When the Past Came Calling

by Larry S. Kaplan

  About ten days after the trip to Dixon, when I returned to the office from an extended court hearing, I was greeted by that all-knowing smile Miss Jordan is capable of flashing when she believes that providence is playing into her hands.

  “You got a phone call this morning from that pretty FBI lady, David. What took you so long? I told her you’d be calling her right back. She said it was very important.”

  Despite my reservations about Sandra, and having decided that my role in her investigation was kaput, I found myself unexpectedly delighted by the prospect of her renewed contact. It also had me wondering what was suddenly so important that might involve me.

  “The hearing went longer than expected,” I explained to my excited—and agitated—receptionist. “Is she at her office?”

  “Here’s the phone number she gave me.” Miss Jordan handed me a piece of paper with her distinctive, elaborate scrawl. “I don’t think it’s her office number, though. Now you go and call her back quick.”

  I headed to my office at a faster pace than usual, speculating about the possible reasons for Sandra’s call. I doubted she was phoning for a date, since something social probably wouldn’t be termed “very important.” Nor could I fathom why she’d have any further need of me in the investigation.

  Closing my office door, I went directly to my desk and dialed the number. I felt my heartbeat amp up. Was it the allure of the investigation that excited me or my attraction to Sandra? I decided that it was probably both. After several rings, a voice I didn’t recognize answered the phone.

  “You have reached the Argonne National Laboratory. How may I help you?”

  The Argonne National Laboratory! What was all this about?

  “Is there a Sandra Newton there?” I asked.

  “Are you David Miller?” the voice on the other end replied.

  “Yes, I am.”

  “She will be with you in a moment.”

  After a few seconds, Sandra was on the line.

  “Hi, David. Thanks for calling back. I’m sorry I haven’t been in touch for a few days.”

  “No problem,” I responded. “I figured you were done with me.”

  “Not a chance—but listen. There’s somebody I’d like you to meet. Today is the only day he can be here, and I think it’s important for you to hear what he has to say.”

  “Where’s ‘here’? At Argonne?”

  “Would you mind? It would be best if he could see you here.”

  “Sandra, I do have a job.”

  “I know, and I’m sorry for the late notice. But please tell me you can pull yourself away from whatever it is you’re doing and meet us here.”

  It took me less than an hour to make the drive to the Argonne lab from my office. It’s located just west of Chicago, in Lemont, Illinois, and harbors the highest level government research in the fields of physics and biochemistry within its secure and expansive facilities. The laboratory was originally created to carry out the work of Enrico Fermi on nuclear reactors as part of the Manhattan Project. Today it is managed by the US Department of Energy. Dr. Emil Whidden had been conducting research there at the time of his disappearance. That much I remembered from what Michael had told me.

  I had to get past a number of guards stationed at various security checkpoints on the private drive leading up to the main building. Fortunately, all of them knew I was expected. When I finally made it inside, a receptionist, speaking into a mic on her desk, announced my arrival; minutes later Sandra and an extremely tall man emerged from a room a short distance from where I was standing.

  “Hello, David,” Sandra said, sounding brisk and businesslike, “I would like you to meet Tristan Conrad.”

  Conrad was at least six feet seven, rail-thin but remarkably fit for someone who was, I surmised, in his midsixties.

  “Mr. Conrad is with the CIA,” Sandra explained. “Once the Omsk connection was suggested, I was required to involve them. Tristan is a specialist in all matters Soviet, so to speak.”

  Because of our height differential, I had to raise my arm upward to shake his hand.

  “Hey, great to meet you,” he said. His enthusiastic greeting diminished to some extent the awe I felt at meeting someone I presumed was a spy. “Sandra has briefed me thoroughly on your role in her investigation,” he added.

  “Nice to meet you too, sir,” I said somewhat timidly.

  “I’ve only had a few days to bone up on the case itself, David,” he continued, “but from what I’ve learned, I think you are in a unique position to help us, even beyond what you’ve done for us already. Do you know much about the man we are seeking—Emil Whidden?”

  “Just what Michael Eisenberg told me.”

  “And what was that?” he asked.

  “That he was involved in research that could upset Darwin’s theory of evolution,” I said.

  Conrad mulled over my response. “Fair enough. I’m no scientist, David, but we’re going to meet with one in a few minutes. His name is Dr. Paul Brisbane, and I’d appreciate your listening very carefully to what he has to say—assuming you still want to assist us. Everything he’ll reveal to you is extremely sensitive and has national security implications. But we won’t compel you to sign a confidentiality agreement—your word is good enough.”

  As I listened to Conrad’s proposal, I wondered if I really wanted to venture any deeper into the Whidden case. But when I thought about my friend Michael, and how his death seemed to be connected to it, I felt I owed it to him to stay the course.

  “Yes, Mr. Conrad,” I finally said. “But I can’t give you any guarantees that I will understand a thing Dr. Brisbane has to say. I’m not very adept in science.”

  “That probably makes two of us,” Conrad said heartily, clearly pleased to have me onboard.

  “Make that three,” Sandra added.

