Seizure

Robin Cook

Acknowledgments
Prologue
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Epilogue
Author’s Note

Robin Cook
Seizure

   Although her faculty of reminiscence has faltered, mine hasn’t; so heartfelt thanks, Mom, for all your love, dedication, and sacrifices particularly during my early years… an appreciation made more poignant and profound now that I have a healthy, happy, and rambunctious three-year-old boy of my own!

Acknowledgments

   As with many of my novels, particularly those dealing with expertise beyond my undergraduate chemistry and graduate medical training in surgery and ophthalmology, I have benefited greatly from the professional erudition, wisdom, and experience of friends and friends of friends for the research, plotting, and writing of Seizure, whose storyline spans medicine, biotechnology, and politics. A host of people have been extraordinarily generous with their valuable time and insights. Those whom I would specifically like to acknowledge are (in alphabetical order):
   Jean Cook, MSW, CAGS—a psychologist, a perceptive reader, a courageous critic, and an invaluable sounding board.
   Joe Cox, J.D., LLM—a gifted tax lawyer as well as a reader of fiction, who is conversant with corporate structure, financing, and offshore legal issues.
   Gerald Doyle, M.D.—a compassionate internist cast from a bygone mold, with a first-class referral list of accomplished clinical physicians.
   Orrin Hatch, J.D.—a venerated senior senator from Utah, who graciously allowed me to experience firsthand a typical day in the life of a senator and who regaled me with humorous stories of late senators whose biographies were a fertile source for creating my fictional Ashley Butler.
   Robert Lanza, M.D.—a human dynamo who tirelessly struggles to bridge the gap between clinical medicine and 21st-century biotechnology.
   Valerio Manfredi, Ph.D.—an exuberant Italian archeologist and author himself, who magnanimously arranged introductions and my visit to Turin, Italy, for my research into the remarkable Shroud of Turin.

Prologue

   Monday, February 22, 2001, was one of those surprisingly warm midwinter days that falsely prophesied the arrival of spring to the inhabitants of the Atlantic seaboard. The sun was bright all the way from Maine to the tip of the Florida Keys, providing a temperature variation astonishingly less than twenty degrees Fahrenheit. It was to be a normal, happy day for the vast majority of people living within this lengthy littoral, although for two exceptional individuals, it was to be the start of a series of events that would ultimately cause their lives to tragically intersect.

   1:35 P.M. Cambridge, Massachusetts
   Daniel Lowell looked up from the pink phone message he held in his hand. Two things made it unique—first, the caller was Dr. Heinrich Wortheim, Chairman of the Department of Chemistry at Harvard, saying he wanted to see Dr. Lowell in his office, and second, the little box labeled URGENT was marked with a bold X. Dr. Wortheim always communicated by letter and expected a letter in return. As one of the world’s premier chemists occupying Harvard’s lofty and heavily endowed department chair, he was eccentrically Napoleonic. He rarely mixed directly with the hoi polloi that included Daniel, even though Daniel was head of his own department, which came under Wortheim’s authority.
   “Hey, Stephanie!” Daniel called out across the lab. “Did you see this phone message on my desk? It’s from the emperor. He wants to see me in his office.”
   Stephanie looked up from the dissecting stereomicroscope she’d been using and glanced at Daniel. “That doesn’t sound good,” she said.
   “You didn’t say anything to him, did you?”
   “How would I have a chance to say anything to him? I’ve only seen him twice during my entire Ph.D. travail—when I defended my dissertation and when he handed me my diploma.”
   “He must have some idea about our plans,” Daniel surmised. “I suppose it’s not too surprising, considering all the people I’ve approached to be on our scientific advisory board.”
   “Are you going to go?”
   “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
   It was only a short walk from the lab to the building that housed the departmental administrative offices. Daniel knew he was facing a confrontation of sorts, but it didn’t matter. In fact, he was looking forward to it.
   The moment Daniel appeared, the departmental secretary motioned him to go directly into Wortheim’s inner sanctum. He found the aging Nobel laureate behind his antique desk. With his white hair and thin face, Wortheim appeared older than his purported seventy-two years. But his appearance did not diminish his commanding personality, which radiated from him like a magnetic field.
   “Please sit down, Dr. Lowell,” Wortheim said, regarding his visitor over the top of his wire-rimmed reading glasses. He had had a trace German accent despite his having lived in the United States most of his life.
   Daniel did as he was told. He knew a faint, insouciant smile, which he was certain would not be missed by the department head, lingered on his face. Despite Wortheim’s age, his faculties were as sharp as ever and attuned to any slight. And the fact that Daniel was supposed to kowtow to this dinosaur was part of the reason he was so certain of his decision to leave academia. Wortheim was brilliant, and he’d won a Nobel Prize, but he was still mired in last century’s inorganic synthetic chemistry. Organic chemistry in the form of proteins and their respective genes was the present and future of the field.
   It was Wortheim who broke the silence after the two men had eyed each other. “I gather from your expression that the rumors are true.”
   “Could you be more specific?” Daniel responded. He wanted to be sure his suspicions were correct. He hadn’t planned to make an announcement for another month.
   “You have been forming a scientific advisory board,” Wortheim said. He got to his feet and began to pace. “An advisory board can mean only one thing.” He stopped and stared at Daniel with acrimonious disdain. “You’re planning to tender your resignation, and you have or you are about to found a company.”
   “Guilty as accused,” Daniel proclaimed. He couldn’t keep his smile from expanding to a full grin. A deep red had suffused over Wortheim’s face. Undoubtedly, Wortheim equated the situation to Benedict Arnold’s traitorous behavior during the American Revolutionary War.
   “I personally went out on a limb when you were recruited,” Wortheim snapped. “We even built the laboratory facility that you demanded.”
   “I won’t be taking the lab with me,” Daniel responded. He couldn’t believe Wortheim was trying to make him feel guilty.
   “Your flippancy is galling.”
   “I could apologize, but it would be insincere.”
   Wortheim returned to his desk. “Your leaving is going to put me in a difficult position with the president of the university.”
   “I’m sorry about that,” Daniel said. “I can say that in all sincerity. But this kind of bureaucratic shenanigan is part of the reason I’m not going to miss academia.”
   “What else?”
   “I’m tired of sacrificing my research time for teaching.”
   “Your teaching burden is one of the least onerous in the department. We negotiated that when you came on board.”
   “It still keeps me from my research. But that’s not the major issue, either. I want to reap the benefits of what my creativity has produced. Winning prizes and getting articles in scientific journals isn’t enough.”
   “You want to be a celebrity.”
   “I suppose that’s one way to put it. And the money will be nice, too. Why not? People with half my ability have done it.”
   “Have you ever read Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis?”
   “I don’t have much chance to read novels.”
   “Maybe you should take the time,” Wortheim suggested scornfully. “It might make you rethink this decision before it’s irreversible.”
   “I’ve given it a lot of thought,” Daniel said. “I think it is the right thing for me.”
   “Would you like my opinion?”
   “I think I know what your opinion is.”
   “I think it’s going to be a disaster for both of us, but mainly for you.”
   “Thank you for your words of encouragement,” Daniel said. He stood up. “See you around the campus.” Then he walked out.

