Life Support

By John S. Budd

In 1945, during the bombing of Dresden, nine-year-old Nemamiah Heinrich suffered burns and a concussion. After awakening from a coma, Nemamiah discovered he possessed telepathic powers that enabled him to make people do his bidding. Two years later, Nemamiah and his father emigrated from East Germany to the United States, making their home in Asheville, North Carolina. Here, they flourished and Nemamiah became a geriatric physician.

The doctor witnesses the inhumane treatment and unnecessary deaths of nursing home patients, and he vows to reform these institutions. He calls on his fortune and telepathic powers to recruit nursing home residents as assassins, confound the FBI, terrify eldercare legislators and industry officials, and shut down the federal government.

A masterful blend of suspenseful fantasy and humor, Life Support narrates a captivating and fast-paced story that reveals and calls attention to the startling maltreatment of residents of many nursing homes.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Mar 18, 2015
• ISBN: 9781496963635

John S. Budd

John S. Budd, now retired, was a division president and corporate officer in two multi-billion dollar companies. He graduated from Washington & Lee University and Harvard Business School’s Advanced Management Program. He is a fellow in the executive committee of the University of North Carolina’s Cameron School of Business. Budd and his wife, Judy, live in Wilmington, North Carolina, and have four sons and nine grandchildren. This is his fourth book.

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PROLOGUE

February 7, 1947

Dresden

Soviet Zone, Germany

Phillip Heinrich and his eleven-year-old son, Nemamiah, sat on a threadbare sofa, waiting for heat from the fireplace to remove the cold from the living room.

Are you warm, son? asked Phillip, putting his arm around Nemamiah’s shoulders and hugging him.

Nemamiah leaned into his father and said, Yes, sir,

Phillip asked, Would you like to go to the zoo today?

Nemamiah squeezed Phillip’s hand and pled, No, no, please, Papa! The animals are screaming.

They are playing. There will be no more bombing or fires to hurt them. The war has been over for two years.

Phillip hesitated. He sighed and, after overcoming his reluctance, said, "Before we go to the zoo, Nemamiah, I want to talk with you about things that I think you are old enough to understand.

"I am going to show you photographs of cruelties done to Germans by Germans, atrocities that stain Germany’s history. I hope that you will learn from these photographs, and will remember them for as long as you live.

After this, I will tell you of my plan to make our lives much nicer. I know you would rather be outside playing with your friends. However, I want you to sit still, and concentrate, until I am done.

Yes, Papa.

Phillip continued: Dresden once was a beautiful city, was it not?

Nemamiah dropped his eyes and nodded in agreement.

You see and hear vermin running about the house. It is cold and damp. The walls are cracked and moldy, and it reeks of smoke and charred wood. Before the bombings, there were photographs and paintings on our walls. Do you see them now?

No, sir.

We have only a few shabby, damaged furnishings. True?

Yes, sir.

Phillip turned to the bay window that overlooked Ackermann Strasse, framing the remnants of bombed-out buildings.

Look outside, son. Across the street are remains of once majestic Baroque buildings. Dresden was once Europe’s most magnificent city, but no more. Its buildings and houses are now crumbled, hollow shells, their shattered windows forlorn witnesses to the city’s desolation. Its glorious history, its culture was destroyed in forty-eight hours. The Bolsheviks now govern us with fists of iron, like the Nazis did. The Kings of Saxony weep in their graves at the wasteland that was once called The Florence of the Elbe. History books will not record the horror we knew here, the senseless devastation. History vanishes, or is distorted by those who had not experienced it, or those who had created fiction about it out of guilt or biases. Like your momma, Dresden is a beautiful, fading memory.

Nemamiah stared at his father, unsure of the meaning of his references to history. There were none in his school’s history books.

An immense hound lay at Phillip’s feet. Two years ago, after Nemamiah’s mother had died, and before his father had returned from prison, Nemamiah had lived with his aunt and uncle. The hound had appeared one morning, lying at the foot of Nemamiah’s bed.

Nemamiah’s uncle had said to him, It would cost too much to feed such a large animal. Besides, he will bring fleas, lice, and disease into the house.

As if the hound had understood, he had no longer stayed in the home at mealtime. He had foraged for food at night, and Nemamiah had bathed him every week.

The hound had eventually become a comfort to Nemamiah’s aunt and uncle. He had frightened most occupying Russian soldiers. Those that had dared to approach the hound had seen the witch Baba Yaga in his menacing eyes, and had retreated. Tales of sightings of Baba Yaga prowling in the city at night, and gliding through the shadows like a disembodied phantom, had spread like the firestorms among the Russian occupiers and Dresden’s citizens.

Phillip put his hand on Nemamiah’s head and said, Nemamiah, all that you have suffered—hunger, cold, illnesses, nightmares, the bombings, your mamma’s death—were God’s vengeance against Germany for doing to people things so barbaric that they are whispered or unspoken. I want you to know of these cruelties, to see them in these photographs. You must always remember them.

Nemamiah, his head hanging, said, "Sometimes I forget Mamma. I can’t help it. When I try to remember her, I think of the storm that took her and hurt me. It makes my memories of her disappear.

