Dead End Deal Read online

  Dead End Deal

  Allen Wyler

  Astor + Blue Editions (2012)

  Rating: ****

  Tags: Medical Thriller

  * * *

  World renowned neurosurgeon Jon Ritter is on the verge of a medical breakthrough that will change the world. His groundbreaking surgical treatment, using transplanted non-human stem cells, is set to eradicate the scourge of Alzheimer’s disease and give hope to millions. But when the procedure is slated for testing, it all comes to an abrupt and terrifying halt. Ritter’s colleague is gunned down and Ritter himself is threatened by a radical anti-abortion group that not only claims responsibility, but promises more of the same. Faced with a dangerous reality but determined to succeed, Ritter turns to his long-time colleague, corporate biotech CEO Richard Stillman, for help. Together, they conspire to conduct a clandestine clinical trial in Seoul, Korea. But the danger is more determined, and more lethal, than Ritter could have imagined. After successful surgical trials, Ritter and his allies are thrown into a horrifying nightmare scenario: The trial patients have been murdered and Ritter is the number one suspect. Aided by his beautiful lab assistant, Yeonhee, Ritter flees the country, now the target of an international manhunt involving Interpol, the FBI, zealous fanatics and a coldly efficient assassin. Dead End Deal is a fast paced, heart-pounding, and sophisticated thriller. Penned by master neurosurgeon, Allen Wyler—who often draws from experience and actual events when writing—Dead End Deal is unmatched as a technical procedural. Its medical and scientific details can impress even the most seasoned medical practitioners. And yet, the fascinating expertise is seamlessly woven into a riveting plot, with enough action and surprises to engross even the most well-read thriller enthusiast. A smart, unique, page-turner, Dead End Deal delivers.

  Review

  "The gritty, graphic details of cutting-edge surgical procedures, capped with an exciting conclusion, should keep fans of the genre riveted." - Publisher's Weekly

  Praise for Allen Wyler’s Thrillers

  “DEAD END DEAL is a medical thriller of the highest order, reviving the genre with a splendid mixture of innovation and cutting-edge timeliness. Neurosurgeon Allen Wyler knows of what he speaks, and writes, and the result is a thriller that equals and updates the best of Robin Cook and Michael Crichton. His latest is terrifyingly on mark, riveting in all ways, and a masterpiece of science and suspense.”

  —Jon Land, best-selling author of STRONG AT THE BREAK

  “DEAD END DEAL by Allen Wyler is a masterful medical thriller, intelligent, ferociously paced, scary as hell, ripping with suspense, and filled with fascinating (and horrific) details that only a neurosurgeon-turned-writer like Wyler could provide. If you like the medical thrillers of Robin Cook or Michael Crichton, you will absolutely love DEAD END DEAL.”

  —Douglas Preston, author of THE MONSTER OF FLORENCE and co-creator of the PENDERGAST NOVELS

  “The gritty, graphic details of cutting-edge surgical procedures, capped with an exciting conclusion, should keep fans of the genre riveted.”

  —Publisher’s Weekly

  “With its lightning-paced excitement and fascinating science, DEAD HEAD has everything you could hope for in a medical thriller!”

  —Tess Gerritsen, author of THE MEPHISTO CLUB

  “The suspense builds and builds in this riveting pageturner. It’s a skillful merging of the medical thriller and political thriller . . . Tom Clancy meets Tess Gerritsen!”

  —Kevin O’Brien, New York Times Bestselling Author of THE LAST VICTIM and KILLING SPREE

  “You’ll be asking the nurse to swab your forehead when you’re admitted into this tense medical thriller exposing DEADLY ERRORS. Wyler does for hospitals what Benchley did for the ocean.”

  —Joe Moore, co-author of the international best seller THE GRAIL CONSPIRACY

  “Wyler writes a fast-paced thriller, which reawakens your scariest misgivings about the Medical-Industrial Complex and the profit motive corrupting the art of healing.”

  —Darryl Ponicsan, author of THE LAST DETAIL

  “DEADLY ERRORS has a fascinating and frightening premise that gives it the potential to be a best seller in the Robin Cook mold.”

