Visibility

by Boris Starling

  “But we reshape nature all the time. We divert waterways, combine crops, cross-breed animals.”

  “Yes. And in most times, those are done very badly.”

  “Exactly. But now we have a chance to integrate ethics with progress, right from the very start. It’s the difference between the sledgehammer of traditional agriculture and the tweezers of biochemistry. If you took your argument to extremes, there would be no medicine, no clothes, no shaving or haircuts. Is the world a worse place for their existence? Of course not. Science’s highest moral obligation is to use what is known for the greatest benefit of mankind. Knowledge is nothing without its purposeful application. And nothing will benefit mankind more than what comes from this discovery, because the discovery is mankind.”

  “The answers are not with science, Rosalind, not all of them. Science is only as good as methods it uses, as people who use them. No, is only as good as the worst of them, the weakest link. Because even the best can’t see where things will end up. Alfred Nobel, he invent nitroglycerine to end wars, and now it makes them longer. Science and technology produce ship that cannot sink, and it called the Titanic. The Manhattan Project is designed for peace: it killed hundreds of thousands. Now, the atom bomb is biggest threat in world, and to world.”

  “But whose fault was that? The politicians’, or the scientists’? Perhaps when we uncover the secrets of DNA, we will find that the capacity to love is inscribed there; that all of us have within us the impulse which has permitted our survival and success on this planet, and which will safeguard our future.”

  “You think that? Really?”

  “Absolutely. Yes, we’re disposed to competition, but we’re also profoundly social. We understand that collective action is, in evolutionary terms, extremely desirable. Maybe you don’t see life this way, Hannah—I’d hardly blame you if you didn’t, after what’s happened to you—but I really believe in it. We’ve the opportunity to enhance love at the expense of hatred and violence. We’ve the opportunity to put right what chance has put wrong, because nature doesn’t know best, there’s not a scientist on earth who believes that it does, and if they do they’re in the wrong job. We’re learning the language with which God created life, and with it, we’re on the verge of having immense power to do good, to heal. It’s almost too awesome to comprehend.”

  Rosalind Franklin, Herbert thought, asexual, and the biggest romantic of them all.

  The phone rang. Rosalind picked up, listened for a moment, and handed the receiver to Herbert without a word.

  “Smith.”

  “Five have found de Vere Green,” Tyce said.

  “About time. Where is he?”

  “He’s dead.”

  De Vere Green had had rooms in Piccadilly—well, Herbert thought, he would have had, wouldn’t he?

  The stench hit Herbert the moment he started up the stairs, long before he reached the flat itself. Smell was the sense most intimately connected to memory, and he recalled immediately where he had last encountered that sweet, high odor of rotting carrion, though on a much greater scale: in Belsen, when they had arrived to liberate the dead. And this despite the fact that the windows had all been thrown open, ushering fog and cold into the room in equal quantities. When Herbert exhaled, he could see his breath mesh with the murk.

  The place was small—three hundred square feet at most—and packed with death’s inevitable attendants; in this case, several men whom Herbert recognized as eminences in Leconfield House and, bristling with the pugnacious belligerence of the outnumbered, Tyce. Herbert waded through the scrum toward him.

  “Bloody circus,” Tyce shouted. “Lucky it’s suicide—we won’t find any evidence once these clowns have finished their trampling.”

  “Suicide?”

  Tyce pointed to the open windows. “Carbon monoxide; you could hardly breathe.” He indicated de Vere Green’s corpse, slumped forward from his chair onto the writing bureau; then he squatted down by the gas fire, ran his finger along the influx pipe, and tapped the valve. “This was wide open. Leaking gas like it was going out of fashion. The windows were closed, the doors too. He’d have been breathing in pure fumes; killed him stone dead. Easy way to top yourself.”

  Herbert nodded. He was already looking back at the desk; in particular, at a neatly written sheet of foolscap half-pinned under de Vere Green’s right hand.

  Tyce followed his gaze.

  “He left a note.”

  Herbert walked over, picked it up, and read it.

