Recalled to Life

Chapter IV

Barker’s shock reaction was violent, instinctive, and brief. He quivered uncontrollably, put his hands to his face, and started to lose his balance. Raymond was right there; he caught him, held him upright for a moment, and released him. Harker wobbled and grinned shamefacedly.

“That’s strong stuff,” he said.

“I’ve got stronger stuff in my office. Come on.”

He and the lab director returned to the adjoining room. Raymond closed the door and clicked it; Lurie and Klaus remained in the lab. Raymond reached into his bookcase, pushed a thick black-bound volume to one side, and withdrew a half-empty bottle of Scotch. He poured a double shot for Harker, a single for himself, and replaced the bottle. Harker swallowed the liquor in two frantic gulps. He gasped, grinned again, and shakily set down the glass. “God. I’m roasting in my own sweat.”

“It isn’t a pleasant sight the first time, I guess. I wish I could share some of your emotional reaction, but I’m blocked out. My dad was a biochemist, specialty life-research. He had me cutting up frogs when I was three. I’m numb to any such reactions by now.”

“Don’t let that trouble you,” Harker said. He shivered. “I could live very happily without seeing another demonstration of your technique, you know.”

Raymond chuckled. “Does that mean you’re convinced we aren’t quacks?”

Harker shrugged. “What you’ve got is incredible. I wonder if I’ve got the voltage needed to handle the job you want me to do.”

“You wouldn’t be here if we didn’t think so.”

“I was fourth on the list,” Harker said. “Lurie told me.”

“You were my personal choice. I was outvoted. But I knew you’d accept and the other three would turn us down without even coming out here to investigate.”

“I haven’t said I’ve accepted,” Harker pointed out.

“Well? Do you?”

Harker was silent for a moment, his mind returning to the impact of the scene he had just witnessed. There was still plenty he had to know, of course: the corporate setup of this lab, including knowledge of the powers that had “outvoted” the director; the financial resources behind him; the possible bugs in the technique.

A dozen implications unfolded. His mind was already at work planning the campaign. He was thinking of people to see, wires to pull, angles to check.

“I accept,” he said quietly.

Raymond smiled and reached into his desk. He handed Harker a check drawn on a Manhattan bank for $2400, payable to James Harker, and signed Simeon Barchet, Treasurer.

“What’s this?”

“That’s four weeks salary, in advance. Barchet’s the trustee who administers the Beller Fund. I had him write the check yesterday. I was pretty confident you’d join us, you see.”

Harker spent a quietly tense weekend at home with his family. He told Lois about the assignment, of course; he never kept things from her, even the most unpleasant. She was dubious, but willing to rely on his judgment.

He worked off some of his physical tension by playing ball in the back yard with his sons. Chris, entering adolescence, was developing an athlete’s grace; seven-year-old Paul did not yet have the coordination needed for catching and throwing a baseball, but he gave it a good try.

On Sunday the four of them drove upstate to a picnic-ground, ate out, even went for a brief swim though it was really too early in the season for that. Harker splashed and laughed with his sons, but there was an essential somberness about him that Lois quietly pointed out.

“I know,” he admitted. “I’m thinking.”

“About the Beller Labs business?”

He nodded. “I keep finding new angles in it. I try to guess what the reaction of the organized churches will be, and what political capital will be made. More likely than not the parties will take opposite stands. Somebody will dig up the fact that I used to be a National Liberal bigwig, and that’ll enter into the situation. After a while it’ll become so confused by side-issues that—” He stopped. “I don’t sound very enthusiastic about this job, do I?”

“No,” Lois said. “You don’t.”

“I guess I really haven’t made up my mind where I stand,” he said. “There are too many tangential things I don’t know about yet.”

“Like what?”

Harker shook his head. “I’m trying not to think about them. This is my day off, remember?”

On Monday he polished off his routine work early, by half-past-ten, and stepped out of his office. He walked down the beige corridor to the door inscribed WILLIAM F. KELLY and knocked.

“Bill? Me, Jim.”

“Come on in, boy.”

Kelly was sitting back of an impeccably clear mahogany desk, looking well-barbered, well-manicured, well-fed. He was the senior partner of the law firm that now called itself Kelly, Harker, Portobello, and Klein. In his late fifties, ruddy-faced, quick-witted, Kelly was by religion a loyal Catholic and by politics a determined maverick.

