Time Bomb And Zahndry Others

The President's Doll

It started—or at least my involvement in the case started—as a brief but nasty behind-the-scenes battle between the Washington Police and the Secret Service over jurisdiction. The brief part I was witness to: I was at my desk, attention split between lunch and a jewelry recovery report, when Agent William Maxwell went into Captain Forsythe's office; and I was still on the same report when they came out. The nasty part I didn't actually see, but the all-too-familiar glint in Forsythe's eyes was only just beginning to fade as he and Maxwell left the office and started across the crowded squad room. I noted the glint, and Maxwell's set jaw, and said a brief prayer for whoever the poor sucker was who would have to follow Forsythe's act.

So of course they came straight over to me.

"Detective Harland; Secret Service Agent Maxwell," Forsythe introduced us with his customary eloquence. "You're assigned as of right now to a burglary case; Maxwell will give you the details." And with that, he turned on his heel and strode back to his office.

For a second Maxwell and I eyed each other in somewhat awkward silence. "Burglary?" I prompted at last, expecting him to pick up on the part of the question I wasn't asking.

He did, and his tight lips compressed a fraction more. "A very special burglary. Something belonging to President Thompson. All I really need from you is access to the police files on—"

"Stolen from the White House?" I asked, feeling my eyebrows rise.

"No, the doll was—" He broke off, glancing around at the desks crowding around us. None of the officers there were paying the least bit of attention to us, but I guess Maxwell didn't know that. Or else mild paranoia just naturally came with his job. "Is there some place a little more private where we can go and talk?" he asked.

"Sure," I said, getting to my feet and snaring my coat from the chair back as I took a last bite from my sandwich. "My car. We can talk on the way to the scene of the crime."

I was very restrained. I got us downstairs, into the car, and out into Washington traffic before I finally broke down. "Did you refer to this burglared item as a 'doll'?" I asked.

Maxwell sighed. "Yes, I did," he admitted. "But it's not what you're thinking. The President's doll is—" He broke off, swearing under his breath. "You weren't supposed to know about this, Harland—none of you were. There's no reason for you to be in on this at all; it's a Secret Service matter, pure and simple. Left at the next light."

"Apparently Captain Forsythe thought differently. He gets like that sometimes—very insistent on having a hand in everything that happens in this town." I reached the intersection and made the turn.

"Yeah, well, this one is none of his business, and I'd have taken him right down on the mat if time wasn't so damn critical." Maxwell hissed through his teeth.

"So what files do you need?" I asked after a minute. "Professional burglars or safecrackers?"

He glanced over at me. "Nice guess," he conceded. "Probably both. We've checked over security at the—office—and it took a real expert to get in the way he did."

"Whose office?"

"Pak and Christophe. Doctors Sam and Pierre, respectively."

"Medical doctors?"

"They say yes. I say—" Maxwell shook his head. "Look, do me a favor; hold off on any more questions until we get there, okay? They're the only ones who can explain their setup. Or at least the only ones who can explain it so that you might actually believe it."

I blinked. "Uh..."

"Right at the next light."

Gritting my teeth, I sat on my curiosity and concentrated on my driving.

—

Dr. Sam Pak was a short, intense second generation Chinese-American. Dr. Pierre Christophe was a tall, equally intense first generation Haitian. Pak's specialty was obvious; the lettering on their office door proclaimed it to be the Pak-Christophe Acupuncture Clinic. It wasn't until the two doctors led us to the back room and opened the walk-in vault there that I found out just what it was Christophe supplied to the partnership.

Believing it was another matter entirely.

"I don't believe it," I said, staring at the dozen or so row planters lining the shelves of the vault. Stuck knee deep into the planters' dirt were rows of the ugliest wax figures I'd ever seen. Figurines with bits of hair and fingernail stuck on and into them... "I don't believe it," I repeated, "Voodoo acupuncture?"