He remembered:

Red bursts of falling Christmas Trees turned night into day, warning me that next would come thunder that would shake and rock our houses violently, make waves of the ground, and send down stone, burning wood and hot metal. I choked on hot, black smoke and dust. There were people on fire in the streets; others fell, unable to breath and some were torn apart by strafing that skirted the flaming trees. People screamed and ran, trampling people to death. The streets were on fire. White snakes seemed to ooze through cracks in the walls of our house. Outside, ditches opened in the ground. Scorching wind tore at my throat and chest and went into my lungs, taking away my breath. Monkeys in zoo cages screamed horrible screams. I held Mamma’s hand, while we ran from the flames and heat. I was torn from her when she was swallowed up by whirling winds and lost in smoke. My head banged against the road and I went black. I woke up in hospital. Auntie was asleep in the chair next to my bed. I had a bad headache, I was sleepy, confused, and dizzy all the time, and, for a few weeks, I hardly could walk without falling. Later I discovered my gift. My nurse laughed and said, What you hear talking to you and see are hallucinations from hitting your head. They will go away in time. But I knew that the flames gave my gift to me, and that it would stay with me until I was old. Then, after it left me, it would pass on to another.

Phillip knew that Nemamiah’s nightmares of the bombings and his severe concussion had crowded out his memories of the gentle and beautiful things he had loved and made him fear God’s vengeance more than was healthy for a boy of his age. He held his trembling son tightly and said, I wish that I had been here to protect your mamma and you.

Phillip removed a deck of photographs from his coat pocket and said, These photographs will disturb you, son. However, you must see them. If ever you should witness such cruelty to people as was done to those in these photographs, you must use your special gift to stop it. God has given you a gift to right injustices. We will talk about it after you have seen the photographs.

Phillip placed the photographs in a pile on his lap. Light from the fireplace fire wavered over the top photograph, animating the starved, naked, cadaverous bodies heaped before an open pit, entangled like worms in a bucket. A bulldozer, its stack hissing white vapor, plowed them into a pit. In the bulldozer sat an obese bearded man. He laughed, his head tilted to the steel gray sky. He held a cigar in his one hand. With his other hand he gripped a gear handle, pushing it forward to incite the plow to do its loathsome work, plowing under steaming corpses, empty tin cans, old newspapers and gnawed bones ... an amalgam of wasted humanity to be excavated in future years to the wonderment of its discoverers, and placed in museums.

Pointing to the mountain of bodies and tapping his finger on them, Phillip said, These were Jews. They were like your mamma, and me. They were teachers, musicians, bakers, machinists, craftsmen, merchants, and housewives. And there were children like you … yes children too, like you and your school mates.

Nemamiah, his bright blue eyes looking up at his father, said, "It was the Nazis, Papa.

No, no, no, roared Phillip, pounding his fist on an end table that collapsed to the floor, shattered.

It was Germans, Nemamiah. They were living, breathing humans, not the dead rubbish that you see in this photograph. Knowing full well of these atrocities, we Germans stood silently by, approving of the Nazis’ brutality. It was Germans who brutalized and murdered fellow Germans.

Tears welled in Nemamiah’s eyes. He feared that his father, in his rage, would abandon him. He thought, I would be left to wander alone through the city and countryside like my friends. I would have to beg for bread and sausages, and dig for food in heaps of rat-infested garbage. I would have to dig for turnips, onions, and potatoes, until the quick of my nails bled. If I could not find food, I would be plowed into a pit.

Too numbed by fear to speak, Nemamiah bowed his head and murmured lowly, Yes, sir

After Phillip had showed Nemamiah several photographs, the boy turned his head away and, holding his hands to his eyes, pleaded, Please no, no, Papa. I don’t want to see any more.

Phillip, seeing that he had pushed Nemamiah further than he should, said, It is done, Nemamiah. I want to hear again about your special gift. Do you remember that, after you were torn from Mamma during the hurricane, you awoke in hospital? There, you discovered that you had a special gift, didn’t you?

Yes, Papa: I could trick people into doing things. I did it to my nurses and friends. I went into their minds, and told them to do bad things. At school, they told me they had done them. It made their parents mad at them. If I use the gift a lot, I get tired.

Is your gift is still with you, Nemamiah?

Yes, sir.

Do you feel that it is as strong as before?

Yes, Papa, even stronger. I just haven’t used it much.

Father and son stared into the fire’s glowing embers, the photographs’ macabre images arising from the embers and burning into Nemamiah’s psyche.

The hound yawned and sighed, and, as dogs do, he raised his head and smiled, and dropped his head. He was impatient for the awakening of the boy’s gift.

Phillip placed his calloused hand on the back of Nemamiah’s neck and said; One day when you are older you will use your gift to help tortured people like the people in these photographs.

I know, Papa; maybe a long time from now.

What would you think if we left Germany and went to America? We would go soon because the rumors are that very soon the Communists will take over Dresden. There is nothing left for us here but more misery. I will take you to a place in America that is very much like Dresden. Beautiful mountains, lakes, and forests surround it. What do you think of this, Nemamiah?

Is it peaceful and clean in America, Papa; no rats or roaches? Is the food good? Would I go to school?