He said, “How’s the ex-Governor this morning?”

Harker grinned. Kelly was the one man who could not offend him with those words. “A washed-up has-been, as usual. Bill, I’ve got a big offer to do some work for a Jersey outfit. I think it’s going to tie me up for the next few months. I thought I’d let you know.”

Kelly blinked, then grinned, showing even white teeth. “Full-time?”

“Pretty near.”

“How about your pending cases?”

Marker said, “I’m keeping the Bryant case. Fuller and Heidell will have to be handed over to someone else, I’m afraid.”

“I guess you know what you’re doing, Jim. Who’s the big client?”

“Hush-hush. Nice pay, though.”

“Can’t even tell old Bill, eh? Well, I know better than to pry. But how come you’re telling me all this, anyway? I don’t give a damn what work you take on, Jim. You’re a free agent here.”

Calmly Harker said, “I thought I’d let you know because the account’s a controversial one. I want you to realize that I’m doing it on my own hook and not as a member of K.H.P. & K. When and if the boomerang comes around and hits me in the face, I don’t want you and Mike and Phil to get black eyes too.”

Dead seriousness replaced the amiable grin on Kelly’s pink face. “Have I ever backed off a hot item, Jim?”

“You might back off this one.”

Kelly leaned forward and turned on all his considerable personal charm. “Look here, son, I’m a decade older than you are and a damned sight cagier. Maybe you better talk this thing out with me. If you’re free for lunch—”

“I’m not,” Harker said doggedly. “Bill, let’s drop the whole thing. I know what I’m getting into and I didn’t come here for advice. Okay?”

Kelly began to chuckle. “You said the same damn thing the night you were elected Governor. Remember, when you started telling me about how you were going to turn the whole State machine upside-down? I warned you, and I warn you again, but you don’t learn. The only thing that got turned upside-down was you.”

“So I’m a fool. But at least I’m a dedicated fool.”

“That’s the worst kind,” Kelly drawled amiably. As Harker started to leave the older man’s office Kelly added, “Good luck, anyway, on whatever you’re getting your fool feet tangled up in.”

“Thanks, Bill. Sorry I have to be so tight-mouthed.”

On his way back to his office he passed the reception-desk; Joan looked up at him and said, “Oh, Mr. Harker—call just came in for you. Mr. Jonathan Bryant’s on the phone. He’s waiting.”

“Switch it into my office,” Harker told her. His brows contracted. Jonathan? What does that particular vulture want? Harker cut round the desks in the outer office and let himself into his sanctum. He activated the phone. There was the usual three-second circuit-lag, and then the gray haze of electronic “noise” gave way to the fishbelly face of Jonathan Bryant.

“Hello, Harker,” he said abruptly. “Just thought I’d call you up to let you know that I’ve obtained a stay of the hearing on my father’s will. It’s being pushed up from the 16th to the 23rd.”

Harker scowled. “I don’t have any official notice of that fact yet.”

“It’s on its way via court messenger. Just thought I’d let you know about it.”

“Go ahead,” Harker said. “Gloat all you want, if it gives you pleasure. Your father’s will is unbreakable, and you know it damn well. All this stalling—”

“Legal delay,” Jonathan corrected.

“All this stalling is just a waste of everybody’s time. Sure, I know you’re hoping the old man will die before the hearing, but I assure you that can’t influence the outcome. If you’re that anxious to collect, stop obtaining postponements and just pull the old man’s feeding-plugs out. It’ll save a lot of heartache for all of us, him included.”

“Harker, you lousy politico, you should have been debarred twenty years ago.”

“The word you want to use is disbarred,” Harker said coldly. “Suppose you get off my line and stop bothering me now? I’d call you a filthy jackal except that I’m too busy for slander suits just now, even suits that I’d win.”

Angrily he snapped off contact and the screen blanked. Nuisance, he thought, referring both to Jonathan and to the postponement of the hearing. He didn’t seriously believe that the Bryant heirs were going to upset the old man’s will, and the quicker he got the case off his personal docket the faster he would be free for full-time work on the Beller Labs account.

He took a doodlepad from his desk and scrawled three names on it:

Winstead.

Thurman.

Msgnr. Carteret.

