The Magic Bullet (17 page)

Logan didn’t have much interest in the topics to be discussed, but he had another reason for coming. This was a pilgrimage. He was coming to this place as a wide-eyed tourist and unembarrassed fan, the way others, back home, visited Elvis’s home at Graceland; imagining, like them, that he might pick up some small sense of what made the great man tick.

The chartered bus from the convention center deposited Logan and two dozen others before the building shortly before eleven. Instantly, he was disappointed. From the outside it was curiously unimpressive; a massive, ivy-covered cube of gray stone fronting a narrow street (renamed the Paul Ehrlich Allee after the war) and adjoined on either side by buildings of nearly identical size and shape. The only sign of its remarkable history was a tiny metal marker in the corner.

Entering, Logan was further disheartened to note that the interior seemed to have been lately refurbished; incongruously, the large reception area was filled with the kind of ultramodern furniture Logan had come to associate with eager-to-impress Park Avenue physicians like Sidney
Karpe. Now it was the few remaining traditional touches that seemed out of place: A pair of large, ornate Oriental vases, filled with peacock feathers. A stately portrait of an elderly woman in turn-of-the-century attire—identified as the wife of the home’s original owner and Ehrlich’s benefactress. An alabaster bust of the scientist himself on a marble plinth, his name and the dates 1854–1915 inscribed on the base.

The visiting doctors and researchers were greeted by an earnest young researcher who identified himself as the assistant to their host, the center’s director. In impeccable English, he gave a brief rundown of the kinds of work being conducted here. As they would shortly see on their tour, the Institute’s labs were state of the art; less than two years before, the upper floors had been gutted and rebuilt. Lunch would be served at the conclusion of the tour, with the featured speaker, the center’s research director, speaking over dessert and coffee. He and his colleagues were, of course, very much looking forward to questions, remarks, and observations from the distinguished guests.

Inwardly, Logan shuddered. This had nothing to do with the magical place that had stirred his imagination all those years before. From the sound of it, even those who worked here had little appreciation of the extraordinary things that had once been said and done within the walls; no sense that they were inheritors of one of the most remarkable research legacies in the history of science.

Perhaps it would have been wiser not to come; leaving the illusion, at least, intact.

By the time, half an hour later, they were midway through the tour, he was sure. Logan was ready to bolt the place—and would have, if he’d had any idea where, in this quiet, dull neighborhood, he could grab a cab. The labs the young researcher was showing off were identical to those Logan had worked in himself: in fact, the flow cytometer of which he seemed so proud—a machine that shoots cells into the path of a laser beam so they can be studied individually—was the model the ACF was about to retire.

As the group moved en masse up the stairs toward the top floor, housing yet another set of labs, Logan slipped down the stairs, heading for the reception area. He’d been sipping coffee throughout and it had caught up with him.

“Pardon me, do you speak English?”

The receptionist cast him an impatient look. “Yes, of course.”

“Can you tell me where the bathroom would be?”

She nodded in the general direction of the front hallway. “Go through there and down the stairs. Then straight on to the next room. Turn left. And turn left again. You will see it on the right.”

He was certain he’d done precisely as told—which is why he was confused to suddenly find himself in a narrow corridor that dead-ended against a wooden door.

Was this what he was looking for?

Tentatively, he pushed the door open—and instantly knew he should close it again. Wooden stairs led downward into the basement. But, after a moment’s hesitation, he flicked on the light instead. Moving quietly, feeling an almost perverse sense of exhilaration, he moved down a few steps and bent low to peer beneath an overhang.

What he saw convinced him to go the rest of the way down: vintage lab equipment, the kind he’d seen before only in photographs, neatly arranged within old glass-fronted oak cabinets lining the walls.

Moving closer, he was as baffled as he was intrigued. These were museum pieces, as useless to contemporary researchers as mortars and pestles. Oversized bronze microscopes. A polished steel balance. Hand-blown glass condensers with beautiful spiral cooling coils. More prosaic Bunsen burners and ring stands. Over it all lay a thick cover of dust, as if no one had even laid eyes on this magnificent junk in decades.