"It is not that difficult to understand," Christophe said in the careful tones and faint accent of one who'd learned English as a second language. "I might even say it is a natural outgrowth of the science of acupuncture. If—"

"Pierre," Pak interrupted him. "I don't think Detective Harland came here to hear about medical philosophy."

"Forgive me," Christophe said, ducking his head. "I am very serious about my work here—"

"Pierre," Pak said. Christophe ducked his head again and shut up.

I sighed. "Okay, I'll bite. Just how is this supposed to work?"

"You're probably familiar with at least the basics of acupuncture," Pak said, reaching into the vault to pluck out one of the wax dolls from its dirt footbath. "Thin needles placed into various nerve centers can heal a vast number of diseases and alleviate the pain from others." His face cracked in a tight smile. "From your reaction, I'd guess you also know a little about voodoo."

"Just what I've seen in bad movies," I told him. "The dead chickens were always my favorite part." Christophe made some sort of disgusted noise in the back of his throat; I ignored him. "Let me guess: instead of sticking the acupuncture needles into the patient himself, you just poke them into his or her doll?"

"Exactly." Pak indicated the hair and fingernail clippings on the doll he was holding. "Despite the impression Hollywood probably gave you, there does seem to be a science behind voodoo. It's just that most of the practitioners never bother to learn it."

I looked over at Maxwell, who was looking simultaneously worried, tense, and embarrassed. "And you're telling me the President of the United States is involved in something this nutzoid?"

He pursed his lips. "He has some pains on occasion, especially when he's under abnormal stress. Normal acupuncture was effective in controlling that pain, but it was proving something of a hassle to keep sneaking Dr. Pak into the White House."

" 'Sneaking'?"

He reddened. "Come on, Harland—you watch the news. Half of Danzing's jibes are aimed at the state of the President's health."

And whether or not he was really up to a second term. Senator Danzing had played that tune almost constantly since the campaign started, and would almost certainly be playing it again at their first official debate tonight in Baltimore. And with the election itself only two months away... "So when the possibility opened up of getting his treatments by remote control, he jumped at it with both feet, huh?" I commented. "I can just see what Danzing would do with something like this."

"He couldn't do a thing," Maxwell growled. "What's he going to do, go on TV and accuse the President of dealing in voodoo? Face it—he'd be laughed right off the stage, probably lose every scrap of credibility he has right then and there. Even if he got the media interested enough to dig out the facts, he'd almost certainly still wind up hurting himself more than he would the President."

"He could still make Thompson look pretty gullible, though," I said bluntly. "Not to mention reckless."

"This wasn't exactly done on a whim," Maxwell said stiffly. "Drs. Pak and Christophe have been working on this technique for several years—these dolls right here represent their sixth testing phase over a period of at least eighteen months."

I looked at the dolls in their planters. "I can hardly wait to see the ads when they have their grand opening."

Maxwell ignored the comment. "The point is that they've been successful in ninety-five-plus percent of the cases where plain acupuncture was already working—those figures courtesy of the FBI and FDA people we had quietly check this out. Whatever else you might think of the whole thing, the President didn't go into it without our okay."

I glanced at the tight muscles in his cheek. "Your okay, but not your enthusiasm?" I ventured.

He gritted his teeth. "The President wanted to do it," he growled. "We obey his orders, not the other way around. Besides, the general consensus was that, crazy or not, if the treatment didn't help him it also probably wouldn't hurt him."

I looked at Pak and Christophe, standing quietly by trying not to look offended. "Did it help?"

"Of course it did," Christophe said, sounding a little hurt. "The technique itself is perfectly straightforward—"

"Yeah. Right." I turned back to Maxwell. "So what's the problem? Either Dr. Pak moves into the White House until after the dust of the election has settled, or else Dr. Christophe goes ahead and makes Thompson a new doll. Surely he can spare another set of fingernail clippings—he can probably even afford to give up the extra hair."

"You miss the point," Maxwell grated. "It's not the President's pain treatments we're worried about."