Leo Winstead was the man who had succeeded him in the Governor’s mansion in Albany—a steady, reliable National Liberal party-line man, flexible and open in his views but loyal to the good old machine. He would be one of the first men Barker would have to see; Winstead would give him the probable Nat-Lib party-line on the resurrection gimmick, and he could be trusted to keep things to himself until given the official release.

Clyde Thurman was New York’s senior Senator, a formidable old ogre of a man with incalculable influence in Washington. Harker had been a Thurman protege, fifteen years ago; publicly old Clyde had soured on Harker since his futile attempt at political independence, but Harker had no idea where the old man stood privately. If he could win Thurman over to his side, Senate approval of revivification legislation was a good bet. The Nat-Libs controlled 53 seats in the 123rd Congress; the American-Conservatives held only 45, with the other two seats held down by self-proclaimed Independents. In the House, it was even better: 297 to 223, with twenty Independents of variable predictability.

Harker’s third key man was Monseigneur Carteret. The Father was a highly-respected member of New York’s Catholic hierarchy, shrewd and liberal in his beliefs, and already (at the age of 38) considered a likely candidate for an Archepiscopacy and beyond that the red hat.

Harker had met Father Carteret through Kelly. While he was no Catholic himself, nor currently a member of any other organized group, Harker had struck up a close friendship with the priest. He could rely on Carteret to give him an accurate and confidential appraisal of the possible Church reaction to announcement of a successful technique for resuscitating the dead.

Harker ripped the sheet off the doodlepad and pocketed it. He hung poised over his desk, deep in thought, his active mind already picturing the interviews he might be having with these people.

After a moment he reached for his phone and punched out the coordinates of Father Carteret’s private number. Might as well begin with him, Harker thought.

A pleasantly monkish face appeared on the screen after several rings. “Yes? May I help you?”

“I’d like to speak to Father Carteret, please. My name is James Harker.”

“Pardon, Mr. Harker. Father Carteret is in conference with Bishop O’Loughlin. Would you care to have him call you when he’s free?”

“When will that be?”

“A half hour, I’d say. Is your matter urgent? ”

“Reasonably. Tell the Monseigneur I’d like to make an appointment to see him some time today or tomorrow, and ask him to call me at my office.”

“Does he have your number?”

“I think so. But you’d better take it anyway, just to make sure. MON-4-38162.”

He blanked the screen, waited a moment, and dialed the number Raymond had given him to use when calling the Laboratory. The pale, goggle-eyed face of David Klaus appeared on the screen.

“I’d like to talk to Raymond.”

“Dr. Raymond’s busy in the hormone lab,” Klaus said sharply. “Try again in an hour or so.”

Harker frowned impatiently; he had taken an immediate dislike to this jittery little enzyme researcher. He said, “You tell Raymond—”

“Just a minute,” a new voice said. There was confusion on the screen for an instant; then Klaus’ face disappeared and the precise, tranquil features of Martin Raymond took their place.

“I thought you were busy in the hormone lab,” Harker said. “Klaus told me so.”

Raymond laughed without much humor behind it. “Klaus is frequently inaccurate, Mr. Harker. What’s on your mind?”

“Thought I’d let you know that I’m getting down to immediate operation. I’m lining up interviews with key people for today and tomorrow as a preliminary investigation of your legal situation.”

“Good. By the way—Mitchison’s prepared some publicity handouts on the process. He wants you to okay them before we send them to the papers.”

Harker repressed a strangled cough. “Okay them? Listen, Mart, that’s exactly why I called. My first official instruction is that the present wrap of ultra-security is to continue unabated until I’m ready to lift it. Tell that to Mitchison and tell him in spades.”

Raymond smiled evenly. “Of course—Jim. All secrecy wraps on until you give the word. I’ll let Mitchison know.”

“Good. I’ll be out at the lab sometime between here and Wednesday to find out some further information. I’ll keep in touch whenever I can.”

“Right.”

Marker broke contact and stared puzzledly at the tips of his fingers for a moment. His uneasiness widened. His original suspicion that behind the smooth facade of the Beller Research Laboratories lay possible dissension was heightened by Klaus’ peculiar behavior on the phone—and the idea of Mitchison doing anything as premature as sending out press handouts now, before the ground had been surveyed and the ice broken, gave him the cold running shudders.

It was going to be enough of a job putting this thing across as it was—without tripping over the outstretched toes of his employers.