Yes, son, it is peaceful and clean and food is plentiful. You would go to school with children who are not always afraid, and who do not denounce one another. I think that you would very much like it there.

I want to go, Papa.

Nemamiah, you must promise me that you will never speak of our going to America to anyone, not to your best friends, your teachers, not even Aunt Margaret or Uncle Hans… not anyone. If you do, the authorities might learn of our plans. I would be put back into prison, or even shot. Is that understood?

Yes, sir: I promise. Can we take my dog with us?

"He will have to be given shots of medicine before entering America. I can arrange that. Let’s be off to the zoo. On the way, we can talk more about America, our secret.."

CHAPTER 1

May 14, 2014

Pisgah National Forest, North Carolina

The vulture pushed off of the pine needle floor of a stretch of the Pisgah National Forest that opened onto a meadow. The bird rose upward upon the fifth downward thrust of its wings. Holding its wings at a slight upward dihedral angle, it was borne aloft by rising warm air. Tipping and righting its wings, it drifted slowly in wide circles, easing southeastward. Solemn choruses sang below, given voice by breezes fanning through the bald stone corridors of North Carolina’s Smoky Mountains.

After gliding above the French Broad River for several miles, the vulture’s acute sense of smell picked up fetid odors that hung above the Homeward Angels skilled nursing complex near Marshall. The bird’s shadow drifted across the red-tiled roofs of the facility’s two brick buildings and its expansive green lawns.

One year ago the vulture had fed in a garden below, where the perfumes of marigolds, salvia, cannas, impatiens, hydrangea, magnolias, and shrub roses floated upward in the morning air, mingling with the miasma of despair and death.

It had been then that Homeward Angel resident Edwina Elliot, in a drug-induced contortion of time and space, had wandered from her room at the rear of the skilled nursing building and into the garden. Sheena Moore, the eighteen-year-old resident assistant, who was charged with Edwina’s personal care, had not been aware that Edwina had been missing from her room. On the morning of her charge’s departure, Sheena had been outside smoking. She had been engrossed in a conversation with her stud, a boy named Melvin who wore baggy pants that hung below his knees and a baseball hat, the visor of which pointed to the rear, a metaphor for the direction of his life.

As Edwina had shuffled down the pebbled garden path, she lost her footing and had fallen backwards, hitting her head upon a rock. She had lain on her back, benumbed, unaware, eyes closed.

Before the accident, Sheena Moore had given Mrs. Elliot two doses of Seroquel, an antipsychotic drug. Mrs. Elliot had been a bother to Sheena—a troublemaker, a handful, uncontrollable.

During breakfast Edwina and the Cherokee Indian sculptress, Kamama Jones, another troublemaker, had laughed too loudly. They had complained that the scrambled eggs were too dry, and that the hashed-brown potatoes had contained saltpeter to tame the resident men’s desires. Such disruptions were not tolerated at Homeward Angels. Calmness and monotonous routines ruled.

An antipsychotic drug pacified one of every three residents of the home. Very few were schizophrenic or suffered from bipolar disorder, conditions for which the drug was indicated. No matter. It was the drug of choice to keep the peace.

No one had seen the vulture fall upon Mrs. Elliot. With its short, hooked beak, it had torn and swallowed her stomach’s flaccid and wrinkled flesh, and innards. Nor had anyone seen the ravens gather at the feast, pecking and pulling at Mrs. Elliot’s eyelids, coveting the delicacies beneath.

Nor had any one shed a tear when Edwin Sevrin, the groundskeeper, discovered Mrs. Elliot’s ravaged body. Edwin had chased away the feeding birds with his shovel, undaunted by the vulture’s menacing hisses and grunts, and the horrid odor of Mrs. Elliot’s barely digested flesh that the raptor had regurgitated to repel him.

The staff agreed that Mrs. Elliot had been close to death, if not already dead, when attacked by the birds. Furthermore, even if alive, in her drug-induced comatose and nerve-shattered state, Mrs. Elliot would have felt nothing as she gave up her flesh to the vulture, her eyes to the ravens, and her soul to God.

Edwina would no longer be a burden to her family, who had been spared a report on the true circumstances of her demise and the sight of her remains. What sort of death could have been more natural than to be snuffed by a creature of nature, chuckled Sheena Moore, a nature lover.

The birds had left to Edwina’s apathetic son and daughter only vague memories of their detached relationships with their mother, and the quiet desperation of their mother’s self-imposed martyrdom for her family, self-sacrifice to which she had been addicted.

For $8,000, the mortuary had prepared Edwina for a modest casket burial next to Mr. Elliot, the family’s first victim of Homeward Angels. The cost of Edwina’s burial had been covered mostly by the proceeds of her $10,000 life insurance policy that she had purchased to save her children of her burial expenses. Her son had attended a three-minute graveside service that had been performed by a minister who had never met his mother. Edwina’s daughter, Wilma, whom the deceased had not seen in four years, had a Pilate’s lesson and could not attend the service. The minister had said a few of the usual things that are said about the dearly departed.

Edwina’s son and daughter had spent six months squabbling over their mother’s meager worldly remains. The son had relented in disgust to Wilma’s claims, never to see his sister again.

