As they pulled away from the curb, she was aware of the old fortune-teller’s eyes following her. They held the potency of either a curse or a blessing, but who could tell? The driver did not give her his name. There was no identifying tag that she could see. For all she knew, the cab wasn’t even registered. As soon as they had pulled away from the curb, she pulled off the mask and threw it on the seat. She checked her glossary of phrases. “Cómo se llama?” He gave no indication he had heard her, and she surrendered to silence and the discomfort of the ride.
He drove slowly, as if afraid that going any faster might cause a crucial component of the engine to fail or one of the tires to fall off and roll into a ditch. Her excitement morphed into anxiety, and she rethought her decision to not tell Jack exactly where she was going. To choose loyalty to Kat instead.
After a while—it was difficult to estimate time because of the slow speed of the car—the driver turned onto a narrower dirt road, although Maddie had seen no sign. The road ended at an iron-grilled gate, and the driver stopped there. The gate was shut but did not appear secured and only required that someone push it open to afford access to the long drive beyond. There was a crude shelter on the other side of the gate. A guard sat inside but did not move. In the distance, she saw a large hacienda that she assumed was the clinic. Or spa. It looked more like the latter. “Can you drive me there?” she asked the driver, motioning for him to continue.
He shook his head, refusing to meet her eyes. She put this down to drunken remorse and took out another clutch of bills from her tote and offered them, but he could not be persuaded to go beyond the gate. She unlatched the door and got out, grabbing her bag but discarding the mask. Even before she had pushed the gate open enough to enter, the taxi had pulled away. She started walking up the drive. As she passed the gatehouse, she checked out the guard, who looked as if he had just awoken, roused, perhaps, by the sound of the taxi. She waited for him to stop her. He was dressed in a uniform and held a rifle slung loosely over one shoulder. She found it unnerving that there would be an armed guard. Was it really so dangerous here? Well, if he was a sentry, he was not one to count on. Even awake, he seemed inattentive to the job. She continued down the drive. As she drew closer to the large, sprawling building, she passed a patio with chaises where three women lazed beneath umbrellas made of palm fronds, reinforcing her initial impression that the place was a spa. Kat was not one of them. Maddie realized she had been preparing herself to encounter patients. Women with heads wrapped in scarfs who belonged to the sisterhood of the hairless. But the three women she saw looked healthy and fit. She shuffled her mental image. Not a clinic then, but a place where well-off women went to rehab or to recover from divorce and prepare for the future they hoped would include another man. She wondered why Kat had chosen this place. What crisis might she be going through that she hadn’t shared with her sister?
Inside the hacienda, the lobby was immaculate and sparse. Native art adorned the walls. Two carved wooden doors opened to an elegant dining room. A round table in the center held a towering display of fruit. Two of the smaller tables were occupied with women having breakfast.
She turned to the lobby desk, where a woman in a pale blue uniform waited. Maddie clutched her tote to her side. After the crash she had developed a wariness, a heightened sense of danger. The doctors had told her that this was not unusual when one underwent a traumatic incident and that it would probably pass. It was different from the panic attacks. Surer, less frantic. More a knowing than an irrational panic. Ever since she left Playa, this sense of wariness had been with her, first in the taxi and then as she entered the grounds of this place, past the armed and sleeping guard. She had originally planned on asking about Kat as soon as she arrived, but the deep instinct for caution silenced her. It was as innate as the heightened awareness any woman felt when walking alone down a city street at night. Each sense sharpened, alert. Before she could regroup, the woman at the desk addressed her.
“The others arrived last night and are already in the conference room. The morning session is about to begin. You can come back after lunch to register.”
As difficult as it was to contain her impatience, to find Kat, or at least learn when she had last been there, her instincts were to conceal her mission for the moment.
“Okay,” she said, grateful for the camouflage of a group to disappear into.