   5:15 P.M. Washington, D.C.
   “Thank you all for coming to see me,” Senator Ashley Butler said in his usual cordial, Southern drawl. With a smile plastered onto his doughy face, he glad-handed a group of eager-faced men and women who’d leapt to their feet the moment he burst into his small senate office conference room along with his chief of staff. The visitors were grouped around the central oak library table. They were representatives of a small business organization from the senator’s state capital who were lobbying for tax relief, or maybe it was insurance relief. The senator did not remember exactly, and it wasn’t on his schedule as it should have been. He made a mental note to bring the lapse up with his office manager. “I’m sorry I’m late coming in here,” he continued, after energetically pumping the last person’s hand. “I’ve been looking forward to meeting you folks, and I wanted to get in here sooner, but it’s been one of those days.” He rolled his eyes for emphasis. “Unfortunately, because of the hour and another pressing engagement, I can’t stay. I’m sorry, but Mike here is great.”
   The senator gave the staffer assigned to meet with the group an acknowledging slap on the shoulder, urging the young man forward until his thighs were pressed up against the table. “Mike’s the best I’ve got, and he’ll listen to your problems and then brief me. I’m sure we can help, and we want to help.”
   The senator gave Mike’s shoulder another series of pats, along with an admiring smile like a proud father’s at his son’s graduation.
   In a chorus, the visitors thanked the senator for seeing them, especially in view of his demanding schedule. Zealous smiles defined each and every face. If the people were disappointed at the brevity of the meeting and the fact that they’d had to wait almost a half hour, they didn’t show it in the slightest.
   “It’s my pleasure,” Ashley gushed. “We’re here to serve.”
   Spinning around, Ashley turned to leave. As he reached the door, he waved. His home-state visitors responded in kind.
   “That was easy,” Ashley murmured to Carol Manning, his long-term chief of staff, who’d followed from the conference room at her boss’s heels. “I was afraid they were going to hogtie me with a litany of sad stories and unreasonable demands.”
   “They seemed like nice people,” Carol said vaguely.
   “Do you think Mike can handle them?”
   “I don’t know,” Carol said. “He’s not been here long enough for me to have much of an idea.”
   Leading the way, the senator strode down the long hall toward his private office. He glanced at his watch. It was five-twenty in the afternoon. “I assume you remember where you are taking me now.”
   “Of course,” Carol said. “We’re going back to Dr. Whitman’s office.”
   The senator shot a reproachful look in Carol’s direction while pressing his forefinger against his lips. “That’s hardly for general consumption,” he whispered irritably.
   Without the slightest acknowledgment of his office manager, Dawn Shackelton, Ashley grabbed the papers she held up as he passed her desk and entered his private office. The papers included a preliminary schedule for the following day, along with a list of the calls that had come in during the time he’d been over at the capital for a late roll call vote, plus the transcript of an impromptu interview with someone from CNN who’d waylaid him in the hall.
   “I’d better get my car,” Carol said after glancing at her own watch. “We’re due at the doctor’s office at six-thirty, and there’s no telling what kind of traffic we’ll be facing.”
   “Good idea,” Ashley said, going around behind his desk while glancing at the list of calls.
   “Should I pick you up at the corner of C and Second?”
   Ashley merely grunted an affirmative. A number of the calls were important, coming from the heads of several of his many political action committees. As far as he was concerned, fund-raising was the most important part of his job, especially since he was facing a reelection campaign for the November after next. He heard the door close behind Carol. For the first time all day, a silence descended over him. He raised his eyes. Also for the first time all day, he was alone.
   Instantaneously, the anxiety he’d felt upon awakening that morning spread through him like a wildfire. He could feel it from the pit of his stomach to the tips of his fingers. He’d never liked going to the doctor. When he was a child, it had been the simple fear of a shot or some other painful or embarrassing experience. But as he’d gotten older, the fear had changed and had become more powerful and distressing. Seeing the doctor had become an unwelcome reminder of his mortality and the fact that he was no longer a spring chicken. Now it was as if the mere act of going to the doctor increased his chances of having to face some horrible diagnosis like cancer or, worse yet, ALS—also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.
   A few years earlier, one of Ashley’s brothers had been diagnosed with ALS after experiencing some vague neurological symptoms. After the diagnosis, the powerfully built and athletically inclined man who’d been much more of a picture of health than Ashley had rapidly become a cripple and within months had died. The doctors had been helpless.
   Ashley absently placed the papers onto his desk and stared off into the distance. He too had begun to have some vague neurological symptoms a month earlier. At first he just dismissed them, attributing their appearance to the stress of his work or having drunk too much coffee or not having gotten a good night’s sleep. The symptoms waxed and waned but never went away. In fact, they slowly seemed to get worse. The most distressing was the intermittent shaking of his left hand. On a few occasions it had been necessary for him to hold it with his right hand to keep people from noticing. Then there was the feeling of sand in his eyes, making them water embarrassingly. And finally there was an occasional sensation of stiffness that could make standing up and starting to walk a mental and physical effort.
   A week earlier, the problem had finally driven him to see the doctor despite his superstitious reluctance to do so. He didn’t go to Walter Reed or the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda. He was too afraid the media would discover that something was amiss. Ashley didn’t need that kind of publicity. After almost thirty years in the Senate he’d become a powerhouse and a force to be reckoned with, despite his reputation as an obstructionist who regularly bucked his party’s dictates. Indeed, with his advocacy and consistency on various fundamentalist and populist issues like states’ rights and prayer in school, and his anti-affirmative action and anti-abortion stances, he’d succeeded in blurring party lines while developing a growing national constituency. Reelection to the senate would not be a problem with his well-oiled political machinery. What Ashley had his sights on was a run for the White House in 2004. He didn’t need anyone speculating or circulating rumors about his health.
   Once Ashley had overcome his reluctance to seek a medical opinion, he visited a private internist in Virginia whom he’d seen in the past and whose discretion he could trust. The internist in turn immediately referred him to Dr. Whitman, a neurologist.
   Dr. Whitman had been noncommittal, although hearing Ashley’s specific fears, he said he doubted the problem involved ALS. After giving a thorough exam and sending him for some tests, including an MRI, Dr. Whitman had not offered a diagnosis but instead gave Ashley a prescription to see if it would help the symptoms. He’d then scheduled Ashley to return in a week when all the tests’ results would be back. He’d said that he thought he’d be able to make a diagnosis at that time. It was this visit Ashley was now facing.
   Ashley ran a hand across his brow. Some perspiration had appeared, despite the coolness of the room. He could feel that his pulse was racing. What if he had ALS after all? What if he had a brain tumor? Back when Ashley was a state senator in the early seventies, one of his colleagues came down with a brain tumor. Ashley tried vainly to remember what the man’s symptoms had been, but he couldn’t. All he could remember was seeing the man become a shadow of his former self before dying.
   The door to the outer office cracked open. Dawn’s carefully coiffed head poked in. “Carol just called on her cell phone. She’ll be at the rendezvous location in five minutes.”
   Ashley nodded and got to his feet. Encouragingly, he had no difficulty whatsoever. The fact that the medication Dr. Whitman had given him had seemingly worked miracles was to him the only bright spot in the whole affair. The worrisome symptoms had all but disappeared save for a bit of hand shaking just prior to another dose. If the problem could so easily be treated, perhaps he shouldn’t worry so much. At least that’s what he tried to convince himself.
   Carol was right on time, as Ashley expected. She’d been working with him for sixteen years of his near-thirty-year senatorial tenure and had proved her reliability, dedication, and loyalty over and over. As they headed for Virginia, she even tried to take advantage of the time by discussing the day’s events and what to expect for the morrow, but she quickly caught on to the degree of Ashley’s preoccupation and fell silent. Instead, she concentrated on the hellish traffic.
   Ashley’s anxiety ratcheted upward the closer they got to the doctor’s office. By the time he got out of the car, his perspiration had reappeared. Over the years, Ashley had learned to listen to his intuition, and his intuition was setting off alarm bells. There was something wrong in his brain, and he knew it, and he knew he was trying to deny it.
   The appointment had been scheduled for Ashley’s benefit after the doctor’s regular office hours, and a sepulchral stillness hung over the vacant waiting room. The only light came from a small desk lamp creating a dim puddle of illumination on the empty receptionist’s desk. Ashley and Carol stood for a moment, unsure of what to do. Then an inner door opened, flooding the space with raw fluorescent light. Within the doorway was Dr. Whitman’s featureless backlit silhouette.
   “Sorry about this inhospitable welcome,” Dr. Whitman said. “Everyone has gone home.” He flipped a wall switch. He was dressed in a starched white doctor’s coat. His demeanor was all business.
   “No need for an apology,” Ashley said. “We appreciate your discretion.” He eyed the doctor’s face, hoping for some softening of his expression to interpret as an auspicious sign. There wasn’t any.
   “Senator, please come into my office.” Dr. Whitman motioned within. “Ms. Manning, if you would be so good as to wait out here.”
   The doctor’s office was a study in compulsive neatness. The furniture consisted of a desk with two guest chairs. The objects on the desk were all carefully aligned, while the books in the bookshelf were arranged according to size.
   Dr. Whitman motioned to one of the guest chairs before taking his own seat. With elbows on the desk, he steepled his fingers. He stared at Ashley once the senator was seated. There was a pregnant pause.
   Ashley had never been quite so uncomfortable. His anxiety had peaked. Ashley had spent most of his adult life jockeying for power, and he’d succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. Yet at that moment, he was utterly powerless.
   “You said on the phone that the medication I gave you helped,” Dr. Whitman began.
   “Wonderfully,” Ashley exclaimed, suddenly cheered by Dr. Whitman’s starting with the positive. “Almost all my symptoms disappeared.”
   Dr. Whitman nodded knowingly. His expression remained inscrutable.
   “I would have assumed that was good news.”
   “It helps us make the diagnosis,” Dr. Whitman said.
   “Well… what is it?” Ashley asked after an uncomfortable pause. “What’s the diagnosis?”
   “The medication was a form of levodopa,” Dr. Whitman began in a doctoral tone. “The body can convert it into dopamine, which is a substance involved in some neuronal transmission.”
   Ashley took a deep breath. A sudden wave of anger threatened to bubble to the surface. He didn’t want to be lectured, as if he were a student. He wanted the diagnosis. He felt he was being teased like a cat teases a cornered mouse.
   “You’ve lost some cells that are involved with the production of dopamine,” Dr. Whitman continued. “These cells are in a part of your brain called the substantia nigra.”
   Ashley held up his hands as if surrendering. He suppressed his urge to lash out verbally by swallowing with some difficulty. “Doctor, let’s get to the point. What do you think my diagnosis is?”
   “I’m about ninety-five percent sure you have Parkinson’s disease,” Dr. Whitman said. He leaned back. His desk chair squeaked.
   For a moment, Ashley didn’t speak. He didn’t know much about Parkinson’s disease, but it didn’t sound good, and some images of celebrities struggling with the disorder popped into his mind. At the same time, he felt relieved he’d not been told he had a brain tumor or ALS. He cleared his throat.
   “Is this something that can be cured?” Ashley allowed himself to ask.
   “Currently, no,” Dr. Whitman said. “But as you’ve experienced with the medication I gave you, it can be controlled for a time.”
   “What does that mean?”
   “We can keep you relatively symptom-free for a while, maybe a year, maybe longer. Unfortunately, because of your history of relatively rapidly developing symptoms, in my experience the medications will lose their effectiveness more quickly than with many other patients. At that point, the disease will be progressively debilitating. We’ll just have to deal with each circumstance as it arises.”
   “This is a disaster,” Ashley mumbled. He was overwhelmed by the implications. His worst fears were coming to pass.