Only the Cherokee Indian, Kamama Jones, had mourned Edwina’s passing. They had been kindred souls, bound by their humors that mocked their fates, and by their stoic acceptances of the madness of the home.

The Homeward Angels staff had gone on without remembering the name of the 83-year old woman who had died in the garden on that May morning one year ago, or the way she had died. They had been too bewildered, absorbed, and exhausted by the demands of the half-living, drugged-up carrion that lay muttering and shouting for them from beds with iron safety sidings. Yet, they could not help but share some of the depression and ennui of these residents.

As they always did, residents slumped in wheelchairs and worn imitation leather chairs in the halls and common areas of the home, heads bowed, eyes open, but almost unseeing. Some stared at televisions, potted plants, beige walls, threadbare oriental carpets, and dusty windows, devoid of will, emotion, or purpose. They inwardly cursed the sponsors and caretakers of their creeping passages and begged visitors to take them from the home. The grandfather clock in the reception area ticked on, measuring the residents’ remaining days. Like all past spring seasons, this spring held no promise of rebirth for them.

. . .

This spring, the revisiting vulture sensed that there would be no feast in the garden as there had been a year ago. It circled above the home once and then rode thermals to 500 feet. Flying west toward the soft hazel nebula from which spread a final golden flush above the silhouette of the Smoky Mountains, the bird had returned to its forest home, where it was revered for its age, and sometimes eaten by hungry young.

. . .

Kamama Jones lay in her bed, remembering that spring morning a year earlier, imagining the garden where Edwina had been taken from her.

She put her legs over the side of her bed, stood and moaned, wincing from sharp pains that knifed through her back, ribs, knees and hips. She chanted her friend’s name in lamentation. To honor the one-year anniversary of Edwina’s death, Kamama had carved a likeness of Edwina in ash wood and wrapped it in a shroud that she made from hemp threads dyed with black ink. She had laid the carving in a miniature casket that she fashioned from tree bark and glue and left a note for Bill Jenkins, an orderly she had befriended, asking him to bury the casket in the place in the garden where Edwina had died. Bill would, as the note instructed him to do, bury the casket in the earth facing to the west, and cover the grave with rocks. Over the next seven days, Kamama would mourn for her friend and, on the seventh day, bid her good bye.

Kamama returned to bed and slept.

Later, she was aroused by a knock on her door. Sheena Moore opened the door and said, Kamama, wake up. You have a visitor, Mr. Molar, our ombudsman.

Ombudsman Simon Molar said, Good evening, Kamama. I apologize for interrupting your sleep.

Turning to Sheena, who lingered at the door, Molar said, That will be all, Sheena. Thank you.

Pulling a chair up to Kamama’s bed, he said, I know that you are not feeling well. However, I need you to listen carefully to me. Have you been having unsettling dreams?

Kamama, lying on her back, turned her head to Molar. Grimacing from pain when she shifted her position, she said, Yes, a doctor visited me in my sleep and made a prophecy of my liberation and final victory. I did not understand.

Molar said, Kamama, your dream was of Doctor, who arranged your stay in Homeward Angels.

He must be evil.

No Kamama; he wanted you to feel first-hand the agony suffered by millions of your brothers and sisters in places like this. Tonight, Doctor will revisit your dreams. He will tell you that tomorrow he will transport you to a place called Azrael. This has been arranged with Homeward Angels’ management. Doctor will say that, at Azrael, he will reinvigorate your quality of life before you pass on. He will also tell you of his plan for you to join two of your Azrael sisters in carrying out a mission for him. They, like you, are terminally ill, but will be rehabilitated enough to enable you to carry out your mission.

Kamama said, Mission?

Molar said, I do not know the nature of the mission, except that you will accomplish much for the sake of humanity.

Tomorrow morning a Homeward Angels orderly will pack your things and assist you down to meet the car that will take you to Azrael.

Kamama raised her head. Grimacing, she asked, Out?"

Molar stood and said, Yes, for as long as you live from tomorrow onward you’ll be cared for and live in peace and comfort before you die. Remember, the orderly will come for you tomorrow morning. Good night, and sweet dreams.

CHAPTER 2

May 20, 2014

Chemical Materials Agency, Aberdeen Proving Ground, Edgewood, Maryland

Col. Mark Reason, Activity Commander of the Blue Grass Chemical Activity Depot in Richmond, Kentucky, sat in the anteroom of the office of General Edward Miller, Commanding General of the U.S. Army Research Development and Engineering Command of the Chemical Materials Agency.

The Blue Grass Activity Depot researched, developed, and tested technologies for the non-incendiary destruction of assembled chemical weapons stockpiles. The focus of the facility’s research and development were blister and nerve agents, the deadliest nerve agents of which were VX and sarin. Stored in the Blue Grass Depot were about five hundred tons of nerve and mustard agents for use in rockets, projectiles, and bombs that are fully assembled with fuses, bursting charges, shipping and firing tubes, rocket propellants, motors, and igniters.

Miller’s aide, Master Sergeant William Arndt, came out of the general’s office, and told Reason that the general was ready to see him.