  —William Dietrich, author of HADRIAN’S WALL

  “This is an ‘up all night’ pass into troubled places that only hardworking doctors know about, a turbulent world of trusting patients and imperfect humans struggling with the required image of perfection. Only a gifted surgeon like Allen Wyler could craft such a wild and wonderful best-of-the-breed medical thriller!”

  —John J. Nance, author of PANDORA’S CLOCK and FIRE FLIGHT

  “Wyler’s debut novel is both an engrossing thriller and a cautionary tale of the all-too-frequent intersection of high technology and higher greed. It’s a message all of us better pay attention to, or face the consequences.”

  —Mark Olshaker, author of EINSTEIN’S BRAIN, UNNATURAL CAUSES, and TH E EDGE; co-author of MINDHUNTER, JOURNEY INTO DARK NESS, and THE CASES TH AT HAUNT US

  Dead

  End

  Deal

  A novel by

  ALLEN WYLER

  This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.

  DEAD END DEAL

  Astor + Blue Editions LLC

  Copyright © 2012 by Allen Wyler

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof, in any form under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by:

  Astor + Blue Editions, LLC

  New York, NY 10003

  www.astorblue.com

  Publisher’s Cataloging-In—Publication Data

  Wyler, Allen. DEAD END DEAL—1st ed.

  ISBN: 978-1-938231-05-6 (paperback)

  ISBN: 978-1-938231-03-2 (epub)

  ISBN: 978-1-938231-04-9 (epdf)

  1. Neurosurgeon Doctor—Thriller—Fiction. 2. Ruthless Assassin— Fiction 3. Corporate Greed and Corruption—Fiction 4. Radical Alzheimer’s Cure—Fiction 5. Experimental Brain Operations—Fiction 6. Seattle (Wash), Seoul (Korea)—Fiction 7. American-Korean Love story. I. Title

  Book Design by: Bookmasters

  Jacket Cover Design: Ervin Serrano

  PROLOGUE

  TROPHOZYME CORPORATION, SEATTLE, WA

  SEEMED LIKE A DYNAMITE IDEA twelve months ago. Still did, for that matter. But now Marge Schwartz was killing him because of it. Sweat sprouted across Richard Stillman’s forehead, making him worry that any second now a drop would slither into an eye and cause him to blink, but he’d be damned if he’d wipe it. Besides, with what? The back of his hand? And if he did that, then what? Wipe his hand on his shirt? How would that look? No, he had to be tough, cool, unflustered. In essence: in charge.

  Schwartz leaned forward on her elbows and drilled him with that squinty-eyed no-shit-serious look she’d mastered during her take-no-prisoners ascension through corporate ladders. “The board wants a solid plan to rectify the situation, Richard. Not some grandiose hypothesis.”

  He swallowed the gastric reflux burning the back of his throat and willed himself to appear relaxed. Let her harangue. After all, that’s her job, especially given the financial disaster facing Trophozyme. A disaster for which he freely took responsibility. Yet, he still believed that with enough time their present track would be profitable. But that required more money and, the way things were going, the company would be bankrupt in six months. Unless he pulled the proverbial rabbit from the hat.

  Easy for her to say. Especially with the clarity retrospection brings.

  The board members sat eying him now with various emotions that were easy to read on their faces: empathy from Levy, disdain from
Chandler, bored bemusement from Gliner. Warner, well, she was apparently more engrossed in her smart-phone than the bloodbath playing out before her.

  Schwartz began collecting the various papers in front of her to replace in the manila envelope. The bitch!

  He flashed the vacant, non-threatening smile he’d picked up from their VP of marketing. One he practiced in front of a mirror until he could flash it under the most stressful conditions. He scanned the room, making eye contact with each board member—well, except for Warner—certain that every one of those smug egotistical bastards believed they could run the company better than he. Truth be told, their success was due to either dumb luck or magnificent ass-kissing. Or both.

  “Well?” Schwartz raised her lids in exaggerated expectation.

