No Time to Die (6 page)

“This is an outrage! I didn't raise you to be a thief!”

“But the tests—”

“Forget the tests!” he snapped, tearing shreds of the envelope apart like tinsel. “I thought we raised you to be more sensible than this!” He turned to his wife, who was sitting beside him on the faded beige sofa's edge. “What did we do wrong?”

Zoe watched her mother's face. A tear slid from the corner of her eye along the thin bridge of her nose. She met Zoe's gaze as if seeing her for the first time in months—not just as a reminder of her own failings, but as a human being, a daughter in distress.

Sitting in his shabby leather recliner, Gramps was watching them all. Behind his head hung a framed portrait of the four of them grinning in beach chairs and sunglasses, shot during last summer's vacation to the Outer Banks. The peacefulness of their family on that trip struck her now as unbearably distant. Gramps noticed her grimacing and shot her a glance of compassion, but said nothing. She wondered if his silence was a sign of his agreement with her father, or merely his reluctance to be burned in the fray. It wasn't like him to shy away from a fight.

“Stephen,” her mother said. “Can't you see she's hurting? Her health is more important than the money. Maybe there is some truth to what he told her. I mean, we've never had a proper diagnosis all these years.”

Zoe gave her a grateful look.

“Pam, please. To claim she is still fourteen years old—who's ever heard of such a thing? I'll have my firm file for malpractice before he knows what hit him. No asinine doctor is going to mess with my kid”—he turned his fiery gaze at her—“even if you did ask for it.”

She jumped to her feet, clenching her fists. “You think I asked to be born this way?”

“Enough,” came a voice, low yet so steadfast that everyone froze. Gramps was standing without the aid of his cane, holding his palms out to signal quiet. Zoe had never seen him with such a severe expression, like that of a prison guard toward a delinquent. He spoke slowly to her father.

“How you raise your daughter is not my business—until you cross the line. I tried to respect your parenting, Stephen. I tried to back off like you wanted—” Her father made a motion to interrupt, but Gramps's eyes narrowed. “Stop. Yes, I know I'm a guest in your house, but you know what? I don't give a damn. That's who I am, and if you don't like it, throw me out. But over my dead body will I stand by and let you bully either of my girls.”

He spoke with the authority of a judge, even as his hands were quivering, reaching for the steadiness of the couch. Pam rushed to hand him his cane and Zoe felt a sob rise up in her throat. Endless love poured through her. She looked at her father: He was sitting completely still, his lips pressed hard together.

Gramps lowered himself back against his recliner. “Now that that's out of the way,” he said, “we can get to the real issue. What you have failed to recognize”—he paused, looking at each of them—“is that Ray Carlyle is no fraud. Zoe, you're a medical marvel.”

Her mother looked frightened. “How—how can you be sure?”

“Every doctor knows his name, Pam. He's a legend in the medical community. If this is what he told Zoe, I'd hang my life on it.” He looked at her with a small smile. “Darling, we weren't expecting this, but what a relief! You're not ill, you're not dying.” He held out his arms and she rushed into them from her lonely perch. She buried her face against his shoulder and he wrapped his gaunt arms around her. It felt ineffably good to be held.

Pam cleared her throat, taking her husband's hand. Her face had drained to ashen pale. “So this is for real?”

Zoe pulled away from Gramps and nodded. “He said only one other girl in recorded history had a similar condition, but she died before they could research why.”

“No wonder you had such a tough time at Northeastern. I feel terrible!”

“If this is really true, we've been awful to blame you,” her dad conceded. But then his expression hardened again. “So they probably want to drag you into some lab now, don't they?”

Pam pressed her husband's hand. “Honey, we've all had quite a shock for one day. Why don't we talk about that later?”

Gramps smoothed Zoe's silky blond hair. “What do you want to do, dear? Do you want to go up and take a rest? We don't need to figure anything out today.”

“No,” she said, staring at her father. “Let's be clear. I will never be a pawn of a bunch of scientists, okay?”

“Amen!” he said, looking relieved.

“I
want
to go to the lab,” she went on. “It's my body, my choice, and I choose the truth. Dr. Carlyle said he would refer me to the NIH so I could get into their program on undiagnosed disorders.”

“Oh Jesus,” he muttered, holding his forehead. “Do you know what these guys are after, Zoe? They don't care about you. They just want money, power . . .” he gestured wildly, slicing the air with his palm. “They're cutthroat.”

“You just think that because you spend all day suing doctors,” Zoe retorted. “Admit it. You think they're mostly bad. But you don't really know.”

