Syndrome

by Thomas Hoover

Sunday, April 5

8:20 A.M.

"Okay, you'd better take it from here," Winston Bartlett declared to Kenji Noda over the roar of the engine. He had lifted his feet off the pedals and was unbuckling the cockpit seat belt. He liked having a turn piloting his McDonnell Douglas 520N helicopter on the commutes between his corporate headquarters in Lower Manhattan and his medical research park in northern New Jersey, but prudence dictated a more experienced hand on the collective during descent and landing. For that he had Noda, formerly of the Japanese Defense Forces. A tall, wiry man of few words, Noda was also his bodyguard, chauffeur, and curator of his museum‑quality katana sword collection.

With the sharp, delicious aroma of the pine forest below wafting through the cabin, Noda quickly put aside the origami he'd been folding, to center his mind and slid around a special opening in the bulkhead. He strapped himself into the seat, then took the radio headphones. The sky was the purest blue, with not another craft in the visual perimeter. They were, after all, over a forest.

As Bartlett settled himself in the passenger compartment, he thought about where matters stood. There was the very real prospect he had rolled the dice one time too many. The daily blood tests at his clinic in New Jersey were showing he was disturbingly close to using up his nine lives.

To look at him, though, you'd never suspect. At sixty‑seven he was still trim and athletic, confident even cocky, with a full head of steel dark hair and probing eyes that instantly appraised whatever they caught in their gaze. He played handball at a private health club near his Gramercy Park mansion for an hour every other morning and he routinely defeated men half his age, including Grant Hampton. Remaining a player in every sense of the term was the main reason he enjoyed flying his M‑D chopper, even though his license had been lapsed for eight years. It was the perfect embodiment of his lust for life. As he never failed to point out, his lifelong business success wasn't bad for a City College grad with a bachelor's degree in Oriental art history. He had gotten this far because he wanted success enough to make it happen.

He'd started out in New York real estate, but for the last twenty years he had concentrated on buying up small, under‑ priced medical‑device manufacturers with valuable patents and weak bottom lines. He dismantled some of the companies and sold off the pieces, always for more than he'd paid for the whole. Others he restructured with new management, and when a profitable turnaround was in sight, he took them public or sold them to a major player like Johnson & Johnson. The potential winners, though, the ones with promising pipelines of medical devices or drugs whose FDA approval was imminent, he relocated here at the BMD campus in northern New Jersey.

But competition was fierce, and the bigger players like Merck and J&J had limitless research capital. They could write off dead ends a lot easier. Thus it was that five years ago, when his pipeline was drying up, Winston Bartlett took the biggest gamble of his life. He acquired a cash‑strapped new start‑up called the Gerex Corporation, whose head scientist was at the cutting edge of stem cell research. Karl Van de Vliet, M.D., Ph.D., had just had his funding terminated and his laboratory at Stanford University closed after a political flap by right‑wingers.

Bartlett had moved Van de Vliet here to New Jersey and poured millions into his stem cell efforts, bleeding BMD's working capital white and racking up 85 million in short‑term debt just to keep the rest of the company afloat. Now, though, the gamble was paying off. This month Gerex was winding up stage‑three clinical trials for the National Institutes of Health. These trials validated a revolutionary procedure that changed the rules of everything known about healing the human body. Already his CFO, Grant Hampton, was heading a negotiating team hammering out a deal with the British biotech conglomerate Cambridge Pharmaceuticals to sell them a 49 percent stake in Gerex. Over 650 million in cash and stock were on the table, and there were escalators, depending on the results of the trials now under way.

The problem was, Cambridge had only seen the financial and summaries of data from Gerex's successful clinical trials. They knew nothing about the fiasco of the Beta procedure.

"Karl called just before we left and said she's worse this morning," Bartlett remarked to Noda. He was removing his aviator shades and there was deep frustration in his eyes. "God I feel so damned responsible. She was—"

"Having the Beta was Kristen's idea," Noda reminded him. "She wanted to do it."

What he didn't say was on both their minds: what about Bartlett himself? After Kristen Starr had had the Beta, and it had seemed successful, Bartlett decided to have it too. Now his daily blood tests here at the institute were showing that the telomerase enzyme was starting to metastasize and replicate in his bloodstream, just as it had in hers.

"Well," Bartlett went on, "Karl thinks he's got a new idea that might save us. Hampton is supposed to be on the case this very morning." He stared out the chopper's window, down at the rooftops of his empire. At the north end of the industrial park was the main laboratory, where stents and titanium joint replacements were tested on animals—mostly sterile pigs, though some primate testing also was under way. The central area had two large manufacturing facilities where the more complex devices were made.

The buildings were all white cinder block, except for the one they were hovering above now. It was at the far south end, a massive three‑story mansion nestled among ancient pines and reached by a long cobblestone driveway. Though it was actually the oldest building of the group by a hundred years, it was the latest acquisition for the complex. It fronted a beautiful ten‑acre lake, and had been a summer palacio of a nineteenth‑century railroad baron. Around mid‑century it was turned into a luxury retirement home, complete with nursing services. Its ornate appointments reminded patients of the Frick Gallery, if one could imagine those marble halls teeming with wheelchairs and nurses.

Bartlett had bought the defunct manufacturing complex next to it eighteen years earlier for the BMD industrial park, but it was only six years ago that the owners of the mansion, a group of squabbling heirs, finally relented and agreed to part with the property. It was now a flagship holding of BMD.

He had an eye for design and he had loved remodeling the old mansion and making it into a modern clinic and research facility. He had renamed it the Dorian Institute and moved in Karl Van de Vliet and the research staff of the Gerex Corporation. He also had put a landing pad on the expansive roof, along with a stair leading down to an elevator that could take him directly to the laboratory in the basement.

Kenji Noda settled the McDonnell Douglas onto the pad and cut the engines. Bartlett never let himself worry about the noise. The patients in the clinical trials were here at no charge, so they really couldn't complain, particularly since they were now part of what was possibly turning out to be the greatest advance in the history of medicine. If your Alzheimer's had just been reversed at no charge, you weren't going to complain about a little hubbub on the roof.

"I'll wait here," Noda said opening the side door. His bald pate, reminiscent of an eighteenth‑century samurai, glistened in the early spring sun.

Bartlett nodded, knowing that his pilot did not trust physicians and hospitals. Taking care of your body was your responsibility, Kenji Noda frequently declared and he trained his own daily. He ate no meat and drank gallons of green tea. When he practiced kendo swordplay, he had the reflexes of a man half his age. He never discussed why he had left Japan, but Bartlett assumed it was for reasons best left in the dark.

Bartlett headed down the metal stairs leading to the self‑ service elevator. This daily ordeal of flying out to give a blood sample and to see Kristen was increasingly unsettling. As he inserted his magnetic card into the elevator security box, he felt his hand shaking slightly.

So close to the eternal dream of humankind. So close. How was it going to end?

Sunday, April 5

8:38 a.m.

"Dr. Vee, I'm feeling so much better, I can't tell you." Emma Rosen reached out and caught her physician by the collar of his lab coat, pulling him down and brazenly bussing his cheek. She'd been longing to do this for three weeks but hadn't mustered the nerve until now. "This morning I climbed the stairs to the third floor, twice, up and back without any chest pain. Oy, can you believe? It's a miracle."

Karl Van de Vliet was a couple of inches over six feet, with a trim face and sandy hair that some older patients judged too long for a physician. His English normally was perfect, though sometimes he made a mistake when trying to sound too colloquial. But everyone, young and old adored his retiring Dutch manner and those deep blue eyes that carried some monumental sadness from the past. They also were sure he would soon be recognized worldwide as the miracle worker he was. The prospect of a Nobel didn't actually seem that far‑fetched.

"Emma, please, I begged you to rest." He sighed and checked the dancing electronic pens of her EKG. They were in the basement of the Dorian Institute. Upstairs, the "suites"—nobody called them rooms—were intended to invoke a spa more than a clinic, so most of the heavy‑duty diagnostic equipment was kept in a row of examining rooms down near the subterranean lab. "For another week at least. Why won't you listen? You've been a very naughty girl. I may have to tell your daughter."

He glanced at the seventy‑three‑year‑old woman's readout one last time, made a quick note on his handheld computer, and then laid a thin hand across her brow for a fleeting, subjective temperature check.

She's all but fully recovered, he told himself. It's truly astonishing.

Five weeks earlier, she had come through the front door of the Dorian Institute in a wheelchair pushed by her youngest, a bottle blonde named Shelly. He took one look and scuttled the normal security precautions, the frisk for cameras and recording devices. Emma's low cardiac output had deteriorated to the point that her left leg below the knee was swollen to almost twice its normal size, owing to renal retention of fluid, and she was so short of breath she required oxygen. He hadn't wanted to complicate the clinical trials by taking on another patient at that late date, but she had been referred by a physician friend in the city, begging. How could he turn her away?

He had removed a microscopic amount of bone marrow from her right ankle, extracted the stem cells, applied the hormonal signal that told them to develop into heart muscle, and then injected a thriving cell factory into her heart. Since stem cells could be made to ignore the body's rules to stop replicating after a certain number, they were able to reproduce forever, constantly renewing themselves. The only other cells with that immortal characteristic were cancer cells. In fact, it was as though he had given Emma a new kind of cancer—one that produced cells as healthy as those in a newborn. Today she probably could have run up those stairs.

Although his stem cell technology was going to create a new era in regenerative medicine, he had experienced his share of bumps in the road. Five years earlier, Stanford University had canceled his research project there since the work he had been doing involved the special stem cells in unused fertility‑clinic embryos. The university claimed there had been death threats to its president. The Board of Regents had finally decided with a sham show of remorse, to revoke his funding. They called him in one sunny afternoon in May and pulled the plug. He thanked them and tore up his contract. By that time he had already demonstrated that, using the right chemical signals, stem cells could be coaxed into becoming almost any organ. Inserted into the heart, they became new heart muscle, replacing scars; inserted into the brain, they became neural tissue. No way was he going to be stopped now. They didn't know what they were losing.

What he needed was a "white knight." He did some poking around and came up with Winston Bartlett, then floated feelers to Bartlett's people. What if, he proposed, Bartlett acquired the Gerex Corporation for BMD and made it a for‑profit business? No more public funding (and maddening administrative meddling). The research already completed was so close to a payoff, after years and years of grinding lab work and thousands of white mice, that the deal could be considered an investment where 95 percent of the seed money had already been supplied by taxpayers.

Winston Bartlett had liked the sound of that, and Karl Van de Vliet had his white knight.

Once his financing was secure, he decided to begin by solving the problem that had dogged him at Stanford. Since there would always be a distracting public‑relations problem hounding any researcher in the United States who made use of aborted embryos, even if it was to save lives, he was determined to find a less controversial way to trick Mother Nature and garner "pluripotent" stem cells, the name given those that could give rise to virtually any tissue type.

He had. After he moved his research team into the Dorian Institute just over 4 1/2 years ago, he had perfected a way to use a human protein, an enzyme called telomerase, to make adult stem cells do most of the miracles once only thought possible with embryonic cells.

The phase‑three clinical trials over the past seven months had proved conclusively that the technique worked. Adult stem cells, when treated with the telomerase enzyme to arrest the process of cell senescence, could indeed regenerate everything from the human brain to the human heart, from Parkinson's to acute myocardial infarction.

Twenty‑three days from now, when the phase‑three clinical trials were formally scheduled to be completed, Karl Van de Vliet would have enough data for the National Institutes of Health to confirm one of the most important breakthroughs in the history of medicine.

Unfortunately, however, there was that other bit of data that he would not be sharing with the NIH. The Beta.

Thinking about that, his heart heavy, he turned back to the situation at hand.

"Emma, you're making wonderful progress," he continued on with the banter, "but don't push yourself too hard just yet."

She laughed, sending lines across her forehead. Her voice was deep and rich, sultry in its own way. "When you get as old as I am, honey, you do anything you can get away with. What am I saving it for? I just might go to Atlantic City next week and pick up a sailor."

"Well, then, I may have to have Shelly go along and keep an eye on you," he said with one last programmed smile. Then he checked his watch. Bartlett should be arriving any minute now. Time to get Emma Rosen the hell out of here and back upstairs.

He turned and signaled for Ellen O'Hara, the head nurse, to start removing the suction‑cup electrodes that had been stuck on Emma for her EKG. Ellen had been with him when he was at Stanford and her loyalty was unquestioned. She had made sure that the Beta disaster with Kristen hadn't become the gossip of the institute. Still, how much longer could it be kept quiet?

Then Sandra Hanes, the lively, dark‑haired woman in charge of the second floor for this shift, walked into the examination room. She knew nothing about Kristen.

"Perfect timing," he said. Then he drew her aside. "Keep an eye on Emma, will you? Try and keep her in her room and quiet as much as you can. The last blood work showed her white‑cell count over twelve K/CMM. It could mean there's some minimal rejection rearing its head. Probably nothing to worry about, but can you just keep her away from the stairs for godsake? I don't want her tiring herself out."

"I'll tie her to the bed if I have to," Sandra answered. The clinical trials had required a mountain of paperwork, and her face was strained from working long shifts, including a lot of weekends, like this one. But he suspected she actually appreciated the overtime. She was forty‑five, divorced and putting a straight‑A daughter through Rutgers.

She also was a first‑rate nurse, like all the others at the institute, and her loyalty couldn't be more secure. Still, he knew that she and all the other staffers were bursting to tell the world about the miracles they'd witnessed. That was why Bartlett had insisted on an ironclad nondisclosure agreement in the contract of every employee to be strictly enforced. (And to put teeth into the security, all employees were body‑searched for documents or cameras or tapes on the way in and out.) To violate it would be to open yourself to a life‑altering lawsuit. During World War II the claim had been that "loose lips sink ships." Here they would render you a pauper for life. Nobody dared even whisper about the spectacular success of the clinical trials.

As the examining room emptied out, he checked his watch one more time. Winston Bartlett was due any minute now and he had nothing but bad news for the man.

Trying to control his distress, he walked to the end of the hallway and prepared to enter the lab. Whereas the ground floor and the two above were for reception, common dining, and individual rooms, the basement contained the laboratory, his private office, the examination rooms, and an OR (never yet used, thankfully). There also was a sub‑basement, accessible only through an elevator in the lab or an alarmed set of fire stairs. It was an intensive‑care area, and it was where Kristen, the Beta casualty, was being kept.

He zipped a magnetic card through the reader on the door and entered the air lock. The lab was maintained under positive pressure to keep out the slightest hint of any kind of contaminant. It was as sterile as a silicon chip factory.

The room was dominated by a string of black slate workbenches, then rows and rows of metal shelves with tissue‑ containing vials of a highly volatile solvent cocktail he had engineered especially for this project, along with a computer network and a huge autoclave and several electron microscopes.

He walked in and greeted his research team. He'd managed to keep the core group that had been closest to him at Stanford, four people who, he believed, were among the finest medical minds in the country. They were the renowned molecular biologist David Hopkins, Ph.D., the strikingly beautiful and widely published endocrinologist Debra Connolly, M.D., and two younger staffers, a couple who'd met and married at his Stanford lab, Ed and Beth Sparks, both Ph.D.'s who'd done their postdoc under him. They all were here now in the wilds of northern New Jersey because they knew they were making medical history.

David was waiting, his long shaggy forelock down over his brow as always. But his eyes told it all.

"Karl, Bartlett's blood work from yesterday just got faxed up from the lab at Princeton. His enzyme level has increased another three point seven percent."

"Damn." It was happening for sure. "Did you run—"

"The computer simulation? A one‑standard‑deviation estimate is that he's going to go critical sometime between seventeen and nineteen days."

"The Syndrome." Van de Vliet sighed.

"Just like Kristen."

"She faked us out. There were no side effects for weeks." Van de Vliet shook his head sadly as he set his handheld Palm computer onto a side table. Later he would transfer all the day’s patient data into the laboratory's server, the Hewlett‑ Packard they all affectionately called the Mothership. Then he began taking off his white coat.

"Bartlett looks to be inevitable now." David exhaled in impotent despair. The frustration and the tension were getting to everybody. They all knew what was at stake. "It's in two and a half weeks, give or take."

What had supposedly been a cosmetic procedure had gone horribly awry. Van de Vliet wondered if it wasn't the ultimate vengeance of the quest for something you shouldn't have.

"His AB blood type is so rare. If we'd just kept a sample before the procedure, we'd have something to work with now," Van de Vliet said sadly. "We still might be able to culture some antibodies."

He hadn't told his research team yet about the other possible option—using somebody else as an AB blood‑type incubator.

His last‑ditch idea was to find a patient with a blood type of AB positive and introduce a small quantity of the special Beta telomerase enzyme into them. The theory was that this might induce their body to produce compatible antibodies, which could then be extracted and cultured in the laboratory. If a sufficient quantity could be produced they could be injected into Bartlett and hopefully arrest the enzyme's pattern of entering the host's bloodstream and metastasizing into the more complex form that brought on the Syndrome. And if it did work, then there might even be some way to adapt the procedure to Kristen.

"Karl, if Cambridge Pharmaceuticals finds out about the Beta fiasco, how's it going to affect—"

"How do you think it's going to affect the sale? If this gets out, there'll be no sale. To anybody. Bartlett will be ruined, and Gerex along with him. That's everybody here, in case you're counting." He turned and exited the lab, pushing pensively through the air lock, and then he walked slowly toward his office, collecting his thoughts. He was just passing the elevator when it opened.

Sunday, April 5

8:47 a.m.

Winston Bartlett looked up to see Van de Vliet as he stepped off the elevator, and the sight heartened him as always. The Dutchman was a genius. If anyone could solve this damned mess, surely he was the one.

"First thing, Karl, how is she now?"

"I think you'd better go down and see for yourself," Van de Vliet said slowly. "As I told you on the phone, she still comes and goes. I think it's getting worse."

Bartlett felt a chill run through him. He had once cared for this woman as much as he was capable of caring for anybody, and what had happened was a damned shame. All he had intended was to give her something special, something no man had ever given a woman before.

"Will she know who I am? She still did yesterday."

"It depends," Van de Vliet replied. "Yesterday afternoon she was fully lucid, but then earlier this morning I got the impression she thinks she's in a different place and time. If I had to guess, I'd say she's regressing chronologically. I suppose that's logical, though nothing about this makes any sense."

Bartlett was following him back through the air lock and

into the laboratory. The intensive‑care area below was reachable only by a special elevator at the rear of the lab.

All these once‑cocky people, Bartlett thought, were now scared to death. Van de Vliet and his research team might actually be criminally liable if the right prosecutor got hold of the case. At the very least they'd be facing an ethics fiasco.

But I'm the one who's about to be destroyed. In every sense.

It had all started when Karl Van de Vliet confided in him that there was an adjunct procedure arising out of stem cell research that might, might, offer the possibility of a radical new cosmetic breakthrough. Just a possibility. He called it the Beta, since it was highly experimental. He also wasn't sure it was reproducible. But he had inadvertently discovered it while testing the telomerase enzyme on his own skin over a decade ago.

At the time he was experimenting with topical treatments for pigment abnormalities, but the particular telomerase enzyme he was working with had had the unexpected effect of changing the texture of his skin, softening it and removing wrinkles, a change that subsequently seemed permanent.

The idea had lain dormant while they were preparing for the clinical trials. But then Bartlett's petite amie, the cable‑TV personality Kristen Starr, had had a career crisis that she blamed on aging, and he came up with the idea of having her undergo the skin procedure.

In a mistake with unforeseen ramifications, she had then been made an official part of the NIH clinical trials. After she had gone for over a month without any side effects, Bartlett had elected to undergo the procedure himself.

Then it began in Kristen—what David had solemnly named the Syndrome. Van de Vliet had immediately (and illegally) terminated her from the clinical trials, removing her from the NIH database. She was now being kept on the floor below, in the subbasement intensive‑care area.

As they stepped onto the elevator to go down, Bartlett found himself wondering how many of the staff here were aware of the real extent of the crisis. Van de Vliet had said that only three of the nurses knew about Kristen and the Syndrome. Fortunately, they all were trustworthy. Two had even been with him back at Stanford. They would never talk.

But what about the rest? They'd all fawned over Kristen, starstruck by her celebrity, and they'd spill the beans in a heartbeat if any of them found out. The story would be everywhere from Variety to the "Page Six" gossip column. It would certainly mean the financial ruin of Bartlett Medical Devices. If Gerex went under, everything else went with it.

On the other hand, he thought ruefully, what does it matter? If I end up like her, I won't even know it happened.

"W.B., the telomerase enzyme is completely out of control in her now," Van de Vliet continued. "First it metastasized through her skin and into her blood. Then it began directing its own synthesis. I've tried everything I know to arrest it, but nothing has worked. I still have a faint hope, though. If we can make some headway on your own situation . . ." He paused and his voice trailed off. "In the meantime, though, I think it would definitely be wise to move her to another location. There are too many people here. The risk is enormous. Word is bound to get out sooner or later. You must have someplace . . ."

"Of course." Bartlett nodded. "I'd rather have her in the city and closer to me anyway. But let me see if I can talk to her first. I need to try to make her understand."

Though it's probably too late for that, he told himself.

They stepped off the elevator and entered a high‑security area, a long hallway illuminated only with fluorescent bulbs. Using a magnetic card as a key, Bartlett opened the first door they came to. As always, he was dismayed by the sight.

For a moment he just stood looking at the thirty‑two‑ year‑old woman sitting up in a hospital bed, mutely watching a flickering TV screen showing the Cartoon Network. He had truly cared for her, perhaps even loved her for a time.

Then he walked over. "Kristy, honey, how're you feeling?"

She stared at him blankly. Kristen had been a vivacious blue‑eyed blonde who’d had her own showbiz gossip show on the E! channel till it was canceled during a scheduling shake‑up six months earlier. She had a nervous breakdown, declaring to Bartlett that her show had been canceled because she looked like a crone.

He’d told her it wasn't true, but if she was so distraught about her appearance, then maybe there was something he could do for her. Van de Vliet had once mentioned an experimental skin procedure. . . .

Bartlett turned back to Van de Vliet, feeling the horror sinking in.

"Karl, goddamit, we've got to reverse this."

"Let's talk outside," Van de Vliet said.

Bartlett kissed Kristen's forehead in preparation for leaving. Her lifeless blue eyes flickered something. He thought it was a flash of some old anger.

Who could blame her? he told himself. But back then, who knew?

He'd wanted to give her a gift like none other. Not quite the Fountain of Youth, but maybe a cosmetic version. Her skin would begin to constantly renew itself.

And he'd been right. The promise of having her skin rejuvenated was just what she'd needed to get her self‑confidence back.

For more than a month the miracle seemed to be working, and there were no side effects. Her skin was becoming noticeably softer and more supple. She was elated.

Screw NIH trials and the FDA, he then decided. It was working for Kristen. By God he would try it himself. He wasn't getting any younger.

But no sooner had he had the procedure too than Kristen started evidencing side effects. First it was little things, like lapses in short‑term memory. Next, as it got progressively worse, she could no longer remember why she was at the institute. Then she couldn't recall her name, where she lived. And now . . .

Could it be that God can't be cheated? And when it's tried, God brings down a terrible vengeance.

When they were outside in the hallway, he said, "I have a place on Park Avenue that's empty. At the moment. We used to spend weekends there and I can arrange for a full‑time nursing staff, all of it." He paused. "Has anybody called here about her lately?"

"Just her mother, Katherine, who's getting pretty frantic."

"The woman is unbalanced. Certifiable. God help us if—"

"I told her to see what she could find out from Kristen's publicist."

"Good." Bartlett had told Kristen's midtown publicity agent, the nosy Arlene of Guys and Dolls, Inc., that Kristen had gone to a private spa in New Mexico to rethink her career and didn't want to be disturbed. She desired complete solitude. Any communication with her would have to be handled through his office.

He looked at Van de Vliet. "Karl, tell me how bad it is for me now."

"For you?" He hesitated. This was the question he'd been dreading. "The telomerase numbers from yesterday's blood sample are not encouraging. As I told you, your topical enzyme application has metastasized into your bloodstream and started to replicate, just like it did in Kristen. We're seeing a process known as 'engraftment.' These special cells have learned to mimic any cell they come near. They become the tissue that those cells comprise and begin replacing the healthy tissue with new. In Kristen's case, we think it's now entered her brain and it seems to be supplanting her memory tissue with blanks. The same side effect could eventually evolve in you."

That doesn't begin to describe the real horror, Bartlett thought. It's too impossible to imagine.

"The only thing left is to find some way to cause your body to reject the enzyme," Van de Vliet said. "I'm optimistic that we might be able to grow some telomerase antibodies in another patient with your blood type, then culture enough of them to stop the Syndrome in its tracks. It's worth a try. Frankly, I can't think of anything else. But your blood type is AB, which is extremely rare. Also, the problem is that we'd possibly be putting that other person at severe risk too."

"Let's go back up to the lab," Bartlett said. "That idea of yours—Hampton thinks he's got somebody. A woman, in her late thirties." He put his hand on Van de Vliet's shoulder. "We're going to get her on board however we have to."

Chapter 3

Sunday, April 5

8:49 a.m.

Stone Aimes was staring at the e‑mail on the screen of his Compaq Armada and feeling an intense urge to put his fist through its twisted spiral crystals. What do you do when you've come up with an idea that could possibly save thousands of lives using simple Web‑based technology and then the piece gets spiked by your newspaper's owners at the very last minute because it exposes some important New York hospitals to unpleasant (but constructive) scrutiny?

What it makes you want to do is tell everybody down on the third floor to stuff it and walk out and finish your book— undistracted by corporate ass‑covering BS ... or, unfortunately, by a paycheck.

Around him the newsroom of the New York Sentinel, a weekly newspaper positioned editorially somewhere between the late, lamented New York Observer and the Village Voice, was in final Sunday countdown, with the Monday edition about to be put to bed. The technology was state of the art, and the room flickered with computer screens, blue pages that gave the tan walls an eerie cast. Composition, spell‑checking, everything, was done by thinking machines, and the reporters, thirteen on this floor, were mostly in their late twenties and early thirties and universally underpaid.

The early morning room was bustling, though it felt to Stone like the end of time. Nobody was paying any attention to him but that was normal: everybody was doing their own thing. Besides, nobody else realized he'd just had a major piece killed at the last minute. Now he felt as though he were frozen in place: in this room, in this job, in this life.

The book he had almost finished was going to change a lot of things. It would be the first major explication of stem cell technology for general readers. Stem cells were going to revolutionize everything we knew about medicine and the research was going further than anyone could have dreamed. The possibility of reversing organ degeneration, even extending life, was hovering right out there, just at humankind's fingertips. It cried out for a major book.

He had read everything that had made its way into the medical journals, but the study that was furthest along was privately funded and now cloaked in secrecy. It was at the Gerex Corporation, whose head researcher was a Dutch genius named Karl Van de Vliet. The company had been bankrolled by the medical mogul Winston Bartlett after Van de Vliet lost his funding at Stanford.

Winston Bartlett, of all people . . . but that was another story.

Thirteen months earlier, the Gerex Corporation had trolled for volunteers on the National Institutes of Health Web site, referring to a pending "special study." The notice suggested the study might be using stem cell technology in some fashion. If that study was what Stone Aimes thought it was, it would be the first to use stem cells in stage‑three clinical trials. Nobody else was even close.

Karl Van de Vliet was the ball game. Unfortunately, however, his study was being held in an atmosphere of military‑like secrecy. Why? Even the identities of the participants in the trials were like a state secret. Since Winston Bartlett owned Gerex, it surely had been ordered by him. You had to wonder what that was all about.

Whatever the reason, Stone Aimes knew that in order to finish his book with the latest information he had to get to Van de Vliet. But Bartlett had forbidden any interviews, and Gerex's clinic, called the Dorian Institute, was off‑limits to the public and reportedly guarded with serious security.

But, he thought, perhaps he had just come up with an idea of how to get around that. . . .

He stared a moment longer at the dim reflection coming back at him from the antiglare screen, which now informed him that his cover feature had been chopped. Truthfully, it was happening more and more; this was the third time in eight months that a major muckraking piece had been axed. Also, as he stared at it, the reflection told him he wasn't getting any younger. The hairline was no longer where it had been in his college photos—it was up about half an inch—and the blue eyes were sadder, the lines under them deeper.

Still, the tousled brown hair was thick enough, the brow mostly wrinkle‑free, and he still had hope. He wasn't exactly young anymore, but neither was he "getting on." The "Willy Loman" years remained safely at bay. He was thirty‑nine and divorced, with an ex‑wife, Joyce, who had departed to be a garden designer in northern California, taking with her their daughter, Amy, on whom he doted. He had a one‑bedroom, rent‑controlled apartment in the East Nineties, on the top floor of a fashionable brownstone. He was socially unattached, as the expression goes, but he was so compulsive about finishing the book that he spent weekends hunched over his IBM Aptiva, nursing a six‑pack of Brooklyn Lager and writing deathless prose. The truth was he was lonely, but he didn't allow himself to think about it.

He'd always vowed he'd amount to something by forty. And now it was as much for Amy as for himself. She lived with his ex‑wife near El Cerrito, California, and she meant the world to him. The mortifying part was, he was a week behind with this month's support check. And he knew Joyce needed the money. It made him feel like a callous deadbeat dad when the real culprit was an unlucky confluence of inescapable bills. He’d make it up next week, but he’d sworn he would never let this happen.

That was why he had a larger game plan. Get out of this frigging day job and finish the book. The time for that plan to kick in was approaching at warp speed. This last insult was surely God's not‑so‑subtle way of informing him that his future was in the freelance world. Every day out there would be a gamble, but he could write anything he damn well pleased.

There was a parable set down by the ancient Taoist philosopher Lao Tzu that Stone Aimes reflected on more and more these days. It was the story of two oxen: One was a ceremonial sacrificial ox who, for the year before he meets the axe, was feted with garlands of lotus flowers and plied with ox goodies. The other was a wild ox who had to scrounge in the forest for every scrap. But, the story went, on the day the ax was to drop, what wouldn't that ceremonial ox give to change places with that haggard struggling, underfed wild ox?

