Free Extreme Measures by Michael Palmer

Grendel?”
    “God, what a prospect! If so, my money’s on Teagarden. Say, listen, does the name
Caduceus
mean anything to you?”
    “Aside from the obvious?”
    “Aside from the obvious.”
    Reed Marshall shrugged and shook his head. “No bells,” he said. “Why?”
    “Nothing. Maybe later we can—”
    The door to the conference room opened and Dr. Joe Silver stepped out. A ferretlike man in his late forties, Silver stood no more than five foot five in the two-inch lifts that, rumor had it, he wore even to bed. He had been the chief of emergency services for five or six years, and ran his office in an autocratic manner that would have made Napoleon proud. He was knowledgeable enough, but he had no sense of people’s needs or how to deal with them straightforwardly. And over their years of association with the man, neither Eric nor Reed Marshall had been able to develop anything approaching a warm relationship with him.
    “Gentlemen,” Silver said, “we apologize for keeping you waiting. If you’ll both come in please.…”
    Both?
Eric wondered why the committee would do something so insensitive. Surely, after three months, and interview upon interview, it would have been more appropriate to speak with the losing candidate alone. He thought back to the eerie call. The caller, whoever he—or she—was, seemed so confidentof being able to affect the selection process.
Was Joe Silver Caduceus?
It was so like the man to play control games with people.
    The committee was seated at a massive hardwood table, with Sara Teagarden at the head. She was a large, androgynous woman with close-cropped auburn hair and gold-rimmed granny glasses. That day she was dressed in a royal-blue suit with a large pearl-and-diamond brooch on the lapel. It was an outfit that somehow made her appear even more intimidating than usual. As she welcomed them Eric tried unsuccessfully to match the cadence of her voice with that of the caller.
    Joining the heads of surgery and emergency medicine on the search committee was Dr. Haven Darden, the chief of medicine. The highly publicized demise of Craig Worrell, the former associate director of emergency services, had bathed White Memorial in an intensely unfavorable light, and the high-powered makeup of the search committee underscored the hospital’s determination to put the whole matter to rest. Silver, Teagarden, Darden—Eric had not faced a panel such as this one since his internship application days. He wondered if the triumvirate was about to take the WMH pyramid philosophy to the limit by grilling the two of them in a medical quiz-down.
    As if reading Eric’s mind, Haven Darden said, “Now don’t get worried, you two. We’re not about to start firing clinical problems at you.”
    Of the three committee members, Darden, a tropical medicine specialist, was the one Eric felt was least in his corner. Like Reed Marshall, he had come straight up through the Harvard system. Unlike Marshall, though, he had risen from abject poverty. His life, from his illegitimate birth in a ghetto in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, through his escape to the United States and his subsequent adoption by a wealthy black physician, had been chronicled in various Harvard publications. There was a rumor that somewhere not fardown the line, Darden was slated to become the first black dean in the history of the university. His detractors, and there were a number, pointed to his inability to make any major research contributions to his field. But his reputation for clinical brilliance kept all but the most vociferous enemies at bay, and residents often jockeyed their schedules to be on the wards when Darden visited.
    Darden’s English was clipped and precise, with just the hint of an accent. And unless he could change his speech radically, Eric decided, there was no way he could have been the caller. He struggled to force thoughts of Caduceus from his mind and to concentrate on the business at hand. In a minute or two the