Reason saluted Miller, who returned his salute and shook the colonel’s hand. "Good to see you, Mark. Please, have a seat. I assume that you have received my memo informing you that the latest daily materials inventory audit discovered the disappearance of certain highly toxic materials. Should we be concerned about this?

Sir, I received your memo three days ago. I ordered an internal investigation of the matter. As you know, we’ve been testing the degradation of weapons-loaded sarin over time and under varying storage conditions. To construct a sarin weapon contained in an aluminum casing, in addition to the sarin, we had to store quantities of two precursors, principally methylphosphonl difluoride and a mixture of isopropyl alcohol and isopropyl amine. We also had to store refrigerants, stabilizers and transfer agents. Small quantities of all of these components were among the missing materials.

Mark, how much sarin is a relatively small quantity? I mean, in theory, how lethal would a weapon with this sarin payload be?

Sir, it would not be enough to do serious damage. If dispensed in a vapor over New York City, maybe one or two casualties. Otherwise, there would be a few hundred people with flu-like symptoms. A lethal situation would be if an aerosol canister containing less than few milligrams of sarin were vaporized in a room, subway or railroad car of, say, 50 people. If they were not immediately treated with atropine and pralidoxime, only about five percent of them would survive. Some of the survivors would suffer temporary or permanent neurological damage.

Good God, Mark; all of the security measures we have in place at your facility, and this happens. Do you have any clues as to how security was breached?

"Thus far, our investigation has not turned up a clue. The material was removed from a very secure, windowless, sealed, temperature-controlled nerve-agent storage room within our research lab. The door to the room is made of three-inch-thick reinforced steel. There was no sign of forced entry. There are two full-time research scientists, who have clearances to enter the storage room and electronic keys to gain entry…Doctors Wield and Goldfarb.

There is one unanswered question, Reason continued. At 3:23 p.m. on February sixteenth, one of our research scientists, Goldfarb, entered the toxic materials storage room accompanied by an outside consulting scientist, Dr. William Simon.

Upon hearing Simon’s name, Miller got up from his desk chair and walked to his office window that looked out over rows of ‘igloos,’ in which were stored tons of chemical weaponry.

After a moment of contemplation, the general turned and said, Col. Reasons, you have been with us for about two months. Is that correct?

Yes, sir

Have you familiarized yourself with the backgrounds of all of our scientists, both those fully employed, and also any consultants?

Yes, sir.

Then you have read the file of the consultant, Dr. Simon?

Yes, sir.

Then, Mark, you know that Simon retired as head of the Chemistry Department of Duquesne University in 2000?

Yes, sir. In 2012 we hired him as a part-time consultant for his expertise in nerve agents.

"You also should know that he is beyond reproach—above suspicion. The man was a two-time winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. He was essential to the development of the Assembled Chemical Weapons Alternative program.

The government flew him to Khamisiyah in 1991 to look into the detonation of the chemical weapons depot there. Over 130,000 troops downwind of the plume…unprotected, were exposed to low levels of sarin. At least that is what the Duelfer Report said. The Duelfer Report; what bull shit!

Miller asked, Mark, Simon is 79-years-old is he not?

Reason said, I do not recall his age or where he lives off-hand, General. One moment, please.

Reason, after referring to notes, said, "According to our investigators, Simon’s last known address was the William Penn long-term care home in Norristown, Pennsylvania. We contacted the home. They confirmed that Simon had been a resident there. He voluntarily checked out of the home at 7:14 the evening of July 18, 2013 He had left a forwarding address that was bogus. All of his personal and health records had left with him, along with his wife’s. As to his age, he is 79.

"He had departed the home voluntarily in a limo. No one at the home had recalled the license plate or anything else about the vehicle, or the man that had arranged his release. The home did have a release form signed by Simon and the gentleman who had arranged his release and left with him, Charles Simon, had claimed to be the doctor’s brother. Charles had said he was taking the doctor to live at his home with his wife and him. Simon had seemed happy to see his brother. The brother had taken care of all of the paper work and other arrangements for the doctor’s release. Afterward, he had driven away with the doctor in a limo. The limo driver had been invisible behind the car’s tinted windows.

Eventually, it had been discovered that the release was bogus. The party who had claimed to be the doctor’s brother was not his brother. He had used a phony home telephone number and address. We don’t know of Simon’s whereabouts.

The general, concern deepening on his face, said, The fact that the home had not retained his personal and health records smells to high heaven. I should think that this would have been required by law, or, at the very least, the home would have wanted to retain the records to protect it against lawsuits down the road.

Yes, sir. The director of the home had been extremely upset when the ruse was discovered. Someone obviously had gotten into their paper and computer files without the employees’ or the home’s knowledge.

I am sure that there is a logical explanation for this whole affair. Is Simon’s wife still living?

No, sir. She had passed away of cancer in 2012.

Are there any living relatives?

No, sir. Simon had a sister, Grace. She had died in a nursing home in Chicago in 2011.

The general said, Have you contacted Duquesne University?

Yes, sir. Simon retired from his position there in 2000 He stayed in touch with the university until July 2013, when he disappeared from the William Penn home. They have no record of his having contacted them since then.

