Scorpion's Advance (8 page)

The service bus hurtled through the town traffic, the driver's foot either hard on the accelerator or hard on the brake. Anderson took what little comfort he could from the fact that neither
Langman nor his fellow passengers seemed to notice anything amiss. He tried to concentrate on the sights that were flashing by, silhouetted date palms, neon signs in Hebrew, the splash of light from a pavement cafe, until Langman eventually nudged him as the bus lurched to a halt. As they climbed down, Anderson was aware of the driver tapping the inside of his signet ring against the steering wheel in his impatience to be away from his enforced pit stop. The pavement felt wonderfully still.

'So you were right and they were wrong,' said
Langman when Anderson had finished telling him what he was doing in Tel Aviv.

'It's not that simple,' replied Anderson. 'I've shown that there is some kind of serious problem connected with the plasmid or the drug but we've still to find out what it is.'

'How long will that take?'

'We should know tomorrow whether it's the drug or the plasmid.'

'What's the betting?'

'Evens.'

Anderson insisted on paying for the meal and they left the cafe to walk through the narrow lanes of the restored artists' quarter of old Jaffa, flanked by minarets and towers of an age gone by.

Langman
said, 'I guess if it turns out to be the drug, the pharmaceutical company are in big trouble.'

'Agreed.'

'Mind you, it would be an interesting case,' said Langman.

'How so?'

'From what you have said, this plasmid thing is required to induce lethal changes in the drug.'

'Yes.'

'But you also said that the plasmid was man-made?'

'Yes, it was.'

'Then the drug company could argue that there is nothing wrong with their drug at all. It's perfectly safe with anything in the natural world.'

Langman
had stressed the word 'natural' and Anderson took his point. 'Maybe the company will brief you for the defence,' he said.

Langman's
job prospects disappeared at eight on the following morning when Cohen and Anderson inspected the test animals; three were dead and three were alive. The test using Anderson's plasmid culture and the Israeli Galomycin had proved lethal. The Israeli version of PZ9 had had no effect on the animals.

Cohen said that he would inform Strauss while Anderson went to the telex office to send a message home. He addressed it to John Kerr and it said simply, 'PLASMID LETHAL NOT DRUG'.

For once Anderson was not conscious of the blistering heat as he walked slowly back across the campus carrying the full implication of what had been discovered on his shoulders. Martin Klein had been carrying a cloning vector in his gut and it had killed him. Could the thing have mutated inside him? Could a harmless bacterial gene really have become so deadly through spontaneous change? It was a straw that Anderson felt unable to grasp with any degree of conviction, but on the other hand, alternative explanations had all the attraction of a field full of stinging nettles. There had to be something wrong with the Israeli explanation of what gene the plasmid was carrying . . . Could Strauss and Cohen be lying?

'Dr Anderson,' said Strauss, 'tell us again how you came to conclude that the plasmid found in Martin Klein was our PZ9.'

Anderson went through the story, step by step, of how he had isolated a plasmid from specimens taken from Klein at post-mortem. The Molecular Biology Department had performed restriction analysis on it and identified it positively as PZ9, an Israeli cloning vector. Klein was an Israeli; Klein had worked in the lab in Tel Aviv where the plasmid originated. It all fitted.

'It seems watertight,' s
aid Strauss with a sigh of resignation. Cohen shrugged in agreement.

'Do you have a copy of the analysis with you?' Strauss asked Anderson, who said that he had and excused himself while he went to fetch Teasdale's report. He handed it to Strauss who read it quickly, his head moving slightly from side to side as he scanned the data. His head suddenly stopped moving and he frowned as if deep in thought.

'Is something wrong?' asked Anderson.

'The size of the insert,' said Strauss slowly. 'Your colleague found it to be two point seven
kilobases of DNA. We know it to be two point nine.'

'So the British measured it wrongly,' said Cohen.

'A difference of nought point two,' said Strauss, still deep in thought.

'Perhaps it underwent some kind of change in Klein's gut,' suggested Anderson.

'A spontaneous deletion of part of the gene? It's possible, I suppose,' said Strauss.

'But unlikely,' added Cohen, satisfied with his own explanation of a British error.

The room lapsed into silence again as Strauss considered and Cohen and Anderson waited. The air conditioning fan seemed to get louder as the minutes ticked by, and Anderson took to watching the progress of a small, stone-coloured lizard as it climbed up the sun-baked exterior surface of the building.

