The Magic Bullet

by Harry Stein

  “What was your mother’s name?” asked Logan.

  “Emma. Isn’t she pretty?” It was apparent this was important to her even now.

  “Very.”

  “She was a piano teacher, did you know that? That’s how they met. With all his work, he decided to take up the piano.” She laughed. “I have all the details. My mother also sent over her diary. Would you like to see it?”

  “I would.” For, in fact, the particulars of this family’s life were starting to engage him.

  “Actually, it’s four volumes. She wrote down everything.”

  She went to a closet across the room and carried them over. For the next quarter hour, as she hung over his shoulder, commenting, he perused the pages of flowing script.

  “It’s remarkable,” he said finally, gently closing the book, “what a treasure.” He paused. “I was wondering, by any chance did your father also keep a diary?”

  “My father?” She shook her head. “Not really, I don’t think he had the time.”

  “I mean about his work.”

  “Ohh.” She thought a moment. “Actually, yes, I think there is something, a journal of some sort.…”

  Getting up, she went to a closet across the room and began rummaging about. “Most of it I can’t make heads or tails of, of course. All those numbers and letters.” She stood on tiptoes and gingerly pulled down a box from the crowded top shelf. “I think it’s in here. Yes, here it is.”

  In her hands she held a black-and-white marble composition book, similar to those Logan himself had used in school. “I hope you’ll excuse the disorder. But I usually find what I’m looking for.”

  She handed it to him. Casually, as if simply perusing another interesting artifact, he opened it. What he saw on the first page sent a shiver down his spine. A rendering of the precise compound with which Logan had been working.

  “I hope it’s helpful,” she was saying.

  He flipped to the next page and then on to the one after that; then, more rapidly, scanned perhaps ten more. What he was seeing was a series of brief entries, three or four to the page. Occasionally an entry was accompanied by a sketch of a chemical model, annotated and dated. The story being told here was riveting—that of the evolution of a brilliant scientist’s thinking as he struggled, over the course of more than two decades, with a problem of almost unimaginable complexity.

  Excitedly, apprehensively, Logan skipped to the back of the notebook. The final dozen pages were blank. But on the one that preceded them, there it was: the fully realized compound!

  Logan quickly deciphered the German words above it. “Es funktioniert!” It works! It was dated 26/10/38. Two weeks before Kristallnacht.

  “Would you mind if I borrow this?” asked Logan, trying to maintain a veneer of calm.

  She looked suddenly concerned. “It’s very important to me.”

  “I understand. Of course.” How to put this? “I just think you should know your father did some remarkable work here.”

  “Really?” She lit up. “That’s wonderful to hear.”

  “Only for a day or two, I just want to make a copy of it.” He began fumbling in his jacket for his wallet. “I’ll leave you my driver’s licence, my credit cards …”

  With a sudden laugh, she relented. “Never mind, of course you can. I never imagined anyone would ever be interested.”

  Someone else might have dreaded this confrontation. Seth Shein relished it. In his long tenure at the ACF, never before had he had such an opportunity, and there’d surely never be one like it again.

  He had to make the most of it—even if that meant winging it.

  “Say, Stillman,” he said, strolling into his rival’s office unannounced, “haven’t seen much of you lately.”

  Gregory Sillman looked up from the paper he’d been working on, his lip instantly curling in a sneer. “Who the hell let you in here?”

  “Just wonderin’ what you been up to.” He noticed Stillman had slipped his forearm over the page before him. “Colleague to colleague.”

  “Get the hell out of here!” Stillman snapped the button on his intercom. “Martha!” There was no response. “Martha, goddamn it!”

  “I think she might be downstairs in the cafeteria,” offered Shein, innocently. “I think that’s where I just saw her.” He took a seat. “So … you wanna tell me what you been workin’ on?”

  Stillman rose to his feet. “I’m in no mood for your idiocy, Shein.” He started moving toward him. “Now get out!”

