by Harry Stein
“I’m interested in your honest feeling about these compounds. As one who was personally involved.”
“I think they stink. I think they’re killers.”
“No, Doctor,” he said, with sudden impatience, “no one else is here, I want you to level with me. What are their strengths and liabilities? Why was the decision made to go back to the lab in the first place? What structural problems were identified with the molecule?”
Reston hesitated and Stillman moved quickly to reassure him. “I promise you, should we resume research on these compounds, you shall continue to play a prominent role. You can take that as a personal guarantee.”
It took a moment to penetrate. “You’re thinking of doing more work on Compound J? Why?”
“I’m not dogmatic, I’m a scientist. The drug did show some activity.”
Reston laughed uneasily. “Too goddamn much activity.”
“Yes, of course.” From the top drawer of his desk he removed a sketch. Reston recognized it as the chemical structure for Compound J. “Clearly, in your conversations, you discussed ways of mitigating the toxicity problem. I’d like to know what they were.”
“But aren’t you focused on your own protocol?”
In the split second it took Stillman to answer—“I can do both”—Reston began to suspect the truth. This fucker’s own drug doesn’t work!
But simultaneously, Stillman was reaching a disturbing conclusion of his own. “Tell me, Doctor, do you even know the chemical structure of Compound J-lite?”
There was an undercurrent of menace to the question, and Reston caught it. But there was no way he could bluff this one. “I lived and breathed Compound J for almost a year,” he said, falling back on bravado instead. “Short of Logan, I know more about the stuff than anyone.”
“Uh-huh.”
“The work in the lab isn’t exactly my strong suit, but I took notes.”
Stillman didn’t believe him, not for a second. Fleetingly, he wondered just how much this guy might shoot off his mouth. “Good, I’ll want to see those.”
“I think I still have them around somewhere. I dumped a lot of the protocol stuff.”
“Sure, bad memories and all.” Stillman smiled congenially. “As I say, so far it’s only a vague possibility. But if we do pursue this, you’ll be key.”
“Good.” The meeting was clearly over, and Reston rose to his feet. “Till then, maybe you can find me something else worth doing around here.”
“Absolutely, I’ll see to it.” Stillman nodded. “In the meantime, of course, we never had this conversation.”
Throughout the latter half of his stay, Logan’s father had been uncharacteristically restrained. After the call from St. Louis, the one which had left his son so crestfallen, he’d not asked even once about the progress of the search.
“So …?” he finally put it to Logan on Saturday morning, as they drove down Webster Avenue, the town’s main street, in his six-year-old Chevy.
Here it comes, thought Logan. “So what?”
They were en route to the library, one of his father’s weekly routines. A voracious but indiscriminate reader, he’d haul home ten or twelve volumes per trip, everything from Herodotus to Jackie Collins.
“So what the hell are your plans? Or do you plan to make a career of feeling sorry for yourself?”
Teeth gritted, Logan said nothing. He just stared out the window at the passing storefronts, so much shabbier than he remembered them. No question, this guy’d give Seth Shein a run for his money any day.
“Dad, when are you going to lay off? Why don’t you just let people live their own lives?”
“Don’t be a fool. You sound like your sister.”
“I’m going back to New York, all right? I’m probably going to take a job that I’m incredibly overqualified for!”
He’d reached the decision just the evening before, and called Ruben Perez to make sure the spot was still open. The pay was minimal, just $34,000 per year, but working was better than not working.
“And whose fault is that supposed to be?” asked his father.
He sighed wearily. “No one’s, Dad, no one’s fault. I guess I’ll be leaving in a couple of days.”
“You know, I’ll never forget that nickel cadmium storage battery you rigged up for the science fair. Useless, but very interesting. It showed a lot of promise.”
“Right. Thanks.”
Over the years, his father had brought up the storage battery regularly, as if all of Logan’s subsequent accomplishments paled by comparison. Invention had been the older man’s own early passion, as well as his most enduring source of disappointment. Forty years before, while in the Navy, he’d concocted an industrial-strength cleaning fluid—but failed to have it properly patented. A few years later, it was in general use in factories and shipyards, and someone else was cashing in.
“I’ll bet you think I did a lot of things wrong, don’t you?” he asked suddenly.
Logan looked at him, staring straight ahead at the road. Him? Everything. “Look, there’s no sense in getting into any of that. I’m sure you did the best you could.”
“Damn right I did!” He pressed slightly on the accelerator. “Sure, I know I might’ve done more with myself. You don’t think it bugs me?”
Logan turned back to him in surprise. Never before had he heard such an admission from his father.
“I look at this business of you and the ACF,” he continued, “and it just tees me off. They’re trying to do the same thing to you they did to me.”
“Thanks, Dad.”
“I just think it’s awful. The world is full of miserable bastards who think they can get away with anything.”
“You’re right.” Logan nodded, feeling better than he had in weeks. “That’s it exactly.”
“Well … you just keep doing your work, that’s what counts.”
Logan nodded. “I know.”
“That’s the best way to fight ’em. It’s what I should’ve done.” His father fell silent for a few seconds. “And how about staying in a little better touch? Your mother misses you.”