Did Goldfarb allude to anything that Simon said or did that had struck Goldfarb as unusual during his visit to the storage room with Simon? Had Simon ever been alone in the storage room?

No on both counts, sir.

Miller said, If we had suspected that this might have been a kidnapping, we would have kept it under wraps until we were certain, particularly if we had suspected that he was involuntarily taken out of Pennsylvania?

Yes, sir.

Miller said, "I am sure, Mark, that you’ll continue your efforts to track down Simon without the involvement of the law, including the F.B.I., or the local or state police. As far as I am concerned, this is an internal Army matter. It does not remotely represent a threat to national security. It will remain so until we have credible evidence to the contrary.

I’ll contact General Perkins, the Commander of U.S. Army Intelligence and Security at Fort Belvoir, Miller continued. "He is an old buddy and owes me a favor or two. It is not exactly in INSCOM’S bailiwick, but I am sure that he will be willing to send an investigator down to give us a hand.

Mark, what concerns me most is word of the sarin’s disappearance getting out to the beltway clowns, media, and the public before we have had a chance to complete our investigation. I want us to bury it until we have had time to sort it out. Who else knows about this?

Reason said, When I was informed about the missing materials by Goldfarb, I told him that the materials had been sent to Aberdeen. I didn’t give him a reason. This seemed to satisfy him. I did not ask him to keep it to himself, thinking that to do so might arouse suspicion and speculation. In the past, he has been very tight lipped about what we do.

Very well, Miller said. Who knows? It could turn out to be a very innocent disappearance. I am glad, Mark, that you immediately came to me. Let’s do our best to keep this contained while we get to the bottom of it. Keep me posted.

Reason stood, saluted and said, Yes, sir.

Miller returned Reason’s salute with a dismissive wave of his hand. Good day, Mark.

Miller pushed the intercom button on his telephone and said, Sergeant, please get me General Perkins at INSCOM.

CHAPTER 3

July 13, 2014

Room SD-560, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C.

Pamela Wilson, staff director for Senator Paul Byer, sat erect across from the disheveled and hoary-headed 80-year-old senator, holding a pencil and a steno pad.

Byer slouched behind his desk in an old leather-covered swivel chair. His wrinkled suit coat lay on a couch, and his shirtsleeves were rolled up to his elbows. The lower right side of his chin was propped on the base of the palm of his sun-spotted and deeply tanned right hand, his forearms road maps of prominent blue veins. His glittering, animated eyes, partially hidden under drooping lids, scanned his office walls, occasionally pausing on photographs of highlights of his 25-year military career. His visual reconnaissance ended on a frame in which were mounted a Medal of Honor and Lieutenant General’s stars.

On his desk was an extinguished, half-smoked Cuban Corona cigar, resting in the saddle of a clear glass ashtray. He smoked cigars outside of the building on the sidewalk of Connecticut Avenue for ten minutes every two hours, cursing the building’s ban on smoking.

Byer’s desk was strewn with reports bearing various official seals. His wife, two sons and their families smiled from family photographs that crowded the credenza behind him.

His eyes turned to a photograph of Harry Truman awarding Captain Paul Byer the Medal of Honor for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at risk of his life and beyond the call of duty. Byer heaved a long sigh and, slowly turning to Pamela Wilson, said, I assume, Pam, that written notices of the meeting went out on time?

Yes, Senator. All nineteen committee members have indicated that they will attend. In addition, we have confirmation of the attendance of eleven panelists. This includes one director, one CEO, and one president, each representing his/her assisted living or skilled nursing institution; one nursing home ombudsman; Senators Riley, Smothers, and Roland who, as you know, represent three states with large populations of seniors and nursing homes. There will also be three residents of a skilled nursing institution. Each of the panelists will be allowed seven minutes to speak. Add an hour for procedural matters and some discussion. The session should be over by 1 p.m. You are scheduled for lunch with Mr. Arnold Seymour, the Director of the Gray Panthers.

Did we make this an open session? asked Byer, as he rolled an unlit cigar around in his hand.

Yes, sir

I approved media coverage?

Yes, sir…cable TV, radio, the press…the works.

Mimicking W.C. Fields fingers, Byer said, Ah. It must be a subject fecundated with promise for political gain, posturing, persuasion, and proselytizing of preposterous promises and ponderous party planks. Remind me please.

With a laugh, Pamela Wilson replied, using her Mae West impersonation, Assisted Living and Nursing Home Care: Policies and Practices for Optimum Quality Care

Byer said, The usual indigestible mouthful. Please tell me this was not my idea! he said, laughing, throwing his arms above his head, and rolling up his eyeballs in mock self-disgust.

I am afraid so, sir, said Pamela, flashing a tenuous smile. The meeting of the Special Committee on Aging will commence at 9:00 a.m., in room 580 in this building on July 20.

"Oh Pamela, before I forget. There is no need to subject the three senior citizens from the nursing home to security checks. I am sure that they will not be concealing weapons of mass destruction beneath their…their…er ... whatever undergarments old ladies wear. Woefully, it has been too many years since I last explored this question. I have lost interest and touch, so to speak, since the start of the women’s liberation movement. It was then that Bella Abzug had tantalized us with the prospect of her removing her brassiere in the shade of her broad-brimmed hat. How time flies! It had been almost thirty years ago that I sat next to her when she puked on Walter Cronkite’s fork, protesting his attempt to feed her as an outrageous act of male chauvinism.

