‘I’m sorry, Frank. It’s just …’ Jackson gripped his chair arms and stood on knees that had both been replaced. He grimaced and headed towards a carved Victorian sideboard covered with stacks of journals and a liter-and-a-half bottle of Kentucky bourbon. He poured two tumblers half full, took a swig, and with his back turned, spoke. ‘Her name was … is Leona. And it was a long time ago.’
Frank waited as Jackson returned and handed him his glass. ‘And?’
‘I don’t want to talk about this.’
‘No. In a world where everything is caused, there’s a reason we wandered to the topic of your most-brilliant student. So out with it. What’s the object lesson worth shooting down the cure for cancer?’
Jackson snorted. ‘I didn’t say that to make you jealous.’
‘I’m not. I’m curious. Leona who?’
‘Let’s leave her with a first name. She was even younger than you, whizzed through her doctoral work with a thesis that was complex, logical, and could have set her on the path for a brilliant academic career. She was one of the first to look at the so-called garbage DNA sequences and lay out serious questions as to their true purposes.’
‘There’s still pushback on that,’ Frank said.
‘There always is with anything new. What was it that Planck said? Science advances one funeral at a time.’
Frank looked up from the amber depths of his drink to Harvey’s birdcage, and the brilliant green and blue bird as he savaged a swinging feed toy. He spotted a mangled head of fresh lettuce on the floor and watched it disappear under a worktable that was Killer’s favorite lair. He walked over and knelt. The tortoise’s wrinkled head and beak-like mouth were mostly hidden inside the bulk of his shell. But it wasn’t the tortoise that ran through his mind, it was thousands of related articles around his thesis. And then it hit, ‘Leona Krawsinska, 1988, Genetics International. Volume 52.’ He paused and mentally flipped pages in his mind. ‘Hypotheses Regarding the Nature of Leader Sequences in Human DNA.’
‘Fuck you, Frank. I should have kept my mouth shut,’ Jackson said.
‘Glad you didn’t. What happened to the brilliant Dr Krawsinska?’ Frank paused, and let his mind drift as he meditated on the name Krawsinska. ‘Why aren’t I seeing other articles? With that big a topic someone should have published her thesis … strange. And as we both know, she was onto something big.’
‘She was, and now you are, thirty years later.’ Jackson mumbled into his drink.
‘Spit it out.’
‘I didn’t say anything.’
‘Jackson, you’re trying my last nerve. What happened to Leona Krawsinska?’
‘What do you think happened? She met a man, got married … and was never heard from again.’
‘Not exactly the dark side. People get married. Where’s this object lesson?’
‘I merely brought it up as a cautionary tale.’
‘Which makes no sense without the details.’ Frank stood and left Killer to his salad. ‘What was so bad? She was your student and you mentored her. Your name was second on that article. It’s not like you slept with her.’
And Frank, who sucked at social clues, read Jackson’s silence as a confession.
‘Seriously?’
‘I’m not talking about this,’ Jackson restated.
‘Yeah, you are. This was your conversation. You tell me that I need to suppress what we both know is ground-breaking work. I’m sick to my core of watching children die when I know I can do something about that.’
‘I get it, Frank. And why you chose pediatric oncology, I never understood and still don’t.’
‘Don’t change the subject.’ Frank felt a pressure in his temples and started to pace. Horrific images of his childhood, never far from the surface, intruded. Chief among them, a crazy mother locked away in a forensic hospital since he was nine. ‘Tell me about your affair with Leona Krawsinska and I’ll tell you why working with those kids is the one thing that keeps me going. Because children shouldn’t have to suffer, and they do. And you’re saying that when I can completely change the game and give them a whole life without people stabbing them with needles or poisoning them with chemo that destroys the very cells they need to survive, I shouldn’t. I don’t get it Jackson. Make me understand, because none of it makes sense.’
Jackson winced.