At length, Strauss threw his pen down on the desk and pushed up his glasses to rub his eyes. 'There is no easy way,' he said through stretched lips. 'We must analyse the DNA from both versions of the plasmid and find out the difference for ourselves.'

Strauss's decision sentenced Anderson and Cohen to three days' hard work with little or no rest, days that were made more difficult by Cohen's stubborn refusal to thaw in the camaraderie of joint effort. Anderson was glad when Friday evening came round and he went to have dinner with Myra and Sam Freedman.

The arrangement was that Sam Freedman would pick up Anderson at seven on his way home from the Institute at
Hadera. He was ready by a quarter to and waited out on the roof until he saw a white Mercedes glide silently to a halt outside the apartments. He ran down the stairs to save Freedman the trouble of climbing up and was met by a short swarthy man with hawk-like features and darting eyes that analysed everything they saw.

'Sam Freedman?' enquired Anderson.

'Neil Anderson, I presume,' said Freedman, stretching out his hand. 'Good to meet you.' As they shook hands Freedman slapped Anderson on the shoulder, a gesture that made Anderson mark him down as an extrovert. The slightly proud walk and exaggerated swing of the arms as they walked to the car added weight to the diagnosis.

There was an eerie silence about the streets as they sped across the city. It prompted Anderson to say that it seemed more like two in the morning than early evening.

'Shabbat,'
said Freedman, 'the Jewish Sabbath. Sundown on Friday till sundown on Saturday. If you think this is quiet, you should see Jerusalem. Nothing moves.' Freedman took a hand off the wheel to make a chopping gesture. 'We would risk being stoned driving through certain parts of the capital on
Shabbat.'

'By whom?' asked Anderson.

'Religious nuts,' said Freedman.

Freedman's answer told Anderson what he wanted to know about the man's own religious commitment. 'I thought that Tel Aviv was the capital,' he said.

Freedman threw his head back and gave a guffaw. 'For Israelis, Jerusalem is the capital. The Americans and the British like to pretend it's still Tel Aviv. They don't like offending the Arabs.'

The car turned off the main thoroughfare and purred quietly through back streets before swinging round into the drive of a white-painted villa with a flat roof. It was surrounded by dense shrubbery giving off a heady mixture of scents.

'Here we are,' Freedman announced. He got out and slammed the door behind him. Anderson closed his with a gentle click and followed his host into the house. He waited while Sam and Myra embraced, before being welcomed by Myra and shown into a beautifully appointed room. The walls were pastel blue and hung with what Anderson considered to be better examples of modern art, while the seating, a variety of chairs and couches in matching soft leather, lined the walls in tasteful proximity to floor-standing lamps and spotlights. Here and there, religious items appeared and reminded Anderson that he was in a Jewish household. Their presence puzzled him slightly after what Freedman had said in the car. Freedman noticed him glance at the menorah, the Jewish candlestick, and appeared to read his mind. 'For a Jew it's hard to separate religion from tradition, they are so intermingled.'

'It must give you a sense of history,' said Anderson.

'Some of it offends the intellect,' said Freedman. 'On the other hand, it's comforting to be part of something that has spanned the centuries. We all need a sense of belonging though we might not care to admit it.'

Sam Freedman, it turned out, was as different from Cohen as Anderson could have possibly hoped. Whereas Cohen found it difficult to speak, Freedman found it difficult to stop. His quicksilver mind darted from one subject to the next without pause and, unlike Jacob Strauss who considered everything before speaking, Freedman would say the first thing that came into his head and modify it rapidly in succession as objections arose in his own mind. Anderson experienced at first hand the restless intellect that had made Sam Freedman one of the world's foremost researchers in medical biochemistry. He asked him about the
Kalman Institute.

'We supply technical expertise and research facilities to companies who can't afford, or don't want, to set up their own,' said Freedman.

'Sounds interesting,' said Anderson with as much enthusiasm as he could muster.

Sam Freedman laughed out loud and said, 'Thank you for your politeness but we both know that it's anything but interesting. In fact, testing other people's cosmetics for potential allergy problems is possibly the most boring job on earth. But it makes a lot of money for the Institute and provides a lot of employment.'

