No Survivors Read Online Free PDF

can I provide the best treatment?”
    Alix said nothing. She glanced away, brushing a strand of blond hair away from her face. Finally she turned back toward Dr. Geisel, looking directly at him.
    Geisel was all too accustomed to the effects on those whose loved ones suffered serious illness. Miss Petrova had been worn down by the months of worry and uncertainty. Her face was thinner, more drawn than it had been; her complexion was pale, the skin dry and unattended; there were deep, dark rings around her eyes. But, my God, he thought, what eyes.
    They were pure sky-blue, but as he looked more closely—purely in the interests of dispassionate analysis, he told himself—Geisel noticed a slight asymmetry. One lid was very slightly heavier than the other and the two eyes were fractionally out of line. This imperfection in an otherwise flawless assembly—her lips were full, her cheekbones high, her nose straight and neat—served to add to, rather than detract from, her beauty. Without it, she would merely have been very pretty. With it, she was mesmerizing.
    “I understand,” she said, “but I can’t discuss it . . .”
    “Let me be frank,” he said, steeling himself. “For months you have refused my questions. But if Herr Carver is to have any hope of a recovery, I must have the information I need to treat him. You must understand—I am very used to dealing with patients who require extreme discretion. What you say to me goes no farther. But I need to know.”
    “If I tell you, can you make him get better?” she asked.
    “No, I cannot promise that. But I can promise you this: If you do not tell me, I have no hope of helping him. The longer you remain silent, the more certain it is that Herr Carver will remain like this forever.”
    “I’m only trying to protect him.”
    Her voice was little more than a whisper. She was trying to persuade herself as much as him. Her anguish was so stark that Geisel’s human instinct was to reach out and comfort her. But his professional self knew that he must do and say nothing. She had to have the space to find her way to her own decision.
    Alix suspected that the timing of his approach was no accident. He must have known that she had been visited by Marchand yesterday, and had realized at once what that must mean. Carver’s bills had not been paid. Unless they were, he would surely be forced to leave. So now there was a ticking clock counting down to Carver’s expulsion, making the need for a cure even more desperate.
    Alix struggled to defy the inexorable logic of her situation. Finally, she came to her conclusion.
    “All right,” she said. “I will tell you. . . . I tried to escape from a man, a Russian, like me. He was very rich, very powerful.”
    “Was?” asked Geisel.
    Alix ignored the interruption and what it implied. “He sent his men to take me back. Carver . . . Samuel found out where I was and came after me, to Gstaad. He hoped to exchange me for . . . certain information. The man who had taken me had no intention of making the deal. His men took Samuel and . . .”
    She seemed unwilling or unable to finish the sentence.
    “He was harmed?” asked Geisel.
    “Yes. They stripped him, blindfolded him, and put him in handcuffs. Then they . . . excuse me . . .”
    She stopped for a moment to compose herself, blinking rapidly and clearing her throat.
    “Sorry,” she said.
    “You were saying . . . ?”
    When Alix spoke again, she sounded dispassionate, almost matter-of-fact. “They placed a belt around Samuel’s waist. It was linked to a remote control. When the remote control was switched on, the belt gave him an electric shock, very strong, enough to make him fall to the floor and jerk around, with no control over himself. They made him do this in front of me, at my feet, to make him ashamed.”
    “How many times did this happen, the shock?”
    “Three or four times for sure, maybe more that I didn’t see.”
    “Was that all?”
    “No, that was just the