  I no longer wish to live this life; or rather, I no longer wish to live these lives, all of which have been dragged from their bushels these past days and thrust into the open.

  Those who have trusted me—my country, my colleagues, my friends, and my lover—I took their confidence and trampled it underfoot. I have deceived and betrayed them all.

  Whatever anguish they experience at this is but a fraction of my own. Being mendacious and treacherous is bad enough. Far, far worse, I am, in the final judgment, a murderer too.

  I took Max’s life from him, because he would not give me what I wanted. Perhaps, somewhere in the next world, he will forgive me.

  Do not mourn me. I am not worthy of it.

  It was unquestionably de Vere Green’s handwriting, and equally unmistakably his voice, Herbert thought; florid to the end, tinged with desperation, as though his flamboyance was potpourri to sweeten the stench of his self-loathing.

  Carbon monoxide was colorless and odorless; a fitting exit for a spy, perhaps, creeping up almost undetected on one.

  De Vere Green would not have suffered too much. He would at first have had a slight headache and experienced some shortness of breath—symptoms, in other words, indistinguishable from the run-of-the-mill fog malaise.

  These would gradually have worsened, giving way to nausea and chest pain before unconsciousness had kicked in. All in all, there were worse ways to go.

  Herbert looked at his watch. It was past five; more than six hours since de Vere Green had run from the church in Farm Street. The carbon monoxide would have taken some time to have full effect, which meant that, even if de Vere Green had returned straight home from the church, written the note, and turned the gas on, he could still have been saved, had bureaucracy been bypassed.

  Herbert looked around him. It was as bachelor a flat as one could have imagined. Where Rosalind’s flat had been devoid of male presence, so de Vere Green’s seemed almost surgically bleached of any influences feminine.

  Despite his differences with de Vere Green, Herbert was sad that things had ended this way. He remembered his belief that only the brave committed suicide; and he thought that, in his own fashion, and in more ways than one, de Vere Green had probably been as brave as the next man.

  Herbert suddenly, badly wanted to be elsewhere; it didn’t really matter where.

  It was less than three minutes’ walk to Shepherd Market, even in the fog. All this time de Vere Green had exercised such a pull on the course of Herbert’s life, yet he had never known that they lived so near to each other. It seemed to Herbert as sad as it was fitting.

  From his flat, Herbert rang the American Embassy. The receptionist said that Papworth would be dining that night at Wheeler’s in Soho. Herbert knew the place well. Sheltering behind a green façade, Wheeler’s was luxury at a time when British food was at its dreariest. It served sole and lobster in thirty-two separate ways, but offered no vegetables bar salad and boiled potatoes.

  Herbert had felt it best not to bring Hannah to de Vere Green’s flat. Now, she was the only person he wanted to see.

  He picked his way through the mist to Frith Street, and when he got there she did nothing but hold him, listening as he recounted in a meandering jumble what de Vere Green had done.

  By the time he had unburdened himself, it was almost dinnertime. Time to go and find Papworth.

  It might have been Sunday night, but there was no sense of winding down in Soho, which was, as ever, a world apart.

&n
bsp; Herbert and Hannah passed a group of musicians outside their union on Archer Street, arms draped lazily over their violin cases as though they were a gathering of gangsters. The queues for Humph’s jazz club were already stretching all the way round the corner, a line of worshippers at a New Orleans temple of warm sex.

  On Dean Street, since they were slightly early, Herbert and Hannah stopped for a drink in the York Minster pub, known universally as “the French” after the Resistance had used it as a hideout during the war.

  The landlord, a Frenchman with a mustache to which the word “flamboyant” would have done scarce justice, greeted Hannah like a long-lost daughter.

  “Chérie,” he cried, and kissed her hand. “I thought you’d left us forever.”

  Hannah introduced Herbert—“Gaston,” said the landlord, “enchanté”—and bought drinks over Herbert’s protestations that he should pay.

  There was no draft beer; Herbert had wine.

  “Let her pay, Herbert,” Gaston said, with ersatz conspiratorialness. “It’s been so long since she was last here that I’m surprised she’s not using sovereigns.”

