Rogue Pharma: A Qian Choi Novel

By Hugh Cameron and Edna Quammie

The ongoing saga of the lives, loves, and tragedies of four very different women in an increasingly chaotic world. First introduced in the book Prions from Wuhan, the book 2 in the series, Die or Make Die, described their tangled, difficult, and increasingly distrustful but intertwined complex relationships.

Qian Choi is the leader of a Hong Kong–based triad deeply involved in pharmaceuticals. Her daughter-in-law, Jazz, formerly a sex slave in Saudi Arabia, is now prime minister of the new country of Vancouver. Hong, also married to her son, is forced to leave Hong Kong for fear of the CCP. Qian runs afoul of Big Pharma who is trying to force her to sell out. Lauren—a former assassin, widow of Qian’s former husband, unwillingly pressed back into service—stages a violent rescue and goes on to settle the score with dangerous, ruthless people.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 13, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669815785

Hugh Cameron

Hugh Cameron, born in Scotland, is an internationally known orthopedic surgeon who lives, works, and teaches in Toronto. He was one of the developers of modern joint replacement surgery. Most patients with artificial hips are walking on the technology he was instrumental in developing. He was the lead designer of many artificial hip and knee implants, some of which are currently being implanted. For more than thirty years, he and a group of surgeons crisscrossed the world teaching and demonstrating modern joint replacement surgery. He is the lead author of more than two hundred scientific papers and continues to publish, now mostly on issues related to pain. He has published two technical books and several novels of which this book is the fourth in a series about the decline and fall of the West and its possible redemption.

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Copyright © 2022 by Hugh Cameron and Edna Quammie.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,

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without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the

product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance

to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 03/11/2022

Xlibris

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CONTENTS

Chapter 1     Muggers

Chapter 2     Bribery

Chapter 3     My Territory

Chapter 4     Toronto

Chapter 5     Rent

Chapter 6     Hong

Chapter 7     Grandfather

Chapter 8     Long Shot

Chapter 9     Trouble

Chapter 10   Generics

Chapter 11   Preparation

Chapter 12   Elimination

Chapter 13   Reconciliation

Chapter 14   Reminiscences

Chapter 15   Kidnap

Chapter 16   Rescue

Chapter 17   Aftermath

Chapter 18   The Meeting

Chapter 19   Romance

Chapter 20   Villains

Chapter 21   Who Are You

Chapter 22   MacGregor

Chapter 23   Exploring Options

Chapter 24   Considerations

Chapter 25   The Plot

Chapter 26   The Kill

Chapter 27   What Next?

Chapter 28   The Contract

Chapter 29   Negotiations

Chapter 30   Japan

Chapter 31   Mistaken Identity

Chapter 32   Betrayal

Chapter 33   Revenge

Chapter 34   Envoi

Acknowledgments

CHAPTER 1

Muggers

Hand me the gun, Fred.

Wordlessly he picked it up from where it had fallen from the dead man’s hand and passed it to her. She took it in her left hand, still holding her .22 in her right, menacing the man on the ground in front of her. She glanced at it. Some cheapo knockoff from somewhere, she thought. Just what you would expect from a couple of stupid, useless muggers and would-be rapists.

Roll over, shithead, she commanded. The man did. She leaned over and shot him between the eyes with his friend’s gun. He twitched and was still. All was quiet. There was no one in the alley at the back of the houses, and she could see no one on the street.

She hurriedly wiped off her .22 and placed it in the dead man’s hand, folding it around the butt. She also wiped the other gun and placed it back in the hand of the man she had first shot, squeezing his hand around the butt.

Okay Fred. Let’s go!

He raised his eyebrows. And leave them here, Lauren? Call the police later?

If no one sees us, let’s not call them at all. The police are clueless. They will simply give us a hard time.