"Then what—?"

"You mean you have forgotten," Christophe put in, "how voodoo dolls were originally used?"

I looked at the doll still in Pak's hand. "Oh, hell," I said quietly.

—

"Our theory is that it is the protein signature in the hair and nail clippings that, so to speak, forms the connection between the doll and the subject," Christophe said, gesturing broadly at the dolls in the vault. "Once that connection is made, what happens to the doll is duplicated in what happens to the subject."

I gnawed at my lip. "Well... these dolls were made specifically for medical purposes, right? Is there anything about their design that would make it impossible to use them for attack purposes? Or even to limit the amount of damage they could do?"

Christophe's brow furrowed. "It is an interesting question. There was certainly no malice involved in their creation, which may be a factor. But whether some other person could so bend them to that purpose—"

"If you don't know," I interrupted brusquely, "just say so."

"I do not know," he said, looking a little hurt.

"What's all this dirt for?" Maxwell asked, poking a finger experimentally into one of the row planters.

"Ah!" Christophe said, perking up. "That is our true crowning achievement, Mr. Maxwell—the discovery that it is the soil of Haiti that is the true source of voodoo power."

"You're kidding," I said.

"No, it's true," Pak put in. "A doll that's taken away from Haiti soon loses its potency. Having them in Haitian soil seems to keep them working indefinitely."

"Or in other words, the doll they stole will eventually run out of steam," I nodded. "How soon before that happens? A few hours? Days?"

"I expect it'd be measured in terms of a few weeks, maybe longer. I don't think we've ever gotten around to properly experimenting with—"

"If you don't know," I growled, "just say so."

"I don't know."

I looked at Maxwell. "Well, that's something, anyway. If it takes our thief long enough to figure out what he's got, it won't do him any good."

"Oh, he knows what he's got, all right," Maxwell said grimly. "Unless you really think he just grabbed that one by accident?"

"I suppose not," I sighed, glancing back at the rows of figurines. None of the others showed evidence of even having been touched, let alone considered for theft. "Dr. Christophe... is there anything like a—well, a range for this... effect of yours? In other words, does the President have to be within five miles, say, of the doll before anything will happen?"

Christophe and Pak exchanged looks. "We've treated patients who were as far as a hundred miles away," Pak said. "In fact—yes. I believe President Thompson himself was on a campaign trip in Omaha two months ago when we treated a stomach cramp."

Omaha. Great. If this nonsensical, unreal effect could reach a thousand miles across country, the thief could be anywhere.

Maxwell apparently followed my train of thought. "Looks like I was right—our best bet is to try and narrow down the possibilities."

I nodded, eyeing the vault door. This wasn't some cheap chain lock substitute Pak and Christophe had here—only a genuine professional would have the know-how to get into it. "Alarm systems?" I asked.

"I've got the parameters," Maxwell said before either of the others could speak. "You think I've proved sufficient urgency now for us to head back and dig into your files?"

The President's life, threatened by the melding of two pseudosciences that no one in his right mind could possibly believe in... except maybe that the combination happened to work. "Yeah, I think you've got a case," I admitted. "How's the President taking it?"

Maxwell hesitated a fraction too long. "He's doing fine," he said.

I cocked my eyebrow at him. "Really?" I asked pointedly.

His jaw clenched momentarily. "Actually... I'm not sure he's been told yet. There's nothing he can do, and we don't want to... you know."

Stir up psychosomatic trouble, I finished silently for him. Made as much sense as any of the rest of it, I supposed—

"Wait a second," I interrupted my own thought. "I remember reading once that for acupuncture to work the subject has to believe in it, at least a little. Doesn't the same apply to voodoo?"

Christophe drew himself up to his full height. "Mr. Harland," he said stiffly, "we are not dealing with fantasies and legends here. Our method is a fully medical, fully scientific treatment of the patient, and whatever he believes or does not believe matters but little."

Maxwell looked at Pak. "You agree with that, Doctor?"

