Seizure

nine

2:45 P.M., Saturday, February 23, 2002

Daniel sensed he was getting a vague idea of what it was like to have manic-depressive disorder as he hung up the phone from yet another disappointing conversation with the venture capital people in San Francisco. Just prior to the call, he felt on top of the world after outlining the schedule for the next month on a legal pad. With Stephanie now enthusiastically behind the plan to treat Butler, including using blood from the shroud, things were beginning to fall into place. That morning, between the two of them, they had drawn up an encompassing release for Butler’s signature and had emailed it to the senator. As per their instructions, it was to be signed, witnessed by Carol Manning, and faxed back.

When Stephanie had disappeared back into the lab to check on Butler’s fibroblast culture, Daniel had convinced himself that things were going so smoothly that it was reasonable to call the moneymen in hopes of changing their minds about releasing the second round of financing. But the call had not gone well. The key person had ended the conversation by telling Daniel not to call back unless he had proof in writing that HTSR would not be banned. The banker had explained that in light of recent events, word of mouth, particularly in the form of vague generalities, would not be adequate. The banker had added that unless such documentation was forthcoming in the near future, the money allocated for CURE would be transferred to another promising biotech firm whose intellectual property was not in political jeopardy.

Daniel sagged in his chair with his hips perched precariously on the edge, resting his head on the chair’s back. The idea of returning to stable-but-impecunious academia, with its snail’s-pace predictability, was sounding progressively appealing. He was beginning to loathe the precipitous ups and downs of trying to achieve the moneyed celebrity status he deserved. It was galling that movie stars only had to memorize a few lines and famous athletes only had to show mindless dexterity with a stick or a ball in order to command the lucre and attention showered on them. With his credentials and a brilliant discovery to his credit, it was ludicrous that he had to bear such travail and associated anxiety.

Stephanie’s face poked around the corner. “Guess what?” she said brightly. “Things are going fantastic with Butler’s fibroblast culture. Thanks to the atmosphere of five-percent CO and air, a monolayer is already starting to form. The cells 2 are going to be ready sooner than I anticipated.”

“Wonderful,” Daniel said in a depressed monotone.

“What’s the problem now?” Stephanie asked. She came into the room and sat down. “You look like you’re about to ooze off onto the floor. Why the long face?”

“Don’t ask! It’s the same old story about money, or at least the lack of it.”

“I suppose that means you called the venture capitalists again.”

“How very clairvoyant!” Daniel said sarcastically.

“Good grief! Why are you torturing yourself?”

“So now you think I’m doing this to myself.”

“You are if you keep calling them. From what you said yesterday, their intentions were pretty clear.”

“But the Butler plan is moving ahead. The situation is evolving.”

Stephanie closed her eyes for a moment and took a breath. “Daniel,” she began, trying to think how best to word what she was about to say without irritating him, “you can’t expect other people to view the world as you do. You’re a brilliant man, maybe too smart for your own good. Other people don’t look at the world the way you do. I mean, they can’t think the way you do.”

“Are you being patronizing?” Daniel eyed his lover, scientific collaborator, and business partner. Lately, with the stress of recent events, it was more the latter than the former, and the business was not going well.

“Heavens, no!” Stephanie stated emphatically. Before Stephanie could continue, the phone rang. Its raucous sound in the otherwise silent office startled both of them.

Daniel reached for the phone but didn’t pick it up. He glanced at Stephanie. “Are you expecting a call?”

Stephanie shook her head.

“Who could be calling here at the office on a Saturday?”

“Maybe it’s for Peter,” Stephanie suggested. “He’s back in the lab.”

Daniel lifted the receiver and used the long name of their business rather than the acronym. “Cellular Replacement Enterprises,” he said officially.

“This is Dr. Spencer Wingate from the Wingate Clinic. I’m calling from Nassau for Dr. Daniel Lowell.”

David motioned for Stephanie to go out in the reception area and pick up Vicky’s extension. He then identified himself to Spencer.

“I certainly didn’t expect to get you directly, Doctor,” Spencer said.

“Our receptionist doesn’t come in on Saturdays.”

