by Ben Bova
“The real question is, where has Abramson gone? And how can we get him before the FBI does?”
“If I were you,” Merriwether said slowly, “I’d put a man on Hightower’s tail. That way, the FBI’d be working for us, sort of.”
Fisk nodded minimally. “Might be a good idea. At least we ought to cover that base.”
“Yeah.”
Bartram Laboratories
SHANNON BARTRAM WATCHED Luke carry his granddaughter up the steps to the entrance of her domain. The child looked like an eighty-year-old.
Behind them, this sleek younger woman stood tall and smiling, a heavy tote bag slung over one shoulder.
Shannon wondered what she should say. As Luke came to a stop before her, with the child in his arms, she heard herself proclaim, “Welcome, Luke. Mi casa es su casa.”
He broke into a guarded smile. “Thanks, Shannon. Thanks a million.”
“Come on in,” Shannon said. “I’ve set up a room in the clinic for your granddaughter.”
As they stepped through the glass doors of the entrance, Luke introduced Tamara, ending with, “She’s Angela’s personal physician.”
“How do you do?” Shannon said.
Without waiting for an answer, she led the three of them into the building, through its central corridor, and along a covered walkway to the small clinic in the rear. The main building was humming, Luke saw. Through open doors along the corridor he could see white-smocked men and women bent over the tools of their trade, microscopes and spectrometers, centrifuges and computer screens.
Shannon chattered away as they came to the room prepared for Angela. Two nurses in starched white uniforms were already there, waiting for them.
“I think you’ll find everything you need for Angela right here,” Shannon said. “And if there’s anything we don’t have, I’ll see to it that we get it right away.”
“That’s great,” Luke said, laying Angela gently on the bed.
Shannon eyed the child for a moment, then turned to Luke. “Progeria?”
“It’s a side effect of the treatment I’m giving her: telomerase inhibitors.”
“Ah. To kill off the tumors.”
“It’s working. I think the tumors are gone.”
Tamara interjected, “But we need a high-resolution MRI to make certain.”
“Of course,” said Shannon. “We have one of the best in the country here. Is her wrist broken?”
“Hairline fracture,” Tamara said.
“I’ll call a local osteopath and have him look at it.”
“Good,” said Luke.
Once they got Angela comfortably settled, Shannon gestured to the nurses. “I’ve set up round-the-clock care for her. What’s her feeding schedule?”
Tamara started to give her the details, but Shannon said, “Tell the nurses, why don’t you? They’ll enter it into the computer schedule.”
With a glance at Luke, Tamara stepped over to talk with the nurses.
Shannon said to Luke, “This is the first time in years that you’ve been here.”
“I came for the dedication ceremony,” he remembered.
“Eight years ago.”
He nodded.
Looking at him curiously, Shannon said, “You seem … well, younger than you did then. Your hair’s darker, longer.”
“I haven’t had a chance to get a haircut the past few weeks.”
“And your skin isn’t as wrinkled.”
He admitted, “I’ve been taking telomerase accelerators.”
Shannon’s breath caught in her throat.
Luke explained, “A seventy-five-year-old coot can’t go barging across the country they way we’ve been. I’d have collapsed from arthritis or asthma or a heart attack.”
“But accelerators can lead to tumor growth, Luke. You know that.”
“I know. But it’s a risk I’ve got to take.”
With a sigh, Shannon said, “Come on, let’s get some dinner into us.”
Luke called to Tamara, “You hungry?”
“Starved.”
“Come on, then.”
After promising Angela that they’d come back to say good night to her, Luke allowed Shannon to lead them through a small but gleamingly immaculate cafeteria and into a still smaller dining room behind it. The table was already set for two; Shannon told the white-coated Hispanic waitress, younger than her overweight body suggested, to put another setting in place.
“Executive dining room,” Luke said, looking around. The room was tastefully decorated with paintings of the Columbia River valley. “Nice.”