A skeptic by nature as well as training, Logan nonetheless could not wholly suppress the thought: Was it remotely possible these had once been used by Paul Ehrlich himself?

Now, in the corner, he noticed a stack of wooden
crates. Gingerly, he lifted off the top one and set it on the floor. Within were exquisite old bottles that had once contained chemicals, each protectively wrapped in a single sheet of yellowed newspaper. Though their contents had long since vanished, the raised lettering on several indicated what they’d held: concentrated HCl, H
₂
SO
₄
, ammonium hydroxide. Other bottles bore glued labels, now brown with age, the spindly handwriting faded almost to invisibility.

Keenly aware that he’d already been down here too long—lunch might already have started—Logan began hastily rewrapping the bottles. But he paused to note the date on the newspaper—7 Juli 1916—and, despite himself, was soon caught up trying to decipher that long-ago day’s events. A terrible battle was in full swing—could it have been the infamous Battle of the Somme?—and the German people were being urged to even greater sacrifices on behalf of their Kaiser and his glorious troops.

Logan picked up another discarded page to look for more. But his eye was quickly drawn to something else: a crumpled sheet of lined notebook paper, wedged in the corner. He picked it up and smoothed out the page. In pencil—difficult to read in the dim light—was the date 25 November 1916, followed by a line of tight script. But what seized his interest was the sketch beneath: twin hexagons sharing a common side and, protruding from the end of each hexagon, additional sulfonate molecules. He took a deep breath, sucking in the musty air. What he held in his hands defied all logic. A primitive version of Compound J!

Carefully, he folded the page, stuck it in his pocket, and resumed putting the bottles back in the crate. Five minutes later, heart racing, he rejoined the group.

S
abrina had always been good at keeping her feelings under wraps and she gave John Reston no reason to suspect she’d opposed his involvement with the project. Her philosophy on human relations was simple: Don’t go looking for problems, resist the impulse to make them. In scientific collaboration, especially, team harmony is essential—even, if as is often the case, it is forced or artificial.

“Give him the benefit of the doubt, can’t you?” Logan had urged. “Give
me
the benefit of the doubt.” And that, finally, was what she’d decided to do.

By now, even she was sure that was the right course. In the couple of days since Logan’s departure, her ill will had completely dissipated. Working with Reston on the protocol proposal, spending much of that Saturday hunched together over her computer, she found him every bit as bright as advertised; and what she had before taken as self-centeredness increasingly seemed nothing more than garden-variety masculine insecurity; the kind that, taken in the right frame of mind, can actually be endearing.

What mattered was they were so obviously on the same wavelength. Given the severe handicaps under which the team would be operating—their youth, the fact that Compound J had failed so dismally in AIDS trials, the likelihood of serious opposition—the proposal had to be close to flawless. The distinctions between this protocol and all that had come before had to be meticulously spelled out, the case for its likely success vigorously and creatively argued.

Like Logan, Sabrina had had the basic arguments for Compound J down pat for weeks. But it was only now, with
Reston manning the keyboard, that she saw them being marshaled for maximum effect. He was a gifted editor—and in a field where such a skill is rare. Sabrina knew that Logan had been right: Reston’s presence could be crucial to the eventual outcome.

By midafternoon they had completed a rough draft of the introduction to the proposal, six pages’ worth.

“You are excellent with words, Reston,” she said, reading it over. “You make everything so clear.”

He smiled up at her. “Coming from you, I appreciate that.”

“From the way it sounds, who would not wish to support such a protocol?”

“It’s called piling on the bull. Now we get to the hard part—the particulars.” He paused. “Say, got any liquor around here?”

She nodded. “But I do prefer not drinking and working at the same time.”

“I figured maybe it was time for a break.”

“Why? The sooner we start, the faster we will end, no?”

Reston laughed. “I swear, sometimes you talk like someone in a spaghetti western.”

“I do not know what this is.”