  Trophozyme needed a new blockbuster therapy. Their pipeline was drying up. With the patent on their only revenue-generating product expiring in less than a month, their competitors were already licking their chops, gearing up production of a generic substitute while several major shareholders were dumping stock. Once the short sellers started . . .

  Schwartz said, “Need I remind you, Richard, you were hired to put our company back on track.”

  The board had lured him with a fat signing bonus, a high salary, and a group of industry-savvy executives who had no idea where to take the company. To Richard Stillman, the future was obvious: by 2020, thanks to drugs like Lipitor, mortality from heart disease and stroke would be way down, making diseases like Alzheimer’s the leading cause of death. Any company to come up with an effective treatment would be sitting on a fortune. That treatment, Stillman believed, was to implant specially manufactured stem cells into patients’ brains to replace dead ones. The problem was the method he picked to grow them didn’t work. Okay, so maybe his first attempt was a bust. But he knew where to get his hands on the right method . . .

  Sweat slithered into his right eye, stinging like hell. He inhaled and said, “As I’ve repeatedly advised, we must be patient. My vision for moving us forward remains unchanged. We’ve had minor setbacks, is all.” He shrugged to emphasize the mere insignificance of his mistake. “As my presentation showed, the results of our retinal implant program are excellent.” Two weeks ago his R&D team successfully implanted tissue-cultured stem cells into the retinas of three patients with a specific type of blindness. So far, the results were excellent in spite of being too soon to determine if patients’ eyesight actually improved.

  Aronson, CEO of a major pharmaceutical company, waved away his remark. “All well and good, but even if this works, it’s an extremely small market, nothing that will keep this company afloat. We need revenue or we’re out of business.”

  Stillman squelched a sarcastic reply. “Everyone understands that, Stan.” You dumb shit. “What we can’t lose sight of is,” he chuckled at the pun that no one else seemed to get, “our retinal implant program success will establish the proof of principle to Wall Street. Do that and we leverage the potential that cell implants may have on reversing Alzheimer’s.” He said this with the infectious enthusiasm that had served him well in securing financing for the previous companies he’d taken public.

  Schwartz raised her hand to halt further discussion. “We’re getting wrapped around the axle here, Richard. Bottom line is that during our executive session we made a decision. Six months is all you get.” She paused, the room suddenly dead silent. “By then, either this company has a viable therapy or we’ll be forced to close down. Believe me, that happens and there’ll be no other business on the face of this earth, not even a mom and pop 7-Eleven store in Rwanda, that’ll touch your resume. Do you understand?”

  Before he had a chance to answer, she yanked off her glasses. “Meeting adjourned.”

  1

  ONE MONTH LATER

  THE BUZZ FROM the desk phone startled Jon Ritter. The sky was darkening, he realized, and streetlights now dotted the hill across Portage Bay. The phone buzzed again. He picked up, “Ritter here,” and swiveled toward the window to watch traffic shoot by on the 520 interchange.

  “Hate to bother you, Doctor. Officer Schmidt, campus police. I’m in S-1 and it looks like someone broke into your car. Can you come down and take a look, see if anything’s missing so we can file a report?”

  Aw, man . . . He checked his watch. Already past seven, time to go home anyway. “Yeah, be right there.” After grabbing the sports coat off the door, he checked to make sure his file cabinets were locked. He decided to pick up some Thai take-out on the way home to eat while watching the Mariners.

  He was walking past the secretary’s desk when Gabriel Lippmann called, “Good night, Jon,” from the chairman’s office.

  He glanced into the office as he passed. Typical Gabe. Parked at his desk with stacks of paperwork. Always the last to leave but never the first to arrive. The only neurosurgeon in the department who no longer gowned up, leaving the younger partners with bigger case loads. In exchange, butt numbing meetings consumed Gabe’s days. Well, Gabe could have it. To Jon, administration held zero appeal. He waved. “Night, Gabe,” and continued out the door.

  The elevator rattled and groaned down eight floors to the first basement level, jerked to a stop, hovered a moment before rising a half inch to be level with the hall floor. Third-world countries had better elevators than this. The door opened.

