The Magic Bullet (44 page)

No question, the pitch had its points—not the least of which was the chance to work closely with his old friend. Since Ruben, the company’s only other on-site employee, was a sort of all-purpose assistant in the lab, the two of them would be together almost constantly.

As soon as they were alone, Logan threw an arm over his friend’s shoulder. “So that’s the big bonus of being here, your company?”

“Eight hours a day, every day.” Perez laughed. “Just remember, I got seniority. If it’s a conflict between the Mets and the Yankees on the radio, we go with the Yanks.”

“Fine,” said Logan. “If you’re gonna play hardball”—he paused to give his friend a chance to grimace—“I’m gonna make
you
listen to classical music.”

Perez smirked. “And I thought things around here couldn’t get any worse.”

Logan’s gaze took in his surroundings, fixing on the phony wood paneling, buckling in the middle, that lined an entire wall. “They can’t.”

“You’re right, this is the Bowery of biomedical research. But, you know what? No one gives you any shit here either. Personally, I’ll take it over Claremont Hospital any day.”

“The Bowery, nice. As in: nowhere lower to sink.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” said Perez, faintly impatient. “Working the hospital on Riker’s Island might be lower. Look, it’s a job, not a career.” And a job, moreover, that Perez had put himself out to secure for him.

Logan nodded. “I know you’re right. I’ve just gotta keep thinking that.”

Sabrina had to make the trip, if only to satisfy her intense curiosity. True enough, she had nothing more than an address: Philusstrasse 29. A call to the local directory had failed to locate even a telephone number. More ominously, her own letters to Herr Kistner had gone unanswered.

Still, she couldn’t let it rest there, not knowing for sure. The first Friday in December, not due back at the hospital till Sunday, she headed out to the airport and bought a ticket for Cologne.

When she arrived in early afternoon, she was surprised to find the temperature a good twenty degrees cooler than that in Rome.

“Bringen Sie mich bitte zum Kölner Dom,”
she instructed the cabbie.
Take me to the cathedral, please
.

As they entered the city proper, brilliantly decked out for Christmas, there the historic building suddenly loomed, majestic, in the midst of square miles of postwar construction.

“Wie ist es passiert? Wie hat er ürberlebt?” How did it happen? How did it survive?

He shrugged. “I am too young, I wasn’t here. But they say the English pilots were under orders not to hit the cathedral. They say that after a while people knew to run there whenever there was an air raid. Are you going to go inside?”

“I don’t have time just now. Please, if you could just circle around it so I can have a look.”

When he stopped at a light at the edge of the crowded square, she handed him a slip of paper with the address. “Is this very far?”

“
Nein, Fräulein
. Just a little bit over in that direction.”

It turned out to be a brick building of four stories. She half believed the name wouldn’t be there, but there it was, the first of eight listed on the directory: R. Kistner. He was on the ground floor.

She pushed the buzzer. Though she could hear it ring in an apartment just off the lobby on the other side of the glass front door, there was no response. She rang again. Nothing.

Dispirited, she stood there a long moment. What now? Perhaps she should find a hotel room and come back later. Or leave a note.

She wandered outside into the cold, and was hit with
another blast of frigid air. On a bench across the street huddled several figures. Shivering, she hurried toward them.

“Entschuldigen Sie, bitte,”
she said to the one closest at hand, an elderly woman.
Excuse me
.

The woman did not move.

“I am trying to find someone. Perhaps you can help.”

She gazed up at her with watery eyes. “You are not from around here.”

“No.” She hesitated. “His name is Rudolf Kistner. He lives in that building.”

The woman looked at her companions. “No. I do not know.”

“Perhaps”—Sabrina turned hopefully to the others, a man and a woman, equally bundled up—“one of you might know.”

Neither even looked in her direction.

“We do not know,” said the woman.

“Thank you.” Sabrina started moving off. “I will leave him a note.”

Having composed it and wedged it into Kistner’s mailbox, she again left the building. She was searching the street for a cab when she became aware of the old man from the bench coming toward her. Though he used a cane, he moved remarkably well. Stepping aside, she watched him enter the lobby; then, though aware of her eyes upon him, proceed to the mailbox and begin reading her note.

