electrodes rose neatly behind each of them, out of the way, connected to
Siemens monitors that seemed to be recording their heart rates.
Ben recognized both of them, too.
The man was Dr. Walter Reisinger, the Yale professor turned Secretary
of State. In person, Reisinger looked healthier than he seemed on TV or
in photographs. His skin glowed, though that might have been a result
of the running, and his hair seemed darker, though it was probably dyed.
The woman he was talking to on the next treadmill resembled Supreme
Court Justice Miriam Bateman. But Justice Bateman was known to be
nearly crippled with arthritis. During State of the Union addresses,
when the Supreme Court filed in, Justice Bateman was always the slowest,
walking with a cane.
This woman–this Justice Bateman–was running like an Olympic athlete in
training.
Were these people lookalikes of famous world figures? Ben wondered.
Doubles? Yet that wouldn’t explain the infusions, the training.
Something else.
He heard the Dr. Reisinger clone voice saying something to the Justice
Bateman clone about “the Court’s decision.”
This was no clone. This had to be Justice Miriam Bateman.
So then what was this place? Was this some sort of health spa for the
rich and famous?
Ben had heard of such places, in Arizona or New Mexico or California,
sometimes Switzerland or France. Places where the elite went to recover
from plastic surgery, from alcoholism or drug dependency, to lose ten or
twenty pounds.
But this–?
The electrodes, the IV tubes, the EKG screens … ?
These famous people–all, except Arnold Carr, old–were being closely
monitored, but what for?
Ben came upon a row of Stair Masters on one of which an ancient man was
moving up and down at top speed, just as Ben regularly did at his health
club. This man, too–no one Ben recognized–was clad in gray sweats.
The front of his sweatshirt was darkened with sweat.
Ben knew young athletes in their twenties who couldn’t sustain such a
grueling pace for more than a few minutes. How in the world was this
old man, with his wrinkled face and liver-spotted hands, able to do it?
“He’s ninety-six years old,” a man’s voice boomed. “Remarkable, isn’t
it?”
Ben looked around, then up. The person speaking was standing on the
catwalk, just above Ben.
It was Jorgen Lenz.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX.
A soft, low chime filled the air, melodic and sedate. Jurgen Lenz,
resplendent in a charcoal suit, blue shirt, and silver tie, under a
neatly pressed white doctor’s coat, strolled down wrought-iron stairs to
the main floor. He glanced over at the treadmills and Stair Masters The
Supreme Court Justice and the former Secretary of State and most of the
others were beginning to finish their exercise sessions, dismount from
the machines, nurses removing the wires from their bodies.
“That’s the signal for the next helicopter shuttle to Vienna,” he
explained to Ben. “Time to return to the International Children’s
Health Forum they were so kind as to depart. Needless to say, they’re
busy people despite their age. In fact, I’d say because of their age.
They all have much to give the world–which is why I’ve selected them.”
He made a subtle hand gesture. Both of Ben’s arms were suddenly grabbed
from behind. Two guards held him while another expertly frisked him,
removing all three weapons.
Lenz waited impatiently as the weapons were confiscated, like a
dinner-table raconteur whose tale has been interrupted by the serving of
the salad course.
“What have you done with Anna?” Ben asked, his voice steely.
“I was about to ask you the very same thing,” Lenz replied. “She
insisted on inspecting the clinic, and of course I couldn’t refuse. But
somehow, along the way, we lost her. Apparently she knows something
about evading security systems.”
Ben studied Lenz, trying to determine how much of this was truth. Was
that his way of stalling, of refusing to bring him to her? Was he
negotiating? Ben felt a surge of panic.
Is he lying? Fabricating a story he knows that I’ll believe, that I’ll
want to believe?
Have you killed her, you lying bastard?
Then again, that Anna might have disappeared to investigate what was
happening in the clinic was plausible. Ben said, “Let me warn you right
now, if anything happens to her ”
“But nothing will, Benjamin. Nothing will.” Lenz put his hands in his
pockets, head bowed. “We are in a clinic, after all, that is devoted to
life.”
