by Blanca Miosi
“To be honest, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t remember anyone in an unsuspecting guise.”
“Exactly, which is why they go that route. It could even be a woman.”
The only woman I remembered was the librarian Molly Graham, unless it were one of the tourists at the library.
“Some Japanese tourists took a few pictures of us in the library, but I don’t think they could have known we were going to be there.”
“Unless someone had slipped into the group that day. Was the photo of any great importance?”
“No. Except for the chains being all in a mess, I don’t think there would’ve been anything in the picture that could serve as a clue. What’s more, now that I think about it, if they managed to find the book I ripped a few pages out of, they’d be following a false trail. I’d like you to teach Nicholas a few precautionary measures, too, Nelson. He’ll be joining me. He can be trusted.”
Nelson scrutinized Nicholas who, up to then, had remained sitting quietly in a chair beside the massive man.
“Do you know how to shoot a gun?” was Nelson’s first question.
“I have a license. I was in the army for two years.”
I gave a start.
“That makes things a bit easier. I’ll give you an automatic pistol. Carry it with you at all times except, of course, to places where they’ll search you because they aren’t allowed, like at the laboratory tomorrow. I think it would be better for you to stay here in Mr. Dante’s house, instead of going back and forth from where you live. We need to avoid all routine movements.”
“So I should go back to get a few things.”
“I’ll go with you tonight.”
I felt a lot better having Nelson around. My mind immediately jumped to John Merreck. I looked at the phone number on the card and got ready to call him.
On the second ring, I was surprised by a soft voice with just a hint of a German accent that answered, “Hello, Mr. Contini-Massera. I’ve been anxiously awaiting your call.”
I had figured he would know who was calling. Surely my number would show up on his caller ID.
“Hello, Mr. Merreck. I would like to speak with you in person.”
“It would be a pleasure. I’ll look for you tomorrow. I suppose you know the address?”
“Yes, I have it. I’ll see you tomorrow, Mr. Merreck.”
That afternoon Nicholas took up residence with us in Uncle Claudio’s enormous apartment in Tribeca. I could not have said it was mine as it was more than evident I owned nothing beyond massive doubts and a few sheets of paper that might be important. My American friend had brought a few of his belongings: a suitcase and a laptop computer. His presence had by now become very familiar to me, with his ever-present blank manuscript under one arm as if he were still hoping at any minute the answer to all of our questions would suddenly appear in writing.
Peoria, about 125 miles southwest of Chicago, is one of the main cities of the state of Illinois. Following Nelson’s directions, we found the laboratory without difficulty. The building looked ordinary, an eight-floored square with absolutely nothing to set it apart architecturally from the surrounding buildings. Nelson, Nicholas, and I walked through the glass door that separated the waiting room from the street, and our presence—whether my physical resemblance to Uncle Claudio or the fact that she recognized Nelson—provoked an immediate response from the young woman behind the desk.
“Hello, Mr. Dante Contini?” she asked.
“Hello, yes, that’s right.”
“Be so kind as to follow me, please.”
We followed her to the elevator and came out directly onto a heliport on the roof where a helicopter was waiting for us. About twenty minutes later we were landing on the grounds of a place located in Roseville, if I heard the pilot correctly. A man in a gray suit welcomed us and led us to “the ranch.” All we saw was an unimposing one-story house with a long stretch of white fence surrounding a yard with scattered trees. It looked like an unassuming house in the middle of an excellently manicured golf course. Careful observation revealed that its walls were neither wood nor stucco but some material covered with sheet metal with a wood grain design.
As we crossed the threshold, we went through a metal detector, and just before entering the elevators we were searched a second time. The level of security surprised me though Nelson had already warned me, “Don’t be taken off guard when they search you. They search everyone, including employees.”
Soon after, bright name badges were affixed to our respective lapels. But what really took me by surprise—and truly impressed me—was that we descended ten stories before the elevator came to a stop. White lights simulating natural daylight lit up everything, I suppose to preclude the sensation of claustrophobia that was bound to shroud a work environment so deep underground.
Before we entered Merreck’s office, Nelson was detained. He calmly went to one side and waited in a chair in the hallway.
“He comes with me,” I said, glancing at Nicholas.
“Hello, Mr. Contini. I’m John Merreck.” A thin, pale man greeted us in that American way of dropping the compound last name. He held out his hand.
“Hello, Mr. Merreck. This is Nicholas Blohm, my advisor.”
“Pleased to meet you. Can I offer you some coffee?”
“I’d love some, thanks,” I nodded eagerly. The strong smell of the stuff was irresistible.
“It’s a coffee we grow ourselves, genetically seasoned with cacao,” Merreck explained with pride.
He himself prepared the aforementioned drink for us in a corner of his office and made a great show of the presentation. Then he sat behind his desk.
“I’m very sorry for what happened, Mr. Contini. Your uncle was a great friend of this estate.”
