The Runner

by Peter May

  Margaret gasped as another cramp gripped her, and she wondered fleetingly if Fleischer thought she was perhaps gasping in admiration. She controlled her breathing, and felt a fine, cold sweat break out across her forehead. ‘How?’ she managed to ask.

  ‘Ah,’ Fleischer said. ‘The sixty-four thousand dollar question. In this case, perhaps, the sixty-four million dollar question.’

  ‘I suppose that’s how you got these athletes to agree to be your guinea-pigs, was it? With money?’

  ‘Oh, that was a part of it, Doctor. But only a part. You have to ask yourself why an athlete wants to win. Why they will put themselves through all that grinding pain and hard work, all that blood, sweat and tears. After all, they were doing it way before the monetary rewards made it financially worthwhile.’ He paused long enough to allow her to consider his question. And then he answered it for her, ‘Vanity, Doctor. It’s that simple. A desperate need for self-esteem, or the esteem of others. Fame, celebrity. And they are utterly single-minded in the pursuit of it.’ He chuckled. ‘So, you see, it wasn’t hard to convince them. After all, I was promising to deliver what it was they all wanted. Like a god, I could make them winners. Or not. It was their choice. But it was irresistible.’

  ‘Only to cheats,’ Margaret said.

  Fleischer was indignant. ‘They weren’t cheating. They weren’t taking drugs. I engineered them to be better. Naturally. It’s the future, Doctor, you must know that. The enhancement of human performance by means of genetic manipulation. And not just in athletics. We’re talking about every aspect of human life. Health, intelligence, physical capability. Soon we’ll all be able to pop a pill to make us better in every way. Drugs to genetically treat those who are well, rather than those who are sick. And there’s a fortune to be made from it. Well people can work and pay for their medicines. They live longer than sick people, and so they can buy their medicines for longer. Sick people get cured or die. Either way, they stop buying medicine. Well people just get better and better. Like my athletes.’

  ‘Really?’ Margaret was not impressed. ‘Six of them are dead. You don’t get many corpses winning races.’

  Fleischer frowned and shrugged aside her unwelcome observation like some irritating insect that buzzed around his head. ‘A glitch,’ he said. ‘One we can put right.’

  Margaret dug her fingernails into her palms to stop herself from passing out. With a great effort she said, ‘You still haven’t told me how you did it.’

  The German’s smile returned. ‘HERV,’ he said.

  Margaret frowned. ‘HERV?’

  ‘You know what HERV is?’

  ‘Of course.’

  He was positively gleeful. ‘It is so deliciously simple, Doctor, it gives me goosebumps each time I think of it. Human endogenous retroviruses comprise about one percent of the human genome. I chose the HERV-K variant, because it is known to carry functional genes. It was an easy enough matter to isolate pieces of HERV-K from blood samples, and then amplify those pieces by cloning them in a bacterium. Are you following me?’

  ‘Just about.’ Margaret’s voice was no more than a whisper, but her brain was still functioning, and she felt somehow compelled by Fleischer’s icy blue eyes, and the nearly mesmeric delight he took in his own genius.

  ‘I was then able to modify the cloned HERV, embedding in it genes with a unique promoter which would stimulate hormone production. In some cases the promoter would stimulate the athlete’s body to produce increased amounts of testosterone, or human growth hormone. In others it would stimulate increased quantities of EPO. It depended upon whether we wished to increase speed or strength in a sprinter or a weightlifter, or whether we wanted to increase stamina in a distance runner or a cyclist.’ He leaned further into the light. ‘Did you know that EPO can increase performance by up to fourteen percent? Fourteen percent! It gives an athlete a phenomenal edge. If you are already one of the top half dozen distance runners in the world, you become unassailable. You will win every time.’

  In spite of everything, Margaret found the concept both fascinating and horrifying. But there were still gaps in her understanding. ‘But how? How did you make it work?’

  He laughed. ‘Also simple. I re-infected them with their own HERV. A straightforward injection, and the modified retrovirus carried the new genes straight into the chromosome.’

  Margaret shook her head. ‘But, if suddenly these athletes are creating excesses of whatever hormone it is you’ve programmed them to produce, they would OD on it. It would kill them.’

  Fleischer was terribly amused by this. He laughed. ‘Forgive me, Doctor. But you must think I am incredibly stupid.’

  ‘Stupid is not the word I would have used to describe you,’ she said, working hard to maintain eye contact.

  His smile faded. ‘The genes can be switched off and on,’ he snapped. ‘If you want me to be technical about it, the hormone promoter is triggered by a chemical which is recognised by the enzymes acting at the promoter to synthesise the RNA message for the protein hormone.’

  ‘You can be as technical as you like,’ Margaret managed dryly. ‘But it doesn’t mean I’ll understand it.’

  Fleischer’s returning smile was smug. He was in the ascendancy again. ‘I’ll keep it simple for you, then. One chemical activates the gene. Another switches it off. And a second HERV is activated by a third chemical.’

  ‘What’s the function of the second HERV?’

