The Eternal World (11 page)

“So, what do you do?” Elizabeth asked.

“Executive recruiter,” she said.

“Oh, a headhunter.”

Shy smiled. “Some people call me that.”

“Is it fun?”

“It has its moments.”

“Sounds boring to me,” Elizabeth said. “All that sitting around in offices, talking on the phone. I’ve spent enough time indoors already in my life.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“Aquatic paleontologist.”

“I’ve never heard of that.”

“It’s because I invented it,” Elizabeth said proudly. “I figure there have to be a ton of dinosaur bones we haven’t found yet because they’re underwater. So I’m going to learn to be a marine biologist and a paleontologist, and set up digs on the ocean floor.”

Then she seemed to remember where she was. She looked at the hospital room and her bed and the tubes in her arms. “At least, that’s the plan,” she said.

There was an awkward silence. Shy didn’t know what else to say to the girl.

“It’s all right,” Elizabeth said. “I know this probably isn’t your idea of a fun date.”

“I’ve been on worse.”

Elizabeth’s eyes lit up again. “Really? Tell me all about it.”

“Let’s just say I’ve had some very awful boyfriends in the past.”

“Oh, come on. You can’t keep me hanging like that.”

David returned with the ice chips then, rescuing her.

“Here you go, Your Majesty,” he said. “Ice chips. With lemon flavor.”

“Aw, he really does care,” Elizabeth said. She took the paper cup from David’s hand and poured some of the ice into her mouth, crunching it between her teeth.

“You ever want to lose weight, Shy,” she said, “let me tell you, there’s nothing like the chemo diet.”

A pretty, but haggard, young woman entered the room. She stiffened, but then smiled when she saw David.

“Oh, hi, David,” she said. “Elizabeth was wondering where you’ve been.”

“Hi, Amber,” David said. He introduced Shy to her. She was Elizabeth’s mother. She tried to smile and exchange pleasantries, but Shy could see that none of it was really touching her. All of her thoughts were focused on the girl in the bed. She practically hummed with anxiety.

Elizabeth seemed to fade then, too, her energy dimming as if someone had flipped a switch.

“Tired,” she said in a croaky voice.

“We’re going to go,” David said. “I’m sorry for the interruption. I’ve got a shift coming up this week. I’ll be here for sure.”

“Right. Sure,” Elizabeth said, turning on her side.

“It’s the chemo,” her mother explained, half apologizing. Whispering: “She doesn’t want you to see her, you know . . . throw up.”

“Shut up, Mom. Jeez.”

David and Shy made their good-byes. Elizabeth barely responded. But on their way out, she found the energy to call after them.

“You’d better buy her something pretty, David,” she said. “That is, if you want her to stay your girlfriend.”

“I will,” he said.

She didn’t respond. Her mother waved at them, then went back to stroking her daughter’s scalp where there used to be hair.

SOME OF THE ANGER
seemed to find its way back to David as they rode down in the elevator. He was stiff and held himself away from her.

They were outside, walking back to the car, before she tried speaking to him.

“She’s a lovely girl,” Shy offered.

“Yeah. She is. And she’s dying. Acute lymphocytic leukemia. Recurrent. There’s usually a better than fifty percent chance of a cure, but she’s on the other side of the coin flip. This is her fifth round of chemo. It’s failing. She’s got maybe three more months at the outside.”

He was fuming now, frustration and helplessness curdled to anger, searching for someplace to vent. “So, you tell me again about your larger plan and the balance between life and death. You tell me how that girl deserves to die.”

She stopped and took his hands in hers. He did not pull away, but she could see that he wanted to.

“She doesn’t,” Shy said. “A lot of people don’t. But we all have to face it. People are still going to die. There will still be car accidents. People will still fall down stairs. There will still be madmen with guns opening fire on crowds of complete strangers. Little girls will still die, even if you succeed. There will still be evil in the world. Even more of it, in some cases.”

David looked baffled. “You think what I’m doing is evil?”

“I don’t think you can see the end of the path you’re choosing.”

“No. You just don’t see what I’m trying to do. I don’t care about getting rich off a wonder drug. I want to keep people alive. Sure, there will be some rich assholes who try to hoard this for themselves. That’s the way with every medical advance. But eventually everyone benefits. It’s like vaccination. Or protease inhibitors for AIDS patients. Eventually, everyone will get access.”

“You think Conquest will really allow that?”