That's the one he empathized with. The one who was out there, half starved but free.

The Sentinel was an iron rice bowl that normally never let anybody go except for grossest incompetence or flagrant alcoholism. On the other hand getting ahead was all about office politics, kissing the managing editor's hindquarters, and copying him on every memo to anybody to make sure nobody else took credit for something you thought of.

On the plus side, he knew he was a hell of a medical journalist. There was such a gap between medical research and what most people knew, the field cried out for a Stephen Hawking of health, a medical Carl Sagan. The way he saw it, there was room at the top and he was ready for a major career breakthrough. He had done premed at Columbia before switching to journalism, and these days he read the Journal of the American Medical Association from cover to cover, every issue, along with skimming the many other journals now on the web.

The piece that just got cut was intended to show the world that investigative journalism was alive and well and trying to make a difference. He'd documented that hospital mistakes were actually the eighth leading cause of death in the United States. The Institute of Medicine estimated that medical errors caused between fifty and a hundred thousand deaths a year—rivaling the number from auto accidents or AIDS. (He'd gotten enough data to be able to quantify how many of those deaths were in leading New York hospitals.) Yet there was no federal law requiring hospitals to report mistakes that caused serious injury or death to patients.

The reason seemed to be that the medical lobby‑‑he'd named names—had successfully turned back all attempts by Congress to pass such a law, even though it was a formal recommendation by the Institute of Medicine. The problem was, once you admitted you screwed up, you could get sued.

So there was no formal accountability.

But (and here was the constructive part) if patients' medical records were put on the Web—everything, even their medications—it could make a big dent in the all‑too‑frequent hospital medication foul‑ups. That alone could cut accidental hospital deaths in half.

He'd pitched Jay Grimes, the managing editor, to let him do a five‑thousand‑word piece for the Sentinel. Jay had agreed and even promised him the front page. Jay liked him, but since all the real decisions were made by the owners, not‑so‑affectionately known as the Family, there wasn't much Jay could do to protect his people. Stone now realized that more than ever.

The e‑mail on his Compaq's screen was from Jane Tully, who handled legal affairs for the paper. Apparently, Jay didn't have the balls to be the hatchet man, so he'd given the job to Jane, who could throw in a little legal mumbo jumbo for good measure. And she hadn't even had the courtesy to pick up the phone to do the deed. Instead, she'd sent a frigging e‑mail: See attached. Corporate says legal implications convey unacceptable risk. Consider an op‑ed piece. That way the liability will be all yours. Love and kisses.

And of course, by "Corporate," she meant the Family (or, more likely, their running‑dog attorneys down on Nassau Street).

It was really too bad about Jane. She was a young‑looking thirty‑six and had her own legal practice with a large law firm in midtown, but she always dropped by before her Sunday brunch to answer any legal questions that might be pending before the Sentinel was put to bed. Stone knew pretty well how her mind worked. He should. Jane Tully was his former, very former, significant other.

They d lived together for a year and a half on First Avenue in the East Sixties. But she was type A (tailored Armani suits and always on time) and he was a type B (elbow patches and home‑cooked pasta). The denouement had been seismic and full of acrimony and accusations.

So was she killing this major piece out of spite? he wondered. Just to prove one last time who really had the cojones?

Actually, it would have been nice to think so. That would put a human face on this gutless travesty. But the attached memo had enough legal jargon that another reason was immediately suggesting itself. The owners of the paper, the Family, the fucked‑up twins Harry and Bosco and their mother, Adeline, the heirs of Edward Jordan, actually were afraid of a lawsuit. The attachment had the fingerprints of the Family's attorneys all over it. Jane was just carrying out marching orders.

And sure enough, there at the bottom was a second message, unsigned and not part of the original memo. She had written clearly ITMB.

That was their old code for "I tried my best."

Well, Jane baby, who the hell knows. Maybe you did.

Damn, it wasn't supposed to be like this. He wasn't trying

to be a Carl Bernstein, for chrissake. For once, all he wanted was to report a story exactly the way it was, and then try to help. He ultimately wanted to fix, not fault.

He hit a button and printed out a copy of everything, then minimized the screen, grabbed his jacket, and walked down the hall. Was this the moment to quit? It was, except he couldn't afford to. He'd never managed to put enough aside to take off a year and live on air and write and still get that fifteen‑hundred‑dollar check out to Joyce and Amy every first of the month.

He got to the bank of elevators and pushed the button for the third floor and stepped on. The inspection sticker framed just above the controls actually told the whole saga of why his cover story about sloppy procedures in New York and national hospitals had been killed. The building was owned by Bartlett Enterprises, the real estate holding company of Winston Bartlett.

The Sentinel held a very favorable lease, renewable for another ten years at only a 5 percent increase when it rolled over in seven months. The Jordan family had gotten it in the early 1990s, when New York real estate was still in the toilet from the stock market crash of '87, and for once Winston Bartlett really screwed up. Now it was about a fifth of the going price per square foot.

So naturally he was about to do everything he could to break the lease. He was that kind of guy. The Jordan family, owners of the Sentinel, probably figured that a big lawsuit by the AMA or somebody would overtax their legal budget and give Bartlett a shot at their soft underbelly. Thus no boats were to be rocked.

The elevator chimed and he stepped off on three. This floor had subdued lighting and understated birch paneling, pale white, in the reception area. It was as though power didn't need to trumpet itself. Everybody knew who had it

He waved at Rhonda, the receptionist, and strode past. She glanced up, then said, "Does she know you're coming?"

She knew full well he was headed down to see Jane. Unlike most organizations, which take Sunday off, this was always a big day for the Sentinel, with all hands on deck.

"Thought I'd give her a little surprise."

"No kidding." She was reaching for the phone. "I think maybe I should—"

"Not necessary." He was charging down the hall, feeling knee‑deep in the thick beige carpet. "I've got a feeling she's expecting me."

Jane's door was open and she was on the phone. But when she saw him, she said something abruptly and hung up. He strode through the door, then slammed it. The decor was bold primary colors, like her take on life. Explicit.

"Okay," he demanded, "what the hell's going on? How about the real story?"

"Love, you know you can't hang the Family out with that kind of liability," she declared, then got up and came around her desk and cracked open the door half a foot. "And you're the one person here I can't have a closed‑door meeting with. It'll just get people talking again."

"Good. Let the world hear. It's time everybody on this floor learned what a bunch of gutless owners we have." He watched the crisp way she moved, picture‑perfect inside her deep blue business suit, complete with a white blouse and a man's red tie. Seeing her here, hair clipped short, glasses, in an office brimming with power, you'd never guess she liked nothing better than to be handcuffed during sex.

"Stone, have you ever considered growing up?" She settled back into her chair. The desk was bare except for her notebook computer, an expensive IBM ThinkPad T25. Power all the way. "The Family's attorneys are just trying to keep us from getting dragged into court. At least until we can get the paper's lease on this building renewed. We're going to need to focus on that negotiation, not be distracted by some massive libel suit brought on by an irresponsible, mudslinging piece. You practically accused the AMA of bribery, and you named three senators. One from New Jersey, for chrissake. Stone, there might be a time for that, but this is not it."

This was exactly the reason he'd expected. What it really meant was, the Family was scared stiff of Winston Bartlett. They figured he was going to go to court to try to break the Sentinel's lease.

"Let me ask you a question. Whatever happened to journalistic ethics around here? Remember that Statement of Purpose they have everybody sign before they could be hired. 'All the news, without regard'. . . you know. We were both so damned proud to be a part of that. Now you're helping them kill anything that's the slightest bit controversial. Is that what we've come to?"

"Stone, what the New York Sentinel has come to is to try and stay out of legal shit till their lease is renewed." She brushed an imaginary lock of hair from her face, a residual gesture she once used to stall for time when she actually did have long hair. "Just let it go, won't you? To get the signed and notarized documentation we'd need to run that piece— assuming we even could—would cost a fortune in time and resources."

Well, he told himself, there was possibly something to that, from a legal standpoint. But this was not the moment to let sweet reason run riot.

"Okay, look, if you or the Family, or whoever the hell, believe I'm going to go quietly, you'd better get ready for some revisionist thinking. If this piece gets spiked, after all the work I put into it—and dammit, Jane, you know I can document everything I write; that's the way I work—then I bloody well want something back from this gutless rag. Actually, it's something I want from you."

"You're not really in a position to—"

"Hey, don't try to ream me twice in the same morning." He walked around her desk and gazed down at the street. The Sunday‑morning traffic was light. He also noticed that there was a public phone on the corner. Good, he'd be using it in about eight minutes. Then he took a moment to reflect on how nice it was to actually have a window. Of any kind. "You know the saying, the pen is mightier than the sword. I'm about to prove that once and for all, but there's something I need I need a half hour’s face time with one of Bartlett's employees. A certain Dr. Karl Van de Vliet. He runs a company that Bartlett bought out, called the Gerex Corporation. Strictly for fact‑checking. They've got some important clinical trials going on at a clinic in New Jersey that I need to hear about."

She looked at him in sincere disbelief.

"Stone, how on earth am I supposed to—"

"You talk to the Family's lawyers. They've gotta be talking to Bartlett's attorneys by now. Make it happen."

"And why exactly—?"

"Because I have a book contract, Jane. And in the process I need to find out everything there is to know about Winston Bartlett's biggest undertaking ever. He has bankrolled something that could change the face of medicine."

"You're doing a book about Bartlett?" Her astonishment continued growing and appeared to be genuine. "Jesus, you didn't tell—"

"Hello. That's because who or what I write about on my own dime is nobody's effing business around here."

Now he was thinking about Winston Bartlett and wondering why he'd never told her the most important piece of information in his life. It was how he was connected to the man. He often wondered if maybe that was why he was doing this book on stem cells, knowing that half of it would end up being about Bartlett's self‑serving, take‑no‑prisoners business career. His infinite cruelty. Was the book actually revenge?

"You know you'll have to get permission to reprint anything you've published in the Sentinel. The paper owns the rights to—"

"Didn't you hear me?" He smiled. "It's a book. My book. There's no editorial overlap."

"Who's the publisher?"

"They exist, trust me."

His small publisher wasn't exactly Random House, but they were letting him do whatever he wanted.

"It didn't start out being a book about Bartlett, per se," he went on, "but now he's becoming a central figure, because of what's going on—or possibly not going on—at Gerex."

She was losing her famous poise.

"What . . . what are you writing?"

"The end of time. The beginning of time. I don't know which it is. You see, the Gerex clinic in northern New Jersey has clinical trials under way on some new medical procedure involving stem cells. At least that's what I think. They've clamped down on the information, but I believe Van de Vliet, who's the head researcher there, is perilously close to one of the most important breakthroughs in medical history. I just need to get all this confirmed from the horse's mouth."

"Is that what you want to interview him about?"

"He was available for interviews until about four months ago. I actually had one scheduled, but it abruptly got canceled. Bang, suddenly there's a total blackout on the project. They just shut down their press office completely. When I call, I get transferred to his CFO, some young prick who likes to blow me off. For starters, I'd like to know why it's all so hush‑hush."

"Stone, private medical research is always proprietary, for God's sake. Sooner or later he undoubtedly hopes to patent whatever he's doing. A privately held corporation doesn't have to report to anybody, least of all some nosy reporter."

That was true, of course. But Stone Aimes knew that the only way his book would be the blockbuster he needed to get free of the Sentinel was to tell the real story of what Gerex was in the process of achieving. And to be first doing it.

For which he needed access.

"Make it happen. Because, like it or not, Winston Bartlett is about to be the subject of a major volume of investigative journalism. I've already got a lot of what I need." That wasn't precisely the case, but there was no need to overdo brutal honesty. "The only question is, does he want it to be authorized or unauthorized? It's his choice."

Winston Bartlett, Stone knew all too well, was a man who liked nothing better than to see his name in the papers. In fact, he used the free publicity he always managed to get with his jet‑setting lifestyle to popularize his various business ventures. Like Donald Trump, he had made himself a brand name. So what was going on here? Was he just playing his cards close to the chest, waiting to make a dramatic big announcement? Or was he keeping this project secret because he was worried about some competing laboratory beating him to a patent?

Or was he hiding something? Had the clinical trials out in New Jersey gone off the track? Was he keeping the project hush‑hush because something was going on he didn't want the public to hear about? Had stem cell technology turned out to be an empty promise? Or had there been some horrible side effect they didn't want reported?

"So could you just raise this with his attorneys? Because if he lets Van de Vliet talk with me directly, he can be sure I'll get the story right. We can do this the easy way or the hard way. It's up to him."

"Stone, I hope you have an alternative career track in the advanced stages of planning. Because the minute the Family gets wind of this, that you're writing some tell‑all about Bartlett, they're going to freak. Even if you're doing it on your own time, you still work here. At least for the moment. Your name is associated in the public's mind with the Sentinel."

He knew that, which was why this was going to be all or nothing.

"Just do me this one itsy‑bitsy favor, Jane. It's the last thing I'll ever ask of you." He was turning to walk out. "And look on the bright side. When the Family finally sacks me for good and all, you won't have to write me any more nasty memos telling me to be a good boy."

He walked to the elevator and took it down. The next thing he had to do was make a phone call, and this was one that required a pay phone.

He'd thought about it and decided one possible way to encourage Bartlett to open up was to try to bluff him, to make the man think he knew more about the clinical trials than he actually did. There was only one way he could think to do that.

In premed days Stone Aimes had shared a dorm room at Columbia with Dale Coverton, who was now an M.D. and a deputy director at the National Institutes of Health. His office was at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.

One of the nice things about having friends who go way back is that sometimes, over all those years, something happens that gives one or the other a few chips to call in. Such was the case with Stone Aimes and Dale Coverton.

Dale's oldest daughter, Samantha, a blond‑haired track star and math whiz, had—at age thirteen—developed a rare form of kidney cancer and needed a transplant. She was given six months, tops, to live.

Stone Aimes had done a profile of her in the paper he worked for then, the New York Globe, and he'd found a transplant donor, a young girl on Long Island with terminal leukemia, who was able to the knowing she'd saved another person's life. The two had met and cried together, but Samantha was alive today because of Stone Aimes. It was a hell of a chit to call in, and he'd sworn he never would, but now he felt he had no choice. The truth was, Dale Coverton would have walked through fire for him. The question was, would he also violate NIH rules?

Stone hoped he would.

He stopped at the pay phone at the corner of Park and Eighteenth Street, an area where nine people out of ten were wearing at least one item of clothing that was black. It also seemed that six out of ten who passed were talking on cell phones. He took out a prepaid phone card and punched in the access number and then the area code for Bethesda, Maryland, followed by Dale's private, at‑home number. It was, after all, Sunday morning.

"Hey, Atlas, how's it going?" That had been Dale's nickname ever since he lifted two kegs of beer (okay, empty) over his head one balanced on each hand, at a Sigma frat blast their senior year. It now seemed like an eternity: for Dale, two wives ago, and for Stone, one wife and two live‑togethers.

"Hey, Truth and Justice, over and out." It was their all‑ purpose old code phrase for "I aced the quiz. I hit with the girl. I'm doing great."

"My man, I need some truth," Stone said. "Justice may have to wait."

A big delivery truck was backing up against the sidewalk, its reverse‑gear alarm piercing and deafening. The mid‑morning sun was playing hide‑and‑seek with a new bank of clouds in the south.

"That thing you told me about? Is that it?" Dale's voice immediately grew subdued. He was a balding blond guy with just enough hair left for a comb‑over. Beyond that, his pale gray eyes showed a special kind of yearning. He wanted truth and justice to prevail.

"Don't do anything that won't let you sleep nights. But this situation is very special. I was hoping I wouldn't have to come to you about what we talked about last month, but I'm running out of time and ideas." He paused, listening to the sound of silence. "I suppose it's too much to ask."

"Well, I still haven't seen any data or preliminary reports. The NIH monitor for those particular clinical trials is a woman called Cheryl Gates and she's not returning anybody's phone calls. The truth is, she doesn't have to. But another possibility is, she doesn't actually know beans and she's too embarrassed to admit it. If somebody wants to keep a monitor in the dark for strategic commercial reasons, it's easy enough to do."

"Well, how about the other thing? The thing we talked about. The list?"

He sighed. "I was afraid you might come to that. That's a tough one, Truth and Justice."

"Hey, you know I didn't want to ask. But I'm running out

of cards."

He sighed again. There was a long silence and then, "You know you're asking me to give you highly restricted access codes to the NIH Web site. We shouldn't even be talking about it. So officially the answer is no. That's for the record."

"Strictly your decision." But he had his fingers crossed, even as he was ashamed of himself for asking in the first place.

"Maybe this is God's way of letting me even up things a bit. It can't be something easy or it doesn't really count, does it?"

"I could end up knowing more about these trials than the NIH does," Stone said. "Because it doesn't sound like you guys actually know much at all."

"Let me think about it and send you an e‑mail tonight. Whatever comes up, it'll be 'scrambled eggs.'"

"Thanks, Atlas."

"Scrambled eggs" was a reference to a made‑up code system they'd used in college. A name or number was encoded by interlacing it with their old phone number. This time the interlaced number would be an access code for proprietary NIH data.

"I do not think I'm long for the world here at the Sentinel. We're forming a mutual hostility society."

"I sure as hell hope you've got a new career concept ready for the day when they give you the ax." Dale's attempt at a light tone did not quite disguise his concern.

"Funny, but that's the second time I've received that advice in the last half hour. I deem that unlucky."

"Stone, sometimes I think you ought to try not living your life so close to the damned edge. Maybe you ought to start practicing a little prudence, just to see what it feels like."

"I'm that wild ox we used to talk about I like to scrounge.

But I also like to look around for the biggest story I can find. I'm trying to get an interview with a guy on Bartlett's staff. Maybe our 'scrambled eggs' will flush him out."

"Just take care of yourself and keep in touch."

"You too."

And they both hung up.

Was this going to do the trick? he wondered. As it happened Stone Aimes already knew plenty about Bartlett's business affairs. He had been a lifelong student of Bartlett the man, and as part of his research into the Gerex Corporation he had pulled together an up‑to‑date profile of Bartlett's cash‑flow situation. If you connected the dots, you discovered his financial picture was getting dicey.

Bartlett was overextended and, like Donald Trump in the early 1990s, he needed to roll over some short‑term debt and restructure it. But his traditional lenders were backing away. He had literally bet everything on Van de Vliet. If his research panned out, then there was a whole new day for Bartlett Enterprises. That had to be what he was counting on to save his chestnuts.

The funny thing was, Bartlett didn't really like to spend his time thinking about money. One of his major preoccupations was to be in the company of young, beautiful women, usually leggy models.

Bartlett also had an estranged wife, Eileen, who reportedly occupied the top two floors of his mansion on Gramercy Park. Rumor had it she was a paranoid schizophrenic who refused to separate or give him a divorce. She hadn't been photographed for at least a decade, but there was no reason to think she wasn't still alive and continuing to make his life miserable.

Another tantalizing thing to know about Winston Bartlett was that he had bankrolled a Zen monastery in upstate New York twenty years ago and went there regularly to meditate and recharge. He had once claimed in a Forbes interview, that the monastery was where he honed his nerves of steel and internalized the timing of a master swordsman.

The Forbes interview was also where he claimed he had quietly amassed the largest collection of important Japanese samurai swords and armor outside of Japan. For the past five years he had been lobbying the Metropolitan Museum of Art to agree to lend its dignity to an adjunct location for his collection, and to name it after him. The Bartlett Collection. Winston Bartlett lusted for the prestige that an association with the Met would bring him.

At the moment some of his better pieces were housed in a special ground‑floor display in the Bartlett Building in TriBeCa. Most of the collection, however, was in storage. He had recently bought a building on upper Park Avenue and some people thought he was planning to turn it into a private museum.

Well, Stone thought, if the stem cell project works out, he could soon be rich enough to buy the Metropolitan.

He walked back to the lobby of his building and stood for a moment looking at himself in the plate glass. Yes, the older he got, the more the resemblance settled in. Winston Bartlett. Shit Thank goodness nobody else had ever noticed it.

[Chapter 4]

Sunday, April 5

9:00 a.m.

When Ally and Knickers walked into her lobby, Alan, the morning doorman, was there, just arrived, tuning his blond acoustic guitar.

Watching over her condominium building was his day job, but writing a musical for Off Broadway (about Billy the Kid) was his dream. He was a tall, gaunt guy with a mane of red hair he kept tied back in a ponytail while he was in uniform and on duty. Everybody in the building was rooting for him to get his show mounted, and he routinely declared that he and his partner were this close to getting backers. "We're gonna have the next Rent, so you'd better invest now" was how he put it. Alan had the good cheer of a perpetual optimist and he needed it, given the odds he was up against.

Knickers immediately ran to him, her tail wagging.

"Hey, Nicky baby, you look beautiful," he effused. Then he struck a bold E minor chord on his guitar, like a flamenco fanfare, and reached to pat her. "Come here, sweetie."

"Hi, Alan. How's everything?" Seeing him always bucked Ally up. He usually came on duty while she was out for her run, and she looked forward to him as her first human contact of the day. He was younger than she was—early thirties—but she thought him attractive in an East Village, alternative‑lifestyle sort of way. He was very proud of the new yin and yang tattoos on his respective biceps. She admired his guts and his willingness to stick to his dream, no matter the degradation of his life in the meantime.

"Doing great, Ms. Hampton. Things are moving along."

"Alan, I've told you a million times to call me Ally." Anything else made her feel like a hundred‑year‑old matron.

"Hey, right, I keep forgetting." Then he nodded at the manila envelope Grant had just given her. "Pick that up on your run?"

"I was ambushed by my ex‑brother. He passed it along."

"What's that mean?" he asked with a funny look. "Brothers are for keeps."

"Unfortunately, you're right, Alan. The whole thing was long ago. And not far away enough." She was urging a reluctant Knickers on through the inner door. "Seeing him just now was sort of like an aftershock. From a big earthquake in another life."

"Sounds like you need a hard hat," he said, and turned back to his guitar, humming. And dreaming.

She took the elevator up to the top floor and let herself into her apartment, as always feeling a tinge of satisfaction at where she lived. Home, sweet home.

Her loft‑style apartment was in an idiosyncratic building whose six‑year‑old renovation had been designed by her old architectural firm, just before she had to leave and take over CitiSpace. It was their first big job in the city. She was the one who had designed the large atrium in the middle and the open glass elevators that let you look out at tall trees as you went up and down.

She loved the building, but at the time she couldn't have begun to afford an apartment there. Later, when she could, none was available. Then she heard through the managing agent that a German owner, after completely gutting his space, had to return to his homeland in a hurry and was throwing it on the market for half what he’d paid.

She’d built a bedroom at one end—walling off an area with glass bricks that let light through—and installed a "country" kitchen at the other, but beyond that it was hardwood floors and open space and air and light, along with a panoramic view of the Hudson River out the north window and a central skylight that kept her in touch with the sky and the seasons. In much of Manhattan it was possible to go for months and not actually walk on soil. You could completely lose the sense memory of the feeling of earth beneath your feet. She didn't want to lose the sky too. Since she couldn't afford a brownstone with a rear garden, the next best thing was to have a giant skylight.

What she really dreamed of was to someday have a vacation home on the Caribbean side of the Yucatan, where she could wake to the sounds of the surf and play Bach partitas to the seabirds in the coconut palms. She felt there was something spiritual in the pure sound of a stringed instrument. It was sweetness and joy crystallized. It went with the sound of surf. They belonged together.

She had actually researched and designed that dream house already. The place itself would be based on the Mayan abodes of a thousand years ago, on stilts with a bamboo floor and a palm‑frond roof to provide natural ventilation.

And since this was all a dream, she could fantasize that Steve was alive and was there too. Maybe this was her version of the Muslim Paradise, a land of milk and honey and infinite beauty and pleasure. Sometimes late at night, when the world was too much with her, she would put on headphones and a Bach CD and imagine she was on that beach in the Yucatan, gazing up at the glorious stars.

The other thing she wanted to do someday was memorize the first violin score of all the Beethoven late quartets. But now any intensive playing, which was more tiring than it looked brought on chest pains after a few minutes. Shit. She felt like she was slowly being robbed of everything she loved. . . .

She decided to stop with the negative thoughts and get ready for the stressful day to come. She just needed a few quiet moments to get mentally prepared for it.

The first thing she did was give Knickers an early morning snack, then a fresh bowl of water and a large rawhide chew to occupy her energy for part of the day. After that, she would shower and change for the trip uptown.

She had to dress for the rest of the day, which eventually might include going down to the office, if she had the time and inclination, so she decided to just throw on jeans and a sweater. She didn't pay any attention to the envelope Grant had given her; she just tossed it onto the burnt‑tile breakfast counter.

She told herself there wasn't time to look at it now, but she also realized she had a very serious psychological resistance to opening it. She hadn't anticipated that just seeing him once more would make her this tense and angry. His proposition was surely part of some kind of scam. She'd vowed never to believe him again. It was going to take a lot of persuading to get her to break that resolve.

Look at it later. Whenever.

She gave Knickers a good‑bye pat and headed out the door.

In times gone by, she took Knickers with her, since her mother loved to give her sinful sugar treats and fuss over her, but these days Nina's condition was never predictable. Knickers was one confusing element too many.

On the trip uptown she always stopped at Zabar's for some smoked fish that she could pass off as "kippers" and some buttery scones. Nina was born in a little place called Angmering‑on‑Sea, in southern England, and she was an unreconstructed Brit. She insisted on oatmeal (the nutty, slow‑ cooked kind) for breakfast on weekdays and kippers and dark tea on weekends.

Now when Ally visited, she never knew what to expect. Some Sundays Nina could be as spunky as Phyllis Diller, and other times she seemed to barely recognize her. (Though she sometimes wondered if her mom just acted that way so she’d leave sooner and let her get back to her Spanish‑language soaps. She claimed to be watching them to study Hispanic culture, but Ally suspected the real reason was their racy clothes and plot lines.)

And today, on the anniversary of Arthur's tragic death, would she even remember him? Early‑onset Alzheimer's could proceed at a frightening pace.

Nina had been a notable Auntie Mame kind of figure around Greenwich Village for decades. She smoked Woodbine cigarettes fiendishly and was forever giving homeless people food and handouts. She had adopted the garden at St. Luke's and worked there weeding and pruning and planting and nurturing from late spring to early autumn. As soon as afternoon tea was completed, she waited an only moderately decent interval before her first scotch and soda. Room temperature. No ice.

"One should have a little something, shouldn't one?"

Arthur joined her to have a cocktail after work once in a while, but mainly he successfully kept his mouth shut about her smoking and drinking. Everyone knew she was destined to live to a hundred. Cancer was surely terrified to go near her. But then the Alzheimer's struck.

One of Nina's greatest gifts was an unerring BS detector. She had been skeptical about Grant since he was in his twenties. She deemed him a hollow suit, full of vapid ambition. She also believed his irresponsible behavior was a contributing factor to Arthur's death, though she did not have the same ferocity of feeling about it that Ally did. She had had him pegged as a no‑goodnik for so long that she already had zero expectations about his character.

In any case, Grant contributed nothing to the care of Nina and that suited Ally just fine. As part of the post‑tragedy financial restructuring, she sold their Greenwich Village condo, which was too big and too full of memories for Nina to continue living there. She then found her a rent‑regulated one‑bedroom apartment in a wonderful old building on Riverside Drive, and when Nina's early‑onset Alzheimer's progressed to the point where she couldn't really be relied upon to take proper care of herself, she arranged for a very conscientious and sprightly woman from the Dominican Republic to be her full‑time caregiver.

Maria was devoted to Nina, and Ally didn't know anyone who could have been more nurturing. She had been there for nine months and she also used Nina's space to baby‑sit periodically for her daughter, Natalie, who had a darling five‑ year‑old son. What would the next stage be, Ally wondered fearfully, and would her mother's medical insurance pay for it, whatever it was? She didn't know the answer and she was terrified.

Aging. It was nature's process to make way for the new, but why did the last act have to be so cruel? Seeing her mother this way made her sometimes think that perhaps Arthur was luckier than anyone knew. He'd managed to miss out on having to watch the woman he loved go into a humiliating decline.

Then she thought about her own mortality, the heart condition that refused to get any better. Dr. Ekelman had never been more serious. Slow down, take it easy, watch out for warning signs. She'd said everything except start saving up for a transplant. Or maybe she was just postponing that announcement as long as possible.

Dammit, why couldn't she do something to make her heart stronger? That was the most frustrating part of all. The rest of her body could still have run a mile before breakfast. She could traipse all over lower Manhattan Saturdays, shopping for herbs in Chinatown and shoes in SoHo. Damn. Why wouldn't her heart get with the program?

Half an hour later, a big Zabar's bag on the seat beside her, she found a space for her Toyota right on Riverside Drive, just across from the park. She took a final look at the sky, which was bright and blue and cheerful, and then, bag in hand, she headed up.

Nina's building was a dark brick prewar and had no doorman, though the super's apartment was right off the lobby, allowing him to receive packages and generally keep an eye on comings and goings. To Ally, the bland, inevitably tan hallways in many old West Side buildings had a musty quality to them that always left her depressed. But her mother’s eighth‑floor apartment was light and airy—after Ally had had it remodeled and redecorated—and she couldn't have wanted a more cheerful home. The wallpaper was a light floral pattern and the overstuffed furniture was buried in enough pillows to please Martha Stewart. And in the living room there was the piano her mother once played, now covered with photos from happier times, and a stereo system with a turntable.

When she buzzed Maria came to the door with an unusually bright smile.

Great! Ally could always tell immediately from Maria's face whether her mom was having a good day or bad day. Today, she knew immediately, was going to be good.