“My word!” Spencer remarked. He laughed. “I didn’t realize it was the weekend. Since we’ve recently opened our new facility, we’ve all been working twenty-four-seven to iron out the wrinkles. Many pardons if I’m causing a disturbance.”

“You are not disturbing us in the slightest,” Daniel assured him. Daniel heard the faint click as Stephanie came on the line. “Is there some problem vis-à-vis our discussion yesterday?”

“Quite the contrary,” Spencer said. “I was afraid there had been a change on your end. You said you would call last night or today at the latest.”

“You’re right, I did say that,” Daniel responded. “I’m sorry. I’ve been waiting for word about the shroud to start the ball rolling. I apologize for not getting back to you.”

“No apologies are necessary. Although I hadn’t heard from you, I thought I’d call to let you know that I have already spoken with a neurosurgeon by the name of Dr. Rashid Nawaz who has an office in Nassau. He’s a Pakistani surgeon trained in London who I’ve been assured is quite talented. He’s even had some experience with fetal cell implants as a house officer, and he is eager to be of assistance. He’s also agreed to arrange for the stereotaxic equipment to be brought from Princess Margaret Hospital.”

“Did you mention the need for discretion?”

“Most certainly, and he is fine with it.”

“Marvelous,” Daniel responded. “Did you discuss his fee?”

“I did. It seems that his services will be somewhat more than I thought, perhaps due to the required discretion. He is asking for one thousand dollars.”

Daniel momentarily debated with himself if he should make an effort to negotiate. A thousand dollars was significantly higher than the original estimate of two or three hundred. But it wasn’t his money, and in the end he told Spencer to make the arrangements.

“Any further information about when we can expect you?” Spencer asked.

“Not at the moment,” Daniel said. “I’ll let you know as soon as I can.”

“Perfect,” Spencer said. “While I have you on the phone, there are a few details I’d like to discuss.”

“By all means.”

“First, we’d like to request half the agreed-upon fees up front,” Spencer said. “I can fax you wiring instructions.”

“You want the money immediately?”

“We’d like it as soon as we have a date for your arrival. It will make it possible for us to begin scheduling appropriate staffing. Will that be a problem?”

“I suppose not,” Daniel responded.

“Good,” Spencer said. “Next, we’d like to arrange for instruction in HTSR for our staff, particularly for Dr. Paul Saunders, as well as the opportunity to discuss with you a future licensing agreement for HTSR and rates for the required probes and enzymes.”

Daniel hesitated. His intuition was telling him he was being pushed for having agreed too quickly to the compensation the day before. He cleared his throat. “I will not have a problem with Dr. Saunders observing, but as for the licensing issue, I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to grant such requests. CURE is a corporation with a board of directors that would have to agree to any such arrangement, with full consideration of the stockholders. But as the current CEO, I can promise you we will visit the issue in the future, and your help in the current situation will be taken into consideration.”

“Perhaps I was asking a bit much,” Spencer admitted amiably. He chuckled. “But as the saying goes: There’s no harm in trying.”

Daniel rolled his eyes, lamenting the indignities he had to endure.

“One last thing,” Spencer said. “We would like to know the name of the patient, so we can start the admission process and the patient record. We’d like to be prepared for his or her arrival.”

“There is to be no record,” Daniel said flatly. “Yesterday I made it clear this treatment is to be done under absolute secrecy.”

“But we will have to identify the patient for lab tests and such,” Spencer said.

“Call him Patient X or John Smith,” Daniel said. “It doesn’t make any difference. I anticipate his being in your facility for only twenty-four hours at most. We’ll be with him the entire time, and we’ll be doing all the lab tests.”

“What if the Bahamian authorities question his admission?”

“Is that likely?”

“No, I suppose not. But if they do, I’m not sure what we would say.”

“I’m trusting that with your experience dealing with the authorities during the clinic’s construction, you can be creative. That’s part of the reason we’re paying you forty thousand dollars. Make sure they don’t question.”

“We’ll need a bribe or two. Perhaps if you were to raise the price by five K, we could guarantee no problems with the authorities.”

Daniel didn’t respond immediately while he controlled his anger. He hated to be manipulated, especially by a clown of Wingate’s caliber. “All right,” he said at last, without camouflaging his irritation. “We’ll be wiring twenty-two and a half thousand. However, I want your personal assurances that this operation will go smoothly from here on out, and there’s to be no more demands.”

