The Egyptian (7 page)

She remembered the boyfriend a few years back who had only wanted to cuddle and shop and watch fashion on television. He dressed better than she did, which was hard to do, and he liked to discuss their body flaws. The last thing she wanted to date was another woman.

She did tend, she had to admit, to go for the playboy types: successful, confident, smooth, handsome in a JFK kind of way. Dominic didn’t have any of the qualities on her list. He did have, she had to admit, a pretty face and soulful green eyes. Fine, maybe he was a little sexy, in a raw and mysterious sort of way.

Another thing: the playboy types, for all their flair, were riddled with insecurities that Veronica had spent a lifetime practicing how to exploit. Dominic was downright awkward socially, but she sensed an underlying strength of character that she hadn’t come across in far, far too long. So long that she wondered if something about herself wasn’t repelling the good ones.

But Dominic hadn’t been awkward when he manhandled that thug. Again, that walk… not graceful in an effeminate manner, but in a predatory one. Like a stalking cat. Her profession involved frequent contact with policemen and criminals and other edgy types, and she knew he had the walk of a dangerous man, a man beyond the need for affected confidence in that realm. A man who didn’t question his hierarchy in the jungle. She rolled her eyes and made a face. God knew what skeletons he had in his closet.

But he intrigued her, and above all else, Veronica Brown liked to be intrigued.

Someone tapped her on the shoulder and offered to buy her a drink. God, he was almost sixty. How old did he think she was? She smiled and pointed at his wedding ring. He gave her a sheepish grin, and she gave him her back.

She finished her wine, grabbed her handbag and left. She caught a taxi and headed south on First. In the taxi she replayed their conversation in her mind. A company with the infamy of Somax, coupled with the real possibility that ground-breaking work might be taking place there, was the stuff of which investigative journalist dreams were made. Career changing.

Biomedical work may not sound exciting, but she had found a niche and worked it. She had paid her dues over the years from Kentucky to Cincinnati to Detroit to Washington to New York.

The time had come for bigger and better things. Biotech was her ladder, and Somax could be the final rung. Where did the ladder lead? Perhaps a top network position, perhaps a book contract, maybe even to that ultimate opener of locked doors: fame. A thief in the night, that one. She’d seen it with others in her profession: it came and took your body and soul and flung them across the earth.

But what a ride it would be.

Bulgaria was not exactly a place the IBMO accountants liked to see on expense account receipts. In fact, the IBMO probably wouldn’t be interested in the sort of scandal she hoped to find at Somax.

But many sources would be.
Many
. She’d pursue a lead on her own, if it was promising enough.

And she’d just had drinks with someone that might have one.

•  •  •

She climbed to the third floor of her pleasantly crumbling East Village building, exhausted after a day that had started at five a.m. The BioGorden copy had gone out just before she met with Dominic.

She entered the cramped one-bedroom, kicked off her heels, and sighed at the mess. There was only so much time in the day. She sloshed a nightcap into a wine glass and collapsed on the sofa.

After half a glass she sighed again and swung to her feet. She turned on her laptop and checked the major news sources one last time. Once in the early morning, once before bed, and often in between. Veronica Brown would not be caught unaware of breaking news. It was the one daily regimen she forced herself to keep. She would like to say the same about running and aerobics and Pilates, but at least her job kept her on her feet.

Next to the computer lay a Rosetta Stone Intermediate French CD-ROM, which sat atop a buyer’s guide to fine wines, which fought for space on the desk with an introductory manual on yoga and a Thai cookbook still in its wrapper. She needed to find a way to work in her sleep. Couldn’t those biotechs hurry up and find the secret to eternal life?
Dammit
.

Her eyes lingered on the image of a couple standing in front of a peeling clapboard house wedged between two other identical houses. The couple appeared elderly, but Veronica knew that was because they had aged far beyond their years as a result of factory jobs and a hardscrabble existence. She knew this because they were her parents, she knew the house because she grew up there. The screensaver photo served as more than a memento: it was her constant reminder of what must never happen to her.