  ‘Stimulated by the third chemical, a protease enzyme in the second modified HERV will, literally, munch up the excess hormone. It can be activated at a moment’s notice so that the presence of increased hormone in the system is undetectable. Quite simply because it’s not there any more.’ He waved a hand dismissively. ‘A mere refinement. Because at the end of the day, the IOC and all their stupid testing bodies cannot say that naturally produced endogenous hormone constitutes doping.’

  Margaret let another wave of pain wash over her, and then tried to refocus. ‘So you engineered these seven athletes to produce, within themselves, whatever hormone would best enhance their particular discipline. And also the ability to flush it out of their systems at a moment’s notice, so they could never be accused of doping.’

  ‘Makes it sound devilishly simple when you put it like that. Don’t you want to know how they were able to switch the hormone producing genes off and on?’

  ‘I’ve already worked that one out,’ Margaret said.

  ‘Have you?’ Fleischer was taken aback, perhaps a little disappointed.

  ‘The bottles of aftershave, and perfume.’

  His smile was a little less amused. She had stolen his thunder. ‘You’re a very clever lady, aren’t you, Doctor Campbell? Yes, the aerosols act like a gas. The athlete only has to spray and inhale, and the unique chemical content of each scent, ingested through the lungs, sends the requisite message to the appropriate gene. Hormone on, hormone off.’

  ‘And the breath freshener?’

  ‘Triggers the destructive protease to chew up the excess hormone.’ He straightened up in his seat and beamed at her triumphantly. ‘Genetically engineered winners. Virtually guaranteed to break the tape every time.’

  From the depths of her misery, Margaret gazed at him with something close to hatred. ‘So what went wrong?’

  And his face darkened, and all his self-congratulatory preening dissolved in an instant. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Well, not exactly. There was some kind of recombination between the introduced and the endogenous HERV. It created something we could never have foreseen. A new retrovirus which attacked the microscopic arteries of the heart.’ He was thoughtful for a long time, gazing off into some unseen middle distance. Then, almost as if realising he still had an audience, he said, ‘Of course, we did not know that at first. It was all going so well. All our athletes were winning. We were monitoring them all very closely. And then suddenly our cyclist dropped dead without warning. Of course, I knew immediately there was a problem. But the last thing we wanted
was anyone performing an autopsy. So we arranged for him to die “by accident”. The body was removed from its coffin before it was burned at the crematorium, and then we were free to perform our own examination. Which is when we discovered the thickening of the microvasculature.’

  ‘And you knew that your retrovirus had caused that?’

  ‘No, not immediately. It wasn’t until the three members of the sprint relay team became ill after coming down with the flu, that I began to piece things together. We knew that the cyclist had suffered from the flu shortly before he collapsed. That was when I realised that the retrovirus was being activated by the flu virus, and that there was nothing we could do about it. We kept all three athletes at our clinic, and they died within days of each other. An autopsy on one of them, after he had been “cremated”, confirmed all my fears.’

  ‘So you decided to get rid of the rest of your guinea-pigs before someone else started figuring it all out.’

  ‘The risks were too great.’ Fan Zhilong moved into the light, startling them both. They had all but forgotten that there were others there. He said, ‘We could not afford to have any of our athletes take fright and start to talk.’

  Margaret looked at him with disgust, seeing only his expensive haircut and his designer suit, his manicured hands and his air of confident invulnerability. ‘And you funded all this?’ He inclined his head in acknowledgement. ‘Why?’

  ‘Why?’ He seemed amused by what he clearly thought was a silly question, and dimples pitted his cheeks. ‘Because I am a gambler, Doctor Campbell. We are all gamblers here. And like all gamblers, we spend our lives in pursuit of the impossible. The sure thing.’ His supercilious smile did not reach his eyes. ‘And there can hardly be a safer bet than an athlete who is guaranteed to win. Our little experiment in human engineering here in China was going to be just the beginning. Had it been successful, there are athletes around the world who would not have taken much persuading to join our winners’ club. Membership a guarantee of success. The potential rewards could have run to millions. Tens, maybe even hundreds, of millions.’

  ‘Only there is no such thing as a sure thing, is there, Doctor Fleischer?’ Margaret turned her contempt on the German doctor and saw that he appeared suddenly to have aged. All Fan’s talk of ‘woulds’ and ‘coulds’ and ‘might have beens’ perhaps bringing home to him, finally, that it was all over. ‘You must be very proud of yourself. Tricking young athletes in Germany into taking drugs that left them dying or disabled. And then exploiting the greed and insecurity of young Chinese athletes to pursue your insane idea of a genetically modified world. Only to kill them in the process. There’s no such thing as a sure thing in science, either. Unless you think you’re God. Only, gods are supposed to be infallible, aren’t they?’

  Fleischer gave her a long, sour look, and then he eased himself out of his chair and stood up. ‘I’ll get it right next time,’ he said.

  ‘I’m afraid there won’t be a next time,’ Fan said, and Fleischer turned towards him in surprise as Fan drew a small pistol from inside his jacket and fired point blank into the old man’s face.