  “Maybe that’s the wrong question. What I mean to ask is—who’ve you been treating with Compound J?”

  He stopped in his tracks, less angry now than seemingly bewildered. “What?”

  “Simple question. I looked at the records down in the pharmacy. It seems you’ve checked out fifteen grams of the stuff. Who for?”

  “For research purposes, of course,” he said. But, knowing who he was dealing with, he wasn’t able to manage complete conviction. “I’ve never denied Compound J seems to have some activity.”

  Shein snorted. “Don’t insult my intelligence,” he said, his voice taking on a dangerous edge. “You can do anything else—all right?—but don’t insult my intelligence. We’re talkin’ fifteen fuckin’ grams! How many mice you planning to dose, a hundred thousand?”

  “Shein, that’s the most irresponsible kind of speculation!”

  Shein hesitated a long moment, appearing to consider this. “You know what Logan thinks?” he picked up, his tone almost conspiratorial. “He thinks you murdered his lab animals. He thinks you were so desperate to discredit his research, you poisoned his fuckin’ lab animals! So that you could take over.”

  “You’re throwing Logan at me? A guy who faked his data? He’s got his head up his ass.”

  Shein nodded decisively. “You’re right, I agree with you—Compound J-lite is incredibly toxic stuff. No way you killed those lab animals.” He smiled; it was impossible to tell he was operating on pure intuition. “Just the women.”

  “What? What the fuck are you—”

  “Simple enough with these new poisons, Greg. Was it chrisanthetoxin—that destroys the liver. All you’d have to do is get a thousanth of a microgram into the IV line. Or, better yet, into the chocolates the Italian babe was always slipping her patients.”

  Stillman came back with a brittle laugh. “Compound J killed those women, Shein. It’s an established fact.”

  “No, Greg, Compound J doesn’t have that kind of toxicity. You know that. Why else would you take the chance of feeding it to someone else?”

  The other man hesitated, his face suddenly drained of color.

  Jackpot!

  “I’m not even going to dignify that with a response,” said Stillman finally.

  “Greg, you already have.” Shein smiled confidentially. “She must be pretty big stuff for you to go to so much trouble. I figure none of the conventional stuff worked, right? So what were you gonna use—your stuff, that’d had zero responses? Compound J may be hit and miss, it’s had some problems, but at least it’s active.”

  “Where do you come up with this crap?”

  “Take a look at Kober’s file, Greg. The woman only has one kidney …

  “What the hell do I care?”

  “It means she had more Compound J in her system, not less. The stuff didn’t kill her—it probably saved her. It helped her fight off the toxin.”

  “You’re psychotic, Shein, you’re delusional! Do you know what you’re suggesting?”

  “Well, Greg, I know this: We got three dead ladies and Compound J didn’t kill ‘em. Just as a matter of professional interest—did you use the same toxin on Reston? The fucker was quite a loose cannon, wasn’t he?”

  “Jesus H. Christ!” Throwing up his hands, Stillman returned to his desk chair and sat down heavily.

  Shein had never imagined there’d come a time when he’d see his rival so helpless, so utterly vulnerable—and he moved in for the kill. “It’s okay if you
don’t wanna tell me. He’s only been buried—what?—a week. No problem exhuming the body and running a few tests.”

  “Shein, look, we’ve had plenty of problems, you and I. But what are you trying to do to me here? We’re both in the same business, we’re both out to cure cancer.”

  “I assume you’re just talking theoretically here, right?”

  “What are you trying to do, wreck the ACF? I’m not saying there’s a word of truth to this—there’s not. But I promise you, if you pursue it, that’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to fuck up everything we’ve worked for. And, let me tell you, it couldn’t come at a worse time.”

  Shein leaned forward. “Oh, yeah? Why’s that?”

  Stillman closed his eyes and breathed in deeply.

  “C’mon, Greg,” he urged gently, almost seductively, “out with it. You know I’m gonna get it anyhow.”