She went to the bedroom, a closet in a normal city, then shrugged into a long T-shirt and pulled down the Murphy bed. Before she climbed into bed she did the last thing she did every night: she opened the window and took a few deep breaths of air. The air was clean, or clean for New York, because Veronica had traded square footage for a window on Tompkins Square Park.

She gazed into the thicket of elm outside her window, and then gripped the windowsill.

Someone was standing in the trees, facing the direction of her apartment. Someone dressed in some kind of white clothing that reflected the dull light of the moon with a weird glow.

People did cut through the park, and the homeless sometimes crashed there. But this person was just standing there, waiting alone in the darkness. What the hell was he doing?

Veronica took her miniature binoculars out of her handbag and crouched beside the window. She swung the binoculars around until she found the blurry image of the figure, and focused on it.

Then she gasped.

She slammed the window, locked it and threw the curtains across. She raced to the other side of the apartment, made sure she’d dead-bolted the door, and took rapid shallow breaths.

She ran to the phone and dialed with shaking fingers.

“Emergency 911.”

“I just saw someone outside my window standing in the middle of Tompkins Park covered head to toe in white bandages, they were just standing there and I don’t know what the hell is wrong with them but they’re not right in the head. Someone needs to come out here and check on them, I think someone’s escaped from the mental hospital.”

“Calm down, ma’am. Tell me where you live. We’ll send someone to check it out.”

After Veronica gave her information she sat on the couch and waited for the sirens. The sudden sight of that escaped mental patient, or prankster, or whoever it had been, had disturbed her more than anything else had in ten years of living alone. She didn’t care if the police came and found kids dressing up; she wanted them arrested for scaring the bejesus out of her.

God, she hoped that had been a prank.

When the trembling stopped she evened out with another glass of wine, and then another. The sirens came and went, and she fell asleep with her fingers wrapped around the glass.

G
rey did some research on Somax in the morning. He confirmed some of what Veronica had told him, but found little else. Somax corporate headquarters was located in Sofia, Bulgaria. Radicals on both sides of the fence mentioned Somax in their blogs: either as a haven for brave new research, or as a moral cesspool of scientific irresponsibility. He suspected the truth lay somewhere in between, as it usually did.

Or maybe not. The story about the African village troubled him. He found a few articles from three years ago that advanced the same suspicions of human experimentation Veronica had mentioned.

He also discovered that Somax received grants from the Lazarus Foundation, which research revealed to be a nongovernmental organization dedicated to the progress of science. More digging presented a clearer picture: the Lazarus Foundation granted funds solely for anti-aging research.

Grey found nothing else of interest on Somax, and he phoned Al-Miri. He answered on the third ring.

“I have some things I wanted to run by you,” Grey said. “I paid a visit to BioGorden yesterday, the company in New Jersey. I don’t think they’re the one you’re looking for. Somax sounds more promising.”

“Somax has a record of questionable research.”

“They do, but that’s not what tipped the scale. I did some thinking: your company is tiny compared to the giants on this list.”

“Yes.”

“So who could’ve known about your product? Are you aware Somax reportedly conducted biological experiments on villagers in Africa?”

“I do not concern myself with outside affairs.”

“Well this one was close to home. It happened in Sudan. If I wanted a fairly stable, international base of operations in that area, I’d choose Cairo over Khartoum.”

Al-Miri didn’t respond, and Grey continued, “What are the chances that Somax’s people spent some time in Cairo? It’s easier to compile research, get supplies, stay anonymous, reach the outside world.”

“I see.”

“They had opportunity to stumble across your company, if one more fact fits: was your company in possession of this technology three years ago, or was it at least in development? That’s when Somax was in Africa.”

“It was,” Al-Miri murmured.

“Is there any chance Somax might’ve heard about your product?”

“There are the inevitable leaks and rumors.”

Grey paced the room as he talked. “I think it’s time to take a chance. I can be in Bulgaria by tomorrow evening. We don’t have any other leads, and the African connection is compelling. I can stir something up, even if it’s just to rule Somax out.”

