by Tom Clancy
Well, Popov told himself, he was closer than ever to realizing it. All he had to do was set up a few more jobs like this one in Bern. If his employer was willing to pay that much money for fools—well, a fool and his money were soon parted; a Western aphorism he found delightfully appropriate. And Dmitriy Arkadeyevich was no fool. With that satisfied thought, he lifted his remote and turned his TV off. Tomorrow, wake up, breakfast, make his bank deposit, and then take a cab to the airport for the Swissair flight to New York. First class. Of course.
“Well, Al?” Clark asked over a pint of dark British beer. They were sitting in the rear-corner booth.
“Your Chavez is all he was reported to be. Clever of him to let Price take the lead. He doesn’t let ego get in the way. I like that in a young officer. His timing was right. His division of the floor plan was right, and his shots were bang on. He’ll do. So will the team. So much the better that the first time out was an easy one. This Model chappie wasn’t a rocket scientist, as you say.”
“Vicious bastard.”
Stanley nodded. “Quite. The German terrorists frequently were. We should get a nice letter from the BKA about this one, as well.”
“Lessons learned?”
“Dr. Bellow’s was the best. We need more and better translators if we’re to get him involved in negotiations. I’ll get to work on that tomorrow. Century House ought to have people we can use. Oh, yes, that Noonan lad—”
“A late addition. He was a techie with the FBI. They used him on the Hostage Rescue Team for technical backup. Sworn agent, knows how to shoot, with some investigative experience,” Clark explained. “Good all-around man to have with us.”
“Nice job planting his video-surveillance equipment. I’ve looked at the videotapes already. They’re not bad. On the whole, John, full marks for Team-2.” Stanley saluted with his jar of John Courage.
“Nice to see that everything works, Al.”
“Until the next one.”
A long breath. “Yeah.” Most of the success, Clark knew, was due to the British. He’d made use of their support systems, and their men had actually led the takedown—two-thirds of it. Louis Loiselle was every bit as good as the French had claimed. The little bastard could shoot like Davy Crockett with an attitude, and was about as excitable as a rock. Well, the French had their own terrorist experiences, and once upon a time Clark had gone out into the field with them. So, this one would go into the records as a successful mission. Rainbow was now certified. And so, Clark knew, was he.
The Society of Cincinnatus owned a large house on Massachusetts Avenue that was frequently used for the semi-official dinners that were so vital a part of the Washington social scene, and allowed the mighty to cross paths and validate their status over drinks and small talk. The new President made that somewhat difficult, of course, with his . . . eccentric approach to government, but no person could really change that much in this city, and the new crop in Congress needed to learn how Washington Really Worked. It was no different from other places around America, of course, and to many of them the gatherings at this former dwelling of somebody rich and important was merely the new version of the country club dinners where they’d learned the rules of polite-power society.
Carol Brightling was one of the new important people. A divorcée for over ten years who’d never remarried, she had no less than three doctorates, from Harvard, Cal-Tech, and the University of Illinois, thus covering both coasts and three important states, which was an important accomplishment in this city, as that guaranteed her the instant attention, if not the automatic affection, of six senators and a larger number of representatives, all of whom had votes and committees.
“Catch the news,” the junior senator from Illinois asked her over a glass of white wine.
“What do you mean?”
“Switzerland. Either a terrorist thing or a bank robbery. Nice takedown by the Swiss cops.”
“Boys and their guns,” Brightling observed dismissively.
“It made for good TV.”
“So does football,” Brightling noted, with a gentle, nasty smile.
“True. Why isn’t the President supporting you on Global Warming?” the senator asked next, wondering how to crack her demeanor.
“Well, he isn’t not supporting me. The President thinks we need some additional science on the issue.”
“And you don’t?”
“Honestly, no, I think we have all the science we need. The top-down and bottom-up data are pretty clear. But the President isn’t convinced himself, and does not feel comfortable with taking measures that affect the economy until he is personally sure.” I have to work on him some more, she didn’t add.
“Are you happy with that?”
“I see his point,” the Science Advisor replied, surprising the senator from the Land of Lincoln. So, he thought, everyone who worked in the White House toed the line with this president. Carol Brightling had been a surprise appointment to the White House staff, her politics very different from the President’s, respected as she was in the scientific community for her environmental views. It had been an adroit political move, probably engineered by Chief of Staff Arnold van Damm, arguably the most skillful political operator in this city of maneuvering, and had secured for the President the (qualified) support of the environmental movement, which had turned into a political force of no small magnitude in Washington.
“Does it bother you that the President is out in South Dakota slaughtering geese?” the senator asked with a chuckle, as a waiter replaced his drink.
“Homo sapiens is a predator,” Brightling replied, scanning the room for others.
“But only the men?”
A smile. “Yes, we women are far more peaceful.”