He seemed in no hurry to talk about what had had me tied up in knots recently. He just idly stirred his coffee as if I were not actually there. I felt like I was in the presence of a professional day-dreamer. Nicholas shot me a glance, and I decided to wait for Merreck to speak first.
“Would you like to have a tour of the ranch?” he asked when he had finished his coffee.
“Of course.”
“Follow me, please.”
We left his office by a door next to the one through which we had entered and walked into a sort of dressing room.
“Please, take off your jackets and put these on.” He handed us each a white suit that zipped in the front, gloves, a hat, and disposable shoe covers. “Everything has been sterilized,” he explained.
We followed him. Beyond the door we found ourselves in a long hallway with countless doors at either side; all the walls were made of glass, which allowed us to see what was going on inside. In most of the rather spacious rooms there were personnel engrossed in their work.
“The cures for many diseases come out of these rooms. Sometimes it takes years to achieve just one small step forward, but it’s worth it.”
We came to a room with lots of white rats in different glass containers.
“Animal metabolism does not always equate to humans, in terms of achieving the same results,” he said gravely, “but we do what we can. These rats were injected with a growth hormone. There’s been some progress in their cell regeneration, but, unfortunately, their livers are beginning to excrete an excess of somatomedin. The result is something similar to fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva. In other words, the muscle turns to bone.”
I saw a few rats that could barely move, their bodies horribly deformed. They had truly become monsters. I could not stop thinking about what I had read in Mengele’s notes.
“I’ve read about some similar experiments done on human beings.”
“I have, too, believe me. But that’s not allowed here. Everything we do here,” he answered, looking around, “is legal.”
We got to the end of the corridor and passed into another, where plants seemed to be the primary subjects.
“What you’re seeing is the l
atest in genetic development, a theory that is finally starting to become reality, though there’s still more work to be done.”
“Are you making genetically modified food here?”
“No, my dear Mr. Contini. We leave that to Monsanto, and they are doing it very well. Occasionally we allow ourselves a little fun, like the coffee you savored, but that is all. Herein may lie the very answer to the question of eternal youth. It may shock you to know that everything you touch, everything around you, is alive.”
He must have understood I had no idea what he meant. He continued, “This.” He grabbed an ashtray and held it up at eye level. “It’s not an inanimate object, though it looks like it. It’s made up of millions and millions of atoms in perpetual movement; an atom is so small that a single drop of water contains roughly five sextillion of them, each in perpetual motion with their protons, neutrons, and electrons like infinitesimal microcosms. And that’s how everything around you is, including you yourself. Every cell in your organism is made up of atoms. And we have already proved that it’s possible to manipulate them to last as long as we want. Plants are alive. They listen, feel, breathe, feed themselves, and some even have cells that reproduce indefinitely.”
I knew then that he was ready to start talking about what I had come for.
“You’re talking about extending life?”
“To unthinkable limits.”
“How long? Maybe two hundred years? Who would want to live that long? I don’t think the length is what matters but rather the quality.”
“It does not seem very important to you, Mr. Contini, because you are young. How old are you?”
“Twenty-four.”
“And what if I told you I could make you immortal, keeping the same appearance you have,” he glanced at his watch, “at 4:00 p.m. today, Wednesday, November 17, 1999?”
Nice touch, I thought. The guy should sell encyclopedias.
“It seems highly unlikely. No one can escape death. Anyhow, what would happen to humanity if nobody ever died?”
“Some people deserve to live on. We could have an Einstein forever, and I have no doubt that unified field theory would have already been resolved and proven. Intergalactic travel could become something actually attainable...”
“Yeah, now where have I heard that before?” Nicholas interrupted.
His irony was lost on Merreck, who opened a door and invited us to enter.
“Did you know that the longest living plant on Earth is the creosote bush, or larrea? Studies of its cellular structure suggest that the king clone sample in the Mojave desert is between 9,400 and 11,700 years old. That’s the experiment Dr. Josef Mengele was working on here,” Merreck said, indicating the lab we had just entered. “Unfortunately, he died before he could finish. Mr. Claudio Contini was aware of everything that was going on, but for reasons we do not understand he took some documentation necessary for carrying on with the formula. With his death, I fear that everything will be left in limbo. He was living proof that it was possible.”
“That immortality was possible?” I asked, stupefied. “So then how do you explain his death?”
“Your uncle had been exposed to a radioactive element some twenty years before. As the longevity treatment was applied to his body, the cancer invading his system also acquired immortal characteristics. It was a battle his organism lost.”
“And what makes you sure that this time the study results would be positive?”
“As the good Dr. Tyrell said, ‘to make an alteration in the evolvement of an organic life system is fatal. A coding sequence cannot be revised once it’s been established.’ At least that is the conclusion we had reached.”
“So what make you change your mind?”
“Dr. Josef Mengele managed to do it with your uncle, Mr. Contini.”
“But he died,” I said, nearly as a reproach.
“Because Dr. Mengele could not complete the sequence. Mr. Contini died due to the long hours of exposure to radioactivity. However, I know he had the exact formula to achieve it. Unfortunately, your uncle had cancer, and that did not help the experiment.”