He took his hands away from hers. “Enough. I’m not arguing this with you anymore. This is pointless, and I have work to do.”

“Right,” she said. “You have to save the world, after all.”

“Look,” he said, taking a deep breath, clearly trying to calm himself. “This is science, not magic. The way this has been going, I may never get an answer. I could spend years on this and never come close to succeeding. And even if I succeed, it doesn’t mean the end of death.”

“Now you’re lying to yourself,” Shy said. “I believe you will succeed, if you keep trying. And you know it’s going to mean much more than a cure-all for a few diseases. You’re doing something unnatural. You’re severing a connection between life and death. You’re going to give people a way to put off dying for years. Even decades. Or longer.”

David looked at her, utterly bewildered.

“How is that a bad thing?”

She gave him a sad smile. “I suspect you’re going to find out.”

FROM THE
NEW YORK
TIMES
BUSINESS SECTION, PAGE ONE:

WONDER DRUG UNDER INVESTIGATION BY FDA FOR LINK TO CANCER

Revita, the massively popular antiaging drug from Conquest Biotech, is under investigation by the federal Food and Drug Administration for potentially causing tumors of the spinal cord and brain, the
Times
has learned.

The FDA, through a spokesperson, confirmed Revita was the subject of an active investigation, but declined to comment further. However, sources both within the FDA and close to Conquest gave details about the investigation to the
Times
on condition of anonymity.

Dozens of patients who have used Revita have contracted cancer, the sources said. The drug, which is supposed to encourage healthy cell growth, apparently has damaged the cells’ reproductive process in some cases, leading to runaway cell division in nervous system tissue, causing tumors.

The sources within the FDA stressed that these findings are preliminary. But sources close to the company said that Conquest is aware of the complications caused by the drug, and may have even hidden these problems from federal investigators.

If true, these charges would be a massive blow to Conquest’s bottom line. Sales of Revita were responsible for 70 percent of Conquest’s revenues in the past year.

Legal experts say that this scandal could mean a class-action lawsuit or worse against the company. “Liability for something like this could be in the billion-dollar range,” said Michael Bartlett, a trial attorney specializing in high-stakes liability cases. “If it’s true that the company knew the risks but put the drug on the market anyway, they could be looking at enormous punitive damages.”

A spokesperson for Conquest declined to comment. Efforts to reach Simon Oliver IV, the company’s recently installed chief executive, were unsuccessful.

CHAPTER 12

D
AVID STOOD UNDER
the cold spray of his shower. The hot water ran out a while ago. He barely felt it.

He was trying. God knew, he was trying his best. And he was failing. There was no answer in the cells of any of the test subjects. Whatever miracle whipped through them and cleaned them up and rebuilt them, as if they were fresh off an assembly line, did not leave a trace.

At least, not one he could see. He’d tried everything. Computer modeling. Genetic sequencing. Tests for foreign matter. Nuclear resonance imaging.

None of it worked. He found nothing.

Failure.

On his last visit to the hospital, he found Elizabeth had checked in again. He’d had a stupid, desperate hope that he would crack the code of the miracle cure in time to get her into clinical trials. But he hadn’t been fast enough. She was not going to make it. It was a matter of weeks, if not days.

Failure.

Things were even bad between him and Shy. True, he was still seeing her almost every night. In his paranoid moments, he suspected that she was keeping him exhausted to keep him from focusing completely on his work. It was an insane theory, but it would explain the distance that had grown between them since they’d fought.

He looked down into the drain of the shower. He was having a hard time finding the energy to get out, dry off, and head to the lab to fail again.

He noticed something. Hair. More than usual at the drain.

Terrific. On top of everything else, male-pattern baldness. It almost made him laugh. Here he was, trying to cure old age and disease, and he’d have to get a prescription for Propecia himself.

He got out of the shower, toweled off, and began to shave. A scrape and a sting on his chin told him that he’d pushed one too many days out of the razor blade. Either that or his skin was getting thinner, too.

Everything falls apart. Everything ages. Everything dies. Failure.

Of all people, he should have known this was inevitable. Somewhere in his cells, a tipping point had been reached, and the downward slide had begun. Free radicals ricocheting around his body, breaking things up like a drunk in a bar. Mutation erupting in his genes as ultraviolet light and transcription errors piled on top of one another. And the never-ending strain of breathing, eating, and bleeding, every day. We are not built for long-term success, David remembered. Aging was constant and unstoppable, the continual erosion of the body against time. Over time, we are all dead.