"Miss Hampton, she was asking about you, wondering when you'd get here," Maria said. "She remembered this is the day you come."

Maria was half a head shorter than Ally, and her hair was dyed a defiant black. She had an olive complexion and her fine features made her a handsome woman for late fifties. She always wore bold silver jewelry that might have done more for her daughters than for her, but Ally liked the spunky persona that went along with too many accessories. She still had a trace of her Spanish accent even after all the years in New York. On days when her mother was cognizant, Maria was the perfect companion for her.

Ally handed over the Zabar's bag and walked in. "Hi, sweetie."

Nina was on the lounger, where she spent most of her waking hours. Yes, she was definitely having a good day today. She'd done a full makeup number.

Her face could only be described as youthful, no matter that she was past sixty‑five. She had elegant cheekbones and a mouth that was still sensuous. And her blue eyes remained lustrous, though nowadays they often seemed to be searching for something, or someone, no longer there. She had a colorist come in every three weeks to keep her hair the same brunette it had always been, and that had a way of making Ally fantasize she hadn't aged at all. Ally also felt—hoped—she might be looking at a spitting image of herself some decades hence. You could do a lot worse.

The TV was on, sound turned low, and her mother was staring at the multihued screen. Probably the tape of a Spanish‑language soap she'd somehow missed. Three cosmetic‑heavy women in deeply cut blouses were arguing, all appearing either angry or worried or both.

In times past Nina was always starting some new project, claiming that was how she kept her mind alert. She had taught herself French and had a very good accent, particularly for a Brit. Just before the Alzheimer's hit, she decided to try to learn Spanish, as something to divert her mind and keep it active. She also wanted to be able to chat with the increasingly Hispanic workforce in restaurants and delis.

Now, though, Ally thought her mom was continuing the language study as part of a program of denial. Nina knew her mind was being stripped from her, but she was determined to try to wrestle it back by giving herself mental challenges. The struggle was hopeless, of course, but her spirit refused to admit that.

Ally bent down and kissed her clear white forehead. "Hey, how's it going?"

"Look at those pathetic creatures," she declared, only barely acknowledging Ally's presence. "If boobs were brains, they'd all be Einstein. In my day women knew how to make themselves attractive. Simplicity. Less is more."

Yep, Ally thought, this is going to be a good day. She's obviously spent an hour on makeup. For all her complaining she probably watches Maria’s soaps at least in part to glean cosmetic tips. Who knew, maybe she was learning Spanish too, like she claimed. Dear God, let her do it.

Maria was looking into the Zabar's bag. "Oh, she's going to love this. Could you come in the kitchen and help me fix a tray?"

That's strange, Ally thought. Maria thinks I'm all thumbs around food preparation and she never wants me in the kitchen.

The apartment was old enough that the kitchen was a separate room with an open doorway. When they stepped inside, Maria set down the bag and turned to her.

"There was a man here yesterday. I never saw him before. He said he was your brother. Is that true?"

Ally felt a chill go through her body.

"Your mother seemed to know him," Maria went on, "but I wasn't sure whether she might have just been pretending. Sometimes you never know what she gets or doesn't get. She's a good faker."

"What... what did he want?"

"Well, the first thing seemed to be that he wanted to ask your mother a question about you. Then he started trying to talk her into going to some clinic out in New Jersey, where they might be able to help ... her mind."

Shit. What is he up to? Is he trying to get to me through Nina?

"You said he asked Mom a question about me? What—"

"What are you two whispering about?" came a voice from the doorway.

"All kinds of secrets." Ally glanced up and smiled. "Maria was just telling me about a visitor you had yesterday, Mom. Do you remember if anyone came to see you?"

"Pish. Of course I remember. Seth. But sometimes I think I'd just as soon not." She stared at Ally, those searching blue eyes boring in. "Do you ever see him anymore?"

Funny you should ask, she thought.

Then she wondered, why not tell the truth? She couldn't think of any reason not to.

"As a matter of fact, Mom, Grant came by my building this very morning. I hadn't seen him in ages. He called and said he wanted to meet me while I was out running. I told him to bug off, but he came anyway. He wanted me to... Let's just say he's still wheeling and dealing."

Nina looked at her for a long moment.

"He showed up here yesterday morning, darling, out of the blue. After all those years when he didn't give a shit— excuse my Francais. I acted like I didn't quite know who he was, but I got every word. He's still spending his salary on clothes. He talked a lot, saying he knew a man—a doctor with some kind of experimental treatment—who could turn back the clock on my ... or at least stop it. He could give me a chance to take my mind back. And then he left his card. He wanted me to talk to you about it and then call him back."

Grant, you bastard. You didn't say a word about any of this. What're you trying to do?

No need for rocket science. He was using Nina as bait. This was his way to make sure she was dragged into whatever shenanigans he was up to. If he got Nina out to that place in New Jersey, whatever it was, it would be like he had a hostage.

She was so angry she was gasping for air. And she felt that damned tightness in her chest coming on.

"I told Maria to throw the card away," Nina went on, "but then I got to wondering. What if it's true?"

"You don't really think—"

"Of course not," Nina declared, but Ally wasn't sure how much she meant it. "Probably he just needs money. That'll come next. I'd guess he's hoping I'll give him a 'down payment' for this 'treatment,' whatever it is. That's surely what's going on. Trying to take advantage of a senile old woman."

Nina didn't appear to be fooled. Or was she? Sometimes she did her thinking out loud before coming to a conclusion.

"Seth may be barking up the wrong tree with me, Ally," she went on. "I'm not sure I want any of his miracle cures. I've lived my life. I'm tired." She looked away. "When you're young, you never think about what it's like to be old. But then when you do get old you somehow can't imagine being young again. Having to do it all over..." Her voice trailed off.

Yes, Ally thought, you’ve had plenty of pain you wouldn't want to relive.

Nina sat back down on her flowered chaise and closed her eyes. "Do you know what day this is?"

"I was hoping you'd remember." She reached and grasped her hand. "It's been five years today. Exactly."

"I still have nightmares about it, the horror, " Nina said, her eyes still closed "but he did it for me, you know. He thought the insurance was all that would save me. And then when it didn't . . . So now we've got to hang on with all we've got. For him." She opened her eyes and looked directly at Ally. "One day soon, maybe sooner than we think, I'm going to be mad as a hatter. Time, Ally, time has played a cruel joke. God the Prankster is keeping me in physical health so I can experience every step of my own degradation." Then she glanced back at the Spanish soap and went on. "I hope you know how to enjoy life, while you're still full of it. Don't miss a minute."

"I'm going to try, Mom." Ally squeezed her hand again and for that moment sensed Nina was her old self. She wasn't going to tell her about Dr. Ekelman and the latest heart news. But if she did the response would probably still be the same. Just live life for all it’s worth. You never know if there's even going to be a tomorrow.

"Would you put on some Janacek?" she said finally, aiming the remote at the TV and clicking it off. "One of the string quartets. I've had my fill of Hispanic tarts. I've learned a good deal of Spanish from them, but sometimes I think understanding what they're saying just makes it all that much cheaper."

That was when Ally realized with a burst of joy that Nina still had an interior life that she was carefully hoarding. What else was going on in that mind? The sense of the night closing in? Do not go gentle. Please. Stay awhile with me.

She got up and went over to the record cabinet. Her mother still had her collection of old 33s, today they were called vinyl, with conductors from decades ago like Bruno Walter and Arturo Toscanini. She found a Janacek String Quartet, No. 2, a rare mono pressing by the old Budapest String Quartet fifty years ago, and put it on the turntable, still loving those first crackling sounds that raise your anticipation. She remembered how Nina would put on a record in the evening, after dinner, with room‑temperature scotch in hand, and make the family sit and listen. She suspected that had a lot to do with her own desire to play the violin herself someday. And then, in high school, she started lessons. Better late than never.

Now, though, she sensed there was something Nina wanted to tell her and this was her way of setting the stage.

After the music had played for almost three minutes, Nina listening with eyes closed as though in a rapture as the movement clawed its way toward an initial theme in an elusive minor mode, she turned and looked at Ally.

"He didn't tell you he came to see me, did he? Seth?"

"I guess he forgot," Ally said. It was a lie neither of them believed.

"I've been thinking over all he was trying to say. I didn't get everything at the time, but I guess my feeble mind was recording it. Now it's all coming back. He was talking about Arthur and his suicide—Ally, we both know that's what it was—and how he felt responsible and how he was finally going to be able to make up for all the harm he'd done to me, and to you. But he was worried you might not want to go along with this special treatment for me." She was studying Ally, as though searching for an answer. Maria had discreetly departed for the kitchen. "He kept talking about this doctor he knew. At this clinic. He swore this man could perform a miracle for me. He said I should do it, whether you approved or not."

Ally looked at her, wondering what to say. This was getting too devious for words.

Then Nina went on. "I'll probably not remember anything about this by tomorrow. But I just wanted to tell you. When you get as mentally addled as I am now, you compensate by developing your other senses, I call it your sixth sense. And Ally, I think he's involved in something that's evil. And he wants to draw me into it, maybe both of us." She stopped carefully framing her words. "I sensed a kind of desperation about him. I don't know exactly what it was."

As Ally listened the Janacek quartet swelling in the room, scratches and all, she felt more and more like an utter dunce. She hadn't caught any of this in Grant's come‑on, but now . . . Nina was right about that sixth sense.

But what could the real story be? Grant was more a simple con artist than some embodiment of evil. Think the Music Man in designer threads, not Darth Vader. Evil was surely too strong a word He was just the consummate self‑promoting hustler. The troubling part was, he was so damned good at it.

"Mom, you're wonderful today. Why don't we all three go somewhere for brunch now? Right now. There's a new French place just down Columbus that needs checking out."

She had an eerie foreboding it might be their last chance.

"No, honey, you brought some smoked fish, didn't you? That's all I want." Nina dismissed the idea with a wave of her hand. "Besides, no one in this town knows how to brew a proper pot of tea." Then, the next thing Ally knew, she was back to musing out loud about Grant. "I can't stop wondering. He said this doctor he knows might work a miracle for me. What am I supposed to think?"

Ally was trying to decide whether a glimmer of hope, even though it was almost certainly false, might be a healthy tonic for Nina just now.

"Mom, Grant gave me some materials about that doctor. I'll read them tonight, I promise." She was listening to the Janacek quartet soar, and it was bucking her up. "Let me see what I can find out."

"He wants me to start in right away," Nina pressed. "I think he said there are some studies going on at this clinic, but they're almost over. It's free now, and unless I go soon, I can't get in the program. He said he would take me out there Monday morning if I wanted. But if I go with anybody, I want it to be you."

He’s such a bastard, Ally thought.

She glanced at Maria, who'd been watching from the kitchen door and listening to all that had happened. She was looking very upset and she motioned Ally toward the doorway with her eyes.

"Let me get a glass of water, Mom." She headed for the kitchen.

"Did you hear all the things she's talking about?" she asked when they were out of earshot.

Maria nodded. "A lot of what your mother said is true. It was very strange. At the time she acted like she didn't understand him. Now I realize she did. Or maybe it all just came back to her."

"What do you think is really going on?" Ally was studying her, hoping to get at the truth. "She seems a lot better today."

Maria paused a moment. "Miss Hampton, I don't believe your mother is going to be with us much longer. I saw my own go through much the same thing. There's always a glimmer just before ..." She looked down and stopped.

"You said Grant asked her something about me. What—"

"I don't think she remembers. He was asking her about your blood type. It seemed a very strange question."

Ally couldn't think of any reason why he would be asking that.

"Maria, what was your impression of him? Overall?"

"Just that he seemed very nervous. Very uneasy." She hesitated, as though uncertain how to continue. "He wanted something, Miss Hampton. That much I'm sure about. But

this doctor he wants to take her to. It sounded to me like he does things that are against the laws of nature."

"Grant wants me to go out to that clinic too."

"Whatever you do, just stay close to her," Maria said finally, picking up the tray with its smoked fish and teapot covered with a knit cozy. "She may not have that long."

Maria had a seer's mystical bent that sometimes troubled Ally. What if she was right? It was moments like this when Ally truly missed having someone special in her life.

[ ]

Chapter 5

Sunday, April 5

3:19 p.m.

The afternoon was waning when Ally finally headed back downtown. Days like today she couldn't help coining away buoyed, feeling her mom was going to be cogent forever.

In fact, Ally was more worried about herself just now. About two o'clock she'd started feeling that sensation in her chest again, but she hadn't wanted her mother, or Maria, to know she was using vasodilator medication. She casually said her farewells and got down to the car and was sitting behind the wheel before she popped a nitro tab. She immediately felt okay again, and as she drove down Broadway, heading for her office, she reviewed all that had happened.

After their brunch of smoked fish and onion chutney and soda bread and a pot of double‑strength Earl Grey, she'd tried to sell her mother on a trip to the Bahamas, with Maria joining them. Soon, maybe at the beginning of summer. She wanted Nina to spend some time thinking about it, but she didn't want to wait too long. Was this just going to be a distraction at the end of Nina's life? God, she didn't want to think so. She wanted to think of it as a rebonding.

Nina had always liked to revisit the Devonshire countryside of her childhood in midsummer—when Arthur could take time off—always for just a week, but it was as intensively planned as a major military campaign. Her favorite thing was to trek among the hedgerows and stone fences, making charcoal sketches on opened‑out brown bags. In the evenings they would dine en famille at a country inn. They went with local favorites, like kidney pie. Then they would stroll the country lanes in the moonlight as a family. No TV, and she and Grant hated everything about the trips. Booooring.

But that was long ago and far away, when she and Grant were still kids. Now her mom would surely want something restful. And some guaranteed sunshine wouldn't hurt either. Already she had an idea: why not rent a house with a private pool, say on Paradise Island where Nina could spend a couple of hours each afternoon in the casino? She'd always loved casinos, and never missed a chance to hit the blackjack tables if she was anywhere near one. Her loss limit was a hundred dollars, but she actually beat the house more often than not. The teatime scotch hadn't impaired her card‑counting skills.

Nina appeared to like the idea, so Ally had started making up a schedule in her head. The beginning of summer would be off‑season in the Caribbean and there should be some real bargains to be had. She made a mental note to ask Glenda, her assertive, gum‑chewing travel agent at Empress, to start trolling for a package.

What was Ally really thinking, hoping? She was fantasizing she could heal Nina all by herself. She so desperately wanted to, she had a premonition she could will it to happen. When she saw her mom on good days, she always found herself believing she could somehow make all her days good. She was sure of it, against all odds.

What she wasn't sure about was what her mother really thought about Grant's proposal to enroll her in this clinic in New Jersey. Was this doctor's "miracle" stem cell cure based on a real medical advance, or was he some kind of charlatan?

The first thing to do was to find out more about this supposed medical magician, Karl Van de Vliet. The envelope Grant gave her was still lying there on her breakfast bar, unopened. She told herself she'd read it the minute she got home tonight, when the day's work was over and she could concentrate....

The Sunday office. The interior‑design job she had on her mind was behind schedule and she was feeling a lot of pressure. It was for a Norwegian couple in their mid‑thirties. He was a software programmer working in New York's restructured Silicon Alley, and she was teaching at the Fashion Institute of Technology. Together they pulled down over 250 thou a year and they'd decided to stop throwing away money on obscene New York rents.

They bought an entire floor, actually three small apartments, of what was formerly a tenement in the West Fifties, an area once known as Hell's Kitchen but now much gentrified and renamed Clinton. They had dreams of an open‑space loft of the kind made famous in SoHo when artists took over abandoned factory buildings and gutted the space, taking out all the walls.

Because they had combined three apartments, they had to file their plans with the NYC Department of Buildings and modify the building's Certificate of Occupancy to reflect the change in the number of dwelling units.

So far so good, but then a woman who was the local member of the District Council got wind of the project and sent someone from her office to look over the place. The next day, the Department of Buildings' approval of their plans was abruptly withdrawn.

It turned out that there was an obscure law on the books concerning Clinton, one that even the Department of Buildings was only vaguely aware of. It said that in order to preserve the "family character" of the neighborhood, no renovation could alter the number of rooms in a residential building. Not the number of apartments, mind you, just the number of rooms.

That was when they showed up at CitiSpace in despair. They wanted Ally to help them by doing some kind of design that would satisfy the law and also give them the open, airy feeling they had set their hopes on. On the face of it, their two goals seemed mutually contradictory and impossible.

He was short and shy and she was plump and sassy and Ally liked them both a lot. Sometimes in this business she sensed she was helping people realize their dreams and that was a very rewarding feeling. Real estate was an emotional thing. Your home was a part of you. She always tried to get to know people before she did any designs for them. Sometimes design was more psychology than anything else.

But this time she had to solve a problem before she could wax creative. If their plan for open space could be stopped by some obscure local provision that even the Department of Buildings was fuzzy about, then maybe there was some other obscure law in the Housing Code that could be used to fight back. The full code had recently been put on the NYC Web site, so she wanted to go over every page and see what she could come up with. And she wanted to do it in the office, undisturbed with all the architectural plans close to hand.

The office was deserted when she cruised in and clicked on the lights. She got on the expansive NYC Web site and started poring over the Housing Code, though she was still obsessing about Nina. What if this doctor in New Jersey actually could do something for her?

Finish here, she told herself, and then go home and read the guy's CV.

A pot of decaf coffee later, she came across a little‑known fact, which she now vaguely remembered from her days as a practicing architect. If you installed a fifteen‑inch drop across a ceiling, that was technically a wall in the eyes of the NYC Department of Buildings. The space on each side became a separate "room."

As they say in the movies, bingo.

In fact, why not do a honeycomb ceiling that would actually simulate the industrial look they were seeking, anyway? The ceiling was over eleven feet high; there was plenty of vertical space. Nobody would know it was just a sneaky way to get around a funny local aberration in the Building Code.

I'm brilliant, she thought. Yes! Dad would be proud.

She made some sketches, and by that time it was after six. Time to go home.

Knickers was waiting by the door, and she gave Ally a dirty look and some very disapproving barks. By way of penance, Ally took her on an extra long walk, all the way up to Fourteenth Street and back. Then she picked up some tuna salad and steamed veggies from a new deli on West Tenth Street.

As she settled down to eat at the breakfast bar, she felt like a single mom, always eating and doing everything on the run—and all she had to worry about was a friendly dog. How did real working moms do it?

It was just past nine when she poured a glass of Chardonnay and picked up Grant's envelope and took it into the living room, pausing to put some Chopin ballades on the CD player.

The envelope contained a bound folder that was Dr. Karl Van de Vliet's curriculum vitae, his resume. It was in fact a minibiography that devoted a page to each of his career turns. His life story was presented from a god's‑eye view, as though it were a novel.

Karl Van de Vliet had done his undergraduate studies at the prestigious University of Maastricht after which he'd migrated to the United States and taken a Ph.D. in molecular genetics from the University of Chicago, top of the class. Following that he went to Yale as a postdoctoral fellow, again studying genetics.

From the beginning he focused his research on the mechanisms that govern human cell reproduction. Along the way he'd become interested in something known as the Hayflick limit—which concerned the number of times a cell could divide before it became senescent and ceased to replicate. This natural life span controlled the aging process of every organism, and it seemed to be nature's device for nipping undesirable (i.e. mutant) cells in the bud by never letting any cell, unhealthy or healthy, just keep on replicating indefinitely.

However, there were "immortal cells" buried within us all, so‑called stem cells that could replicate forever, unchanged. They were present at the very beginning of life and all our differing body tissue was created from them. Some still lingered on in our body, as though to be available for spare parts. If one could figure out how to transfer the characteristics of those cells to other cells, then the possibility existed that we could regenerate damaged or aging tissue in our vital organs. The trick was to figure out the mechanism whereby stem cells managed to cheat time.

His research, which was accompanied by a flurry of scientific papers, was celebrated and encouraging. After three years he was lured away from Yale to become a faculty member at Johns Hopkins, which offered to double his laboratory budget. He was there for six years, during which time he met Camille Buseine, a neurosurgeon finishing her residency.

She had a doctorate from a medical institute near Paris and she was doing research that was similar to his, so the biography said. They married and became a team, and when he was asked by Harvard Medical to found a department for molecular genetics, she was immediately offered a tenured position there too. Harvard considered it a double coup.

His research was zeroing in on the telomerase protein, an enzyme many scientists believed was responsible for suppressing the aging process in stem cells. Could it be used to regenerate tissue?

He was well along on the task of exploring that tantalizing possibility when tragedy struck. Camille, who had worked around the clock during her residency at Johns Hopkins, began feeling weak at Harvard and was diagnosed with acquired aortic stenosis. After a 2 1/2‑year struggle, she died during a severe cardiac episode.

My God, Ally thought, that's what I have.

After Camille died, he left Harvard and its time‑consuming academic obligations and went to work full‑time at a research institute affiliated with Stanford University. He even formed a paper company to structure the work, the Gerex Corporation. But then there came a second strike against him. He was doing research using embryonic stem cells obtained from the discarded embryos at fertility clinics. After two years of harassment by right‑wing political groups, Stanford decided his research was too controversial and terminated his funding.

Three months later, Karl Van de Vliet merged his company with Bartlett Medical Devices and moved his research staff east to New Jersey, to the Dorian Institute. That was five years past, and now his research using stem cells was in third‑stage NIH clinical trials.

The official history ended there, though with a strong hint that the final chapter was yet to be written. Then at the back there was a bibliography of publications that extended for eight pages, and included a summary of the most important papers. His work on stem cells and the telomerase enzyme appeared to be at the forefront of the field.

Oddly, however, some of his writings also were philosophical, an argument with himself whether his work could be misused to alter the natural limitations life imposes. One of those papers, from a conference presentation in Copenhagen, had a summary, and in it he pondered whether the use of stem cells to rejuvenate the body might someday give medical science godlike powers.

The Greeks, he declared, had a myth about the punishment reserved for those who sought to defeat our natural life span. When the goddess of the dawn, Aurora, fell in love with the beautiful youth Tithonus and granted him immortality, it turned out to be a curse, since he still reached the decrepitude of age but had to suffer on forever because he could not have the release of death.

But, Van de Vliet pondered, if we could find a way to arrest the aging process in our body's tissue, might we escape the process of aging? If so, was this a good thing? Or might this be a step too far that would bring on unintended, and as yet unknown, consequences?

Well, Ally thought, I wouldn't mind having Mom's mind restored. Or my own heart, for that matter.

All in all, Karl Van de Vliet was clearly a genius. He also was a very complex man. But might he be a very gifted huckster as well?

The inside back cover had a group photo, showing him surrounded by members of his research staff, all in white lab coats. There were two men and two women and each was identified, along with a list of his or her academic credentials. They were standing on the porch of what appeared to be a nineteenth‑century mansion, which had large Doric columns in Greek Revival style. The lettering in the marble above their heads read the dorian institute.

She put down the folder and went into the kitchen and poured herself another glass of wine, finishing off the botde. Her mind was chinning, but not because of the words on the page. It was that photograph at the back. It was dated less than two years ago.

His Ph.D. at the University of Chicago was granted in 1962. But even if he was a genius and got his first doctorate in his early twenties, he’d still have to be—what? At least sixty years old by now. Probably halfway to seventy.

But in the photo, he looks no more than forty, well, forty‑five at most. What the heck is going on?

She went back into the living room and picked up the brochure and stared at it. He had sandy hair that lay like a mane above his elongated brow. He was tall and gaunt, with high cheeks and deep, penetrating eyes. But no matter how you gauged him, the guy hadn't aged a day since his forty‑fifth birthday, tops.

So what’s going on that isn't in the package?

She checked the digital clock on the side table—the hour was pushing ten—and decided to give Grant a call.

Three chirps, and then, "Yo. Hampton here."

My God, she thought, he even does it at home. That synthetic bravado was left over from his trader days: You're the luckiest person alive, just to have reached me. How can I further make your day? his tone implied.

"Grant, it's me. I think it's time for that vital chat."

It took him a split second to recover, and then, "Hey, I was beginning to wonder what happened to you. If you were going to stand me up or what. Not call, like you said you would."

"Long day. I was up at Mom's this morning. You knew she was going to tell me, right? About your little surprise visit and proposal?"

"I had a hunch the topic might arise." His voice seemed to shrug nonchalantly. "I thought you should hear it from her instead of from me. So what do you think?"

"What do I think? I think I'm wondering what you're up to."

"I'm not 'up to' anything, Ally, except exactly what I told her. Trouble is, I don't know whether she got it. I wanted to see how she was doing. You know, I'm thinking maybe Dr. Vee can do something for her. But I had to see her first. She seemed pretty distant, but that woman there—what was her name? Marie, Maria, whatever?—said she has lucid moments. So who knows? He might possibly help her. I think I can arrange to get her into his clinic. Bartlett gives me a few perks. It's the least I can do for her, so..." His voice trailed off expectantly.

"Grant, I need to talk to you about this man. I read the stuff you gave me and I still don't know the first thing about him." She paused, about to speak words she never thought she would. "If you want to come over, I'll stand you a drink."

"You serious?"

"For my sins."

"I'll grab a cab. See you in fifteen."

It's begun, she thought. I'm about to let Grant screw up my life one more time.

No. This round, don't give him the chance. Stay ahead of him.

Sunday, April 5

10:39 p.m.

"I didn't know if I should have brought a bodyguard" he was saying as he strode in the door, a Master of the Universe with a leather jacket slung over his shoulder. He looked stylish, but then he always did. He casually tossed the jacket onto the gray couch, then gazed around. Thankfully, he didn't try the New York cheek kiss. "I guess this is not supposed to seem like old times, but somehow it does. Seeing you again. Hey, we're still blood kin, right?"

"Don't push it, Grant." She'd killed the Chopin and put on a Bach sonata. Clear, precise thinking was required not sentimentality. Knickers had rushed to give Grant a hello nuzzle, happier to see him than Ally was. "Whatever this is, it is definitely not old times."

He sauntered into her kitchen, looking around—trying to act cool, but clearly ill at ease. "You've done a nice job on this place, sis." He was looking over the rustic counter she'd installed. "You get a deal on the space? A bank repo or something?"

"The people who had it wanted to sell fast and I made them an offer." Not that it was any of his damned business. Why didn't she treat the question with the scorn it deserved?

She had an old fifth of Dewar's in the cabinet. She poured him some, over ice, then gave herself a shot of tequila anejo, neat, to sip. She loved the pure agave flavor. The more she thought about the situation, the more she was sure she needed it.

He picked up his scotch, then walked into the living room and helped himself to the couch. "Ally, I know why you're ticked. And I don't blame you. I feel crummy about Dad, I really do. I guess I share some of the blame."

He was trying to sound contrite but the reading did not quite rise to the minimal threshold of credibility.

"You 'share'... with whom, you self‑centered prick? Nobody else was involved. He mortgaged CitiSpace to the hilt and settled those fraud suits to keep you from losing your license. Or worse. You destroyed his business and his life all by yourself."

He looked as contrite as she'd ever seen him.

"Look, I thought the business plan I had would work out. I really did. I was managing discretionary accounts, but the bond market hit a downdraft when I was long. A few of my clients didn't have the balls to ride it out. What do you want me to say? That I feel like a complete cretin over what happened? That a day doesn't go by that I don't hate myself for it?" His eyes went dead and he seemed to shrivel, his body becoming visibly smaller. "Well, I do. More than you'll ever know."

"You didn't seem all that contrite at the time."

"I was operating in a high state of denial back then. But now I want to take a shot at growing up. I want to start trying to make up for all that, if you'll just cut me a little slack and give me a chance."

"Grant, you're working for Bartlett Enterprises, doing whatever it is you do. Fine. That's your job. But now you want me to become a guinea pig when this Dutch doctor needs one in a crunch. Or maybe Mom too, for all I know. Maybe he needs her as well. Two guinea pigs. So don't try to make this about me and her. Let's keep it honest. It's really about you, just like always."

"Ally, a lot of things have gone on since Dad... passed away. I've changed, in more ways than you could ever imagine." He was all sincerity now, his demeanor rapidly evolving to fit the current vibes of the scene. "I'm not like I used to be. I really mean that. I've learned ... learned that I can't always just be thinking about myself."

"So ... what changed you?" The truth was, he did seem different. In some way she couldn't quite understand. But he was always talking about turning over a new leaf, especially whenever he'd just gotten himself in trouble. That part hadn't changed at all.

"Ally, Dr. Van der Vliet... I don't know how much I should tell you, but he's a miracle worker." He paused and looked down at his scotch. One thing about him was definitely different, she thought. There was a lot less bravado and swagger. "The thing is, what he's doing is so powerful. I'm not sure which worries me most—that it's not true, that it's just some placebo effect, or that it is true. When I think about the implications . . ." His voice trailed off again.

"Go on." She could tell he was dead serious.

"It's not something I'm sure I should talk about." He reached over and touched her hand. "But it's working, I swear. He's doing things that shouldn't even be possible."

Uh‑huh, she thought, pulling her hand away.

"Grant, please tell me exactly what you think he could do for Mom." She wasn't sure she should be having this conversation. "You want her to go out to the Dorian Institute, right? Where he does his 'research.' And I take it that's where you want me to go too."

"It's in northern Jersey, about an hour's drive from the city, maybe not even if traffic's light. But I'd only want Mom to go if you say it's okay. I'm not trying to do anything behind your back."

She breathed a long sigh, trying to clear her brain. Every other word he uttered was probably part of some hustle. But what was it?

"Why don't we start at the beginning, Grant? I read his CV, and believe me I've got a lot of questions. For starters, how did he convince Winston Bartlett to bankroll him?" She took another sip of her tequila, then set it down. "You're his flunky now, so you should be able to answer that question."

"You read the materials I left?"

"Just finished them."

"Then you know he lost his federal funding at Stanford a few years back, when he was at a critical stage of his research using stem cells. That's when he came to the Man and persuaded him to put up the money to help him take everything private. The only way Bartlett would play ball was if he could buy the Gerex Corporation and get three‑quarter interest in all the patents. Van de Vliet kept the other quarter, but now they're both hoping to sell off forty‑nine percent to a big pharmaceutical company. Not American. I can't tell you any more than that."