“Why not?”
“Once again I turn to Dr. Tyrell’s explanation in the movie: because a short while after incubation, ‘any cells that have undergone reversion mutation give rise to revertant colonies,’ and in your uncle’s case, it happened with the carcinogenic cells. They became powerfully immortal. A repressive protein that would block the operating carcinogenic cells would impede the ad infinitum duplication, but at the same time it caused a replication error that made the restructured DNA chain carry an inherent fatal mutation.”
“But this isn’t a movie,” Nicholas interrupted.
“Yet the similarities are breathtaking, Mr. Blohm,” Merreck answered condescendingly.
“Besides Mengele’s experiments, is there no one else in the scientific world doing research about this?” I asked. I truly was curious, and yet I also wanted to know if there were a competition factor going on here.
“But of course, Mr. Contini. There have been other experiments. From what we know, Dr. Robert White here in the United States carried out a few brain transplants, including the head, in monkeys. He had relative success. That was between the years 1950 and 1971. In the Soviet Union, Dr. Vladimir Demikhov did the same, though, as is typical, with no great repercussion.”
“And what happened?”
“There was great opposition from animal rights groups. Dr. White managed to transplant the head of one monkey onto the body of another. The animal survived seven days, during which it seemed to retain the same personality as the monkey whose brain it was. In other words, you could take any human body in good repair and transplant onto it the head of a man suffering some paralyzing illness.”
It seemed like a rather bizarre solution to me. The idea of a person walking around with someone else’s head was repulsive.
“What would happen if Mr. Dante Contini handed over to you the missing documents?” asked Nicholas, who up to then had been almost entirely ignored by Merreck.
“Do you have them?” Merreck asked me.
“I didn’t say he had them,” Nicholas clarified.
“If you had the documents and brought them to us, obviously, we could finish the studies and start producing the enzyme that would lead to immortality,” Merreck explained.
“There were two attempts on the life of my uncle, Mr. Contini. Were you aware of that?”
“Sadly, yes. And I’m very sorry about it. But if you are insinuating that we had anything to do with it, you are wrong. We had nothing to gain from his death. As you can now see, his death was much more of a problem for us than a benefit.”
“What were Contini-Massera’s holdings in this laboratory?” I asked.
“Mr. Contini owned twenty-five percent of the stocks.”
Nicholas let out a whistle.
“He owned a quarter of all this,” I said.
“Looking at it like that, yes. But his shares were limited to aspects related to the antiaging formula.”
“I suppose he still owns them.”
“Of course, but those shares were backed by the research he took with him; without it...”
“I don’t follow,” I interrupted.
“The results of those experiments, the missing formula, and all the studies belong to this laboratory. That was the agreement we made.”
“Then why did he take them? And how do I know you’re telling me the truth? This place is crawling with security measures,” I said, glancing around.
“There are always ways to get around security. I have no doubt your uncle was a very resourceful man.”
“And, speaking in dollars, of course, about how much does that twenty-five percent of the company you mentioned come out to be?” Nicholas interjected.
“Four billion dollars,” Merreck answered resolutely.
“It seems to me that a discovery of this caliber would be worth at least twenty,” I objected. “You’re
telling me that he holds twenty-five percent of the shares, but once the formula is secured, the discovery of something like this acquires an unattainable worth.”
“Mr. Contini, this is not an auction. We’re talking about the most important scientific discovery in the history of humanity. So much good could come of it.... Twenty billion seems a bit excessive.”
“I bet if we offered the lucky documents directly to the US government or any other interested country, we could get a lot more for them. If we had them, of course,” I said, as if I had spent my entire life trafficking secret formulas.
Nicholas was petrified, his gaze traveling back and forth between Merreck and me. I must have seemed to him then like a low-down, dirty gambler. I was speaking calmly, nearly affably, just as Uncle Claudio would have done. A sheen of sweat appeared on Merreck’s forehead. We looked rather ridiculous talking business in our strange outfits.
“I presume Mr. Contini-Massera established the value of the stocks in his estate,” Merreck said cautiously.
“I would suppose,” I said, making a mental note to call Fabianni. “Weren’t there two shareholders in this laboratory who were against it?” I goaded him.
“That is so, but they are no longer with the company. We cannot allow ourselves the luxury of prioritizing moral concerns over scientific advances.”
“Do you think they were behind the attempts on my uncle’s life?”
“I don’t think so, Mr. Contini. They were very decent people.”
“And they were Jews.”
“Let me remind you we hold no anti-Semitic feeling in this place.”
“I’m only saying it because the experiments for prolonging life were headed by Josef Mengele, which is enough reason for any Jew to want to put a stop to it all.”
“To a degree, I would say you are correct. It would be unwise to rule out that possibility. Don’t think it didn’t occur to me. But, thank God, your uncle survived those two attacks and died of
Natural causes.”
It was true. The Jewish shareholders had had nothing to do with his actual death. But my life was in danger.