  Stillman stared at him miserably. Then he picked up the file on his desk and handed it over.

  Logan had been poring over the notebook in Perez’s living room for over four hours, but he was still as lightheaded with excitement as at the start. Though he’d never been especially religious, he now could say he understood the definition of a spiritual experience. For what he held in his hands was close to holy—the life work of a scientist as remarkable as any he’d ever studied in the classic texts. Work of potentially incalculable benefit to humankind.

  The telephone rang, startling him.

  “Logan? I hope you’re not chewing up the carpets.”

  “Ruben, where are you?”

  “At your place. How much stuff you want me to bring over?”

  Nothing could’ve been of less importance to him. “I don’t know, at least a few days’ worth.”

  “Great,” said his friend, wearily.

  “Oh—could you also bring my German-English dictionary? It’s on the shelf next to the couch.” Logan had been having trouble deciphering some of Nakano’s more complicated notes.

  “What for?”

  “Please, I’ll tell you when you get here.”

  “I see it. It looks like a heavy mother! Logan, I have a lot of junk to carry already.”

  “Take a cab, I’ll pay for it. Please, just hurry.”

  Logan turned back to the notebook. It was nothing short of remarkable in its detail, a complete record of the development of the compound from theory to realization. He could see how Nakano had built on small successes as he went; yet, too, how reluctant he’d been to discard certain key ideas that seemed virtual truisms and how slow to embrace others that appeared, at first blush, extraordinarily unlikely.

  Logan understood. Nakano had also been convinced at first the toxicity was linked to the length of the polymer’s bridge—in fact, had persisted in that belief for a dozen frustrating years. It was only his belated discovery that the problem lay elsewhere—in the unlikeliest of places—that enabled him to press forward; and even then, ten more years were required to reach completion.

  Logan studied the final series of drawings with particular care. All that had been required was a slight repositioning of the sulfonate groups, on the head and tail modules of Compound J. The compound Nakano discovered was, in fact, an isomer of Compound J: it had exactly the same number of atoms in its chemical composition, but its parts were arranged slightly differently.

  It was as if the molecule were a deck of cards in which, for a particular trick to work, the cards had to be in a precise order. Logan himself had had several cards out of sequence. He might have gone on working for a hundred years—a thousand!—and never gotten it right.

  He heard the click of a key in the door and looked up.

  “Well,” announced Perez, a shopping bag in each hand and the dictionary under his arm, “just call me the Bag Man of Washington Heights.”

  “Ruben, c’mere. I have to show you something.”

  “Will you let me close the door, for Chrissakes?”

  He had just done so and was heading toward the couch when there came the sound of heavy footfalls in the hallway outside, immediately followed by a violent pounding on the door.

  “What the fuck?” exclaimed Perez, quickly moving for the baseball bat he kept in the corner.

  In a panic, Logan slammed shut the notebook and slipped it beneath a cushion of the couch.

  Abruptly, the door crashed open, kicked in by one of the four burly men who came rushing in. Three of them had guns drawn.

  “Which one of you is Logan?”

  “Who the hell are you?” demanded Perez.

  “Keep your mouth shut!”

  Logan noticed the head man had a small photograph in his hand. It was identical to the one on his ID card at the ACF. Instantly, he knew: these guys were ACF security.

  “I am,” he accepted the inevitable. “I’m Dan Logan.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “He’s my friend, he didn’t do anything.”

  “He goes too,” came the command.

  “What about these?” One of the men indicated the rats.

  The leader didn’t hesitate. “Take ’em.”

  Both men were jostled out of the apartment and down the stairs, where two cars waited, engines running.

  “My fault, man,” called Perez, before he was pushed into one car. “I was a fuckin’ idiot!”

  Logan couldn’t manage a reply before he disappeared into the second—a Volvo. No way, he reflected miserably, ALL mine.

  He was placed on the back floor, invisible to passersby. “My friend didn’t do anything,” he repeated. “He doesn’t know about any of this.”