He grunted in amusement and shrugged his shoulders. Exiting the alleyway onto the street, they glanced around. In the far distance, they saw a couple coming towards them, so they turned and walked back the way they had come toward Yonge Street. At the next side street, they separated. Lauren turned and walked north for a couple of blocks, and then walked west to go home. At her suggestion, her husband walked south and then west so that anyone who met them on the street saw individuals, not a couple. In that very quiet residential neighborhood, there were few people about at that time of night, and they saw no one either of them recognized.

While walking calmly home, Lauren went over the encounter in her mind to see if there was any other way she could have handled it.

She had been exercising on the elliptical trainer in the basement gym in her house when her husband, Fred Buechel, had phoned her. The phone was resting on the machine, as she had been listening to a podcast while she worked out. Recognizing the number, she picked up, slightly breathless, while she continued to run. Yes?

Fred here. I am in the office. Just having a productive meeting with a new company that Leda has introduced to me.

Lauren knew Leda. She was an engineer that her orthopedic surgeon husband occasionally still worked with in the implant design business, which for years had fascinated him.

The guys are going to be in Toronto for one night only, so Leda has suggested we carry on the meeting and conclude with dinner at Coppi’s, you know, that Northern Italian restaurant on Yonge Street. Would you like to come along?

Lauren remembered that place. It was the scene of her first date with Buechel shortly after her husband, Al Campbell, had unexpectedly dropped dead of a heart attack. Both Lauren and her husband were widely traveled, so for them eating out was not exactly a big deal. Lauren now had two little children at home, Sheila from her first husband, Al, and Scott from Fred, her current husband. Going out for the evening was not a problem, as they had a live-in amah, but it was not something that they did very often. As she had no special plans for that night, she thought, ‘Why not?’

Sure, Fred. About what time?

He consulted the others in his office. About half past six. That suits you?

No problem. I will take a taxi across.

She had done that and had had an enjoyable evening. The group her husband was meeting turned out to be doctors and businessmen from India who had bought a small American orthopedic implant company and were looking for help with publicity and sales. Leda, Buechel’s old friend, had suggested he might be interested. Buechel was interested, not so much in helping with sales in the US, where he was involved with other companies, but in India, which he saw as a burgeoning market. He also felt that priced right, it might be possible to break into extremely price-sensitive markets like Canada and the UK. These markets were controlled by governments, and the price of any new procedure, rather than the outcome, was a major issue.

The food, as always in that restaurant, was excellent. Lauren, having eaten there before, knew what she liked, carpaccio, followed by a mushroom risotto done in a Parmesan cheese wheel. She also liked the fish baked in salt Ligurian style. The meal was accompanied by several bottles of excellent Montepulciano d’Abruzzo.

They had decided on a contract in principle, but the new owners would have to finish their exploratory business trip and return to India before finalizing it. Buechel, having been to India many times and having loved it, was happy at the thought of again visiting that country. The men from India called for a taxi to take them back downtown where they were staying. Leda planned on taking the subway home, and Buechel and Lauren decided to walk, as it was a fine fall night and their house was only a mile or two away in a quiet enclave west of Yonge Street.

Arm in arm, they strolled up a quiet residential street, which at that time of night was deserted. They were a couple of blocks away from Yonge Street when two young men came out of one of the numerous laneways. Robberies and violence were sadly becoming more common year after year in Toronto as the number of new migrants, posing as juvenile refugees, increased. These people, almost all young men, with no education and no skills, would never find employment in what was becoming an increasingly AI-dominated job market. Minimum wage demands mandated by government policy meant that increasingly low-grade service jobs, such as cashiers, were being computerized and therefore disappearing.

These migrants unfortunately therefore would mostly simply become an underclass, forever dependent on government handouts. Most people knew that, but they were still being brought in by a cynical federal government who assumed such migrants would always vote for them if they promised more and more welfare.

Buechel was wary but not particularly alarmed at their sudden appearance, as they were unshaven, sloppily dressed young men but not particularly menacing. He was shocked when one of them pulled out a pistol and pointed it at his face.