"Congratulations," she said. "Sounds like your job is secure."

"Yeah, right."

That twitch of nonchalance he had when something really mattered—even as a child he would attempt (and fail) trying not to gloat over some personal success. It was moments like this when she realized she'd missed seeing him and talking to him. When you cut a family member off from you, you also cut yourself off from them. After all, he was her closest blood kin, even though he was an unreconstructed shit. At some level she wished she could get past the bitterness she felt toward him. Could it be he really had changed?

He didn't like the way the scene was going. What the hell was her problem? He looked at his scotch longingly, then got up and went to the kitchen and got another ice cube for it.

Go easy.

How was he going to get through to her? If word of the Beta screw‑up got out, the buyout was toast and Grant Hampton along with it. But if Ally could be brought in . . .

"Grant," she was saying, "I want to start off by asking you if you've ever taken a really good look at that guy Karl Van de Vliet. Does he look anything like his picture? The one that came with that CV of his."

"Sure, that's him."

"And I assume you've actually read his resume?"

"Of course." Here it comes, he thought. The thing everybody asks.

"If those dates are right, then he has to be—what?—at least sixty years old. But in the picture he doesn't look a day over forty‑five. So what's going on?"

"Ally, you're finally getting it." He rattled the ice in his Dewar's, then finally took a deep sip. Maybe, he thought, it would help with the courage. "He's a truly amazing human being."

"That's not an answer, Grant. It's a generality." She exhaled in obvious exasperation. "But I want an honest answer about one thing, dammit. Do you actually think he could help Mom's Alzheimer's? Maybe even reverse it? Tell me the truth. Just once."

"Ally, I can't guarantee anything. But it's worth a shot."

Now, he thought hopefully, she was sounding like she was starting to come around. Thank God. As for whether Dr. Vee could cure the old bird who knew? But he'd overheard the nurses talking about how he and his research staff had had some phenomenal luck with Alzheimer's. . . .

"By the way, what happened when you talked to Mom?" he went on. "Did she seem like she understood anything I told her?"

"Grant, she probably understood a lot more than you wanted her to. The bad part is, she let you give her some hope. Now, what's going to happen if she goes out there and ends up being disappointed?"

It's a real possibility, he told himself. But it's probably the only way I'll ever get you out there, and that's what really matters.

"Ally, we'll never know unless ... You should go too."

"Look, maybe I'll talk to Van de Vliet. But it's purely information‑gathering." She was staring at him. "So why not tell me? The whole story. Are you doing this for Mom and me, or are we just being used like lab animals?"

"I'm not sure you're going to believe anything I say." He sipped again at his scotch, then walked over to the skylight

and looked up. Finally he turned back. "After Dad . . . and everything, I had trouble sleeping. I know you didn't think it got to me, but it was like some bad force had taken over my mind, haunting me. I became obsessed with death. I took off two months and went to Colorado, camping. Out there, under the stars, I did a lot of thinking. Dad had died suddenly, but maybe that was a blessing in disguise. The rest of us, we all die a little every day. Why does time do the things to us it does? Why do we have to grow old and repulsive?"

He drew on his scotch again, then continued.

"When I came back, I started doing research on aging. That's when Karl Van de Vliet's name popped up on the Internet. Some paper he'd given in Vienna years ago. It was about the physiology of aging. But then Tanya came along and I sort of forgot about him. Then when I went to work for Winston Bartlett, there he was. The very same guy. It was weird, but it was as though God had delivered him."

"Is this shaggy‑dog story going to end up being about why he looks so young?"

"I'm getting there." He smiled. "I kept wondering too, and then finally I saw an opening in his schedule and took him to dinner here in the city, down at Chanterelle. A social thing. Eventually, after a couple of bottles of serious wine, it came out that once upon a time he had done an unconventional experiment. On himself. It was sort of an accident, something about melanoma research."

"So he—"

"You asked me why he looks so young. Well, some procedure he did apparently stopped his skin from aging. But then he changed the subject and wouldn't talk about it anymore. So do I think he's a miracle worker? I'd say he's walking proof of something. That you can cheat nature."

"And?"

"There is no 'and.' That's all I know." He came back and settled onto the couch. His scotch glass was empty and he yearned for another, but that small voice inside was urging discretion. This was the moment that could be make or break.

"But to get back to you, Ally, you really should meet him. I can't talk specifics about the actual clinical trials, but let me just say they've been very positive. There's every reason to think he can help you. And Mom too."

He studied her, trying to read her mind. He wondered if she could detect the anxiety he felt lurking just beneath the surface. Was she seeing through him, the way Nina, for all her mental debility, had seemed to?

"Grant, has this doctor Van de Vliet gotten into some kind of medical experiment that's turned into a Faustian bargain? Is his skin rejuvenation a signal that this research has gone over into The Twilight Zone'! When a sixty‑something man looks forty‑something, there's got to be an unnatural act going on. What does it mean?"

"Maybe it means he's found the thing Ponce de Leon was looking for. The Fountain of Youth or whatever."

"Then he'll probably have to pay for it some other way," she said getting up. "Mother Nature doesn't give out freebies. Look, I've got to give Knickers her midnight walk. That's your exit cue. I'll call him tomorrow. I'll go that far."

"Don't blow this chance, Ally," he said setting down his empty scotch glass and getting up. He felt hope and it bucked him up. "It could be the biggest mistake of your life. And Mom's."

He was at the door before he turned back. It was time for the insurance. The hedging of bets. Bartlett had authorized it.

"By the way, I almost forgot. Jesus, I'm going senile myself. W.B. told me to tell you he'd like you to come over to his place on Gramercy Park tomorrow morning around ten, if you can work it into your schedule."

"What for?"

"That job on his place that I told you about this morning, I guess. I do know he's planning to renovate the ground floor. But just between us, he's also got a massive renovation job in the wings, so maybe that's what's really on and this is like an audition. Who knows? He bought an old mansion on upper Park and he's planning to heavily redo it and turn it into a museum for his incredible collection of Japanese military stuff, swords and armor and shit. He's going to do over the entire interior. It's part architecture and part design, so I gave him your name. Who knows? But I was over at his place this afternoon and he asked about you. He said he wanted to see you as soon as possible. He even gave me one of his personal cards to give to you. Here. It has the Gramercy Park address and his private cell phone."

"Just like that?" She looked skeptical but took the card.

"Winston Bartlett is not a man who dawdles. If he decides he wants to do something, he just moves on it. All he asked was that you bring a portfolio, to show him some of your work."

Come on and do it, he thought as he headed out the door. Go and see the Man. Just fucking do it. If he can't close this frigging deal, nobody can.

Chapter 6

Sunday, April 5

11:43 p.m.

Winston Bartlett put the newly glazed creme brulee, still warm from his preparation in the kitchen below stairs, on the bed tray in front of Kristen, next to her untouched champagne flute. She used to love it and he was trying everything he knew to jog her memory. He'd cooked her favorite supper, eggs Florentine, with barely wilted spinach topped by prosciutto, had taken her to bed and now there was champagne and her favorite dessert.

But she still seemed distracted and distant. Yes, it was a good idea to get her away from the institute, but that was merely relocating the problem, not fixing it. If it could be fixed. In the meantime, she had to be kept here, out of the public eye.

"Thank you," she said and gingerly took a small bite. She had been almost lucid earlier this evening and was leaning against the antique headboard wearing a soft blue nightgown. Her long blond hair was tousled and down over her breasts. Her memory might now be a sometime thing, but her libido was still going strong.

"Do you remember how much you used to like that?" he asked, trying to make eye contact.

She nodded her head dumbly. Did she actually remember? Increasingly, he had no idea.

He had brought her here to stay in this five‑story nineteenth‑ century mansion on Park Avenue. He'd purchased it a year and a half earlier for 23 million and he was intending to have it renovated and converted into a museum. That renovation, however, had been put on hold awaiting a decision by the Board of Directors of the Metropolitan Museum. He wanted the building to be a Park Avenue adjunct to the Met, and he also wanted his definitive assemblage of Japanese implements of war to be known as the Bartlett Collection.

The tax write‑off would be monumental, but that was not nearly so important as the prestige.

It was clear now that this project would not have any momentum until he first got himself appointed to the board of the Met. Unfortunately, money alone wasn't adequate. Major‑league politics was involved.

He was working on it, with a lot of Upper East Side lunches and targeted charity events. He was also taking his time and getting designs and estimates for the renovation. The way things were at the moment, he didn't have the cash to actually start construction anyway.

For the moment, the place was furnished but unoccupied except for a security guard, a part of Bartlett's personal staff. Now, with Kristen here, discretion was his uppermost concern.

He had sent the security guy home this evening, so he and Kristen could have privacy. In the morning two nurses would come on duty, one to look after her and another to cook.

Over the past year he'd brought her here most weekends. It was like having their own Shangri‑la. Best of all, unlike his official residence on Gramercy Park, he didn't have a wife upstairs, like some mad (in every sense of the word) aunt in the attic.

He had hoped that bringing Kristen back here might do

something for her memory. He still hoped, but he wasn't sure. In bed tonight she had been as lithe and enthusiastic as ever. Possibly even more so. Did she know who he was? He couldn't really tell. But he still loved being with her. The soft skin and the voluptuous curves of her breasts and thighs: it made him feel young again.

Since she had been out at the Dorian Institute and away from him, he had begun to feel older and older.

Winston Bartlett was sixty‑seven and—increasingly—felt it. To begin with, his prostate was enlarging itself, in spite of all the special, expensive medicines he used Surgery was increasingly looking like a possibility. And his memory was nowhere near what it once was. He wolfed down ginkgo and ginseng capsules by the handful but was finding it harder and harder to remember people's names, particularly the new wave of donation‑hungry politicians who fawned over him.

And then there was the matter of teeth. He'd just gone through major periodontal surgery, a sign of aging gums. How long before his ivories would be replaced by ceramic choppers? Oh, and the heart. His cardiologist was talking more and more about stents to alleviate the two constricted arteries in the left ventricle. They were already down to 40 percent. Face it, his whole damned body was falling apart.

Probably worst of all, the Johnson was far from what it used to be; not long back, it was a daily triple threat. Soon he might be resorting to Viagra as more than a discretionary recreational drug, something he was still joking about less than a year ago.

The dirty secret about living this long is, after you've seen everything you ever wanted to see, done everything you ever wanted to do, bought everything you ever wanted to buy, you gradually lose the only thing really worth having.

Youth.

To try to hang on to it, he had been through clinics as far‑ flung as Phoenix and Lucerne. He had undergone regimens of antioxidants and injections of human growth hormone. He'd tried testosterone and dehydroepiandrosterone, better know as DHEA. Maybe it had made a difference, maybe not. Sometimes he thought he had more libido and energy, but other times he wasn't sure. Maybe it was just that he'd begun working out even harder, playing handball an extra half hour every other day. He did know his body was continuing to deteriorate.

Shit, the Beta had to be made to work

"I don't want to stay here alone," Kristen said, putting down her spoon. "I want to go back to work."

"Honey, I can't be here all the time, and you're really not well enough to go to work. There'll be someone here with you. It's just till you get better." He studied her, the face that was so young, and felt the full weight of the tragedy sinking in. "Do you remember what it was you used to do?"

"I don't remember right now. I mean exactly. I used to talk to people. I was in this room with lots of bright lights."

She didn't actually remember, he thought. Her former producer at E!, along with everybody else (including her harridan of a mother, Katherine), had been told she was at a private health spa in New Mexico. It had to be kept that way.

No one must know she was here. All the phones had been removed before the ambulance brought her. Starting at six in the morning, there would be a nurse and a nurse/cook downstairs on a twenty‑four‑hour basis. Under no conditions could she be allowed to leave, not the way her mind was now.

"Kristy, it wasn't supposed to turn out like this. I'm so sorry. But Karl is doing all he can. We're ... He has a new idea that he's about to explore. He's going to..." His voice trailed off as he stared at her unblinking eyes. "You don't remember what happened, do you?"

But how she looked. My God. The youth. How could a true miracle have such a tragic downside?

That was when the cell phone on the stand beside him chirped. It was the only phone in the place, and tomorrow it would be gone. No way could she be allowed to have a phone.

The caller ID advised that it was Grant Hampton.

"Kristy, I've got a feeling this could take a while." He was reaching for his silk robe. "I'll be downstairs on the first floor if you need anything, okay?"

She just stared at him mutely. He shook his head sadly. There wasn't much time left to mend her. How in God's name had it come to this?

As he moved down the spiraling grand staircase, he clicked on the phone.

"Yeah."

"I was just at her place, W.B. I actually got in, which is more than has happened in over four years. I think she's on board but I'm still not entirely sure. So, just to be safe, I told her you wanted to see her tomorrow."

"Are you saying you couldn't make this happen? With your own fucking sister?"

"It's ... We're not exactly on the greatest of terms, Ally and me." There was an awkward tone in his voice. "It's hard to explain. Like I told you, I confirmed her blood type on Saturday. It's AB, like I thought. And I played the mother angle. At the very least, I think she's willing to drive the old bird out to the institute and meet Karl. That's a start, at least."

"And what about her medical . . . Karl wanted to see—"

"I'm working on it. I remembered something about her. I've got a guy. He's going to check on it tonight."

"Good" Bartlett growled. "There's no time to screw around on this."

"I've set it up for you to meet her tomorrow, the way you wanted. I think she'll show. I told—"

"The one who really should talk to her is Karl." Bartlett sighed. "He knows how to handle patients."

"Then he could call her tomorrow. After she's talked to you. If we all pull together on this, W.B., I'm sure we can get her out there by day after tomorrow, Tuesday."

Winston Bartlett looked at his watch. It had just turned

Monday, one less day to find something that would stop the Syndrome in its tracks.

"We'd better."

He was clicking off the phone when he heard a wail of despair from the bedroom upstairs and the sound of a champagne flute being thrown against a wall.

Kristen was losing it rapidly now. Was she still conscious enough to know what was happening to her?

Chapter 7

Monday, April 6

7:30a.m.

The commute from Ally's West Village place to the CitiSpace office in SoHo was normally a twenty‑minute brisk stroll, and she brought Knickers with her a lot (the boss's prerogative) since her office was arguably homier than her home. (Knickers loved to wander around and—she thought—guard the computers and drafting tables.) This morning, though, Ally had an appointment for her at Pooch Pros, the dog groomers near her office. A wash and a trim and plenty of pampering. Betty and Misha always fussed over her shamelessly, and she gloried in it.

But now a pounding rain had just come through, which meant no walk for either of them. Knickers would show up looking like a bedraggled mop. Definitely the moment to take the car.

Alexa Hampton liked to say that she wasn't really an auto person. Hers was a four‑year‑old Toyota, light blue, and its modesty befitted her needs. In New York, hopping around SoHo and the Village, it made a lot more sense to rely on a bike or on cabs, or just plain walk. Garaging a car in New York cost the equivalent of a studio apartment rental in most normal places, and the bottom‑line truth was, she resented the Toyota's presence in her life. But there were moments when cabs weren't the answer, and this was one of them. Fortunately, the parking garage she used was just around the corner, so she and Knickers got there before being totally soaked. Knickers loved riding in the Toyota, and she always seemed to know what was coming the minute they turned the corner for the garage. This morning she gave a gleeful "Woof" and started panting, a sure indicator of joy.

As they drove the few blocks downtown, the rain was easing up but the streets were still shiny. Ally reached into her bag and took out the personal card of Winston Bartlett. His private residence was on Gramercy Park. The only reason he could possibly want to meet her there was if he did indeed have a job. She decided she would call him from the office and confirm the appointment, assuming he still remembered it. Then she'd get Jennifer to help her assemble a portfolio of their work and make a color copy to leave with him.

She leaned over and rubbed Knickers' ears. Her thoughts were drifting back to Karl Van de Vliet. At some level his stem cell technology sounded like the ultimate snake oil. Was she about to take leave of her common sense to go to see him, or even to consider letting him perform some experimental procedure on her mother's mind?

On the other hand, what about him? What kind of "procedure" could Van de Vliet have done that would stop his own skin from aging? If Grant had merely told her that Karl Van de Vliet had finally realized the cosmetician's dream and learned how to make human skin youthful and supple again, she would have passed it off as just more Wall Street IPO hyperbole. But seeing was believing, and it also seemed like there was a lot more going on than just a change in his skin. There was something about him, in his eyes, that felt . . . inconsistent.

She was still puzzling on that point when Knickers jumped up and barked. They were passing a garbage truck and the guys were banging the cans into the back.

"Shhh." She reached to quiet her. "We're almost there, baby." Then she tugged at her leash and settled her back into the seat.

Since the rain was all but over, she decided to park the car where she dropped Knickers off and then walk over to her office, which was only a couple of blocks east. She found a spot right next to the awning of Pooch Pros, and the minute Knickers was liberated from the car, she bounded to the door dragging her leash through the puddles. Misha was already there to meet her.

"Come on, my kraceve baby, my beauty." He reached down and gave her a big hug. Misha was a gaunt, balding, blond‑haired Russian who had once been the hero of the Soviet Olympic swim team. Now he looked like he could stand a piroshki or two to plump him up. "You be big fluff of cloud after we finishing."

Ally followed them in, and there was Betty. Ally figured "Betty" assumed her made‑up but totally American name was easier than whatever she'd used in Russia, but to Ally it just felt weird Betty had dark hair, a broad smile that wouldn't die, and approximately thirty pounds that would have looked better on Misha. They reminded her of Jack Sprat, et al.

"Honey, there is problem at your office. Woman name Jennifer call. Say she try reach you at home but you leave already. And you don't answer your cell phone."

"Shit, I turned it off. Knickers goes nuts if it rings in the car."

Jennifer was only a couple of years older than Ally, but she'd been with the firm back when Ally's father, Arthur, ran it and she was the mother figure of CitiSpace. She was also Ally's best friend and had been even before Ally came back to run the firm. Ally felt like she had known her forever. These days Jen spent a lot of effort trying to create a social life for Ally that would include eligible men. She kept nagging her to join some clubs, anything, just get out there.

Ally knew she was right, but she was working too hard to take time out. She had the idea, which she wasn't naive enough to actually believe at a rational level, that sooner or later someone who could replace Steve would come along. Yes, she was lonely a lot, but until this last deterioration of her heart she'd spent a lot of evenings and weekends outside, biking and hiking around town, and she knew plenty of people who were interesting and kind. She sometimes thought her problem was that she liked people, all kinds of people, as long as they were kept slightly away, at a psychic distance. Maybe it was the getting close part that never seemed to work out.

It had actually been that way ever since Steve disappeared. She had the premonition that if she got too close to somebody, she was destined to lose them.

Now she stood for a second, puzzling. She'd mentioned taking Knickers to Pooch Pros, so that's how Jen knew where she'd be, but what could have gone wrong at 7:45 in the morning?

Jennifer wasn't usually in this early, but she was finishing a rush job for a marble bathroom for a couple on the Upper East Side. On days when Jennifer did get to the office first, she'd have the coffee going and an extra bagel for Knickers, on the chance Ally might bring her, which she often did. But to phone Betty just to tell her to hurry? That was odd.

"Should I call now?" It seemed pointless. She was no more than ten minutes away. What else could go wrong in ten minutes?

"She sound very hurry," Betty declared.

Ally took her cell phone out of her bag and switched it on. The office rang only once and then Jennifer was there.

"Ally, you're not going to believe who called here ten minutes ago, asking for you. Winston Bartlett. My God, it's like Donald Trump called. Well, actually it was some male secretary or something. He said he was calling to confirm your ten o'clock appointment. At an address on Gramercy Park East. What's that about? Jesus, Ally, where are you? I don't know what you're up to, but this could be big. He owns entire buildings, for chrissake."

"Did you say I was coming?"

"I didn't know what to say. He left a number to call if you can't make it. Otherwise, he'll assume you'll be there. It's only two hours from now."

"All right, Jen, let's put together a 'folio’ of our biggest jobs. Lead with that gut rehab we did on the building down by the South Street Seaport. And put in those two floor‑through lofts we did on that conversion in TriBeCa. The ones with the slate bathrooms and the stainless‑steel countertops in the kitchen."

"I've already started. Do you know specifically what he has in mind?" She paused. "How did he find out about us, anyway?"

"My creepy kid brother works for him." She sighed. "It’s a long story. Be there in a couple of minutes." She clicked off the phone.

"Betty, thanks a lot. I've gotta run." She turned and gave Knickers a last rumple of the ears. "Be good, baby. I'll pick you up by six at the latest."

"What wrong?" Misha was concerned, twisting a white towel he was holding. "Big problem?"

"Nothing's wrong. Actually, something probably is wrong. I just don't know what it is yet." She headed out the door.

The design firm her father had started and she'd kept going, now with some architecture thrown in, was on the ground floor of an old industrial loft building whose upper floors had been converted into rental apartments in the early 1980s. The owner was an ex‑wrestler named Oskar Jacobi, who had turned Zen master (after a fashion) and had a studio upstairs, on the second floor. He had drifted from wrestling into karate during his thirties and thence into the life of the mind, or rather the life of "no‑mind," in his late forties. Now he taught meditation as well as karate and insisted they be learned in that order. He served as his own superintendent, mopping the halls and setting out the garbage on pickup days.

The ground floor was zoned commercial, and CitiSpace had a lease for all of it, which meant she had tons of space. Oskar had given Ally's dad, Arthur, a ten‑year lease, which was now a fraction of the going rate. They both knew that, and she'd more than once offered to renegotiate or move, but he said he didn't need any more income and, besides, he liked having her as a tenant because she reminded him of her father. It was a generosity perfectly in keeping with his philosophy that excess money corrupted the spirit.

She'd done the place as a sort of Spanish desert flower, with burnt‑orange tile floors and all the natural materials she could cram in. A lot of her clients wanted the hard‑edge industrial look in their lofts, which was fine by her, but she found it too cold for a daily working environment. The front was unassuming, with small lettering on the window. CitiSpace was not a walk‑in business. And she had no metal gates over the windows. What's to protect?

When she marched through the door, everybody looked up from their coffee and computers, and Jennifer led the applause. Winston Bartlett. Had they finally made the A‑list? This could be the start of something big.

Chapter 8

Monday, April 6

9:56 a.m.

Ally stepped out of the cab, holding the large leather‑bound portfolio, and checked the number on the card against the bronze plaque above the door. Winston Bartlett lived like a nineteenth‑century robber baron. The building had five stories and was adorned with Italian marble window lintels that glowed like mother‑of‑pearl.

Already she liked his sense of style. Bartlett was New Money, but this place had the solemn dignity of Old Money. The front door was eight feet tall and solid mahogany. The odd thing was, there were two doorbells. One read w. bartlett and the other read e. bartlett.

That was when she remembered she had read somewhere that he had a wife named Eileen. But why did she have a separate doorbell? Winston Bartlett had a tabloid reputation as a womanizer. Perhaps they lived apart. If so, there it was, for all the world to see.

She found herself examining the late Greek Revival columns on either side of the door. They were marble and meticulously cleaned of soot, whose ubiquitous presence in New York meant that eventually everything not regularly scrubbed turned gray. It told her that Winston Bartlett liked things to be immaculate and that he was a stickler when it came to details.

She glanced up and noticed that she was being observed by a security camera. She was reaching out to push the bell for w. bartlett when the door magically opened. A tall, trim Japanese man in a crisp black suit was standing in the doorway. But he had a muscular build that would be more appropriate for a bodyguard than a butler.

"Hello," she said. "I have an appointment with—"

"Yes." He nodded, appearing to know exactly who she was. "He's upstairs in the library. Please . . ."

She'd expected a grand central staircase in the Palladian design, but instead there were elevators off to the left of the entryway. But even without an obvious staircase, the ground floor and its fifteen‑foot ceiling were palatial in every sense of the term. The marble floors were covered with antique, and expensive, Persian rugs, and the light tan wallpaper was flecked with gold leaf, giving the feeling it could have been meticulously stripped from some palazzo in Venice. The lighting fixtures were a row of chandeliers down the middle of the vast room, and at the back was a dining table that appeared to be large enough to seat thirty dinner guests. The architecture was a showpiece for the extravagant taste of some Victorian "enemy of the people."

But what really set it apart was that the walls were lined with exquisitely severe antique swords and armor from Japan. In a way, the room felt like the foyer of a boutique museum, an adjunct of the Asia Society.

The Japanese man directed her to one of the elevators, and then got in with her. She still couldn't decide whether he was a butler or a bodyguard. He had the polished demeanor of the first, but the strapping body and deft movements of the latter. Maybe he was both. In any case, he looked like he would be quite at ease brandishing one of those long samurai swords.

The elevator had dark paneling and smelled of freshness, partly fresh wood and partly fresh lacquer. It was utterly silent as it glided up to the third floor. When the door opened, she stepped into what appeared to be a large den/library, except that there was a huge four‑poster antique bed at the far corner, with its drapes drawn around the side. It was definitely something out of another place and time. Was this Bartlett's bedroom? The space was magisterial.

In the other corner was a wide mahogany desk covered with phones and papers and two computers. From his photos, she recognized the man rising to greet her as Winston Bartlett. Seeing him in the flesh, she first noticed that there was something in his eyes that in another man might be called ruthless, but in him it merely came off as determined. They were eyes that were accustomed to getting what they wanted—be it a company, a building, a woman.

"Fine, Ken, and please have them hold my calls," Bartlett said nodding to the Japanese man, who tipped his head in acknowledgment and disappeared back into the elevator. Then he turned to her and extended his hand. "Ms. Hampton, I appreciate your making time for me. I'm possibly your newest fan. After Grant told me about you, I had a couple of my people do some research. You've been responsible for some very interesting, even elegant interiors. Grant may have told you I have a big project down the road that you might wish to bid on. But for now, as a way of getting to know each other, I wanted to talk to you about a more modest undertaking."

She thanked him, attempting to take it all in. She was trying not to admit to herself that Winston Bartlett was an attractive man, in the way that power brings charisma. "I'd be happy to hear about what you have in mind. I don't necessarily take every job that comes along. I always look for challenges."

She listened to herself and wondered why she was starting off the meeting in such a confrontational manner. Probably, she thought, it was because she didn't want to seem intimidated. Doing high‑end interior design, you come across a lot of wealth and power, but this was a whole new level.

"Well, I guess I'm the same way." He smiled. "A lot of the things I've done over the years have ended up being a challenge. And a risk. But now and then, something is worth it." He gestured toward a couch. "Please, we have a lot to talk about."

He returned to the chair behind his desk and turned off the laptop computer he had been using.

"I brought a portfolio," she began, "with photos. There's also a DVD with virtual walk‑throughs of some of our projects. I'm not sure what you have in mind, but this should give you some idea of the kind of thing we—"

"I'll look at it," he said, setting the portfolio aside unopened. "I'm sure you live up to your reputation. Like I said, I have two jobs pending, so first let me outline the smaller one. This building was built just before the prior turn of the century, and it was intended to house a small workforce of cooks and nannies and seamstresses below stairs. The rooms were lit with town gas, and coal was used for heating and cooking. Then in the twenties, everything was gradually switched over to electricity and oil and natural gas. But very little effort was made to accommodate the change aesthetically. It was just retrofitted."

"That's typically how it was done."

"And I haven't really cared until now," he went on. "But lately I've decided I want to redo this place properly. Starting below stairs and moving up. It's mainly the kitchen down there that concerns me now. I want to remove all the outdated fixtures and go state of the art. There's nothing original there anymore; just somebody's idea of a 'modernization' back in the fifties. So nothing of historic value will be lost. I don't want a restaurant kitchen precisely, but I want a range with enough Btu's that it could be. Granite countertops are all the rage these days. . . ." He paused, then grinned sheepishly. "I promise I won't start telling you how to do your job. Work up some ideas without any interference from me, and then we'll see where we go from there."

"Do you have any blueprints of this building? The original plans?"

He smiled, as though to say you ask good questions. "As a matter of fact, they were filed downtown, in a little‑known cranny of the Department of Buildings and I had an expediter I know track them down." He paused. "Ms. Hampton, there is one little matter I want to clear with you in advance. I know that the newspapers occasionally print things about me that might be termed unsavory. You came to meet me here, so that tells me something about your feelings toward me. But I have discovered that I am a somewhat controversial figure in certain circles. I'd just like to know if you think of me as controversial."

She found this unexpected new tack in the conversation puzzling. Was he trying to get a rise out of her?

"I barely know you, Mr. Bartlett," she said. "And, frankly, the private life of a client is none of my business. So that question is entirely unnecessary."

"Very well." He smiled. "Like I said, there's a much larger job now in the planning stage. I have a building on Park Avenue in the Seventies that I'm planning to convert into a museum. It would be a private undertaking at first, but in the long run, who knows? The job will require extensive alterations of the building, and I also plan to have a museum cafe in the lower level. Anyway, there's a lot of work ahead, and I thought this would be a good way for us to get acquainted. Redoing the first floor here would give us both some idea of whether we could work together on a larger project."

She listened and found herself wondering what he was really up to. This conversation felt like he thought he needed to have plenty of bait on the hook.

First Grant and then him, a tycoon who's a perfect stranger. Why?

Monday April 6

10:38 a.m.

Winston Bartlett was not finding himself entirely satisfied with the way things were going. As he looked her over, he had a lot on his mind. This was the woman who shared his rare blood type and could represent his last hope. So far, she seemed smart and courageous. Given the gravity of what he'd heard about her heart condition from Karl—which you'd never realize by just looking at her—she had to be courageous to continue on with her kind of spirit. But that was not necessarily all to the good. She might not be so easy to manipulate.

