Shadowfires

thing, Sharp used his formidable size to intimidate; he stood close, towering over his adversaries, staring down ominously, huge shoulders drawn up, full of pent-up violence, a volatile man. Yet the threat never became overt, and in fact Sharp frequently smiled. Of course, the smile was a weapon, too, for it was too wide, too full of teeth, utterly humorless, and strange.
    More important than Sharp's size was his use of every trick available to a highly placed government agent. Before leaving the Geneplan labs in Riverside, he had employed his Defense Security Agency authority to make several telephone calls to various federal regulatory agencies in Washington, from whose computer files he had obtained what information he could on Desert General Hospital and Dr. Hans Werfell, information that could be used to strong-arm them.
    Desert
General's record was virtually spotless. The very highest standards for staff physicians, nurses, and technicians were strictly enforced; nine years had passed since a malpractice suit had been filed against the hospital, and no suit had ever been successful; the patient-recovery rate for every illness and surgical procedure was higher than the normal average. In twenty years, the only stain on Desert General had been the Case of the Purloined Pills. That was what Peake named the affair when Sharp quickly briefed him on arrival, before confronting Dunn and Werfell; it was a name Peake did not share with Sharp, since Sharp was not a reader of mysteries as Peake was and did not have Peake's
sense of adventure. Anyway, just last year, three nurses at Desert
General had been caught altering purchase and dispensation records in
the pharmacy, and upon investigation it was discovered they had been
stealing drugs for years. Out of spite, the three had falsely
implicated six of their superiors, including Nurse Dunn, though the
police had eventually cleared Dunn and the others. Desert General was
put on the Drug Enforcement Agency's “watch list” of medical institutions, and Alma Dunn, though cleared, was shaken by the experience and still felt her reputation endangered.
    Sharp took advantage of that weak spot. In a discreet session with
Alma Dunn in the
nurses' lounge, with only Peake as a witness, Sharp subtly threatened the woman with a very public reopening of the original investigation, this time at the federal level, and not only solicited her cooperation but brought her almost to tears, a feat that Peake-who likened Alma Dunn to Agatha Christie's
indomitable Miss Jane Marple-had thought impossible.
    At first, it appeared as if Dr. Werfell would be more difficult to
crack. His record as a physician was unblemished. He was highly
regarded in the medical community, possessed an AMA Physician of the
Year Award, contributed six hours a week of his time to a free clinic
for the disadvantaged, and from every angle appeared to be a saint.
Well… from every angle but one: He had been charged with income-tax
evasion five years ago and had lost in court on a technicality. He
had failed to comply precisely with IRS standards of record
keeping, and though his failure was unintentional, a simple ignorance
of the law, ignorance of the law was not an acceptable defense.
    Cornering Werfell in a two-bed room currently unoccupied by
patients, Sharp used the threat of a new IRS investigation to bring
the doctor to his knees in about five minutes flat. Werfell seemed
certain that his records would be found acceptable now and that he
would be cleared, but he also knew how expensive and time-consuming
it was to defend himself against an IRS probe, and he knew that his
reputation would be tarnished even when he was cleared. He looked to
Peake for sympathy a few times, knowing he would get none from Sharp,
but Peake did his best to imitate Anson Sharp's air of granite resolution and indifference to others. Being an intelligent man, Werfell quickly determined that the prudent course would be to do as Sharp wished in order to avoid another tax-court nightmare, even if it meant bending his principles in the matter of Sarah Kiel.
    “No reason to fault yourself or lose any sleep over a misguided
concern about professional ethics, Doctor,” Sharp said, clapping one
beefy hand on the
physician's shoulder in a gesture of reassurance, suddenly friendly and empathetic now that Werfell had broken. “The welfare of our country comes before anything else. No one would dispute that or think you'd