“Herr Kistner?” she said, pushing through the front door.

He looked at her a moment; then back down at the note.

“I can
tell
you who I am. I am from the American Cancer Foundation!”

Slowly he unwrapped his muff. The face that emerged was ancient, a thousand furrows beneath a shock of snow-white hair. If she’d had to guess, she’d have put his age at past ninety.

“In America?”

She nodded. “I have written you letters. I’ve been working on the study you inquired about. With Dr. Logan? Why didn’t you speak to me out there?”

He ignored this. “And you are who? His assistant?”

Sabrina was wise enough not to take offense; it was likely that in his entire career in the lab, the old man before her had never worked with a woman as an equal.

“Actually, his associate.”

“I am very old. I do not enjoy visitors.”

“In your letters, you inquired about our progress. Since I happened to be in Cologne, I thought I might be able to tell you.”

Unused to telling lies, Sabrina found that even this modest one came with great difficulty. But she’d come too far to risk being turned away now.

His damp, pale blue eyes opened a bit wider. “I will make an exception.”

Wordlessly, he led her through the lobby and into the living room of his tidy apartment. She was reminded of her grandmother’s place in Livorno; the same heavy turn-of-the-century furniture and odd assortment of Oriental rugs on the floor, the same musty odor and shelves heavy with leather-bound books.

“Forgive me,” he said, turning almost courtly. “The housekeeper comes only once a week. May I get you some tea?”

“No, thank you.”

He took a seat in a stiff-backed chair. She noticed on the table before him an electronic chess board. He was midway through a game.

“Do you play?” he asked.

“Just a little.”

“Care to make a move?” He turned the game toward her.

Flushing slightly, she studied the board; she wasn’t ready for such a test. “Pawn to King-six.”

He smiled—she’d passed.
“Gut, sehr gut.”
He looked
up at her. “Now, please, tell me about your protocol. Your Dr. Logan did not give many details.”

“We have had,” she replied, choosing her words carefully, “very encouraging results. The drug is active, of this there is no doubt.”

He leaned forward, as alert as any rabid fan at a sporting event. “Yes, I see.”

“Unfortunately, toxicity remains a problem.”

“Of course. As always. Can you give me the details? How many women have you had on this test?”

So she began at the beginning, in broad strokes recounting the entire history of the Compound J protocol, leaving out only the final, humbling chapters. The impression with which she deliberately left him was that the experiment was ongoing—and that both she and Logan were still running it.

“This brings me to something I wish to ask you,” she said. “It is about Mikio Nakano, the Japanese chemist. In the letters you wrote of him with great admiration.”

She thought she saw him start. “Yes? Perhaps I did.”

“Can you tell me what happened to him? And to his work?”

He shook his head. “Nein, nein. I do not know. After he left our laboratory, I did not see him.”

She gazed at him curiously. “But,” she said, feeling in her pocket for the Xerox copy of the letter, “you wrote something to Dr. Logan. You wrote”—she studied the page—“ ‘I know he did not stop working on this problem.’ ” She looked up. “Is this not so, Herr Kistner?”

Again, he shook his head. “It was very long ago, I am sorry.”

“But how did you know?” she pressed. “Were there rumors of such a thing? Did you perhaps hear about it somewhere?”

“No, I did not hear. I am old.” Grasping the arms of his chair, he slowly lifted himself to his feet. “Sometimes I write things, even I do not know why.”

Sabrina understood she was being dismissed. “I’m sorry
to keep asking you this, Herr Kistner, but it is important. You have no idea what became of this man Nakano?”

“No, I am very sorry, miss.” Taking up his cane, he started leading the way toward the door.

As they walked, Sabrina withdrew a business card. “Please,” she said, handing it to him, “just one favor. If you do recall anything else, you will let me know?”

He held the card close to his face and squinted; then turned to her in surprise. “The Instituto Regina Elena in Rome?”

She nodded. “Our study had problems. You see, I am no longer welcome at the ACF. Neither is Dr. Logan.”

Logan’s spirits picked up somewhat once they got started. Obliged to spend at least a couple of hours each day in the P-3 facility, strictly isolated from the rest of the lab because it housed live HIV, he had to go about his work with the utmost precision and vigilance; any slip was potentially disastrous. It was not for nothing that, by statute, no sharp objects were permitted in this area, nor could any equipment be removed from it without exhaustive cleaning. Depression was an indulgence he could simply not afford.