MADISON
The conference room was spacious and airy in spite of the low ceiling. A table along one wall held a tray of sectioned melons and a glass dispenser of water in which floated slices of lemon and orange. An array of squat glass tumblers rimmed in blue sat beside it. There were no windows on three of the walls, but an expanse of glass doors on the fourth gave out to a patio and an azure-tiled pool.
Maddie took a seat in the back row, away from the wall of glass, and checked out those who had assembled, scanning faces looking for Kat. She counted fourteen women, several of them thin to the point of scrawniness. There were two men. One woman looked familiar, but Maddie couldn’t place her, although she was positive she had seen her before. There was an energy of anticipation in the air. A low buzz of conversation.
“I mortgaged my house to pay for this,” said a brunette seated directly in front of her.
“Your first time here?” a woman to the brunette’s left asked the speaker.
“Yes. You’ve been here before?”
“No. But my girlfriend has. She said he’s amazing. A miracle worker.”
Maddie realized she had been directed to an orientation meeting for new arrivals. Of course Kat would not be attending. She swallowed back her disappointment and started to leave, but then the door in the rear opened and the room fell silent as quickly and cleanly as if a knife had cut off sound. A woman clad in a white doctor’s coat strode to the front. Studying her face, Maddie felt a chill. She saw ambition there. And something else. For one odd moment, Maddie pictured the riven mask of Lady Macbeth, the queen whose singular quality was a lack of humanity. A shudder ran through her, so strong the woman at her side whispered, “Are you okay?”
She nodded and resisted the impulse for escape, to distance herself from the spidery effect of the woman, who began to address the group.
“Good morning,” she said. “My name is Helen Mercer, and I am the assistant director of Retirada de la Playa. Dr. Verner will be here shortly. Before he arrives, I want to take a minute or two to review some information in addition to that which is in the packet in your rooms. Immediately after this morning’s session, we ask that you stop by registration and pick up your individual schedules, which will include the times for your tests and your treatments at the spa. When you have an opening in your schedule, you are free to walk the grounds, use the pool, or take advantage of some of the classes that are available here.
“We ask that you abide by the few regulations. As you’ve all read in the material you received prior to arrival, alcohol, drugs, and any smoking materials are not allowed on the property.”
A dramatic groan went up from several members of the group.
Mercer flashed a falsely sympathetic smile before continuing. “All of our main buildings and the property are available for your use, but the separate building that houses our laboratory and the staff quarters is off-limits. We also request that for your own safety and well-being you stay within the compound.”
Creepy. The word sprang to mind. There was definitely something creepy about this place, with its guards and quasi-military rules and regulations, and Maddie couldn’t imagine why Kat would have come here.
“Does that mean we can’t explore the areas outside?” one of the men asked.
Irritation flashed across Helen Mercer’s face. “For your own safety we require that you stay on the grounds at all times. There are feral dogs that sometimes rove in packs—you will hear them at night. Also, as is true in any country, Mexico is not without crime. We have never had a problem here, but we are vigilant in protecting you from falling prey
to undesirable persons. Our security team is top-notch.”
Maddie thought of the guard sleeping at the gate.
At that moment the door in the rear again opened. Heads swiveled to look at the man entering. All eyes followed him as he walked to the center of a raised platform. He was tall, with the commanding presence of a general or athlete. He wore light tan trousers with pleats that emphasized his trim waist. His hair, just graying at the temples, was thick, and he wore it long and combed back. His eyes were a clear blue and steely. He wore a short-sleeved shirt that revealed muscular arms. There was an aura of vigor and good health around him and the mesmerizing sense of wealth, health, and power. Maddie scanned the gathering, noticing that every eye remained fixed on him. Helen Mercer slipped from the room.
“I am Dr. Paul Verner,” he began. “Welcome to Retirada de la Playa. Welcome to a new you. Welcome to the future.”