One

   6:30 P.M., Wednesday, February 20, 2002
   One Year Later
   It seemed to Daniel Lowell that the taxi had senselessly pulled to a stop mid-block in the center of M Street in Georgetown, Washington D.C., a busy four-lane thoroughfare. Daniel had never liked riding in taxis. It seemed the height of ridiculousness to trust one’s life to a total stranger who more often than not hailed from a distant Third World country and frequently was more interested in talking on his cell phone than paying attention to driving. Sitting in the middle of M Street in the darkness with rush-hour traffic whizzing by on both sides and the driver carrying on emotionally in an unknown language was a case in point. Daniel glanced over at Stephanie. She appeared relaxed and smiled at him in the half-light. She gripped his hand affectionately.
   It was only by leaning forward that Daniel could see there was a traffic light suspended from above to facilitate a rather awkward mid-block left-hand turn. Glancing at the other side of the street, he could see a driveway leading to a nondescript, boxy brick building.
   “Is this the hotel?” Daniel questioned. “If it is, it doesn’t look much like a hotel.”
   “Let’s hold our evaluation until we have a little more data,” Stephanie responded in a playful tone.
   The light changed and the taxi leapt forward like a racehorse out of the gate. The driver only had one hand on the steering wheel as he accelerated through the turn. Daniel steadied himself to keep from being thrown against the car door. After a big bounce over the junction of the street and the hotel’s driveway, and then another sharp left-hand turn beneath the hotel’s porte cochere, the driver braked hard enough to put significant tension on Daniel’s seat belt. A moment later, Daniel’s door was pulled open.
   “Welcome to the Four Seasons,” a liveried doorman said brightly. “Are you checking in?”
   Leaving their luggage in the hands of the doorman, Daniel and Stephanie entered the hotel lobby and headed toward the registration desk. They passed a grouping of statuary fit for a modern art museum. The carpet was thick and luxurious. Smartly dressed people lounged in overstuffed velvet chairs.
   “How did you talk me into staying here?” Daniel questioned rhetorically. “The outside might be plain, but the interior suggests this is going to be expensive.”
   Stephanie pulled Daniel to a halt. “Are you trying to suggest that you’ve forgotten our conversation yesterday?”
   “We had a lot of conversations yesterday,” Daniel muttered. He noticed the woman who had just walked by carrying a French poodle had a diamond engagement ring the size of a Ping-Pong ball.
   “You know what I’m talking about!” Stephanie proclaimed. She reached up and turned Daniel’s face toward her own. “We decided to make the best of this trip. We’re staying in this hotel for two nights, and we’re going to indulge ourselves and, I would hope, each other.”
   Catching Stephanie’s witty licentiousness, Daniel smiled in spite of himself.
   “Your testifying tomorrow in front of Senator Butler’s Health Policy Subcommittee is not going to be a walk in the park,” Stephanie continued. “That’s a given. But in spite of what happens there, we’re going to at least take the memory of a nice experience back to Cambridge.”
   “Couldn’t we have had a nice experience at a slightly less extravagant hotel?”
   “Not in my book,” Stephanie declared. “They have a health club, a masseuse, and top-rated room service, all of which we’re going to take advantage of. So start relaxing and unwinding. Besides, I’ll pick up the tab.”
   “Really?”
   “Sure! With the salary I’ve been pulling down, I should give some back to the company.”
   “Oh, that’s a low blow!” Daniel remarked playfully, while pretending to reel from a make-believe slap.
   “Look,” Stephanie said, “I know the company hasn’t been exactly able to pay our salaries for a while, but I’m going to see that this whole trip goes on the company charge card. If things go really badly tomorrow which they very well might, bankruptcy court can decide how much the Four Seasons will be paid for our indulgence.”
   Daniel’s smile erupted into a full laugh. “Stephanie, you never fail to amaze me!”
   “You ain’t seen nothing yet,” Stephanie said with a smile. “The question is—are you going to let your hair down or what? Even in the taxi, I could tell you were wound up like a piano wire.”
   “That was because I was worried about whether we were going to get here in one piece, not how we were going to pay for it.”
   “Come on, big spender,” Stephanie said, urging Daniel forward. “Let’s get up to our suite.”
   “Suite?” Daniel questioned, as he allowed himself to be dragged toward the registration desk.
   Stephanie hadn’t exaggerated. Their suite overlooked a part of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal with the Potomac River in the background. On the coffee table in the sitting room was a cooler chilling a bottle of champagne. Vases of freshly cut flowers graced the bureau in the bedroom and the expansive countertop in the generous-size marble bathroom.
   As soon as the bellman disappeared, Stephanie put her arms around Daniel. Her dark eyes stared up into his blue orbs. A slight smile played across her full lips. “I know you are under a lot of stress about tomorrow,” she began, “so how about letting me be the tour leader? We both know that Senator Butler’s proposed legislation would effectively outlaw your patented and brilliant procedure. And that would mean a cancellation of the second-round financing for the company, with obviously disastrous consequences. With that said and understood, let’s forget about it for tonight. Can you do that?”
   “I can try,” Daniel said, although he knew it would be impossible. Failure was one of his worst fears.
   “That’s all I ask,” Stephanie said. She gave him a quick kiss before breaking away to attend to the champagne. “Here’s the schedule! We have a glass of bubbly, then take refreshing showers. Following that, we have reservations at a nearby restaurant called Citronelle that I hear is fantastic. After a wonderful meal, we come back here and make mad, passionate love. What do you say?”
   “I’d be crazy to offer any resistance,” Daniel said, raising his hands in mock surrender.
   Stephanie and Daniel had been living together for more than two years and had developed a comfortable familiarity. They had noticed each other back in the mid-eighties, when Daniel had returned to academia and Stephanie was an undergraduate chemistry major at Harvard. Neither acted on their mutual attraction, since such liaisons were specifically frowned upon by university policy. Besides, neither had had the slightest notion that their feelings were reciprocal, at least not until Stephanie had completed her Ph.D. and had joined the junior faculty, giving them an opportunity to interact on more equal footing. Even their respective areas of scientific expertise complemented each other. When Daniel left the university to found his company, it was natural that Stephanie would accompany him.
   “Not bad at all,” Stephanie said, after she drained her flute and put the glass down on the coffee table. “Now! Let’s flip to see who gets the shower first.”
   “No need to flip a coin,” Daniel said, placing his empty glass next to Stephanie’s. “I concede. You first. While you shower, I’ll shave.”
   “You’ve got a deal,” Stephanie said.
   Daniel didn’t know if it was the champagne or Stephanie’s infectious buoyancy but he felt significantly less tense, although hardly less worried, as he lathered his face and began shaving. Having had only one glass, he suspected it was Stephanie. As she had implied, the morrow might bring disaster, a fear disturbingly reminiscent of Heinrich Wortheim’s prophecy the day he’d discovered Daniel was moving back to private industry. But Daniel would try not to allow such thoughts to dominate their visit, at least for that evening. He would try to follow Stephanie’s lead and enjoy himself.
   Looking beyond his lathered image in the mirror, Daniel could see Stephanie’s blurred figure through the misted glass-enclosed shower. Her singing voice could be heard over the roar of the water. She was thirty-six but looked more like twenty-six. As he had told her on more than one occasion, she’d done very well in the genetic lottery. Her tall, curvaceous figure was slender and firm as if she worked out regularly even though she didn’t, and her dark, olive skin was nearly blemish-free. A mat of thick, lustrous dark hair with matching midnight eyes completed the picture.
   The shower door opened, and Stephanie stepped out. She briskly dried her hair, totally unconcerned about her nakedness. For a moment, she bent over at the waist, allowing her hair to fall free as she frenetically rubbed it with the towel. Then she stood back upright, flipping her hair back in the process like a horse redirecting its mane. When she switched to drying her back with a provocative wiggle of her hips, her line of sight happened to catch Daniel’s stare in the mirror. She stopped.
   “Hey!” Stephanie exclaimed. “What are you looking at? You’re supposed to be shaving.” Suddenly self-conscious, she wrapped herself in her towel as if it were a strapless minidress.
   Initially embarrassed about being caught as a voyeur, Daniel quickly regained his equanimity. He put down his razor and stepped over to Stephanie. He gripped her shoulders and stared into her liquid-onyx eyes. “I just couldn’t help but notice how sexy and absolutely alluring you look.”
   Stephanie tilted her head to the side to get a view of Daniel from a slightly different perspective. “Are you all right?”
   Daniel laughed. “I’m fine.”
   “Did you slip back to the sitting room and polish off that bottle of champagne?”
   “I’m being serious.”
   “You haven’t said anything like that for months.”
   “To say I’ve been preoccupied would be putting it mildly. When I had the idea of founding the company, I had no idea that fund-raising was going to occupy one hundred and ten percent of my efforts. And now on top of it comes this political menace, threatening to destroy the whole operation.”
   “I understand,” Stephanie said. “Truly I do, and I haven’t taken it personally.”
   “Has it really been months?”
   “Trust me,” Stephanie said, nodding her head for emphasis.
   “I apologize,” Daniel said. “And to show my remorse, I’d like to make a motion to change the evening’s schedule. I propose that we move up the lovemaking and put the dinner plans on hold. Do I hear a second?”