Dan Logan was relieved to find that his prospective new boss was more than just a money-grubbing cynic. Alex Severson had absolute faith in his idea: what he took to be a novel method of targeting HIV-infected cells while bypassing healthy ones. Having patented it, the young biochemist had devoted the past year and a half to raising money for his own start-up biotech company, HIV-EX.
The problem—and Logan saw this almost as quickly—was that the guy was a far better promoter than he was a scientist. Like so many others behind small biotech companies, Severson was trying to stuff something down Nature’s throat—in this case, the notion that a drug delivery system might be made to seek and destroy selected cells while leaving others untouched. Appealing as such an idea might be in theory, plausible as it was to hopeful and unsophisticated investors, Logan knew that in practice it was close to an impossibility. Already in his brief career, he’d seen countless similar ideas bite the dust.
Which made for an awkward situation. Given his reservations about Severson’s project, Logan just wasn’t sure he could bring to the job the commitment the other had every right to expect. Nor, frankly, was he crazy about the idea of being subordinate to someone of such obviously limited gifts.
On the other hand, Severson seemed desperate to have him; so much so, the young entrepreneur was ready to augment the modest salary with stock in his company—plus, far more significant in Logan’s view, unlimited use of the lab during off hours.
“I understand you’re a creative guy,” assured Severson. “That’s why I want you.”
“I’ll tell you the truth,” Logan told him, struggling with it even as they talked, “I’m very tempted. I’m just really not sure there’s enough work here for the two of us.” He glanced around the converted loft space that was HIV-EX world headquarters, trying to conceal his distress; the equipment, what little there was, looked to be recondi
tioned surplus. “Wouldn’t there be a lot of replication of effort?”
“None at all,” Severson dismissed this. “You’ll be my director of basic research, I defer to your greater skills in the lab.”
“And you?”
“I’m president and CEO, I don’t even want to hang around this place. My job is to get out there and round up money.”
“How much have you raised so far?”
Severson gave him two thumbs up. “Nine hundred forty thousand and counting. I’m finding I’m pretty good at it.”
Logan could see that. He was increasingly aware that in what is known as the real world the distinction between reality and wishful thinking can be remarkably tenuous. As a salesman Severson didn’t just spin a good story—more vitally, he believed it himself.
Logan figured, in fact, that it was this very capacity for self-delusion that now had Severson regarding him as a prestige hire.
“Look,” he was saying now, moving into hard-sell mode, “I know how this place must look to a guy like you. We don’t throw money at equipment, we don’t buy three of something if one will do. But lean and mean has its advantages, starting with the fact that you’ll pretty much be your own boss. Could you ever say that at the ACF?” He smiled, and Logan wondered if he might know something of his recent past after all. But, no—if that were the case, he wouldn’t be here. “The fact is, I’m one helluva great guy to work for. You do the work and I’m happy, period, end of story. Ask Perez.”
No question, the pitch had its points—not the least of which was the chance to work closely with his old friend. Since Ruben, the company’s only other on-site employee, was a sort of all-purpose assistant in the lab, the two of them would be together almost constantly.
As soon as they were alone, Logan threw an arm over his friend’s shoulder. “So that’s the big bonus of being here, your company?”
“Eight hours a day, every day.” Perez laughed. “Just remember, I got seniority. If it’s a conflict between the Mets and the Yankees on the radio, we go with the Yanks.”
“Fine,” said Logan. “If you’re gonna play hardball”—he paused to give his friend a chance to grimace—“I’m gonna make you listen to classical music.”
Perez smirked. “And I thought things around here couldn’t get any worse.”
Logan’s gaze took in his surroundings, fixing on the phony wood paneling, buckling in the middle, that lined an entire wall. “They can’t.”
“You’re right, this is the Bowery of biomedical research. But, you know what? No one gives you any shit here either. Personally, I’ll take it over Claremont Hospital any day.”
“The Bowery, nice. As in: nowhere lower to sink.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” said Perez, faintly impatient. “Working the hospital on Riker’s Island might be lower. Look, it’s a job, not a career.” And a job, moreover, that Perez had put himself out to secure for him.
Logan nodded. “I know you’re right. I’ve just gotta keep thinking that.”
Sabrina had to make the trip, if only to satisfy her intense curiosity. True enough, she had nothing more than an address: Philusstrasse 29. A call to the local directory had failed to locate even a telephone number. More ominously, her own letters to Herr Kistner had gone unanswered.
Still, she couldn’t let it rest there, not knowing for sure. The first Friday in December, not due back at the hospital till Sunday, she headed out to the airport and bought a ticket for Cologne.
When she arrived in early afternoon, she was surprised to find the temperature a good twenty degrees cooler than that in Rome.
“Bringen Sie mich bitte zum Kölner Dom,” she instructed the cabbie. Take me to the cathedral, please.
As they entered the city proper, brilliantly decked out for Christmas, there the historic building suddenly loomed, majestic, in the midst of square miles of postwar construction.
“Wie ist es passiert? Wie hat er ürberlebt?” How did it happen? How did it survive?