“You have my assurance as the founder of the Wingate Clinic that we will make every effort to ensure your association with us meets your expectations and complete satisfaction.”

“You’ll be hearing from us shortly.”

“We’ll be here!”

The screaming jet engines made the walls of Spencer’s office shudder as the Boeing intercontinental 767 passed over the Wingate Clinic at an altitude of less than five hundred feet in preparation for landing. With the building’s heavy insulation, the vibration was more tactile than audible though strong enough to jiggle Spencer’s array of framed diplomas. Spencer was already accustomed to the daily intermittent disturbance and paid no heed other than to absently right his diplomas on occasion.

“How did I do?” Spencer yelled through the open door.

Paul Saunders appeared in the doorway after having listened to Spencer’s conversation with Daniel from his office next door. “Well, let’s look on the bright side. You didn’t find out the name of the patient, but you managed to eliminate close to half the world’s rich and famous. We now know it is a man.”

“Very funny,” Spencer said. “We didn’t expect him to give us the name on a silver platter. But I did get him to up the offer to forty-five thousand and agree to allow you to observe the cellular work. That’s not bad.”

“But you didn’t press him on the favorable licensing issue. That could save us big bucks with our burgeoning stem cell therapy down the line.”

“Yeah, well, he had a point. He’s running a corporation.”

“It might be a corporation, but it’s a private company, and dollars to donuts, he’s the major stockholder by a long shot.”

“Well, we win some and lose some. Anyway, I didn’t scare him off. Remember that was one of our worries-that if we pressed too hard, he’d go somewhere else.”

“I’ve reconsidered that worry, provided he was telling us the truth about his tight time frame. We’re probably the only place that can supply him overnight with a first-rate lab, a hospital setting, and human oocytes with no questions asked. But it doesn’t matter. Our potential bonanza payoff is going to come from finding out the name of the patient. I’m convinced of it. And the sooner we find out, the better.”

“I couldn’t agree more, and to that end, I did find out Lowell was at his office for the day, which was the real purpose of the call.”

“True! And I have to give you credit for that. As soon as you hung up, I called Kurt Hermann to let him know. He said he’d relay the information immediately to his compatriot who’s positioned in Boston, waiting to break into Lowell’s apartment.”

“I hope this compatriot, as you’ve called him, is capable of finesse. If Lowell gets spooked-or, even worse, hurt-the whole thing might be off.”

“I specifically relayed your fears about heavy-handedness to Kurt.”

“And what did he say?”

“You know Kurt doesn’t say much. But he understands.”

“I hope you are right, because we could truly use a financial windfall. With what we’ve spent getting this place up and running, the well is just about dry, and besides our stem-cell work, there’s very little infertility business on the immediate horizon.”

“Dr. Spencer Wingate sounds just like the sleaze I feared,” Stephanie said. She’d come back into Daniel’s office after listening in on the conversation. “He talks about bribery as if it were an everyday occurrence.”

“Maybe it is in the Bahamas,” Daniel said.

“I hope he’s short, fat, and has a wart on his nose.”

Daniel gave Stephanie a confused look.

“Maybe he’s a chain-smoker and has bad breath.”

“What on earth are you talking about?”

“If Spencer Wingate looks as bad as he sounds, maybe I won’t lose complete faith in the medical profession. I know it is irrational, but I don’t want him to look anything like my mental image of a physician. It scares me to think he’s a practicing doctor. And that goes for his partners as well.”

“Oh, come on, Stephanie! Don’t be so naïve. The medical profession, like any profession, is far from perfect. There are good ones and bad ones, with the majority somewhere in between.”

“I thought self-regulation was part of the definition of this profession. Anyway, the real issue is that I wish my intuition wasn’t telling me that working with these people is a bad idea.”

“For the last time,” Daniel said with frustration, “we’re not working with those clowns. God forbid! We’re using their facilities and that’s it. End of story.”

“Let’s hope it’s that simple,” Stephanie said.