Failure.

Wait.
Over time.

Intuition pulled something together at the back of his mind. It had been there almost since day one. He’d truly witnessed the process of the cure in action only once, when Simon showed him Mueller. But he hadn’t seen it at the cellular level.

Since then, he’d spent all his time on tissue samples, cell slices, and DNA markers.

But his tests had all been static—examinations of one moment or a single result. He’d never watched the process in action. He’d never seen how it behaved in the human body, over time.

It couldn’t be that simple, could it?

Only one way to find out. But he had to have an actual sample of the original cure. Otherwise it was useless. He had to convince Simon any way he could.

He wiped the shaving cream from his face, got dressed in record time, then ran two red lights on his way to Conquest.

There might be a solution lurking behind all this failure after all.

CHAPTER 13

D
AVID HAD NEVER
been on a private jet before, but he suspected he could get used to it very quickly. Instead of being groped by a TSA agent—there was no way on Earth he’d allow one of those radiation-leaking scanners to mess with his genes—he’d walked in his own shoes up a rolling staircase before he sat down in a comfortable leather armchair.

Because this was Simon’s plane, of course there was a model-level beautiful stewardess handing out drinks. David had been up all night in the lab, and he felt a buzz behind his eyes after just a few sips.

He put the drink down before they took off.

Aside from the stewardess and the pilots, they were the only ones on board. Simon said this was the only time they’d have to talk.

“Where are we going?” David asked. Nobody had bothered to tell him the itinerary. His instructions included only the time of departure.

Simon rubbed his eyes. He wore yesterday’s clothes and smelled like body spray and club girls. There was a small patch of body glitter stuck to one of his cheeks.

“Washington, D.C.,” he said. “See an old friend about this.” He took a sheet of paper from a folder on the seat next to him and tossed it over to David.

It was another letter from the FDA, demanding more information for the investigation into possible side effects from Revita.

Simon crunched the ice from his drink between his teeth. “Wish I knew who tipped those bastards off,” he said when David had finished reading.

David looked up at him, saw Simon eying him carefully.

“It wasn’t me,” David said. “But I did warn you. You should have pulled it.”

“Saying ‘I told you so’ is not the way to convince me that you didn’t call the
New York Times
.”

David shrugged. “Maybe I should have. Those patients wanted a new outlook on life, not cancer.”

Simon sighed. “They took their chances. Way down in the small print of the warning label, we put in a clause about everything possible. We included everything from rickets to STDs. We can beat them in court. But it’s still a huge pain in my ass. Stock is tanking. Feds are sniffing around. We can’t have that. That’s why we’re headed to Washington now.”

“Maybe you can do something for the people who did get cancer. Offer to pay for their care.”

Simon laughed. “Yeah. And why don’t I just hand over the keys to my Porsche while I’m at it? No. We’re going to stall this out in court. Most of those geezers will be in the ground long before it ever goes to trial.”

“How humanitarian of you.”

Simon scowled at him. “I don’t pay you for your legal advice. You’re so concerned about these coffin cases, why don’t you give me another miracle cure to sell them? Isn’t that what we’re supposed to talk about? Why don’t you have a solution for me yet?”

“I told Max—”

“Max is not here. I am. Tell me.”

“I need the original sample. Whatever it is. I’ve done everything I can with what I’ve been given, and I’m at a dead end. I have to see the original compound if I’m going to duplicate its effects.”

Simon sat with that for a long moment, just looking at David.

“And here I thought you were smart,” he finally said.

David felt himself flush a little. “I’m on the right track now. It’s a process that has to be observed, in real time. Without getting too technical, I need to see how it works if I’m going to know how it works.”

Simon gritted his teeth in what was definitely not a smile. “I told you from the start. I gave you everything else. But I told you, there was only one thing,
one thing,
you couldn’t have. And now, of course, you want it.”

“You’ve asked me to re-create a unicorn just from hoofprints. I’ve come closer than anyone else you’ve ever had on this. And yes. Now I need more. I’m asking you—no, I’m telling you—I need the original sample. Or we’re done.”

Simon didn’t appear to hear him. He stared at the bottom of his glass for a long time, then looked up again.

“Oh, you’re telling me, are you?” Simon said. His voice was different. There was no mocking tone, no trace of the usual twist of irony that usually punctuated every sentence out of Simon’s mouth.