To Maddie, the words were the clichéd phrases of a snake-oil peddler, and she couldn’t imagine Kat of all people buying into it, but those gathered leaned forward as if drawn by the power of a vast magnetic pole. He let silence fill the room and took time to make eye contact with every person. When his eyes caught hers, she froze. For one second, quick as lightning, it was as if his mask had slid and she had a glimpse of the ruthlessness that lay beneath the easy charm. As it had when she had seen the true nature of Mercer, a chill ran through her. What a couple they made: he Iago, she Lady Macbeth. His eyes stayed on her for a long moment before moving on; then he returned his attention to the entire group. “Let me ask you this—how long do you want to live?”
The room was silent. No one responded. “How long,” he repeated, “do you want to live? Give me a number.”
“One hundred!” one of the two men there shouted.
“Only one hundred?” Verner said.
“One hundred and ten,” a woman said.
“Okay,” Verner said. “Anyone else?”
“One hundred sounds good to me,” said the woman who had seemed familiar to Maddie. On hearing her voice, Maddie placed her—she was an actor on a television series. Others joined in, shouting out numbers.
“Good,” Verner said. “Now we’re getting somewhere. Now we have a goal to aim for.”
A husky voice spoke up. “One hundred and ten sounds fine to me, but only if I’m healthy and not warehoused in some nursing home somewhere, propped up in a wheelchair, being spoon-fed applesauce and waiting to die.”
There was a murmur of agreement.
“This is possible. I am going to show you that it is not only possible but realistic to live well beyond one hundred and to do so while being active and healthy, to postpone disease and infirmity, to defer degeneration of your physical and mental powers.” He paused to let the promise of the words sink in. “The aging that you witness in your world is not inevitable. Aging is not the normal course of events; it is a disease. And like many diseases, it can be cured. I have found the cure.”
Again Maddie wondered how Kat could have swallowed Verner’s line, and then she was struck with a new thought: Perhaps Kat hadn’t bought into it at all. Perhaps she was here investigating the clinic, in search of a story. She looked at Verner, saw him as Kat would have seen him in this new light.
He had them now. He slowed his pace, allowed his voice to drop. “I know you want to hear the specifics of our work here,” he said, “but I’ll begin by giving you some history.” He paused and took a drink of water. “From time immemorial, mankind has been searching for the fountain of youth, a goal as human and as elusive as the ancient alchemists’ desire to transform straw into gold. Modern alchemists have continued this pursuit. In 1889, Charles-Édouard Brown-Séquard experimented with injecting extracts of crushed animal testicles into the limbs of his patients.” A murmur of repugnance rose, and he waited for it to subside before continuing. Maddie actually felt ill.
“In the 1920s, the Russian Serge Voronoff built on the work of Brown-Séquard and found success by using extracts of monkey glands.” Another quick murmur, more restrained this time. “In fact, Voronoff was a brilliant man. His work has never been disproved. Unfortunately, he was never taken seriously by his peers. His work engendered a powerful and negative response among the world’s press, an aversion to the idea of being injected with the sex glands of a primate.”
A woman in the front row tittered nervously, and Verner smiled. “Don’t worry. I have not brought you here to be injected with the testicles of a monkey.” There was another spate of laughter, but Maddie, remembering her glimpse of Iago behind the careful facade, did not join in.
“The next pioneer was Paul Niehans, who worked in Switzerland in the 1930s. Among his many hundreds of patients, many of whom survived to their eighties and nineties, were the rich and famous. Their names are familiar to you: Thomas Mann, Pope Pius XII, Somerset Maugham, and the millionaire Bernard Baruch. It is Niehans’s work with cellular therapy that is the vanguard of much research today. His discovery of the role of cell therapy, of the use of injected enzymes, is the key to our work here.”
In spite of herself, Maddie felt herself being drawn in, fascinated.
“Unfortunately, as most of you are aware, in the United States, cell therapy is prohibited, although it is perfectly legal in other, more enlightened countries. It is regularly practiced in Argentina, France, Belgium, Italy, Holland, Germany, and Great Britain.