“Don’t worry about it, it’s great.” He smiled. “C’mon, just a glass of wine?”

She shook her head. “After.”

“Look, I gotta tell you, I’ve got an agenda. There’s a good chance we’re going to have a serious argument in a few minutes, and I was hoping to dull your mind so you won’t win quite so easily.”

She suppressed a smile. “Oh, yes? What kind of argument?”

“Before we go much further, we’re going to have to discuss patient eligibility for this protocol. I have a pretty good idea where both you and Logan stand on this.”

Sabrina was taken aback. The question of how relatively sick or well a patient ought to be to qualify for such a protocol was absolutely fundamental. She’d simply taken it
for granted that it was something on which they’d all see eye to eye.

To the outsider a seemingly straightforward medical question, in fact the matter of patient eligibility is also a political, even a
moral
, decision. Like edgy speculators in real estate or finance, many ambitious researchers will try to secure an edge in advance, limiting their treatment protocols to patients whose relative good health going in vastly increases the odds of a high success rate.

Sabrina paused a moment before responding. “Where
do
I stand?” she asked, betraying nothing. “This is something I have not even decided.”

“I’d guess you’d want patients at fifty to sixty percent on the Karnovsky Scale.” The reference was to the standard shorthand measure of a cancer patient’s condition. Ninety percent or above means close to fully functional; thirty percent, bed bound; ten percent, moribund. At fifty to sixty percent, a patient would most likely be in decline; still ambulatory, but easily fatigued and steadily losing weight.

She couldn’t argue. That was precisely the sample that would accurately gauge Compound J’s effectiveness. “And you would want something higher? Sixty to seventy?”

“Eighty-five and above.”

She snorted. “These people are almost well already. These people you can take out dancing. Or”—she strained to come up with something appropriately outrageous—“watch them play American football!”

“What’s wrong with that? Damn good game.”

Sabrina felt herself flushing. Eminently reasonable herself, she was always at a loss in the face of what she took to be lunacy. “Listen to me, Reston, do you not believe in this compound? Logan and me, we do. Very much.”

“You understand all our careers are on the line here? You DO understand that?”

“And a trial with such a bias? This will help your career?”

“Don’t exaggerate, these women are sick with breast cancer.”

Her rising contempt was hard to hide. “Such a proposal”—she shook her head—“when the data comes out they will laugh. And they will be right.”

“Think of it as a negotiating position. We can drop down to eighty percent, maybe even a little lower.”

“We should not discuss this now. We will all talk when Logan has returned.”

Turning her back to him, she worked to regain control.

“What should we talk about, then?”

“I do not know.”

“Is there an Italian version of the expression
beautiful when mad
?”

“What?”

“There should be.”

Suddenly, incomprehensibly, she felt his arms around her waist, his breath against her neck.

“John, what are you doing?”

He didn’t move. “I guess this isn’t the greatest time to try this, huh?”

“You STOP. Right now!”

“But you look so good, I can’t resist. I’ve been thinking about it all day.”

She twisted her upper body, trying to pull away.

“Hey, take it easy.” He kissed her neck. She could feel his crotch pressing against her. “C’mon, Sabrina, what’s Logan got that I don’t?”

“Bastardo! Figlio di puttana!”

With a violent lurch, she wrenched herself free.

He held up his hands in a gesture of uncomprehending innocence, like a basketball player unjustly charged with a foul. “You’re not interested, fine. It was worth a try.”

“You get out, Reston. Right now!”

“C’mon. don’t be stupid. Let’s get back to work.”

“You get out NOW.”

Never had he heard any words spoken more coldly.

“Look, I’m only human. It won’t happen again.” But
already he was reaching to a nearby chair for his down jacket. “I really mean it, Sabrina, I’m sorry.”

He zipped the jacket closed and took a few steps toward the door. “Please, let’s just keep this in perspective, all right? And to ourselves.”

Before the conference was half over, Logan had decided it was impossible to compete with Shein’s private life. He would save the subject of Compound J—and the forthcoming protocol proposal—for the trip home.