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Authors: Michael Crichton
Tags: #Mystery, #Thriller, #Suspense, #Fantasy, #Science Fiction, #Adventure
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A Novel
T
his novel is fiction,
except for the parts that aren’t.
The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.
—STEVEN WEINBERG
The word “cause” is an altar to an unknown god.
—WILLIAM JAMES
What is not possible is not to choose.
—JEAN-PAUL SARTRE
Prologue
- Vasco Borden, forty-nine, tugged at the lapels of his suit…
CH001
- Division 48 of Los Angeles Superior Court was a wood-paneled…
CH002
- Alex had been watching the jury all during the latest…
CH003
- Barry Sindler, divorce lawyer to the stars, shifted in his…
CH004
- Beneath the high canopy of trees, the jungle floor was…
CH005
- Get this,” Charlie Huggins said, looking at the television in…
CH006
- BioGen Research Inc. was housed in a titanium-skinned cube in…
CH007
- At noon, Alex Burnet left her office in her Century…
CH008
- In the BioGen animal lab, Tom Weller was going down…
CH009
- Kevin McCormick, chief administrator of Long Beach Memorial, looked up…
CH010
- At the Radial Genomics lab in La Jolla, Charlie Huggins…
CH011
- Barry Sindler was bored. The woman before him yammered on.
CH012
- Josh Winkler closed the door to his office and started…
CH013
- The coffin rose into sunlight. It looked the same as…
CH014
- Marty Roberts was sweating by the time he got back…
CH015
- At sunset, the titanium cube that housed BioGen Research shimmered…
CH016
- The jungle was completely silent. Not a buzzing cicada, not…
CH017
- Rick Diehl of BioGen was changing in the locker room…
CH018
- It was just his way of relaxing, Brad Gordon knew,…
CH019
- Marilee Hunter, the pedantic director of the Long Beach Memorial…
CH020
- Finally!
CH021
- At the Congressional Biotechnology Prayer Breakfast in Washington, Dr. Robert Bellarmino…
CH022
- It was a bad day for Marty Roberts, made much…
CH023
- Josh Winkler was staring out his office window that overlooked…
CH024
- Brad Gordon frowned unhappily at the toilet in his jail…
CH025
- Henry Kendall parked in the Long Beach Memorial parking lot,…
CH026
- We’re talking submarines,” the patent attorney said to Josh Winkler.
CH027
- Rick Diehl approached the whole thing like a research project.
CH028
- Bail was set at half a million dollars. Brad Gordon’s…
CH029
- In the corner of the office, the TV showed Sheldon…
CH030
- In a glass-walled conference room on Madison Avenue, the marketing…
CH031
- The fact-finding hearing of the Bioethics Review Panel at the…
CH032
- Madame Bond,” the first-grade teacher said, “your son is a…
CH033
- Brad Gordon clicked off the TV and yelled, “It’s open.
CH034
- Henry Kendall’s wife, Lynn, designed web sites for a living,…
CH035
- Henry Kendall left Dulles Airport and drove north on 267,…
CH036
- What are you talking about?” Lynn Kendall said, staring at…
CH037
- There were fifty reporters in the conference room of Shanghai’s…
CH038
- The memory haunted Mark Sanger—the image burned in his mind…
CH039
- Josh Winkler hurried into the animal facility to see what…
CH040
- Speaking in Washington at a noon briefing for congressmen, Professor William Garfield…
CH041
- Dave’s first few days in the Kendall household went surprisingly…
CH042
- Ellis,” Mrs. Levine said, “what is that tube?”
CH043
- Things were not going well, Rick Diehl thought, as he…
CH044
- Gail Bond fell into a routine. She would spend the…
CH045
- Alex Burnet was in the middle of the most difficult…
CH046
- The lights dimmed smoothly in the plush presentation room at…
CH047
- There was no moon and no sound, except the booming…
CH048
- Josh.” It was his mother, on the phone.