Inevitably he found himself comparing her to Kristen. For starters, Alexa Hampton seemed to have a lot more self‑ assurance. Kristy liked to appear tough on camera, but she was riddled with an aspiring actress's insecurities. Which had played a large part in the current tragedy. But you could say she brought that on herself. Alexa Hampton was struggling with something she had nothing to do with. And to look at her, you'd never know it. That was spunk.

In truth, this was the kind of woman he'd often wished he'd married—someone who shared his own gusto for life. God had dealt her a particularly lousy hand, and yet she still had drive. She had more courage in her little finger than that monster upstairs, Eileen. And the fact was, she was more appealing than Kristen. But don't even think about going there.

"Coincidentally," he said, beginning a new tack, "there's a totally unrelated matter I wanted to discuss with you. I understand Grant has already told you about the clinical trials currently winding up at the Dorian Institute, which is part of one of my companies. He told me about your heart condition and about your mother's Alzheimer's. We're working on a new procedure that could be very relevant for both of you. The clinical trials are scheduled to conclude in just a few days from now, but I spoke with the lead researcher there, Dr. Van de Vliet, and he said there's still time to get you into the program."

"Yes, Grant came to see me and brought me a brochure."

"Your brother is very concerned about you and your mother, and he specifically asked me to inquire if you had any questions about the procedure that I might be able to answer for you."

He was watching her carefully, all the while trying to keep his tone casual.

"Well, I think my mother is interested. Quite frankly, she doesn't have much to lose, though she may be in denial about that. In my own case, I'm not so sure. I still don't know anything about Karl Van de Vliet."

She's still toying with the bait, Bartlett thought. I can't yank the line just yet, but she’s close. She’s so close.

"Truly, the best thing you could do would be to talk to him," Bartlett said getting up from his desk and walking over to the window and pulling the curtains aside. The mid‑morning light streamed in, a momentarily blinding presence. I've got to shake this up, he told himself. "As a matter of fact, I'd like for you to meet with Karl before we go any further with this job. We need to get you well first. And your mother. He's had some truly amazing successes with both Alzheimer's and Parkinson's."

"It's just that this is all so experimental. Aren't there any side effects? New drugs or new medical procedures always have side effects."

Well, he thought, now you've hit on it. But that part is best left to Karl.

"If you have questions, that's all the more reason to check out the clinic," he declared. Time to close the sale. He came back and sat down behind the mahogany desk. "I've seen a lot of medical innovation over the years, including a good bit in my own companies. But there's never been anything that remotely compares to the promise of stem cell technology. And these stage‑three clinical trials have shown how many miracles are in the realm of the doable."

"Grant said Dr. Van de Vliet wanted to include someone with my specific condition in the—"

"Let me be frank with you." He looked across at her and smiled. "You would be a perfect fit. But the trials are going to be over very, very soon, so he's anxious to get started."

"Truthfully, I'm thinking about taking Mom out there," she said. "And since we're all being so frank, let me say I'm getting the impression that my going out to your clinic is really the reason you wanted to see me today. It's—"

"It's the second reason," he said. "The design job is uppermost in my mind, but I see nothing wrong with having two purposes in seeing you. As someone once said, commerce is the mutually beneficial exchange of worth."

Was she agreeing to see Van de Vliet? Playing the mother card may have done the trick.

"Well, why don't we stick to tangible worth," she said. "Let me take a look at the space downstairs. But you'll have to tell me some more about what you have in mind."

"I propose we do it the other way around. You go down and look around, take measurements, make sketches, whatever it is you do, and then get back to me with some ideas. That'll be our starting point." He picked up a walkie‑talkie on his desk and punched a button. "Ken, could you please come up. I'd like you to show Ms. Hampton the service floor." He clicked it off without waiting for a reply. "I'm due down at the office. When I get there, I'll have them cut a check for five thousand dollars as a retainer and messenger it over to your shop."

Is this going to work? he wondered. Maybe I should be pushing harder. . . .

He examined Alexa Hampton one last time as he rose to leave. Yes, she's a rare woman. Wouldn't it be ironic if Karl actually could do something for her heart?

Monday, April 6

10:49 a.m.

As Ally watched Winston Bartlett sweep from the room, she was still trying to take measure of the man. What troubled her was why Grant and Bartlett were both so anxious to get her and her mother out to the clinic. But give Bartlett his due. He could charm the birds off the trees.

She looked around the room, wondering what the old kitchen and staff quarters would be like. Certainly not like this. The library/bedroom had a rich, over‑the‑top feeling, with a beautifully molded plaster ceiling, a virtual bas‑relief of fruits and birds and clouds all meticulously painted. It wasn't the Sistine Chapel but had some of that feeling. The paneling and wainscot were burnished mahogany, and the floor was a mix of hardwoods worked into an isometric design. She decided it was probably the most luxurious private residence she had ever seen.

CitiSpace was mainly known for its creative handling of lofts in the abandoned commercial buildings of SoHo and TriBeCa. These old mansions of the nineteenth‑century moguls were an entirely different world. It was intimidating, but she was sure she could do something below stairs that would retain the period flavor of the building while creating the kind of semiprofessional space he said he wanted. Still, it was different from anything else CitiSpace had ever done, so he had no way of knowing whether or not she could pull it off. Again that question: why on earth would he hand her this plum job?

And where was his wife? Although he liked to be photographed with blond starlets, the tabloids always reminded you that he had a wife someplace. The two doorbells were a tip‑off that that someplace was here. Best guess: she probably had the top floors.

My God was Madame Bartlett going to get involved in the renovation? A lot of women with superrich husbands and too much time on their hands come to assume that that happenstance creates in them a natural gift for interior design. Big problem.

But whatever happened, this could be a sweetheart job. And maybe she'd get a crack at that museum he'd talked about. That was the kind of thing an architect‑turned‑interior‑ designer dreamed about.

She looked up to see the Japanese man—Bartlett had called him Ken—stepping into the room. He was all business.

Monday, April 6

11:08 A.M.

Winston Bartlett was on the phone to Van de Vliet the moment he stepped into his limo to head downtown.

"She said she's thinking about bringing her mother out to the institute, Karl. I believe she's ready to do it. Before she changes her mind, I want you to talk to her and schedule an appointment for tomorrow morning, if you can."

"I'll put in a call to her office."

"Karl, she's not there now. Try her cell. Grant has the number. We need to get moving on this. I've done about all I can at the moment." He was watching the midmorning traffic that was clogging the avenue. He always felt claustrophobic in a limo, even a stretch. The only time he felt free was when he was in the McDonnell Douglas chopper. When he was flying the chopper, against all the laws of civil aviation.

"Don't you think that's a little pushy, W.B.? We shouldn't seem too anxious. Believe me, I've had a lot of experience with ambivalent patients."

"All right. She should be back at her office sometime after lunch."

"I'll wait awhile and put in a call there." He paused. "When was the last time you saw . . . Beta One? The situation at Park Avenue?"

"I don't want to discuss it over a cell, Karl." This conversation was definitely a bad idea. "She comes and goes. I think it's getting worse."

"I'll try to get over there late this afternoon and look in on her," Van de Vliet said. "I want to see her every day."

"Karl, we can't give up hope. Never give up hope."

He clicked off the phone and thought about his crapshoot with God. Kristen had wanted to play, to experiment with the Beta. But nobody made her undergo the procedure. She should never—

His cell phone rang.

"Yeah."

"Mr. Bartlett," came a female voice with a Brooklyn accent, "it's Bernd Allen calling."

"Put him on."

Shit, Bartlett thought, this is news I don't want to hear.

Bernd was a Brit who was in charge of day‑to‑day accounting for Bartlett Medical Devices. He was forty‑seven and not a risk taker and he was always worried about something. That was his job. These days he had plenty to be worried about

He had been running a weekly projection of the cash flow at BMD, and the drawdown was now getting perilous.

The flagship product of Bartlett Medical Devices had been the "balloons" used in heart angioplasty that inflate and expand clogged arteries. They were marketed together with stents, miniature metal mesh supports that keep coronary arteries open after angioplasty. The problem was that in 27 percent of the cases, the stents manufactured by BMD caused scar tissue to form, a process called restenosis, and re‑block an artery, requiring a repeat of angioplasty or even a bypass operation. Other manufacturers' numbers were not any better. But a few months back, out of the blue, Hemotronics, a competing company near Boston, had introduced stents coated with drugs that prevented scarring. BMD's piece of the $2.6 billion angioplasty market had plummeted from 13 percent to 4 percent and was still dropping like a stone.

Add to that, two titanium joint replacements for arthritis patients that they'd pinned their future on—along with millions in cash—still had at least two years of human trials left before

they could hope for FDA approval. Long story short, BMD was in a mature product cycle with its most lucrative hospital hardware, with nothing major in the pipeline for at least two years. They had bet the ranch on the stem cell research at Gerex.

"W.B., I just got last week's numbers back from the green‑ eyeshade chaps downstairs. As you asked, I had them refine all the assumptions. Remember the union contract. There's going to be a three percent wage increase for all hourly personnel at the end of the month. And we didn't hedge our Euro exposure and now it's going against us. That's my own bloody fault. And since we don't have any pricing flexibility in that territory at the moment it's like a four percent haircut right off the bottom line. Remember we ran that in a worst‑case scenario a while back. Well, chances are we're about to see it for real."

Bartlett had been watching the rate of cash burn and trying not to let the problem be evident. The logical thing to do, start laying off workers in the fabrication divisions, was out of the question. If you had a make‑or‑break deal cooking, you couldn't afford to look like you were on the ropes.

"Give me some parameters," Bartlett said.

"You know we've already hit our credit lines at Chase about as hard as we dare without them calling for a review. So unless we try to refinance some real property, say the flagship building downtown—and in this interest‑rate environment any rational lender would put a gun to our head—we've got to ink this deal with Cambridge Pharmaceuticals in two months max. Right now we're living on borrowed money and it's about to be borrowed time too."

You don't know the half of it, Bartlett thought. I'm already living on borrowed time.

What's more, if word of the Beta gets out, we can kiss the buyout adios. The adverse publicity and legal problems ... Nobody's going to buy into that kind of liability. Not Cambridge, not anybody. Bernd doesn't know about it yet. If he did, then he'd really be worried.

"Bernd, take a deep breath. We're on schedule and we've got to make sure we stay that way. Get hold of Grant and tell

him I want him to double‑check the regulatory situation for the Cambridge deal. I know he already has, but I want a memo from our attorneys by noon tomorrow. If there are going to be any roadblocks cropping up, we need to know about them now. We can't afford to be blindsided."

He clicked off the phone and tried to think. In the confines of a limousine, it was hard.

What's it all for?

Unknown to the world—but, unfortunately, known to his wife, Eileen—Winston Bartlett had a natural son. And that son, now in his own career, despised Bartlett. It was one of many sorrows he had long since learned to bear.

All the same, he increasingly regretted that he had made such a botch of their relationship. The man who was his natural son had done very well for himself professionally, had plenty of drive. And in fact Bartlett believed he himself deserved some of the credit for that. What he had done was let the boy fend for himself, which was exactly how Bartlett was raised. Make it with your own two hands. How else are you supposed to develop any character?

And it had worked. The pity was, he now hated Winston Bartlett's guts.

But Bartlett had begun thinking more and more about a legacy. What if he could make peace with that son and bring him into the business? Right now the closest thing he had to a son was Grant Hampton, and Hampton was a little too slick and expedient. Bartlett knew a gold‑standard hustler when he saw one.

The more he thought about it, the more he was convincing himself to make his natural son his sole heir.

Assuming there was anything left to pass on.

Monday, April 6

11:20 A.M.

"Mr. Bartlett asked me to give you this," Kenji Noda said handing her a large manila envelope as they stepped off the

elevator. "It's a copy of the original plans. And also, there's a blueprint for the current layout, along with measurements."

She took it, looking him over again as she did. There was something very fluid about his motions. He could have been a dancer. There was a softness about him, and yet you got an unmistakable sense of inner strength. She suspected he had something to do with Bartlett's incredible collection of Japanese katana. He looked like he could have a connoisseur's eye.

She walked into the below‑stairs service space and looked around. The back part, which was the kitchen, had stone walls that had been whitewashed. There also were two massive fireplaces, which, she assumed, had once housed coal‑burning stoves. Large grease‑and‑soot‑covered gas ranges were there now.

But the space was fabulous. Massive load‑bearing columns went down the center, and a partition separated the front half of the space from the back. The front traditionally would have been the nursery and sewing room, in short, the maids' working quarters.

She turned to the man Bartlett had called Ken.

"Does Mr. Bartlett have a cook?" she asked. "This kitchen doesn't look used."

"No," he said. "Actually, he almost never dines here, and Mrs. Bartlett has her meals delivered from various restaurants. Though she does go out sometimes as well."

This was the first time she had heard any mention of Eileen Bartlett.

"She resides on the top two floors," he went on. "She has her own dining room up there, where she takes her meals, along with an efficiency kitchen."

So the Bartletts did live completely separate lives. That explained a lot.

"Okay," she said, "I want to look around and get a feeling for the space and start putting together some ideas." She was starting to focus on the job. The ceiling was lower than upstairs, but still the space had enormous possibilities. "Off the top, I'd probably suggest we open this out. Remove that dividing wall and make a great room. With the right kind of kitchen, this could be a marvelous contemporary space for semiformal dining and entertaining." Assuming, she thought, Winston Bartlett actually wanted a renovated space to entertain. She still had the nagging suspicion that he just wanted her. "I'd use materials that have a really warm tone."

Mix different materials for the different parts of the kitchen and the room, she thought. The cabinets could be mahogany, to echo the extensive use of that wood upstairs, and the walls around the stove area and the fireplaces could be an earth‑ colored slate. And that look could be accented with polished granite countertops in a slightly darker hue. There would need to be a high‑Btu stove, probably a big Viking, with a slate backsplash all around. A couple of stainless‑steel Sub‑ Zero refrigerators and a large Bosch dishwasher could be spaced along in the slate and granite. And if Bartlett wanted it, there could be a place for a temperature‑controlled wine cellar. High‑end design.

There also would need to be a large stone island—say a Brandy Craig—with a couple of sinks and—depending on what he wanted—maybe another high Btu stovetop there.

She turned to Ken. "If you have something else to do . . . I just need to walk around and live in this space a little. Then I want to make some notes on the plans. Possibly take a few photos."

"Take your time," he said. "I'll be upstairs."

He disappeared into the elevator, with his curious catlike gait, and was gone in an instant.

As she looked around she realized the thing that was missing was light.

Wait a minute, she thought, there must be a garden at the rear of this building. There are windows in the front, so why aren't there any at the back?

She turned to examine the back wall. It was, in fact, clearly of recent origin, and there was a door at one side. She walked over to the door, which was locked with a thumb latch, and opened it.

And sure enough, behind the building was an unkempt space the width of the building that ran back for a good thirty or thirty‑five feet. When she stepped out into the late‑morning sunshine and looked at the back of the building, she realized there also was a row of windows facing the garden that had been bricked shut. What a travesty.

The whole design would depend on whether those windows could be reopened. But if Bartlett would allow it, then there were tremendous possibilities. With all this light, you could—

"Who the hell are you?" came a raspy, oversmoked voice from behind her. "Are you his new tart? We agreed he would never bring his whores here."

Ally turned to see a tall, willowy woman, who appeared to be in her mid‑sixties. She had shoulder‑length blond hair, clearly out of a bottle, and a layer of pancake makeup that looked as though it had been applied by a mortician.

"Perhaps it would be helpful if I introduced myself." She squeezed past the woman in the doorway and walked over to the counter, where she had left her bag. She extracted a business card and presented it.

The woman squinted at it, obviously having trouble making out the print.

"I work with the design firm CitiSpace, and I was asked by Mr. Bartlett to give him an estimate for some renovations." She had quickly acquired the sense that the less said to this woman, the better.

"I'm his wife and I still don't know who the hell you are." She squinted at Ally a moment, then glanced back at the card. "What is . . . CitiSpace?"

"It's an interior‑design firm."

"What are you, then? Some kind of decorator?" She grasped the door to steady herself and Ally suddenly wondered if she was slightly tipsy.

"Actually, what we do is probably closer to architecture."

Ally was collecting her belongings, hoping to get out before Eileen Bartlett decided to do something crazy.

"This is the first I've heard about all this." She turned and slammed the rear door.

"Mind if I ask you a question?" Ally said. "Do you have any idea why those back windows were bricked over?"

"It's for security," she said. "No one is ever down here."

That's obvious, Ally thought, which is why this job is so odd. This space clearly isn't being used now, and the social dynamic here doesn't bode well for a lot of cozy entertaining and dinner parties in the foreseeable future. So why is he spending money to renovate? And in this big hurry? And he just happened to pick me to do this as an audition for designing an entire museum. No, this whole thing definitely does not compute.

But of course it does. The job is a blatant bribe. To butter me up for something.

"Look, Miss Whoever‑you‑are, I want you to leave. I don't appreciate strange women walking around unescorted in my house."

"I'm going right now. Perhaps you should speak to Mr. Bartlett and decide together what you want to do about this space."

"I'll tell you right now what I want to do. Nothing. For all I know, he's fixing this up so he can move in some tart. We've lived here for twenty‑eight years and he's never done anything down here. So why is that tightfisted SOB suddenly deciding to renovate?"

"That would be an excellent question to ask him."

"You're screwing him, aren't you?" she demanded, wrinkled brow furrowed and dim eyes seething. "Like that other little whore of his. That's why he hired you. Well, let me tell you something. I'll outlive you both."

Without another word she turned and got into the elevator.

[Chapter 9]

Monday, April 6

12:18 P.M.

"Hey, how did it go?" Jennifer asked the minute Ally came in the door.

She wasn't sure she knew the answer to that. Initially the job looked like a lot of fun, but now she felt the interpersonal dynamics of working in Bartlett's home were already a problem even before she started.

Also, maybe it was just paranoia, but as she took the cab downtown from the mansion on Gramercy Park, she got the impression that somebody was following her in a black SUV. And the stress of that brought on a tightness in her chest. But as she neared their office in SoHo, the vehicle abruptly veered east. She had a nitro tab at the ready, but she didn't have to pop it.

"There's good news and bad news. The good news is he's practically handing us a sweetheart of a job, and dangling another—designing a whole museum—in our face. The bad news is, I don't know why he suddenly thinks we're so terrific. I mean, you and I know that but how did he figure it out?"

Jennifer looked puzzled. "You mean he—"

"Oh, did I mention that his crazy wife showed up after he left and essentially accused me of being a hooker? I suppose that comes under the heading of bad news."

"Great. Does that mean she's going to start second‑guessing whatever we do?"

"The communication channels between Mr. Bartlett and Mrs. Bartlett don't appear to be all that great. They live on different floors in his place—which really is a huge old mansion on Gramercy Park, by the way—and the job would be in his part, the lower level." She explained the Bartletts' living arrangements. "He wants to redo the garden‑level floor. It was originally the servants' quarters. Like Upstairs, Downstairs."

"So he's upstairs and she's way upstairs."

"And let's hope she stays there."

Ally fetched herself a cup of coffee, checked in with everybody to see how they were doing, and then settled herself at her computer. She had the latest program in computer‑aided design (CAD) and she wanted to program in the dimensions and layout of the space. And since she had a copy of the blueprints, the first thing she would do would be to run them through her flatbed scanner and incorporate them into the program. She didn't get a chance to take any digital photos with CitiSpace's snazzy (and expensive) new Nikon. But if the job went forward there'd be plenty of time later.

Everybody's computers were connected to the Net via a broadband DSL hookup and they were never turned off. Because of that, the computers were vulnerable to being hacked so Jen had installed a firewall program to keep out snoops.

She sat down and stared at the screen saver, which was an ever‑changing series of tropical beaches at sunset. She sipped at her coffee—this was the one cup she allowed herself each day, always saved for the moment when she felt she needed to be most alert—and reached to turn on the scanner. The tightness in her chest that she had momentarily experienced in the cab had completely disappeared and she felt perfectly normal.

What was she going to do about her mother and the clinic in New Jersey? Nina certainly appeared to want to go. And with the inevitability of what lay in store for someone with early‑onset Alzheimer's, taking her out there was surely worth doing. But as for her own heart, she wasn't so sure she thought the reward was worth the risk. But she'd decided to hold off on a decision till she could have a firsthand look at the institute.

She took another sip of coffee and then tapped the keyboard. When she did that, the screen would normally bring up the "desktop."

But not this time. A file was open, and she was certain she hadn't left it open. What's this?

"Jen, could you come here a minute? There's something funny."

The first page of the file that had been pulled up and opened was an ID photo of herself.

"This is what was running. Has somebody been fooling around with this computer?"

Jennifer looked puzzled when she saw it "Not that I know of."

"Then how did this get . . . ?” She just sat staring. "I didn't open this file. Does this thing have a mind of its own?"

About eight years ago, Kate Gillis at Manhattan Properties—with whom Ally had an occasional after‑work drink— told her she'd scanned all her vital personal documents into her computer at home. She'd said it was an easy way to make a safety backup.

Seemed like a good idea, so Ally had stored a copy of her birth certificate, her driver's license, all her credit cards, her passport, a set of medical records, even the mortgage on her apartment. She'd even scanned in an ID photo, just for the heck of it. She also suggested to Grant that he do the same.

Brilliant right? Well, maybe not.

The reason was, she'd routinely made an updated copy on a ZIP disk and then copied it onto this computer here in the office. Like a second backup.

"I had everything ready for you for your meeting with Bartlett, so nobody here has touched your computer this morning." Jennifer furrowed her brow. "Could somebody have picked the locks and come in last night and done this, like a prank or something?"

"Come on. That's totally far‑fetched." She was trying to imagine how somebody could have gotten in and out and left no trace. Impossible. "This must just be something stupid I did when I came down yesterday after seeing Mom. I don't remember it, but I guess I was pretty tired."

"I've never seen you that tired."

Jen's right, she thought. I was on the city's Web site checking the Department of Buildings' Housing Code, but I certainly didn't pull up my personal data. Computers do strange things, but to open a data file for no reason? That would require a higher intelligence.

Right?

"Jen, you're our resident computer expert. We leave these things hooked up all the time. I know we have a firewall, but what are the chances that somebody could defeat it somehow and hack into our computers?"

Jennifer was a software whiz and she had all the designs for all the clients on their CAD system, which they used to create a virtual‑reality space and allow clients to "walk" through.

"Well, that's entirely possible. Our firewall software is over a year old. Let me take a look. Maybe I can reverse‑engineer what happened. If somebody went through pulling up files, I might be able to figure it out."

Ally relinquished her chair and stood staring as Jennifer started checking the firewall.

It was scary to think that some stranger could know everything about you. But on the other hand what difference could it make? She had nothing to hide. Still, it was creepy. Her Social Security and credit card information was in that file. Could that be—

"Shit. Ally, you're not going to believe this. Whoever did this was damned good. We've been seriously hacked."

"How do you know?" She bent over to look.

"Our firewall software has been disabled. In fact, the actual program was uninstalled. Jesus, that's cool. I think we'd better shut down everybody's Internet connection right this minute, till we can get some new software."

"That's incredible. You mean somebody—"

"Honey, hackers have gotten into Microsoft's own site. Even the Pentagon, so I've heard. Anything is possible."

"This is not good."

"What are you thinking?" Jen was still staring at the screen and tapping at the keyboard.

"I'm thinking what a jerk I was. I keep all my personal information in that file, like a safety backup in case my apartment burned down or something. Scanned it in. My passport, driver's license, credit cards, medical records, everything."

Jennifer looked puzzled. "You can just cancel the credit cards. As for the rest of the stuff, what could anybody possibly want with it?"

"I don't know, Jen. I don't even know if we were hacked by somebody who wants to find out about me, or just look at our designs."

She was reflecting that when somebody goes through your files, they want the information for a purpose. And that purpose couldn't be positive for you, or they wouldn't have started their undertaking with a surreptitious act.

"Well, I'm going to check around and download a new firewall program. Right now."

"Shit, I don't need this. I've got enough on my mind already. Mom wants to go out to a clinic in the wilds of northern New Jersey and see a doctor there. And the whole thing makes me nervous."

"Oh Jesus, is the place called the Dorian Institute by any chance?"

"How did—?"

"I'm such a scatterbrain. I took a message for you while you were gone. From a Dr. Van de Something. I think that's the name of the place he's with. He wants you to call him back as soon as possible."

Monday, April 6

11:43 a.m.

Would she call back? Karl Van de Vliet had to believe she would but nothing in this world was sure.

On the nineteen‑inch screen of his office IBM, he was scrolling the medical file that he'd downloaded earlier that morning. How Grant Hampton got his hands on it, he didn't know and didn't want to know.

Yes, Alexa Hampton would be perfect. She had aortic valve stenosis, well along, the same condition that had precipitated the coronary destruction that took Camille from him. It was the great tragedy of his life.

He studied the charts carefully, trying to assure himself he was making the right choice. What if the stem cell procedure on her heart didn't work? To fail would mean he couldn't have saved Camille after all. That was actually the main reason he'd kept putting it off. He didn't want to know if he couldn't have rescued her.

But Alexa Hampton was the obvious candidate. Her clinical condition had deteriorated to the point that, at some level, you might even say she had nothing to lose by undergoing an experimental procedure.

And she was perfect in another way as well. Other than her heart condition, which she could do nothing about, she was in excellent physical shape. Her last blood pressure was 110 over 80 and her pulse was 67. She clearly had been exercising, which had been both good and bad for her heart, though on balance probably a plus. In fact, it was indicative of a strong fighting spirit, which was often the best prognosticator of all.

He looked up to see Dr. Debra Connolly walking in. He had just paged her. She was an M.D. who had been his personal research assistant during her grad school days at Stanford. Now she was a full and valued member of the research team. Just turned thirty, she also was a smashing blonde, five‑nine, with a figure that would stop traffic, even in her white lab smock. She held Van de Vliet in the reverence always bestowed on a brilliant, beloved mentor.

"Hi, Deb, I wanted you to take a look at this." He indicated the screen. She knew all about the Beta and what had happened to Kristen, the Syndrome, but she didn't know about the plan to subject Alexa Hampton to two procedures at once: one for her aortic valve stenosis and another to develop antibodies to combat the looming side effects of the Beta in Winston Bartlett.

"This is the patient I was telling you about. I wanted you to see this. Let's pray she signs on for the trials, because she looks like she could be perfect, in a lot of ways."

But if she doesn't call back, he told himself, what am I going to do?

"What am I looking at?" Debra asked, scrolling the page. "Is this what I think it is?"

"It's her medical history."

"How did you get it?" She turned back. "Did she send it?"

"No, Deb, and I don't think you really want to know."

"Somehow, I think I probably should." She looked again at the screen. "We're in this together."

"All I know is, I got an e‑mail from Grant Hampton, and this was an attachment. She must have been keeping it on a computer somewhere. I understand he's her brother, but how he got it, I have no idea. He said we're not supposed to let her know we have it."

"How recent—"

"This final battery of tests is less than two weeks old," he said, pointing to the date on the corner of the page. Then he scrolled. "Take a look at her high‑speed CT scan. See that degenerative calcification there. Now look at the same test last year." He scrolled past a number of pages. "See." He tapped the screen, then scrolled back to the first image. "Over the past year there's been a significant buildup. She's made‑to‑ order for the clinical trials."

And there was another reason he wanted her, which he was reluctant to admit to himself. There was a photo of Alexa Hampton in her medical files and something about her reminded him of Camille. Her eyes had a lot of spirit. They made you want to root for her. It was nothing short of ironic that this woman had the exact same medical condition that took the life of Camille, who had been at his side during the early stages of the research that now might provide a cure. But for Camille it had come too late. It was more than ironic; it was heartbreaking. Now, though, to save Alexa Hampton would be a kind of circular recompense. He took a last look, then closed the file.

"Does she want to be in the clinical trials? There's not much time left. We'd have to get her—"

"I just left a message at her office," he said revolving around in his chair. "Grant has talked to her, and so has W.B. This very morning. She's aware that time is of the essence. But there's no guarantee she'll do it."

He glanced at his mute phone. If she didn't call back today, he had a feeling that Winston Bartlett might just have her seized and brought to the institute by force.

"I see that her blood type is AB," Debra said. "Extremely rare."

Funny she should notice, he thought. Is she going to put it together?

"That's the same as Bartlett's blood type," she continued. "Interesting coincidence, huh?"

"Right."

"You're already fond of her, aren't you?" Deb asked finally. He detected the usual tinge of rivalry seeping into her voice. "Without even meeting her."

Dear God, he thought, don't start that. It's the same with

every attractive female patient under the age of fifty. I don't have time for games now.

The truth was, Karl Van de Vliet was turned on by Debra Connolly. What red‑blooded primate wouldn't be? But she was half his age and to act on that attraction would be to guarantee trouble. He had enough to worry about without a lab romance. Besides, he was still thinking about Camille. They'd had the kind of long‑lasting, thick‑and‑thin love Debra would never understand.

However, she did sufficiently understand the problems with the Beta procedure and the Syndrome, so he had to flirt back. She had to be kept on the reservation. Feign an interest but not enough for it to go anywhere.

"Deb, she's just an ideal fit for the study, that's all. Nothing more."

The stem cell procedure for her stenosis should go forward with only minimal risk. There was every reason to hope he could rejuvenate the tissue in Alexa's left ventricle. It was merely an extrapolation of the kind of heart procedure that had worked such a wonder for Emma Rosen.

The real challenge was simultaneously attempting the Beta‑ related procedure. The trick was to stimulate the development of antibodies through a moderate dosage of the special Beta enzyme, tempering it enough that it didn't go critical and begin replicating uncontrollably, the way it had in Kristen, and (probably) very soon in W.B. Not so low as to be inoperative but not so high that it would go out of control. The "Goldilocks dosage," not too much, not too little. The problem was, he wasn't absolutely sure what that dosage was.