'What about your research work?' asked Anderson.

'I get a small grant from the Institute which enables me to carry on my own work, and the facilities at the
Kalman are second to none.'

'Doesn't the Institute have a say in what you work on?'

'No, I have complete academic freedom. The only restriction is financial; if I come up with anything that makes money, the Kalman gets sixty per cent, I get forty.'

'I'd like to see round the Institute before I go back,' said Anderson.

'You would be very welcome.'

As they relaxed after dinner, Freedman turned the conversation to the reason for Anderson being in Israel.

'I understand your visit here has something to do with the death of Martin Klein,' said Freedman.

'And the deaths of two other people,' agreed Anderson.

'Myra said that you found something strange in Klein's body.'

'A plasmid.'

'Lots of us have plasmids inside us.'

'This one was a cloning vector.'

Freedman gave a low whistle. 'I see, and you think it came from Tel Aviv?'

'Yes, it's one of Professor Strauss's - PZ9. Klein worked in that lab during his vacation.'

'Yes, I remember.'

'You knew Martin Klein?'

'Myra brought him home for dinner once. A very clever young man.'

'So I hear.'

It was well after midnight when Sam Freedman drove Anderson back to his apartment through streets that were deserted and silent. Freedman's Mercedes sped north like a white ghost through Ramat Aviv, along the broad sweep of Ha Universita and turned into Einstein to stop outside the university apartments.

'Don't forget. Whenever you want to see round the
Kalman, just tell Myra and we'll fix something up.'

Anderson said that he w
ould.

Anderson's alarm went off at six and the headache, a legacy of the Freedmans' hospitality, made sure that he stayed awake. It faded after a long shower and a good breakfast and had completely gone by the time he set off for the lab. It was Saturday,
Shabbat,
and Anderson was alone on the streets as he walked up Einstein and crossed the normally busy intersection without having to wait for assistance from the traffic lights. He knew that he and Cohen would be the only two working today but that grim prospect was to some extent offset by the knowledge that today would see an end to their work and provide an answer.

An unexpected relief from the silent strain of Cohen's company came just after eleven when Myra Freedman came into the lab to deal with some work that Professor Strauss had asked her to take care of. Anderson joked about his hangover and thanked her for dinner.

'Glad you enjoyed yourself. How is the work going?' 'Another couple of hours and we should know.' Myra had long gone when Cohen and Anderson watched the computer printer chatter into life and give them their answers.

SAMPLE ONE: PLASMID PZ9: INSERT 2.9 SAMPLE TWO: PLASMID PZ9: INSERT 2.7

Anderson looked at Cohen but the Israeli avoided his eyes. There really was a difference in the size of the inserted genes and, what was more, the computer agreed with the figure provided by Teasdale in the Molecular Biology Department back home.

'Well, well,' said Anderson, enjoying the moment.

Cohen ignored him and feigned deep concentration while he typed his next question into the computer. He sat with his arms folded and his glasses perched perilously near to the end of his nose while he waited for the answer.

The printer stuttered out its reply. GENE H
OMOLOGY: NIL.

All thoughts of self-satisfaction left Anderson as he pushed himself forward in his chair. 'But that should read one hundred per cent,' he said quietly, but there was no mistaking the alarm in his voice.

Cohen did not say anything. He retyped the question.

Chatter . . . Chatter . . . GENE HOMOLOGY: NIL.

'But this is crazy!' Anderson protested. 'The computer is saying that there is no similarity at all between the two inserts. It's not just a case of a small piece of DNA being lost from one of them. They never were the same! They are entirely different genes.'

Cohen stared at the screen and shook his head.
‘I don’t understand,' he said, ‘I simply do not understand. A small deletion of the original gene was possible . . . but this?'

Anderson looked for signs of acting on Cohen's part but could not be sure. It was difficult to spot any emotion in Cohen. He turned the screw. 'Correct me if I'm wrong, Doctor,' he said, 'but doesn't this mean that in the case of the Klein plasmid someone cloned a different gene into PZ9?'

Cohen moved in discomfort. 'Possibly Klein himself.'

'Who did he work with in the lab when he was here?' asked Anderson.

'Me.'

'Well?'

Cohen took a deep breath but fumed inwardly. 'Just what are you suggesting?' he said in a hoarse whisper.

‘I
think you know,' said Anderson.