Daniel returned Stephanie’s gaze. They’d been together long enough for him to tell that she was not buying his simple assessment, and it irritated him that she wasn’t being more supportive. The problem was, her misgivings called attention to his own, which he was actively trying to ignore. He wanted to believe the whole episode was going to go smoothly and soon be over, but Stephanie’s negativity kept undermining his hopes.

The fax sprang to life out in the reception area.

“I’ll see what it is,” Stephanie said. She got up and went out of the room.

Daniel watched her go. It was a relief to escape her stare. People had a way of irritating him-even Stephanie, on occasion. He wondered if he’d be better off alone.

“It’s the release from Butler already,” Stephanie called out. “Signed and witnessed along with a note saying the hard copy is in the mail.”

“Great!” Daniel yelled back. At least Butler’s cooperation was encouraging.

“The cover sheet asks if we have checked our email this afternoon.” Stephanie appeared at the door with a questioning expression. “I didn’t check. Did you?”

Daniel shook his head and tilted forward, connecting to the Internet. At the new, special email account set up for Butler’s treatment, there was a message from the senator. Stephanie came around Daniel’s desk and looked over his shoulder as he opened it.

My dear doctors,

I hope this note finds you busy with your preparations for my imminent treatment. I too have been productively occupied, and I am happy to report that the custodians of the Shroud of Turin have been most helpful, thanks to the intercession by an influential colleague. You are to travel to Turin at your first opportunity. Upon arrival, you will call the Chancery of the Archdiocese of Turin to speak with Monsignor Mansoni. You will inform the monsignor that you are my representatives. At that point, my understanding is that the monsignor will arrange a meeting at an appropriate location to give you the sacred sample. Please understand that this is to be done with the utmost discretion and secrecy, so as not to jeopardize my esteemed colleague. Meanwhile, I remain your dear friend.

A.B.

Daniel took a moment to delete the message just as he and Stephanie had made a point of deleting the senator’s other emails. It had been their collective decision that there was to be as little evidence as possible of the affair. When he was done, he looked up at her. “The senator is certainly doing his part.”

Stephanie nodded. “I’m impressed. I’m also starting to get excited. The affair is definitely acquiring a touch of international intrigue.”

“When can you be ready to leave? Alitalia has daily flights to Rome that depart in the evening with connections to Turin. Remember, you’re going to have to pack for a month.”

“Packing is not the problem,” Stephanie said. “My two problems are my mom and Butler’s tissue culture. I need to spend some time with my mom, as I mentioned. I also want to get Butler’s tissue culture to a point where Peter can take over.”

“How much time are you talking about with the culture?”

“Not long. As good as it looks this morning, probably by tomorrow morning I’ll be satisfied. I just want to be sure a true monolayer is forming. Then Peter can maintain it, passage it, and cryopreserve it. My plan is for him to overnight an aliquot down to Nassau in a liquid-nitrogen container when we’re ready for it. We’ll keep the rest of the culture here in case we need it in the future.”

“Let’s not be pessimistic,” Daniel said. “What about your mother?”

“Tomorrow I can see her for a few hours during the day. She’s always in on Sundays, cooking.”

“Then you could conceivably be ready to leave tomorrow night?”

“Sure, if I pack this evening.”

“Then let’s get back to the apartment ASAP. I’ll make the necessary calls from there.”

Stephanie walked back into the lab to get her laptop and her coat. After making sure Peter was planning to be in the lab the following morning so they could discuss Butler’s culture, she returned to the reception area. She found Daniel impatiently holding the hallway door open for her.

“My, you are in a hurry!” Stephanie remarked. It was usual for Stephanie to have to wait for Daniel. Whenever they were going someplace, he always found one more thing to do.

“It’s already almost four o’clock, and I don’t want you to have an excuse for not being ready to leave tomorrow night. I remember how long it took you to pack to go to Washington for two nights, and this is for a month. I’m sure it is going to take you longer than you think.”

Stephanie smiled. It was true since, among other things, she needed to do some ironing. She also realized she’d want to hit the drugstore for some travel necessities. What she didn’t expect was how fast Daniel drove once they were in the car. She hazarded a glance at the speedometer as they tore down Memorial Drive. They were going almost fifty in a thirty-mile-an-hour zone.