   As Daniel tried to lean down to give Stephanie a playful kiss, she pushed his still-lathered face back with just the tip of her index finger on his nose. Her expression suggested she was touching something remarkably distasteful, especially as she wiped the bit of lather from her finger onto his shoulder. “Parliamentary rules are not going to maneuver this lady out of a good dinner,” she remarked. “It took some effort to get those reservations, so the evening’s plans hold as previously voted on and passed. Now back to shaving!” She gave him a spirited shove toward the sink, then stepped to the neighboring sink to dry her hair.
   “Kidding aside,” Daniel yelled over the sound of the hair dryer when he’d finished shaving. “You do look fantastic. Sometimes I wonder what you see in an old man like me.” He patted his cheeks with aftershave lotion.
   “Fifty-two is hardly old,” Stephanie yelled back. “Particularly as active as you are. Actually, you’re pretty sexy yourself.”
   Daniel regarded himself in the mirror. He thought he didn’t look too bad, although he wasn’t going to fool himself by imagining he was in any way sexy. Long ago, he’d reconciled himself to the fact that he was on the nerdy side of the equation of life, having grown up as a science prodigy since the sixth grade. Stephanie was just trying to be nice. He’d always had a thin face, so at least there was no problem with developing jowls or even wrinkles, save for some mild crow’s feet at the corner of his eyes when he smiled. He’d stayed active physically, although not so much over the previous several months, due to the time constraints of fund-raising. As a faculty member at Harvard, he’d taken full advantage of the athletic facilities, using the squash and handball courts regularly, as well as the rowing opportunities on the Charles River. His only real appearance problem as he saw it was the retreating hairline at the upper corners of his forehead and the thinning area of his crown, plus the salt-and-pepper silvering of his otherwise brown hair along the sides of his head, but there wasn’t much he could do about all that.
   After both of them had finished primping, dressing, and donning their coats, they left the hotel armed with simple directions to the restaurant obtained from the concierge. Arm in arm, they strolled several blocks west along M Street, passing a potpourri of art galleries, bookshops, and antiques stores. The night was crisp but not too cold, with a canopy of stars visible despite the city lights.
   The maître d’ at the restaurant led them to a table off to the side that afforded a degree of privacy in the busy establishment. They ordered food and a bottle of wine, and settled back for a romantic dinner. By the time the entrees had been served and they both had had fun remembering their mutual attraction prior to their ever having dated, they lapsed into a contented silence. Unfortunately Daniel broke it.
   “I probably shouldn’t bring this up…” Daniel began.
   “Then don’t,” Stephanie interjected, having an immediate inclination of where Daniel was heading.
   “But I should,” Daniel said. “In fact, I have to, and this is a better time than later. Several days ago, you said you were going to research our tormentor, Senator Ashley Butler, with the idea of possibly giving me some help for tomorrow’s hearing. I know you looked into it, but you didn’t say anything. How come?”
   “My recollection is that you agreed to forget about the hearing for tonight.”
   “I agreed to try to forget about the hearing,” Daniel corrected. “I haven’t been totally successful. Did you not bring up what you learned because you didn’t find anything helpful or what? Help me here, and then we can put it all aside for the rest of the night.”
   Stephanie looked off for a few beats to organize her thoughts. “What do you want to know?”
   Daniel let out a short, exasperated laugh. “You’re making this more difficult than it needs to be. To be truthful, I don’t know what I want to know, because I don’t know enough to even ask questions.”
   “He’s not going to be easy.”
   “We already had that impression.”
   “He’s been in the senate since 1972, and his seniority gives him significant clout.”
   “I’d assumed as much, since he’s the chairman of the subcommittee,” Daniel said. “What I need to know is what makes him tick.”
   “My impression is he’s a rather typical, old-fashioned Southern demagogue.”
   “A demagogue, huh?” Daniel questioned. He chewed the inside of his cheek for a moment. “I suppose I have to admit to my stupidity here. I’ve heard the word demagogue before, but to tell you the truth, I don’t really know exactly what it means other than its pejorative sense.”
   “It refers to a politician who makes use of popular prejudices and fears to gain and hold power.”
   “You mean, in this instance, like the public’s concern about biotechnology in general.”
   “Exactly,” Stephanie admitted. “Especially when the biotechnology involves words like embryo and cloning.”
   “Meaning embryo farms and Frankenstein scenarios.”
   “Precisely,” Stephanie said. “He plays on people’s ignorance and worst fears. And in the Senate, he’s an obstructionist. It’s always easier to be against issues than for issues. He’s made a career of it, even bucking his own party on numerous occasions.”
   “It doesn’t sound good for us.” Daniel moaned. “It rules out trying to convince him with any kind of rational argument.”
   “Unfortunately, that’s my take as well. That’s why I haven’t told you what I’d learned about him. It’s depressing someone like Butler is even in the Senate, much less having the seniority and power he has. Senators are supposed to be leaders, not people who are there for power’s sake.”
   “What’s depressing is that this dimwit has the power to block my creative and promising science.”
   “I don’t have the feeling he’s a dimwit,” Stephanie corrected. “Quite the contrary. He’s been very creative in his own right. I’d even have to say Machiavellian.”
   “What are some of his other issues?”
   “The usual fundamentalist, conservative ones. States’ rights, of course. That’s a biggie. But also he’s against things like pornography, homosexuality, same-sex marriage, and that sort of thing. And, oh yeah, he’s against abortion.”
   “Abortion?” Daniel questioned with surprise. “He’s a Democrat and not pro-choice? He’s starting to sound like a member of the Republican hard right.”
   “I told you he’s not afraid of bucking his party when it suits him. He’s definitely against abortion, although his stance has required some maneuvering and backpedaling on occasion. In the same way, he’s been tap-dancing around civil rights issues. He’s a clever, conniving, blue-collar, populist conservative who, unlike Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms, did not bolt the Democratic Party.”
   “Amazing!” Daniel commented. “You’d think people would have eventually seen him for what he really is, self-serving and personally power hungry, and voted him out. Why do you think the party hasn’t teamed up against him if he’s bucked them on key issues?”
   “He’s just too powerful,” Stephanie said. “He’s a fund-raising powerhouse with interlocking political action committees, foundations, and even corporations run on behalf of his various populist issues. Other senators are frankly afraid of him with the kind of PR money he can wield. He’s not afraid or shy about using his deep pockets against anyone who’s crossed him when they come up for reelection.”
   “This is sounding worse and worse,” Daniel murmured.
   “I did learn something curious,” Stephanie added. “It’s rather a coincidence, but you and he have a few things in common.”
   “Oh, please!” Daniel complained.
   “For one thing, you’re both from large families,” Stephanie said. “In fact, you’re both from families with nine children, and you both are third in line with two older brothers.”
   “That is a coincidence! What are the chances of that?”
   “Pretty small. One would have to assume you two are more alike than you think.”
   Daniel’s face clouded over. “Are you serious?”
   Stephanie laughed. “No, of course not! I’m teasing! Loosen up!” She reached across the table, picked up Daniel’s wine, and handed it to him. Then she lifted her own glass. “Enough about Senator Butler! Let’s toast to our health and our relationship, because whatever happens tomorrow, at least we have that, and what’s more important?”
   “You’re right,” Daniel said. “To us!” He smiled, but inside he felt his stomach ball up into a knot. Try as he might, he could not dismiss the specter of failure that was looming like a dark cloud.
   They clicked glasses and drank, eyeing each other over the rims.
   “You really are alluring,” Daniel said, trying to regain the moment back in the bathroom at the hotel when Stephanie had stepped out of the shower. “Beautiful, smart, and very sexy.”
   “That’s more like it,” Stephanie responded. “So are you.”
   “You’re also a teaser,” Daniel added. “But I still love you.”
   “I love you, too,” Stephanie said.
   Once the dinner was over, Stephanie was eager to get back to the hotel. They walked quickly. After the warmth of the restaurant, the night chill penetrated their coats. In the hotel’s empty elevator, Stephanie kissed Daniel passionately, backed him into a corner, and pressed against him erotically.
   “Hold on!” Daniel said with a nervous laugh. “There’s probably a security video in here.”
   “Oh, my gosh!” Stephanie murmured, as she quickly straightened up and smoothed her coat. Her eyes scanned the elevator’s ceiling. “I never thought of that.”
   When the elevator opened on their floor, Stephanie took Daniel’s hand and encouraged him to walk quickly down the hall to their door. She smiled as she opened it with her room card. Once inside, she made a production out of locating the DO NOT DISTURB sign and hanging it outside the door. With that accomplished, she took Daniel’s hand and pulled him from the small foyer into the bedroom.
   “Coats off!” she ordered, throwing hers onto a side chair. She then pushed him backward onto the bed. Climbing on top of him with her knees on either side of his chest, she started to loosen his tie. Suddenly, she stopped. She noticed his forehead was glistening with perspiration.
   “Are you okay?” she questioned with concern.
   “I’m having a hot flash,” Daniel confessed.
   Stephanie slid off to the side and pulled Daniel up to a sitting position. He wiped his forehead and looked at the moisture in his hand.
   “You’re also pale.”
   “I can imagine,” Daniel said. “I think I’m having an autonomic nervous system mini-crisis.”
   “That sounds like medical doctor-speak. Can you explain that in normal English?”
   “I’m just overwrought. I’m afraid I’ve had some sort of sympathetic adrenaline rush. I’m sorry, but I don’t think sex is in the picture.”
   “You don’t have to apologize.”
   “I think I do,” Daniel said. “I know you are expecting it, but as we were walking back, I had a feeling it just wasn’t in the cards.”
   “It’s all right,” Stephanie insisted. “It’s not going to make or break the evening. I’m more interested in making sure you’re going to be all right.”
   Daniel sighed. “I’ll be all right after tomorrow, when I know what’s going to happen. Uncertainty and I have never gotten along particularly well, especially when it involves something bad.”
   Stephanie put her arms around him and hugged him. She could feel his heart pounding in his chest.
   Later, after Stephanie had been motionless long enough for her breathing to deepen in sleep, Daniel pulled back the covers and slipped out of bed. He’d not been able to fall asleep with his mind and pulse racing. He put on a hotel robe and wandered out into the sitting room. At the window, he looked out at the view.
   What kept coming back to his mind was Heinrich Wortheim’s prophecy of disaster and the fact that it seemed to be coming to pass. The problem was that Daniel had burned bridges when he left Harvard. Wortheim would never take him back and might even try to blackball him at other institutions. On top of that, Daniel had also burned some bridges when he left Merck in ’85 to go back to academia when he’d accepted the Harvard post.
   The champagne bottle nestled in its cooler caught Daniel’s attention. He pulled it out of the water; its ice had long ago melted. He held it up to the light coming from outside the window. There was still almost a half bottle left. He poured himself a glass and tasted it. It was somewhat flat but still reasonably cold. He took a few sips as he redirected his attention out the window.
   He knew his fear of having to return to Revere Beach, Massachusetts, was irrational, but it didn’t make it any less real. Revere Beach was where he’d grown up in a family headed by a small-time businessman who’d blamed his series of failures on his wife and progeny, particularly those who embarrassed him. Unfortunately, that was mostly Daniel, who had the misfortune of following two older brothers who’d been high school superstar athletes, a fact that had provided a modicum of solace for their father’s fragile ego. In contrast, Daniel had been a spindly kid more interested in playing chess and producing hydrogen from water, Drano, and aluminum foil in the cellar. The fact that Daniel had gotten himself into Boston Latin, where he excelled academically, had had no effect on his father, who continued to use him mercilessly as a scapegoat. Even Daniel’s scholarships to Wesleyan University and then to Columbia Medical School had changed little other than to estrange him from his siblings for a time.
   Daniel finished the champagne in his glass and helped himself to more. As he continued to sip the wine, his mind wandered to Senator Ashley Butler, his current bête noire. Stephanie had said she was teasing when she’d suggested that he and the senator were more alike than he’d assumed. He wondered if she really felt that way, since it was indeed such a coincidence that he and the senator had similar types of families. Way in the back of Daniel’s mind, there was a thought that maybe there was some truth to the idea. After all, Daniel had to admit that he envied the power the man could wield in putting Daniel’s career in jeopardy.
   Daniel put his glass down on the coffee table and turned back toward the bedroom. He moved slowly in the darkness of the unfamiliar surroundings. He was far from confident that he could fall asleep while his intuition was so actively telling him that disaster was coming, yet he didn’t want to stay up all night. He thought he’d get back in bed and try to relax, and if he couldn’t sleep, at least he’d rest.

