up the phone number of Gene, Inc. He noted the company was located on
Pioneer Street in east Cambridge next to the MIT campus.
Impulsively, he sat down and dialed the number. The line was answered by
a woman receptionist with an English accent. Jason asked for the head of
the company.
"You mean Dr. Leonard Dawen, the president?"
"Dr. Dawen will be fine," Jason said. He heard the extension ring. It
was picked up by a secretary.
"Dr. Dawen's office."
"I'd like to speak to Dr. Dawen."
"Who may I say is calling?"
"Dr. Jason Howard."
"May I tell him what this is in reference to?"
"It's about a lab book I have. Tell Dr. Dawen I'm from the Good Health
Plan and was a friend of the late Alvin Hayes."
"Just a moment, please," the secretary said in a voice that sounded like
a recording.
Jason opened the center drawer to his desk and toyed with his collection
of pencils. There was a click on the phone, then a powerful voice came
over the line, "This is Leonard Dawen!"
Jason explained who he was and then described the lab book.
"May I ask how it came into your possession, sir?"
"I don't think that's important. The fact is I have it." He was not
about to implicate Carol.
"That book is our property," Dr. Dawen said. His voice was calm but with
a commanding and threatening undercurrent.
"I'll be happy to turn the book over in exchange for some information
about Dr. Hayes. Do you think we might meet?"
"When?"
"As soon as possible," Jason said. "I could get over just before lunch."
"Will you have the book with you?"
"I will indeed."
For the rest of the morning Jason had trouble concentrating on the
steady stream of patients. He was pleased Sally hadn't scheduled him
through lunch. The minute he finished his last exam, he hurtied out to
his car.
Reaching Cambridge, Jason threaded his way past MIT and among the new
East Cambridge corporate skyscrapers, some with dramatically modem
architecture that contrasted sharply with the older and more traditional
New England brick structures. Making a final turn on Pioneer Street,
Jason found Gene, Inc., housed in a startlingly modem building of
polished black granite.
Unlike its neighbors, the structure was only six floors high. Its
windows were nartow slits alternating with circles of bronze mirrored
glass. It had a solid, powerful look, like a castle in a science fiction
movie.
Jason got out of his car with his briefcase and gazed up at the striking
facade. After reading so much about recombinant DNA and seeing Hayes's
grossly deformed zoo, Jason was afraid he was about to enter a house of
horrors. The front entrance was circular, defined by radiating spikes of
granite, giving the illusion of a giant eye, the black doors being the
pupil. The lobby was also black granite: walls, floor, even ceiling. In
the center of the reception area was a dramatically illuminated modern
sculpture of the double helix DNA molecule opening like a zipper.
Jason approached an attractive Korean woman sitting behind a glass wall
and in front of a control panel that looked like something out of the
Starship Enterprise. She wore a tiny earpiece along with a small
microphone that snaked around from behind her neck. She greeted Jason by
name and told him he was expected in the fourth-floor conference room.
Her voice had a metallic sound as she spoke into the microphone.
The minute the receptionist stopped speaking, one of the granite panels
opened, revealing an elevator. As he thanked her, Jason suddenly fancied
that she was a lifelike robot. Smiling, he boarded the elevator and
looked for the floor buttons. The door closed behind him. There was no
floor-selector panel, but the elevator started upward.
When the doors reopened, Jason found himself in a doorless black foyer.
He assumed the entire building was controlled from a central location,
perhaps by the receptionist downstairs. To his left a granite panel slid
open.
Within the doorway stood a man with coarse features, impeccably dressed
in a dark pinstripe suit, white shirt, and red paisley tie.
"Dr. Howard, I'm Leonard Dawen," the man said, motioning Jason into the
room. He didn't offer to shake hands. His voice had the same commanding
quality Jason remembered from the phone conversation. Compared to the
tomblike austerity of the rest of the building, the conference room
looked more like a wood-paneled library and seemed positively cozy until
you looked at the fourth wall, which was glass. It looked out on what
appeared to be a large ultramodern lab. There was another man in the
room, an Oriental, wearing a white zippered jumpsuit. Dawen introduced
the man as Mr. Hong, a Gene, Inc., engineer. After they were all seated
around a small conference table, Dawen said, "I assume you have the lab
book ... Jason opened his briefcase and handed the ledger to Dawen, who
handed it to Hong. The engineer began studying it page by page. A heavy
silence ensued.
