worker. He has studied you, Doctor. Every detail of your life. Your wife and your little girls as well. Lovely creatures. My client wishes to convey his compliments, and his best wishes for their continued health and happiness.”
That veiled threat had gotten his attention. Another, deeper peek into that shadowy cavern. He had always loved a gamble.
He’d been perversely glad for the threat to Helen and the girls. It gave him a face-saving excuse for saying yes. Indeed, how could he not?
The odds were bad. The man’s body was probably rotted by a lifetime of excess. It would be against his Hippocratic oath, and every sane principle.
Ultimately, that did not dissuade him in the least. Neither did the slaughtered Parisian girls. Nor was the issue decided by money. Being chosen had stroked his vanity, but he had daily opportunities to have his ego stroked.
He’d done it for the thrill. He’d never felt one so strong. That morning, lying in that blood-soaked bed, the thought of what he was going to do had burned through his body and mind, dispelling his hangover like sun on fog.
It made him feel invincible. The high stakes, the secrecy, the risk. Unspeakable acts. Unaskable questions. It lit him up inside.
He’d felt that thrill again the day he replaced the diseased organ of his mysterious patient with a beautiful, healthy young heart of unknown provenance.
Some months later, there had been another call. A business associate of his previous patient had a newborn infant daughter with an irreparable heart defect. A rush job, as the child was dying.
Richard had cleared his schedule, leaped on a plane. He had not asked where the tiny donated heart had come from. Another rush of euphoria. Another five million dollars in the numbered account.
The money had been nice. He had been a relatively wealthy man before, but as Diana liked to point out, fondling her sapphire and diamond bracelet, there was wealthy and there was wealthy.
That child was now a healthy, thriving six-year-old. If Richard had needed to soothe his conscience, that would have been enough.
But oddly, he did not. At some point, that euphoria had burned away the part of him that pondered ethics. He did not miss it. Life was exquisitely simple without it. More profitable, too.
In fact, he reflected as he toweled himself off, he’d never had much of a conscience to begin with. Morals were artificial. Notions culturally superimposed upon persons at a tender age, who had no idea they were being mind-fucked into being docile doormats. At the service of other people. Tormented by guilt, self-doubt. Not him.
And this Sunday, he would meet with someone who could supply him with a constant supply of his favorite thrill. People would sell their souls to cheat death, for themselves, their spouses, their children.
Dr. Richard Mathes found souls very appetizing.
When he came out, Diana was at her vanity, brushing her hair. He could tell from the glitter in her eyes that she was angry.
“He wants to look over his investment?” she said. “Check your teeth, look over your pedigree? Put you through your paces?”
He opened her closet, took out a starched white shirt. He knew exactly where