“And neither do you,” he shot back, standing up. “You want to be one of their lab rats? You want to undergo tests and procedures you won't understand, just so they can get a bunch of statistics and cold hard cash from new grants? They don't care about you, the human being—only you, the DNA!” He tugged at his stiff white collar and sat back down with a sigh.

“Your dad has a point,” her mother remarked. She rubbed a fraying thread on her blue cotton dress. “We just want to protect you, sweetie. Who knows what you'd be getting yourself into?”

Zoe shook her head at the room's soft Oriental area rug, the rug that had padded many a fall during her earliest years. “But I don't believe it. I can't believe Dr. Carlyle and his colleagues are bad.”

“You're still so innocent,” her father said. “Just like a child. You don't know any better.”

A cold sweat came over her. She looked at Gramps.

“I don't think you're hearing her,” he cut in. “What did Dr. Carlyle tell you, dear? What would the next steps be?”

“He said they would sequence my genome,” she whispered. “That they could maybe figure out the cause of aging once and for all, and then possibly be able to control it at will.”

Gramps raised his eyebrows at her parents. “That's a pretty solemn statement. Are you prepared to turn your nose up at it?”

“Silas,” Stephen said. “Cut the hype. Zoe can't be trusted to make these kinds of decisions for herself. Our job is to protect her.”

“Your job,” Gramps corrected, “is to respect her. She may still biologically be a child, but she has more years under her belt than any fourteen-year-old I know. She's not disabled. She should be allowed to make up her own mind.”

“Thank you,” Zoe muttered, looking to her parents. “Are you going to physically restrain me?”

“Look, it's not that we want to stop you from being independent,” her father said, getting up again to pace. “We just want you to be safe. Who knows what will happen if all the wackos out there find out about this?”

“I'll be fine!”

“I wish we could believe that. And I'm sorry this is happening to you. It must be terrifying. Your mother's right. The money doesn't matter.
You
do.”

“My health matters, but so does my happiness. Please, Dad. All I want is to grow up and be normal. This research is my only chance.”

“But do you realize what a can of worms you'd be opening? You're talking about scientists trying to fundamentally alter our genetic makeup. Like Frankenstein. This isn't something to mess around with.”

“But don't you see it could be a good thing? Maybe you could live longer, postpone your old age—”

Her mother shook her head. “We're supposed to get old and die, to clear out for the next generation. That's the natural order of life.”

“So you'd choose death over life, just because living longer is unnatural? So is chemo, but that saved your ovaries!”

“That's different,” her mother said sharply. “Cancer is a pathology. Aging is normal.”

“Aging is the leading cause of death in the civilized world,” Gramps interjected. “Just because it's always been that way doesn't make it desirable.”

“The way I see it, nature made you special,” her father declared, ignoring him. “It's not up to us to go against it, or to question why.”

“But it is, Dad. Otherwise how can we ever make any progress?”

“Smart girl.” Gramps patted her hand and Zoe noticed the pained look in her mother's eyes, which had nothing to do with nature and everything to do with a jealousy she would never admit. Gramps noticed it, too, for he whispered in her ear: “Go give your mother a hug.”

She stood and went to her parents on the sofa opposite Gramps, where her father stood fuming.

“Don't worry so much about me. I've gotten this far.” She bent down and hugged her mother tightly. Then, just as she was turning to her father, he walked over to Gramps, who pushed himself up from his recliner and stood again without his cane, staring up at his formidable son-in-law.

“I don't appreciate,” said Stephen through clenched teeth, “any further interference in our family matters.”

“Stephen—” Pam interrupted, but he ignored her.

“I will act as I see fit,” Gramps replied.

“He was just looking out for me, Dad,” Zoe interrupted, hurrying between them. Her small body barely reached to their chests. “Relax.”

Stephen did not break eye contact with him. “You've insulted me and encouraged my daughter down a path I regard as dangerous. Now, I'm giving you one last chance. Unless you agree to back off, I'm going to have to find you another living arrangement.”

“No!” Zoe cried. “You can't do that! Please!”

“Stephen,” her mother pleaded, “that's really not necess—”

“That's okay.” Gramps held up a hand. “I've ruffled a lot of feathers. I'll stay out of it from now on.” He looked down at Zoe, and only she caught the mischievous smile in his eyes. “It's about time I excuse myself.”

Stephen gave a curt nod and stepped aside. Gramps shuffled toward the stairs, squaring his shoulders just as he'd taught Zoe to do whenever the boys at school taunted her. As he approached the foot of the stairs, she noticed, in his path, a pair of sandals that she had mindlessly kicked off. Before she could even shout, his foot had hooked into one of the glittery silver straps, shifting his already precarious balance a notch off center. Oh God, it was too much—he pitched forward, arms flailing to find the cane he had left behind.