“I’m afraid I’ve already seen too much to believe that.”
“How much do you really understand of whatever you’ve seen?” Lenz said.
“I’m sure that once you truly grasp the work we’re doing, you’ll
appreciate its importance.” He motioned for the guards to let Ben go.
“This is the culmination of a lifetime’s work.”
Ben said nothing. Escaping was out of the question. But in fact he
wanted to remain here.
You killed my brother.
And Anna? Have you killed her, too?
He became aware that Lenz was speaking. “It was Adolf Hitler’s great
obsession, you know. The Thousand-Year Reich, and all that nonsense
though it lasted, what, twelve years? He had a theory that the
bloodlines of the Aryans had been polluted, adulterated, because of
interbreeding. Once the so-called ‘master race’ was purified it would
be extremely long lived Rubbish, of course. But I’ll give the old
madman credit. He was determined to discover how he and the Reich’s
leaders could live longer, and so he gave a handful of his brightest
scientists free rein. Unlimited funds. Do your experiments on
concentration-camp prisoners. Whatever you like.”
“Made possible by the generous sponsorship of the greatest monster of
the twentieth century,” Ben said, biting off his words.
“A mad despot, let us agree. And his talk of a thousand-year Reich was
laughable a deeply unstable man, promising an epoch of lasting
stability. But his pairing of the two desiderata longevity and
stability was not ill-founded.”
“I’m not following.”
“We human beings are singularly ill-designed in one respect. Of all the
species on the planet, we require the longest period of gestation and
childhood of development. And really, we must think about intellectual
as well as physical development. Two decades for complete physical
maturation, often another decade or more to attain full professional
mastery in our area of specialization. Somebody with a highly involved
craft, such as a surgeon, may be well into his fourth decade before he
has achieved
full competence at his vocation. The process of learning and
progressive mastery continues–and then, just as he reaches its height,
what happens? His eyes begin to dim, his fingers to lose their
precision. The depredations of time begin to rob him of what he spent
half a lifetime acquiring. It’s like a bad joke. We’re Sisyphus,
knowing as soon as we have rolled the boulder toward the top of the
hill, it will start hurtling back down. I’m told you once taught
schoolchildren. Think how much of human society is devoted simply to
reproducing itself–transmitting its institutions, its knowledge and
skills, the struts and gearings of civilization. It’s an extraordinary
tribute to our determination to win out over time. And yet how much
farther would our species have been able to advance if only its
leadership, political and intellectual, had been able to focus on
advancement, rather than simply self-replacement! How much farther we’d
all be if some of us were able to stay the course, mount the learning
curve and stay there! How much farther we’d be if the best and the
brightest of us could keep that boulder rolling uphill, rather than
fending off the nursing home or the grave by the time the crest came
into view!”
A doleful smile. “Gerhard Lenz, whatever we think of him, was a
brilliant man,” Lenz went on. Ben made a mental note: was Jorgen Lenz
really Gerhard’s son? “Most of his theories never amounted to anything.
But he was convinced that the secret to how and why human beings age was
in our cells. And this was even before Watson and Crick discovered DNA,
all the way back in 1953! A remarkable man, really. So farsighted in so
many ways. He knew the Nazis would lose, and Hitler would be gone, and
the funds would dry up. He simply wanted to make sure his work would
continue. Do you know why that was important, Benjamin? May I call you
Benjamin?”
But Ben was transfixed, looking around the cavernous laboratory in
stupefaction, and did not answer.
Because he was there and not there.
He was entwined with Anna, their bodies slick and warm. He was watching
her cry after he’d told her about Peter.
He was sitting in a rural Swiss inn with Peter; he was standing over
Peter’s blood-soaked body.
“An extraordinary undertaking required extraordinary resources. Hitler
prattled about stability while contributing to its destruction, and so
it went with other tyrants in other parts of the world. But Sigma
really could contribute to the pacification of the planet. Its founders