Blood Brothers by Rick Acker

Author:Rick Acker [Acker, Rick]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781503934825
Published: 2016-07-12T06:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWELVE

PROBLEM SOLVING

At exactly five thirty in the evening, a woman’s smoky voice crooned, “Ring, ring, ring” from the computer speakers on George Kulish’s U-shaped desk. George glanced at the clock on the monitor and smiled. “Right on time.”

He clicked on the videophone icon, and the screen was instantly filled with the fat face of Grigori Kurilev. Grigori was a gifted biochemist with nearly a dozen patents to his name. His employer paid him well, but not well enough to support the lavish lifestyle he enjoyed. So he moonlighted as a consultant to Cleverlad and a few other high-paying clients. “Good to see you, Grigori.”

“And it is good to hear your voice,” replied Grigori. “Someday you must turn on your webcam so that I can see what the great George Kulish looks like. It is a little strange talking to a blank computer screen.”

“I can turn on the camera, but of course then I will have to kill you.”

Grigori laughed uncertainly. “Perhaps the blank screen is not so bad. You wish to know about the test results, yes?”

“Yes. How difficult is this drug to manufacture?”

Grigori waved a balloon-like hand dismissively. “Very simple. I can make it on my kitchen stove.”

“Good. But would the ingredients be difficult to obtain?”

“Not at all. The active ingredients are caffeine and ginseng. You can buy them in any drugstore.”

“It is not . . . This drug does not contain a previously unknown plant extract?”

“No. I ran the chemistry twice. There is nothing there except caffeine, ginseng, and a couple of common binding agents. There are a dozen basically identical pills you can buy over the counter in any country. If you ground it up and put it in fizzy sugar water, it would be an average energy drink.”

“I . . . I see. Thank you very much. Send me the report. Your fee will be wired to your Bahamian account today.”

George clicked the “End Teleconference” button and the screen went blank. He stared at it for several minutes. So Karl Bjornsen had sent him fake pills. That act could not go unpunished. George’s first inclination was to deal with Karl the same way he would deal with any cheating supplier—have him killed discreetly, but not so discreetly that his other business partners wouldn’t hear about it and get the message. The problem, though, was that Bjornsen Pharmaceuticals was not just any cheating supplier—it was the exclusive source of Neurostim. One of the reasons for George’s success was that he had learned to spot hot drugs early and lock up suppliers before his competitors knew what was going on. Neurostim was going to be huge, and if he played his cards right, he would be the only significant nonprescription source of it in the world. To do that, he would need Karl Bjornsen alive and cooperative.

George had hoped that the threat of exposing his boardroom bribery would be enough to keep Karl in line, but apparently not. Karl was a smart man, smarter than George had given him credit for.

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