  Conrad led us down a wide concourse lined on both sides with portraits of prominent scientists like Einstein, Newton, and Galileo. The walkway terminated at a large door where an overhead sign read Special Access Only. Conrad pressed what appeared to be an intercom button on the wall next to the door and said into the speaker, “Paul? We’re here if you’re ready for us.”

  The door opened, and we were met by a short middle-aged man with a neatly trimmed gray beard, clad in a white lab coat. He greeted us as a group, and we shook his hand in turn. Then he escorted us down another hallway that led to a circular chamber from which several corridors sprouted. We followed him down the one marked by a plaque that read Primate Research Laboratory. After a trek of perhaps fifty yards, we entered a huge enclosure with two large, floor-to-ceiling glass compartments separated by a thick metal wall. Each compartment contained a rock mound with jutting stone ledges, several tire swings, and a multibranched tree with thick hanging vines that almost touched the ground.

  “This is where we keep our chimpanzees,” Brisbane explained. “They’re feeding now in a separate area. You’ll meet them shortly. Sit wherever you’d like,” he said, motioning to the long bench that was situated only a few feet from the compartments. “There’s not a bad seat in the house.”

  Sandra, Tristan, and I sat together toward the middle of the bench facing the enclosures. Brisbane stood in front of us with the barrier wall directly behind him, so he wasn’t blocking our view.

  “Before I introduce you to our primate friends,” he continued, “I’d like to provide you with some background on Dr. Whidden’s research. David, are you familiar with the monarch butterfly?” Brisbane asked.

  “Not really,” I said, surprised at being questioned about a butterfly in a primate lab. “I mean I’ve probably seen them flying around on flowers now and then, but that’s all.”

  “It is a most remarkable organism, and do you know why?”

  “Their color?” I guessed, knowing full well that my answer was not what he was after.

  “They are a beautiful color. A tawny orange with deep black veins. But what makes them truly extraordinary is their memory. Th
e monarch passes on its memories from one generation to another. What do you know about heredity, David?”

  “Just that we have genes, made up of DNA, I believe, where we get and then pass along our traits to the next generation.”

  “But what about memories, David?”

  “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “Do you believe we pass those on as well? For example, if you have a particularly bad experience—say with a spider—one that causes you great fear. Will your memory of that experience be passed on to your offspring?”

  “I would kind of doubt it.”

  “And why is that?”

  “Well, because our DNA is coded in us from birth. Nothing that happens to us during our lives is going to change that. I mean, if I have surgery and change my eye color from brown to blue, the new color will not be passed along. So the same applies to experiences, I would imagine. If I’m traumatized by a spider, well, it’s too late for that to get coded into my DNA. My DNA has already been determined.”

  “That’s a very good answer,” Brisbane said. “But it turns out to be the wrong answer—at least partially wrong. Most of our DNA is already stamped and ready to go right out of the box, so to speak—even as we are being formed into tiny zygotes. But there are some unstamped sections of our DNA strands—nucleotides that seem to have no purpose. We used to think of them as junk DNA, present within the double helix of our genomic blueprint, perhaps as a protective buffer for the important genes. Are you still with me?”

  “Yes, I think so,” I said, on the verge of getting lost.

  “Maybe the example of the monarch butterfly will help me explain it better. Did you know, David, that this little creature,”—Brisbane was now holding up a replica of it—“paper-thin and without bones or feathers, completes a six thousand–mile round trip between a particular place in Mexico and Canada every year?”

  “I didn’t know that,” I answered. “Pretty remarkable.”

  “Well, the remarkable part is that it takes four generations to complete the journey. You see, the first generation leaves Mexico in February, flying north, but only gets part of the way to Canada, and then dies in April. The second generation then picks up from there, flies further north, but they are all dead by June. The third finally makes it to Canada, but they perish by August. It is the fourth generation that then makes the three thousand-mile trek back to Mexico, to the precise location where their great-grandparents started their journey. And then, of course, that cycle repeats itself again and again. And do you know why this is significant, David?”

  “Well, it does show some impressive family teamwork,” I answered, certain again that this was not the answer Brisbane sought.

  “Yes, family teamwork but a whole lot more. It means that the fourth-generation monarch that flies from Canada to Mexico has inherited the memories of its great-grandparents in order to know exactly where to fly.”

  “Maybe you can explain,” Conrad cut in, “how this phenomenon relates to Whidden’s research.”

  “Sure,” Brisbane responded. “By studying the monarch, Whidden discovered the way in which memories become coded on the unstamped strands of DNA. And the monarch is not alone in possessing this trait. All species have a certain section of DNA reserved for memories, but it so happens that the monarch utilizes these unstamped strands more than most. Maybe because it needs to. Maybe because its migration requires multigenerational participation that could not occur unless memories were passed to future generations like the genetic traits for blue or brown eyes.

  “But every organism has this same potential. Especially when it comes to intense memories that affect a large group within the species. It is nature’s—or evolution’s—way of making certain future generations obtain the benefit of what their predecessor generations experienced. Once those memories become part of an organism’s genome, they can be inherited by the next generation.”