Still, demanding as it was, the work would never be challenging. In other labs around the country, the P-3 facilities were thought of as the place to be, epicenters of cutting-edge AIDS research. At HIV-EX, what passed for pioneering work—Severson’s own—had already been completed. The tasks that fell to Dan Logan were less those of a talented biochemist than a competent technician. In essence, his function was simply to prepare solutions of Severson’s material and various anti-HIV drugs; then monitor their progress against a mix of normal cells and live HIV to establish whether HIV-EX technology was an advance over existing delivery systems. He was under no illusion that he would find significant data to support the thesis.

It was only after normal working hours that he was able to spread his creative wings. For at last, he was free to get back to work on Compound J.

Yet the primitive conditions held him back. Before, everywhere he’d worked, lab animals had been available virtually for the asking, with tumors preinduced by support staff. Here, animals had to be ordered from a breeding lab in Massachusetts, untreated. Because they had to be paid for out of pocket, Logan decided on immunosuppressed rats, which at fifteen bucks per (ninety dollars, plus shipping for a minimum order of six), were roughly one third the cost of rabbits. The human tumor cell line necessary to induce cancer had to be obtained through a suburban Washington outfit called the American Tissue Type Collection.

“Christ,” exclaimed Logan, filling out the order form, “from the sound of it, you’d think they sold ladies’ dainty underthings. I won’t even know how to grow the tumors in the damn rats when everything gets here. I’ve never done that kind of shit work.”

“I have,” said Perez dryly.

“Well, there you are,” said Logan, trying to make the best of it, “you’ve got to help me out.”

From the outset, Perez had resisted the notion that he serve as Logan’s assistant. Although he was untutored in high-level chemistry, he was blessed with considerable common sense, so he quickly grasped the obvious: Even if, theoretically, such a miracle drug could be concocted, the chances that it could happen here, in this miserable excuse for a lab, with him, Perez, as the entire support staff, were close to nonexistent.

“The truth is,” he challenged, “you don’t even know what you’re looking for, do you? It’s totally hit and miss.”

“No, the basic structure for the compound is there.”

“There are how many changes you could make in that molecule, ten thousand? A hundred thousand? Even under the best of circumstances, in the best of labs, that could take years. You’re talking needles and haystacks. Hell, hay
fields
.”

“Except we’ve got a head start—Compound J-lite.”

“Dan, that’s a death drug. It rots livers!”

“I’m not convinced of that.” He paused meaningfully. “Atlas was in with those animals, Ruben, I’d bet my life on it.”

“So what if he was? You’re saying he
murdered
your bunnies? That’s what you think?”

Absolutely, FUCKING right! Bet the farm on it, buddy!
“Well,” he said, a stab at moderation, “it’s what I hope to find out.”

This is why Perez had begun to fear for his friend’s equilibrium. Hadn’t Compound J inflicted enough damage already? The guy’s career was a shambles, his personal life all but nonexistent. Logan was self-destructive, anyone could see it. What better proof could there be than his lunatic insistence on pursuing this thing?

“Look, Dan, why don’t you drop it,” he asked, “at least for now? Just lay low for a while, relax, do your work.”

“I can’t, Ruben. You know why.”

“Right, yeah. Because the stuff works.”

“Yes, because it works! It’s active, we proved that.” He looked at Perez beseechingly. “C’mon, Ruben, I need you, I can’t do this alone.”

Perez didn’t want to be unkind—he just wanted to force upon the guy some semblance of reality. If Logan was determined to play Don Quixote, he wasn’t simply going to slide into the role of Sancho Panza.

“Look,” said Logan, “I know what you’re saying. Really. Don’t you think I know where I stand?”

“I don’t. Tell me.”

Logan exhaled deeply. He thought about this all the time—sadly, bitterly—but he’d never once said it aloud. “I have no standing in the scientific community.
None
. Even if we make progress with the drug, right now I’m not even in a position to get it tested. It’s possible I never will be.” He looked levelly at his friend. “You know how that bastard Shein always refers to the ACF?”