The First Family

by Michael Palmer

  Day and night, reporters continued to scavenge for information, attempting to piece together some kind of story using what few facts they had, spreading disinformation with the speed of a mouse click.

  Karen winced in pain as she took a seat in the empty chair placed in front of Ellen’s cherrywood desk. The bullet Hewitt fired had bruised her ribs badly, but otherwise she’d escaped serious injury. A few inches lower and the projectile would have bypassed her bulletproof vest and could easily have severed her spinal cord. Karen was well aware of her good fortune. Her gaze settled on a manila envelope on the desk in front of her.

  “Is that what I think it is?” she asked.

  “Bump in salary, promotion to senior management, everything we discussed,” replied Ellen. “I told Russell that I wanted to give you the news personally.”

  A lump sprang into Karen’s throat, making it difficult to swallow. Finally, after so many setbacks, she’d get a chance to put into practice many of the reform ideas she and her father had spent years championing.

  “Ellen … I’m—” Karen paused. Not one to normally be at a loss for words, she was suddenly unsure exactly what to say. “I’m sorry” hardly seemed adequate. What Hal had done to her, to Geoffrey, to so many others, was unconscionable.

  “You don’t have to say anything, Karen. You of all people understand how hard I fought to have Cam, and I’ll never, ever stop fighting for him, no matter what that monster did to our family.”

  Ellen picked a piece of paper off her desk and flipped it over. “I found Hal’s e-mail to me,” she said. “He sent it ten years ago, but I had it in my archives. He wrote to tell me that he was now on the board of the TPI and he could get Cam in right away, no waiting list. I didn’t need much convincing.”

  Karen sighed with disgust. “Guessing he sent similar letters to the parents of the other children,” she said.

  “Yes, he did,” said Ellen, anger rising in her voice. “From what the FBI could piece together, Hal Hewitt got close to Yoshi and worked his way onto the board so he could steer all his offspring to the institute from the shadows, then he carefully observed their progression.

  “Five families took him up on his offer. Those that couldn’t afford tuition were told they could get scholarships, when in reality it was Hewitt secretly paying their bill. Three families declined his offer entirely. One of those families had relocated to Ohio. They’re all dead. Home invasion. No arrests ever made. The other two have children younger than Cam. They haven’t presented with symptoms yet.”

  “Have they been notified?” Karen could hardly imagine how difficult that news would be to receive.

  “It’s in process,” said Ellen. “Should we go over the press statement? I wanted to get your reaction before I present it to Geoffrey and his senior staff and cabinet members. Some of this might not make it to the final press statement, but the public is clamoring for answers and we have to give them something. I’m not sure how much I’m comfortable sharing, or what to even say. Either way, I’ll need you with me to answer any questions pertaining to the assault.”

  “Sounds good.”

  The only thing the public knew for certain was that Dr. Hal Hewitt had illegally fathered Cam Hilliard, along with other children, and that the first lady had confronted him after learning the devastating news. The story leaked to the press was that Karen shot Hewitt, who had brandished a weapon of his own. Everyone agreed that America did not need to know that Hewitt had threatened the first lady with a gun seized from the Secret Service.

  As for figuring out Hewitt’s various crimes, he had left behind a substantial digital trail, which had allowed the FBI and other investigative agencies to piece together his methods and motives. It took three minutes for Ellen to dispense with background information, including the development of Cam’s strange symptoms, Lee’s involvement, links to other TPI students, concerns over the ProNeural nootropics, and Gleason and Yoshi’s fraud scheme.

  Ellen began reading the press statement:

  In every case, the murders and assaults, including the attempt on my son’s life, were the result of one man’s horrifically misguided deeds. Dr. Hal Hewitt’s sick and twisted vision for the future began with the struggles of his son, Liam Hewitt.

  Liam was a gifted artist who had fallen victim to drug abuse. From analysis of Dr. Hewitt’s digital archives, we now know that he confronted his son about his drug problem. Liam insisted that drugs were essential to his creative process and would not stop taking them. Dr. Hewitt became obsessed with saving Liam and set off on his destructive path to discover if it was possible to unlock a person’s creative potential without any reliance on drugs of any kind.