Two

   9:51 A.M., Thursday, February 21, 2002
   The door to Senator Ashley Butler’s inner office burst open, and the senator emerged with his chief of staff in tow. He snapped up the paper proffered by his office manager, Dawn, who was seated at her desk.
   “It’s your opening statement for your subcommittee hearing,” she called after the senator, who was already rounding the turn into the main corridor and heading toward the front door of his senate office. She was accustomed to being ignored and didn’t take it personally. Since she was the one who typed the senator’s daily schedule, she knew he was already behind. He was supposed to have been at the hearing already so it could begin at ten sharp.
   Ashley merely grunted after he’d read the first few lines on the paper and handed the sheet behind him to Carol for her to take a peek. Carol was more than Ashley’s chief of staff who hired and fired personnel. When the two of them reached the waiting room for his office complex and he paused to say hello and shake hands with the half-dozen or so people waiting to see various staffers, Carol had to herd him toward the door, lest they be later than they already were.
   Out in the Senate Office Building’s marbled hall, they picked up the pace. It was difficult for Ashley, whose stiffness had returned despite the medication prescribed by Doctor Whitman. Ashley had described the stiffness as a feeling like trying to walk through molasses.
   “How does that opening statement look to you?” Ashley asked.
   “Fine, as much as I’ve read,” Carol answered. “Do you think Rob had Phil take a look at it?”
   “I should hope so,” Ashley snapped. They walked for a short distance in silence before Ashley added, “Who the hell is Rob?”
   “He’s your relatively new head aide for the Health Policy Subcommittee,” Carol explained. “I’m sure you remember him. He literally sticks out in a crowd. He’s the tall redhead who came over from Kennedy’s staff.”
   Ashley merely nodded. Although he prided himself on having a facility for remembering names, he could no longer keep up with all the names of the people who worked for him since his staff had ballooned to more than seventy people, and there was inevitable turnover. Phil, however, was a familiar name, since he’d been around almost as long as Carol. As Ashley’s chief political analyst, Phil was a key player, and it was important for everything that was going into a hearing transcript or the Congressional Record to be run by him.
   “What about your medication?” Carol questioned. Her heels rang out like gunshots as they hit the marble floor.
   “I took it,” Ashley clipped irritably. To be one hundred percent certain, his hand surreptitiously slipped into the side pocket of his jacket and felt around. As he suspected, the pill he’d put in earlier was no longer there, meaning he’d taken it just before leaving his private office. He wanted a good high level of the drug in his blood for the hearing. The last thing he wanted was for someone in the media to notice any symptoms, like his hand shaking during the proceedings, particularly not now that he had a plan to obviate the problem.
   Rounding a turn in the corridor, they bumped into several particularly liberal senatorial colleagues heading in the opposite direction. Ashley paused and slipped easily back into his signature, syrupy, Southern drawl while complimenting his fellow politicians’ hairstyles, modish contemporary suits, and flamboyant ties. In a humorously self-deprecatory style, he compared their dapper attire with his own plain dark suit, dark nondescript tie, and ordinary white shirt. It was the same style of clothes he’d worn when he’d first arrived at the Senate back in 1972. Ashley was a man of habit. Not only did he still wear the same type of clothes, he still bought his entire wardrobe from the same conservative haberdashery back in his hometown.
   After he and Carol continued on their way, she commented on the degree of Ashley’s cordiality.
   “I’m just buttering them up.” Ashley sneered. “I need their votes on my bill coming up next week. You know I cannot abide such foppery, especially hair transplants.”
   “Indeed I do,” Carol said. “That’s why I was taken aback.”
   As they neared the side entrance to the hearing room, Ashley slowed. “Quickly review for me once again what you and the rest of the staff found out about this morning’s first witness. I’ve got a special plan brewing on my back burner that I definitely want to succeed.”
   “His professional resume is what stands out in my mind,” Carol said. She closed her eyes for a moment to help mobilize her memory. “He’s been a science prodigy since middle school, and he breezed through both medical school and his Ph.D. studies. That’s impressive, to say the least! On top of that, he rapidly became one of the youngest department-head scientists at Merck before being actively recruited to a prestigious post at Harvard. The man must have an IQ in the stratosphere.”
   “I remember the curriculum vitae. But that’s not what’s important now. Talk to me about Phil’s take on the man’s personality!”
   “I remember Phil guessed he was self-centered and cocky because of the way he’s so dismissive of his fellow scientists’ work. I mean, most people, even if they feel that way, keep it to themselves. He’s got to be brash.”
   “What else?”
   They reached the door to the side room and hesitated. Farther down the hallway at the main entrance to the hearing room, a small crowd was milling about, and the babble of their voices drifted toward them.
   Carol shrugged. “I can’t remember much else, but I have the dossier with me that the staff put together, which certainly incorporates Phil’s impressions. Do you want to take the time to read it over again before we begin the hearing?”
   “I was hoping you’d talk to me about the man’s fear of failure,” Ashley said. “Is that something you remember?”
   “Now that you mention it, yes, I believe that was one of Phil’s points.”
   “Good!” Ashley said, with his eyes staring off into the distance. “And combining that with an apparent ego the size of a racehorse’s paddock gives me an opportunity to exert some significant leverage, wouldn’t you agree?”
   “I suppose, but I’m not sure I’m following you. I do remember Dan thought that he had a fear of failure out of proportion to his accomplishments and his obvious intelligence. After all, he could probably be successful at anything he wanted to do, provided he put his mind to it. How does his fear of failure give you leverage, and leverage for what?”
   “He might be able to do anything he sets his mind to, but apparently at this moment in time he wants to become a celebrity entrepreneur, a fact which he apparently shamelessly admitted in one of his interviews. And to do this, he’s made a rather large gamble—career-wise and financially. He wants his newly founded company based on his patented procedure to succeed for very personal, if not superficial, reasons.”
   “So what is it you want to do?” Carol asked. “Phil wants you on record favoring a ban on his procedure. It’s that simple.”
   “Circumstances have made it a little more complicated than that. I want to make the good doctor do something he most assuredly wouldn’t want to do.”
   Concern spread across Carol’s broad face. “Does Phil know about this?”
   Ashley shook his head. He made a motion for Carol to give him back the prepared opening statement and took it when she held it out.
   “What is it you want the doctor to do?”
   “You and he will know tonight,” Ashley said, as his eyes began scanning the opening statement. “It would take too long to explain at the moment.”
   “This is scaring me,” Carol admitted out loud. She looked up and down the hallway as Ashley read his speech. She shifted her weight uneasily. Carol’s ultimate goal and the reason she’d sacrificed so much of her own life to her current position was that she wanted to run for Ashley’s office when he retired, a situation that promised to occur sooner rather than later because of the Parkinson’s disease diagnosis. She was more than qualified, having served as a state senator prior to coming to Washington to run Ashley’s show, and at this late date with her goal in sight, she didn’t want him pulling some sort of stunt to do what Bill Clinton did to Al Gore. Ever since that fateful evening visit to Dr. Whitman, Ashley had been preoccupied and unpredictable. She cleared her throat to get her boss’s attention. “Exactly how are you planning on getting Dr. Lowell to do something he doesn’t want to do?”
   “By setting him up and then pulling the rug out from under him,” Ashley said, with his eyes rising to meet Carol’s. He grinned conspiratorially. “I’m in a battle here, and I want to win. To do that, I’m going to follow an age-old cue from The Art of War–figure out the necessary points of engagement, then arrive there with overwhelming force! Let me see the financial report on his company!”
   Carol juggled the file of papers she was carrying before producing the paper Ashley wanted. She handed it to him, and he rapidly scanned it. She watched his face for clues. She wondered if she should call Phil on her cell phone the second she had a chance and warn him to be ready for the unexpected.
   “This is good,” Ashley mumbled. “This is very good. It’s a lucky thing I have those contacts over at the Bureau. We couldn’t have gotten much of this on our own.”
   “Maybe you should go over with Phil whatever it is you are planning to do,” Carol suggested.
   “No time,” Ashley responded. “In fact, what time is it now?”
   Carol glanced at her watch. “It’s after ten.”
   Ashley held out his left hand supported by his right in order to check for any tremor. There was a slight one, but it was hardly noticeable. “That’s as good as can be expected. Let’s go to work!”
   Ashley entered the hearing room from the side door to the right of the horseshoe-shaped, raised dais. The room was filled with a meandering, jostling crowd of people from which emerged a buzz of incoherent conversation. Ashley had to worm his way between colleagues and staffers to reach his seat. The redheaded Rob appeared immediately with a second copy of Ashley’s prepared opening statement. Ashley waved him off by flapping the copy he already had in his hand. Ashley took his seat and adjusted the goosenecked microphone.
   After Ashley’s eyes had made a rapid circuit around the comfortably familiar Greek revival décor of the hearing room, they came to rest on the two figures seated at the witness table below him. At first his attention was magnetically drawn to the attractive young woman with the shiny, minklike hair framing her face. Ashley had an affinity for beautiful women, and this female in front of him filled the bill. She was dressed in a demure, deep blue suit with a white collar that contrasted sharply with her tanned, olive complexion. Despite her modest attire, she exuded a healthy sensuality. Her dark eyes were riveted on Ashley, giving him the impression he was staring down two gun barrels. He had no idea who she was or why she was there, but he thought her presence promised to make the hearing a bit more enjoyable.
   Reluctantly, Ashley switched his attention from the comely woman to Dr. Daniel Lowell. The doctor’s eyes were paler than his companion’s, yet they reflected an equal degree of brassiness with their unblinking stare. Ashley guessed the doctor was reasonably tall, despite the fact that he was slouching back in his chair. He was slight of build, with a thin, angular face capped by a shock of unruly salt-and-pepper hair. Even his dress suggested a degree of insolence comparable to that reflected in his eyes and posture. In contrast to his companion’s appropriate business apparel, he was sporting a casual tweed jacket with leather elbow patches, an open shirt without a tie, and, his legs visible beneath the table, a pair of jeans and sneakers.
   Ashley smiled inwardly as he picked up his gavel. He guessed that Daniel’s apparent attitude and dressing down was a weak attempt to prove he wasn’t threatened by being called to testify before a Senate subcommittee. Perhaps Daniel thought he could bring his Ivy League, academic persona as a form of intimidation against Ashley’s small-town, Baptist college experience. But it wasn’t going to work. Ashley knew he had Daniel in his arena with the usual home-court advantage.
   “The Subcommittee on Health Policy of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee will now come to order,” Ashley announced with a pronounced Southern intonation as he banged his gavel. He waited for a few moments, as the previously disorderly group of attendees took their seats. Behind him, he could hear the various staffers do the same. He glanced down at Daniel Lowell, but the doctor had not moved. Ashley glanced to his right and left. Most of his subcommittee members were not present, although four were. Those present were either reading memoranda or talking in whispers with their aides. There wasn’t a quorum, but it didn’t matter. No vote had been scheduled, and Ashley was not going to call for one.
   “This hearing will proceed on Senate Bill 1103,” Ashley continued, as he placed his opening statement notes on the table in front of him, folded his arms, and cupped his elbows in his palms to forestall any potential tremor. He tilted his head back slightly to see the print better through his bifocals. “This bill is a companion bill to the bill already passed by the House to ban the cloning procedure called…”
   Ashley hesitated and leaned forward, squinting at the sheet. “Bear with me for a moment,” he said, obviously departing from his prepared text. “This procedure is not only scary, but it’s a mouthful, and maybe the good doctor will help me if I stumble. It’s called Homologous Transgenic Segmental Recombination, or HTSR. Wow! Did I get that right, Doctor?”
   Daniel sat up and leaned forward to his microphone. “Yes,” he said simply and leaned back. He too had his arms folded.
   “Why don’t you doctors speak English?” Ashley questioned, while peering over the tops of his glasses at Daniel.
   A few of the spectators tittered, to Ashley’s delight. He loved to play to the crowd.
   Daniel leaned forward to answer, but Ashley held up his hand. “That question is off the record, and there’s no need to answer.”
   The clerk made the adjustment on her machine.
   Ashley then looked to his left. “This is off the record too, but I was curious if the distinguished senator from Montana agrees with me that doctors purposefully have developed their own language just so that half the time we mere mortals have no idea under the sun what the dickens they are talking about.”
   There was more laughter from the spectators, as the senator from Montana looked up from his reading and nodded an enthusiastic yes.
   “Now, where was I?” Ashley questioned, as he looked back at his prepared opening statement. “The need for this legislation lies in the problem that biotechnology in general and medical science in particular in this country have lost their moral and ethical underpinnings. We here on the Senate’s Health Policy Subcommittee feel it is our duty as concerned and moral Americans to reverse this trend by following the lead of our colleagues in the House. Ends do not justify means, particularly in the medical research arena, as was unequivocally stated as far back as the Nuremberg Trials. This HTSR is a case in point. This procedure once again threatens to create poor, defenseless embryos and then dismember them with the dubious justification that the cells derived from these nascent, tiny humans will be used to treat a wide variety of patients. But that’s not all. As we will hear in testimony from its discoverer, whom we are honored to have here as a witness, this is no ordinary therapeutic cloning procedure, and I, as the bill’s principal author, am shocked that this procedure is poised to become mainstream. Well, I say only over my dead body!”
   A modest level of applause issued from a smattering of audience members. Ashley acknowledged it with a nod of his head and a short pause. Then he took a deep breath. “Now, I could go on about this new technique, but I’m not a doctor, and I respectfully defer to the expert, who has graciously come before this subcommittee. I would like to proceed with the witness, unless my eminent-ranking colleague from across the aisle would like to say a few words.”
   Ashley regarded the senator seated to his immediate right, who shook his head, covered his microphone with his palm, and leaned toward the chairman. “Ashley,” he whispered. “I hope you are going to be expeditious about his. I’ve got to be out of here by ten-thirty.”
   “Have no fear,” Ashley whispered back. “I’m going for the jugular here.”
   Ashley took a drink from the glass of water in front of him and peered down at Daniel. “Our first witness is the brilliant Dr. Daniel Lowell, who, as I’ve already mentioned, is the discoverer of HTSR. Dr. Lowell has impressive credentials, including M.D. and Ph.D. degrees from some of our country’s most august institutions. Somehow he even found time to do a residency in internal medicine. He has received countless awards for his work and has held prestigious positions at Merck pharmaceuticals and Harvard University. Welcome, Dr. Lowell.”