  Lili screamed as Fleischer momentarily staggered backwards, blood pouring from the place where his nose used to be. Then he dropped to his knees and fell face forward on to the floor. Margaret was very nearly more startled by the scream than the shot. She had forgotten that Lili was there. The young athlete had not uttered a sound during the entire exchange.

  Fan stepped back fastidiously to avoid getting Fleischer’s blood on his shoes. He looked at Margaret. ‘The police are far too close to the truth,’ he said. ‘We have to remove all the evidence.’ And he raised his gun towards Margaret and fired again. Margaret screwed up her face, bracing herself against the impact of the bullet and felt nothing but the ear-splitting sound of the second shot ringing in her head in the confined space. There was a moment of silence and confusion, and then she opened her eyes in time to see Lili tipping forward, crashing to the floor, still tied to her chair. Most of the back of her head was missing.

  Margaret felt herself start to lose control. Of her mind, of her body. She just wanted it all to be over. But Fan was in no particular hurry.

  ‘I suppose your boyfriend is going to wonder what happened to you,’ he said softly. ‘Maybe he’ll think you just changed your mind about getting married and took off back to America. Maybe he won’t even care. But one thing is certain, he’ll never find you. So he’ll never know.’ He turned and nodded to Sun who was still hovering just beyond the reach of the light. ‘You do it.’

  Sun stepped forward. He looked pale and shocked. ‘Me?’

  ‘I’m not used to asking twice,’ Fan said.

  Without meeting her eye, Sun slipped a gun from a holster strapped high under his leather jacket and raised it unsteadily towards Margaret. She looked straight at him, the tears running silently down her face. ‘At least have the guts to look me in the eye, Sun Xi,’ she said. And she saw the fear and confusion in his eyes as they flickered up to meet hers. ‘I hope your child, when he is born, will be proud of you.’ A series of sobs broke in her throat, robbing her momentarily of her power of speech. She gasped, struggling to control herself, determined to have her final say. ‘And I hope every time you look him in the eye you’ll see me. And remember my child.’

  ‘Get on with it!’ Fan snapped impatiently. And Sun turned and put a bullet straight through the centre of Fan’s forehead. There was barely time for Fan to register surprise. He was dead before he hit the floor.

  Sun turned back to Margaret. He shook his head. And through her own tears, she saw that he was weeping, too. ‘I never knew it be like this,’ he said pathetically. ‘I sorry. I so sorry.’ He raised his gun again and Margaret wanted to close her eyes. But she couldn’t. And she saw him turn the barrel towards himself, sucking it into his mouth like a stick of candy. Now she closed her eyes, and the roar of the shot filled her head, and when she looked again he was lying on the floor. Four dead people lying all around her, an acrid smell that filled the cold air, and a pain that gripped her so powerfully that all she wanted to do was join them.

  Through the window, she thought she could see the lights of the village twinkling in the distance. But she knew it was too far. They would never hear her shouts. She looked down and saw that the tops of her jeans were soaked with blood. And she knew that she would not have to wait much longer.

  III

  Li was exhausted by the time he and Tao got back to Section One. Physically and mentally. Somewhere, he had lost his stick, and found it hard to walk without it. He was closer to despair than he had ever been in his life. Closer to simply giving up. It all seemed so hopeless. It was perhaps two, maybe three hours, since Margaret had been taken from the Forbidden City. The chances of her still being alive were so remote he could not even contemplate them. If he could, he would have wept. For Margaret, for their child, for himself. But his eyes remained obstinately dry, full of the grit of failure.

  His office felt bleak and empty, and lacking in any comfort under the harsh overhead fluorescent striplight. Tao said, ‘I’ll get some tea and check on developments.’ He left Li to slump into his chair and survey the detritus of his working life that covered every inch of it. A life that seemed far away now, a life that belonged to someone else.

  On top of the ‘in’ tray was a faxed report from Doctor Pi at the Centre of Material Evidence Determination. In the two and a half centimeters of Jia Jing’s hair, he had found a record of regular concentrations of human growth hormone. But this was no synthetic substitute. It was the real thing, produced by his own body, in amounts that peaked way above normal concentrations, and then dipped again to normal, or below normal, levels. All at regular intervals over a two-month period.

  Li let the report fall back into the tray. It hardly mattered now that he knew why the heads of the athletes had been shaved. That somehow they had been producing concentrations of endogenous hormone to enhance their performances. And that someone had c
ut off all their hair to hide that fact. Without Margaret, nothing in the world mattered to him any more.

  Which was when he saw the envelope in the internal mail tray, its distinctive red, gold and blue public security emblem embossed on the flap, and he knew that it came from the office of the commissioner. He sat staring at it for a long time, unable, or unwilling, to make himself reach out and open it. Just one more thing that no longer mattered. Wearily he lifted it from the tray and tore it open. A cryptic acknowledgement of receipt of his letter of resignation. So it had reached the commissioner after all. And confirmation that he was relieved of all duties with immediate effect. Deputy Section Chief Tao was to assume interim control of the section until his replacement was appointed.

  Li let the letter slip from his fingers and flutter to the desk. He wondered if Tao knew. If he had been summoned, or telephoned, or whether there was a letter from the commissioner waiting for him in his in tray, too.