Jeff Meyer nodded slowly. "You need men," he said.
"We need men. Men to study. Cruel as it may sound, men to experiment upon. We can't learn any more from any other variety of ... experimental animal. But there are problems. Toy around with a man's brain and he is likely to die, quite abruptly. Or he may be deranged, or he may go violently insane. Most of the work, however well planned, however certain we were of results, however safe it appeared, proved to be completely unpredictable. Much of the work and many of the results were quite horrible. But we're making progress, slow—but progress nonetheless. So the work continues.
"It hasn't been very popular. No man in his right mind would volunteer for such a job. So we hired men. For the most truly altruistic work in the world, our workers come with the most mercenary of motives: we pay for their services and we pay well. A hundred thousand dollars is a small fee, on our scale. We have the government behind us. The sky is the limit, if we need a man for a job. The money is paid, when the work is completed, either to the man himself or to his heirs. You see why the name they've given themselves is so curious—Medical Mercenaries, the 'Mercy Men.' That's why a man must be desperate to come to us. That's why we must be so very careful who joins us, for what motives."
Jeff Meyer stared at his hands and waited in the silence of the room. His eyes strayed once again to the curious cards, and the chill of fear went through him like a ghastly breeze. This was a port of last resort, a road that could end in horror and death. Ted Bahr had said it wasn't worth it—that Conroe would never escape alive—but he knew that Conroe could. And he knew Conroe well enough to know that he would.
Jeff felt the old bitterness and hatred swell up in his mind, and his hands trembled as he sat. He had long since thrown aside his life as he had known it, cast off the veneer of civilized life that he had acquired, to hunt Paul Conroe down and kill him. There was nothing else in his life that mattered. It had been a long, grueling hunt, tracking him, following him, studying him, tracing his movements and habits, plotting trap after trap, driving the man to desperation. But there had been no indication, anywhere along the line, that Conroe would turn to such a desperate gamble as this.
But he must have known that death otherwise was inevitable. Here he could be changed. He might disappear from the face of the Earth in the oblivion of quiet death, to be sure, but he also might emerge, unscathed, to live in wealth the rest of his life, unrecognizable and safe.
Jeff Meyer looked up at the doctor and his eyes were hard. "I haven't changed my mind," he said. "What has to be done to join?"
Dr. Schiml sighed, and turned resignedly to the file panel. "There are tests that are necessary and rules to be obeyed. You'll be confined and regimented. And once you're assigned to a job and sign a release, you're in." He leaned forward and punched the visiphone button. Tapping his fingers idly on the desk, he waited until an image blinked and cleared on the screen. "Blackie," he said tiredly. "Better send the Nasty Frenchman up here. We've got a new recruit."
The visiphone snapped off and Jeff sat frozen to his seat, his pulse throbbing in his neck, every nerve in his body screaming in excitement. The face on the screen had been clearly visible for a moment: a pale face with large gray eyes—a woman's face, surrounded by flowing black hair. It was a face that was impressed indelibly on his memory. It belonged to the girl who had danced the night before in the red light.