‘What?’ Frank asked. ‘Just spit it out …’
‘You don’t know how things work.’ He drained his glass and headed for a refill. ‘Leona was my lesson. Not my only one, but the one time I was unfaithful to Ruth. It nearly destroyed my marriage, it kept me from getting department chair, though there were other reasons, and … it just about broke me.’
‘You were in love with her.’
Jackson grimaced. ‘I was.’
‘And she married someone else.’
Tears popped at the corners of Jackson’s eyes. ‘Like you, she was at a decision point. Thesis in hand. Ridiculously young to have a PhD … and while these things shouldn’t matter, they do. She was the most-beautiful young woman I’ve ever met. What happened between us was shameful. A fifty-year-old married man and a twenty-two-year-old. Like an accident in slow motion. You think somebody should stop it, but no one does.’
Frank struggled to make sense of Jackson’s strange revelation. What does this have to do with him refusing to sponsor my next trial?
‘I remember the moment we crossed that line. It was in this room. Just like you, she’d come over. At first, maybe once a week to talk about her work, or new papers. I thought I was the hip supervisor who had students coming and going. Ruth liked that I did most of my office hours from home. She’d sometimes bake trays of cookies or brownies. That I hurt her is the worst part of this. She found out. She asked me if I wanted a divorce, if I was in love.’ He choked on his words. ‘I lied and told her I didn’t know. That was a lie.’ He gazed out through a darkened conservatory window. ‘I asked Leona to marry me. Told her I would leave Ruth.’
He became quiet. The room was silent save for the crunch of lettuce, and the squeak of Harvey’s swing’s toy.
‘She said no, that she’d met someone else and intended to marry him. I realized what an absolute fool I’d been. It was the last time I saw her before she graduated. Ruth and I stayed together, though she never again trusted me. No more trays of cookies and not till she got sick did we really talk. I hurt her more than I could ever atone for.’
‘Jackson, that’s … I’m sorry. But I don’t see the parallel.’ Frank’s cell rang. He glanced at the screen and hit decline.
‘Recruiter?’ Jackson asked.
‘Yeah.’
‘Pimps and whores. That’s the parallel, or rather the fork in the road, or the devil that speaks with forked tongue. Leona left, got married … and went into industry. That last paper of yours should never have been published.’
‘Not again.’
‘You chummed the waters, Frank. How many recruiters from how many drug companies have called today?’
‘Enough. I get it.’
‘No, you don’t. The minute your work leaves your head, you have no control on how it gets used. When you published that article on telomere manipulation and how that influences lifespan, you basically said, “I can make you live longer.”’
‘Your name is on that piece, too.’
‘My name is on thousands of articles. I should never have agreed to it. Did you at least get rid of the rats? And that’s a whole other can of worms. You had no permission for an animal study. If I’d known, I would have shut it down myself. Are they gone?’
‘Yes.’
‘All of them?’ Jackson asked.
Frank hesitated and did something he rarely did. He lied. ‘Yes.’
‘Good.’
The whiskey had both muddled and cleared Frank’s thoughts. He felt manipulated and realized that Jackson had confessed to something big, but had never made his point. ‘You left something out.’
‘Damn,’ Jackson said
. ‘I hoped you’d drop this.’
‘Where’s the object lesson, old man? I didn’t sleep with those rats … or anyone else for that matter.’
‘I didn’t just betray Ruth.’
Frank let the silence stretch.
‘I did something worse. I’ve never told anyone.’ He looked down. ‘I let her read my other students’ theses.’
‘What?’
‘You heard me.’ He met Frank’s gaze and looked away.
‘Why?’
‘She asked. I was in love. I knew it was wrong. What I didn’t know was how she’d use it.’
‘Blackmail?’
‘If only. No, it was during a wave of bone-marrow research. The underpinning of all the toxic chemos. I had three doctoral students who’d found a way to destroy nests of stem cells. She stole it. Within six months of her leaving the university … and me, the first of those poisons was on the market. She took something that was never intended for human use, at least not in that form, and it’s resulted in untold human suffering.’
Frank wanted to feel bad for Jackson. He looked old and defeated. But what roiled in his chest was disgust.
