The Immortalist (46 page)

She was so lost in thought that she was startled when Hobbs appeared out of nowhere. “Doctor . . . ma'am—there's a call for you on the radio.”

Cricket followed him into his office. Hobbs handed her an old-fashioned chrome-plated desktop microphone on a heavy stand.

“Hello? Hello? This is Dr. Sandra Rensselaer-Wright.”

“Chris Dayton here. I'm a New Jersey state trooper. They asked me to check Teterboro Airport for a fugitive in a Cessna Corvalis airplane.”

“Have you found him?”

“No. Not so far.”

“What about the other airports? Are you checking them, too?”

“Everything within a hundred-mile radius of Manhattan is on alert. He won't get through, believe me.”

“Good. Look, I'm flying out to Teterboro myself. We're leaving in a few minutes. Can you stay until I get there?”

“Yes, Doctor. Those're my orders.”

“Thank you. Remember—avoid direct contact with Dr. Gifford at all costs. He's extremely dangerous.”

“Understood. We've mobilized our state tactical biohazard response team in Newark in case there is a sighting. I'll stay thirty feet from him if I see him.”

“Good. I'll be there as soon as I can.”

“Fly safe. Over and out.”

Cricket handed the microphone back to Hobbs.

Hobbs set it down beside his coffee mug. “I'm gonna go gas up the Baron and bring 'er onto the runway.” Turning up the collar of his Windbreaker, he headed out the rear door.

Cricket went back to the lobby to wait. On TV was a financial news program. As a gray-haired commentator looked on from his paneled studio, a sidebar showed a panning camera view of a huge crowd huddling under umbrellas and ponchos in the rain, with a voice-over by a woman reporter on the scene:

“Despite the off-and-on rain, thousands of people have camped out here at Rockefeller Center, all along the Upper Plaza and Promenade, waiting for their chance to win one of the most unusual lotteries ever. We're not talking about cash, Bob, but about that new miracle drug the whole world knows about by now—the Methuselah Vector.”

The male commentator spoke from the comfort of his warm, dry studio: “You know, Laura, there's a rumor that Eden Pharmaceuticals is planning to postpone the Lottery, with CEO Phillip Eden scheduled to make an announcement in the morning. Futures on Eden stock are down eight percent overnight. That's a loss of over four billion dollars in market cap. Staggering. Other drug stocks are also down slightly. Pfizer and Novartis, both trending down. Any sense on how the crowd there is reading the news?”

The monitor showed a close-up of the woman reporter, struggling against the wind with her umbrella. Her mascara was streaked with rain. “People are upbeat, Bob. Some have heard the rumor, but we're all waiting to see. Certainly, there's anticipation of something historic today at noon. Plane flights to JFK, LaGuardia, and Newark are booked solid as people keep pouring in. There's not a hotel room to be had anywhere in midtown Manhattan.”

“Any idea how the weather will cooperate?”

“Forecast is for the rain to end by midmorning, with clearing but partly cloudy skies after that—”

Cricket switched off the TV. The very mention of the crowd at Rockefeller Center made her nervous. Instead, she called the BSL-4 lab and had her cell phone patched into the intercom of Bay 2. She was loath to wake Emmy, but she needed to speak to her one more time before getting on that plane to New York.

“So I'm leaving you again,” she said, once Emmy was on the line. “I'm just a shit, aren't I? You always seem to come second.”

“It's cool, Mom. Dr. Freiberg explained everything.”

“I don't want it to be like this.”

“You have to go.”

“Can you forgive me?”

“Forgive you? I'm proud of you. I'd be so fucking scared in your place.”

Cricket covered her eyes, trying to hide tears that no one saw. “L-l-listen, Emmy, if something happens—” She paused to sniffle. “If . . . if—”

“Don't say it, Mom. It's bad luck.”

“What? To say I love you?”

“Yeah, that.”

“But—”

“Just come back in one piece—okay?”

“All right. I promise.”