   “Thank you, Senator,” Daniel said. He moved forward in his chair. “I appreciate your kind remarks about my curriculum vitae, but, if I may, I’d like to take immediate issue with a particular point in your opening statement.”
   “By all means,” Ashley responded.
   “HTSR and therapeutic cloning do not, I repeat, do not involve the dismemberment of embryos.” Daniel spoke slowly, emphasizing each word. “The therapeutic cells are taken before any embryo has started to form. They are taken from a structure called a blastocyst.”
   “Do you deny these blastocysts are incipient human life?”
   “They are human life, but when disaggregated, their cells are similar to the cells you lose from your gums when you brush your teeth vigorously.”
   “I don’t think I brush that vigorously,” Ashley said with a short laugh. A few spectators joined in.
   “We all shed live epithelial cells.”
   “Perhaps so, but these epithelial cells are not going to form embryos like a blastocyst.”
   “They could,” Daniel said. “That is the point. If the epithelial cells are fused with an egg cell whose nucleus has been extracted, and then the combination is activated, they could form an embryo.”
   “Which is what is done in cloning.”
   “Precisely,” Daniel said. “Blastocysts have a potential to form a viable embryo, but only if implanted in a uterus. In therapeutic cloning, they are never allowed to form embryos.”
   “I think we’re getting bogged down in semantics here,” Ashley said impatiently.
   “It is semantics,” Daniel agreed. “But it is important semantics. People have to understand that embryos are not involved in therapeutic cloning or HTSR.”
   “Your opinion regarding my opening statement has been duly recorded,” Ashley said. “I’d like to move on to the procedure itself. Would you describe it for us here at the hearing and for the official transcript?”
   “I’d be happy to,” Daniel said. “Homologous Transgenic Segmental Recombination is the name we have given to a procedure that involves replacing the portion of an individual’s DNA responsible for a particular illness with homologous disease-free DNA. This is done in the nucleus of one of the patient’s cells, which is then used for therapeutic cloning.”
   “Hold it right there,” Ashley interrupted. “I’m already confused, as I’m sure most of the audience is. Let me see if I have this straight. You’re talking about taking a cell from a sick person and changing its DNA before doing the therapeutic cloning.”
   “That’s correct,” Daniel said. “Replacing the small portion of the cell’s genetic material that’s responsible for the individual’s illness.”
   “And the therapeutic cloning is then done to make a bunch of these cells to cure the patient.”
   “Correct again! The cells are encouraged with various growth hormones to become the type of cells the patient needs. And thanks to HTSR, these cells will not have the genetic predisposition to reform the illness being treated. When these cells are put into the patient, not only will the patient be cured, he or she will not have the genetic tendency to come down with the same illness.”
   “Perhaps we could talk about a particular disease,” Ashley suggested. “It might make it easier for us nonscientists to understand. I gather from some of the articles you’ve published that Parkinson’s disease is one of the illnesses you believe will be amenable to this treatment.”
   “That’s correct,” Daniel said. “As well as many other maladies, from Alzheimer’s and diabetes to certain forms of arthritis. It’s an impressive list of illnesses, many of which have not been amenable to treatment, much less a cure.”
   “Let’s concentrate on Parkinson’s for a moment,” Ashley said. “Why do you think HSTR will work with this ailment?”
   “Because with Parkinson’s, we are lucky enough to have a mouse model for testing,” Daniel said. “These mice have Parkinson’s disease, meaning their brains are missing nerve cells that produce a compound called dopamine that functions as a neurotransmitter, and their illness is a mirror image of the human form. We have taken these animals, carried out HTSR, and have cured them permanently.”
   “That’s impressive,” Ashley commented.
   “It’s even more impressive when you see it happen in front of your very eyes.”
   “The cells are injected.”
   “Yes.”
   “And there are no problems with that?”
   “No, not at all,” Daniel said. “There’s already been considerable experience using this technique on humans for other therapies. The injection must be done carefully, under controlled conditions, but there’s generally no problem whatsoever. In our experience, the mice have had no ill effects.”
   “Are the mice cured soon after the injection?”
   “In our experience, the Parkinson’s symptoms begin to subside immediately,” Daniel said. “And it continues rapidly. With the mice we’ve treated, it’s been truly remarkable. Within a week, the treated mice cannot be distinguished from the well controls.”
   “I suppose you are eager to try this on humans,” Ashley suggested.
   “Extremely so,” Daniel admitted with a series of nods for emphasis. “After we complete our animal studies, which are moving ahead rapidly, we’re hoping for a fast track with the FDA to begin human trials in a controlled setting.”
   Ashley saw Daniel glance at his companion and even grip her hand for a moment. Ashley smiled inwardly, sensing Daniel was thinking the hearing was going well. It was time to rectify that misconception. “Tell me, Doctor Lowell,” Ashley began. “Have you ever heard the saying—if something sounds too good to be true, it probably isn’t?”
   “Of course.”
   “Well, I think HTSR is a prime example. Putting aside for a moment the semantic argument about whether or not embryos are being dismembered, HTSR has another major ethical problem.”
   Ashley paused for effect. The audience was completely still.
   “Doctor,” Ashley said patronizingly. “Have you ever read that classic novel by Mary Shelley called Frankenstein?”
   “HTSR has nothing to do with the Frankenstein myth,” Daniel said indignantly, implying he knew full well where Ashley was headed. “To imply as much is an irresponsible attempt to take advantage of public fears and misconceptions.”
   “I beg to disagree,” Ashley said. “In fact, I think Mary Shelley must have had an inkling that HTSR was coming down the pike, and that’s why she wrote her novel.”
   The spectators again laughed. It was apparent they were hanging on to every word and enjoying themselves.
   “Now I know I have not had the benefit of an Ivy League education, but I read Frankenstein, whose whole title includes The Modern Prometheus, and I think the parallels are remarkable. As I understand it, the word transgenic, which is part of the confusing name of your procedure, means taking bits and pieces of various people’s genomes and mixing them together like you’re making a cake. That sounds to this country boy pretty much the same thing Victor Frankenstein did when he made his monster, getting pieces from this corpse and parts from another and sewing them up together. He even used a bit of electricity, just like you people do with your cloning.”
   “With HTSR, we are adding relatively short lengths of DNA, not whole organs,” Daniel retorted heatedly.
   “Calm down, Doctor!” Ashley said. “This is a fact-finding hearing we’re having here, not a fight. What I’m driving at is that, with your procedure, you’re taking parts of one person and putting them in another. Isn’t that true?”
   “On a molecular level.”
   “I don’t care what level it is,” Ashley said. “I just want to establish the facts.”
   “Medical science has been transplanting organs for some time,” Daniel snapped. “The general public does not see a moral problem with that, quite the contrary, and organ transplantation is certainly a better conceptual parallel with HTSR than Mary Shelley’s nineteenth-century novel.”
   “In the example you gave concerning Parkinson’s disease, you admitted you are planning on injecting these little molecular Frankensteins you are planning on mixing up so they end up in people’s brains. I’m sorry, Doctor, but there haven’t been too many brains transplanted in our current organ-transplant programs, so I don’t think the parallel is any good at all. Injecting parts of another person and getting them into someone’s brain is a step beyond the pale in my book, and I believe in the Good Lord’s Book.”
   “The therapeutic cells we create are not molecular Frankensteins,” Daniel said angrily.
   “Your opinion has duly been recorded,” Ashley said. “Let’s move on.”
   “This is a farce!” Daniel commented. He threw up his arms for emphasis.
   “Doctor, I must remind you that this is a congressional subcommittee hearing, and you are expected to abide by appropriate decorum. We’re all reasonable people here, who are supposed to show respect for one another while trying to do our best to gather information.”
   “It’s becoming progressively obvious this hearing has been set up under false pretenses. You didn’t come in here to gather information with an open mind about HTSR, as you so magnanimously suggest. You’re just using this hearing to grandstand with preprepared emotive rhetoric.”
   “I’d like you to know,” Ashley said condescendingly, “making that kind of inflammatory statement and accusation is specifically frowned upon in Congress. This is not Crossfire or some other media circus. Yet I refuse to take offense. Instead, I will once again assure you that your opinion has been duly recorded, and, as I said, I’d like to move on. As the discoverer of HTSR, you can’t be expected to be entirely objective about the procedure’s moral merits, but I’d like to question you about this issue. But first I would like to say that it has been difficult not to notice the disarmingly attractive woman who is sitting next to you at the witness table. Is she here to help you testify? If so, perhaps you should introduce her for the record.”
   “This is Dr. Stephanie D’Agostino,” Daniel snapped. “She is my scientific collaborator.”
   “Another M.D., Ph.D.?” Ashley questioned.
   “I am a Ph.D., not an M.D.,” Stephanie said into her microphone. “And Mr. Chairman, I would like to echo Dr. Lowell’s opinion about the biased way this hearing has been proceeding, but without his inflammatory words. I strongly believe that allusions to the Frankenstein myth in relation to HTSR are inappropriate, since they play to people’s fundamental fears.”
   “I’m chagrined,” Ashley said. “I always thought you Ivy League folks were addicted to alluding to various and sundry literary masterpieces, but here, the one time I give it a whirl, I’m told it’s inappropriate. Now is that fair, especially since I distinctly remember being taught at my small, Baptist college that Frankenstein was, among other things, a warning about the moral consequences of unchecked scientific materialism? In my mind, that makes the book extremely apropos. But that’s enough on this particular issue! This is a hearing, not a literary debate.”
   Before Ashley could continue, Rob came up behind him and tapped him on the shoulder. Ashley placed his hand over his microphone to prevent it from picking up any of his aide’s comments.
   “Senator,” Rob whispered in Ashley’s ear. “As soon as the request came through this morning for Dr. D’Agostino to join Dr. Lowell at the witness table, we did a quick background check on her. She’s a Harvard-trained townie. She was brought up in the North End of Boston.”
   “Is that supposed to be significant?”
   Rob shrugged. “It could be a coincidence, but I doubt it. The indicted investor in Dr. Lowell’s company whom the Bureau told us about is also a D’Agostino who grew up in the North End. They are probably related.”
   “My, my,” Ashley commented. “That is curious.” He took the sheet of paper from Rob and put it next to the financial statement of Daniel’s company. He had trouble suppressing a smile after such a windfall.
   “Dr. D’Agostino,” Ashley said into his microphone after removing his hand. “Are you by any chance related to Anthony D’Agostino residing at Fourteen Acorn Street in Medford, Massachusetts?”
   “He is my brother.”