  And Herbert saw that Gaston, too, was captivated by Hannah’s luminosity, this little blind girl whom everyone wanted to protect, but who needed nothing from anybody. Humanity had yet to find a more alluring combination.

  “He is nice man, but don’t let him fool you,” Hannah said as they sat down. “He has no beer because Pernod and wine make more money for him.”

  As if to prove Hannah’s point that he was no saint, Gaston immediately started quarreling with a drunk. “One of the two of us will have to go,” Gaston shouted, “and I’m afraid it’s not going to be me!”

  And it was not.

  Herbert was too on edge to taste the wine, let alone enjoy it.

  He wanted to find Papworth and tell him that de Vere Green was dead, and no, it was not Papworth’s fault, any more than it had been Herbert’s; but they had helped de Vere Green get there, and for that they bore some responsibility, logic be damned.

  Hannah may have moved easily among the flotsam of Soho, but they were not Herbert’s type. With every person that came up and chatted to her about some inconsequence or other, he felt the fuse of his patience fizzle away a touch further. He had neither the time nor the inclination to watch, for instance, bleach-blond tarts in rabbit fur complain to Hannah that people were trying to pick them up.

  A drunk staggered up to them, virtually collapsed into Herbert’s lap, and gasped: “The price of a drink! The kiss of life!”

  Herbert pushed him off and stood up.

  “Come on, Hannah. Let’s go.”

  When she started to demur, he added: “please,” and she understood.

  No, Herbert thought as they walked the streets again, Soho was not so much a world apart as another country, a Bohemian exclusion zone where the only sin was to be boring, and where there was no such thing as postwar depression.

  In this reverse world, people cried in public, traveled in taxis, cashed checks everywhere but the bank, did not know what day it was, thought nothing of missing an appointment if they were having a good time, and had been barred from at least one establishment.

  But the drinking and bitchiness and sex obscured one fundamental: this was a place of great innocence. Every day brought manuscripts to be finished, trips to be made, masterpieces to be painted, dreams to be fulfilled. Whatever commodities were in short supply, hope was not among them, and never would be.

  Maybe, Herbert thought, maybe, one day, he could sneak in at the edges.

  They walked into Wheeler’s past a long counter where a waiter in a white apron was opening oysters at lightning speed. Another waiter intercepted them. Herbert told him who they were looking for, and the waiter indicated a plain wooden table without tablecloth in the far corner.

  Papworth was there with Fischer; Pauling was nowhere to be seen.

  “Herbie!” Papworth staggered to his feet—he was already quite drunk—and embraced Herbert woozily. “Join us, old bean—isn’t that what the British say, ‘old bean’? We were just celebrating. The radio says the fog’s going to lift tomorrow, so Fritz here and Linus can head back to the good ol’ U.S. of A.”

  Papworth gestured to a bottle of champagne on the table. “Champagne for your real friends, real pain for your sham friends!”

  He laughed loudly, and Fischer with him.

  “De Vere Green’s dead,” Herbert said.

  It seemed to take a moment for the news to filter through to Papworth’s brain, and another moment for it to sober him up.

  He took half a step back, squinted his eyes in a manner that might in different circumstances have been comic, peered at Herbert, and said “Dead?”

  “Dead. Carbon monoxide poisoning.”

  “Where?”

  “In his flat.”

  “Suicide?”

  “Yes.”

  “Jesus.” Papworth puffed his cheeks out and wiped his forehead. “Jesus.”

  He gestured to the table. There was room for four, would they not sit down?

  “You want to eat?” Herbert asked Hannah.

  She shook her head.

  “I don’t have hunger,” she said. “Maybe I go.”

  “Are you all right?”

  She nodded jerkily. “Fine. Am tired, is all. Not feeling so good. Maybe the fog. You come see me later, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Promise?”

  “Promise.”

  “Good.”

  She kissed him on the mouth, unashamed, turned, and walked out, tapping her cane in front of her; stubbornly, magnificently independent.