“Hey, slow down!” Stephanie managed. “You’re driving like one of the taxi drivers you complain about.”

“Sorry,” Daniel said. He slowed down slightly.

“I promise I’ll be ready, so there’s no need to risk our lives.” Stephanie glanced over at Daniel to see if he realized she was trying to be funny, but his determined expression didn’t change.

“I’m eager to get this whole unfortunate affair over with now that I feel we’re really starting,” he said without taking his eyes from the road.

“I thought of something I should do,” Stephanie said. “I’m going to set it up so that any future Butler emails also go to my cell phone inbox. That way, we’ll know when a message comes in, and we’ll be able to access it ASAP.”

“Good idea,” Daniel agreed.

They pulled up to the curb in front of Daniel’s house. He turned off the engine and hopped out. He was halfway up the front walk by the time Stephanie got her laptop from the backseat. She shrugged. He could be such an absentminded professor when he became focused on a single thought. He could ignore her totally, as he was doing presently. But she wasn’t about to take his behavior personally. She knew him too well.

Daniel took the stairs two at a time while deciding he’d first make the call to the airlines to book the flights and then get back in touch with the Wingate people. He thought that scheduling a single overnight stay in Turin would be appropriate. Then he reminded himself to get the money-wiring instructions from Spencer when he made the call to Nassau so he could get the money issue out of the way as well.

Daniel reached the third-floor landing and paused while he fiddled with his keys. It was at that moment that he noticed the apartment door was slightly ajar. For a split second, he tried to remember who had been the last one out that morning: he or Stephanie. Then he remembered it had been he, since he’d had to return for his wallet. He distinctly remembered locking the door, including the dead bolt.

The sound of the building’s front door opening and closing drifted up the stairwell, along with Stephanie’s footfalls on the creaky, aged stairs. Otherwise, the house was silent. The first-floor tenants were off to the Caribbean on vacation, while the second-floor tenant was never home during the day. He was a mathematician who haunted the MIT computer center and only came home to sleep.

Gingerly, Daniel pushed open the door to get a progressively larger view of his foyer. Now he could see down the hallway into the living room. With the sun nearing the distant southwestern horizon, the apartment was in deep shadow. All at once, he caught sight of a flashlight beam as it momentarily flickered across the living room wall. At the same time, he heard one of the drawers of his upright file click closed.

“Who the hell is in here?” Daniel shouted at the top of his lungs. He was outraged that an intruder had gotten into his apartment, but he was not foolhardy. Although the intruder had obviously entered through the front door, Daniel was confident he’d cased the apartment and knew of the back exit from the study onto the fire escape. As Daniel pulled out his cell phone to call 911, he fully expected the burglar to flee by taking this route.

To Daniel’s shock, the intruder immediately presented himself in Daniel’s line of sight and blinded him with his flashlight. Daniel tried to block the beam with his hand. He wasn’t entirely successful, but it was enough to see that the man was coming at him with breathtaking speed. Before Daniel could react, he was roughly shoved to the side by a gloved hand hard enough to cause him to literally bounce off the wall. His ears rang from the concussion. Regaining his equilibrium, Daniel caught sight of a large man dressed in a tight-fitting black outfit, including a black ski mask, rapidly descend the stairs on silent feet. After a shriek from Stephanie, the front door to the building burst open and banged shut.

Daniel dashed to the banister and looked down. On the landing below, Stephanie was pressed up against the mathematician’s locked door with her laptop clasped against her chest with both hands. Her face was white. “Are you okay?” he asked.

“Who the hell was that?” she demanded.

“A goddamn burglar,” Daniel responded. He turned back to examine the door. Stephanie came up the final flight of stairs to look over his shoulder.

“At least he didn’t break the door,” Daniel said. “He must have had a key.”

“Are you sure it was locked?”

“Absolutely! I specifically remember even locking the dead bolt.”

“Who else has a key?”

“No one,” Daniel said. “There’s only two. That’s all I had made when I bought the place and changed the locks.”

“He must have picked the lock.”

“If he did, then he was a professional. But why would a professional be breaking into my apartment? I don’t own anything valuable.”