Pak pursed his lips. "There's some element of belief in it, sure," he conceded. "But what area of medicine doesn't have that? The whole double-blind/placebo approach to drug testing shows—"

"Fine, fine," Maxwell cut him off. "I suppose it doesn't matter, anyway. If the President has enough belief to get benefit out of it, he probably has enough to get hurt, too."

Pak swallowed visibly. "Mr. Maxwell... look, we're really sorry about all this. Is there anything at all we can do to help?"

Maxwell glanced at me. "You think of anything?"

I looked past him at the rows of dolls. There was still a heavy aura of unreality hanging over this whole thing.... With an effort I forced myself back to business. "I presume your people already checked for fingerprints?"

"In the entryway, on the windows, on the vault itself, and also on the file cabinet where the records are kept. We're assuming that's how the thief knew which doll was the President's."

"In that case—" I shrugged. "I guess it's time to get back to the station and warm up the computer. So unless you two know of a antidote to—"

I broke off as, for some reason, a train of thought I'd been sidetracked from earlier suddenly reappeared. "Something?" Maxwell prompted.

"Dr. Christophe," I said slowly, "what would happen if a given patient had two dolls linked to him? And different things were done to each one?"

Christophe nodded eagerly. "Yes—I had the exact same thought myself. If Sam's acupuncture can counteract any damage done through the stolen doll—" He looked at Pak. "Certainly you can do it?"

Pak's forehead creased in a frown. "It's a nice thought, Pierre, but I'm not at all sure I can do it. If the dolls are both running the same strength—"

"But they won't be," Maxwell interrupted him. "The Haitian dirt, remember? You can keep yours stuck up to its knees in the stuff, while theirs will gradually be losing power." He shook his head abruptly. "I can't believe I'm actually talking like this," he muttered. "Anyway, it's our best shot until we get the first doll back. I'm going to phone for a car—have all the stuff you'll need ready in fifteen minutes, okay?"

"Wait a second," Pak objected. "Where are we going?"

"The White House, of course," Maxwell told him. "Well, Baltimore, actually—the President's there right now getting ready for the debate tonight. I want you to be right there with him in case an attack is made."

"But the doll will work—"

"I'm not talking about the damn doll—I'm talking about the problem of communications lag. If the President has to tell someone where it hurts and then they have to call you from Baltimore or the White House and then you have to get the doll out and treat it and ask over the phone whether it's doing any good—" He broke off. "What am I explaining all of this for? You're going to be with the President for the next few days and that's that. As material witnesses, if nothing else."

He hadn't a hope of getting that one to stick, and he and I both knew it. But Pak and Christophe apparently didn't. Or else they were feeling responsible enough that they weren't in any mood to be awkward. Whichever, by the time Maxwell got his connection through to the White House they'd both headed off to collect their materials and equipment, and by the time the car arrived ten minutes later they were ready to go. Maxwell gave the driver directions, and as they drove off he and I got back in my car and returned to the station.

—

"Well, there you have it," I sighed, leaning back in my chair and waving at the printout. "Your likeliest suspects. Take your pick."

Maxwell said a particularly obscene word and hefted the stack of paper. "I don't suppose there's a chance we missed any helpful criteria, is there?"

I shrugged. "You sat there and watched me feed it all in. Expert safecracker, equally proficient with fancy vaults and fancy electronic alarm systems, not dead, not in jail, et cetera, et cetera."

He shook his head. "It'll take days to sort through these."

"Longer than that to track all of them down," I agreed. "Any ideas you've got, I'll take them."

He gnawed at the end of a pencil. "What about cross-referencing with our hate mail file? Surely no ordinary thief would have any interest in killing President Thompson."

"Fine—but most of your hate-mail people aren't going to know about the President's doll in the first place. We'd do better to try and find a leak from either the White House or Pak and Christophe's place."