CH049
- Gail Bond’s husband, Richard, the investment banker, often worked late…
CH050
- Rob Bellarmino smiled reassuringly. “Just ignore the cameras,” he said…
CH051
- It had been raining all day in southern Sumatra. The…
CH052
- Six attorneys sat at the long table, all shuffling through…
CH053
- Vasco Borden faced the mirror and reviewed his appearance with…
CH054
- Brad Gordon had a bad feeling as he walked into…
CH055
- Lynn Kendall ran into the La Jolla school, arriving out…
CH056
- Alex Burnet jumped out of the cab and ran toward…
CH057
- Georgia Bellarmino would never have known, if it hadn’t been…
CH058
- Barton Williams’s Boeing 737 rolled to a stop at the…
CH059
- The warehouse was located near the airport in Medan. It…
CH060
- Georgia Bellarmino opened the door to her daughter’s bedroom and…
CH061
- In the Chicago offices of Dr. Martin Bennett, the intercom was…
CH062
- The desk officer at the Rockville Police Station was an…
CH063
- Riding the underground tram from the Senate Office Building to…
CH064
- Not again!
CH065
- This is on, man!
CH066
- Stan Milgram had begun the long trip to see his…
CH067
- Lynn sat on the edge of the tub and used…
CH068
- Traffic crawled. The 405 Freeway was a river of red…
CH069
- There were two more gunshots as Lynn ran into the…
CH070
- Alex took her son to an In-N-Out drive-in, and they…
CH071
- Stan Milgram was lost in endless darkness. The road ahead…
CH072
- Ellis sat down across from his brother Aaron, in Aaron’s…
CH073
- When Brad Gordon started the bar fight at the Lucky…
CH074
- The self-proclaimed environmental artist Mark Sanger, recently returned from a…
CH075
- Still lost, now driving through very hilly terrain, Stan Milgram…
CH076
- The Robinson R44 helicopter descended in a cloud of dust,…
CH077
- Gerard watched the dark shapes approach.
CH078
- Sleeping in the front seat of her car, Alex Burnet…
CH079
- In Congressional Hearing Room 443, while waiting for proceedings to…
CH080
- The ambulance sped south on the freeway. Sitting in the…
CH081
- Bob,” Alex said, holding her phone to her ear.
CH082
- It’s the last thing we need, Henry Kendall thought. Visitors!
CH083
- The Hummer pulled up behind the ambulance, and Vasco got…
CH084
- Gerard was tired. He had been flying for an hour…
CH085
- Okay, we got action,” Vasco said. Two young kids were…
CH086
- The Oxnard courtroom was small and so cold Bob Koch…
CH087
- The Kendalls were screaming as the Hummer raced forward, but…
CH088
- Adam Winkler lay in the hospital bed, frail and weak.
CH089
- The Oxnard judge coughed in the chilly air as he…
CH090
- Rick Diehl was trying to keep it together, but everything…
CH091
- Frank Burnet walked into the starkly modern offices of venture…
CH092
- Brad Gordon followed the crowds that swarmed toward Mighty Kong,…
CH093
- At the fall meeting of the Organization of University Technology…
CH094
- The overhead lights came on in the autopsy room, bank…
CH095
- Henry Kendall was surprised that Gerard could help Dave with…
V
asco Borden,
forty-nine, tugged at the lapels of his suit and straightened his tie as he walked down the plush carpeted hallway. He wasn’t used to wearing a suit, though he had had this one, in navy, specially tailored to minimize the muscular bulk of his body. Borden was big, six-four, two-forty, an ex–football player who worked as a private investigator and fugitive-recovery specialist. And right now, Vasco was following his man, a thirty-year-old balding postdoc, a fugitive from MicroProteonomics of Cambridge, Mass., as he headed right for the main room of the conference.