Should he tell Alexa Hampton the full story about what he was doing? About the Beta? That ethical question, he had decided, he would leave to Grant Hampton, Bartlett's hustler of a CFO. It was his sister, after all. Presumably, he'd tell her whatever she needed to know to make an informed decision. Let the responsibility be on his head.

The phone on his desk finally rang.

[Chapter 10]

Monday, April 6

12:57 p.m.

Stone Aimes was floating through cyberspace, through the massive data pages of the National Institutes of Health. Since the Gerex Corporation had a complete clampdown on their clinical‑trial results, he was attempting an end run. By going to the source, he was hoping he could find out whether or not Karl Van de Vliet's experiments with stem cell technology were succeeding.

He needed that information to finish his book, and he hoped that the remainder of the advance could be used to pay for his daughter Amy's private school in New York, if he got it in time. He was dreaming of a life in which she could come back to live with him at least part of the year. Sometimes, particularly days like this—Monday was his official day off—he couldn't avoid the fact he was incredibly lonely.

But first things first He had gone to the section that described the many and varied clinical trials the NIH had under way. Then he used "scrambled eggs," the entry protocol given to him by Dale Coverton, to circumvent security on the site and get him into the second‑level NIH data files. He was hoping to find the names of patients who had gone through the Gerex stem cell procedure and could be interviewed.

It really wasn't all that difficult, or even—he told himself—unethical to get in this far. No big deal. Entry protocols were available to any high‑level NIH employee who had the right security grade. Now he was poking through the reams of proprietary data that the Gerex Corporation had submitted to initiate the clinical trials.

It was one of the more ambitious studies he'd ever seen, not in numbers of patients necessarily but certainly in scope. They were indeed running stage‑three clinical trials of their stem cell procedure on a variety of maladies. There was no double‑blind placebo. You either were cured or you were not.

Jesus, it was incredible. They were shooting for nothing less than the unified field theory of medicine, aiming not just to patch some failing element of the human body but to regenerate entire organs. Among their stated objectives were building pancreatic islets, reconstructing the ventricles of the heart, reconstituting the damaged livers of individuals with advanced cirrhosis. They were also accepting patients with Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.

"Christ," he said, scrolling past page after page, "how come they're suddenly so secretive about this?"

If Van de Vliet had achieved results in just a fraction of those trials, it would herald the beginning of a new age in medicine.

The NIH monitor for the Gerex trials was Cheryl Gates, just as Dale had said. Her photo was featured along with the introductory description of the trials. Nice‑looking, he thought, probably late thirties, dark hair, dark‑rimmed glasses. She wasn't wearing much makeup in the photo, probably to emphasize how serious she was. Sooner or later, he told himself, he had to find a way to meet her. . . .

He stared at his IBM Aptiva screen a moment longer, overwhelmed at what he was seeing, then got up and walked into the kitchen and made a peanut butter sandwich, whole wheat. It was a rehearsal for the possibly hard times to come. Then he retrieved a Brooklyn Lager from the fridge. It was his day off and the sun was over the yardarm.

He lived on the fourth floor of a brownstone in Yorkville, in New York's East Eighties. The apartment was small, but it was rent stabilized which meant he was paying well under market value—$1,128 a month on a place that probably could go for close to twice that on the open market. He'd lucked into it after he and Jane split—even though they weren't married they'd bought a condo in the West Fifties, and at the breakup they'd switched the mortgage to her name—but the problem now was, how was he going to pay even this piddling rent (not to mention child support for Amy) after he got fired from the Sentinel? That day, he sensed was fast approaching. And if it happened before the book was finished he was just three months away from going back to freelancing. That was how long his "nest egg" would last.

Carrying the sandwich and beer, he walked back to his "office," a corner of the cramped living room that had an Early American desk, and sat down at the frayed chair in front of his IBM.

So here he was, past the first level of security of the NIH site, zeroed in on the Gerex clinical trials. Somewhere here had to be all the data about the patients who had been, and currently were, participating.

He moved on to the results section and opened the first page. Yes.

Then he looked more closely.

Hello, we've got a problem. The patient data he was looking at had only code numbers for names. The categories of trials also were just numbers. Without a key, there was no way to get a single patient name or differentiate Alzheimer's from fallen arches. Then he saw the notice at the top of the page: As part of the NIH policy on privacy, all patient data are aggregated and anonymous.

Shit.

This was as far as "scrambled eggs" would take him. He needed a higher security protocol to get into individual‑case data. Dale either didn't have it or didn't dare give it out.

Well, he thought, at least I've got information on the structure of the clinical trials. I should print that before the system realizes it's been hacked. He clicked on the print icon. Let the games begin.

His real objective was to try to wangle an interview with Karl Van de Vliet, an interview that would have to be approved by Winston Bartlett. Maybe what could be gleaned from this level of the NIH site would be enough to bluff Bartlett into thinking he knew more than he really did. In truth, interviewing discharged patients would have meant anecdotal information, probably not rigorous enough for use in a definitive book. But at the moment, that would have been a start.

He lifted the first printed page and studied it.

Stone Aimes had seen enough clinical trials over the years to know that the data were reported according to an established schedule. Obviously, the schedule was always adapted to fit the nature of the trials under way, but studies that produce the kind of short‑term results Gerex hinted at in their early press releases—before they clammed up—would probably have a tight reporting schedule, possibly even weekly.

He stared at the page for a moment, then lifted out another. He wasn't sure just yet what it all meant, but he might be able to infer something. He was still puzzling over the columns of numbers as the data finished printing.

What was it telling him?

He went back and clicked on study procedures. This section explained how the reporting was structured. He still held out hope that the names of the discharged patients in the clinical trials could be accessed somehow. In the past, when the FDA tested drugs, it often happened that the names of the participants were not revealed to the monitor, or to anybody. The policy was intended to preserve the privacy of study participants. But lately it had been under review. All that secrecy and non‑accountability had permitted some spectacular fabrication of test data.

Surely the NIH had taken this into consideration by now and come up with a system whereby the identities of the participants could be checked and verified. That information had to be stored somewhere.

No such luck. It appeared the NIH had begun using a modified version of the new FDA sunshine policy. NIH clinical trials had a "one week of sunshine" provision, during which the suitability of test subjects could be evaluated by a review procedure. During that time, their real identity was in the database. But after that, the identity information of any patient actually selected for inclusion in the clinical trials was encoded—where thenceforth it could only be accessed through a lengthy legal process.

Screwed again.

At this late date, the Gerex Corporation surely was not going to be adding any new names and giving them that week of sunshine. According to press releases at the beginning of the clinical trials, when Gerex was a lot more communicative, at this date the entire study should be just days away from being wrapped up.

He went back to the patient files one last time, out of frustration. As he continued to scroll, he noticed that although the identities of patients and crucial personal data were encrypted, the dates on which they entered and finished the trials were all supplied.

Hmmm. It was actually more detailed than that. There were dates for when a patient entered each stage of the procedure: Screening, Initial Evaluation, Admitted into Program, Procedure Under Way, Procedure Monitoring, Results Evaluation, Patient Release, Patient Follow‑up.

The time between screening and patient release averaged around five weeks, six weeks at most

Looking at the time‑sequenced data, you couldn't avoid the conclusion that the clinical trials had been a spectacular success. No doubt the specific data would reveal whether there had been any adverse reactions, but as clinical trials go, these seemed to have been without major incident. He had a nose for trouble, and these looked as rigorous as clockwork. . . .

Hold on a second. . . . That’s odd.

What the data structure did not have was a category for Termination. Yet one of the patients had been listed with dates leading up to and including Procedure Under Way, but after that the patient was noted parenthetically as having been "terminated." That was all the information given.

What could that mean?

He leaned back with a sigh and pulled on his Brooklyn Lager. Okay, patients frequently got dropped from clinical trials because some underlying condition suddenly manifested itself and made them unsuitable trial subjects. In fact, that was preferable to keeping them in a study when they were no longer appropriate. But the thing about clinical trials was, there always had to be a compelling, fully explained reason for terminating a test subject. Otherwise you could just "terminate" non‑responsive participants and skew the results. No reason was given here.

He thought again about the "one week of sunshine," and as a long shot checked to see if anyone had been admitted this week.

Nada, but again that was reasonable. The entire study was wrapping up.

Which meant, in short, that he had nothing to work with in terms of people. All he had were dates and encrypted names.

What now?

He finished the beer and was preparing to go off‑line when a drop‑down screen flickered new data.

He was being directed to the new applicants' "sunshine" page.

He clicked back, then stared at the screen.

A name had appeared.

He couldn't believe his luck. For some unknown reason,

they must still be adding new test subjects at this late date in the trials.

nina hampton.

Finally he had a name. This was an incredible stroke of...

Wait. A second name was appearing now, the letters popping up one by one as they were being typed in.

He rolled the mouse to print, and felt his hopes surge.

Then his heart skipped a beat. The second name was . . . alexa hampton.

Jesus, could it be?

No way. Too big a coincidence. But wait, the other was Nina Hampton. Isn't that the name of her Brit mum? That unredeemable piece of work.

Impossible.

If it was the Ally Hampton he knew, she was a woman he still thought of every day. It went back to when they were both undergraduates. She was taking a degree in architecture at Columbia and he had just switched from premed to the Columbia School of Journalism.

Wasn't there a Cole Porter lyric about an affair being too hot not to cool down? They undoubtedly were in love, but they both were too strong‑willed to cede an inch of personal turf. It was a combustible situation.

When they decided to go their own way, it was done under the agreement that they would make a clean break and never see each other again. Be adult and hold your head high and look to the future. No recriminations and no second thoughts. In respecting that agreement, he had gone out of his way not to keep track of her. He particularly didn't want to know if she'd gotten married had a family, any of it.

Thinking back now, he remembered that she had had some kind of heart condition. She refused to talk about it, and now he couldn't remember exactly what it was. But that could possibly explain her entry into the clinical trials, though it didn't clarify why she was only being added now, at the last minute.

If it was actually her.

And if so, how would he feel talking to her? He hoped time had mellowed her, though he somehow doubted it. Not Ally.

What an irony. If it was the same Alexa Hampton, she could end up being his entree into the secretive world of Winston Bartlett's Gerex Corporation. The trouble was, he wasn't sure he actually wanted to see her again. Even after all the years, the wounds still felt fresh.

He closed out the NIH file and opened People Search, which he often used to look up phone numbers. He started with New York State as a criterion. The names Alexa and Nina undoubtedly belonged to women, so they might be listed merely by their initials. But start with Alexa and be optimistic.

He got lucky. Three names and phone numbers popped up.

One was in Manhattan, and Ally was a dyed‑in‑the‑wool New Yorker, but he wasn't sure he was psychologically prepared to speak to her. That number he decided to save for last, though it was by far the most plausible.

The next Alexa Hampton lived in Syracuse, with area code 315. He was still shook up as he dialed the number.

"Yeah, who's this?"

Sure didn't sound like Ally. But he was playing this straight. As a reporter he always started a conversation by identifying himself, so naturally he answered, "Stone Aimes, New York Sentinel."

"The fuck you want?" came the voice. It was female but it definitely was not ladylike. "I don't need any newspapers."

Whoa, that definitely didn't sound like Ally. She was direct but she didn't talk like a sailor.

"Sorry, ma'am. I have a few questions about your participation in some clinical trials. Sorry to bother you, but I have a deadline. Shouldn't take a minute."

"You a fucking reporter?"

"I'm doing a story on the Gerex Corporation. Are you—?"

"The what corporation? The fuck you talking about?"

"Seems like I'm calling the wrong number. I'm very sorry and I apologize."

"Listen, if you're some kind of weirdo, I'm going to call the cops and have this call traced."

"I said I apologize." He hung up and thought about another beer. This was beginning to feel like the moment.

But he resisted the urge and called the next number. Come on. Be the right one and don't be Ally.

This one had a 516 area code. That meant Long Island.

"Hello," came a rusty old voice that had to be in its seventies. It sounded oversmoked and just hanging on. Again definitely not the Ally he knew.

"Hello, ma'am," he said "I'm sorry to bother you, but—"

"Are you trying to sell me something, young man," the woman asked. "It's not going to do you much good. I live on a Social Security check, and it's all I can do to make ends meet as is. You sound nice, but—"

"No, ma'am, I'm a newspaper reporter. I'm doing a story on ... I just wanted to follow up on your admission to the clinical trials for the Gerex Corporation." He felt a surge of hope. It wasn't Ally, but she did sound like a woman who might well be a candidate for medical treatment. "Do you know what day you plan to start?"

"What on earth are you talking about?" she asked. "Young man, it's ill manners to start asking a body silly questions, no matter how nice you might be otherwise. I've never heard of this, whatever you called it, corporation." Click.

She sure didn't sound like a patient. Or maybe she was too far gone to even know if she was a patient or not. In any case, this was not a promising lead.

Okay, he thought, go with the one you should have in the first place.

Blast. He wanted this to be the one, but he just didn't want it to be Ally. Or maybe he did.

He took a deep breath and punched in the last number, which had a Manhattan area code, 212. The phone at the other end rang five times and then an answering machine came on. At this hour, she would most likely be at work.

"Hello, this is Alexa Hampton. I'm sorry I can't come to the phone now, but if you'll leave your name and number, I'll get back to you as soon as possible. If you're calling about design work, the number of CitiSpace is 212‑555‑8597."

He felt his heart flip, then sink. It was Ally. It was a voice he had heard for years in his reveries—or were they the nightmares of roads not taken?

She still might not be the new patient in the clinical trials, but at least he knew he could reach her.

The sound of her voice. After all this time he didn't realize it would still affect him the way it did.

So, he thought, clearing his head, she's running a design business now. He wondered how that had happened. The last time he saw her, she was a single‑minded student of architecture. Intensely focused.

No message. Don't leave a message. It probably would freak her out. Actually, it might freak them both out.

Assuming she was the new patient, how the hell did Ally get involved with Winston Bartlett? It probably would have something to do with that heart condition she didn't like to talk about.

He clicked off the phone and settled it onto the desk. Then he glanced again at the computer screen and decided to go back to the NIH files. The other woman, Nina, he would look up later. Ally's Brit mum must be getting on by now, but still it was hard to imagine anything being wrong with her; as he remembered Nina, the woman was well nigh indestructible

When he got back to the NIH Web site and went to the "sunshine" page, it was again blank. The two new names, Nina Hampton and Alexa Hampton, were not there anymore. They must have been entered immediately into the clinical trials. But why now? If Van de Vliet kept to the original schedule, the trials would be over in a matter of days.

Maybe, he thought, this was a momentary screw‑up. I just happened to be at the right place at the right fleeting moment, when somebody, somewhere, was entering those names. Maybe some NIH bureaucrat hit the wrong key on a keyboard someplace in Maryland.

But it was the break he'd been waiting for.

He turned off the IBM and headed for the fridge and another Brooklyn Lager. Ally, Ally, Ally. Can it be you? This is so weird.

Worse than that, it was painful. There was that immortal line from Casablanca: "Of all the gin joints in all... she walks into mine."

Why you, dear God?

Coming back, he sat down, took a long hit on the icy bottle, and reached for the phone.

[ ]

Chapter 11

Monday, April 6

1:29 p.m.

As she hung up, Ally wondered again what she was getting into. But she did want to meet this miracle worker. The kind of thing Van de Vliet was talking about sounded as much like science fiction as anything she’d ever heard. Still, his voice was reassuring, even mesmerizing, and there seemed no reason not to at least check out the Dorian Institute firsthand. But then what? Help!

She looked at her coffee cup and wished she dared have a refill. But that much caffeine always made her heart start to act up. And maybe she didn't need it. The conversation with Karl Van de Vliet had energized her and sharpened her senses quite enough.

She was still thinking about that when the phone rang again. There was an electronic voice directory, but her own phone was the default if a caller did not care to use it.

"CitiSpace."

"Hi, Ally. Tell me if you recognize the voice. Just please don't hang up."

Who was it? The intonations were bouncing around somewhere in the back of her brain, as though they were a computer file looking for a match. The one her unconscious mind was making was being rejected by her conscious mind. Then finally the match came through and stuck.

My God, it couldn't be. The last time she’d talked to him was ... what? Almost two decades ago.

The irony was, she’d been thinking about him some lately, as part of taking stock of her life. She’d been meditating over all the roads not taken, and he’d been the last man she’d actually loved or thought she loved before Steve.

"What . . . How did . . . ?" She found she was at a loss for words. She figured he’d have been the same way if she’d called him out of the blue.

"Hey, this isn't easy for me either. But I have a pretty good reason for breaking our vow of silence."

She was immediately flooded with mixed emotions. Stone Aimes. She already knew he wrote for the Sentinel. Or at least she assumed the irreverent reporter by that name who did their medical column was him. The tone sounded so much like the way she remembered him. There was a lot of passion and he was always editorializing against "Big Medicine." He had plenty of raw courage, but sometimes he had too much edge. That was one quality he had that had eventually gotten to be nerve‑racking back when they were together.

Now, in hindsight, she remembered their breakup with both anger and regret. She was angry that, even though she tried like hell, she could never really connect with him at the level she yearned for. He always seemed to be holding something back, some secret he was afraid to divulge. Truthfully, they both were grand masters at never allowing vulnerability. In short, they were overly alike. They shared the same flaws.

Still, after Steve was taken away, it was hard not to think of Stone now and then. Before Steve, Stone was the only sane lover she'd ever been close to.

But she also knew the bit about letting sleeping dogs lie. Sometimes that was the better part of wisdom. This conversation, she finally decided, was just going to open old wounds. Better to nip it right now.

And add to that, she didn't actually know if he was free now or not or what

But he'd said he had a good reason for calling—what could that be?

"Stone, I read your columns in the Sentinel. So I sort of feel like I've kept in contact. I can almost hear your voice sometimes."

"That makes me think you were cheating a little on our deal."

"Well," she heard herself say, "some of them were pretty good. Sometimes you sounded like you knew as much as a doctor."

"Don't flatter me excessively, or I might want to start believing you." He laughed. "But speaking of doctors, didn't you used to have some kind of heart issue? How is that these days?"

"You really want to know?"

"Maybe it might have something to do with why I'm calling. Best I recall, you never actually told me, even back when."

"Thank you for asking," she said. "I guess it's not much of a secret anymore, with me popping nitro every other day. I have a scarred valve, coronary stenosis, and it's not getting any better. I don't know what to do about it short of going to Lourdes for a miracle."

"I see," he said. Then he fell silent. Mercifully, he didn't come up with false bravado about revolutionary treatments and you never can tell, blah, blah, blah. Then he said, "So is that why you've enrolled in the clinical trials at the Dorian Institute? To be part of their work using stem cells?"

What! "How the hell do you know about—"

"Hey, Ally, you know I can't divulge my sources. After I knew you, I grew up to be a real reporter. That was my grand plan, remember?"

"Then this may turn out to be a very short conversation. I have nothing to—"

"Okay, okay, let's start over." He paused and cleared his throat. "Ahem. Are you the Alexa Hampton who was formally entered about half an hour ago into the stage‑three clinical trials for the National Institutes of Health being held by the Gerex Corporation? Or maybe I should play dumb and begin by asking if you've ever heard of them."

"Stone, why . . . why are you asking me this?"

It was bizarre. How could he know? And wait a minute, what did he mean about enrolling? She hadn't enrolled in anything.

"Ally, I'm finishing a major—I hope—book about stem cell technology, and right now the world leader is the Gerex Corporation. I think, but I can't yet prove, that their Dorian Institute out in New Jersey is the site of some pretty incredible stuff. I was ... fooling around on the Internet, on the NIH Web site, looking for information about them, and—it must have been some momentary computer glitch—someone with your name popped up for a second. Along with a Nina Hampton. Which made me suspect it was you."

She was incredulous. She was being entered into the clinical trials before she had even seen the place? Somebody was pushing the pace. Winston Bartlett or Van de Vliet had taken it for granted that she and her mother would enter the trials. Worst of all, it took a former lover she hadn't talked to in x‑zillion years to give her this unnerving information.

"Nina is your mom, right?" he went on. "I still remember her fondly. I don't think she thought much of me, however. By the way, how is she?"

"She's . . . she's not doing all that great." Ally was still trying to get her mind around what she'd just heard. "But why are you calling me, Stone?"

"If anything I've said rings a vague bell, then could we meet someplace and talk? I don't think it would be a great idea to do it over the phone. That's all I really can say now."

Maybe, she thought, Stone Aimes might have uncovered a few things of which she ought to be aware. His pieces in the Sentinel showed he was a damned good reporter.

"I don't think what little I know about Gerex would be any help to you." She was attempting to get her mind back together. "I actually have a lot of questions about the stem cell procedure myself. I spoke on the phone just now with Dr. Van de Vliet and he described their technology to me in general terms. But maybe I should interview you. Maybe you could explain it to me using that wonderful gift you have for simplification in your columns."

"Ally, I don't know anything except what's in the public domain. They're privately held, so they don't have to tell anybody zilch. I assume you've actually been out to the Dorian Institute, which is more than I can say."

"Never."

"But you're enrolled—"

"I'm not enrolled in anything." To say the least. "And it bothers me that anybody thinks so. But I am thinking about taking Mom out there tomorrow, if she still wants to go. When I talked to him on the phone, Dr. Van de Vliet wanted me to start the procedure immediately. That's scary, but he does seem to know what he's doing."

"I take it, then, that you're leaning toward going through with it."

She hated the way he'd just made her sound so gullible.

"The truth is, I'm more concerned for Mom. He claims he can help her early‑onset Alzheimer's, and that would mean a lot." Why was she telling him all this stuff? She found herself wondering if he'd ever married.

"I'm so sorry to hear that. But the chances are he can."

"What are you thinking?" she asked finally. "And why did you call me? Really? What's going on?"

"I don't know yet. There's a lot I don't know." He seemed to hesitate. "Ally, is there any chance whatsoever that—while you're out there—you could get me the names of some of the

people who've been through the clinical trials? The Dorian Institute is entirely off‑limits to the press. I tried several times to schedule an interview with Karl Van de Vliet, the guy you talked to, but no luck. I can't get past the corporate people. My only hope is to try and find some patients who've been treated and released who've completed the clinical trials. But Gerex has been ruthless about keeping their identities secret You are literally the first person I've found who has any connection with the institute and is willing to talk about it. That is, if you're willing."

"Stone, it would be like the blind leading the blind. I don't know the first thing about the place."

"Well, let me ask you this—when you were talking with him, did Van de Vliet happen to mention any occasion where a subject had been terminated from the trials?"

"It never came up. Why do you—?"

"Never mind. But when and if you go out there, you might inquire about that." He paused. "Don't get me wrong. I'm actually Gerex's biggest fan. I mean, considering merely what you told me, that they're claiming to have a procedure that treats early‑onset Alzheimer's. Think about it. I'm rooting for your mom, sure, but that's a Nobel Prize in itself, right there. We're talking major medical history in the making."

"And?"

"And I want to publish the first book about it." He paused. "Also, a little birdie tells me that something not entirely kosher may be going on out there. No proof, just a reporter's hunch. There's a little too much sudden secrecy."

Ally was having a strange feeling come over her. She was actually enjoying talking to him.

"Shit, Stone, I'm glad you called. I lost two men I loved very much since I knew you and I'm feeling very alone at the moment. I could use some moral support I've got a lot of people bugging me to enter those clinical trials. Even people I'd never met before, like Winston Bartlett, the New York big shot. He's suddenly very concerned about my health. I have no idea what that's about. But it makes me uneasy."

There was an awkward lull, then, "Ally, all I'm asking is that you just take the measure of the Dorian Institute when you're out there and tell me what you think about the place. Are they performing the miracles they announced as their objective?"

"Look, I'll help you when and if I actually can. So give me your number, okay?"

He did.

"I can tell when I'm being blown off," he went on. "I have a very sensitive blow‑off detector. But why don't you try a test? When you're out at the institute, ask Van de Vliet or somebody why that mystery patient was terminated from the clinical trials. See if the question makes them uncomfortable."

"Why does that matter so much to you?"

"If a patient is dropped for no good reason about the same time they clamp down on information, I think it could be fishy. Beyond that, I cannot speculate. And while you're at it, I'd love the names of some other ex‑patients. Anybody. I found a list on the NIH Web site but they're all encoded, so it doesn't do me any good. I just want to ask them if the procedure worked or not. It's information that's going to be made public eventually, no matter what. Come on, Ally, don't you want some testimonials?"

"Okay, look, I'll try to see if anybody there will give me any info."

She was realizing she was in a comfort zone when she was talking to him. Still, so much about him remained a mystery. He had always said his mother and father were both dead, but it was still suspiciously hard to get him to speak about them. She'd gotten the impression that he didn't actually remember his father. That was the part of his life that he'd always been the most closed off about. Either that or he was repressing some horrible memories.

"Thanks a lot, Ally." A pause, then, "Interested in getting together sometime?"

"Let me think about it."

She put down the phone with her mind in turmoil. She realized she hadn't asked him if he was "attached" but the next time they spoke, she was going to try to ease it into the conversation.

[ ]

Chapter 12

Tuesday, April 7

9:50 a.m.

Ally steered her Toyota onto the ramp leading to the George Washington Bridge, the entryway to northern New Jersey. She was just finishing a phone call to Jennifer. She wanted her to take a look at the notes and blueprints for Bartlett's Gramercy Park project and scan them into their CAD program. After all the phone calls yesterday, she'd been too sidetracked to do it. Although Bartlett had declared he wasn't in any hurry, he had messengered a certified check to her office Monday afternoon. The project was a go. She wanted to get moving while everything was fresh in her mind.

Before leaving her apartment this morning, she'd downloaded a map from MapQuest and from it she had estimated that the drive up to the Dorian Institute would be approximately an hour—give or take. She had begun the trip early because her mother's mind had been lucid the previous evening and she was hoping that interlude might last into this morning.

Unfortunately, it had not.

Nina was sitting next to her now, in full makeup but completely unresponsive, seemingly in another world. When Ally arrived at the Riverside Drive apartment to pick her up, Maria—now silent and uneasy in the backseat, reading a Spanish novel—met her at the door with a troubled look and shook her head sadly.

"Miss Hampton, I know she was all right when you were here last night, but this morning ... she may not recognize you. She'll most likely snap out of it and be okay later on, but right now she's just in a fog. It was all I could do to get her ready."

When Ally walked in, Nina was sitting in her favorite chair, dressed in her favorite black suit. Her makeup was perfect Thank you, Maria.

"Hey, sweetie, you look great."

Nina stared at her as though trying to place the face and said nothing. She just looked confused and very, very sad.

Dear God, Ally thought, this is the first time she's completely failed to recognize me.

It was so disheartening. Last night, when Ally had come up to discuss whether or not she still wanted to explore Dr. Van de Vliet's experimental treatment, Nina had been completely cognizant. Ally had tried to explain the concept of neural tissue regeneration using stem cells, which was difficult since she barely understood it herself.

"Mom," she had said "this might be something that could reverse some of the damage to your... memory. At least keep it from getting worse. I know it sounds scary but everybody says the conventional treatments for what you have don't work very well or very long."

"Then let's go out there and talk to him, honey. Just come in the morning and take me. By then I'll probably forget everything you've said tonight."

How prescient, Ally thought sadly. Now Nina was just gazing blankly ahead, silent. Does she remember anything from last night?

For that matter, what was Nina thinking now? Was she conscious of the fact she was losing her mind? And what

about the ultimate question: do we want to live longer merely to be alive, or do we want to stay alive in order to do things? To be or to do? In her mother's case, she knew it was the latter. Nina had always been full of life, ambition, and projects. Would she want to go on living if none of those things were possible? You never know for sure about other people, even your own mother, but Ally suspected she would rather not live to see that day.

Now, though, was she even aware it was coming?

Ally thought back about the first signs. Nina hadn't yet turned sixty‑five when she abruptly started having trouble remembering little things. She began forgetting where she'd put items, and she gave up on remembering phone numbers and dates. Initially it had just seemed like a lot of "senior moments" run together, very puzzling.

But then it got worse. She'd always loved music, and she'd always played the piano. She loved Chopin, especially the nocturnes. By the time she was sixty‑six, however, she was having trouble remembering the names of her favorite composers. She also completely gave up trying to play, either from memory or with the music. When getting dressed one day, she put on her blouse completely backwards. It was bad.

Ally had taken her to see four different specialists and they all had concluded that Nina Hampton suffered from what was known as familial early‑onset Alzheimer's. It was caused by a mutated gene and was extremely rare, representing only some 5 percent of all Alzheimer's cases.

There were two major drugs currently on the market, Exelon and Reminyl, that could relieve some of the symptoms of Alzheimer's by boosting the action of the brain chemical acetylcholine. However, Nina had not yet declined to the stage where doctors would prescribe those drugs. To resort to them was an admission you were at endgame, since they usually were effective only for a few months.

So the Dorian Institute might well be a long shot worth taking. Frankly, what's to lose?

This morning, she knew, was going to be difficult. If Nina

wanted to stay and checked in, there would surely be a pile of paperwork. Ally had had the foresight to acquire power of attorney for her mother three months earlier, and she'd brought along that document in case it might be needed. And Maria, the wonderful, ultimate caregiver, was there to help. The real challenge, however, might well be trying to help Nina understand what was going on and participate in the decision. This was the moment every child dreads, when you have to face, really face, a parent's mortality.

As the green forests of northern New Jersey began to envelop them, she slipped a CD of Bach partitas for unaccompanied violin into the CD player. She had loved to play them all her life, but now Dr. Ekelman had urged her to put her violin into storage. Hearing the violin now reminded her of the other purpose of the trip, the treatment decision she needed to make for herself.

In that regard one of the things that kept running through her mind was what Stone Aimes had said about the Gerex Corporation instituting a news blackout simultaneously with a patient being mysteriously dropped from the trials. Those concurrent facts did not need to be ominous, but they also could use an explanation.

What was she going to do? Was Van de Vliet's stem cell procedure on her heart really worth the risk? She honestly didn't know. Even though the violin had temporarily been taken away from her, she had hopes she could gradually get it back. There were other ways to try to strengthen a dysfunctional heart.