“I agree. Please move quickly. I’ll await word of what you find.”

Grey held the phone away and frowned at it. He’d expected at least a little resistance. “Tell me more about what was stolen. I’ll try to get up to speed.”

There was a pause on the phone. “The solution in the test tube involves the telomerase enzyme. Telomerase is instrumental in the reparation of DNA.”

Grey asked him to spell the name of the enzyme, and scribbled it down.

“The telomerase enzyme has been studied in detail. We believe we have uncovered previously unknown properties. Those properties are extremely technical.”

“I just need to be familiar with it for now,” Grey said. “I’ll keep you posted.”

“Yes.”

•  •  •

Grey called Viktor and relayed the conversation with Al-Miri. Viktor told him to watch his step in Bulgaria, as a corporation like Somax probably had the local authorities, or worse, under its thumb. Viktor also promised to take a closer look at The Lazarus Foundation.

Grey didn’t know what he’d expected when he agreed to work for Viktor, but it wasn’t a foray into the underworld of biomedical gerontology. Not that he minded: he was thankful to be working, and had to admit the whole affair intrigued him.

And Bulgaria? He’d seen more than fifty countries, but Bulgaria wasn’t one of them. He needed to get a rudimentary handle on the Cyrillic alphabet, and learn as much as possible about local customs and language. English had spread like a mutating virus to every back alley and lost peninsula on the globe, but then there was Bulgaria.

However, Bulgaria didn’t bother him. Al-Miri bothered him. Something about the bizarre CEO gnawed at Grey, something unrelated to cultural differences or Al-Miri’s odd mannerisms. Something to do with his speech, the neutral inflection of his voice that somehow managed to convey extreme urgency concerning that test tube. Urgency that, to Grey, seemed to go beyond simple greed. Grey was not a greedy man, however, and understood that money affected some people far more than others. To some it could become a religion.

He bought a phrasebook and a map of Sofia, and picked up some research on gerontology. He returned to his hotel, grabbed a beer and settled into a chair. Before opening the phrasebook his eyes swept the personal contents of the room: a stack of books stood in one corner, philosophy and martial arts theory and a few crinkled novels. On a bedside table was a picture of his mother, and next to that a present Nya had given him, a tiny soapstone carving of two intertwined lovers.

He finished his beer with distracted slowness, his mind already hovering above the Atlantic.

P
rofessor Viktor Radek cradled the reservoir glass with one massive hand. He laid a cube of sugar on the slotted absinthe spoon and placed the spoon across the top of the glass. He drizzled absinthe over the sugar, then lit the cube with a match. He watched the sugar caramelize and drip through the spoon into the glass, then he dunked the flaming spoon. She ignited briefly, and he smiled. A true and wanton lover she was, fiery and pure.

He added ice water to quench the flames, just enough to release the wormwood and anise oils, just enough to reach that sensual milky color that signified the ritual transformation of La Louche.

He swirled, caressed, divined her depths. He tipped her into his throat and she slid downward and carried his mind, troubled and willing, to her familiar home.

He moved to the window of his hotel room and saw Berlin, his mind perked by the strangely lucid effect of thujone. A strong city, Berlin. A marvel of evolution. Stripped of pride, it had survived, adapted and become a new creature, a modern thing, a melting pot of unity and progress. War humbles cities in that way, he mused: they rebuild wiser and kinder, arms spread wide to those they once would shun.

Wars, or any transient affairs of state, had never interested Viktor. He saw the universe as a gigantic puzzle, the earth one planet among billions, the petty struggles of its inhabitants a diversion from greater truths. Those greater truths drove him—what did it all mean, where do we go, from whence do we come? He did not have an ethos, a theology, but he had devoted his life to research and personal experience, the glimpses into what he viewed as pieces of that puzzle: the strange, the inexplicable, the uncanny, the divine. This sense of faith or religion or simply ontological
being
—it affected billions of people on a daily basis.