Please arrange security clearance for the ladies and bring them into my office, the senator continued. "It would be politic of me to consort with a few elders who have lived through the abuses and tyranny of nursing homes, and the neglect of indifferent friends and family vultures waiting to pick over their meager assets. After their brief visit, please escort them from my office to the meeting room. Protect them along the way from green and overly zealous security people.

How many times, Pamela, have we reviewed this subject in one form or another?

A bunch in the eight years that I have been with you, sir.

Byer stood and, waving his arms, said, What have been the results of resolution after resolution and the passage of regulation after regulation to improve things, and White House conferences to develop this and that program?

Slamming his fist on his desk, he said, "Nothing of significance. Folks keep getting older and living longer, piling up like cordwood in these wretched homes. There are already about one and one-half million of these poor devils in nursing homes, and by 2030, there will be three million. Good grief! What will we do with all of them? Three million of me: I cannot imagine!

The people who are supposed to care for them are underpaid, overworked and unmotivated. The managers and owners of the institutions get greedier and greedier and richer and richer, while their charges suffer painful and humiliating mental and physical abuse, neglect, and depression. I can recite their maladies from memory. Clenching both hands into fists the senator began counting the maladies, raising one finger for each: "Infections, muscle contractions, broken bones, malnutrition, dehydration, dementia, myelitis, septic shock aspiration, acidosis, unclean bodies and environments ... I need more fingers—fecal impaction, pneumonia, renal failure, unattended bed sores teeming with maggots, physical and chemical restraints, and minds fogged by unnecessary behavior-controlling drugs. I know them by heart.

"No battlefield that I was ever on was as gruesome or so rife with carnage as these killing fields. It seems as though God created these tortuous places for the aged so that He could inflict such misery upon them that they would open their arms to death and welcome resurrection to some peaceful and painless place.

How do we attempt to solve the problem? We lay law upon law until we have constructed an inescapable vast wilderness, a Colossus of regulations so tangled and arcane they confound the caregivers that they were meant to guide and, in every way imaginable, ruin those that they were meant to protect. In the meantime, while nursing home residents are in agony, we engage in endless debate about whether or not terrorist prisoners at Abu grade are getting properly balanced, ethnically relevant diets, or are being interrogated too harshly. We must tear the entire health and welfare system down to the ground and re-build it, free of government meddling. This is my last year at this job. Enough is enough. I, too, need peace and a last chance to do something worthwhile, away from this red tape bound monster. There is more tyranny in the tentacles of our government bureaucracy than in the hearts and actions of the worst of dictators.

I’ve seen enough, too, Pamela said. I have a very generous government pension coming. I’ll be right behind you. Hopefully, I’ll never be forced into a nursing home.

I would not wish that on any one, Byer replied.

"Please ask Bill Squires to prepare my opening statement. I am sure that he will find a bunch of my past statements on the subject in our files. Just tell him to keep me consistent with them, and enthusiastic about our progress. He should re-shuffle words and pretty them up… rah, rah stuff. Tell the congresspersons to please keep their statements under seven minutes, even though they are allowed at least ten. I will very unceremoniously cut them off, if they exceed seven… while the cameras are rolling.

And there is one more thing. Please tell the participating congresspersons that I would prefer that they not say that they are concerned when they refer to the problems of these forgotten citizens. That word, along with but should be stricken from politicians’ lexicons. When used by politicians, the word concern is transparently non-solicitous, phony, and reeks of resolute intent to do nothing.

Pamela Wilson stood and, having sat through the same speech eight times, smiled and said, Yes, sir, leaving the senator alone in his office, with the ache of decades of frustration, hopelessness, and failure gnawing at his gut.

Byer muttered to Harry Truman’s photograph, No more will come out of this show of concern than has come out of any other such displays before it. This will be so, as long as cloistered old sick people do not have a strong single voice to speak on their behalf. We care more about the welfare of animals, greenery, melting ice bergs, and stressed out polar bears than about the health and welfare of today’s millions of elderly humans. This never changes and will only worsen as the elderly population grows. However, this abomination is in the here and now. It must change. It will, if I have anything to do with it.

CHAPTER 4

July 14, 2014

Azrael Health Retreat

One Mile North of Hot Springs, North Carolina

Kamama Jones’s new home was an Adirondack-style lodge, built in 1937. It stood on a promontory that overlooked the French Broad River that snaked through the small community of Hot Springs, North Carolina, two thousand feet below Rich Mountain.

German Merchant Marines had been interred in the estate during World War II. The original 15 feet high stonewall that surrounded the property still stood. Corroded barbed wire snaked across the wall’s top.

At the entrance into the estate was a 16-foot tall, arched oak paneled gate. Across the gate’s arch was inscribed in eight inch high gold letters, Azrael Health Retreat, beneath which were in three inch gold letters, Do Not Go Gentle.

