Chapter 68

The next week another local girl went missing. Again, it was quiet and if the authorities hadn't been looking for it, she would have gone completely unnoticed. As it was, this poor girl was only missed because she had been a regular volunteer Saturday at the animal shelter. Once a month, like clockwork. When she didn't show up, someone asked a question, then a report was filed. And forgotten. Almost.

An hour later, I was standing in Gertie's office. As I looked around, I noticed there had been some subtle and some not so subtle changes lately. There was a new picture on her desk of a large young woman and a painfully bent young man. They were happy. The picture was in a silver frame with a soft blue velvet ribbon draped artfully over it. The ribbon didn't detract from the frame or the photo, but highlighted the colors of the woman's dress, making her seem somehow attractive. I recognized Simone's delicate touch.

I heard her clear her throat behind me. It took me as second before I realized Gertie was in the same room with me and my eyes weren't watering. No perfume! I spun around to face her, astounded. I was even more amazed at the transformation in her. Make no mistake, she was still a large, large woman. But she looked somehow less formidable. Almost feminine, if I could be so bold. I stared, speechless.

"Close your mouth, Mr. Sampson. As nice as it is to have you silent, I assume you are here for a reason?"

Good old Gertie. "I, uh, yes. We have to talk."

"Is this official? I got word of your activation. Congratulations. I think."

She, better than most people, knew what this was going to do to me. My only hope was that she would be there to patch me back up after. Again.

"No, Gertie, this isn't official."

"Can it wait? I have an appointment."

"At this hour?"

She blushed. Then I noticed the make-up, lightly applied. The fresh lipstick, artfully done. Simone had been very busy, indeed! Gertrude Schwartz, MD had a date or my name wasn't Lawrence Sampson.

"Can it wait? Please?" She was pleading with me. This was unprecedented!

I shook my head. "It won't take long, Gertie, but it is very important," I said gently.

Sighing, she picked up the telephone. She dialed a four-digit extension. Oh-ho! A local boy, an intra office romance. She turned her back to me for a brief moment and held a mostly whispered conversation. I didn't try to hear.

She turned back to me, put her massive capable hands flat on the desk and lowered herself into her chair.

"I remember a fable from grade school," I started. "A kindhearted woman is out for a walk on a cold winter's day. She comes across a snake in the path, cold, freezing, dying. Her heart goes out to the dying snake. She picks it up, slips it inside her coat and hurries home. Over the next several days she would feed and cuddle the snake and eventually the snake recovered. One day following, as the woman picked up the snake and kissed him gently, the snake bit her on the neck. The venom rushed to her brain, and the kindhearted woman fell to the ground, dying. As she lay there, she gasped out to the snake, 'Why? Why did you bite me?' The snake replied, 'Because I'm a snake. What did you expect?'"

Gertie sat there puzzled, then started to get up. She looked angry. I held up my hands, a plea for time. She sat back down, but she glared.

"The American people have long held the medical profession in the highest esteem and rightly so. Years ago, family physicians made house calls, delivered countless babies in bedrooms, saved countless lives from sickness and pretty much wiped out serious diseases. We owe our health and our lives to your profession. We have been trained over the past generations to trust our doctors implicitly, without question. We tell our doctors about everything in our lives and our family's lives, from Aunt Peg's lumbago to crazy Uncle Willie's wooden leg. We tell them when our family grows, when someone dies and how it happens.

"The doctors moved from visiting us to us visiting them. It made sense, it was more efficient. They could help more of us and there were certainly more of us that needed help. The population was exploding. The doctors needed hospitals. Hospitals cost money to run. Insurance companies were formed to cover the costs of the medical care. Medicine became a business."

Gertie was getting madder, now. This was her profession and she didn't like where this was headed. But I needed her to hear this. She had no idea where I was headed. I held up my hands for patience once more. I didn't think it would work again. She was pissed...

"Businesses run on information. The information we entrust to hospitals is total, absolute. They know where we live, where we work, how much money we make, how we are going to pay them, they have our credit card numbers, social security numbers, telephone numbers. They know the size of our families and who to contact in case of emergency. In short, the hospital databases contain all the information you would need to determine if you could safely make a person disappear."

"Mr. Sampson! That's quite enough. Those databases are secure!"

"Are they, now? Suppose a person worked for a government agency in a sensitive position. The FBI runs a security check on that person to the level appropriate to the position. You know that. And even with those measures, some of that secure information still gets out.

"Now suppose a group of people skilled in the art of subversion and seduction was suddenly out of a job. Their government no longer needed them. They immigrate to another country whose people welcomed them with open arms. These kindhearted people just wanted to help these unfortunate souls.

"The immigrants are industrious but this is not their country, not their culture, not their landsmen, not their laws. Many of them are bitter and hold a grudge against their naïve hosts. Some of them gravitate to the shadier side of the law where they are more comfortable, where there is less competition. Probably by accident, one of them meets or picks up a stray girl. They take her in. Things happen, she panics, tries to get away. An unfortunate trip, a fall, she dies. No one misses her. No one cares. She vanishes. They are astounded in the age of technology that something like that can occur.

"A seed is planted. They've seen other girls like her. On the streets, in the malls. But who to take? Who has no one to care? Who will no one miss?

"Then one day, one of them has an illness and requires hospitalization. They are astounded at all of the personal information they need to provide to the hospital for admittance. That starts them thinking. Where does all the information go? What is it for? Does everybody have to provide it? You can imagine the questions.

"Remember, Gertie, these are people skilled in subverting and recruiting others to do their bidding, even to the point of convincing someone into betraying their own country. One day the pieces fall together. A pretty young girl approaches a bored middle-aged married man. She seduces him. The next day, he is presented with the photographic evidence. His life is ruined if his wife/family/church ever found out. But they don't want money. In fact, they want to give him some. Just give us the name of that young person who was here last weekend. Oh, her address and telephone number, too.

"He does and he is hooked. They probably don't even want the data on the first person they ask for. What they are after comes later, after he has lost all conscience about what he is doing. Nothing happened to the woman after all and it is always women they ask about. He knows it is harmless because they make sure he finds out that nothing happened to the first woman or two.

"They begin looking for certain types of women. He may even do a search on the database for them. They look for divorced or single women, 18-40 years old, one child is OK as long as it is a girl. Credit checks are run, at hospital expense, of course. Bank balances, savings accounts, it's all available.