  Ellen paused and took a drink of water.

  “It sounds great so far,” Karen said, encouraging.

  Dr. Hewitt’s work as a fertility specialist made him uniquely qualified to shape the formation of human life. He spent years perfecting his protocol and developed a rudimentary form of gene editing in sperm that predated today’s modern CRISPR-Cas systems for targeted genome editing.

  Using his technique, Dr. Hewitt could snip out a piece of any organism’s DNA cheaply, quickly, and precisely—like a film editor altering frames of a movie. We can only speculate that Dr. Hewitt did not share his breakthrough research with the broader scientific community because he wanted to further his selfish and misguided ambitions without interference.

  Dr. Hewitt believed he had correctly identified the genes that control our neuroplasticity, which is how the brain learns and retains information. In one of the papers the FBI recovered during this ongoing investigation, Dr. Hewitt referred to his procedure as, and I quote, “putting the brain’s ability to form new neural connections on steroids.”

  What Dr. Hewitt strived for was a genetically modified child capable of quickly mastering skills requiring tremendous creativity. Music. Art. Chess. Mathematics. Any endeavor combining creative thought and cognitive ability.

  In his prodigious writings, Dr. Hewitt expressed a desire to maximize people’s potential, to help usher in a new golden age. He imagined a planet full of artists and brilliant abstract thinkers who could solve humanity’s greatest challenges, and believed wrongly that the sacrifices of a few would be worth such a result.

  Dr. Hewitt used his sperm without the knowledge or consent of any of the parents who had entrusted him with their fertility treatment, as a way of presumably reducing the variables of his horrific experiment. From the data analyzed so far, it appears Dr. Hewitt’s procedure did augment to some capacity the brain’s natural neuroplasticity and enabled a type of genius that far surpassed what was obtainable without genetic enhancement.

  To put his theory into practice, Dr. Hewitt required a vehicle to expose each child to different skills to master. It was his hope an innate interest would take root, and because of the genetic enhancement, Dr. Hewitt theorized these children would develop tremendous skills quickly. He believed rapid skill acquisition would subsequently foster an interest in obtaining true mastery. For this reason, the TPI became an essential component of Dr. Hewitt’s plan.

  It is our strong belief that Dr. Hewitt was well aware of the risks involved and he intentionally limited his manipulations to a handful of test subjects so that he could monitor them most carefully. He made a vow, which he had put into writing, to see each child through to adulthood before he went public with his discovery.

  However, when these children reached a certain age of maturity, they experienced symptoms of a systemic genetic disease unlike anything known to medicine. The symptoms that presented in these young people—organ enlargement, seizures, among others—were unequivocally the result of Dr. Hewitt’s nightmarish eugenics procedure.

  We believe Dr. Hewitt became worried that doctors would eventually discover the genetic anomaly and trace it back to him. However an autopsy, if performed, would show evidence of a new type of genetic disease, but would not offer any links back to his fertility clinic. It is the opinion of th
e FBI, and other investigative authorities, that Dr. Hewitt commissioned the murder of all affected young people, and in some cases their families as well, to hide his many crimes and protect his research.

  It is the strong belief of the FBI that the people responsible for the attempted murder of my son were part of this elaborate scheme and that Dr. Fredrick Gleason, Cam’s personal physician, played no part in the attempt on my son’s life.

  Ellen put the paper down.

  “Is that all?”

  “No, there are a few paragraphs about what this has done to my family, to the others. I just can’t read it right now.”

  Karen reached across the desk and briefly took hold of Ellen’s hand. “Are you sure you can go through with this?”

  “I have to,” said Ellen.

  “How did he get to Duffy?” The question had been bothering Karen for some time.

  “Mark Mueller—he was the man Lee killed at the farm, nickname Mauser—was a drug dealer who sold narcotics to an employee at the NSA. That employee went looking through various computers at the people closest to Cam, to learn their secrets.”

  “And found Duffy’s.”

