After the burial, the inner circle repaired to the Spee Club for a catered lunch. I had told Jonas that I needed to return early and couldn’t make it, but he insisted so ardently that I had little choice. There were toasts, remembrances, a great deal of drinking. Every second was torture. As people were leaving, Jonas pulled me aside.
“Let’s go out to the garden. There’s something I need to talk to you about.”
So here it was, I thought. The whole mess was about to come out. We exited through the library and sat on the steps that led down to the courtyard. The day was unusually warm, a mocking foretaste of spring—a spring I believed I would not see. Surely I would be living in a cell by then.
He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and removed a flask. He took a long pull and passed it to me.
“Old times,” he said.
I didn’t know how to respond. The conversation was his to steer.
“You don’t have to say it. I know I fucked up. I should have been there. That may be the worst thing.”
“I’m sure she understood.”
“How could she?” He drank again and wiped his mouth. “The truth is, I think she was leaving me. Probably I deserved it.”
I felt my stomach drop. On the other hand, if he’d known it was me, he would have already said so. “Don’t be ridiculous. She was probably just going to see her mother.”
He gave a fatalistic shrug. “Yeah, well, last time I checked, you don’t need a passport to go to Connecticut.”
I had failed to consider this. There was nothing to say.
“That’s not the reason I asked you out here, though,” he went on. “I’m sure you’ve heard the stories about me.”
“A little.”
“Everybody thinks I’m a big joke. Well, they’re wrong.”
“Maybe this isn’t the day for this, Jonas.”
“Actually, it’s the perfect day. I’m close, Tim. Very, very close. There’s a site in Bolivia. A temple, at least a thousand years old. The legends say there’s a grave there, the body of a man infected with the virus I’ve been searching for. It’s nothing new—there are lots of stories like that. Too many for all this to be nothing, in my opinion, but that’s another argument. The thing is, I’ve got hard evidence now. A friend at the CDC came to me a few months back. He’d heard about my work, and he’d happened across something he thought would interest me. Five years ago, a group of American tourists showed up at a hospital in La Paz. All of them had what looked like hantavirus. They’d been on some kind of ecotour in the jungle. But here’s the thing. They all had terminal cancer. The tour was one of those last-wish things. You know, do the stuff you always wanted to do before you check out.”
I had no idea where he was headed. “And?”
“Here’s where it gets interesting. All of them recovered, and not just from the hanta. From the cancer. Stage four ovarian, inoperable glioblastoma, leukemia with full lymphatic involvement—not a trace of it was left. And they weren’t just cured. They were
better
than cured. It was as if the aging process had been reversed. The youngest one was fifty-six, the oldest seventy. They looked like twenty-year-olds.”
“That’s quite a story.”
“Are you kidding? It’s
the
story. If this pans out, it will be the most important medical discovery in history.”
I was still skeptical. “So why haven’t I heard about it? It isn’t in any of the literature.”
“Good question. My friend at the CDC suspects the military got involved. The whole thing went over to USAMRIID.”
“Why would they want it?”
“Who knows? Maybe they just want the credit, though that’s the optimistic view. One day you have Einstein, puzzling over the theory of relativity, the next you’ve got the Manhattan Project and a big hole in the ground. It not like it hasn’t happened before.”
He had a point. “Have you examined them? The four patients.”
Jonas took another pull of the whiskey. “Well, that’s a bit of a wrinkle. They’re all dead.”
“But I thought you said—”
“Oh, it wasn’t the cancer. They all seemed to kind of … well, speed up, like their bodies couldn’t handle it. Somebody took a video. They were practically bouncing off the walls. The longest any of them lasted was eighty-six days.”
“That’s a mighty big wrinkle.”
He gave me a hard look. “Think about it, Tim. Something’s out there. I couldn’t find it in time to save Liz, and that’ll haunt me the rest of my days. But I can’t stop now. Not just in spite of her;
because
of her. A hundred and fifty-five thousand human beings die every day. How long have we been sitting here? Ten minutes? That’s over a thousand people just like Liz. People with lives, families who love them. I need you, Tim. And not just because you’re my oldest friend, and the smartest guy I know. I’ll be honest: I’m having a hard time with the money. Nobody wants to back this anymore. Maybe your credibility could, you know, grease the gears a bit.”