Cohen's face quivered slightly as the anger within him threatened to erupt. 'You think that I participated in an illegal experiment with the student Klein! You think that I am in some way responsible for the deaths of innocent people!'

Anderson's pulse was racing. To see such a usually unemotional man suffused with rage was unnerving, frightening even. He said, 'Someone in this place knows more than they care to admit and you were Klein's supervisor . . . ' For a moment Anderson thought that Cohen was about to strike him but, at the last moment, he turned on his heel and stormed out of the room leaving Anderson to expel his breath slowly in relief.

Anderson sat still for a moment feeling drained after the angry, unpleasant scene. He had remained outwardly calm but his heart was thumping and his stomach felt hollow. He hoped Cohen had left the building for anger and suspicion hung in the air like lightning looking for a passage to earth, and he and Cohen were the only people there. He collected the computer printouts and returned to the lab.

As he reached the bench, Anderson's preoccupation turned to terror for, as he moved his stool to open the drawer holding his lab book, a glass container came crashing down from the gantry above the work surface and shattered. The unmistakably acrid fumes of hydrochloric acid filled his lungs as the liquor turned to fire on his skin and nightmare thoughts of disfigurement and blindness filled him with panic. He groped his way to the sink with his eyes screwed tightly shut in a desperate attempt to save his eyesight and clawed over the cold, smooth metal to find the taps. His hands were now smoking as the acid burned into the flesh and he let out a curse as a drop found its way into the corner of his left eye. The stream of water from the taps seemed painfully inadequate to his needs as he sluiced what he could gather in his hands up to his face.

All at once a great deluge of water hit Anderson, soaking him from head to toe,
and then another as Cohen emptied a second twenty-litre carboy of distilled water over him.

'This way!' insisted Cohen as he dragged Anderson, who still had his eyes tightly shut, along the corridor to what, Anderson felt, must be certain death. He could see it now, an accident in the lab. Blinded with acid, frantic with pain, it would be assumed that he had stumbled and crashed through a sixth-floor window to his death.

Cohen pushed him and Anderson fell backwards, waiting for the crash of glass and the fall through space. He slid down the cold tiling of the shower that Cohen had pushed him into; Cohen turned on the water and said, 'I will be right back.'

Anderson tore at his smouldering clothes.

'Here, use this!' Cohen pressed a large sponge into Anderson's hands. 'It's mild alkali.' Cohen recharged the sponge at intervals as Anderson neutralized the remaining acid on his skin. 'Your eyes, can you see?'

Anderson opened his eyes cautiously, one at a time, keeping the alkali sponge ready. 'Yes ... I can see.'

'Mainly superficial,' said Cohen, applying the final dressing to Anderson's hands. 'You were very lucky.'

‘I’ll
say,' said Anderson quietly, still trembling with the after effects of shock. 'I'm in your debt, Dr Cohen. If it had not been for you . . .’

'Please, say no more.'

Anderson's gratitude was qualified by a lingering doubt: despite Cohen's quick actions in saving him from disfigurement and blindness, he could still not believe that the Israeli was completely innocent in the affair.

'Perhaps you should be admitted to hospital,' said Cohen.

Anderson insisted that that would not be necessary; he would much rather go back to his apartment.

'I have some spare clothing in my locker,' said Cohen and went to get it.

Anderson put on the shirt and trousers that Cohen returned with and looked at the charred remains of his own clothing. He shuddered.

'At least let me drive you to your apartment,' said Cohen.

Anderson declined, saying that a short walk in the sunshine was just what he needed to wipe out the trauma of the last half-hour.

Cohen shrugged. 'Very well,
until tomorrow then.'

'Indeed, and thank you again.'

Anderson walked slowly across the campus and paused to sit in the shade of a tree for a while before he left the grounds. He could now think objectively about what had happened. How had the acid fallen from the gantry? He had used it the previous day and was sure that the bottle had not been balanced near the edge. The container had crashed down when he had moved the stool, but he had not hit it against the bench; in fact, he had pulled it
away
from the bench. Curiosity persuaded Anderson to change his mind about returning to his apartment; he walked back to the medical school.

As he stepped out of the elevator on the sixth floor, Anderson heard a noise and stopped in his tracks; there was someone in his lab! He tiptoed to the door and looked in. It was Cohen; he was bending down near the bench where the accident had happened.