Be quiet, and step into this alley, the gunman hissed.

Buechel, who had wrestled competitively in his youth, was unsure if this was real or a toy gun and made to move toward him. Lauren recognized it as real and held his arm.

Do as they say, Fred, she said.

They took a few steps into the tree-lined alley at the back of the houses. The two men grinned. They obviously felt they had these soft, weak city people under control. One looked closely at Lauren. She recognized that look. She had the round neotenous Asian face that many men liked. In spite of having two children, the rigorous exercise program she undertook had kept her slim and fit. At her lover’s request years ago, she had had a little breast enhancement—just enough to be pleasing without attracting too much male attention.

Anticipating a pleasant evening with good company in a superb restaurant, she was made up and had dressed nicely in a relatively short skirt to show her legs. She thought she knew exactly what the muggers were thinking, a little pleasant rape while her impotent husband looked on.

Pull your skirt up, said the unarmed man. Grinning, the gunman kept his gun pointed at Buechel’s face.

Lauren smiled at them. The dopamine blast had hit her, and everything slowed down as the visual frames per second went sky-high from the standard fifty. The light in the shady alleyway brightened. Unobtrusively she moved her hand-bag in front of herself with her right hand. With the left, she grasped the free edge of her skirt and pulled it high up to expose her panties. Her handbag was small, so the skirt covered it. While the men stared at her uncovered thighs and groin, she unsnapped the clip on her handbag with her right hand. It opened, and she felt the gun she usually carried.

She got her hand around the butt and pulled it out, dropping her skirt. She shot the gunman in the belly as her hand cleared the handbag. His face was blank, and his mouth dropped open. Lauren had a fleeting thought, ‘This clown has never fired a gun in his life.

Then as her hand came up smoothly to eye level, she shot him in the face. It was only a .22, but the soft slug still penetrated his facial bones and entered his skull, bouncing around inside his brain. He stood for a second then collapsed in a heap, dropping his gun. Arm fully extended, Lauren held the gun to the other man’s face.

On your knees, shit-head, she snarled, or I’ll kill you too.

Stunned at the sudden change of power dynamic and what seemed to be the death of his companion, the man dropped to his knees, looking up at the muzzle of the gun pointing at him.

Now lie face down.

The man, thoroughly frightened by the sudden death of his friend, did so.

Pick up that gun, Fred, and give it to me, said Lauren. When he did, she ordered the man on the ground to roll over then, with no hesitation, shot him between the eyes with that gun.

They stayed on separate side streets until they reached their home, Buechel arriving first and Lauren a few minutes later.

Did you see anyone you knew? asked Lauren.

No, said Buechel. So I guess we don’t need to call the police.

If there was a CCTV camera I didn’t see, then possibly they may come looking. But you have Gary, that lawyer friend of yours, and he can talk to them. We just say nothing. The police are nowadays nothing but a nuisance, bothering law-abiding citizens and helping criminals.

I know, sighed Buechel. To think that thirty years ago I was the police orthopedic surgeon and I respected these guys. I used to go drinking and shooting with them. When did it all change?

I don’t know, and I don’t care. Would you like a drink, Fred?

I would. Let me make you one, Lauren. A vodka tonic?

Yes, a stiff one. Hard to believe that Toronto the Good is getting almost as bad as Paris.

Coming back from the kitchen, Buechel handed her a drink. "Not quite as bad. When we were assaulted there, you killed half a dozen of them, tonight just a couple. Wait till I tell Phillipe what has happened again. He will say, ‘Ah, mon ami, what an exciting life you live. Have Lauren come back to Paris and kill a few more bad guys.’"

Lauren laughed, thinking back to what had happened when she and Fred had been attacked in that city. Fred still did not realize how lucky they had been that she had managed to kill all the attackers. He had become almost nonchalant about her lethal abilities. He did not know, or pretended he did not know, that she had been a professional assassin, so for her, death was not a stranger. She had been introduced into that trade years ago by her lover. She found it quite amusing that Buechel and his best friend, Phillipe Cartier in Paris, were so unconcerned about the dead bodies she left lying around. After that first violent encounter in Paris, she had asked Buechel how he felt about her killing their attackers.