Jason looked back and forth between the two men. He'd expected things to
be a bit more cordial. After all, he was doing them a favor.
He turned and peered through the glass wall. The floor of the room
beyond was a story below. Much of the area was filled with stainless
steel vats, reminding Jason of a visit he'd once made to a brewery. He
guessed they were the incubators for the culture of the recombinant
bacteria. There was a lot of other equipment and complicated piping.
People in white jumpsuits with white hoods were moving about checking
gauges, making adjustments.
Hong closed the lab book with a snap. "It seems complete," he said.
"That's a nice surprise," Dr. Dawen said. Turning to Jason he said, "I
hope you realize everything in this book is confidential."
"Don't worr-y," Jason said, forcing a smile. "I didn't understand much
of it. What I'm interested in is Dr. Hayes. Just before he died he said
he'd made a major discover-y. I'm curious to know if what is described
in those pages would be considered as such."
Dawen and Hong exchanged glances. "It's more of a commercial
breakthrough," Hong said. "There's no new technology here."
"That's what I suspected. Hayes was so distraught I couldn't tell if he
was entirely rational. But, if he made a major breakthrough, I'd hate to
have it lost to humanity."
Dawen's blunt features softened for the first time since Jason had
arrived.
Jason continued, dir-ecting his attention to the engineer. "Any idea
what Hayes could have been talking about?"
"Unfortunately, no. Hayes was always rather secr, etive." Dawen folded
his hands on the table and looked directly at Jason. "We were aft-aid
you were going to extort us with this material-make us pay to get it
back," he said, touching the cover of the lab book. "You have to
understand that Dr. Hayes had been giving us a rather difficult time."
"What was Dr. Hayes's role here?" Jason asked.
"We hired him to produce a recombinant strain of bacteria," Dawen
explained. "We wanted to produce a certain growth factor in commercial
quantities."
Jason guessed that was the Somatomedin.
"We agreed to pay him a flat fee for the project, as well as letting him
use the Gene, Inc., facilities for his own research. We have some very
unique equipment."
"Any idea what his own research involved?" Jason asked.
Hong spoke up. "He spent most of his time isolating growth-factor
proteins.
Some of them exist in such minute quantities that the most sophisticated
equipment is required to isolate them."
"Would the isolation of one of these growth factors be considered a
major scientific discovery?" Jason asked.
"I can't see how," Hong replied. "Even if they've never been isolated,
we know their effects."
Another dead end, Jason thought wearily.
"There's just one thing I remember that might be significant," Hong
said, pinching the bridge of his nose. "About three months ago Hayes got
very excited about some side effect. He said it was ironic."
Jason straightened. There was that word again. "Any idea what caused his
excitement?" he asked.
Hong shook his head. "No," he said, "but after that we didn't see him
for a time. When we did see him, he said he'd been to the Coast. Then he
set up an elaborate extraction process on some material he'd brought
back with him. I don't know if it worked, but then he abruptly switched
to monoclonal antibody technology. At that point his excitement seemed
to die."
The words "monoclonal antibody" reminded Jason of the second lab book,
and he wondered if he shouldn't have brought it after all. Maybe Mr.
Hong could have made more out of it than he had.
"Did Dr. Hayes leave any other research material here?" Jason asked.
"Nothing significant," Leonard Dawen answered. "And we checked
carefully, because he'd walked off with our lab book and the cultures.
In fact, we were suing Dr. Hayes. We never anticipated he would try and
contend he owned the strains that we'd hired him to produce."
"Did you get your cultures back?" Jason asked.
"We did."
"Where did you find them?"
"Let's say we looked in the right place," Dawen said evasively. "But
even though we have the strain, we still appreciate getting the
protocol book back. On behalf of the company, I'd like to thank you. I
hope we have helped you in some small way."
"Perhaps," Jason said vaguely. He had an idea he'd inadvertently found
out who had searched Hayes's lab and apartment. But why would the scientists from Gene, Inc., want to kill the animals? He wondered if the
huge animals had been treated with Gene, Inc.'s, Somatomedin. "I
appreciate your time," he said to Dawen. "You have an impressive setup
here."
"Thank you. Things are going well. We plan to have recombinant strains
of farm animals soon."
"You mean like pigs and cows?"
"That's right. Genetically we can produce leaner pigs, cows that produce
more milk, and chickens that have more protein, just to give you a few
examples."
