said. “I just want you to give my kidney to someone who needs it.” My colleagues immediately assumed that, frankly, there must be some mental-health issues involved. Such nondirected operations are almost unheard of. Certainly the first one we had ever dealt with.
‘I sent Mr Baxter away. I told him this was something we couldn’t consider. But he came back and I sent him away again. The third time we had a long talk. He told me that he wished he had been born rich. That way – I remember his words – that way, he said, he might have known the pleasure of giving away vast amounts of money. He said there were so many people who needed help. I remember, he asked me, “What does the word philanthropy mean? It means love of your fellow man. Well, why should only rich people be allowed to love their fellow man? I want to be a philanthropist, too.” He was determined to find another way to give – even if that meant giving away his own organs.
‘Eventually I concluded that he was sincere. I ran the tests and there was no medical objection. We even ran psychological tests and they confirmed he was of completely sound mind, totally able to make this decision.
‘There was only one condition, imposed by him. He swore us to complete secrecy, complete confidentiality. The recipient patient was not to know where his or her new kidney had come from. That was very important. He didn’t want that person to feel they owed him. And not a word to the press. He insisted on that. No glory.’
Quietly, almost meekly, Will asked, ‘And so you went ahead with it?’
‘We did. I performed the operation myself. And I tell you, in my whole career there was no operation that made me prouder. All of us felt it: the anaesthetist, the nurses. There was an extraordinary atmosphere in theatre that day; as if something truly remarkable was happening.’
‘And did all go smoothly?’
‘Yes it did, it did. The recipient took the organ just fine.’
‘Can I ask what kind of recipient we’re talking about? Young, old, male, female?’
‘It was a young woman. I won’t say any more than that.’
‘And even though she was young, and he was old, it all worked out?’
‘Well, this was the strangest thing. We tested that kidney, obviously, monitored it very closely. And you know what? Baxter was in his fifties, but that organ worked like it was forty years younger than he was. It was very strong, completely healthy. It was perfect.’
‘And it made all the difference for that young woman?’
‘It saved her life. The staff and I wanted to have some kind of ceremony for him, after the operation, to thank him for what he’d done. It won’t surprise you to hear that never happened. He discharged himself before we’d even had a chance to say goodbye. He just clean disappeared.’
‘And was that the last you heard from him?’
‘No, I heard from him once more, just a few months ago. He wanted to make arrangements for after his death—’
‘Really?’
‘Don’t get too excited, Mr Monroe. I don’t think he knew he was about to die. But he wanted to be sure that everything, his entire body, would be used.’ Huntley gave a rueful chuckle. ‘He even asked me what would be the optimal way for him to die.’
‘Optimal?’
‘From our point of view. What would work best, if we wanted to get his heart, say, to a recipient. I think he was worried, because he lived so far away, that if he was killed in a road accident, for example, by the time he got to a hospital, his heart would be useless. Of course, the one scenario he didn’t count on was a brutal murder.’
‘Do you have any idea—’
‘I have no idea at all who could have wanted this man dead, no. I said the same to Dr Russell just now. I can only think it was a completely random, awful crime. Because no one who knew him would want to murder such a man. They couldn’t.’
She paused and Will chose to let the silence hang. One thing he had learned: say nothing and your interviewee will often fill the void with the best quote of the entire conversation.
Eventually Dr Huntley, with what Will thought was a crack in her voice, spoke again. ‘We discussed this when it happened and we discussed it again today and my colleagues and I agree. What this man did, what Pat Baxter did for a person he had never met and would never meet – this was truly the most righteous act we have ever known.’
Friday, 6am, Seattle
He woke at six am, back now in his Seattle hotel room. He had filed his story from Missoula and then made the long journey cross-country. As he wrote the piece, he was powered by a single, delicious thought: Eat this, Walton. What had that prick said? ‘Once counts as an achievement, William; twice would be a miracle.’
Will prayed he had pulled it off. His greatest fear was that the desk might find it too similar to the Macrae story, another good man among knaves. So he had played up the militia angle, thrown in lots of Pacific Northwest colour and hoped for the best. He even toyed with ditching the quote about Baxter’s action being ‘righteous’, the very same word that woman had used about Howard Macrae. It might look contrived. Still, it would be more contrived to ignore it.
He reached for his BlackBerry, whose red light was winking hopefully: new messages.
Harden, Glenn: Nice job today, Monroe. That was what he wanted to hear. It meant he had avoided the spike; if only he could see Walton’s face. The next email looked like spam; the sender’s name was not clear, just a string of hieroglyphics. Will was poised to delete it when the single word in the subject field made him click it open. Beth. He had not even read all the words when he felt his blood freeze.
DO NOT CALL THE POLICE. WE HAVE YOUR WIFE. INVOLVE THE POLICE AND YOU WILL LOSE HER. DO NOT CALL THE POLICE OR YOU WILL REGRET IT. FOREVER.
Friday, 9.43pm, Chennai, India
The nights were getting cooler. Still, Sanjay Ramesh preferred to stay here in the air-conditioned chill of the office than risk the suffocating heat of the city. He would wait till the sun had fully set before heading for home.
That way he might avoid not only the clammy heat, but the ordeal of the stoop. Every night it happened, his mother trading gossip and health complaints with her friends as they sat outside until late. He found himself tongue-tied in such company; in most company as it happened. Besides, September might be cool by the standards of Chennai but it was still punishingly hot and sticky. Inside this room, an aircraft hangar of an open-plan office, filled by row after row of sound-muffling cubicles, the conditions were just right. For what he needed to do, it was the perfect environment.
It was a call centre, one of thousands that had sprung up across India. Four storeys packed with young Indians taking calls from America or Britain, from people in Philadelphia anxious to pay their phone bill or travellers in Macclesfield wanting to check the train times to Manchester. Few, if any, of them ever realized their call was being routed to the other side of the world.
Sanjay liked his job well enough. For an eighteen-year-old living at home, the money was good. And he could work odd shifts to fit in with his studies. The big draw, though, was right here inside this little cubicle. He had everything he needed: a chair, a desk and, most important of all, a computer with a fast connection to the world.
Sanjay was young, but he was a veteran of the internet. He discovered it when both he and it were in their infancy. There were only a few hundred websites then, maybe a thousand. As he had grown, so had it. The worldwide web expanded like a binary number sequence – 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128 – apparently doubling its size with each passing day, until