“Oh, no!” Stephanie suddenly voiced. “I left all my jewelry on top of the bureau, including my grandmother’s diamond watch.” She pushed past Daniel and headed for the bedroom.

Daniel followed her down the hall. “That reminds me: I was stupid enough to leave all the cash I got from the ATM last night on the desk.”

Daniel ducked into the study. To his surprise, the ATM money was exactly where he’d placed it in the center of the blotter. He picked it up, and as he did so he noticed that everything else on the desk had been moved. Daniel admitted he wasn’t the neatest person in the world, but he was supremely well organized. There might be stacks of correspondence, bills, and scientific journals on his desk, but he knew their exact location, if not the order within each pile.

His eyes wandered over to his upright four-drawer file cabinet. Even the journal article reprints stacked on top and waiting to be filed had been moved. They hadn’t been moved a lot, but their position had definitely been changed.

Stephanie appeared in the doorway. She sighed with relief. “We must have come home in the nick of time. Apparently, he hadn’t yet had a chance to get into the bedroom. All my stuff was where I’d left it last night.”

Daniel held up the stack of bills. “He didn’t even take the money, and he was in here for sure.”

Stephanie laughed hollowly. “What kind of burglar was he?”

“I don’t find this at all funny,” Daniel said. He began opening individual drawers of both the desk and the file cabinet to check the appearance of their contents.

“I’m not suggesting I find it funny either,” Stephanie said. “I’m trying to use humor to defuse my real feelings.”

Daniel looked up. “What are you talking about?”

Stephanie shook her head and breathed out forcibly. She successfully fought back tears. She was trembling. “I’m upset. This kind of unexpected event really disturbs me. I feel violated that someone was in here, invading our privacy. It emphasizes the reality that we’re always living on the edge, even when we don’t know it.”

“I’m disturbed too,” Daniel said. “But not philosophically. I’m disturbed because there is something here I don’t understand. It seems pretty clear to me that this intruder wasn’t a run-of-the-mill burglar. He was looking for something specific, and I have no idea what it could be. That’s troubling.”

“You don’t think we just came home before he had a chance to take anything?”

“He’d been here for a while, certainly long enough to take some valuables, if that was what he was after. He had time to go through the desk and maybe even the file cabinet.”

“How can you tell?”

“I just know because of my own brand of compulsiveness. This man was a professional, and he was looking for something in particular.”

“You mean like intellectual property perhaps associated with HTSR?”

“It’s possible, but I doubt it. That’s all covered with adequate patents. Besides, then the break-in would have been at the office, not here.”

“Then what else?”

Daniel shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Did you call the police?”

“I started to, but that was when he bolted out of here. Now I’m not sure we should.”

“Why not?” Stephanie was surprised.

“What would they do? The man’s obviously long gone. We don’t seem to be missing anything, so there’s no insurance issues, and besides, I’m not sure I want us to be asked a lot of questions about what we have been doing lately, if that were to come up. On top of that, we’re leaving tomorrow night, and I don’t want anything to mess that up.”

“Wait a sec!” Stephanie said suddenly. “What if this episode has something to do with Butler?”

Daniel stared across his desk at Stephanie.

“How and why would it involve Butler?” Daniel asked.

Stephanie returned Daniel’s gaze. The sound of the refrigerator compressor turning on in the kitchen broke the early evening silence. “I don’t know,” she said finally. “I was just thinking about his connections with the FBI, and the fact that he had had you investigated in some form or fashion. Maybe they haven’t finished.”

Daniel nodded as he considered Stephanie’s idea, realizing it couldn’t be dismissed out of hand, despite its outlandishness. After all, the clandestine nighttime meeting with Butler two nights previously had been equally outlandish.

“Let’s try to forget this incident for the moment,” Daniel said. “We’ve got a lot to do to get ready. Let’s start!”

“Okay,” Stephanie said, marshaling her fortitude. “Maybe concentrating on packing will get me to relax. But first I think we should call Peter in the event this character is planning to break into the office as well.”

“Good idea,” Daniel said. “But we’re not going to tell him about Butler. I mean, you haven’t told him, have you?”

“No. I haven’t told him a thing.”

“Good!” Daniel said, as he picked up the phone.