Nothing much. No guilt, no Raskolnikov effect. Just relief that somehow we got out of that alive. I am an orthopedic surgeon, so I am not in the death business. But I saw lots of people die during my training. I guess all docs do. So we are a bit like Edith Cavell, the UK nurse who was executed by a German firing squad for helping prisoners of war escape in WWI. Looking down the barrels of the guns, she said, ‘I have seen death so often that it is not strange or fearful to me.’ Besides, if people want to act like animals, killing them is like stepping on a cockroach. And Phillipe feels exactly the same.

I am glad you feel that way, Fred. So many people are bleeding hearts. If I had not killed tonight’s clowns, they would have been out of jail in no time if they ever even were charged with a crime. The police would likely have charged me with excessive use of force leading to manslaughter. Even if the police didn’t, the thug left alive would have claimed lifelong disability and sued me for inducing a post-traumatic stress disorder.

I like the way you left your gun with him to give the police a plausible excuse that they shot each other. We will have to make a trip across the border into the US so you can buy a replacement for the wall safe here.

We will eventually, said Lauren. But I have a spare one in the basement. Just hang on till I fetch it.

She went to her additional gun safe in the basement and took a .22 from that and placed it in the wall safe beside the door. Buechel had been astonished when he first found out about it. The safe was small, hidden behind a painting, which swung out on a steel plate. The only contents were a couple of guns—a standard 9 mm Walther and a short barrel .22, which Lauren usually took with her when she left the house. She had had that installed because she was concerned that the woman who had employed her on a major execution would send someone after her to eliminate her to break the information chain.

Later that night, both feeling relief about another escape from what could have been a desperate situation, Lauren and Buechel celebrated with a prolonged lovemaking before dropping off into a dreamless sleep.

The two dead bodies were discovered the next morning. There were no witnesses—or none came forward—and no cameras. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, as Lauren hoped, the incident was passed off by the police as a homicidal struggle, and no further investigations were undertaken.

CHAPTER 2

Bribery

Jazz was in her office when the man came to talk to her. She had been told by her staff that he was a businessman from the US representing important people. As the recently installed first prime minister of the new country of Vancouver, Jazz was anxious to bring in as much foreign investment and business as possible. Uncertain what he was bringing to the table, she saw him alone. He appeared Asian and spoke with a slight accent, which suggested to her that he was an immigrant. She did not tell him that she spoke passable Mandarin and understood at least some Cantonese.

He seemed a little surprised that she was on her own. It was hard to believe that he had come here without giving at least a cursory glance at the power structure in this exceedingly new country. Perhaps he thought that as a woman of color she was simply a figurehead, a puppet dancing to someone else’s tune. She felt irritated, but having been a slave in Saudi Arabia, she had learned to control any emotion, and showed no ‘tells’, as the gamblers call it.

Perhaps he interpreted her blank, expressionless face as stupidity, or perhaps he was used to dealing with some of the left-leaning political women in the US where naked corruption was not unexpected and rarely, if ever, made the news. Whatever his reasoning, he came straight to the point and offered her a bribe of $200,000 in exchange for her help in the building of a new dock and warehouses in the port of Vancouver.

Jazz was amused. Firstly, if he was for real, the bribe he was offering was a derisory sum. She thought about ten times that amount would have been more in the ballpark. She decided to see how far this would go.

Eh! she said. That’s a little low, is it not? If you want to bring in drugs, you will have to offer a great deal more.

The man did not blink an eye at the suggestion he was a drug runner. But you personally don’t have all the power, he said. So it will be necessary to influence numerous other people, which will be expensive. So how much more would you want anyway?