  “And this is the same Anthony D’Agostino who has been indicted for racketeering?”
   “Unfortunately, yes,” Stephanie said. She glanced at Daniel, who was looking at her with an expression of disbelief.
   “Dr. Lowell,” Ashley continued. “Were you aware that one of your initial and rather major investors had been so indicted?”
   “No, I was not,” Daniel said. “But he is far from a major investor.”
   “Hmmm,” Ashley voiced. “Several hundred thousand dollars is a lot of money in my book. But we won’t quibble. I don’t suppose he serves as a director?”
   “He does not.”
   “That’s a relief. And I suppose we can assume the indicted racketeer Anthony D’Agostino does not serve on your ethics board, which I understand you have.”
   A suppressed titter sounded in the audience.
   “He does not serve on our ethics board,” Daniel rejoined.
   “That’s also a relief. Now let’s talk for a moment about your company,” Ashley said. “The name is CURE, which I understand is somewhat of an acronym.”
   “That’s correct,” Daniel said with a sigh, as if he were bored with the proceedings. “It was derived from Cellular Replacement Enterprises.”
   “I’m sorry if you are fatigued by the rigors of this hearing, Doctor,” Ashley said. “We’ll try to wrap things up as quickly as we can. But I understand your company is attempting to accomplish its second round of financing via venture capitalists, with HTSR as your major intellectual property. Is your ultimate intent to take your company public by having an initial public offering?”
   “Yes,” Daniel said simply. He leaned back in his chair.
   “Now, this is off the record,” Ashley said. He looked to his left. “I’d like to ask the distinguished senator from the great state of Montana if he thinks the SEC would find it interesting that one of the initial investors in a company planning on going public has been indicted for racketeering. I mean, there is a question of moral propriety here. Money derived from extortion and maybe even prostitution, for all we know, being laundered through a biotech startup.”
   “I’d think they’d be very interested,” the senator from Montana said.
   “That would be my thought as well,” Ashley said. He looked back at his notes and then down at Daniel. “I understand your second round of financing has been held up by the S.1103 and the fact that the House has already passed its version. Is that correct?”
   Daniel nodded.
   “You have to speak for the transcript,” Ashley said.
   “Correct,” Daniel said.
   “And I understand your burn rate, meaning the money you’re using to stay afloat currently, is very high and that if you don’t get this second round of financing, you face bankruptcy.”
   “Correct.”
   “That’s too bad,” Ashley said, with all the appearances of sympathy. “However, for our purposes here at this hearing, I would have to assume that your objectivity in relation to the moral aspects of HTSR is in serious question. I mean, the very future of your company depends on S.1103 not being passed. Is that not true, Doctor?”
   “My opinion has been and will continue to be that it is morally wrong not to continue to investigate and then use HTSR to cure countless suffering human beings.”
   “Your opinion has been recorded,” Ashley said. “But for the record, I would like to point out that Dr. Daniel Lowell has chosen not to answer the posed question.”
   Ashley leaned back and looked to his right. “I have no further questions for this witness. Do any of my esteemed colleagues have any questions?”
   Ashley’s eyes moved around to the faces of the senators seated at the dais.
   “Very well,” Ashley said. “The Subcommittee on Health Policy would like to thank doctors Lowell and D’Agostino for their kind participation. And we’d like to call our next witness: Mr. Harold Mendes of the Right to Life organization.”