He shrugged. “I am too young, I wasn’t here. But they say the English pilots were under orders not to hit the cathedral. They say that after a while people knew to run there whenever there was an air raid. Are you going to go inside?”
“I don’t have time just now. Please, if you could just circle around it so I can have a look.”
When he stopped at a light at the edge of the crowded square, she handed him a slip of paper with the address. “Is this very far?”
“Nein, Fräulein. Just a little bit over in that direction.”
It turned out to be a brick building of four stories. She half believed the name wouldn’t be there, but there it was, the first of eight listed on the directory: R. Kistner. He was on the ground floor.
She pushed the buzzer. Though she could hear it ring in an apartment just off the lobby on the other side of the glass front door, there was no response. She rang again. Nothing.
Dispirited, she stood there a long moment. What now? Perhaps she should find a hotel room and come back later. Or leave a note.
She wandered outside into the cold, and was hit with another blast of frigid air. On a bench across the street huddled several figures. Shivering, she hurried toward them.
“Entschuldigen Sie, bitte,” she said to the one closest at hand, an elderly woman. Excuse me.
The woman did not move.
“I am trying to find someone. Perhaps you can help.”
She gazed up at her with watery eyes. “You are not from around here.”
“No.” She hesitated. “His name is Rudolf Kistner. He lives in that building.”
The woman looked at her companions. “No. I do not know.”
“Perhaps”—Sabrina turned hopefully to the others, a man and a woman, equally bundled up—“one of you might know.”
Neither even looked in her direction.
“We do not know,” said the woman.
“Thank you.” Sabrina started moving off. “I will leave him a note.”
Having composed it and wedged it into Kistner’s mailbox, she again left the building. She was searching the street for a cab when she became aware of the old man from the bench coming toward her. Though he used a cane, he moved remarkably well. Stepping aside, she watched him enter the lobby; then, though aware of her eyes upon him, proceed to the mailbox and begin reading her note.
“Herr Kistner?” she said, pushing through the front door.
He looked at her a moment; then back down at the note.
“I can tell you who I am. I am from the American Cancer Foundation!”
Slowly he unwrapped his muff. The face that emerged was ancient, a thousand furrows beneath a shock of snow-white hair. If she’d had to guess, she’d have put his age at past ninety.
“In America?”
She nodded. “I have written you letters. I’ve been working on the study you inquired about. With Dr. Logan? Why didn’t you speak to me out there?”
He ignored this. “And you are who? His assistant?”
Sabrina was wise enough not to take offense; it was likely that in his entire career in the lab, the old man before her had never worked with a woman as an equal.
“Actually, his associate.”
“I am very old. I do not enjoy visitors.”
“In your letters, you inquired about our progress. Since I happened to be in Cologne, I thought I might be able to tell you.”
Unused to telling lies, Sabrina found that even this modest one came with great difficulty. But she’d come too far to risk being turned away now.
His damp, pale blue eyes opened a bit wider. “I will make an exception.”
Wordlessly, he led her through the lobby and into the living room of his tidy apartment. She was reminded of her grandmother’s place in Livorno; the same heavy turn-of-the-century furniture and odd assortment of Oriental rugs on the floor, the same musty odor and shelves heavy with leather-bound books.
“Forgive me,” he said, turning almost courtly. “The housekeepe
r comes only once a week. May I get you some tea?”
“No, thank you.”
He took a seat in a stiff-backed chair. She noticed on the table before him an electronic chess board. He was midway through a game.
“Do you play?” he asked.
“Just a little.”
“Care to make a move?” He turned the game toward her.
Flushing slightly, she studied the board; she wasn’t ready for such a test. “Pawn to King-six.”
He smiled—she’d passed. “Gut, sehr gut.” He looked up at her. “Now, please, tell me about your protocol. Your Dr. Logan did not give many details.”
“We have had,” she replied, choosing her words carefully, “very encouraging results. The drug is active, of this there is no doubt.”
He leaned forward, as alert as any rabid fan at a sporting event. “Yes, I see.”
“Unfortunately, toxicity remains a problem.”
“Of course. As always. Can you give me the details? How many women have you had on this test?”
So she began at the beginning, in broad strokes recounting the entire history of the Compound J protocol, leaving out only the final, humbling chapters. The impression with which she deliberately left him was that the experiment was ongoing—and that both she and Logan were still running it.
“This brings me to something I wish to ask you,” she said. “It is about Mikio Nakano, the Japanese chemist. In the letters you wrote of him with great admiration.”
She thought she saw him start. “Yes? Perhaps I did.”
“Can you tell me what happened to him? And to his work?”
He shook his head. “Nein, nein. I do not know. After he left our laboratory, I did not see him.”
She gazed at him curiously. “But,” she said, feeling in her pocket for the Xerox copy of the letter, “you wrote something to Dr. Logan. You wrote”—she studied the page—“ ‘I know he did not stop working on this problem.’ ” She looked up. “Is this not so, Herr Kistner?”
Again, he shook his head. “It was very long ago, I am sorry.”
“But how did you know?” she pressed. “Were there rumors of such a thing? Did you perhaps hear about it somewhere?”