“Here!” she screeched, racing toward him, holding it out like a sword two feet in front of her. Why, oh why had she been so careless with her shoes, after all her mother's nagging—

He tried to spin around to meet her, but the effort clinched his fall. Her sandal slid out behind him across the slick wooden floor, thrusting him face forward at a sickening speed. His hands barely rose up in time to greet the crashing ground. As he splayed across it, Zoe heard an unmistakable crack, like a hollow branch splitting in two. She screamed and rushed to his side, dropping the cane. Her parents were beside them in an instant.

“My wrist,” he moaned, twisting into the fetal position and holding his right wrist to his chest. Dizziness overcame Zoe when she noticed its angle—it was bent all the way backward, the back of his hand touching his forearm.

“Go call 911,” her mother instructed. “Hurry.”

She obeyed, rising in disbelief. “But it was just a slip,” she murmured. “I trip all the time . . .”

A heavy arm draped over her shoulders. “His bones are frail,” her father said, as they turned away from Gramps's writhing. “I shouldn't have been so harsh. I just forget how old and fragile he is.”

 

 

Hours later, after Gramps had checked out of the hospital with a bright white cast from knuckles to elbow and a bottle of painkillers, after he had settled back into his favorite recliner and waved off Zoe's heartfelt apologies for the fifth time, she snuck upstairs to her bedroom. Thunder rumbled overhead as she locked the door behind her, cell phone in hand, dialing a number already memorized. She endured several rings, her desperation climbing, as the rain outside smacked against her window.

Finally a man answered in a monotone professional voice.

“Dr. Carlyle?” she said quickly. “It's Zoe. Zoe Kincaid.”

“Zoe, hello! I didn't expect to hear from you this soon.”

“Yeah, listen, remember when we were talking before, how you said the goal was to control the aging genes, so I could grow up one day?”

“First we need to figure out how they work.”

“But once you do that,” she continued, “if you can speed up my aging, won't you also be able to slow down someone else's?”

“Not just slow it down—we'd be able to stop it altogether. If the theory proves correct, and if we can figure out how to chemically replicate your body's way of turning off the master regulator gene, well—then aging could go the way of polio.”

“That's a lot of ifs. What are we waiting for?”

“You.”

“I'm ready. Let's do it.”

“Are you sure? You've had less than a day to think—”

“Yes,” she broke in, thinking of Gramps. “We don't have much time.”

New York City
Tuesday, June 11, 10:00
A.M.

N
atalie Roy was deep in concentration when a knock on her office door startled her. She looked up from the sixteen-page report on her desk, eyes blurry from hours of cross-checking every chemical name, number, and comma. Next to its red-marked pages—the promising results of her latest experiment in her quest to extend the lives of fruit flies—was a list of prestigious journals with names like
Rejuvenation Research
and
Molecular Genetics
. If she was going to have any chance of beating out that supercilious suck-up Mitch Grover for tenure, publishing her research was key.

Of course, the contest shouldn't have been this close a call. Her scientific contributions were more significant than his overall. But no matter—when contemplating that elusive
T
word, Columbia's world-renowned Department of Biological Sciences harbored a dirty secret—quantity trumped quality. And Mitch had more publication credits.

Natalie shook her head, rubbing her eyes. The shortsighted faculty board would probably vote down Watson and Crick if the famous duo hadn't published enough after discovering DNA. And not just any passion project would inspire grant money. It had to be one that aligned with a review board's agenda.

Everything was so goddamn political, far from the unvarnished search for truth she had envisioned as a teenage wannabe researcher twenty years ago. Of course, Mitch got all the federal funding he needed for his trendy projects, while she'd had to struggle to raise private capital after getting turned down multiple times. Her life's mission of increasing human longevity wasn't too appealing to a bloated government that depended—ironically—on the death of its citizens for survival.

She blinked at her office's bare white walls, the standard-issue wooden desk and simple black lamp, her one window overlooking the redbrick campus below. She was too busy to care about decorating her space and had only two personal items: a gardenia plant on the windowsill, and the photograph on her desk that always restored her good spirits. It was of the most beautiful child she had ever seen. Her son.

In it, Theo, then eight, was proudly holding a soccer ball under his arm. His hair was a mop of messy brown curls, his eyes jade green. The picture was a decade old, but she kept it for his smile. His joyful exuberance at that age reminded her of the true spirit alive beneath his tense adolescent exterior. Lately he was worrying about how she, as a single mother, was going to afford his college tuition. He was planning to start community college in the fall to avoid going into debt at a fancy school, but this kind of talk crushed her. She desperately yearned—above all else—to give him the world she had raised him to believe in, a world where greatness was possible. She couldn't give him back his absent dad, but she could give him a shot at free Columbia tuition and proof that you could successfully pursue a dream. If only she could get tenure.