'Something wrong, Doctor Cohen?'

Cohen spun round in surprise and looked flustered. 'The acid . . . the cleaners in the morning ... I thought I'd better
check that none remained . . .'

Anderson walked towards him and squatted down on his heels to see what Cohen had been looking at. An electric cable was wound round one of the legs of
his stool. He traced the cable up and over the gantry where it terminated in a plug socket on the other side. It was the supply cable for a small, under-bench fridge.

'Your stool was caught in the cable,' said Cohen. 'When you pulled it out, the cable brought the acid bottle down
; most unfortunate.'

'Most,' said Anderson flatly.

Miles Langman was on the roof of the apartment building when Anderson returned; he was hanging out some newly washed clothes on an improvised line. He stopped when he saw Anderson and stared. 'I figured we Jews had some screwy customs,' he said, 'but we don't have one that says you bandage your hands and wear your trousers eight sizes too large . . . '

'Beer?'

'Please.'

Anderson got two beers from his fridge and told
Langman about the accident.

'Shit! That isn't funny.'

'No,' agreed Anderson, 'it wasn't.' He took a long swig of the ice-cold beer, and Langman looked at his bandaged hand holding the can. 'Are your hands going to be OK?' he asked.

Anderson assured him that the damage had been restricted to superficial burns; it was what might have been that still kept getting to him.

'I can understand that,' said Langman solemnly.

Anderson sat down with his back against the parapet wall. 'It's been quite a day, all in all.' He told
Langman about the computer report on the plasmids.

'You mean the kid was doing experiments on his own?'

That's the story, but I don't believe it.'

'You think he couldn't have done it?'

'Oh, he could have done it all right, just as physics students are capable of building hydrogen bombs. I'm just saying that he could not have done it without someone knowing.'

'This "other gene" that he cloned, what was it?'

'Anybody's guess.'

'Can't you find out?'

'No. In theory it could have come from any living thing on earth, from a virus to a palm tree.'

'So what do you do now?'

Anderson shook his head slowly. He was trying to think of an answer to another question. Why did Langman want to know so much?

Anderson got in to find a letter lying on his desk, but the bandages on his hands made it difficult for him to deal with. He fumbled around till he found something to serve as a paperknife and slit it open. It was from John Kerr; he was relaying a request from the dean of the medical school that Anderson should visit Martin Klein's home in Caesarea and convey the sympathy of all the students and staff. He stuffed the letter into his desk drawer and sighed,' ... all the good jobs.'

Strauss arrived in the lab looking old and troubled. Anderson could see that he already knew. 'Come in, Dr Anderson,' he said, standing in his office doorway. 'Dr Cohen telephoned me last night.' They were joined a few minutes later by Cohen who enquired about Anderson's hands. Strauss, who had been deep in thought, looked up and asked the same question.

'I'm fine,' said Anderson.

'Dr Anderson thinks that we’ve been doing secret cloning experiments,' said Cohen, putting an end to the pleasantries.

'Really?'  
said Strauss,   looking over his glasses   at Anderson.

Anderson kept his cool and said, 'I do find it difficult to believe that a third-year medical student could carry out a sophisticated cloning experiment in this laboratory without anyone realizing it.'

Strauss continued to stare at him for a long moment before finally saying, 'Yes, Doctor, I think I agree with you.' It was Cohen's turn to receive the stare.

'I don't know how he did it, but he must have,' said Cohen.

A sudden silence fell on the room as the air conditioning fan ceased to function. 'A power failure,' said Strauss as, almost immediately, the temperature began to climb.

'Was Klein ever in the lab for long periods on his own?' asked Anderson.

'No, never,' said Cohen.

'Did he keep a lab book?'

'Of course.'

'May I see it?'

Cohen left the room and returned within moments to hand Anderson a dark blue notebook. He opened it and began to read as a first trickle of sweat ran down the hollow of his back. The notes were a minor work of art, the product of a mind obviously obsessed with neatness. The cloning experiments were those outlined by Strauss in his initial correspondence; there was no mention of any private venture. Anderson leaned forward and placed the book on Strauss's desk saying, 'I wish all student notes were like that.'

Strauss nodded with a weak smile, and Anderson could see the sweat on his forehead as the temperature in the room continued to rise.