My credibility. If he only knew how little that was worth. “I don’t know, Jonas.”
“If you can’t do it for me, do it for Liz.”
I’ll admit, the scientist in me was intrigued. It was also true that I wanted nothing to do with this project, or with Jonas, ever again. In the slender ten minutes in which a thousand human beings had perished, I had come, very profoundly, to despise him. Perhaps I always had. I despised his obliviousness, his monstrous ego, his self-aggrandizing pomp. I despised his naked manipulation of my loyalties and his unwavering faith that the answer to everything lay within his grasp. I despised the fact that he didn’t know one goddamn thing about anything at all, but most of all, I despised him for letting Liz die alone.
“Can I give it some thought?” An easy dodge; I had no such intentions.
He began to say something, then stopped himself. “Got it. You have your reputation to consider. Believe me, I know how it goes.”
“It’s not that. It’s just a big commitment. I have a lot on my plate these days.”
“I’m not going to let you off easy, you know.”
“I was pretty sure you wouldn’t.”
We were silent for a time. Jonas was looking at the garden, though I knew he wasn’t seeing it.
“It’s funny—I always knew this day would come. Now I can’t believe it. It’s like it’s not even happening, you know? I feel like I’ll go back to the house and there’ll she be, grading papers at her desk or stirring something in the kitchen.” He blew out a breath and looked at me. “I should have been a better friend to you, all these years. I shouldn’t have let so much time pass.”
“Forget it,” I said. “It was my fault, too.”
The conversation ended there. “Well,” Jonas said, “thank you for being here, Tim. I know you’d come anyway, just for her. But it means a lot to me. Let me know what you decide.”
I sat awhile after he’d gone. The building was quiet; the mourners had left, returning to their lives. How lucky they were, I thought.
I heard nothing more from Jonas. Winter yielded to spring, then summer, and I began to believe that the dots hadn’t been connected after all and I would remain a free man. Bit by bit, the girl’s death ceased to hang over my every thought and action. It was still there, of course; the memory touched down often and without warning, paralyzing me with guilt so deep I could hardly draw a breath. But the mind is nimble; it seeks to preserve itself. One particularly clement summer day, cool and dry with a sky so crisp it looked like a great blue dome snapped down over the city, I was walking to the subway from my office when I realized that for a full ten minutes I hadn’t felt utterly ruined. Perhaps life could go on, after all.
I returned to teaching in the fall. A bevy of new graduate assistants awaited me; as if the administration took delight in torturing me, most were female. But to say that those days were over for me would be the understatement of the century. Mine was a monk’s existence, as it would be henceforth. I did my work, I taught my classes, I sought the company of no one, man or woman. I heard, secondhand, that Jonas had found funding for his expedition after all and was gearing up for Bolivia. Good riddance, I thought.
On a day in late January, I was grading labs in my office when there was a knock on the door.
“Come.”
Two people, a man and a woman: I instantly knew who, and what, they were. My face probably betrayed my guilt in a heartbeat.
“Got a minute, Professor Fanning?” the woman said. “I’m Detective Reynaldo, this is Detective Phelps. We’d like to ask you a few questions, if you don’t mind.”
“Of course.” I feigned surprised. “Sit down, Detectives.”
“We’ll stand, if that’s all right.”
The conversation lasted barely fifteen minutes, but it was enough to let me know that the noose was tightening. A woman had come forward—the babysitter. She was an illegal, which explained the long delay. Though she had glimpsed me quickly, the description she provided matched the bartender’s. He did not recall my name but had overheard the part of our conversation in which she confessed her crush on me, using the phrase “a lot of the girls did.” This led them to Nicole’s college transcript and eventually to me, who bore a remarkable resemblance to the sitter’s description of the suspect. A
very
remarkable resemblance.
I made the customary denials. No, I had never been to the bar in question. No, I did not recall the girl from my classes; I had seen the story in the papers but had made no connection. No, I could not recall my whereabouts that night. When, exactly? Probably I was in bed.