What if her efforts weren't enough? Due to cost-cutting measures, the department had just one spot available, and Mitch was already in good favor with Professor Adler, the department chair. If only Helen would return her calls! Her closest friend, who up until last week had been a fellow professor in the department, would know just what to say—but she'd been impossible to reach since her resignation. As if to add insult to injury, Adler had announced that no one would be hired to replace her in the department—another casualty of the grim economic forecast—so Natalie and Mitch were forced to continue battling for the only tenured spot available.

Someone rapped on her door again, this time harder.

“Natalie, are you in there?” a gravelly voice demanded.

She recognized it and jumped up to open the door.

“Dr. Adler! I didn't realize that was you—” She broke off when she saw Mitch Grover and several other faculty members standing behind him, looking apprehensive. “What's going on?”

“We have an unexpected meeting in 14-L,” Adler said. “Right now.”

Mitch met her confused expression with a shrug:
I know nothing.

“We?” she questioned.

“The whole department. Come on.”

She locked her office and joined the procession down the austere white corridor, falling into step behind the others, only mildly curious. Odds were it would be another bureaucratic time-waster. After they quickly rounded up the rest of the fifteen-member staff, they filed into the largest conference room on their floor, which looked out over Columbia's cobblestone campus and magnificent domed library. Inside, the walls were adorned with framed clippings of past and present staff members' accomplishments—prizes won, discoveries made, patents granted. A long rectangular table of polished mahogany took up most of the room, surrounded by black leather executive chairs.

Two stern-looking men sat at the head. One was stout, bald, and typing on a BlackBerry with two agile thumbs. The other was lanky, gray haired, and exuded dignity as if in a conscious effort to appear authoritative. His sharp chin was lifted high, his posture erect, his navy suit expertly tailored. Natalie watched him watch everyone trickle in and sit down. She noticed how carefully he assessed each person without seeming obvious. Their eyes met when his rested on her. His steely gaze felt more like a challenge than a greeting. She stared back, refusing to be intimidated.

He looked away to address the room, clearing his throat. “Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for coming on such short notice. My name is Les Mahler. I'm the chief of the Justice Department's Bioethics Committee, and this is my colleague . . .” He looked to the man on his right.

“Bud Pinter, FBI,” he said, briefly holding up a gold badge in a black case. “Executive assistant director of the Science and Technology branch.”

The room was as quiet as a cemetery. Natalie felt her heart quicken. What in the world could these men want with Columbia's Biology Department? She looked around and saw that the other professors also seemed concerned, shifting in their seats and glancing at each other. Seated up near the men, Adler looked grim. What did he know?

“Of course, you all are wondering why we're here today,” Les Mahler continued, his voice deeper than Natalie had expected out of his slender frame. “I'm afraid we have some upsetting news about one of your former colleagues. As you probably all know by now, Dr. Helen McNair resigned from her position last week after an internal controversy.” Les looked at Adler, who nodded his permission. “Dr. McNair was engaged in attempting to develop the first synthetic life-form in her laboratory, a project she had kept secret from the rest of the staff for fear of a backlash.”

Around the room swelled questioning murmurs and surprised expressions. Natalie pretended to look shocked, but she'd known for months. She and Helen were each other's confidantes, which made it all the more hurtful and surprising that her friend had failed to return a single phone call, text, or e-mail since the dean's unfortunate discovery. Natalie assumed she just needed some space to privately grieve the loss of her career. Surely she would call soon.

“Why did she resign?” asked a young male adjunct.

“The dean caught wind of the project,” Adler replied, “and asked her to.” Natalie pressed her lips hard so her mouth would not betray her. The school's unfairness was truly appalling. Rather than uphold Helen's work as a model of innovation, the cautious Dean Loren was skittish around any scientists “trying to play God” and “overstepping ethical lines of inquiry.” His cautious attitude was exactly what had prompted Helen's secrecy in the first place, to no avail. But why was the FBI involved?

“As it turns out, she didn't just resign,” Les Mahler said, looking straight at Natalie. “She's disappeared. No one has seen her for six days. She lived alone, and her apartment is vacant. Her relatives have not been able to contact her, and her credit card shows no activity.”

Natalie's lips parted in shock, her mind racing. Helen had never mentioned wanting to go away. She hated leaving Manhattan, even used to joke that it would take a funeral to get her out—her own.

“Now, normally, this would be treated as a missing persons case by the local police department, but we do not believe this to be a regular case.” Mahler turned to his colleague. “Bud, do you want to . . . ?”