  The car break-in was beginning to seep in now. There was nothing in the vehicle worth stealing, so the act itself was senseless and frustrating. And although the insurance company would pay to replace the broken window—assuming that’s how they got in—it couldn’t compensate for the inconvenience. More than that was the feeling of personal violation. As a student his apartment had been burglarized twice, giving this an all too familiar feel.

  A left turn and a push through the metal security door took him into a tunnel to the parking lot, his footsteps echoing off bare cement. After passing through another fire door he could see his black Audi in the almost empty garage . . . but where was the security officer? Strange, but the car showed no signs of damage either. Puzzled, he circled the vehicle. No damage, no officer.

  Just then a man appeared from behind a round concrete pillar and aimed a gun at him, his face distorted by what looked like pantyhose stretched tightly over his head, the sight so out of context that it didn’t register. The man said, “Got a message for you, baby killer. You listening?”

  Speechless, Jon stared at him.

  “Asked you a question.”

  Jon raised both hands in surrender. “Whoa, there must be some mistake—”

  “No mistake. You’re the bloke I’m after. And in case you aren’t listening, here’s the written version.” He dropped a folded paper on the Audi’s windshield. “No more baby killing. You and your little queer friend are done. Understand?”

  “No, I—”

  “Shut up. Simple enough. Stop work. Don’t, and we’ll kill you and Dobbs. See?”

  A familiar voice called, “Jon? What’s going on?”

  Jon glanced over his shoulder. Lippmann was exiting the tunnel, heading toward them. Jon shouted, “Run. Get out of here. Call 911.”

  Lippmann stopped, looked at Jon’s face, then at the gunman, then back to Jon before something clicked and he started to turn. Motion slowed. Dumbfounded, Jon watched as another man calmly stepped from behind a car, raised a gun, and fired almost point blank into Lippmann’s chest. Lippmann stutter-stepped before going down into a heap.

  Jon yelled, “Gabe!” and started toward him when a lightning bolt exploded his head, turning his world into a black void.

  2

  “FUCK A DUCK!” Nigel Feist slammed the heel of his palm against the steering wheel. The guard rails of the Alaskan Way Viaduct flew past, Elliot Bay in the distance, Feist putting as much distance as possible between them and the parking lot before the cops started to investigate.

  Raymore Thompson said, “Dude, I’m telling you, we had no other choice. The hell we gonna do? Let that fucking gee
zer call the cops?”

  We? Out the corner of his eye, Feist could see the hayseed wedged between the seat and passenger door, streetlights flashing off his disgusting tobacco-stained teeth. Feist slammed the steering wheel again, just to keep from back-handing the ignorant bastard. Bad judgment, agreeing to use this shit-kicker tonight. He knew better than to do it. So why the hell had he? Fuck! Intimidate was the mission. Not kill anyone.

  “Well?” Thompson asked.

  Okay, he could argue the point, but to what end? Raymore was too stupid to understand. Raymore. Who the fuck named a kid Raymore? Sounded like some kind of Georgia Cracker name.

  Feist saw the sign for the West Seattle and Harbor Island exits and tripped the turn signal, letting the car drift into the right lane, deciding he needed to tidy up this mess straightaway before Raymore took them both down.

  Since resigning as an analyst for Australia’s Defense Intelligence Organization twenty years ago, Feist had grown his own consulting firm, a small company specializing in information gathering and disinformation. He never chose sides, simply provided services to anyone willing to cough up his high fees. Clients viewed his results as a godsend. Their targets leveled accusations of industrial sabotage, but nothing they could prove. His reputation included giving clients ultimate discretion. Never had one been exposed nor a project blown. Never had Feist or a client been forced to submit to questioning by a law enforcement agency. He attributed this exceptional record to following a strict set of rock-solid rules specifically engineered to keep him out of trouble. The most important of which was impeccable planning. A rule broken the moment he agreed to take Thompson on tonight’s job. Fuck!

  To make matters worse, Thompson probably couldn’t survive ten minutes of police interrogation without incriminating himself and Feist. Which meant Feist’s life was now at risk.