  “Right. That employee has since been arrested and has been cooperating, as I understand it.”

  “What about Mauser and his crew?”

  “The FBI is still piecing that together,” said Ellen. “They believe Mauser was Liam Hewitt’s drug dealer. Hewitt may have hired Mauser as some sort of nanny to keep his son supplied, monitor his intake, keep him safe, and in exchange for their protection services, Hewitt fed them OxyContin to sell, which he siphoned from his clinic’s pharmacy by replacing real narcotics with counterfeit pills he bought online. He even had a code name; called himself Rainmaker. When the children started having medical issues, Hewitt threatened to cut off Mauser’s supply unless they cooperated.”

  “Cooperated by killing those kids.”

  “I guess in Hewitt’s mind his son Liam wasn’t like the others. Liam could still live as an addict, but the other kids were going to die, no matter what anyone did to try and save them.”

  “And now?”

  “And now…” Ellen’s eyes grew misty. “Now they’re still going to die, Karen, and I can’t stop it. I can’t save my son. Lee can’t. Nobody can.”

  EPILOGUE

  THREE MONTHS LATER …

  The World Junior Chess Championships took place inside the prestigious Marshall Chess Club in New York City. The four-story redbrick building on a leafy street in Manhattan housed the second-oldest chess club in the United States. In this building thirteen-year-old Bobby Fischer had defeated Donald Byrne in “The Game of the Century.” Adorning the walls in the high-ceilinged tournament hall were framed photographs of famous matches and players who had come and gone over the course of the club’s storied hundred-year history. Included among the thirty or so spectators who occupied folding chairs set up along the hall’s perimeter were Lee, Karen, Josh, Susie Banks, Valerie Cowart, the president, and the first lady.

  Cam sat with the U.S. team, a tense look on his face. Everyone was sweating, and not just because the air-conditioners struggled to cool the room on a brutally hot August day. Taylor Gleason, who had taken Cam’s place on the U.S. team, was presently engaged in a tense match against a sixteen-year-old boy from Belarus, who was known as an aggressive player.

  It was incredibly difficult and emotional for Cam to withdraw from the tournament. The decision he made showed not only tremendous maturity, but also acceptance of his disease, his limitations.

  To stay involved, Cam turned to coaching. He and Taylor worked together for hours on end, forging strategies, practicing complex moves. With Cam’s guidance, Taylor’s game had improved remarkably, but nobody could have predicted this level of success.

  Taylor was playing for more than just the tournament win. He was playing for redemption. His disgraced father had had the murder charges dropped, but was still facing prison time for his ProNeural scheme. As much as Cam had showed his maturity by backing out of the tournament, Taylor had demonstrated inspiring grit and resilience.

  Much of the game Taylor spent shoring up his weaknesses. He repulsed many of the speculative attacks with defensive moves, but according to the president’s running commentary, that was not enough. His opponent simply regrouped and tried again, creating space on the board while waiting for Taylor to make a mistake. To win, Taylor had to counterattack, pursue vigorously, and create counterthreats of his own. Cam had drilled Taylor on this tactic. The president insisted it was time to put that strategy into action.

  “This is just like boxing,” the president told Lee. “Everyone has a plan until he gets punched in the mouth.”

  Taylor was looking increasingly anxious, and it was understandable. A victory or draw here would give him enough points to claim the tournament title. His opponent moved his knight to f6, trying to control the center of the board. But Taylor countered, moving his rook to e3, supporting his pawn on e4. Cam gave a subtle thumbs-up sign, clearly approving.

  Lee did not understand the strategy, but a projector displayed the game onto a large screen so at least he could follow the action.

  Susie sat next to Josh, her hands clasped tightly in his in nervous anticipation. She was still adapting to her new reality as well, playing themes on her violin instead of full pieces as she battled her depleted concentration and memory loss. Her myoclonus could be controlled somewhat with medication, but she still needed to be on dialysis. Her organs were still growing larger. Josh had been her rock, a steady presence in her life despite her declining health.