Bud Pinter opened a black file on the table and pulled out what looked like a postcard encased in clear plastic. Without removing the plastic, he held it up for the room to see, pinching it between thumb and forefinger. The focal point of the postcard was a photograph of the Earth moving around the sun in space.

“This,” Pinter said, “is a postcard that was mailed to our headquarters the day we believe Dr. McNair disappeared. On the flip side”—he turned it around to show a short loopy scrawl on the white back—“is her name and this message:

“ ‘And yet it moves—again. Yours, Galileo.' ”

Everyone stared. Pinter's tone carried a gravity that assured them this was no joke. Natalie frowned. The sentence reminded her of a famous line uttered by the real Galileo Galilei back in the sixteen hundreds, when the Church had forced him to recant his heretical belief that the Earth revolved around the sun. He'd cooperated, but then said under his breath, “And yet it moves.” Four words that would come to forever signify rebellion against dogma—now hijacked by a madman.

“This will come as a shock,” Les Mahler said, “but the person who calls himself Galileo runs a covert network of radicals who pose a serious threat to scientists, doctors, and even patients here in the U.S. You won't likely have heard of him because we've kept his profile extremely low, under the radar of the media and the public. But his cult is disturbingly entrenched across the country, from what we have been able to glean, and so far has proved impossible to penetrate or track.”

He paused, looking at each stunned face around the table.

“This group is extremely dangerous,” he went on. “Their crimes have a pattern—they always involve someone in a medical or scientific field who suddenly goes missing. Then, like clockwork, a postcard arrives just like this one, sometimes even on the same day, as if to boast that the abduction was premeditated, and the postcard was mailed in advance of the crime. By the time we get it, it's too late. There's always the victim's name, the same message, the same signature. The only thing that changes is the postmark, which comes from a different city every time, from Burbank to Anchorage to Des Moines. All over the country. We don't know where the victims go or what happens to them.”

Natalie felt warm tears sting her eyes as a surreal image popped into her mind—Helen, bound and gagged, in the clutches of a felon. It didn't seem possible. The last time they had seen each other, right after her forced resignation, Helen was a woman in mourning. Her spouse of forty-five years was her career, and its sudden death had knocked her sideways. She'd gone straight home to be alone. Natalie was certain she hadn't known of any impending danger.

She raised a shaky hand. “How many have been targeted?”

Pinter answered. “Twelve scientists, eight doctors, and six patients—and now Dr. McNair.”

“Just—vanished?”

“It seems that way. In many of the cases, we've recovered suicide notes, but these victims had no reason to end their lives. We think their captors must have forced them into it, so it seems like they're disappearing of their own accord.”

“Have any . . . remains ever been found?” Adler asked.

Mahler paused, his face grim. “Only once. The man was a top industry researcher doing drug development, found mauled to death by a couple of lab chimps that had escaped their cages. His death was ruled accidental, but Galileo's postcard arrived shortly afterward.”

“We don't know why he was left behind to die instead of abducted like all the other victims,” Pinter added. “It's another mystifying aspect of this case.”

“So the other victims—they could still be alive?” Natalie asked.

“It's possible,” Mahler said. “But not probable. The committee's mission for two years has been to track down this Galileo and uproot his Network, but it's been much more difficult than you can imagine. They seem to be very well connected, with rampant safe houses across the country, known as stops on the Galileo Underground. But it's impossible to prove.”

“Leading to where?” Mitch Grover asked. For once, Natalie noted, the smug smile was wiped off his face. He looked nervous.

“We don't know. That's the question.”

Natalie raised her hand again. “What's the motive? Why abduct these people in particular? Why Helen?”

“We can only speculate,” Pinter replied. “What the victims have in common is a history of controversy—they're all scientists and doctors who have gone against the grain in various ways. Except for the patients, who all had mysterious or late-stage illnesses before they were abducted.”

“It's possible that they're being punished or exploited somehow,” Mahler added. He didn't elaborate.

“So how can we help?” Adler asked. He leaned forward. “Anything you need, Columbia is at your disposal.”

“Be vigilant,” Mahler said. “Don't hesitate to call if you have anything suspicious to report. There's also a number where you can anonymously call in tips if you're worried about retribution.” He passed out cards with contact information. “Everything said here must remain strictly confidential. If this story gets out, a media circus will make Galileo burrow down somewhere. We need him to be up and active, not hiding. Also please clear your schedules for the rest of the afternoon. We're going to need to question each of you privately regarding Dr. McNair. Even the smallest thing you tell us could prove significant. Time is of the essence if we have any hope of finding her alive.”