“Interesting. In bed, you say?”
“Perhaps I was reading. I’m a bit of an insomniac. I really don’t recall.”
“That’s strange. Because according to the TSA, you were scheduled to be on a flight to Athens. Any thoughts on that you’d care to share at this point, Dr. Fanning?”
The cold sweat of the criminal dampened my palms. Of course they would know this. How could I have been so dumb?
“Very well,” I said, doing my best to seem annoyed. “I wish this hadn’t had to come out, but since you insist on prying into my personal life, I was going away with a friend. A
married
friend.”
A single eyebrow lasciviously lifted. “Care to tell us her name?”
My mind was racing. Could they connect us? I’d paid for the tickets in cash and bought them separately to cover our tracks. Our seats weren’t even next to each other’s; I’d planned to sort it out before we boarded.
“I’m sorry, I can’t do that. It’s not my place.”
“A gentleman doesn’t kiss and tell, huh?”
“Something like that.”
Detective Reynaldo smiled imperiously, enjoying herself. “A gentleman who runs off with another man’s wife. Doubt you’ll win any prizes for that.”
“I don’t claim to, Detective.”
“So why didn’t you go?”
I gave my most innocent shrug. “She changed her mind. Her husband is a colleague of mine. It was a stupid idea to begin with. That’s really all there is to it.”
For ten full seconds neither of us spoke—a gap I was obviously meant to fill, incriminating myself.
“Well, that’s all for now, Dr. Fanning. Thank you for taking time out of your busy day.” She gave me her card. “You think of anything else, you call me, all right?”
“I’ll do that, Detective.”
“And I do mean anything.”
I waited thirty minutes to make sure they were well clear of the building, then took the subway home. How long did I have? Days? Hours? How much paperwork did they need to get me into a lineup?
I could think of only one option. I called Jonas’s office, then his cell, but got no answer. I would have to risk an email.
Jonas—I’ve given some thought to your proposal. Sorry it took me so long. Not sure how much I can offer at this late date, but I’d like to sign on. When do you leave?—TF
I waited at my computer, hitting the Refresh button over and over. Thirty minutes later his reply came.
Delighted. We leave in three days. Have already cleared your visa with State. Don’t ever say I’m not a man with connections. How many more do you need for your team? Knowing you, you’ll bring a flotilla of attractive female grad assistants, which we could sure use to brighten up the place.
Move your ass, buddy. We’re going to change the world.—JL
23
There is not much more to say. I went. I was infected. Of those infected, I alone survived. And thus was built a race to establish dominion over the earth.
There was a night when Jonas came to see me in my chamber. This was long after my transformation, by which time I had adjusted to my circumstances. I could not know what the hour was, such things having lost all meaning in my captive state. My plans were well under way. I and my co-conspirators had identified the avenue of our escape. The weak-minded men who watched over us: day by day we had infiltrated their thoughts, filling their minds with our black dreams, bringing them into the fold. Their flabby souls were collapsing; soon they would be ours.
His voice came over the speaker: “Tim, it’s Jonas.”
This was not his first visit. Many was the time I had seen his face behind the glass. Yet he had not addressed me directly since the day of my awakening. The last years had wrought startling changes to his appearance. Long-haired, wild-bearded, crazed-eyed, he had become the very image of the mad scientist I had always thought him to be.
“I know you can’t talk. Hell, I’m not even sure you can understand me.”
I felt a confession coming. I was, I admit, only vaguely interested in what he had to say. His disturbed conscience—what did I care? His visit had also interrupted my feeding schedule. Though in life I had not much cared for the taste of wild game, I had come to enjoy raw rabbit very much.
“Something bad is happening. I’m really losing control of this thing.”
Indeed, I thought.
“God, I miss her, Tim. I should have listened to her. I should have listened to
you.
If only you could talk to me.”
You will hear from me soon enough, I thought.
“I’ve got one more chance, Jonas. I still believe this can work. Maybe if I pull it off, I can get the military to back away. I can still turn everything around.”