  Herbert watched her go, and then sat down. He hadn’t intended to eat, but Papworth called for a menu and insisted. He seemed suitably shaken by the news about de Vere Green, so Herbert considered it politic to keep him company.

  “You didn’t really meet properly last time,” Papworth said, indicating Fischer. “Herbert Smith, Fritz Fischer.”

  Herbert shook Fischer’s hand.

  “Did de Vere Green find it?” Papworth said.

  “Find what?”

  “What Stensness was offering.”

  Herbert pondered how to answer.

  Technically, the answer was no; the only people aware of what Stensness had been trying to sell were Herbert himself, Hannah, and Rosalind.

  But de Vere Green had known, in general terms, as had Papworth, and Kazantsev too; of that Herbert was sure. Why else would they have been at the conference?

  Herbert was suddenly very, very tired of all this.

  “You know exactly what he was offering,” he said.

  Papworth started to protest, and Herbert stared him down with the unblinking weariness of a basilisk until Papworth quietened.

  “You know what he was offering,” Herbert repeated. “You all did, or else you wouldn’t have gone to meet him. He said he’d found something in the DNA structure that no one else had. Yes?”

  Papworth said nothing.

  “Yes?” Herbert pressed.

  Papworth nodded. Herbert continued. “Well, I’ve seen what he was offering, and I’ve shown it to someone in a position to know, and I tell you now, you were wasting your time. What Stensness was trying to sell was research that didn’t stand up. He was a huckster, no more.”

  “You’re sure?” Papworth said.

  “Positive.”

  “Maybe you’d let me have a look, just to confirm this?”

  Herbert shook his head. “You think I was born yesterday? This whole thing has done more than enough damage as it is. You send Professor Pauling and Mr. Fischer—”

  “Dr. Fischer,” said Fischer.

  “—home tomorrow, and let them continue working on the structure, like the scientists at Cambridge will, and King’s. Let the best team win, and let the discovery be made available to the whole world.”

  “You understand nothing,” Fischer said.

  Papworth raised a hand. Herbert couldn’t tell
whether he was trying to stop Fischer or admonish him. Either way, Fischer ignored it.

  “The structure of DNA will be the greatest scientific achievement of this century,” Fischer said. “Upon this discovery rests much of the determination of the shape of the future. When we know what our DNA looks like, we will know why some of us are rich and some poor, some healthy and some sick, some powerful and some weak. The intellectual journey that began with Copernicus displacing us from the center of the universe, and continued with Darwin’s insistence that we are merely modified monkeys, has finally focused in on the very essence of life itself.”

  His speech was accented with traces of German which flickered like a radio dial, stronger on some words than others, but there was nothing wrong with his English.

  “The vistas which this discovery will open up are extraordinary,” Fischer continued. “We will at last come to grips with all the great killers—cancer, heart disease, diabetes—because they all have a genetic component. We will be able to compare healthy genes with disordered ones, and replace one with the other, thus rooting out diseases at the most basic level, removing the imperfections at source. Pills and treatments will become things of the past, for healthy organisms need no correction.

  “Science puts a sword in the hand of those fighting disease. It will enable us to go beyond Tiresias, the seer of Thebes whom Athena struck blind after he had seen her bathing. Afterwards, she repented and gave him the gift of prophecy, but he found this to be worse even than his blindness; to be able to see the future, but not to change it. With DNA, we will not have to choose; we will be able to see, and to change.”

  Despite himself, Herbert was transfixed. It was not just Fischer’s words, though they would have been compelling even if spoken by an automaton; it was the way his voice rose and fell, the visionary’s animation in his eyes as he looked round the hall; it was the angle at which he held himself hunched forward at the table, taking his weight on his arms like a sprinter on his marks.

  “The discovery of DNA will revolutionize criminal justice. The genetic code runs through every cell in a human body. Hair, saliva, blood, sweat, semen, mucus, and skin—all imprinted with the unique DNA of their owner, which is distinctive not only from everyone else alive but everyone who has ever been alive.