Three

   11:05 A.M., Thursday, February 21, 2002
   Stephanie could see the taxi in the middle of the oncoming pack of cars, and she put up her hand expectantly. She and Daniel had followed a suggestion they’d been given by a security officer in the Senate Office Building and had walked over to Constitution Avenue in hopes of catching a cab, but they hadn’t had much luck. What had started out that morning as a reasonable day, weather-wise, had taken a turn for the worse. Dark, heavy clouds had blown in from the east, and with the temperature hovering in the lower thirties, there was a distinct possibility of snow. Apparently, under such conditions the demand for taxis far exceeded the supply.
   “Here comes one,” Daniel snapped, as if Stephanie had something to do with the lack of cabs. “Don’t let it go by!”
   “I see it,” Stephanie responded in an equally clipped manner.
   After leaving the Senate hearing, neither had spoken much other than the minimum necessary to decide to take the suggestion to walk over to Constitution Avenue. Similar to the gathering clouds, their moods had darkened as the morning’s hearing had progressed.
   “Damn!” Stephanie mumbled when the cab zipped by. It was as if the driver was wearing blinders. Stephanie had done everything save throwing herself in front of the speeding traffic.
   “You let it go by,” Daniel complained.
   “Let it go by?” Stephanie shouted. “I waved. I whistled. I even jumped up and down. I didn’t see you make any effort.”
   “What the hell are we going to do?” Daniel demanded. “It’s colder than a witch’s tit out here.”
   “Well, if you have any bright ideas, Einstein, let me know.”
   “What? Is it my fault there are no cabs?”
   “It’s not mine either,” Stephanie retorted.
   Both hugged themselves in a vain attempt to keep warm but made it a point to keep away from each other. Neither had brought a true winter coat on the trip. They had thought that they wouldn’t need them, having flown four hundred miles south.
   “Here comes another one,” Daniel stated.
   “Your turn.”
   With his hand raised, Daniel ventured as far out into the street as he thought safe. Almost immediately, he had to retreat when he caught sight of a pickup truck bearing down on him in the outermost lane. Daniel waved and shouted, but the cab went by in the knot of vehicles without slowing.
   “Well done,” Stephanie commented.
   “Shut up!”
   Just when they were about to give up and begin walking west along Constitution Avenue, a cabbie beeped. He’d been waiting at the traffic light on First Street and Constitution, and had witnessed Daniel’s antics. When the light changed, he turned left and pulled over to the curb.
   Stephanie and Daniel piled in and buckled their seat belts.
   “Where to?” the driver questioned while looking at them in the rearview mirror. He was wearing a turban and was as tan as if he’d just spent a week in the Sahara Desert.
   “The Four Seasons,” Stephanie said.
   Stephanie and Daniel rode in silence while staring out their respective windows.
   “I’d say that hearing was about as bad as it could have been,” Daniel complained at length.
   “It was worse,” Stephanie responded.
   “There’s no doubt the bastard Butler will vote out his bill, and when that happens, I’ve been assured by the Biotechnology Industry Organization that it will pass the full committee and the Senate itself.”
   “So goodbye to CURE, Inc.”
   “It’s a shame that in this country medical research is being held hostage by demagogic politics,” Daniel snapped. “I shouldn’t have even bothered coming down here to Washington.”
   “Well, maybe you shouldn’t have. Maybe it would have been better if I’d come alone. You certainly didn’t help things by telling Ashley he was grandstanding and didn’t have an open mind.”
   Daniel turned and stared at the back of Stephanie’s head. “Come again?” he sputtered.
   “You shouldn’t have lost control.”
   “I don’t believe this,” Daniel marveled. “Are you trying to imply that this crappy outcome is my fault?”
   Stephanie turned to face Daniel. “Being sensitive about other people’s feelings is not one of your strong points. And this hearing is a case in point. Who knows what would have happened if you hadn’t lost your cool. Attacking him like you did was inappropriate because it stopped whatever dialogue you might have been able to maintain. That’s all I’m saying.”
   Daniel’s pale face turned crimson. “That hearing was a goddamn farce!”
   “Maybe so, but that doesn’t justify your saying as much to Butler’s face, because it nipped in the bud any chance of success we might have had, however small. I think his goal was to get you mad so you’d look bad, and it worked. It was his way of discrediting you as a witness.”
   “You’re pissing me off.”
   “Daniel, I’m as irritated about this outcome as you are.”
   “Yeah, but you’re saying it’s my fault.”
   “No, I’m saying that your behavior didn’t help things. There’s a difference.”
   “Well, your behavior didn’t help things either. How come you never told me about your brother being indicted for racketeering? All you told me was that he was a qualified investor. Some qualifications! It was a fine time for me to learn about that little sordid tidbit.”
   “It was after he was an investor, and it was in the Boston papers. So it’s not as if it was a secret, but it was something I felt I’d rather not talk about, at least at the time. I thought the reason you didn’t bring it up was that you were being considerate. But I should have known better.”
   “You didn’t feel like talking about it?” Daniel questioned with exaggerated astonishment. “You know I don’t bother reading the stupid Boston rags. So how else would I have learned about it? And I would have had to know about it eventually because Butler was right. If we’d gone for an IPO, it would have had to be disclosed that we had a felon for an investor, and it would have held things up.”
   “He has been indicted,” Stephanie said. “He’s not been convicted. Remember, in our system of justice you’re innocent until proven guilty.”
   “That’s a rather lame excuse for not mentioning it to me,” Daniel snapped. “Is he going to be convicted?”
   “I don’t know.” Stephanie’s voice had lost its edge as she coped with a tinge of guilt at not having been more forthright with Daniel about her brother. She’d thought about mentioning the indictment on occasion but had always put it off until a tomorrow that had never arrived.
   “You have no idea whatsoever? That’s a little hard for me to believe.”
   “I have had vague suspicions,” Stephanie admitted. “I had the same suspicions about my father, and Tony has essentially taken over my father’s businesses.”
   “What are the businesses we’re talking about?”
   “Real estate and a few restaurants, plus a restaurant and a café on Hanover Street.”
   “Is that all?”
   “That’s what I don’t know. As I said, I had vague suspicions with such things as people coming and going from our house at all hours of the day and night, and the women and children being sent out of the room at the end of extended family meals so the men could talk. In many ways, in retrospect it seemed to me we were the cliché of an Italian-American Mob family. Certainly it wasn’t on a scale like you’d see in gangster movies, but modestly similar. We females were expected to be consumed by the affairs of hearth and home and church without any interest or involvement in business whatsoever. To tell you the truth, it was an embarrassment for me, because we kids were treated differently in the neighborhood. I couldn’t wait to get away, and I was smart enough to recognize that the best way was by being a good student.”
   “I can relate to that,” Daniel said. The sharpness in his voice mellowed as well. “My father was also into all sorts of businesses, some of which were close to being scams. The problem was that they were all failures, meaning he and subsequently my siblings and I became the butt of jokes in the town of Revere, particularly at school, at least those of us who were not part of the ‘in’ crowd, which I surely wasn’t. My father’s nickname was ‘Loser Lowell,’ and unfortunately the epithet had a tendency to trickle down.”
   “For me, it was the opposite,” Stephanie said. “We were treated to a kind of deference, which wasn’t pleasant. You know how teenagers like to blend in. Well, it wasn’t possible for me, and I didn’t even know why. I hated it.”
   “How come you’ve never told me about any of this?”
   “How come you’ve never told me about your family other than the fact that you have eight siblings, none of whom, I might add, I have met? I at least asked you about your family on several occasions.”
   “That’s a good point,” Daniel said vaguely. His eyes drifted outside, where a few lonely snowflakes could be seen dancing on the wind gusts. He knew the real answer to Stephanie’s question was that he’d never cared about her family any more than he cared about his own. He cleared his throat and turned back to Stephanie. “Maybe we haven’t talked about our families because we were both embarrassed about our childhoods. Or maybe it’s been a combination of that and our preoccupation with science and founding the company.”
   “Perhaps,” Stephanie said without a lot of conviction. She stared out through the front windshield. “It is true that academics have always been my escape. Of course my father never approved, but that only increased my resolve. Hell, he didn’t think I should go college. He thought it was a waste of time and money, saying I was just going to get married and have kids like it was fifty years ago.”
   “My father was literally embarrassed that I was good at science. He told everyone that it had to have come from my mother’s side, like it was a genetic disease.”
   “What about your brothers and sisters? Was it the same for them?”
   “To some degree, because my father was a small enough person to blame his failings on us. You know, sapping the capital he needed to really get started in whatever was the current bright business idea. But my brothers, who were good at sports, fared a bit better, at least back when they were in school, because my father was a sports nut. But getting back to your brother, Tony. Whose idea was it that he invest in CURE, yours or his?” Daniel’s voice regained some of its earlier brusqueness.
   “Is this going to become an argument again?”
   “Just answer the question!”
   “What difference does it make?”
   “It was a monumental error in judgment to allow a possible—or probable, as the case may be—mobster to invest in our company.”
   “It was a combination of both of us,” Stephanie said. “In contrast with my father, he’s been interested in what I’ve been doing lately, and I’d told him biotechnology was a good place to put some of his money from the restaurants.”
   “Wonderful!” Daniel exclaimed sarcastically. “I hope you realize that investors in general don’t like losing money, despite having been adequately warned of the risks in start-up companies. My guess would be that such an attitude would be an understatement for a mobster. Have you ever heard of such inconveniences as smashed patellae?”
   “He’s my brother, for Christ’s sake! There’s not going to be any kneecap smashing.”
   “Yeah, but I’m not his brother.”
   “It’s insulting to even suggest such a thing,” Stephanie snapped. She turned her head to look out her window. Generally she had a reservoir of patience to put up with Daniel’s sarcasm, ego, and antisocial negativity, thanks to the awe she felt about his scientific brilliance, but at the moment and given the morning’s events, it was wearing thin.
   “Under the circumstances, I don’t have a lot of interest in hanging around Washington for another night,” Daniel said. “I think we should get our things together, check out, and get on the next shuttle back to Boston.”
   “Fine by me,” Stephanie clipped.
   Stephanie got out her side of the taxi as Daniel paid the fare. She headed directly into the hotel lobby, only vaguely aware that he was close behind her. She was upset enough to wonder what she’d do when they got back to Boston. In her current state of mind, the idea of returning to Daniel’s Cambridge apartment where she’d been living was not appealing. Daniel’s suggestion that her family was low enough to be capable of physical violence was galling. She wasn’t sure if anyone in her family was involved in loan-sharking or other questionable activities, but she was darn sure no one ever got hurt.
   “Dr. D’Agostino, excuse me!” one of the concierges voiced loudly.
   Unexpectedly hearing her name called out in the middle of the hotel lobby startled Stephanie enough that she stopped in her tracks. Daniel collided with her, causing him to drop the folder he was carrying.
   “Good grief!” Daniel snapped, as he squatted down to retrieve the papers that had wafted out of the folder. A bellman lent a hand. The papers were professionally rendered schematics of HTSR. He’d brought them to the hearing in case it had been appropriate to hand them out to be sure people understood the procedure. Unfortunately, the opportunity hadn’t presented itself.
   By the time Daniel had righted himself, Stephanie had returned to his side from the concierge’s desk.
   “You could have let me know you were stopping,” Daniel complained.
   “Who is Carol Manning?” Stephanie questioned.
   “I haven’t the foggiest idea. Why do you ask?”
   “You got an urgent message from her.” Stephanie handed over the piece of paper.
   Daniel read it rapidly. “I’m supposed to call her. It says it’s an emergency. How can it be an emergency if I don’t even know who it is?”
   “What’s the area code?” Stephanie questioned, as she looked over Daniel’s shoulder.
   “Two-oh-two!” Daniel said. “Where’s that, do you know?”
   “Of course I do! It’s right here in D.C.”
   “Washington!” Daniel exclaimed. “Well, that settles it.” He crumpled the note, stepped over to the concierge’s desk, and asked one of them to file it in the circular file.
   Stephanie was rooted to the spot where she’d handed Daniel the note. Her mind was churning as she watched Daniel start toward the elevators. Making a sudden decision, she dashed to the desk, took the note from the concierge who still had it clutched in his fist while speaking to another guest, and ran after Daniel.
   “I think you should call,” Stephanie said, slightly out of breath as she reached Daniel.
   “Oh, really?” Daniel questioned superciliously. “I don’t think so.”
   The elevator arrived, and Daniel boarded. Stephanie followed.
   “No, I think you should call. I mean, what do you have to lose?”
   “A little more of my self-esteem,” Daniel said.
   The elevator rose. Daniel’s eyes were glued to the floor indicator. Stephanie’s were glued to Daniel’s. The doors opened. They started down the hall.
   “I think I recognized the number’s prefix from having called Senator Ashley Butler’s office last week. I think the prefix was two-two-four, and if it was, then it is a Senate Office Building exchange.”
   “All the more reason not to call,” Daniel said. He keyed open the door to their room and entered. Stephanie was right behind him.
   While Daniel was removing his coat, Stephanie ducked into the sitting room. At the desk, she smoothed out the note. “It is two-two-four,” she called out to Daniel. “The emergency is underlined. Maybe the old codger changed his mind!”
   “That’s about as likely as the moon dropping out of orbit,” Daniel said, joining Stephanie. He looked down at the message. “It is weird. What the hell kind of emergency could it be? Originally I thought it was from the media, but not if it’s a Senate Office Building exchange. You know, I don’t care. Being cooperative with anyone who has anything to do with the U.S. Senate is not high on my priority list at the moment.”
   “Call! You might be cutting off your nose to spite your face. If you don’t, I’ll do it. I’ll pretend I’m your secretary.”
   “You, a secretary? How entertaining! All right, for God’s sake, call!”
   “I’ll use the speakerphone so you can hear.”
   “Wonderful,” Daniel said sarcastically. He sprawled out on the sofa with his head on one of the furniture’s arms and his feet on the other.
   Stephanie dialed. There was the sound of only one electronic ring before the connection went through. A decidedly female voice snapped a hello as if the person had been eagerly waiting on the other end.
   “I’m calling for Dr. Daniel Lowell,” Stephanie said. She locked eyes with Daniel. “Is this Carol Manning?”
   “It is. Thank you for calling back. It is extremely important that I talk with the doctor before he checks out of the hotel. Is he available?”
   “Can I ask what this is in relation to?”
   “I’m Senator Ashley Butler’s chief of staff,” Carol began. “You might have seen me this morning. I was seated behind the senator.”
   Daniel quickly ran his index finger across his throat to get Stephanie to hang up. Stephanie ignored him.
   “I need to talk with the doctor,” Carol continued. “As I said, it is extremely important.”
   With the addition of an angry grimace, Daniel again gestured with his finger as if he were cutting his throat. He did it again when Stephanie hesitated.
   She motioned to him to stop his antics. It was clear to her that he was not about to talk with Carol Manning, but she was not about to hang up.
   “Is the doctor there?” Carol questioned.
   “He’s here, but momentarily indisposed.”
   Daniel rolled his eyes.
   “May I ask with whom I am speaking?” Carol questioned.
   Stephanie hesitated again while she thought of what to say, considering she’d told Daniel she would pretend to be his secretary. Thinking that was ridiculous now that she was on the phone, she finally just gave her name.
   “Oh, good!” Carol responded. “From Dr. Lowell’s testimony, I understand you are a collaborator. Might I ask if your collaboration is close and perhaps even personal?”
   A wry smile spread across Stephanie’s face. She stared at the phone for a second as if it could tell her why Carol Manning would be willing to flaunt normal etiquette and ask such a question. Under more normal circumstances, it would have angered Stephanie. Now it merely magnified her intrigue.
   “I don’t mean to be inappropriate,” Carol added, as if she sensed Stephanie’s response. “This is a rather awkward situation, but I was told you were registered in the same suite. I hope you understand that my goal is not to invade your privacy but rather to be as discreet as possible. You see, the senator would like to arrange a secret meeting with Dr. Lowell, and in this town that is not easy, considering the senator’s prominence and notoriety.”
   Stephanie’s mouth had slowly dropped open as she’d listened to this surprising request. Even Daniel had brought his feet down from the arm of the sofa and had sat up.
   “It had been my hope,” Carol continued, “that I could have communicated this message directly to Dr. Lowell so that only the senator, the doctor, and myself would have known about the meeting. Obviously, that is no longer possible. I hope we can count on your discretion, Dr. D’Agostino.”
   “Dr. Lowell and I work very closely,” Stephanie said. “You can most assuredly count on my discretion.” She gestured frantically to see if Daniel wished to participate in the conversation now that it had taken such an unexpected twist. Daniel shook his head but motioned for her to continue.
   “We are hoping the meeting could be arranged for this evening,” Carol said.
   “What can I tell Dr. Lowell this meeting is about?”
   “I cannot tell you.”
   “Not telling me is going to cause a problem,” Stephanie said. “I happen to know that Dr. Lowell was not pleased with what happened at this morning’s hearing. I’m not sure he will be open to meeting with the senator unless he has some idea it would be to his advantage to do so.” Stephanie looked at Daniel. He gestured he approved how she was handling the call by giving her a thumbs-up sign.
   “This is also rather awkward,” Carol said. “Although I am the senator’s chief of staff and I normally know everything that is going on in this office, I have absolutely no idea why the senator wants to meet with the doctor. The gist of what the senator said was that although Dr. Lowell might be irritated at today’s events, he should hold off on coming to any conclusions about S.1103 until they meet.”
   “That’s rather vague,” Stephanie said.
   “That’s the best I can do with the information I have. Nonetheless, I strongly urge the doctor to meet with the senator. My sense is that it will indeed be to his advantage. I cannot imagine any other reason for this meeting. It is most out of the ordinary, and I should know. I have been working with the senator for sixteen years.”
   “Where would the meeting take place?”
   “The safest place would be in a moving car.”
   “This is sounding overly melodramatic.”
   “The senator insisted on absolute secrecy, and as I said, that is not easy in this town.”
   “Who would be driving this car?”
   “Myself.”
   “If the meeting were to take place, I’d have to insist on being present as well.”
   Daniel again rolled his eyes.
   “Since I’ve already apprised you of the meeting, I will assume that would be acceptable, but to be one hundred percent certain, I’d have to run it by the senator.”
   “Can I assume you would come to the hotel and pick us up?”
   “I’m afraid that would be inadvisable. The safest plan would be for you and Dr. Lowell to take a taxi to the Union Station. At exactly nine o’clock, I will come by in a black Chevrolet Suburban with tinted windows and District plates: GDF471. I will pull up to the curb directly in front of the station. In case there is any problem, I will give you my cell phone number.”
   Stephanie wrote the number down as Carol relayed it.
   “Can the senator count on Dr. Lowell being there?”
   “I’ll convey this information to Dr. Lowell exactly as you have presented it to me.”
   “That’s all I can ask,” Carol said. “However, I’d like to reemphasize how extremely important this is for both the senator and for Dr. Lowell. The senator used those exact words.”
   Stephanie thanked the woman, said she’d call back in fifteen minutes, and disconnected. She stared at Daniel. “This has to be one of the more bizarre episodes I’ve ever been involved in,” she said, breaking a short silence. “What’s your take?”
   “What the devil could this old geezer have in mind?”
   “I’m afraid there’s only one way to find out.”
   “Do you really think I should go?”
   “Let’s put it this way,” Stephanie said. “I think you’d be a fool not to go. Since the meeting is secret, you don’t even have to worry about losing any more self-esteem, unless you care what Ashley Butler thinks of you, and knowing what you think of him, I can’t imagine that’s the case.”
   “Did you buy this Carol Manning saying she didn’t know what the meeting was about?”
   “Yes, I did. I detected some hurt feelings when she said it. My sense is that the senator has something far from mainstream up his sleeve that he wasn’t even willing to share with his chief aide.”
   “All right,” Daniel said with a tinge of reluctance. “Call her back and say I’ll be at the Union Station at nine.”
   “That’s we will be at the Union Station,” Stephanie said. “I meant what I said to Ms. Manning. I insist on going.”
   “Why not,” Daniel said. “We might as well make it a party.”