Unable to speak more, Cricket hung up the phone and went to the window. It was dark out on the tarmac. She felt so small, looking out into the immensity of the storm. Despite her assurances to Emmy, she knew all promises were off. She was up against an adversary of extraordinary mental and physical power, and a disease for which there was no resistance or cure. They both had to be stopped.
She
had to stop them.

The game, she knew, had no limits. Gifford had bet his life on the Methuselah Vector. Stopping him might very well cost her own.

Two

GIFFORD SURVEYED THE
LONG, SLANTING SHADOWS
of the early-morning sun as they cut across the gentle western-Connecticut hills, making them seem higher, steeper, and craggier than they really were, almost a badlands. Through the cockpit window he saw a dark green valley, still blanketed in shade, and marked out not by fences but by the straight, silver lines of irrigation ditches. A white farmhouse and barn glinted brightly at the edge of a highway.

Loscalzo was gesturing excitedly. This was the spot.

Their landing strip would be a dirt work road that ran through the fields, with a ditch alongside.
Tricky
, thought Gifford.
Like landing on a rail. But my little Cessna can handle it.
Gifford circled and approached from the west. He cut to eighty knots, descending sharply just above a grove of trees, letting the wheels touch down first before pushing the wing flaps up and pressing heavily on both brake pedals. The ground was rough. Gifford felt his stomach wound tear open as he and Loscalzo bounced up and down in their seats. But a moment later, all was quiet. The blue-bellied Cessna 400 Corvalis TT had come to a halt in a cloud of dust between two green fields, about a hundred yards from where the dirt road ended at the edge of a cross-connecting ditch.

As they climbed down from the cockpit, Gifford stood for a moment with his hand against his flank.

“You okay, Doc? Want me to carry that ice chest?”

“I can manage.”

As the pain subsided, Gifford adjusted his sunglasses, picked up the ice chest, and began to follow Loscalzo between two five-foot-tall rows of broad-leafed tobacco plants. Before long, a short, balding man in a faded red shirt ran up to greet them.

“Dom? That you? Holy shit! That's some entrance you just made.”

“Travelin' in style, man.” Loscalzo embraced his greeter with a few pats on the back. “Listen—I've got good news for Mama, Frankie. Really fucking good news.”

“Oh, yeah? Who's your friend?”

“He's a famous doctor, Frankie. You know about that Methuselah Vector?”

“Sure. It's been on TV all week.”

“Well, he invented it. And he's come here himself to give Mama an injection.”

“No shit.”

Gifford looked impatiently toward the house as Frankie gave him the once-over. He flinched when Loscalzo touched him on the shoulder.

“Doc, this is my brother Frankie. Frankie, Doc G.”

A handshake followed. Frankie's grip was strong, his skin like sandpaper.

“Jesus Christ, I don't know what to say,” said Frankie as they started for the house.

“How's Mama doin'?”

“Bad. Vonda won't touch her no more, so I have a girl come in to clean her and help with her bathroom duties. But at night she just lays in it.”

“Vonda home?”

“Naw, she flew out to see her sister in Wilmington.”

They'd stopped at the bottom of a concrete stoop leading to the kitchen. Gifford was impatient with the family discussion. In New York, he knew, a crowd of thousands was waiting. “Gentlemen, if you would show me to your mother . . .”

“Sure, Doc,” said Frankie.

They led Gifford to a little room in the back of the house, across the hall from the kitchen. Gifford was struck at once by the sound of a portable TV droning away on top of a dresser, along with the faint smell of alcohol, urine, and feces. For a second he forgot where he was. That smell, so familiar, brought him back to another room, five years ago. As he glimpsed the masklike face of the woman in the upraised hospital bed, with her puffy, gray hands arranged on top of the blanket, he felt a shudder of recognition.

Doreen?

But Frankie's gravelly voice brought him back. “You want me to take your coat, Doctor?”

“No. No, I'm fine.”

“It's kinda dark in here for sunglasses. Want me to hold 'em?”