“Oh, that’s your ex-husband over there in the corner, isn’t it?” the senator asked, surprised at the change in her face when he said it.
“Yes.” The voice neutral, showing no emotion, as she turned to face in another direction. Having spotted him, she needed to do no more. Both knew the rules. No closer than thirty feet, no lengthy eye contact, and certainly no words.
“I had the chance to put money into Horizon Corporation two years ago. I’ve kicked myself quite a few times since.”
“Yes, John has made quite a pile for himself.”
And well after their divorce, so she didn’t get a nickel out of it. Probably not a good topic for conversation, the senator thought at once. He was new at the job, and not the best at politic conversation.
“Yes, he’s done well, twisting science the way he has.”
“You don’t approve?”
“Restructuring DNA in plants and animals—no. Nature has evolved without our assistance for two billion years at least. I doubt that it needs help from us.”
“ ‘There are some things man is not meant to know’?” the senator asked with a chuckle. His professional background was in contracting, in gouging holes in the ground and erecting something that nature didn’t want there, though his sensitivity on environmental issues, Dr. Brightling thought, had itself evolved from his love of Washington and his desire to remain here in a position of power. It was called Potomac Fever, a disease easily caught and less easily cured.
“The problem, Senator Hawking, is that nature is both complex and subtle. When we change things, we cannot easily predict the ramifications of the changes. It’s called the Law of Unintended Consequences, something with which the Congress is familiar, isn’t it?”
“You mean—”
“I mean that the reason we have a federal law about environmental impact statements is that it’s far easier to mess things up than it is to get them right. In the case of recombinant DNA, we can more easily change the genetic code than we can evaluate the effects those changes will cause a century from now. That sort of power is one that should be used with the greatest possible care. Not everyone seems to grasp that simple fact.”
Which point was difficult to argue with, the senator had to concede gracefu
lly. Brightling would be making that case before his committee in another week. Had that been the thing that had broken up the marriage of John and Carol Brightling? How very sad. With that observation, the senator made his excuses and headed off to join his wife.
“There’s nothing new in that point of view.” John Brightling’s doctorate in molecular biology came from the University of Virginia, along with his M.D. “It started with a guy named Ned Ludd a few centuries ago. He was afraid that the Industrial Revolution would put an end to the cottage-industry economy in England. And he was right. That economic model was wrecked. But what replaced it was better for the consumer, and that’s why we call it progress!” Not surprisingly, John Brightling, a billionaire heading for number two, was holding court before a small crowd of admirers.
“But the complexity—” One of the audience started to object.
“Happens every day—every second, in fact. And so do the things we’re trying to conquer. Cancer, for example. No, madam, are you willing to put an end to our work if it means no cure for breast cancer? That disease strikes five percent of the human population worldwide. Cancer is a genetic disease. The key to curing it is in the human genome. And my company is going to find that key! Aging is the same thing. Salk’s team at La Jolla found the kill-me gene more than fifteen years ago. If we can find a way to turn it off, then human immortality can be real. Madam, does the idea of living forever in a body of twenty-five years’ maturity appeal to you?”
“But what about overcrowding?” The congress-woman’s objection was somewhat quieter than her first. It was too vast a thought, too surprisingly posed, to allow an immediate objection.
“One thing at a time. The invention of DDT killed off huge quantities of disease-bearing insects, and that increased populations all over the world, didn’t it? Okay, we are a little more crowded now, but who wants to bring the anopheles mosquito back? Is malaria a reasonable method of population control? Nobody here wants to bring war back, right? We used to use that, too, to control populations. We got over it, didn’t we? Hell, controlling populations is no big deal. It’s called birth control, and the advanced countries have already learned how to do it, and the backward countries can, too, if they have a good reason for doing so. It might take a generation or so,” John Brightling mused, “but is there anyone here who would not want to be twenty-five again—with all the things we’ve learned along the way, of course. It damned well appeals to me!” he went on with a warm smile. With sky-high salaries and promises of stock options, his company had assembled an incredible team of talent to look at that particular gene. The profits that would accrue from its control could hardly be estimated, and the U.S. patent was good for seventeen years! Human immortality, the new Holy Grail for the medical community—and for the first time, it was something for serious investigation, not a topic of pulp science-fiction stories.
“You think you can do it?” another congresswoman—this one from San Francisco—asked. Women of all sorts found themselves drawn to this man. Money, power, good looks, and good manners made it inevitable.
John Brightling smiled broadly. “Ask me in five years. We know the gene. We need to learn how to turn it off. There’s a whole lot of basic science in there we have to uncover, and along the way we hope to discover a lot of very useful things. It’s like setting off with Magellan. We aren’t sure what we’re going to find, but we know it’ll all be interesting.” No one pointed out that Magellan hadn’t made it home from that particular trip.