‘I need to get out of here. As you said, she was your object lesson. Not mine. You’re trying to control something that will come out, whether it’s from me or someone else. What makes this worse is that I feel like … no, I know for certain, that I could take what I did with those rats and apply it right now to those kids on the eighth floor.’ He gritted his teeth. ‘They don’t have to die, but without your help, and university backing I’ve got no options. Maybe I can get approval for an animal study, but not without your sign-off. I have zero intention of going with a drug company. I need you to say yes.’
‘Pull it back, Frank. You can’t let this out. Not now, not yet. You need to think through how others will use it. There’s at least two sides to every great scientific advance. You just see those kids. I get it. But that’s not how others will use you and your work. You’re going into the very structure of the DNA and what can work to lengthen life and kill a cancer … there are other ways it could go. For God’s sake it could be weaponized. Instead of stabilizing DNA, it could unravel it.’
‘That’s absurd.’ Frank glanced at the clock, it was ten-twelve. And he’s drunk and this is going nowhere! He grabbed his knapsack and looked at Jackson. He stopped himself from saying anything further. It was no use. Without a full professor, and a Nobel Prize winner at that, signing off on grant applications or requests for an animal, or God forbid, human study, his work was dead. ‘I’ve got to go.’
He left through the front and nearly slammed the door. Chill. He stopped and checked to make sure it was locked. He’s old. There’s got to be a way. He slept with a student. She stole. He swallowed hard and thought of his own work and his inspired twist that made the impossible possible.
Cool air brushed his face. He looked towards the lit bus stop at the end of the block, but too much raced inside his head to sit and wait. He mapped the distance from here to his one-bedroom on the Cambridge/Somerville line. About six miles.
He started to jog. The muscles in his legs loosened up. He focused on the sound of his feet as they pounded the sidewalk and pushed faster and faster. He thought of Jen Owens, who had maybe a month to six weeks, and all the other children he’d treated. An army of them at his back, mostly dead. There’s got to be a way. Jackson is wrong. There has got to be a way.
THREE
Dalton Lang adjusted his ear bud and repositioned the directional feed on the Big Brother wireless eavesdropper. From his black BMW X hidden in the shadow of an ancient beach at the edge of Jackson Atlas’s Brookline property, he listened with rapt attention. The conversation between the two, not his first he’d listened to, tripped a nerve – Leona Krawsinska. What were you up to, Mother? You and the professor … shocking. Interesting. And stealing others’ research. But something stung, why didn’t she tell me?
It now made this assignment – recruit Dr Francis Xavier Garfield, for UNICO Pharmaceuticals – more personal. It also fueled his discontent as the only child of Leona Lang, née Krawsinska. He often wondered what she’d do if he just said no to her. I’m not your lackey. But then there was the other piece, the thing that caused his chest to ache. What would it take for you to say I did something right? No, for her nothing was ever good enough. ‘You had an affair with the old man. Why?’ He calculated back to when his mother got her PhD. It was the same year she married Lionel Lang. ‘Of course, she wasn’t going to marry you,’ he said aloud, as if part of the conversation between Frank and Jackson. ‘You don’t know my mother.’ Do I?
As he listened to the conflict inside, he pictured his father. With each year he felt it grow harder, but the one memory that did come, was bad. Lionel Lang’s head covered with blood in the shower. Water and blood down the drain. His mother, naked and too calm as she dialed 911. ‘There’s been an accident. My husband slipped in the shower.’
He tried to block that, but there were smells, metal and feces and soap. ‘Shit!’
Then the front door to Atlas’s house opened. Garfield, tall and with a mop of dark curls, stood lit in the overhang.
‘Frankie boy, what’s it going to take?’ Dalton said to himself. Thus far all attempts to lure the young doctor to UNICO had failed. Even getting him to pick up the phone was a challenge. The last two recruiters he’d sent, who’d snuck into his class, had been shut down and escorted out.