“I like my comforts,” said Shannon.
Another Hispanic, male, dark-skinned, joined the chunky young woman to serve the three of them a passably fair dinner. Shannon ordered a bottle of wine.
Luke recognized the label. “Still drinking the local stuff.”
“They make a very drinkable sauvignon blanc,” Shannon said, as she poured for them all.
As dinner progressed, Luke filled Shannon in on all the details of Angela’s case and their trek across the country.
“So here we are,” he concluded, with a cheerfulness he didn’t really feel.
“And the tumors are gone?” Shannon asked.
Tamara replied, “To the best resolution of the equipment we had available in Louisiana.”
“We’ll get you the best resolution available anywhere, tomorrow.”
Luke nodded as he raised a forkful of poached salmon to his mouth.
“But what about the progeria?” Shannon asked.
“Angie’s been off the inhibitors for less than twenty-four hours. If her body doesn’t start producing telomerase at its normal rate, we’ll have to give her accelerators.”
“And risk new tumor growth.”
“I was thinking of injecting a second set of p53 into her, too. She only has one.”
Shannon nodded. “We can do that here. It might help.”
Tamara spoke up. “So we’ll hold off on the accelerators until we give her the p53?”
They discussed that back and forth right through dessert. At last they got up from the crumb-littered table.
“I’ve put you in a room in the clinic, right next to Angela’s, Luke,” Shannon said. Turning to Tamara, she added, “I hadn’t expected another person, so you’ll be sleeping in a guest suite upstairs, on the top floor.”
“Fine,” said Tamara.
Feeling somewhat embarrassed, Luke confessed, “Look, Shannon, we left Baton Rouge with nothing but the clothes on our backs.”
“And our laptops,” Tamara added.
“We’ll need to do some shopping…”
“Of course,” said Shannon. “I’ll put Jesús at your disposal tomorrow. He can drive you into Portland, all the shopping malls.”
“After Angela’s MRI,” said Tamara.
“Certainly. After the MRI.”
The Oval Office
SHE SEEMS TIRED, thought Paul Rossov.
The President of the United States sat behind her massive desk in the Oval Office, frowning worriedly at the three people sitting before her. She wore a softly draped pearl gray dress that disguised her figure. Some women lose weight when traveling; she tended to gain, and she had just returned from nearly a week of campaigning. Her short blond hair was freshly coiffed, though, and while her eyes were puffy, they looked alert, almost angry.
She didn’t like what she was hearing, Rossov knew.
This was a “for your ears only” meeting. No one was recording what was being said. The only people in the room were the President, Rossov, the Attorney General, and the Secretary of the Treasury. The electronic equipment that normally took down every word spoken in the Oval Office had been switched off by the President herself.
She had acceded to the highest office in the land when the incumbent had suddenly and ingloriously died in bed with his mistress. So far, that detail of his death had been kept quiet. As far as the news media and the public knew, the late President had died alone in his sl
eep, of a heart attack, while his wife was attending a feminist convention in Chicago.
Although the next presidential election was more than a year away, the woman behind the desk was already campaigning up and down the nation to be elected in her own right. She had just returned from a tour of the western states and was obviously suffering from jet lag, lack of sleep, and the tremendous anxiety that is the inevitable companion to tremendous drive.
And now this.
“It will wreck the economy,” the Secretary of the Treasury was saying, his deep voice dolorous, like the crack of doom.
Incredulous, the President asked, “One man’s work?”
The Treasury Secretary was an old friend and backer, bald and portly, as if he’d never bothered to read any of the government’s many publications on the dangers of obesity.
He nodded hard enough to make his wattles jiggle. “Social Security and Medicare are in bad enough shape as it is. If people start living past a hundred—”
“That won’t happen for years,” scoffed the Attorney General. “Decades.”