Jazz knew exactly what he was saying. With his own dock and own warehouses, by bypassing the authorities, he could bring in huge amounts of drugs to sell to the rest of Canada and, more importantly, across a porous border into the US. To do so, a lot more bribe money would indeed be necessary. Having considered legalizing, or at least decriminalizing drugs in Vancouver, when that city was separated from the rest of Canada, Jazz, in theory, had no objections to drugs coming in or even going out.

The problem she and her colleagues had seen was that given the ineffectual US War on Drugs, the amount of money to be made in the illicit drug trade was so vast that it inevitably led to massive corruption, all the way down the trail. In the end therefore, they had decided that they would fall in line with Singapore and reluctantly banned drugs, with severe penalties for opiates such as fentanyl.

I cannot allow the importation of drugs, Jazz eventually said to the man, having again contemplated the problems drugs create. Are there further issues you wish to discuss?

The man looked annoyed. He produced a phone, which he brandished. I have here a recording of you asking for more money. I will play that to your colleagues and, if necessary, the media. It would be better for you if you did what we asked.

Jazz was nonplussed, never having faced such an open threat before. There had been previous attempts at bribery, of course, as the majority of people in power in Vancouver were now Chinese, and in mainland China, being run by communists, corruption was the expected way of life. The group running Vancouver had decided that corruption would have to be stamped out, or at least prevented from gaining much of a foothold. Corruption was therefore seen as a serious issue, with significant penalties. The laws had been decided that crimes such as murder would carry the death penalty, but other issues were still under discussion. Any conviction for corruption would result in a permanent ban from political office.

To make sure that she was not only clean but also, like Caesar’s wife, seen to be clean if there ever was any challenge, Jazz had secretly had a recording device installed under her desk. So this conversation had been recorded. As it had been recorded, the man could cut and paste his own recording as much as he liked, but the original conversation would be available for confirmation.

She was deeply angered by this naked threat but again showed no emotion. She had a sudden flashback to her days as a slave, to her being treated like dirt by some ISIS psychopath, who thought she was of no account. She remembered one awful beating she had sustained, and the keloid scars on her back itched. Okay, she thought. Let’s ride this out and see how far this son of a bitch is prepared to go. Let’s go for a walk outside, she said, rising from her desk.

When she came home that evening, her husband was waiting for her. He had returned from Hong Kong the day before and was leaving for his agribusiness in Chile in the next day or so. As always, she had experienced a frisson of annoyance when he left for Hong Kong. No, it was a lot more than a frisson of annoyance. She didn’t like it, as he would be seeing Hong Zhang, wife number 2. She had been shocked when she first heard of the existence of wife number 2 and had felt betrayed.

She had, however, rapidly come to the realization that the world had changed. The West was in a terminal decline. She thought of it like the fall of Rome, which she had read about, and that seemed to be happening in every Western country she knew. She and others had managed to separate Vancouver from a failing Canada, and it was now effectively a Chinese city-state, just like Singapore. She had also knew about Lee Kuan Yew, the enormously successful first leader of that nation, and she wished to emulate him.

Taken hostage in London years before, she had been taken to Turkey and then Iraq as an unwilling ISIS bride, finally ending up as a concubine in Saudi Arabia. It was from there that her boyfriend, now husband, Colin, had rescued her with the help of his mother, Qian Choi, now the leader of one of the biggest triads in Hong Kong. As his father had been a European, Qian had not felt that Colin, her half-gailo son, could take over a triad. His children with Jazz, a woman of color, would be even less accepted. Qian had therefore insisted Colin additionally marry a mainland Chinese girl, Hong Zhang, with whom he had by now a couple of children. Colin had eventually told Jazz about that relationship.

Initially appalled, Jazz had finally accepted it as simply a different way of looking at the world and that her world was now Chinese, not European. So what a European might have thought was of no significance. Her children by Colin would be top dogs in the Anglo side of the business and Hong’s in the triad or quasi-illegal side. That was simply what it was, and she bore no ill will to Hong, whom she