Well, she thought, wait and hear him out.

From the George Washington Bridge she had taken 1‑4, which turned into 1‑208 and now the green forest held sway. It felt like she'd gone through a time warp, from the beginning of the twenty‑first century to the end of the eighteenth. Then finally, as the second partita was ending, the icy‑cold Greenwood Lake came into view. It was associated with those long Finger Lakes gouged out by glaciers.

Driving past remnants of the last Ice Age, she reflected on how insignificant humans are in the scheme of things. Suddenly she thought of Aldous Huxley's novel After Many a Summer Dies the Swan, about a wealthy madman who'd discovered a way to prolong life by eating the entrails of prehistoric fish. Maybe it was seeing the lake that made her flash on that.

She was now on Greenwood Lake Road, which passed around the west side, and there were numbers on several gated driveways as she passed along. She suspected the place would be somewhere along the middle of the lakeshore, and she was right.

After a few miles she came to a discreet sign announcing the Dorian Institute, and a large iron gate that protected a paved roadway leading into a forest of trees. That was it: just forest, no hint of a building, though she saw signs of some kind of industrial park farther down the road. When she drove up to the gate, she realized there was a video camera and a two‑way intercom.

When she reached out of the window and pushed the talk button, she heard "Good morning." And then the gates parted in the middle and slid back.

They must be expecting us, she thought, and drove through.

The road was cobblestone, or rough paving brick. It wound among the trees for approximately half a mile and then widened.

There, framed by the lake in the background, was a magnificent three‑story building with eight Doric columns across the front in perfect Greek Revival style. There were windows at ground level, but they were heavily curtained.

Built of red brick, the building probably dated from the late nineteenth century, and it looked every bit like an Ivy League dormitory.

"Miss Hampton, I don't like the feeling I'm getting about this place," Maria said quietly. "It is very cold and formal from the outside, but inside I sense a place where there is bad magic.

In the Dominican Republic, we call it Santeria. I can always tell these things."

Ally knew and respected Maria's sixth sense. But then Maria sometimes still acted like a freshly minted citizen just off a green card, and she had an innate suspicion of authority‑ evoking buildings. Her aversion to the Dorian Institute might be nothing more than that.

On the other hand, Ally was having a bit of the same feeling. There was something formidable and foreboding about the place that seemed out of keeping with its supposedly benign purpose. She felt a moment of tightness in her chest.

There was a parking area off to the left, and she drove into the nearest slot and turned off her engine. This was the moment she'd been both anticipating and dreading. The clock on the dash read eleven‑fifteen; she was fifteen minutes ahead of the appointed hour.

"Okay, Mom, how do you feel?"

Nina turned and stared at her, uncertainty in her eyes. "Where are we, Ally? I don't recognize anything."

"This is the institute I told you about last night. Can you remember anything we talked about then?"

"This is the place you were ... Didn't you say there's a doctor here who can do something for my... memory?"

"We're both here now to just talk to him." She turned to the backseat. "Maria, can you get Mom's purse?"

She nodded, then reached hesitantly for the door. She was clearly reluctant to get out.

Ally walked around and opened the door for her mother.

"Okay, Mom, time to stretch your legs."

Ally held her hand and together they headed across the oval brick driveway. Birds were chirping around them and she could smell the scent of the lake, borne up the hill by a fresh wind. Then, through the trees, she saw two women walking up the trail that led down to the lake. They were, she assumed some of the patients.

They both looked to be in their early sixties, but also athletic and nimble. One was wearing Nikes and a pale green pantsuit. The other had on a blue dress and a white cap and Ally realized she must be a nurse. She'd been taking the other woman out for a stroll.

They were engrossed in conversation, but as they approached, the woman Ally had decided was on staff looked up and smiled a greeting.

"Can I help you?"

She introduced herself and Nina and Maria. The woman smiled again but didn't introduce herself in turn.

"We're here to see Dr. Van de Vliet," Ally went on, "about the trials. But we're a couple of minutes early and I was wondering if we could look around a bit first? I'm trying to understand what the institute is really like."

"Well, dear," the woman said, "even those of us who work here aren't allowed everywhere. You know, into the research lab in the basement. Some places here have to be completely hygienic. Of course, for patients who are in the recovery phase, strolling around outside is definitely recommended, as long as they're able. But that's getting way ahead of ourselves. First we'll have to check you in. There's a lot of paperwork for the clinical trials." She seemed puzzled. "They're almost over, you know. But come along and I'll let him know you're here. He's always down in the lab at this time of the morning. It's well after his rounds. They're so busy now."

Then she turned to the other woman. "Sophie, do you think you can find your way back to your room? It's number two‑eighteen, on the second floor, remember?"

Sophie appeared to be pondering the question for a long moment before she huffed "Don't be silly. I know exactly where it is."

As she strode on ahead, the nurse watched her carefully, as though unsure what she might do next. She pushed a buzzer at the door and then a man in a white uniform opened it and let her in. Only after Sophie had disappeared through the doorway did the nurse turn back.

"I'm Elise Baker. Please forgive Sophie if she seems a little ... confused. Her procedure is still under way."

"Her 'procedure'? What—"

"She was diagnosed with Parkinson's before she came here. She's improved an enormous amount, but we're not allowed to say so."

"Why is that?"

"We're in clinical trials. No one is allowed to discuss our results. Everyone here had to sign a secrecy agreement."

Now Maria was helping Nina up the steps. The porch, with its soaring white Doric columns, was definitely magisterial. The front door, however, was not wooden or decorative. It was solid steel, albeit painted white to blend in.

Elise walked to the door, which had a video camera mounted above it, and a split second later, it buzzed, signaling it was unlocked.

This is a lot of security, Ally thought, for a clinic doing research on cells. Are they worried about spies getting in, or patients getting out?

But the locked steel door was just the beginning of the security. Next they entered a small room just inside the door with an X‑ray machine to see into purses and parcels.

"The first floor is reception and dining," Elise explained as she swept through the metal detector. "There are rooms— we call them suites—upstairs for patients, and the research lab and offices are in the . . . lower area."

"What . . . what is all this security for?" Ally asked.

"The work here is highly proprietary. No one is allowed to bring in any kind of camera or recording equipment."

The guard dressed in white looked like a retired policeman, with perhaps a few too many jelly doughnuts over his career. He had a beefy red face and a hefty spare tire. But he was certainly alert to his responsibilities, eyeing the three newcomers with scarcely disguised suspicion.

In fact, Ally sensed a palpable paranoia in the air. Well, she told herself, medical research is a high‑stakes game. It's understandable they would be concerned about industrial espionage.

After the security check, they went through another steel

door and entered the actual lobby. The first thing she noticed was a grand staircase leading up to the second floor, and then to the third. Off to the right was a modern elevator with a shiny steel door.

A number of patients were coming down the stairs and heading for a hallway leading to the back. They were mostly women, whose ages ranged anywhere from forty‑five to well beyond seventy.

Who are these people? Ally wondered. They must have been sufferers of various kinds of debilitating afflictions, but now they were certainly ambulatory, if not downright sprightly. She wanted to talk to some of them, watching them moving along chatting and smiling, but this was not the moment.

"At eleven‑thirty we have meditation in the dining hall," Elise was saying as she led them through the lobby, "for those who care to participate, and after that a vegetarian lunch is served at twelve‑thirty sharp." Then she glanced back. "After you see Dr. Van de Vliet—and assuming you're admitted—there'll be an orientation and then you're welcome to begin participating fully in our activities."

"Actually," Ally said, "if people are well enough to be in 'activities,' why can't they be outpatients?"

"These clinical trials require twenty‑four‑hour supervision," Elise explained, heading for the wide desk in the center of the room. "Now, if you would all sign in here at the desk, Ellen can take you downstairs to the medical reception."

A dark‑haired woman smiled from behind the desk, then got up and came around. A sign‑in book was there on a steel stand. Ally finally noticed that light classical music was wafting through the room, Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake suite.

"You must be Ms. Hampton," the woman said. "And this must be your mother. We were told to expect you."

She nodded a farewell to Elise, who said, "It was so nice to meet you. Good luck."

She then turned and headed for the back.

Ally signed all three of them in.

"Good," the woman said as she checked the information.

"My name is Ellen O'Hara, by the way. I'm in charge of the nursing staff here. We're ready to go downstairs now."

Ellen O'Hara had a knowing, earnest face that fairly lit up when she smiled. She had short brown hair streaked with gray and was pleasantly full‑figured.

When they reached the elevator, she zipped a small plastic card through the reader on the wall and the doors slid open. As they emerged on the lower level, Ally realized they were in the precincts of a very sophisticated medical laboratory. Occupying most of the floor was a glassed‑in area, inside of which she could see three men and two women, all dressed in white. She also noticed rows of steel containers that seemed to be ovens or incubators of some kind as well as racks and racks of vials. At the far end of the laboratory, there was a blackboard on which one of the men was drawing something that looked like hexagonal molecules, linking them together.

"That's Dr. Van de Vliet," Ellen said pointing. "I'll let him know you're here. The laboratory is a special environment. The entrance there is actually an air lock. The air inside is filtered and kept under positive pressure."

She walked over to a communications module, buzzed then announced into the microphone, "Dr. Vee, your eleven‑ thirty appointment is here."

He turned and stared in their direction, then smiled and waved. Next he walked to a microphone near the center of the room and clicked it on.

"I'll be with you in a minute. Can you please wait in the receiving room? And Ellen, can you start getting them ready?"

"Of course." She nodded then clicked off the microphone and turned. "Receiving is just down at the end of the hall. Next to his office. Please come with me."

She led them through a large wooden door, into a room with a retractable metal table covered in white paper and several chairs. It was a typical examination room, with a device on the wall to monitor blood pressure, a stethoscope, and other examination paraphernalia.

"If you'll kindly take a seat," Ellen said, "I'm sure he'll be here as soon as he can, in a few minutes at most. But while we wait, I need to take your temperature and blood pressure, and start a chart."

"Ally, where are we?" Nina asked. Her face was becoming alarmed, and Maria reached to comfort her. "Are we in a hospital somewhere?"

"Yes, Mom, it's actually the institute I told you about last night The doctor here wants to see if he can do anything to... help you."

"Oh," she said, "is he the one you told me about? I thought that was just a dream."

"No, he's real. Whether he can help you or not that part is what’s still a dream. But we're all praying."

She looked around at the pure white walls and wondered again what she was getting into. Meeting a new specialist in the sterile white cold of an examination room, could be frightening in itself. God, how many times before had she done this as she trudged through HMO hell? Maria was so unsettled she was deathly pale.

Ellen took their blood pressure and temperature, including Maria's, even though she protested mildly, half in Spanish—a sign of how unsettling it was to her. Ellen had only just finished putting all the numbers on clipboard charts for each of them when Karl Van de Vliet opened the door and strode in.

[Chapter 13]

Tuesday, April 7

11:39 a.m.

He had a high forehead and prominent cheekbones, just like in the photo. And just as in his photo, there was a genuine dichotomy between his face, which looked to be early forties and unwrinkled, and his gray eyes, which were much older. That was it. That was what seemed odd. He was different ages.

Underneath his white lab coat he was wearing a black suit and an open‑necked blue shirt. Ally noticed that his fingers were long and delicate, like those of a concert pianist, and overall he had a kind of ghostly presence, as though he were more spirit than man. Although he looked exactly as he did in the photograph in the Gerex Corporation brochure, in person there was an added dimension, a kind of raw magnetism about him. It was more than simply a physician's bedside manner, it was the allure of a pied piper. The first thing you wanted to ask him was How old are you, really? Maybe the next thing you'd want to do was ask him to dinner.

What had she expected? Maybe a self‑absorbed nerd researcher in wrinkled stained lab attire, anxious to scurry back to his test tubes. But in person Karl Van de Vliet was debonair and youthful, living proof that his photo wasn't retouched and was recent. He had to be twenty years older than she was, easily, but to look at him you'd guess he was close to the same age. She was dying to ask him about that but she couldn't think of a polite way to raise the subject.

She introduced herself. "We spoke yesterday." Then she introduced her mother and Maria. "Mom and I talked last night about the clinical trials, and she said she's interested. This morning, unfortunately, I'm not sure she remembers what we discussed."

He placed a hand on Nina's shoulder and studied her face as he smiled at her, embracing her with his eyes. "Well, we're going to see what we can do about that aren't we, Mrs. Hampton?"

"I've got a question right up front" Ally said. "Have we already been entered into the National Institutes of Health clinical trials?"

He seemed taken aback for a moment, caught off guard, but then he stepped up to the question.

"As a matter of fact I did take the liberty of authorizing the preliminary NIH paperwork for both of you. Of course it doesn't obligate you in any way. The thing is, there's a lot of red tape, so if you do decide to participate, the sooner we get that part started the better. On the other hand, if you decide not to, we can just terminate everything at this preliminary stage and you won't even be part of the official record."

Well, Ally thought, that undoubtedly explains why Stone saw our names on the NIH Web site. But why did Van de Vliet look so funny when I brought it up?

He focused on Nina. "Mrs. Hampton, I'm Dr. Van de Vliet. You're a pretty lady, and we've had some luck helping other ladies like you."

"Honey, if I had you in my bedroom, then maybe you could help me."

Oh my God, Ally thought, she's about to go ribald on us. But that's a sign she's coming out of her funk.

But then she had another thought. Maybe Nina sensed he was older than he looked. Like that paranormal perception that told her Grant was involved in something evil. So far, however, that particular perception hadn't panned out (though Grant clearly was up to something).

Maria was mortified. She blushed and made a disapproving animal noise low in her throat and turned her face away, but Van de Vliet simply smiled even more broadly.

"Mrs. Hampton, I don't think you should be talking that way in front of your daughter." He gave her a wink. "What you and I do together is none of these people's business. But I do think we should consider keeping them informed if only a couple of hints."

Ally found herself wanting just to listen to his voice. There was an intelligent warmth about it that reminded her of a kindly professor at Columbia, a truly gifted architect who also could quote Keats and make you cry. You wanted to give yourself to him. My God, she thought, how am I going to stand up to this man?

"There're some issues you and I need to discuss," he said turning back to Ally. "The first thing I need to do is take a look at Mrs. Hampton’s records. But whatever they say, it won't do any harm to run what we call a 'mental state examination' for her, to establish a general baseline of cognitive impairment as of now."

"How long will that take?"

"Actually, Ellen can start in just a few minutes," he said "Of course, we'll need to hear about the usual danger signs everybody knows. Does Mrs. Hampton have recent‑memory loss? Does she get confused about places and people? Does she have trouble handling money and paying her bills?"

"The short answer is yes."

All of those things, Ally knew, had accelerated in the last six months. It was the tragic, recognizable onset of the latter stages of Alzheimer's. Already more than once Maria had said there were times when she didn't think Nina recognized her. More and more she seemed to be confused, unable some days to find her way around the apartment, and she'd started repeating herself. She often had trouble finding the right words, and she was increasingly paranoid and suspicious. Maria, who had worked with other Alzheimer’s patients, feared she might begin hallucinating soon, seeing things that weren't there.

Ally turned to her. It felt obscene to talk about her when she was sitting right there with them.

"Mom, sweetie, do you understand what Dr. Van de Vliet is asking? Do you think you have trouble doing everyday things?"

She knew the answer but she was determined that her mother not be treated like a potted plant.

"Ally, you know that half the time I can't remember a blessed thing. I'm getting crazy as a bloody coot."

Then Nina turned and looked Van de Vliet in the eye.

"I don't want to lose my mind, Doctor. I don't want to see the shade closing in. I can't do crosswords anymore. I used to do them all the time. And all the music I used to know. It was my love and now . . . now I can't tell Scriabin from Strauss half the time. It wasn't supposed to happen that way. I thought my mind would go on forever."

"Mrs. Hampton, if you'll let me, what I want to do is try to work on your recollection. I don't know how much I can help you with crosswords, but then I've never been much good at them myself either. Your memory of music should improve, though. There are no guarantees, but—"

"Then I'm ready to try it, Doctor," she cut in. "You're all that stands between me and losing the only thing I have left, my past" Next came a burst of rationality. "Now, I hate to be a pest but could you explain what exactly it is you're going to do. I want Ally to hear this too and then maybe she can go over it with me later and help me understand it."

He smiled and reached over and stroked her slightly thinning hair. "I'd be happy to try, Mrs. Hampton. It's actually pretty simple."

Then he turned to Ally. "We touched on some of this on the phone. Do you want to hear it again?"

"Yes, I'm still trying to get it all into my simple mind."

"Well," he began, "to go back to the very beginning of my interest in stem cells the focus of our research has been directed toward challenging the notorious Hayflick limit. Back in the 1960s, Professor Leonard Hayflick discovered that when tissue cells are taken from the body and cultured in a laboratory dish, those cells grow and divide about fifty times, give or take, and then they stop. They have reached old age, senescence. The physical basis of the Hayflick limit is a section of DNA known as telomere, which gets shorter each time the cell divides. Eventually the telomeres become so short that all cell division stops. It's like an internal clock telling them the game is over. They've had their innings."

"And you're saying you've found a way to beat the clock, to stop the telomeres from getting shorter?"

"All cells possess a gene known as the telomerase gene, which can restore the telomeres to their youthful length. But in most cells the gene is permanently repressed and inactive. It is only found in egg and sperm cells, and in cancer cells." He gazed away for a moment as though collecting his thoughts. Then he turned back. "However, we've found that by isolating and inserting an active copy of the telomerase enzyme into adult stem cells, which can be found in minute quantities throughout the body, we can set their clock back to zero. We extract cells, 'immortalize' them with telomerase, and then return them to the body as a youthful infusion."

"And is that what you'd be doing for Mom?"

"There'd be a series of injections, but given what appears to be her level of mental awareness right now, the procedure probably can be accelerated." He patted Nina on the shoulder.

"All right," Ally said "but can you use the same procedure for someone's heart?"

"Well, yes and no," he said. "Did you bring your medical records? I should have a look at them before making any pronouncements."

To prepare for this moment, she'd printed off a copy of the medical files she'd scanned into her computer.

"There're a lot of files," she said, opening her bag. "I've got copies of my EKGs over the past eleven years. Dr. Ekelman, my cardiologist, says my condition is getting progressively worse."

She took the folder out of her bag and handed it to him. He flipped through the files with what seemed an absent manner, almost as though he already knew what was in them and was just going through the motions. Then he looked up.

"Well, your physical condition looks pretty good. You clearly exercise. And I don't see anything here that would suggest a complication. As to how your procedure might differ from your mother's, I guess the main area of concern is simply the scale." He laid her files on the steel table. "Your heart has reached the stage of aortic valve stenosis where cardiac output no longer can keep up proportionately with vigorous exercise. And that has put an even larger strain on an already weakened condition. What we are about to undertake here corresponds to what might almost be considered an aortic valve replacement, though it is done at the cellular level. We call it regenerative medicine. Millions of cells will be involved We'll attempt to reverse the calcification and also to develop new blood vessels that supply the heart muscle."

"You know, this is so risky. I remember that not long ago they tried to use fetal cell injections into the brain for treating Parkinson's disease. And it turned out that the side effects were horrendous. Why should I assume that this is any safer?"

He looked pained. "I assure you we don't do anything here that is remotely like that particular, unfortunate procedure."

She stared at the ceiling trying to grasp what he'd just said. "So how risky do you think this is?" she asked finally. "Truth time."

He looked away again and sighed. There was a long silence in which he seemed to be pondering some extremely troubling thoughts. Finally he turned back.

"In medicine there Is always something that can go wrong. Even the most innocuous procedure can end up being lethal if that's what the gods want that day." He looked at her intently and seemed to try to measure his words. "But I wouldn't recommend we proceed if I didn't feel that the potential benefits far outweigh the risks."

She listened wondering. Something in his voice is sounding cagey. What is he leaving out?

"I still want to think about it"

"Of course, but we can make some preparations in the meantime," Van de Vliet said turning back to Nina. "Mrs. Hampton, do you understand anything of what I've said? Nothing is risk free."

"Young man, if you'd lived as long as I have, and then felt it all slipping away, you'd be willing to take a chance with anything."

"Mrs. Hampton, Alzheimer's is one of the more promising areas of stem cell research. We've already had successes here. I truly think we can help you. In fact, Ellen can start your preliminaries right now, if you like. A lot of it you may have done before. For example, there's a game where you have to memorize the names of three unrelated objects, and you have to count backwards from one hundred by sevens. Finally there's a test where you copy sentences and symbols." He chuckled and there was a warmth but also a distant sadness. "Some days I'm not sure I could even do it all myself. In any case, it's not something you pass or fail. But if we do enter you into the trials, you'll have to stay here for the duration. That's absolutely essential. We'd also like a caregiver to be here with you, as long as it's necessary."

Ally looked at Maria. "Do you think you want to stay here with Mom?"

Maria's eyes were very sad "I could stay for a day or two. But ... maybe we should talk."

"We can arrange for someone," Van de Vliet interjected "We routinely provide caregivers from our staff when called for. And because we're still in clinical trials, there is no charge."

Ally watched Nina brighten and turn to Maria. "You can bring some things from my closet when you go back. I want to start right away. I just know he can help me. I've got a feeling and you know my feelings are always right."

Ellen reached and took Nina's hand. "Come, dear, we have a special office where we handle all the paperwork for admissions. We can do the tests there."

Ally leaned over and kissed her mother. "I love you, Mom. And I love your spirit. You taught me how to be a fighter a long time ago. And I guess you're still teaching me."

Tuesday, April 7

12:03 p.m.

Karl Van de Vliet watched the three women leave. Now he was alone with Alexa. So far, so good, he thought. With her mother checked in, we're partway there. Now what is it going to take to get her with the program? I'm not sensing commitment. She's asking too damned many questions.

It looks like we may have to go to Plan B tomorrow. Too bad.

After the door was closed, he turned back.

"Your mother is quite an inspiration," he said with a smile. "I'll need those tests to create a baseline, but already I can tell she'll almost certainly respond to the treatment. She fits our success profile. I'd say the odds are heavily on her side." Then he darkened his look, for effect. Better let her know I don't have to do this, he reasoned.

"The truth is, we already have enough data on Alzheimers that I don't really need any further clinical trials. I know the parameters of what the procedure can do and what it can't. But when Grant told me about his mother's condition, I saw no reason not to work her into the trials. We're winding down now and we have some empty beds."

"Don't think I'm not grateful," she said, "even though I may ask a lot of questions."

She got the message, he thought. Good.

"Alexa, I'm now going to tell you something I've never told anyone else," he went on, feeling a tinge of sadness arise in his chest. He hadn't planned to say this, but for some reason he now wanted to. Perhaps because it was true. "My late wife, Camille, was a brilliant medical researcher. We worked together for many years, first at Johns Hopkins and then at Harvard. What took her from me was a heart condition very similar to your own. That was over a decade ago and I vowed I would dedicate my work to her. I wanted the final clinical trial in this program to be on a young person with advanced valvular stenosis, but I could never find a patient who matched that profile. But you would be perfect." He looked carefully at her. It was all so true, which made this whole scene especially poignant.

"I'm sorry about your wife," Ally said. "I read in your—"

"You see, if I can succeed with you, it would almost seem as though I'd had a second chance to save her life. You bear such a striking likeness to her in several ways. You look something like her, but more importantly I sense that you share her indomitable will."

"So I'm not just another statistic to you?" She seemed to be trying to gauge the depth of his sincerity.

"No one here is a statistic, but you would definitely be someone special."

"I see," she said still sounding noncommittal.

Am I getting anywhere? he wondered Just press on. You've got to make this happen.

"All right, whatever you decide, we need to get some preliminaries out of the way. For one thing, we must have a complete new cardiology exam. Nothing in the file you brought presents an obvious red flag, but still, it's essential that we have an up‑to‑the‑minute stress test. Toward that end I've taken the liberty of arranging for a checkup at the New York University Faculty Practice Radiology on East Thirty‑fourth Street. Among other things, they can run a high‑speed computed tomography screening using ultrafast X rays. Also, I'd like to see a phonocardiogram. A sonic analysis of 'murmurs' can tell us a lot about valve abnormalities. Regardless of what you decide to do here, it's a good idea for you to have this done regularly anyway."

"You've already scheduled tests?" Her tone of voice told him she was mildly taken aback at the presumption.

"It's just that the NYU Faculty Practice is sometimes difficult to get into on short notice. They can be booked for weeks in advance. But a cardiologist I know there, Lev Amram, has agreed to make room for you this afternoon. It's a professional courtesy. There'll be no charge. After that, and assuming you want to proceed, you should get a good night's rest and then come back here as early as possible tomorrow morning. You should pack for a three‑week stay, though we'll provide you with pretty much everything you'll need here."

Just get her here.

"You know," she said, "I was actually hoping we could do this on an outpatient basis. I know you like to have your patients here for constant observation, but I run a business that needs me there every day."

"Alexa," he said, putting every last ounce of authority he had into his voice, "this is not a conventional procedure, and it's possible you might suddenly need special care of some kind. This is an experimental clinical trial, so we don't know what can happen. That's why I really must insist that you be here twenty‑four hours a day." He looked at her with great tenderness. "We're talking about the possibility of completely repairing your heart. Surely you don't expect just to drop by now and then for that."

"All right, point taken," she said, "but—if we go forward with this—I'll need to hire at least one temp to be at the office while I'm gone. Somebody to at least handle the phone. That could take time."

"Surely someone there could manage to handle that," he said. She's getting resistant again, he told himself. Don't let that happen. "And there's also the matter of your mother. I think it would be wise for you to be nearby during the early stages of her procedure. When her mind starts climbing out of the abyss, it's important for a close family member to be there to provide a visual and emotional anchor. It truly can make all the difference. I fully expect that her functions of attention and recall will return to those normal for a woman her age, or quite possibly even better, but it will happen a lot quicker if you're here to help her, to remind her of things."

"This is a lot to digest." Ally turned and sat down in a chair. "All right, I might as well get the exam. It doesn't mean I've agreed to anything here."

He heard the ambivalence and knew he had no choice but to do what he was going to have to do tomorrow.

"I will proceed on the assumption that you'll be entering the program. Truthfully, if you don't, a week from now your mother is going to be asking you why." He smiled. "In any case, we need to have those tests done in the city. Also some blood work here. We're affiliated with a lab. I want to check your T‑cells and certain other markers, like C‑reactive protein and homocystine. It's something you should do regularly anyway."

"All right, then," she said finally. "But after that, let me go see how Mom's doing. Then I'll arrange things with Maria somehow and drive back to the city."

"By the way, before I forget, we have to complete a formal application for your mother to admit her into the clinical trials, and we also need a signed liability waiver. I assume you have power of attorney for her by now. If you don't, then we may not legally be able to proceed."

"I have it."

"Then let's get started" he declared almost certain he had her.

[Chapter 14]

Tuesday, April 7

11:35 a.m.

Stone Aimes was in his cubicle, staring at the phone when it rang.

He prayed this was the call he'd been waiting for. As a gamble, a long shot, he'd requested that Jane Tully, his former live‑in lover and the Sentinel's part‑time corporate counsel, do him a small favor. After he hacked the NIH Web site, he'd asked her to pass along just one question concerning Gerex to Winston Bartlett's corporate attorneys: Why had a patient been abruptly and mysteriously terminated, without explanation, from the clinical trials now under way by the Gerex Corporation? If that wouldn't get a rise out of Bartlett, he didn't know what would. It was the only part of the corporation's encrypted NIH file that seemed irregular. But would Bartlett take the bait?

He reached for the phone.

"Aimes here." Around him came the clatter of computer keys and muted laughter from the direction of the water cooler. Everybody had watched a Tivo of the latest Sunday night and they were still critiquing the shows. Mondays were everybody's day off, so Tuesdays were the first chance to catch up. The staff was also starting to rev up again for the coming week's edition, everybody with the hope that their particular assignment would have legs and make its author a household name. Stone, however, felt like this was either the first day of the rest of his life or the last day of a career built on dealing to inside straights. This cannot go on much longer, he kept telling himself; it was an unstable condition. His soul was already over the fence, keeping company with that wild, free ox he liked to muse about.

"Stone," came a husky female voice, strained and yet strong. Just as he'd hoped, it was Jane, whose office was down on the third floor. "Can you come down? Right now."

"Did you hear back from—"

"Stone," she admonished her voice growing urgent, "just come down. Do it now, all right?"

"Sure." He paused a moment, wondering. Why did she sound so upset? Had his plan somehow backfired? "I'm on my way."

He glanced up at the fluorescent light over his head like a pitiless hovering spaceship, and wondered if this was going to be the break he had been praying for. There was a nervousness in Jane's voice that indicated something major was afoot. Something was about to change.

He switched off his Compaq laptop and reached for his brown corduroy jacket, which was hanging from a hook on the side of the glass‑walled cubicle. He straightened his brown knit tie as he stepped on the elevator, and for some reason he found himself thinking of his daughter, Amy.

He mimed a toast. Here's looking at you, kid.

She was in the fifth grade and lived with her mother, Joyce, in a small condominium nestled in the hills near El Cerrito, where his ex‑wife grew up. Joyce was a television producer who had left him to go back out there, where she got work as a garden designer. When he got over the shock, he finally concluded she loved California more than she loved him. Maybe not an unreasonable choice. But then she got custody of Amy, based solely on the fact that his income was inadequate to send her to private school in New York and the public schools were out of the question. But Joyce had agreed that if he ever had the money, she could live with him some of the time. This book, he hoped, would make that happen.

He still didn't know why he and Joyce couldn't have made a go of it. It had occurred to him that there was the real possibility she had fallen in love with the idea of a dashing investigative reporter, not the grueling reality. These days she had Amy all the time except for three weeks in July, and he had so many things to regret he scarcely knew where to start.