The AG was an almost painfully thin black woman with a thick mop of dark spiky hair, flinty eyes, and a hard lantern jaw. She was wearing a burnt orange sweater over her blouse and skirt. Rossov and the Treasury Secretary were both in standard D.C. uniform: gray three-piece suits, although Rossov’s ensemble was stylishly enriched with hair-thin silver pinstripes.
Sitting between Treasury and Justice, Rossov said, “It’s going to happen a lot sooner if this man Abramson isn’t brought under control.”
“It could drive the nation into bankruptcy,” Treasury moaned.
“We mustn’t allow it to happen,” said Rossov, with iron in his tone.
“Never?” the President asked.
Treasury answered, “Not until we’ve got Medicare and Social Security firmly funded.”
The President said sourly, “Those wingdings on the Hill have been kicking that can down the road for twenty years and more.”
“Giving people the ability to live to a hundred, a hundred and fifty … that would break those programs, blow the budget apart,” Treasury repeated. “And the insurance industry! Private pension plans! We can’t let that happen. We just can’t.”
“How can we stop it?”
Casting a glance at the Attorney General, Rossov said, “This man Abramson has got to be found and tucked away someplace where he can’t do any harm.”
“Wait a minute,” said the Attorney General. “From what you’ve told me about his work, it can also cure cancer?”
“Could be.”
“I’ve had breast cancer,” the AG said. “They caught it in time, thank God. But what if it comes back? This man’s work could save my life.”
Leaning back in his chair, Rossov replied, “That’s just what we’re talking about. If we let this man go on, just about everybody will want to take advantage of his work. Nobody wants to have cancer! Nobody wants to die!”
Staring at him, the Attorney General said, “So you’re saying that you’d rather let people go on having cancer, go on dying?”
“The economy can’t stand having people live twice as long as they do now. It’ll ruin the nation!”
With a grim smile, Treasury said, “Do you know why they set the retirement age at sixty-five, back when Social Security was started? It was because the average life expectancy was only sixty. Now you’re talking about doubling that! Maybe tripling it!”
The AG shook her head stubbornly. “Can’t you change the economy? Fix it so that this won’t ruin things?”
The President let out a short, humorless bark of a laugh. “You try getting any meaningful changes through Congress.”
“But—”
“I’m not going to let this issue swamp my re-election campaign,” the President said flatly.
Rossov repeated, “Abramson has got to be found and put away someplace where he can’t have a destabilizing effect on the economy.”
“But … cancer,” the Attorney General whimpered.
“I know,” said Rossov. “My father died of cancer. Chances are I will, too.”
Treasury leaned forward and whispered like a conspirator. “Of course, we could let the man carry on his work in a suitably protected facility. Just because we can’t release his discoveries to the general public doesn’t mean certain people in privileged positions can’t avail themselves of his results.”
The President’s expression turned thoughtful.
But the Attorney General asked, “So you want my people to find this Abramson. Okay. We find him. Then what?”
“He’s got to be put someplace where we can control him,” said Rossov. “Let him keep on with his research, but don’t let it get out to the public.”
The AG shook her head. “That’s illegal.”
“No, it’s not,” Rossov countered. “People have been held incommunicado before. Detained indefinitely.”
“Terrorists,” said the Attorney General. “Mob bosses. This man’s just a scientist.”
“A scientist who could blow the economy apart,” the Treasury Secretary growled.
“He’s wanted for kidnapping,” Rossov pointed out.
Folding her skinny arms over her meager chest, the Attorney General insisted, “I can’t tell my people to do something like this.” Staring at the President, she added, “Not without an executive order.”
The Oval Office fell absolutely silent. At last the President nodded and said, “See to it, Paul.”
Rossov nodded back, knowing that his signature would be on the order and, if things blew up, the President could plausibly deny she knew about it, while he would obediently fall on his sword.
Ruefully, he remembered another Vice President who rose to the top through the death of his President. When Harry Truman occupied this office he kept a sign on his desk: THE BUCK STOPS HERE. The sign was nowhere in sight now.