  But he had no doubt that if they were ready to eliminate him to steal Compound J, Perez, caught in the crossfire, didn’t have a chance.

  “Don’t worry about it,” said the guy in charge.

  “How’d you find me?” Though, in fact, he was just trying to reassure himself these people were human enough to make conversation.

  “No talking, Doctor. Those are our orders.”

  Anyway, the answer seemed clear. Having staked out his place, he figured, they’d followed Perez uptown.

  For the next thirty-five or forty minutes they drove in silence, across—he surmised, looking up from his position on the floor—the George Washington Bridge—and on into New Jersey. When they came to a halt and he was helped from the car, he was surprised to find they were at the edge of the tarmac in what appeared to be a rural airport. But now he found himself hustled aboard a plane on the adjacent runway, a Learjet. A few moments later they were airborne.

  Again, he was kept from the window, an exercise that struck him as completely pointless.

  “I know where we’re going,” he said quietly.

  Neither of the men flanking him replied.

  “At least give me the satisfaction of knowing I’m right.”

  Nothing.

  “Screw you!” he said, summoning up his final reserve of defiance. “Screw you all!”

  They came down at a similar airfield—Virginia, he guessed, by the look of the terrain—and he was made to lie down in the back of another car, a Buick sedan.

  “Hope you’re not too uncomfortable,” said the head man, the first time he’d spoken since New York.

  But by now, in his despair, Logan took this as nothing more than an effort by the guy to absolve his conscience. He’d all but accepted the inevitable. “Look, asshole, where I’m going, I’m not worried about a little discomfort.”

  For another half hour there was silence—until someone tapped him on the shoulder. “Okay, you can sit up now.”

  With difficulty, he struggled in the cramped space to his knees, then two pairs of hands helped lift him to the backseat.

  “Why,” he said, shaking them off, “you want me to see the place where—”

  He stopped in midsentence, jaw literally going slack. What loomed before him was so staggering, for a moment he was actually unable to process it. They’d just driven through a gate and were heading up a drive toward the imp
osing structure.

  “Is that the …”

  “Yessir, of course. The White House.”

  They halted at the East entrance and Logan was helped from the car.

  “Again, I’m very sorry for the inconvenience, sir,” said the senior man. “There was concern you might try to evade us, and our job was to bring you here as quickly as possible. I hope you understand.”

  He got back in the car and it drove off. Instantly, another man was at Logan’s side. “Right this way, please, Doctor.”

  He escorted him into the building, around a corner, and then up a narrow staircase.

  “Excuse me,” said Logan, “but isn’t this where—”

  He nodded. “The private quarters, yessir. Please follow me.”

  He led the way down a long corridor, knocking at a door close to the end.

  “Come in,” called the familiar voice.

  His escort opened the door and stepped aside to let Logan pass. There, in what appeared to be a sort of sitting room, waited Kenneth Markell, Raymond Larsen, and Seth Shein!

  By now Logan was almost beyond surprise. He just stared at them.

  “Dr. Logan,” nodded Markell in greeting, as if the meeting of this group, in this place, were the most natural thing in the world.

  Suddenly conscious he was still dressed in his T-shirt and jeans, Logan folded his arms before him. “What am I doing here?”

  “We’ve got a situation,” said Markell.

  Logan turned to Shein. “Why am I here?”

  “Hey,” replied Shein, with what he’d once have taken as an ingratiating smile, “don’t ask me, I only work here.”

  “A situation,” repeated Markell. “And it occurred to us that you might help.” He paused. “Mrs. Rivers has a chemotherapy-refractory cancer. I’m afraid it’s bad.”

  The First Lady? Logan’s mind raced. It made perfect sense, of course—yet somehow he was again caught short. He’d always liked Elizabeth Rivers, he’d voted for her husband. What Markell was telling him was that she was doomed; they’d tried all the chemo they could and nothing had worked. “I’m sorry.”