“And profitable?” a new senator from Wyoming asked.
“That’s how our society works, isn’t it? We pay people for doing useful work. Is this area useful enough?”
“If you bring it off, I suppose it is.” This senator was himself a physician, a family practitioner who knew the basics but was well over his head on the deep-scientific side. The concept, the objective of Horizon Corporation, was well beyond breathtaking, but he would not bet against them. They’d done too well developing cancer drugs and synthetic antibiotics, and were the leading private company in the Human Genome Project, a global effort to decode the basics of human life. Himself a genius, John Brightling had found it easy to attract others like himself to his company. He had more charisma than a hundred politicians, and unlike the latter, the senator had to admit to himself, he really had something to back up the showmanship. It had once been called “the right stuff” for pilots. With his movie-star looks, ready smile, superb listening ability, and dazzlingly analytical mind, Dr. John Brightling had the knack. He could make anyone near him feel interesting—and the bastard could teach, could apply his lessons to everyone nearby. Simple ones for the unschooled and highly sophisticated ones for the specialists in his field, at the top of which he reigned supreme. Oh, he had a few peers. Pat Reily at Harvard-Mass General. Aaron Bernstein at Johns Hopkins. Jacques Elisé at Pasteur. Maybe Paul Ging at U.C. Berkeley. But that was it. What a fine clinician Brightling might have made, the senator-M.D. thought, but, no, he was too good to be wasted on people with the latest version of the flu.
About the only thing in which he’d failed was his marriage. Well, Carol Brightling was also pretty smart, but more political than scientific, and perhaps her ego, capacious as everyone in this city knew it to be, had quailed before the greater intellectual gifts of her husband. Only room in town for one of us, the doctor from Wyoming thought, with an inner smile. That happened often enough in real life, not just on old movies. And Brightling, John, seemed to be doing better in that respect than Brightling, Carol. At the former’s elbow was a very pretty redhead drinking in his every word, while the latter had come alone, and would be leaving alone for her apartment in Georgetown. Well, the senator-M.D. thought, that’s life.
Immortality. Damn, all the pronghorns he might take, the doctor from Cody thought on, heading over to his wife. Dinner was about to start. The chicken had finished the vulcanization process.
The Valium helped. It wasn’t actually Valium, Killgore knew. That drug had become something of a generic name for mild sedatives, and this one had been developed by SmithKline, with a different trade name, with the added benefit that it made a good mix with alcohol. For street people who were often as contentious and territorial as junkyard dogs, this group of ten was remarkably sedate. The large quantities of good booze helped. The high-end bourbons seemed the most popular libations, drunk from cheap glasses with ice, along with various mixers for those who didn’t care to drink it neat. Most didn’t, to Killgore’s surprise.
The physicals had gone well. They were all healthy-sick people, outwardly fairly vigorous, but inwardly all with physical problems ranging from diabetes to liver failure. One was definitely suffering from prostate cancer—his PSA was off the top of the chart—but that wouldn’t matter in this particular test, would it? Another was HIV+, but not yet symptomatic, and so that didn’t matter either. He’d probably gotten it from drug use, but strangely, liquor seemed all he needed to keep himself regulated here. How interesting.
Killgore didn’t have to be here, and it troubled his conscience to look at them so much, but they were his lab rats, and he was supposed to keep an eye on them, and so he did, behind the mirror, while he did his paperwork and listened to Bach on his portable CD player. Three were—claimed to be—Vietnam veterans. So they’d killed their share of Asians—“gooks” was the word they’d used in the interview—before coming apart and ending up as street drunks. Well, homeless people was the current term society used for them, somewhat more dignified than bums, the term Killgore vaguely remembered his mother using. Not the best example of humanity he’d ever seen. Yet the Project had managed to change them quite a bit. All bathed regularly now and dressed in clean clothes and watched TV. Some even read books from time to time—Killgore had thought that providing a library, while cheap, was an outrageously foolish waste of time and money. But always they drank, and the drinking relegated each of the ten to perhaps six hours of full consciousness per day. And the Valium calmed them further
, limiting any altercations that his security staff would have to break up. Two of them were always on duty in the next room over, also watching the group of ten. Microphones buried in the ceiling allowed them to listen in to the disjointed conversations. One of the group was something of an authority on baseball and talked about Mantle and Maris all the time to whoever would listen. Enough of them talked about sex that Killgore wondered if he should send the snatch team back out to get some female “homeless” subjects for the experiment—he would tell Barb Archer that. After all, they needed to know if gender had an effect on the experiment. She’d have to buy into that one, wouldn’t she? And there’d be none of the sisterly solidarity with them. There couldn’t be, even from the feminazi who joined him in running this experiment. Her ideology was too pure for that. Killgore turned when there came a knock at the door.