The BioChange 2006 Conference, enthusiastically entitled “Make It Happen Now!” was being held at the Venetian hotel in Las Vegas. The two thousand attendees represented all sorts of biotech workers, including investors, HR officers who hired scientists, technology transfer officers, CEOs, and intellectual property attorneys. In one way or another, nearly every biotech company in America was represented here.
It was the perfect place for the fugitive to meet his contact. The fugitive looked like a dink; he had an innocent face and a little soul patch on his chin; he slouched when he walked and gave the impression of timidity and ineptitude. But the fact was, he’d made off with twelve transgenic embryos in a cryogenic dewar and transported them across country to this conference, where he intended to turn them over to whomever he was working for.
It wouldn’t be the first time a postdoc got tired of working on salary. Or the last.
The fugitive went over to the check-in table to get his conference card to drape around his neck. Vasco hung by the entrance, slipping his own card over his head. He’d come prepared for this. He pretended to look at the event roster.
The big speeches were all in the main ballroom. Seminars were scheduled for such topics as “Fine-Tune Your Recruiting Process,” and “Winning Strategies to Keep Research Talent,” “Executive and Equity Compensation,” “Corporate Governance and the SEC,” “Patent Office Trends,” and “Investor Angels: Boon or Curse?” and, finally, “Trade Secrets Piracy: Protect Yourself Now!”
Much of Vasco’s work involved high-tech firms. He had been to these conferences before. Either they were about science or business. This one was business.
The fugitive, whose name was Eddie Tolman, walked past him into the ballroom. Vasco followed. Tolman went down a few rows and dropped into a seat with no one nearby. Vasco slipped into the row behind and sat a little to one side. The Tolman kid checked his cell phone for text messages, then seemed to relax, and looked up to listen to the speech.
Vasco wondered why.
The man
at the podium was one of the most famous venture capitalists in California, a legend in high-tech investment, Jack B. Watson. Watson’s face was blown up large on the screen behind him, his trademark suntan and striking good looks magnified to fill the room. Watson was a young-looking fifty-two, and assiduously cultivated his reputation as a capitalist with a conscience. That appellation had carried him through a succession of ruthless business deals: all the media ever showed were his appearances at charter schools, or handing out scholarships for underprivileged kids.
But in this room, Vasco knew, Watson’s reputation for tough deal making would be foremost in everyone’s mind. He wondered if Watson was ruthless enough to acquire a dozen transgenic embryos by illicit means. He probably was.
However, at the moment, Watson was cheerleading: “Biotechnology is booming. We are poised to see the greatest growth of any industry since computers thirty years ago. The largest biotech company, Amgen, in Los Angeles, employs seven thousand people. Federal grants to universities exceed four billion a year on campuses from New York to San Francisco, Boston to Miami. Venture capitalists invest in biotech companies at a rate of five billion a year. The lure of magnificent cures made possible by stem cells, cytokines, and proteonomics are drawing the brightest talent to the field. And with a global population growing older by the minute, our future is brighter than ever. And that’s not all!
“We’ve reached the point where we can stick it to Big Pharma—and we will. Those massive, bloated companies need us and they know it. They need genes, they need technology. They’re the past. We’re the future. We’re where the money is!”
That drew huge applause. Vasco shifted his bulk in his seat. The audience was applauding, even though they knew that this son of a bitch would cut their company to pieces in a second if it suited his bottom line.
“Of course, we face obstacles to our progress. Some people—however well intentioned they
think
they are—choose to stand in the way of human betterment. They don’t want the paralyzed to walk, the cancer patient to thrive, the sick child to live and play. These people have their reasons for objecting. Religious, ethical, or even ‘practical.’ But whatever their reasons, they are on the side of death. And they will not triumph!”
More thunderous applause. Vasco glanced at the fugitive, Tolman. The kid was checking his phone again. Evidently waiting for a message. And waiting impatiently.
Did that mean the contact was late?
That was sure to make Tolman nervous. Because somewhere, Vasco knew, this kid had stashed a stainless steel thermos of liquid nitrogen that held the embryos. It wasn’t in the kid’s room. Vasco had already searched it. And five days had passed since Tolman left Cambridge.