"We're already doing that," he said grimly. "Also checking with the CIA regarding foreign intelligence services and terrorist organizations. These guys—" he tapped the printout—"were more of a long shot, but we couldn't afford to pass it up."

"Nice to occasionally be included in what's going on," I murmured. "How's the President?"

"As of ten minutes ago he was fine." Maxwell had been calling at roughly fifteen minute intervals, despite the fact that the Baltimore Secret Service contingent had my phone number and had promised to let us know immediately if anything happened.

"Well, that's something, anyway." I glanced at my watch. It was nearly four o'clock; two and a half hours since we'd left the voodoo acupuncture clinic and maybe as many as sixteen since the doll had been stolen.

And something here was not quite right. "Maxwell, don't take this the wrong way... but what the hell is he waiting for?"

"Who, the thief?"

"Yeah." I chewed at my lip. "Think about it a minute. We assume he knows what he has and that he went in deliberately looking for it. So why wait to use it?"

"Establishing an alibi?" Maxwell suggested slowly.

"For murder with a voodoo doll?"

"Yeah, I suppose that doesn't make any sense," he admitted. "Well... maybe he's not planning to use it himself. Maybe he's going to send out feelers and sell the doll to the highest bidder."

"Maybe," I nodded. "On the other hand, who would believe him?"

"Holding it for ransom, then?"

"He's had sixteen hours to cut out newspaper letters and paste up a ransom note. Anything like that shown up?"

He shook his head. "I'm sure I'd have been told if it had. Okay, I'll bite: what is taking him so long?"

"I don't know, but whatever he's planning he's up against at least two time limits. One: the longer he holds it, the better the chance that we'll catch up with him. And two: the longer he waits, the less power the doll's going to have."

"Unless he knows about the Haitian soil connection... no. If he'd known he should have helped himself to some when he took the doll."

"Though he could have a private source of the stuff," I agreed. "It's still a fair assumption, though. Could he have expected us to have Pak standing by waiting to counteract whatever he does? He might be holding off then until Pak relaxes his guard some."

"The theft went undiscovered for at least a couple of hours," Maxwell pointed out. "He could have killed the President in his sleep. For that matter, he could have done it right there in the vault and never needed to take the doll at all."

"Point," I conceded. "So simple murder isn't what he's looking for—complicated murder, maybe, but not simple murder."

"Oh, my God," Maxwell whispered suddenly, his face going pale. "The debate. He's going to do it at the debate."

For a long second we stared at each other. Then, simultaneously, we grabbed our jackets and bolted for the door.

—

It was something like forty miles to Baltimore; an hour's trip under normal conditions. Maxwell insisted on driving and made it in a shade over forty-five minutes. In rush hour traffic, yet.

We arrived at the Hyatt and found the President's suite... and discovered that all our haste had been for nothing.

"What do you mean, they won't cancel?" Maxwell growled to VanderSluis, the Secret Service man who met us just inside the door.

"Who's this 'they' you're talking about?" the other growled back. "It's the President who won't cancel."

"Didn't you tell him—?"

"We gave him everything you radioed in," VanderSluis sighed. "Didn't do a bit of good. He says canceling at the last minute like this without a good reason would be playing right into Danzing's rhetoric."

"Has he been told...?"

"About the doll? Yeah, but it didn't help. Probably hurt, actually—he rightly pointed out that if someone's going to attack him using the doll, hiding won't do him a damn bit of good."

Maxwell glanced at me, frustration etched across his face. "What about Pak and Christophe?" he asked VanderSluis. "They here?"

"Sure—down the hall in seventeen."

"Down the hall? I thought I told them to stick by the President."

"They're as close now as they're likely to get," VanderSluis said grimly. "The President said he didn't want them underfoot while he was getting ready for the debate."

Or roughly translated, he didn't want any of the media bloodhounds nosing about to get a sniff of them and start asking awkward questions. "At least they're not back in Washington," I murmured as Maxwell opened his mouth.