“One thing,” Simon said. “And now, of course, you have to have it. You goddamn
child
. You think you can make demands of me? If you were as brilliant as you thought you were, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. But you’re not. You’re not the man you think you are. You are simply not on my level. If you were, you wouldn’t need to ask me for favors.”

David would have replied, but Simon got up and walked to the bedroom in the back of the plane.

“You disappoint me, David,” he said. “I expected more from you.”

He slammed the door behind him and did not come out until the pilot announced they would be landing soon.

EVEN THOUGH SIMON WAS
freshly shaved, showered, and dressed, his mood hadn’t improved. He’d communicated to David mostly in grunts since they left the plane.

“Nice suit,” David said.

“Piece of crap,” Simon shot back. “I’ve had this one six months and the stitching’s already falling out. I’ve got a Savile Row in my closet that was sewn in 1953, still looks brand-new.”

“From your father,” David said.

Simon gave him a face. “Right. From my father.”

They waited in the lobby of Senator Anthony De la Cruz’s office. The senator was “on an important conference call,” according to his assistant. This didn’t help Simon’s attitude, either.

De la Cruz was a rising star. Even David watched enough CNN to know that. He was the fourth member of his family to enter politics: his grandfather had been a state legislator, his father a governor, and his uncle a well-known congressman. But none of them had reached the heights he had. His blandly handsome features, vague ethnicity, and carefully crafted media image made him a valuable property with both parties recruiting the Latino vote.

Even so, he’d barely squeaked into office in the last election. He’d been up against a well-financed and well-liked incumbent, and voters weren’t certain they wanted to take a chance on a new guy, no matter how inoffensive and polite he seemed. A last-minute blitz of phone calls trashing his opponent pushed enough voters to pick him.

Looking at him, David would have thought De la Cruz had been elected by a landslide. He practically bounced through the office door to shake Simon’s hand. The smile barely dimmed when he offered Simon condolences on the death of his father. “He was quite a guy,” De la Cruz said.

“Yeah, he was a prince,” Simon said. “Can we take this inside, please?”

They went into De la Cruz’s office. It was surprisingly small, but everything about it screamed money: the thick carpet, the richly polished furniture, the butter-smooth leather on the chairs.

The three of them sat down in a conversation area in a corner away from the desk. De la Cruz took a chair under a wall of pictures from his career, a halo made of images of himself.

De la Cruz read through the same FDA letter that Simon had shown to David. He frowned and nodded. Then he put it down on his desk.

“I am sorry for your trouble, Simon. But I’m not sure what you expect me to do.”

“It’s pretty simple. I want you to make this go away.”

De la Cruz looked uncomfortable. “You know I can’t do that.”

“You’re on the Finance Committee. You hold the purse strings for the FDA. I’m pretty sure you can.”

Senator De la Cruz ran a hand through his thinning hair and sighed. “I would like to help you, Simon. I really would. But this is going to get into the media. A lot of my constituents are elderly, and they pay attention to things like this. They know all about medications that don’t work as promised.”

“Not the point,” Simon said. “The drug isn’t the problem. It’s the FDA investigation. We’ll pull it. Let the supply work its way through the pipeline, take it back for more testing. But it has to be voluntary.”

Another hapless smile from De la Cruz. “Again. I wish we could work out a solution like that. If we’d had the results we wanted the last election, we’d be facing a friendlier FDA. We didn’t. It means we’ve got to work harder, of course. That’s why we need contributions from you and your company, to carry on the fight.”

Simon stood up and loomed over the senator. He appeared to be struggling to hold himself in check.

“You are not seriously asking for money right now.”

“Now? No, of course not. But in 2016, who knows? With a better president, businesses like yours will not be in situations like this.”

“You’re saying you don’t want to risk getting your hands dirty when you’ve got a possible shot at the Oval Office.”

De la Cruz stood up to look Simon directly in the eye.

“I’m saying I am sorry I can’t help you. Maybe this is a hit you have to take. The regulatory agencies, you know, they need a scalp now and then.”

Simon’s face grew even darker. “Don’t talk to me about scalps.”

De la Cruz smirked. “Simon. Look. I knew your dad. Our families have been very successful together over the years. You’ll survive this. And if I do make a run at the White House, well, you know, I won’t forget those who were there with me at the start.”

Simon stared at him coldly. “That’s all you have to say for yourself? After everything I’ve done for you? That’s really how you want to respond to me?”