  “You don’t get to pick only the good parts of the people you love,” Josh had said to Lee. “You get the whole package, and I’m fine with that.”

  Susie was everything that Hannah was not. She was affectionate and adoring. What she could not be was healthy. Without a cure, she would die, and so would Cam. Valerie had been looking after Susie these days, and the two had grown close. In many ways, Valerie was as much a surrogate mother as she was Susie’s caregiver.

  Over the course of the match Susie and Cam locked eyes frequently, speaking some unspoken language. In the months since the terrible truth came out, the two had grown extremely close, which made sense given they were half siblings who shared a tragic bond.

  The game continued. Taylor took his opponent’s pawn with his pawn to d6, but his opponent countered, moving his rook to c6 in what turned into an exchange of material.

  “Taylor needs to cramp this guy’s style, force him to defend the pawn in the center of the board, not exchange material.”

  The president sounded exasperated. Lee nodded his agreement but was incapable of visualizing the game to Hilliard’s extent. Karen looked on in rapt attention. Normally she’d be on duty, but it was Woody Lapham leading the team keeping the president and first family safe during the tournament. For the first time in Lee’s memory, Karen did not seem to be missing the action. She was happy to be a spectator. Hell, she was happy to be alive.

  Physically Lee was relatively fine, his shoulder throbbing only intermittently, but it was the emotional strain that had contributed most significantly to his suffering. He blamed himself not only for Paul’s death, but for Yoshi’s as well.

  Yoshi, like Paul, was an innocent in all of this. He took his own life because Lee had shamed him, exposed him as a fraud. While Yoshi’s methods were clearly misguided, his intentions all along were ultimately good.

  But it was Paul that kept Lee up at night. The guilt he felt pulsed more painfully than his bullet wound. Lying awake in the darkness, Lee kept seeing his friend’s face, hearing his voice, aching for a different outcome.

  He would never stop blaming himself for Paul’s death, so he did what he felt he had to do. He sold his practice to the MDC. He did not do it for the money or to honor Paul’s wishes. He sold it because he could no longer practice without him. He and Paul were in a marriage of sorts, and the business simply felt empty with him gone.

/>   It was heartbreaking to let the business go, to sell off a final link to his father, to give up on family medicine, but it paled compared to the suffering of Paul’s family. But in a way it was also freeing. It gave Lee time to concentrate on his new life’s mission: saving Susie and Cam.

  At the moment there was no cure for what they had. Twice during the tournament, Cam’s myoclonus had struck without warning, sending his arms into spasm. Lee would have to live with lingering guilt, but Cam and Susie had to live with something far worse: a progressive, genetic disease.

  But there was hope.

  The process Hewitt had used to engineer the gene augmentation could potentially be reversed into a new therapy. CRISPR technology had advanced greatly since Hewitt had pioneered a rudimentary technique from the shadows. Advancements now offered the possibility of precisely directed gene therapy that not only might cure Susie and Cam, and the other two surviving children Hewitt had fathered, but could someday treat a host of terrible diseases. As with all science, though, its potential for abuse would never disappear. New Hewitts might always emerge.

  The president would fund the research and development using his personal wealth, as well as future money he would make on the speaking circuit, opening a new battlefront in the ongoing war against genetic disease.

  President Hilliard had appointed Lee as program director, and his first act in his new role was to hire Dr. Ruth Kaufmann to lead the research teams. The future of gene therapy had yet to be defined, but Lee had tremendous faith in Dr. Kaufmann’s leadership and her abilities. Their efforts by no means guaranteed a cure, but they did offer hope, and that was the next best thing.

  Taylor moved his knight to g8, and about half the room gasped, while Cam leapt from his seat like there’d been a buzzer-beater basket. The other half of the room, Lee included, had no clue what had happened.

  “I think he just forced the game into a draw,” the president said, pumping his fist in victory. A draw was worth half a point for each player, but Taylor’s total points would give him the tournament title. Even though their roles had been reversed, Cam concentrated on the game as if he were the one playing in the finals, and in a way he was. Without Cam as the catalyst, without his tutelage, Taylor would never have made it this far.