  “So,” I inquired, just to make sure I was getting it, “let’s say my Russian grandfather and his socialist cohorts were about to hang from the gallows because of their Bolshevik activities during the reign of Czar Nicholas. And let’s say he was let off the hook, so to speak, at the last second—but it totally freaked him out. Are you saying that I might have inherited a special dread of hanging?”

  “You’re a quick learner, David,” Brisbane replied, apparently impressed by my analysis, “so now let me show you how this concept of inherited memories was used in Dr. Whidden’s primate research. By the way, I hope none of you is squeamish.”

  Chapter 22

  May 4, 1989

  “Now I want to call your attention to the glass enclosures,” Dr. Brisbane said, “since we’re ready to begin our experiment.”

  At that moment, a large doorway at the back of each glass compartment opened, and several chimpanzees made their way into the play areas. There were five chimps in each compartment, separated by the metal wall.

  “These chimpanzees are from protected communities in the Kibale National Park in Uganda,” Brisbane explained, “a veritable haven for primates. Since chimpanzees are also referred to as apes, I will be using the terms interchangeably.”

  Sandra, Conrad, and I watched as the chimpanzees in each enclosure commenced their favorite activities—grappling with the tire swing, ascending to one of the rock ledges, or swinging nonchalantly from a sturdy tree vine. I noticed that one of the chimps in the compartment to my left appeared to be partially lame—as if his right leg had not been fully developed. But apparently he managed just fine by relying more on his arms to move about the enclosure than the other chimps did. But still, he seemed to struggle a bit.

  “What’s wrong with that one?” I asked Dr. Brisbane, pointing to the crippled chimp.

  “Oh, that’s Harvey,” he replied, “he has a birth defect. The leg never developed normally. He compensates for it fairly well, and the other chimps in his group don’t take advantage of it. To the contrary, since they allow him first dibs on whatever apparatus he wants.”

  At the moment, Harvey was swinging lazily in the tire, staring out at us through the glass.

  “Genetically speaking, the chimpanzee is our closest relative in the animal kingdom,” Brisbane pointed out. “Human and chimp DNA is about ninety-eight percent identical, which is why Dr. Whidden’s findings have such important implications for the human race.

  “Chimpanzees form communities of up to two hundred members,” he continued. “What is a community? It is usually a society of chimps that has strong genetic bonds. In the field, these communities often branch off into smaller subgroups, but they often reunite, always retaining their community identity.

  “The chimps you’re observing now are each a subgroup of two distinct chimpanzee communities from Kibale. Dr. Whidden named the community in the enclosure to your right the Dobies, the one to your left, the Gillises. He was a big fan of the Dobie Gillis TV show, as you’ve probably guessed. The Dobies and the Gillises have never encountered each other before—in the field or here at Argonne. The barrier between them prevents them from having any awareness of each other—that is, until now.

  “We are about to introduce these two chimpanzee communities to each other for the first time by removing the metal barrier that separates them. Watch carefully.”

  When Brisbane pressed a button on the wall behind him, the metal barrier separating the two enclosures began to slide along a track, until it was swallowed up into the back wall. What had been two separate enclosures was now one.

  Both groups of apes were noticeably aroused by the movement of the metal barrier—a few of them jumped up and down and beat their chests in an agitated manner. But once the barrier was gone, all the chimps went still and silent. They appeared to be transfixed—staring at their counterparts from whom they were now separated by only a few feet of empty space.

  I was expecting to witness some acts of aggression, but I was pleasantly surprised at what I saw instead. They approached each other, all except Harvey, caut
iously at first, like some freshmen boys at a high school dance approaching a clique of co-eds. But soon many of the chimps began to engage in a series of animated and apparently friendly conversations—utilizing the same kinds of facial, hand, and arm movements one would expect to see from humans.

  “Dr. Whidden documented sixty-six different communication gestures that chimpanzees use,” Brisbane said. “Except for using grunts instead of words, you might think you were watching a town hall meeting.”

  The biggest ape from the Dobies approached Harvey, the lame chimp from the Gillises.

  “That’s Rocky, the Dobies’ alpha male,” Brisbane explained.

  As Rocky neared Harvey—still swinging on his tire—Rocky sat on his bottom and reached up with his long right arm to gently touch the lame chimp on his shoulder. This gesture inspired Harvey to make an awkward effort to climb down from the swing and position himself on the ground close to the alpha male. Once he was settled there, Rocky proceeded to groom Harvey.

  “Grooming is a show of friendship and the highest level of respect between chimps who are strangers to one another,” Brisbane commented. “And in fact, it is how evolution shaped them to interact for the sake of their survival. For example, given the numerous chimpanzee communities within the limited space of Kibale, it is unavoidable that separate territories overlap; yet these communities are naturally inclined to be friendly with one another or it wouldn’t serve the survival of the species at all.”

  I was mesmerized by the remarkable relationship that I watched develop between Harvey and Rocky, which was mirrored in the friendly interactions of the other chimps in the two communities. Shortly thereafter, an attendant entered the enclosure and guided each group back to their original side. Once that was done, Brisbane pressed the button that triggered the release of the metal barrier so it slid back in place and Harvey struggled to regain his perch on the tire swing.