De la Cruz choked out a laugh. “Look. I owed your dad. Not you. You’re not your father, and this isn’t
The Godfather
. This is reality. You can’t just come in here and dictate—”

Whatever else he was going to say was lost in the sudden contact between Simon’s fist and his face.

David was stunned. Simon just punched a U.S. senator. He half rose out of his chair. Simon gave him a warning look and turned back to De la Cruz.

It wasn’t a particularly hard punch, but it was enough to rock De la Cruz. He sat down in his office chair and then touched his nose, which started to bleed.

He looked at the blood and then at Simon in a kind of horrible fascination.

“You—you can’t—” The senator gulped like a goldfish violently spilled from its bowl. “You’ve got to be crazy. I’m going to have you arrested—”

Simon raised his fist again, and De la Cruz immediately shut up and covered his head with both arms.

“Jesus, Simon,” David blurted out. He couldn’t believe he was seeing this.

Simon turned on him, suddenly furious. “You
shut up
,
” he ordered David. Then he wheeled back on the senator.

De la Cruz peeked out from between his fingers again. Simon unclenched his fist and simply pointed at the senator.

“Don’t interrupt me,” he warned. “You want to talk about reality, Senator? Then allow me to reintroduce you to reality. I know you’ve been spending a lot of time on CNN and Fox lately. I know there are a lot of people filling your head with grand plans for the future. And I don’t blame you for liking those plans. It’s easy to get your head caught up in big dreams.

“But you should never forget your past. My grandfather owned your grandfather. Everything your family has, you owe to me. You think you owe my father? You owe me. I paid for your diapers, whether you know it or not. You are my employee. And when I tell an employee what to do, I expect him to say nothing more complicated than ‘Yes, sir.’ ”

De la Cruz almost spoke up, but a warning look from Simon was all it took to close his mouth again.

“If you’re still having trouble with the concept, I’ll put it in plain terms. I know about the slush funds, the bundling of contributions, and the PAC money that paid for the last-minute ad blitz that saved your ass in the last election. I have the records. And I also know where the cameras were in your hotel suite in Miami last fall. I know who else was in the room. And, unlike my father, I know people who can have that video up on YouTube in fifteen minutes.”

David noticed the senator’s face turn very pale against the blood from his nose.

“This is not a negotiation. This is me with your life in my hands, and you begging me to do whatever it takes to keep it safe and undisturbed. And so far you’re doing a piss-poor job of convincing me.”

De la Cruz looked up, eyes filled with panic. Simon gave him the slightest nod in permission to speak.

“Please,” he said. “I’ll make it happen. I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll—”

Simon looked bored again. “You call that begging?”

De la Cruz gave a spastic jerk of his head, and then looked back up at Simon. His expression seemed to ask a question, but he found the answer in Simon’s eyes.

Quickly, clumsily, the junior senator from the state of Florida slid out of his chair and kneeled. Then he put his forehead on the carpet in front of Simon’s feet and begged.

FOR AT LEAST TWO
minutes, they walked through the Capitol halls in silence, the sound of their shoes echoing from the marble walls and floors.

David watched Simon, unbelieving. “What the hell was that?”

“You try to be polite with some people. It never pays,” Simon said. His mood had improved dramatically. He seemed almost joyful now that he had the senator’s blood on his knuckles.

“No, seriously, Simon, what the hell were you doing in there?”

Simon stopped and looked at David. “He forgot who signs his checks. I reminded him.”

David wondered if he should push it, but decided he had to know.

“What did he do in that hotel room?” David asked.

“What?”

“Nobody behaves like that unless they’re terrified. He would have kissed your feet if you’d asked him. So what did he do in that hotel room that made him so afraid you’d release the video?”

Simon smirked and took his time answering.

“There are a lot of trade-offs involved in making a better world, David. I’ve known it for a long time.”

“From your father,” David said.

Simon gave him a suspicious look. “Yes, from him. But also from watching the way the world works. You have no right to be this naive. You should know better than anyone by now that there are very few people willing to be good on their own. Most of them are scared, selfish, and horny, and they’ll step on their own grandmothers’ necks to get what they want. That makes our task—yours and mine—more difficult in many ways. But it’s better for us in at least one way. Because all those scared, selfish, and horny bastards are predictable. We can use them because we know how they will respond. They will never surprise us with a sudden burst of conscience. And that means that sometimes we have to dip our hands down into the sewer where they live.”