The coolant wouldn’t last forever. And if the embryos thawed, they would be worthless. So unless Tolman had a way to top up his
LN
2, by now he must be anxious to retrieve his container, and hand it over to his buyer.
It had to happen soon.
Within an hour, Vasco was sure of it.
“Of course,
people will try to obstruct progress,” Watson said, from the podium. “Even our best companies find themselves embroiled in pointless, unproductive litigation. One of my startups, BioGen, in Los Angeles, is in court right now because some guy named Burnet thinks he doesn’t need to honor the contracts he himself signed. Because now he’s changed his mind. Burnet is trying to block medical progress unless we pay him. An extortionist whose daughter is the lawyer handling the case for him. Keeping it in the family.” Watson smiled.
“But we will win the Burnet case. Because progress cannot be stopped!”
At that, Watson threw both hands up in the air, waving to the audience as applause filled the room. He almost acts like a candidate, Vasco thought. Is that what Watson was aiming for? The guy certainly had enough money to get elected. Being rich was essential in American politics these days. Pretty soon—
He looked over, and saw that the Tolman kid was gone.
The seat was empty.
Shit!
“Progress is
our mission, our sacred calling,” Watson cried. “Progress to vanquish disease! Progress to halt aging, banish dementia, extend life! A life free of disease, decay, pain, and fear! The great dream of humanity—made real at last!”
Vasco Borden wasn’t listening. He was heading down the row toward the side aisle, scanning the exit doors. A couple of people leaving, nobody looking like Tolman. The guy couldn’t have gotten away, there was—
He looked back just in time to see Tolman moving slowly up the center aisle. The kid was looking at his cell phone again.
“Sixty billion this year. Two hundred billion next year. Five hundred billion in five years! That is the future of our industry, and that is the prospect we bring to all mankind!”
The crowd suddenly rose to its feet, giving Watson a standing ovation, and for a moment Vasco could no longer see Tolman at all.
But only for a moment—now Tolman was making for the center exit. Vasco turned away, slipping through the side door and out into the lobby, just as Tolman came blinking into the bright lobby light.
Tolman glanced at his watch and headed down the far corridor, past big glass windows that looked out on the red brick campanile of San Marco, re-created by the Venetian hotel and lit brilliantly at night. He was going toward the swimming pool area, or perhaps the courtyard. This time of night those spaces would be crowded.
Vasco stayed close.
This was it, he thought.
In the ballroom,
Jack Watson paced back and forth, smiling and waving to the cheering crowd. “Thank you, that’s very kind, thank you…” ducking his head a little each time he said it. Just the right amount of modesty.
Rick Diehl snorted in disgust as he watched. Diehl was backstage, taking it all in on a little black-and-white monitor. Diehl was the thirty-four-year-old CEO of BioGen Research, a struggling startup in Los Angeles, and this performance by his most important outside investor filled him with unease. Because Diehl knew that despite the cheerleading, and the press releases with smiling black kids, at the end of the day, Jack Watson was a true bastard. As someone put it, “The best I can say about Watson is, he’s not a sadist. He’s just a first-class son of a bitch.”
Diehl had accepted funding from Watson with the greatest reluctance. He wished he didn’t need it. Diehl’s wife was wealthy, and he had started BioGen with her money. His first venture as CEO had been to
bid on a cell line being licensed by UCLA. It was the so-called Burnet cell line, developed from a man named Frank Burnet, whose body produced powerful cancer-fighting chemicals called cytokines.
Diehl hadn’t really expected to land the license, but he did, and suddenly he faced the prospect of gearing up for FDA approval for clinical trials. The cost of clinical trials started at a million dollars, and went rapidly to ten million a pop, not counting downstream costs and after-marketing expenses. He could no longer rely solely on his wife’s money. He needed outside financing.