Maxwell closed his mouth again, clenched his teeth momentarily. "I suppose so," he said reluctantly. "Well... come on, Harland, let's go talk to them. Maybe they'll have some ideas."

We found them in the room, lounging on the two double beds watching television. On the floor between the beds, the room's coffee table had been set up like a miniature surgical tray, with Pak's acupuncture needles laid out around a flower pot containing Christophe's replacement doll. It looked as hideous as the ones back in their Washington vault. "Anything?" Maxwell asked as the doctors looked up at us.

"Ah—Mr. Maxwell," Christophe said, tapping the remote to turn off the TV. "You will be pleased to hear that President Thompson is in perfect health—"

"He had some stomach trouble an hour ago." Pak put in, "but I don't think it had anything to do with the doll. Just pre-debate tension, probably. Anyway, I got rid of it with the new doll."

Maxwell nodded impatiently. "Yeah, well, the lull's about to end. We think that the main attack's going to come sometime during the debate."

Both men's eyes widened momentarily, and Christophe muttered something French under his breath. Pak recovered first. "Of course. Obvious, in a way. What can we do?"

"The same thing you were brought here for in the first place: counteract the effects of the old doll with the new one. Unfortunately, we're now back to our original problem."

"Communications?" I asked.

He nodded. "How are we going to know—fast—what's happening out there on the stage?"

I found myself gazing at the now-dark TV. "Dr. Pak... how are you at reading a man's physical condition from his expression and body language?"

"You mean can I sit here and tell how President Thompson is feeling by watching the debate on TV?" Pak shook his head. "No chance. Even if the camera was on him the whole time, which of course it won't be.

"Maybe a signal board," Maxwell suggested, a tone of excitement creeping into his voice. "With individual buttons for each likely target—joints, stomach, back, and all."

"And he does, what, pushes a button whenever he hurts somewhere?" I scoffed.

"It doesn't have to be that obvious," Maxwell said, reaching past Christophe to snare the bedside phone. "We can make it out of tiny piezo crystals—it doesn't take more than a touch to trigger those things. And they're small enough that a whole boardful of them could fit on the lectern behind his notes—Larry?" he interrupted himself into the phone. "Bill Maxwell. Listen, do we have any of those single-crystal piezo pressure gadgets we use for signaling and spot security?... Yeah, short range would be fine—we'd just need a booster somewhere backstage... Oh, great... Well, as many as you've got... Great—I'll be right down."

He tossed the phone back into it cradle and headed for the door. "We're in," he announced over his shoulder. "They've got over a hundred of the things. I'll be right back." Scooping up a room key from a low table beside the door, he left.

I looked at my watch. Five-fifteen, with the debate set to begin at nine. Not much time for the kind of wiring Maxwell was talking about. "You think it'll work?" I asked Pak.

He shrugged uncomfortably. "I suppose so. The bad part is that it means I'll be relying on diagnostics from someone who is essentially an amateur."

"It's his body, isn't it?"

Pak shrugged again, and for a few minutes the three of us sat together in silence. Which made it even more of a heart-stopping jolt then the phone suddenly rang.

Reflexively, I scooped it up. "Yes?"

"Who is this?" a suspicious voice asked.

"Cal Harland—Washington Police."

"Oh, yeah—you came with Maxwell. Has he gotten back with those piezos yet?"

I began to breathe again. Whatever was up, at least it wasn't a medical emergency. "No, not yet. Can I take a message?"

"Yeah," the other sighed, "but he's not going to like it. This is VanderSluis. Tell him I called and that I just took his suggestion in to the President. And that he scotched the whole idea."

My mouth went dry all at once. "He what?"

"Shot it down. Said in no uncertain terms that he can't handle a debate and a damn push-button switchboard at the same time. Unquote."

"Did you remind him that it could be his life at stake here?" I snapped. "Or even fight dirty and suggest it could cost him the election?"

"Just give Maxwell the message, will you?" the other said coldly. "Leave the snide comments to Senator Danzing."