Though he now had gathered good information, about Garfield’s past, which, if I thought my mother was bad at least she’s not an ax murderer. Although … He shook his head, as graphic memories of blood and water threatened to overwhelm him. With them came the unanswerable question. Was it an accident? Then, as he jogged closer, he focused on Frank Garfield.
He sank down and ticked through intel he’d accumulated. Frank’s best friend since childhood was another pediatric oncologist and researcher, Grace Lewis. Gay, no boyfriend, and he’d been seeing shrinks most of his life. But why Dalton was here had to do with Frank’s work, and his mother’s uncanny ability to ferret through scientific journals, like a douser for water, for the next big thing. Even Dalton, with his lack of scientific interest, sensed it. He’s got the Holy Grail. And Mother wants it. All I need to do is get it for her. Simple … not.
He contemplated his next move, the two men’s talk had crystalized Garfield’s dilemma. He wants to use his research to save his patients. He snorted. Which I’m certain is not Mother’s intent. And that’s why the old man wants to keep this in the bottle. He knows her … why didn’t I know that? Did she think I wouldn’t find out? His thoughts spiraled down. And that’s how much she thinks of me. And if I fail … just another example of how I don’t measure up. But … and inspiration hit. The thing that could dislodge Garfield from the ivy towers of Cambridge. He wants to save those kids … that’s it. But … but … but.
But the old man isn’t going to let that happen. So … And inspiration hit. Sorry, old man.
He pulled out the ear bud and studied the quiet lamplit street. He mapped a path of shadow from his car along a dense hedge that hemmed the property. Then he inventoried what he’d need and how best to do it. No time like the present. He wondered what Leona would say. She hated it when he went off script and didn’t run things by her. But she never has to know it was me. After all, she keeps secrets. It rankled. What else haven’t you told me, Mother?
He got out, felt the heft of the Glock in its holster, and moved with grace up the lawn towards the brightly lit conservatory out back. He spotted Jackson, back turned, at work on a computer. He surveyed the options: ground floor and second story windows, French doors at the back and another entrance off the kitchen. There we go, an open window on the second floor. Too easy.
He tested his weight on an ivy-covered trellis. It held, and he climbed. Years of gymnastics and martial arts made it easy.
Like a boa he eased his head and shoulders through the window, then lowered his bo
dy to a bathroom floor.
Did she love him? he mused as he padded down a broad curved staircase. What will she think about this? Excitement bubbled as he saw the light from the conservatory. She hates surprises. Hates not being in control. This is fucking perfect.
He unsnapped the holster and screwed on the silencer. He heard the lettuce-crunch from the giant tortoise and the click of the old man’s fingers on the keyboard as he came up behind and squeezed off a single surgical shot through the occipital cortex of Nobel Prize laureate, Jackson Atlas. There was minimal recoil, and a gasp of breath, like an uncapped soda bottle through the old man’s lips. Then maybe a second, and he crumpled forward.
But Dalton’s focus was pulled by the screen as it went black – it had been an unsent email to Frank Garfield. Without thought he pressed the enter button to bring it back, shit! Should not have done that. Aware of the error, that every keystroke created traceable meta data, he focused on Atlas’s final words to Garfield.
Dear Frank:
It pains me to be your stumbling block. Yet, through the lens of my decades I see what you cannot or will not. Your research has ramifications far beyond your admirable and altruistic aims. Yes, I believe you could save those children. But at what cost? That’s the rub and until you can address it in a manner that assuages my concerns, I see us and you at a crucial point. For me to continue to offer my support I would like you to terminate your current research. Perhaps develop a new project that focuses on one of the many rich and related topics. I believe for someone as brilliant as you, this should not be difficult. However, should you decide not to terminate your current efforts
Dalton read the ultimatum and imagined its end. Do what I say or else. Sounds familiar. He lingered and stared at the stark white hair on the back of Atlas’s scalp. He resisted the urge to pull up other files, to search for traces of his mother. The revelations from earlier, burned. How stupid of her not to tell him she’d had an affair with Frank Garfield’s supervisor. She didn’t think I’d find out.
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