That was when he discovered just how risky venture capitalists considered cytokines to be. Many cytokines, such as interleukins, had taken years to come to market. And many others were known to be dangerous, even deadly, to patients. And then Frank Burnet had brought a lawsuit, casting doubt on BioGen’s ownership of the cell line. Diehl had trouble getting investors to even meet with him. In the end, he had to accept smiling, suntanned Jack Watson.
But Watson, Diehl knew, wanted nothing less than to take over BioGen and throw Rick Diehl out on his ass.
“Jack! Fantastic speech!
Fantastic!” Rick extended his hand, as Watson came backstage at last.
“Yeah. Glad you liked it.” Watson didn’t shake his hand. Instead, he unclipped his wireless transmitter and dropped it in Diehl’s palm. “Take care of this, Rick.”
“Sure, Jack.”
“Your wife here?”
“No, Karen couldn’t make it.” Diehl shrugged. “Thing with the kids.”
“I’m sorry she missed this speech,” Watson said.
“I’ll see she gets the DVD,” Diehl said.
“But we got the bad news out there,” Watson said. “That’s the point. Everybody now knows there’s a lawsuit, they know Burnet is a bad guy, and they know we’re on top of it. That’s the important thing. The company’s now perfectly positioned.”
Diehl said, “Is
that
why you agreed to give the speech?”
Watson stared at him. “You think I
want
to come to Vegas? Christ.” He unclipped the microphone, handed it to Diehl. “Take care of this, too.”
“Sure, Jack.”
And Jack Watson turned and walked away from him without another word. Rick Diehl shivered. Thank God for Karen’s money, he thought. Because without it, he’d be doomed.
Passing through
the arches of the Doge’s Palace, Vasco Borden moved into the courtyard, following his fugitive, Eddie Tolman, through the nighttime crowd. He heard his earpiece crackle. That would be his assistant, Dolly, in another part of the hotel. He touched his ear. “Go,” he said.
“Baldy boy Tolman has reserved some entertainment.”
“Is that right?”
“That’s right, he—”
“Hold on,” Vasco said. “Just hold that thought.”
Up ahead, he was seeing something he could not believe. From the right side of the courtyard, he saw Jack B. Watson, accompanied by a beautiful, slinky, dark-haired woman, merging with the crowd. Watson was famous for always being accompanied by gorgeous women. They all worked for him, they were all smart, and they were all stunning.
The woman didn’t surprise Vasco. What surprised him was that Jack Watson was heading directly toward Eddie Tolman, the fugitive. That made no sense at all. Even if Tolman were doing a deal with Watson, the famous investor would never meet him face-to-face. And certainly never in public. But there they were, on a collision course in the crowded Venetian courtyard, right before his eyes.
What the hell? He couldn’t believe it was going to happen.
But then the slinky woman stumbled a bit, and stopped. She was wearing a short, skintight dress and heels. She leaned on Watson’s shoulder, bent her knee, showing plenty of leg, and inspected her shoe.
She adjusted her heel strap, stood up again, and smiled at Watson. And Vasco glanced away from them and saw that Tolman was gone.
But now Watson and the woman crossed Vasco’s own path, passing so close to him that he could smell her perfume, and he heard Watson murmur something to her, and she squeezed his arm and put her head on his shoulder as they walked. The romantic couple.
Was all that an accident? Had it happened on purpose? Had they made him? He pressed his earpiece.
“Dolly. I lost him.”
“No prob. I got him.” He glanced up. She was on the second floor, watching everything below. “Was that Jack Watson that just walked by?”
“Yeah. I thought maybe…”
“No, no,” Dolly said. “I can’t imagine Watson’s involved in this. Not his style. I mean, Baldy boy is heading for his room because he has an appointment. That’s what I was telling you. He got some entertainment.”
“Namely?”
“Russian girl. Apparently he only likes Russians. Tall ones.”
“Anybody we know?”
“No, but I have a little information. And I got cameras in his suite.”