"Sorry," I muttered. But I was talking to a dead phone. Slowly, I replaced the handset and looked up to meet Pak's and Christophe's gazes. "What is the matter?" Christophe asked.

"Thompson's not going for it," I sighed. "Says the signal board would be too much trouble."

"But—" Pak broke off as the door opened and Maxwell strode into the room, his arms laden with boxes of equipment.

"Hell," he growled when I'd delivered VanderSluis's message. "Hell and hell. What's a little trouble matter when it could save his life?"

"I doubt that's his only consideration," Pak shook his head. "Politics, again, Mr. Maxwell—politics and appearances. If any of the press should notice the board, there are any number of conclusions they could come to."

"None of them good." I took a deep breath. "But damn it all, what does he want you to do?—defend him without his cooperation?"

"Probably," Maxwell said heavily. "There's a long tradition of that in the Secret Service." He took a deep breath. "Well, gentlemen, we've still got three and a half hours to come up with something. Suggestions?"

"Can you find the robber and get the doll back?" Christophe asked.

"Probably not," Maxwell shook his head. "Too many potential suspects, not enough time to sort through all of them."

"A shame the thief didn't leave any hair at the scene of the crime," I commented, only half humorously. "If he had, we could make a doll and take him out whether we knew who he was or not."

Maxwell cocked an eye at Christophe. "Anything you can do without something from his body?"

Christophe shook his head. "Only a little bit is required, Mr. Maxwell, but that little bit is absolutely essential."

Maxwell swore and said something else to Christophe... but I wasn't really listening. A crazy sort of idea had just popped into my head... "Dr. Christophe," I said slowly, "what about the doll itself? You made the thing—presumably you know everything about its makeup and design. Would there be any way to make a—I don't know, a counteracting doll that you could use to destroy the original?"

Christophe blinked. "To tell the honest truth, I do not know. I have never heard of such a thing being done. Still... from what I have learned of the science of voodoo, I believe I would still need to have something of the stolen doll here to create the necessary link."

"Wait a minute, though," Pak spoke up. "It's all the same wax that you use, isn't it? That strange translucent goop that's so pressure-sensitive that it bruises if you even look at it wrong."

"It is hardly that delicate," Christophe said with an air of wounded pride. "And it is that very responsiveness that makes it so useful—"

"I know, I know," Pak interrupted him. "What I meant was, would it be possible to link up with the stolen doll since you know what it's made of?"

"I do not think so," Christophe shook his head. "Voodoo is not a shotgun, but a very precise rifle. When a link is created between doll and subject it is a very specific one."

"And does that link work both ways?" Maxwell asked suddenly.

There was something odd in his voice, something that made me turn to look at him. The expression on his face was even odder. "Something?" I asked.

"Maybe. Dr. Christophe?"

"Uh..." Christophe floundered a second as he backtracked to the question Maxwell had asked. "Well, certainly the link works both ways. How could it be otherwise?"

For a moment Maxwell didn't say anything, but continued gazing off into space. Then, slowly, a grim smile worked itself onto his face. "Then it might work. It might just work. And the President should even go for it—yeah, I'm sure he will." Abruptly, he looked down at his watch. "Three and a quarter hours to go," he said, all business again. "We'd better get busy."

"Doing what?" Pak asked, clearly bewildered.

Maxwell told us.

—

The Hyatt ballroom was stuffed to the gills with people long before President Thompson and Senator Danzing came around the curtains, shook hands, and took their places at the twin lecterns. Sitting on the end of the bed, I studied Thompson's television image closely, wishing we'd been allowed to set up somewhere a little closer to the action. TV screens being what they were, it was going to be pretty hard for me to gauge how the President was feeling.

The moderator went through a short welcoming routine and then nodded to Thompson. "Mr. President, the first opening statement will be yours," he said. The camera shifted to a mid-closeup and Thompson began to speak—"

"Stomach," Maxwell said tersely from behind me.