“Like most of you here today, I am an American, but I have been forced to come here, exiled to Mexico, to continue my work and to achieve great breakthroughs. Building on the work of Niehans and Voronoff, I have determined precisely how the body ages.” He paused to take another sip of water. “And I have learned how to counteract this aging.” The room fell still, so silent it was as if everyone feared that drawing a breath would kill the spell, break the promise. Maddie allowed herself to scan their faces but saw no trace of suspicion. Was she the only one in the room who saw the truth of the man?
“If you have already taken the opportunity to look over the reading material we had waiting for you in your rooms, then you know that researchers in the United States have recently stated that if scientific and medical resources were mobilized, aging could be conquered within the decade. Someday, these scientists and geriatricians proclaim, someday the aging process will be chemically controlled. We will have our morning smoothie of chemical cocktails and drink away the prospect of aging as a disease. It sounds exciting, doesn’t it?”
Several people voiced their assent.
“But in fact, the researchers and scientists are mistaken.”
“They’re wrong?” a woman asked.
“Absolutely and totally in error. Not in the promise that the disease of aging can be cured. They are mistaken in their timeline. It is not necessary to wait a decade. Or five years. Or one year. Here, it is happening now. Today.”
A wave of reaction swept the room. He walked to the front edge of the platform. “Permit me a little lecture,” he began. “A lecture within a lecture, if you will. How do we age?”
“By having birthdays?”
Maddie recognized the voice as that of the man who had announced he wanted to live to one hundred. Verner acknowledged the joke with a slight bow.
“We age,” he said, “because around the time we reach our thirties, our bodies begin to decrease production of several essential hormones, hormones that keep our waists thin and our hair thick, our skin supple and smooth. Hormones that allow us the gift of deeper sleep and an active libido.” The two women in front of Maddie nudged each other with their elbows, like teenagers in a sex-education class.
He scanned the room to ensure that everyone was following him. “How many of you have heard of metformin? Or nicotinamide riboside? Nobody?” The room was silent.
“You will be hearing more about them this week. Today and tomorrow, each of you will be going through a battery of tests, and from these tests we will determine the precise state of your body’s chemistry. We will then be able to put toge
ther for each of you an individual prescription, a cocktail, if you will, that will not only prevent aging, but will actually reverse its effects.”
His voice, his manner, everything about Verner reminded Mattie of a present-day version of a carnival pitchman. A huckster. A televangelist. If Kat had indeed been here undercover, it must have been a challenge for her to disguise her disdain. And if her disguise had slipped, how had Verner responded? Where was she? For a moment the question was so urgent, Maddie feared she had spoken aloud.
“I want to conduct an experiment,” Verner continued in the oily voice. “Unscientific, perhaps, but revealing. Are you ready? With the fingers of your left hand, pinch the skin on the back of your right hand. Hold it for a minute. Now release.”
Around the room, each person nipped a pinch of skin then let go, watched the little mound of flesh retract slowly. Maddie kept her hands clasped tightly in her lap, unwilling to play his game. “Once your skin was as tight and taut as that of an infant,” Verner said. “As you grew older, as you were exposed to toxins and preservatives, your bodies became damaged and underwent the process we know as aging. Your skin—the first defense again the poisons of what you have ingested and those of the world you inhabit—reveals the extent of this damage.”
He leaped down from the platform and crossed to the first row, extended his hand, pinched the flesh, and let it go. Immediately the skin fell flat, no ridge, no time lapse. He went from person to person, repeating the demonstration, occasionally allowing someone else to pinch his skin. When he returned to the platform, he unbuttoned his shirt and slipped it off. His skin was tan and toned, his chest muscles, like those of his arms, well defined. One of the women, the one Maddie had recognized as the television actor, gave a low wolf whistle. Verner bowed to her and smiled. The others laughed. He dropped to the floor and did thirty one-armed push-ups. When he stood he was breathing easily. He put his shirt on and faced them.
The Orchid Sister Page 21