“It's all right. I have very sensitive vision.” Gifford pulled up a chair and sat down, placing the ice chest on the bed next to the woman's legs. Now, in her presence, his impatience vanished. He saw only her. “Hello, Mrs. Loscalzo. I'm Dr. Charles Gifford.”

Gifford saw the woman's lips move, but her voice was less than a whisper. “I know you,” she seemed to say, gesturing with her eyes toward the TV.

“Dom tells me you have multiple sclerosis. I've come to give you a treatment that might help. It's called the Methuselah Vector. Have you heard of it?”

The woman's lips trembled, as if trying to speak. In lieu of words, a single tear rolled down her cheek.

“Do you want me to give you the treatment, Mrs. Loscalzo?”

Her eyes closed and reopened. “Yes. Yes, Doctor, yes,” she whispered.

Gifford opened the ice chest and looked inside. “Dom, do you have any rubbing alcohol?”

Frankie held up a handful of square, red packages. “We got lots of these little alcohol pads.”

Gifford took a couple and tore them open, leaving just the tops of the alcohol-soaked gauze squares sticking out of the foil wrapper. He then gently lifted Mary Loscalzo's arm and tapped the inside of her elbow gently, until he could see the blue tinge of a vein. After wiping her skin with alcohol, he tied a rubber tourniquet around her arm and waited for the vein to rise. “Mrs. Loscalzo, I understand a little of what you've been through.”

Again, she closed and reopened her eyes.
Yes,
he imagined her saying.
It's been a living hell. At least in hell you can scream.

Gifford tore open a paper packet from the ice chest and donned the sterile blue gloves inside it. The samples of Methuselah Vector had frozen in the dry ice. Carefully removing the tube labeled
LOSCALZO
, Gifford enclosed it in the palm of his hand to thaw it. “My wife endured something like this, Mrs. Loscalzo. It almost made me lose hope. But in the end, it was my memory of her that spurred me on to create the Methuselah Vector. I was too late for her, but I'm giving you the treatment that I once dreamt I could give her.”

Mrs. Loscalzo looked at him with sympathy.

“Yes. She's gone,” said Gifford, answering her unspoken question.

The sample had thawed to body temperature. Peeling back a sterile wrapper, Gifford took up a small syringe, flipped open the top of the tube, and drew out all of the colorless liquid. With one hand he inserted the needle into the vein of the old woman's arm. With the other he yanked off the tourniquet. Then he took a deep breath and pressed the plunger.

“There. I'm done.” Gifford withdrew the syringe and used a Band-Aid to tape a folded-up square of gauze over the pierced vein. “You will soon be healthy and strong again, Mrs. Loscalzo. You will acquire beauty that will not fade.”

The woman struggled to produce a whisper. “God . . . bless . . . you . . . Doctor.”

Gifford squeezed her hand. “No need to thank me. Thank Dom. He worked very hard to get this treatment for you.” After stripping off his sterile gloves, Gifford stood up and looked at the brothers. “Why don't you let her get some rest now? There shouldn't be any side effects, but with her condition, too much excitement is not a good idea.”

“How long before this stuff works, Doctor?” asked Frankie.

“The Vector will reach full strength in three or four days. You may notice some changes by then. The plaques in her brain and spinal cord may take a week or two to heal. She should be walking and feeding herself and breathing normally after that. Of course, her muscles are severely atrophied from years of being bedridden. She'll need exercise and physical therapy. But even so, improvement will come quicker than you might expect.”

Frankie glanced at Dom and then at Gifford. “Do we need to pay you?”

Gifford shook his head. “No. We're done.”

“No more injections? Nothing?”

“No. That's it.”

“Jesus Christ. If this works, you should get the Nobel Peace Prize.”

Gifford smiled. “Is there somewhere I could clean up a bit?”

“I'll show him.” Loscalzo led Gifford up a long, straight, narrow, uncarpeted staircase, to a cramped, pink-tiled bathroom on the second floor. Loscalzo pulled out a box of four-by-four gauze pads from under the sink. “Mama's always got bedsores. We have plenty of these if you need 'em.”