"Fascinating," Jason said without enthusiasm. How far away could they be
from genetically engineering people? He shivered again, seeing Hayes's
outsized rats and mice, especially those with supernumerary eyes.
Back in the car, Jason glanced at his watch. He still had an hour before
the staff meeting being held to go over recent patient deaths, so he
decided to visit Samuel Schwartz, Hayes's attorney.
Starting the car, Jason backed out of the Gene, Inc., parking lot and
worked his way over to Memorial Drive. He crossed the Charles River,
stopping at Philip's Drug Store on Charles Circle. Double-parking with
his emergency light blinking, he ran into the store and looked up
Schwartz's address. Ten minutes later he was in the lawyer's waiting
room, flipping the pages of an outdated Newsweek.
Samuel Schwartz was an enormously obese man with a glistening bald head.
He motioned Jason into his office as if he were. directing traffic.
Settling himself into his chair and adjusting his wire-rimmed glasses,
he studied Jason, who had seated himself in front of the massive
mahogany partner's desk.
"So you are a friend of the late Alvin Hayes ..."We were more
colleagues than friends."
"Whatever," Schwartz said with another wave of his chubby hand. "So what
can I do for you?"
Jason retold Hayes's story of a purported breakthrough. He explained
that he was trying to figure out what Hayes had been working on and had
come across cortespondence from Samuel Schwartz.
"He was a client. So what?"
"No need to be defensive."
"I'm not defensive. I'm just bitter. I did a lot of work for that bum
and I'm going to have to write it all off."
"He never paid?"
"Never. He conned me into working for stock in his new company."
"Stock?"
Samuel Schwartz laughed without humor. "Unfortunately, now that Hayes is
dead, the stock is worthless. It might have been worthless even if he
had lived. I should have my head examined."
"Was Hayes's corporation going. to sell a service or a product?" Jason
asked.
"A product. Hayes told me he was on the verge of developing the most
valuable health product ever known. And I believed him. I figured a guy
who'd been on the cover of Time had to have something on the ball."
"Any idea what this product was?" Jason asked, trying to keep the
excitement out of his voice.
"Not the foggiest. Hayes wouldn't tell me."
III[)o you know if it involved monoclonal antibodies?" Jason asked,
unwilling to give up.
Schwartz laughed again. "I wouldn't know a monoclonal antibody if I
walked into it."
"Malignancies?" Jason was only fishing, but he hoped he could jog the
lawyer's memory."Could the product have involved a cancer treatment?"
The obese man shrugged- "I don't know. Possibly."
' 'Hayes told someone that his discovery would enhance their beauty.
Does that mean anything to you?"
"Listen, Dr. Howard. Hayes told me nothing about the product. I was just
setting up the corporation."
"You were also applying for a patent."
"The patent had nothing to do with the corporation. That was to be in
Hayes's name."
Jason's beeper startled both men. He watched the tiny screen. The word
"urgent" blinked twice, followed by a number at the GHP hospital. "Would
it be possible to use your phone?" Jason asked.
Schwartz pushed it across the desk. "Be my guest, doctor."
The call was from Madaline Krammer's floor. She'd arrested and they were
giving her CPR. Jason said he'd be right there. Thanking Samuel
Schwartz, Jason ran from the lawyer's office and impatiently waited for
the elevator.
When he got to Madaline's room, he saw an all too familiar scene. The
patient was unresponsive. Her heart refused to respond to anything,
including external pacing. Jason insisted they continue life support
>
while his mind went over various drugs and treatments, but after an hour
off~antic activity, even he was forced to give up and he reluctantly
called a halt to the proceedings.
Jason remained at Madaline's bedside after everyone else had left. She'd
been an old friend, one of the first patients he'd treated in his
private practice. One of the nurses had covered her face with a sheet.
Madaline's nose poked it up like a miniature snowcovered mountain.
Gently, Jason turned it back. Even though she had been only in her early
sixties, he couldn't get over how old she looked. Since she'd entered
the hospital, her face had lost all its cheerful plumpness and taken on
the skeletal cast of those nearing death.
Needing some time by himself, Jason retreated to his office, avoiding
both Claudia and Sally, who each had a hundred urgent questions about
the up coming conference and the problems of rescheduling so many
patients. Jason locked his door and settled himself at his desk. As such
an old patient, Madaline's passing seemed like the severing of one more
connection to Jason's former life. Jason felt poignantly alone, fearful,
Cook,Robin - Mortal Fear.txt Page 19