Two armed security guards were stationed in a log guardhouse on an island in the center of the driveway entrance immediately beyond the gate. The guards could not enter the lodge, nor would they dare ask about what went on within. They had been warned by Doctor not to pry into Azrael’s business or reveal information about the comings and goings of the retreat’s staff, residents, visitors, suppliers, or him.

The doors of the entry gate swung inward, opening on to a driveway paved with loose pearlescent pebbles. After 500 yards, the driveway formed into a circle in front of the lodge’s front door that was constructed of four-inch thick, century old oak panels.

The lodge had been built on rock. Its roof’s shingles lay between enormous timbers and its vertical siding had been fashioned from split, hand-hewn logs. The window, front door, and porch railings had been trimmed with roughly dressed limbs and roots of indigenous trees with natural curves and knots. Surrounding the lodge’s front and two sides was a railed porch protected from rain and snow by a broad overhang.

Extending from the rear wall of the lodge was a fieldstone veranda. On it were a wet bar, lounge chairs, Adirondack straight back chairs, and tables that had tree root bases covered with Yellow Birch bark or mosaic designs made from cut twigs. A ramp extended from the veranda down to a fenced pleasance through which wound an arbor covered garden path that led to a swimming pool, open-air gazebo, and a Koi pond below which was a lawn bowling court.

At the rear of the pleasance was a hot mineral spring in which the retreat’s residents soaked daily, assisted by personal caretakers called Sisters. Beyond the hot spring was a greenhouse in which were grown flowers for the residents’ rooms, the great hall, and the veranda. Hybrid tea roses grew abundantly in a riot of colors near the oak-railed fences that surrounded the pleasance, and next to the latticework of the garden path arbor—snowy white and shades of red, salmon, yellow, copper, pink, and apricot. The roses delighted the residents who had come from places where the effluvium of sickness, human decay, and death pervaded.

On the east side of the low oak picket fence that surrounded the pleasance was an out-building in the same Appalachian architectural style as the main lodge. It housed a computer room, an infirmary, fully equipped medical and Bioscience laboratories, an atelier, and rooms for painting, woodworking, and sculpting.

The front entrance of the lodge opened to a great room that measured 4,000 square feet. The oak beamed ceiling vaulted 35 feet to the roofline. The slanted ceiling had three fifteen-by-ten-foot lightly tinted ceiling window transoms that, regardless of the weather, brought refulgence to the room. A 20-foot wide oak mantled fireplace constructed of hand hewn native stone occupied one corner of the room.

Off the hallway from the great room to the kitchen was a bank of four elevators. Next to the elevators was a 50-seat theater, across from which was a library replete with a variety of books.

Next to the library and off the kitchen was a dining room at the center of which was a finely finished oak table that seated 30 people. Carved twice in the table’s center, so as to be readable by those sitting on opposite sides was the inscription, ‘Nourish Our Bodies from Which Azrael Will Gently Transport Our Souls’. A circular carving surrounded the inscription, facing the head of the table. It had been embossed with four faces, a multitude of wings, and throng of eyes and tongues that together formed a human body, gender indistinguishable.

The staff could not explain the emblem to the residents, nor would any of the residents or staff ask Doctor for an explanation of it. Such curiosity might incite anger out of the menacing moodiness that, more and more, seemed to lurk in Doctor’s eyes and voice.

Dr. Nemamiah Heinrich sat in a soft leather sofa in front of the library fireplace. Next to him sat Simon Molar, the Long-Term Care Regional Ombudsman for North Carolina’s Buncombe, Henderson, and Transylvania Counties, and Madison County, in which the retreat was located. They discussed the recruitment of additional standard-bearers to assist Kamama in carrying out the opening assault of Doctor’s crusade, about which ombudsman Molar knew nothing.

CHAPTER 5

Same Day

Azrael Heath Retreat

Nemamiah Heinrich is an imposing man of 78 years. He is six feet six inches tall and weighs 240 pounds. His thick marigold hair is laced with gray. It waves over his ears and partially down the nape of his neck, and curls up at its ends. The depths of his iridescent, galvanizing hazel eyes reflect a plaintive pleading for absolution and a benevolent lumen of generosity and caring. When provoked, these reflections would dissimilate into a riveting, feral glower. His full grey beard almost swallows his mouth that is perpetually shaped in neutrality of mood. His physique is thick-boned and athletic. His hands measure nine inches from his wrist to the tip of his middle finger and span over six and one-half inches. Normally, his voice rumbles like distant thunder without being stentorian. Its smooth modulation and resonance soothes, nourishes, and entrances. However, when he is angry, his voice explodes, deep-throated and grave.

Nemamiah is known as Doctor to all who enter or reside in Azrael, and to townspeople. All of Azrael’s transactions with suppliers and payments of salary to its staff are in cash. Doctor gives donations generously and anonymously to the Hot Springs library, police, fire department, hospital, schools, and churches—always in cash. While the townspeople are not sure absolutely that Doctor is the donor, he is thought by most to be the only one in the area with the means to give so much. Assuming this to be true, they treat him with reverence.

In 1948, Nemamiah and his father, Phillip, had immigrated to the United States. They had settled two miles north of Asheville, North Carolina,