Read Online Terminal by Robin Cook - Free Book Online

printed in block letters on the open door. Inside was a control room with banks of TV monitors covering one wall. In front of the monitors was a third guard with a clipboard. Even a cursory glance at the monitors told Sean that he was looking at a multitude of locations around the complex.
    Sean continued to follow Ramirez into a small windowless office. Behind the desk sat a fourth guard who had two gold stars attached to his uniform and gold trim on the peak of his hat. His name tag said: Harris.
    “That will be all, Ramirez,” Harris said, giving Sean the feeling he was being inducted into the army.
    Harris studied Sean who stared back. There was an almost immediate feeling of antipathy between the men.
    With his tanned, meaty face, Harris looked like a lot ofpeople Sean had known in Charlestown when he was young. They usually had jobs of minor authority that they practiced with great officiousness. They were also nasty drunks. Two beers and they’d want to fight about a call a referee had made on a televised sporting event if you suggested you disagreed with their perception. It was crazy. Sean had learned long ago to avoid such people. Now he was standing across the desk from one.
    “We don’t want any trouble here,” Harris was saying. He had a faint southern accent.
    Sean thought that was a strange way to begin a conversation. He wondered what this man thought he was getting from Harvard, a parolee? Harris was in obvious good physical shape, his bulging biceps straining the sleeves of his short-sleeved shirt, yet he didn’t look all that healthy. Sean toyed with the idea of giving the man a short lecture on the benefits of proper nutrition, but thought better of the idea. He could still hear Dr. Walsh’s admonitions.
    “You’re supposed to be a doctor,” Harris said. “Why the hell are you wearing your hair so long? And I’d hazard to say that you didn’t shave this morning.”
    “But I did put on a shirt and tie for the occasion,” Sean said. “I thought I was looking quite natty.”
    “Don’t mess with me, boy,” Harris said. There was no sign of humor in his voice.
    Sean shifted his weight wearily. He was already tired of the conversation and of Harris.
    “Is there some particular reason you need me here?”
    “You’ll need a photo ID card,” Harris said. He stood up and came around from behind the desk to open a door to a neighboring room. He was several inches taller than Sean and at least twenty pounds heavier. In hockey Sean used to like to block such guys low, coming up fast under their shins.
    “I’d suggest you get a haircut,” Harris said, as he motioned for Sean to pass into the next room. “And get your pants ironed. Maybe then you’ll fit in better. This isn’t college.”
    Stepping through the door Sean saw Ramirez look up from adjusting a Polaroid camera mounted on a tripod. Ramirezpointed toward a stool in front of a blue curtain, and Sean sat down.
    H ARRIS CLOSED the door to the camera room, went back to his desk, and sat down. Sean had been worse than he’d feared. The idea of some wiseass kid coming down from Harvard had not appealed to him in the first place, but he hadn’t expected anyone looking like a hippie from the sixties.
    Lighting a cigarette, Harris cursed the likes of Sean. He hated such liberal Ivy League types who thought they knew everything. Harris had gone through the Citadel, then into the army where he’d trained hard for the commandos. He’d done well, making captain after Desert Storm. But with the breakup of the Soviet Union, the peacetime army had begun cutting back. Harris had been one of its victims.
    Harris stubbed out his cigarette. Intuition told him Sean would be trouble. He decided he’d have to keep his eye on him.
    W ITH A new photo ID clipped to his shirt pocket, Sean left security. The experience didn’t mesh with the welcome sign, but one fact did impress him. When he’d asked the reticent Ramirez why security was so tight,