"I see it," Pak answered in a much calmer voice. "...This should do it."

I kept my own eyes on the President's face. A brief flicker of almost-pain came and went. "He's looking okay now," I announced.

"Unfortunately, we can't tell if the treatment is working," Pak commented. "Only where the attack is directed—"

"Right elbow," Maxwell cut him off.

"Got it."

"Thank you, Mr. President," the moderator cut smoothly into Thompsons's speech. "Senator Danzing: your opening statement, sir."

The camera shifted to Danzing and I took a deep breath and relaxed a bit. Only for a second, though, as an angled side camera was brought into play and Thompson appeared in the foreground. "Watch it," I warned the other. "He's on camera again."

"Uh-huh," Maxwell grunted. "—stomach again."

"Got it," Pak assured him. "Whoever our thief is, he isn't very imaginative."

"Not terribly dangerous, either, at least so far," I put in. "Though I suppose we should be grateful for small favors."

"Or for small minds," Maxwell said dryly. "It's starting to look more and more like murder wasn't the original object at all."

"I do not understand," Christophe spoke up.

Maxwell snorted. "Haven't you ever heard of political dirty tricks?"

The camera was full on Danzing again, and I risked a glance around at the others hunched over the table set up between the two hotel beds. "You mean... all of this just to make Thompson look wracked by aches and pains on camera?"

"Why not?" Maxwell said, glancing briefly up at me. "Stupider things have been done. Effectively, I might add."

"I suppose." But probably, I added to myself, none stranger than this one. My eyes flicked to the table and to two wax figures standing up in flower pots of Haitian soil there: one with a half dozen acupuncture needles already sticking out of it, the other much larger one looking more like a pincushion than a doll.

But those weren't pins sticking into it. Rather, they were a hundred thin wires leading out of it. Out, and into a board with an equal number of neatly spaced and labeled lights set into it... and even as I watched, one of the tiny piezo crystals Christophe had so carefully embedded into his creation reacted to the subtle change in pressure of the wax and the corresponding light blinked on—

"Right wrist," Maxwell snapped.

"Got it," Pak said. Belatedly, I turned back to my station at the TV, just in time to see the President's arm wave in one of his trademark wide-open gestures. The arm swung forward, hand cupped slightly toward the camera... and as it paused there my eyes focused on that hand, and despite the limitations of the screen I could almost imagine I saw the slight discolorations under his neatly manicured fingernails. Would any of the reporters in the ballroom be close enough to see that? Probably not. And even if they did, they almost certainly wouldn't recognize Christophe's oddly translucent wax for what it really was.

Or believe it if they did. Doll-to-person voodoo was ridiculous enough; running the process in reverse, person-to-doll, was even harder to swallow.

The picture shifted to Danzing. "He's off-camera again," I announced, getting my mind back on my job.

The battles raged for just over an hour—the President's and Senator's verbal battle, and our quieter, behind-the-scenes one. And when it was over, the two men on the stage shook hands and headed backstage... and because I knew to look for it, I noticed the slight limp to the President's walk. Hardly surprising, really—though I've never tried it, I'm sure it's very difficult to walk properly when your socks are full of Haitian dirt.

—

The Secret Service dropped me out of the investigation after that, so I don't know whether or not they ever actually recovered the doll. But at this point it hardly matters. The President's clearly still alive, and by now the stolen doll is almost certainly inert. I haven't seen Pak or Christophe since the debate, either, but from the excited way they were talking afterwards I'd guess that by now they've probably worked most of the bugs out of the new voodoo diagnostic technique that Maxwell came up with that night. And I suppose I have to accept that all medical advances, whether they make me uncomfortable or not, are ultimately a good thing.

And actually, the whole experience has wound up saving me a fair amount of money, too. Instead of shelling out fifteen dollars for a haircut once a month, I've learned to do the job myself, at home.

I collect and destroy my fingernail clippings, too. Not paranoid, you understand; just cautious.