Bartram Laboratories
“YOU KNOW, THIS is the first almost-normal day I’ve spent since we left Massachusetts,” said Tamara Minteer.
She and Luke were riding back to the Bartram Labs after an afternoon of shopping for clothes. Luke had insisted on paying for everything out of the diminishing bankroll he carried in his wallet. Tamara wanted to at least buy their lunch, but that would mean using her credit card, and Luke balked at that.
The MRI scans of Angela’s brain that morning had been very positive. No trace of tumors. Luke had let out a whoop of victory that startled the lab technicians and made Angela laugh at her grandfather’s antics.
“Now if the progeria reverses…,” Tamara had said.
“If it doesn’t,” Luke had countered, “we’ll put her on telomerase accelerators and bring her back to normal.”
Tamara nodded without pointing out that the accelerators might lead to new tumors. She didn’t have to say it; Luke knew.
But for a few hours they left all that behind them as they traipsed from one shop to another at the biggest mall in Portland and bought everything from underwear to winter hats.
Sitting in the back seat of the Infiniti, with Jesús driving up front, Luke said, “Let’s have dinner at a top-grade restaurant.”
“I’m still full from lunch,” Tamara said. “Besides, we’re halfway to the labs now.”
Luke nodded, disappointed. It would have been fun having a quiet dinner, he thought. Just the two of us. Then he realized that he was thinking of a quiet romantic dinner. And why not? he asked himself. Tamara’s a wonderfully good-looking woman, and I … Lord, I haven’t felt this way about a woman in years. Ages.
Tamara broke into his thoughts. “How many women are in love with you, Luke?”
Startled, he blurted, “In love with me?”
With a mischievous smile, she said, “There was Petrone in Bethesda, and now Bartram here in Oregon. How many other women do you have stashed away someplace?”
Luke stared at her. “What’re you talking about? Shannon was a student of mine. We never had anyth
ing going on between us.”
“Maybe you didn’t, but she did.”
“Nonsense.”
“If I wasn’t around to protect you…” She let the thought dangle.
Luke saw the curve of her lips. “Listen,” he said. “I never had anything going with either one of them, or anybody else, for that matter. I was a faithful husband. If you’d known Adele, you’d know why.”
More seriously, Tamara said, “I’m sure you were, Luke. But she’s gone, and Shannon is interested in you.”
“Bullshit.”
“For real. Keep your guard up.”
“Bullshit,” he repeated. Then he added, “Besides, if I was going to get interested in a woman, it’d be a good-looking chick like you.”
It was Tamara’s turn to go wide-eyed with surprise.
* * *
THERE WAS NOTHING more stupefyingly boring than listening to other people’s conversations. All morning long, Hightower sat in the audio technician’s cramped little booth and strained to hear a clue, a hint, a whisper that might tell him where Abramson had fled to.
The young technician had worked all through the night to amplify the weak voices on the CDs. Now—baggy-eyed and listless, with four emptied cardboard mugs of coffee littering his worktable—he was playing them for Hightower to hear.
The booth was the size of a casket stood on end, Hightower thought. Windowless, airless. The only chair they could find for him was a rickety three-legged stool. Hightower planted himself on it without complaint, so close to the young technician that he could smell the kid’s body odor. Little geek didn’t shower this morning, he told himself.
Nothing. Nearly two hours of nothing. Most of the chatter between Abramson and Dr. Minteer was about the condition of their patient, Abramson’s granddaughter. Several times they left whichever room they were in and went outside, where the microphones couldn’t pick up their voices.
Hightower shook his head. Amateurs. Merriwether was an amateur at bugging his guests’ rooms. A pro would have included those verandas.
Or maybe, Hightower thought, Merriwether had installed the listening devices suddenly, on the spur of the moment, when he’d learned that Abramson would be coming to stay at Nottaway.