He kept a year‑old photograph of Amy on his desk, in a frame far too expensive for a snapshot of a young girl on a black horse named Zena. But it was Zena that his $1,500 a month in child support had helped to pay for, and he felt it somehow bonded them.

Hi, Dad, from me and Zena, went the inscription.

Why was he thinking about her now? he wondered. The answer was, because he wanted her world to be different from the one he had known as a child. He hadn't had a father around, and that had left him with a lot of anger. He didn't want the same fate for her.

Amy's world, he knew, was going to be very different, no matter what he did. To be young like her and starting out was a daunting prospect these days. He wanted to make everything easier for her, but the only thing he could give her now was a measly $1,500 every month and his unshakable love.

Even so, that was more than his mother, Karen, got for child support—from a natural father he had never actually seen in the flesh until he was eleven. And that was a chance encounter....

So, if this book got some traction and he got some recognition, along with some economic security, he might be able to have Amy come back and live with him. It was something

she'd said she wanted to do, though he wasn't sure where he would keep Zena.

But all in good time. Now everything depended on the book....

The elevator door opened and he stepped out on the third floor. The receptionist, Rhonda, a dark‑haired resident of Avenue A who usually tried to flirt, looked at him as though he'd just been convicted of a crime and nodded with her head toward the corridor leading to Jane's office.

"Stone, you've really screwed up this time. You'll never guess who's in there and after your scalp. What on earth did you do?"

"You mean—"

"This is a guy I've only seen in newspaper pictures, though, needless to say, not in this upstanding rag." In her dismay, she unthinkingly reached for the pack of Virginia Slims lying next to the phone, momentarily forgetting that smoking had long‑since been forbidden in the building. "You'd better get your ass in there. Jesus, he came in with a bunch of lawyers, but then he told them to split. 'I'm going to handle the fucker myself.' Quote, unquote. Right here by my desk."

Stone didn't know, with absolute certainty, who she was talking about, but surely it had to be ... My God, he thought with a thrill, maybe it worked. Maybe I've smoked him out.

"Truth tellers have nothing to fear, Rhonda." He winked at her. "I'm protected by the sword of the Lord. 'He is my rod and my staff. He leadeth me beside still waters.'"

"You're crazy, you know that?" She'd remembered where she was and began putting the cigarette back into the pack. Then she smoothed her short black hair. "He leadeth you into the shit, handsome. That's where He 'leadeth' you. You're adorable, but you're also a sane person's nightmare."

"Thanks," he said giving a thumbs‑up as he walked past her desk. "I appreciate your unstinting praise."

He headed on down the hall, the plush gray carpet soft against his feet. Could this be the break? he wondered feeling his hopes cautiously rising. Had the Big Man himself shown up? Could it be that there was something funny going on with that patient who got dropped?

But what? He still didn't have a clue.

As he walked into the room, he felt as though time just stopped. He had fantasized about this moment more and more as the years went by. Now here it was. What next? He thought he had been emotionally prepared, but now he realized he wasn't. Were they going to acknowledge the past, or were they just going to act as though nothing existed between them?

That first chance meeting, when Stone was eleven, had been when his mother threatened to sue Bartlett for formal child support. The threat of publicity caused the matter to be immediately settled, as she'd hoped it would be. Stone had been sitting in the law firm's reception area when Bartlett walked through. Each knew who the other was, but Bartlett just stopped and glared at him for a moment before moving cm. Stone had sized up the man who had abandoned his mother and only barely managed to suppress an urge to leap up and lash out at him, if only to say, Look at me. I'm here.

He had not been in the same room with his father since, but this time around he was definitely noticed.

Winston Bartlett looked just as he did in news photos. He was in his late sixties, with thinning blond hair that was cut too long and shaggy in the back. Stone's first thought was that the tightfisted old rou6 should spring for a better barber.

But it was Bartlett's eyes that really caught him. They were strong and filled with anger, but they also contained a hint of desperation. They were very different eyes from the haughty dismissal he remembered from a lifetime ago.

Good, Stone thought. I've finally made you squirm, Daddy dearest. Nothing else I've done has ever gotten the slightest notice from you.

For a moment they stood sizing up each other.

"Stone," Jane said, "this is—"

"I know," he said.

Even though they had been practically married, he had never

told her that he was the unacknowledged son of Winston Bartlett. He had never told anyone. To him, his father had died before he was born and that was the story he stuck to.

He naturally had a lot of complex feelings about that. He had seen his mother struggling to give them a decent life, hoofing in the chorus line of Broadway shows long after she should have, and a lot of his anger remained. Now, though, Stone Aimes wanted nothing from the old man. Except the truth.

"Miss Tully," Bartlett barked, glowering at her, "I think you’d better leave us alone."

"Of course," Jane said with a wry look, and in a tactful instant she had slipped past them and out, gently closing the office door behind her.

"I don't believe it," Bartlett said turning back after he watched her leave. "You're trying to blackmail me, you little prick. Which tells me you're not half as smart as I thought you were."

Wait a minute! Did that mean Winston Bartlett has been following my career? Stone felt a thrill in spite of himself.

"I never knew you thought about me, one way or the other."

He was experiencing a curious sensation. Although he was in the same room with his father for only the second time in his life, it felt natural. They were having one of those age‑old arguments. The younger generation had just challenged the older generation, and because of that sparks were set to fly.

This was the kind of thing that was supposed to happen between fathers and sons all the time. In fact, it felt good. It felt normal. More than that, he was finally being acknowledged.

My God, he thought, I share DNA with this man and yet we have so little in common.

Then he had a more scary thought: Maybe we have a lot in common.

"I think it's time you told me what the hell you're up to," Bartlett declared, ignoring the jibe. "How did you—"

"I'm trying to do us both a favor, but you're not cooperating. If the Gerex clinical trials are going half as well as I think they are, then it seems to me you've got everything to gain by publicity. I'm trying to write the first book that tells the Gerex story. So why the hell won't your legal flunkies let me interview Karl Van de Vliet?"

"That's actually none of your business." Bartlett's eyes abruptly turned cloudy. "I want you to stay the hell away from—"

"Right now I'm the best friend you've got in this world. Believe me." Stone couldn't believe he was saying this. For how many years had he loathed and despised this man? But now, for the first time, he actually needed something from him. "I want to tell the real story of what Van de Vliet has accomplished. What Gerex has accomplished. It'll be the latest word on stem cell technology. But your office keeps giving me the runaround."

"We have a damned good reason to keep our work proprietary just now," Bartlett declared. "This is like the Manhattan Project." His eyes bored in. "The results of the clinical trials are going to cause a press feeding frenzy, and I want to be in a position to control that when the time comes."

This is incredible, Stone told himself. We 're talking as though we have no history. You have a granddaughter by me whom you've never even seen. Don't you at least care about her?

"I've got a pretty good idea of what Gerex is doing and I think it's going to be a milestone in medical history." Stone looked at him, trying to figure him out after all these years. For all his bluster, Winston Bartlett seemed like a man with a lot of vulnerabilities and insecurities. He hadn't expected it. "It so happens I'm a damned good medical reporter and all I'm asking is to be the Boswell to Van de Vliet's Johnson. I want to be the one to chronicle this historic moment. There's no one who can do it better, believe me. Ill even agree to embargo everything until I get a green light from Gerex. But I want to start now and get it right"

"You can't ethically know any details of the work," Bartlett declared. "So the question I'm waiting to hear answered is, how did you find out–?"

"I can't reveal my source." Because, he told himself, I still don't have one. All 1 have is guesswork. "But I know that Karl Van de Vliet is running the first successful clinical trials using stem cell procedures. And I'm going to report on it whether you want me to or not. So are you going to help make sure my facts are accurate?"

"I'm going to help make sure there's no reporting at all till I say so," Bartlett went on. "Anything you print will be— by definition—irresponsible speculation and you can expect enough legal action to—"

"The original schedule was that they'll be finished in less than a month. I'm not going to publish anything before that I just want to have the manuscript I've been working on ready when the Gerex story finally can be told. It'll be the final chapter, the payoff. I'm going to describe your clinical trials, and it would be better for all concerned if it could be the 'authorized' version. If you force me to publish without your cooperation, it's not going to do either one of us as much good."

Again he wondered why Bartlett was so upset. What was it about that one terminated patient that made him freak when he found out somebody knew? So freaked he charged up here personally, all the way from his fancy corporate building in TriBeCa, to breathe fire and brimstone and yell threats?

"Do I have to get a court injunction to put a stop to this corporate espionage?" Bartlett demanded.

"Everything I know is in the public domain somewhere." Actually, Stone thought that's a serious out‑and‑out lie. Nobody knows that a patient got mysteriously terminated from the trials. "I just want to work together with you."

Even as he was saying it, Stone Aimes realized that it was not in the cards, now or ever. He watched Winston Bartlett's eyes narrow.

"What kind of contract do you have with this paper?"

"Quite frankly, the terms of the contracts for employees of this paper are confidential."

"I knew I should have kept those fucking lawyers here. It takes a shark to deal with a shark." Then he seemed to catch himself. "So if you're planning on writing anything about this, you'd be well advised to get yourself an attorney, because you're sure as hell going to need one."

"Thanks, Dad." It just came out. Maybe he'd been wanting to say it all his life.

Bartlett's look was shock for a moment, and then it turned pensive.

"You don't think I take an interest in you, but I do."

"Yeah, you've really been around through thick and thin." He felt the old anger of abandonment welling up.

"I took care of your mother. Whatever she did was beyond my control." The eyes were switching to chagrin. "Do you have the slightest idea what I could do for you? I've . . . I'm not getting any younger and I've been thinking about . . . with your medical background you could easily have a place . . . I mean, if you've got a head for business, then someday . . . So why do you fucking want to do this now? "

Stone listened, trying to internalize what he was hearing. Not only did Winston Bartlett know about him, he was finally thinking about acknowledging him. Sort of.

Or was this just a bribe to hush him up?

Either way, it was too little, too late.

"You've never given me anything and I've sure as hell never asked. I'd just like for you to get out of my way so I can do my job."

Bartlett stalked toward the door. Then he turned back.

"You'd better think long and hard about what you're getting into. You can ask some of the two‑bit reporters I've dealt with in the past. They're fucking roadkill."

With that pronouncement, he slammed the door and was gone.

Stone stared after him, feeling his heart pump. It wasn't the threat; it was the mixed emotions. For a moment, in spite of his better judgment, he'd felt like he had a father, but then Bartlett became the enemy again.

Then the door cracked open and Jane appeared, dismay in her eyes.

"What was that about?"

"What was what about?"

"I've gotta tell you, that man doesn't know how to keep his voice down. What was that about helping your mother? Karen. You never talked about her much, but I sure don't remember you ever saying anything about her and Winston Bartlett."

"That's because I didn't. Jane, there are parts of my past life that I try not to think about any more than I have to."

"After the fact, it's nice to know that there were parts of your life that you didn't see fit to share with me." She sniffed.

"Maybe someday."

"It's a little late for that," she declared, hurt lingering in her voice. "Look, Stone, I don't know what you know that's got Bartlett so upset, but he's not the best guy in the world to piss off. He stormed in here, fit to be tied, personally demanding to know how the hell did you have proprietary information about the Gerex Corporation's clinical trials. He already seemed to know who you were. Now I realize there's more to the story, somewhere back there in time."

"And what did you tell him?"

"I was completely blindsided for which I thank you. I told him I didn't know anything about your sources, but I wouldn't reveal them even if I did. He's our landlord but that doesn't give him subpoena power. He doesn't have the right to barge in here and try to intimidate the Sentinel's staff. We're current on the rent."

Stone felt a tinge of nostalgia. Sometimes her gold‑plated bitchiness was the very thing he admired most about her.

"Well, thanks for sticking up for me. Maybe I've got him upset enough that he'll come around eventually and decide it's better to have me inside the tent, where I can be monitored."

She snorted at the improbability of that.

"No, Stone, as usual you're an idiot idealist and dreamer. I'll tell you exactly what's going to happen. Bartlett is most likely on his cell phone right now, as we speak, threatening the Family, trying to get you fired. He's saying you're stealing proprietary information somehow and he's going to sue the Sentinel for our last dime if we print a syllable of anything you write about him. That's his next move, Stone. I expect my phone to ring in approximately fourteen and a half minutes. Their attorneys are going to tell me to tell Jay to get you under control. That's what's going to happen. The Family does not want Winston Bartlett pissed off. Especially by the likes of you, somebody who's always writing muckraking articles that make them real nervous. Does anything I've said have the ring of logic to you? Or are you living in some never‑never land where the facts don't fucking penetrate?"

Hey, he thought, that's pretty good. Jane is in DEFCON 1 mode today.

"Depends on what you look at, the doughnut or the hole. That is, the stick approach or the carrot. I'm betting he's going to split the difference and try a little of both. He's going to cool off and then offer me a few crumbs as an inducement to go away."

"God, you're so naive." She laughed in derision. "Winston Bartlett is not accustomed to having to ask anybody for anything. So the fact he came up here this morning to try to get you to back off on whatever it is you're doing must mean you've really got him psyched." She stared at him. "What is it, Stone? Tell me. What do you have on him?"

"Right now I'm more interested in what he thinks I might

have. And the truth is, I don't really know. But it must be something pretty big."

"Stone, why is it so hard to hate you? You can make a person's life miserable and that stupid person will still root for you. God, I don't know what it was about you." She paused a moment as though thinking. "Maybe you're just too honest. Or just too sincere. Maybe that's what it was."

"Don't try to butter me up. I know my weaknesses. But dammit, Jane, I'm this close to the story of the century. And the paranoid zillionaire who was in here just now yelling at me is trying to freeze me out"

"Well, please don't involve me in this anymore, Stone. You've just provided me with a week's worth of unnecessary shit. From now on, any communicating you want to do with Gerex's attorneys is going to have to be done by someone else. Trust me when I tell you I do not need this in my life."

"Sweetie, wait till you see what I'm on the track of. What the Gerex Corporation is doing at a small clinic out in New Jersey is going to change everything we know about medicine. And it's going to blow wide open the second they finally let the press in on what's happening at the clinical trials they're now winding up for the NIH. When they finally hold that big press briefing, I want to have a manuscript already in copyediting. I want to be first."

"Then why is he so worked up over your question?" she mused. "About somebody being dropped from the clinical trials?" She paused "Incidentally, I can do without being called 'sweetie' by a man I'm no longer screwing."

"Sorry about that." He winced. It did just sort of slip out in this orgy of intimacy. "But what I think Bartlett desperately doesn't want me to find out is the reason that patient was dropped. And he's afraid I'm getting close. Unfortunately, I'm not, and I just took my best shot at prying the information out of him and—you're probably right—blew it." He was turning to leave. "But I'm, by God going to find out somehow. Just see if you can keep me from getting fired for a little while longer. If I'm still working for the Sentinel three months from now, you may get honorable mention in my Pulitzer acceptance."

It was bluff talk. But he believed it with every fiber of his body. You've gotta believe, right?

Come on, Ally, get lucky. Find out who that mystery patient was. The way things look now, you 're the only shot I've got left.

[Chapter 15]

Tuesday, April 7

8:13 p.m.

What a day! When Ally finally settled onto her couch, after giving Knickers a long walk, she was exhausted. She leaned back and kicked off her shoes. There had been a few moments of tightness in her chest—maybe it was psychological, anxiety‑induced—but that was gone now. She thought about calling New Jersey to ask how Nina was doing, but she doubted they would tell her anything.

She'd spent the latter part of the afternoon getting yet another heart exam. After driving to northern New Jersey and back, she'd had a formal (and exhausting) stress test for her heart at the New York University Faculty Practice. God, she was sick of examining rooms and those blue paper shifts you put on backwards, as though it was okay for doctors and nurses to see your bare ass. Then she put on shorts and sneakers and an Israeli physician stuck wired suction cups all over her chest and put her on a treadmill for seventeen minutes, boosting her pulse to over 150, which was as high as he dared to go. Then he called Van de Vliet, faxed him the charts, and they reviewed the squiggly lines for another ten minutes. Finally she had a high‑speed CT scan, whose results were then sent directly to Karl Van de Vliet's lab computer.

The bottom line was, the damaged valve in her aortic ventricle was deteriorating even more rapidly than her regular physician, Dr. Ekelman, had thought, but her heart was still strong enough for the procedure.

She wondered if she had gone this far because she was letting hope outweigh a sober evaluation of the risks. Was this the sign of complete desperation? Whatever she decided, tomorrow was the day, D day, decision day.

She thought again about her mom, who had been bubbling with hope when she looked in on her. Nina hadn't even been formally checked in, but already she seemed transformed. It was enough for her just to entertain the possibility that her mind could be renewed. That in itself was sufficient to convince Ally to sign the consent agreement for Van de Vliet to go forward with her procedure. He even offered to provide a car service to take Maria home to the Bronx after Nina was settled and resting.

In her own case, the special injections for her heart, she was far less sure what she thought. The part that bothered her most was having to give herself entirely over to a person she scarcely knew. It was the kind of ultimate surrender that she abhorred.

While Knickers rummaged behind the couch for the remnants of her rawhide chew toy, Ally momentarily considered calling Grant. She couldn't think of a reason why except that he was the only coherent immediate family she had left and this felt like a moment for pulling together. God, she missed Steve. Sometimes she felt so alone.

Then she considered calling Stone Aimes, but she decided that would seem pushy. The truth was, she'd enjoyed talking to him and she'd been surprised at how comfortable she'd felt. Looking back over the elapsed years, she couldn't remember exactly why they split up. There must have been a good reason, but now she could only recall the good times. A picnic in Central Park, or the time they took the Staten Island ferry at night just to see the inspiring downtown skyline.

With those jumbled thoughts cluttering her mind, she finally got around to remembering she hadn't checked her phone machine. She got up off the couch and went into the bedroom.

There were three calls and at first she thought she was too exhausted to check them.

But no, that was irresponsible. She was running a business...

"Hi, Ally, it's me." The voice was Jennifer's. "No emergency, but call when you get in and let me know how it went, okay?"

Not tonight. There was too much to explain and she was too tired. She went to the second message.

"Hi, it's me again. I need you to look over the Jameson design, that Italian‑marble bath. They're having trouble getting the ocher. Some kind of strike at the quarry. What can they substitute? But remember, it's got to be absurdly overpriced or they'll assume it's crap. If I don't hear back from you, I'll fax you some stuff in the morning."

Okay, she thought, these rich clients love to show off. I'll get them what they should have ordered in the first place, knowing them. Stone from the quarry near Agra, where they got the marble for the Taj Mahal. That ought to be ostentatious enough. It’ll take an extra couple of months, but that will impress them even more.

As she considered going to the third message, she had a feeling of misgiving, though in truth there were several people she wouldn't mind hearing from.

Or maybe the Dorian Institute had called about Nina. Maybe she'd freaked. This whole thing was happening way too fast. In any case, she didn't really want to talk to anybody right now. What she really wanted to do was sit and think, maybe run the whole thing by Stone and get his take….

She decided to check out the third message.

"Hi, it's your intrepid reporter, just checking in to see how it went today. It's just after eight, and I'm at home. I may not be able to afford this place much longer, given all the excitement I've had today, so call me while I still have an apartment and a phone."

She felt a ripple of excitement and the feeling pleased her. Maybe she did have someone stable and rational in her corner, someone who understood the risks and possible rewards of going forward with the procedure.

She'd put his number in her Palm, which was in her bag, and she went back to the living room, poured herself a glass of wine, and then retrieved it.

She heard him pick up on the second ring.

"Hi, it's Ally. Thanks for checking on me. I'm really not in the greatest shape at the moment."

"Oh yeah? So how'd it go?"

"Well, I met Dr. Miracle. . . ." She paused. "I don't know quite how to handle you, Stone. Are we having some kind of reunion? The affair redux. Are we friends all over again? Two days ago, all we had were memories. Then I start getting phone calls from you. I still don't know what I'm supposed to think."

"I'll tell you what I think. I think we're playing this by ear. I don't know what you've been doing for the years that I haven't seen you. I don't know what you know about me. So this is kind of like a blind date with a lot of baggage."

"I agree," she said, then hesitated. Her resolve was melting. "I might as well say this. Is it too late to come down and talk? I thought I was tough enough to handle this on my own, but I definitely could use psychological support."

"Give me the address. I could use a little support myself. I got tlhreatened today, I think, by somebody who would like to crush me like a bug. And easily could. I'll spare you the ironies, but you and I may have more in common than you think. My interest in the Gerex Corporation has just gotten extremely personal."

After she hung up, she felt energized and she decided to give Jennifer a call after all. In truth, she wanted to tell her about Stone and to get her take on whether seeing him was a good idea. Aren't these second‑time‑around things always doomed?

"Hi, Jen. I'm home and I'm making all kinds of fateful decisions."

"So what happened? Are you going to be a guinea pig for that clinic?"

"Is that what you think it amounts to?" She couldn't tell how serious Jennifer intended to be. "I'm still debating it Mom loved the place."

"Well, good. Good for her. But you're still not sure about you?"

"I'm leaning . . ." She paused. "Jen, somebody I used to see in college is on his way down here right now. He's a medical reporter, but the truth is, I don't know why I asked him."

"I guess if I were your shrink, I'd ask, 'How do you feel about that?'"

"If I knew the answer to that, I wouldn't need you to be a one‑woman support group." She bit her lip. "He's doing a book about stem cell procedures. So in a way it's a lucky break that he appeared exactly when he did."

"Yeah, Ally, if you ask me, it sounds like it was a lucky break in more than one way. An old flame reappearing can be a positive sign. It's high time something happened in your life."

You 're tighter than you know, she thought. I'm ready for this, whether I admit it to myself or not. But is there going to be any chemistry when we actually see each other? There used to be a lot.

The embarrassing thing was, her first thought was to wonder if he was still terrific in bed. She remembered thinking he was very adroit back then, but back then she didn't have much experience to compare him with. Mainly, thinking about him now made her painfully aware she was overdue for some closeness.

Tuesday, April 7

10:22 PM.

What's she going to think of me? Stone wondered as he knocked gently on the door. She'd buzzed him up from the lobby without a word.

More to the point, he thought, what am I going to say if she wants an opinion about whether she should undergo the procedure or not? So far, the only evidence I have that the clinical trials are working is circumstantial, the patients who've been through the sequence and discharged. So how can I, in good faith, advise her one way or the other?

But, he then concluded, I'm getting way ahead of myself. She may take one look at me and decide she was right to dump me the first time.

Nice building, though. Housing for grown‑ups, not like the one‑bedroom starter setup I've been reduced to.

He knocked—he always hated the idea of ringing a bell on an apartment door—and a second later, it opened.

Alexa Hampton and Stone Aimes just stood awkwardly for a moment and stared, taking each other in. Finally...

"You look... great." They both said it simultaneously, and that served to make the moment even more awkward.

"Well," he said finally, into the silence, "you do." And he meant it. There was, however, a lot of strain on her face, in her eyes. The mark the years had left seemed more psychic than physical.

"You don't look so bad yourself."

"God, it seems like a lifetime ago when we went to our separate corners," he said after another long, contemplative pause. Then he stepped in and she closed the door. He didn't try to peck her cheek, for which she looked relieved. ”Tell me how you're doing, really."

"You really want to know? Okay, this afternoon I had a heavy‑duty heart checkup. Nobody wants to put odds on this thing, but my condition is getting worse." She led him through to the living room.

"Then we should talk," he said looking around. "I love your loft, by the way. You make me envy you. You should see the makeshift quarters I live in. I'm sort of waiting for my ship to come in."

"The truth is, Stone, that I no longer know the first thing about you or your life. And I think I'd like to."

" 'Had we but world enough, and time.'" He smiled "We'll get around to the catching up, but I don't flatter myself that you asked me down at this hour to reminisce about our respective pasts."

"You've already got me figured out." She made a face. "I don't know whether I like that or not. By the way, would you care for something? You used to like scotch, right?"

"The operative part of that statement is 'used to.' These days I try to avoid anything harder than beer. I was starting to have an ethanol dependency problem. I think it's a common occupational hazard for a reporter."

"I don't keep beer around. It's fattening. How about some diet cranberry juice?"

"Maybe I'll have that scotch after all." He laughed. "I have a feeling it might be more suited to the occasion."

"Know what, I think I'll join you." She walked into the kitchen and started making the drinks. "On the rocks, right?"

"Good memory."

"Stone, I asked you down because I've got to make a big decision." She was bringing the drinks into the living room. "Tonight. You're the closest thing I've got to a knowledgeable sounding board. You have some idea of the risks and rewards here. So do I check into the Dorian Institute and let them start injecting doctored‑up stem cells into me or not? Turns out that's what Van de Vliet wants to do."

"We're in worse trouble than we thought." He took a scotch. "You've at least seen the place. I don't have a shred of actual physical evidence that those clinical trials are producing results. I can make inferences from what I see on the Web site, but it's nothing you can take to the bank." He ventured a sip, then looked up. "By the way, did you get a chance to ask about the patient who got dropped?"

"Oh shit, I forgot." She sighed. "There was so much going on, with Mom and all the rest, that it completely slipped my—”

"Don't worry about it," he said with a sigh.

Come on, Ally, she thought, this could be really important. You've got to get focused.

"I'll try to remember tomorrow."

"I do think it's kind of vital. But be careful not to mention my name. I've ... I've just acquired some problems of my own with the Gerex Corporation."

"What kind of 'problems'?"

"Let me take a rain check on answering that. Suffice to say, they're not thrilled about the idea that I'm doing a book in which they're prominently featured." He paused. "Look, Ally, there's a lot going on here. Including that patient who was dropped for some reason that nobody wants to disclose. But if you do decide to do it you couldn't have a better physician. Karl Van de Vliet is quite possibly the world's leading researcher in stem cell technology. On the other hand, this is the first time there've been actual human trials. If anybody tells you there's no risk, then they're not behaving ethically."

"Well, the way things stand now, I'm due out there at the institute at ten a.m. tomorrow. If I want to, I can be formally entered into the clinical trials on the spot. I've passed my qualifying exam."

"You know the trials are almost over. It's like they're taking you at the last minute."

"That's what he said. I'm going to be the last ... whatever. My friend Jennifer just called me a guinea pig. Van de Vliet also said I'd have to stay out there for at least a couple of weeks, probably longer. That's going to be a bloody drag, since things are really busy down at CitiSpace now."

"Ally, given what I know, or don't know, I don't have an entirely good feeling about this. It could be they're hiding something, but I don't have a clue what it is. It's quite possibly connected to that patient who got terminated. And when I tried to raise this with Gerex's attorneys, no less person than Winston Bartlett himself went ballistic."

"What are you saying? That I shouldn't do it?"

"Hey, I can't make that decision for you. But one possibility would be to just play along for a day or two and see if you can't find out a little more about what went wrong with the patient who was dropped."

"Stone, that's maybe a little paranoid. Couldn't a single patient have been dropped for a whole bunch of different reasons?"

"Of course, but it's not that simple. A patient was dropped from the Gerex clinical trials, and there was no official reason given in the data file. It made me curious enough that I had our paper's attorney pass along a question about it to their attorneys. That motivated Winston Bartlett to come personally to threaten me. So why is a guy who runs a huge conglomerate suddenly afraid of one tiny question? Is there some problem, some reaction to the procedure that they're terrified will come to light? Ultimately millions and millions of dollars are at stake. I want the book I'm writing to tell the whole story, not just the part they'll want to have told. That's why God put reporters on earth."

"Shit, Stone, I'm glad you're here. I think I told you on the phone, I had someone I loved very much disappear on me some years ago, and I'm feeling very alone at the moment." She looked him over. "Okay, I'll ask. We're adults. Are you married, divorced, attached, unattached, seeing someone, alone and suicidal, what? I mean, where do things stand here?"

"Where things stand is that I'm very happy that I stumbled into you after all the years. And yeah, I've got a little history. At least I'd like to think so. But nothing is going on at the moment." Then he told her about Joyce, the divorce, Amy. "And what was that you said about having somebody disappear on you?" He studied her, reaching back for the feelings that were still buried. Seeing her was bringing it back. "What did you mean by that? Disappear like a missing person, or disappear as in up and split, or—"

"He was my husband, Steve, and he was a political consultant. He was in a single‑engine Cessna that went down in the rain forest in Belize and I miss him terribly."

"I'm so sorry, Ally. Nothing that's happened to me comes close to that tragedy."

"It gets worse. A few months before that, my dad had an accident with a Browning shotgun that was no accident."

"Jesus. What's that line about how the troubles tread on one another's heels. Was he depressed? I guess that's a stupid question."

"He thought he was going to lose his business. After a lifetime of work. What do you think?"

"Ally, I'm really sorry about all that."

"Well, I suppose it could be worse. As I recall, you never knew your dad, did you?"

When am I going to tell her the truth? he asked himself.

"Let's get off the history topic tonight, what do you say. We'll both get ourselves depressed."

"Agreed." She sipped at her scotch. "So ... you're saying I should play along and see if I can find out something about this discharged patient, the mere mention of whom causes grown millionaires to become unhinged?"

"It's what / would do," he said, finishing off his scotch and settling the glass on a coaster on a side table. Then he got up. "I have to tell you, Ally, you look awfully tired. I'd love to be responsible for keeping you up all night, but I doubt that would be a humane act."

"It might remind me of a time long ago and not so far away," she said with a faint smile. "But you're right. When I get this tired, I can precipitate an episode."

"I'd offer to drive you out there tomorrow, but that would just get you in trouble. They probably have orders to shoot me on sight. I'm the number one persona non grata with the top management of the Gerex Corporation at the moment. So I'm the last person you want to be seen with. Right now the only way you're going to find out what they're hiding is if nobody suspects anything. Which means you've got to show up alone."

Maybe that's true, she thought. But you're a person I'd like to be with tonight.

"Thanks for coming over." She walked over and pecked him on the cheek.

You 're vulnerable tonight, she told herself, wanting to ask him to stay. Don't start making any big life decisions.