Aphrodite

Curtis now joined in the grinning. "Not according to my pals at the hotel," he said.

Curtis was driving; Deena sat shotgun. Justin, a baseball cap pulled down low over his forehead, was in the backseat. As they made the turn into the Havens driveway, the protesters began booing and screaming. One of them even made a feeble attempt to kick the car, until a policeman came running over and the protester disappeared into the throng.

They drove a few feet farther, inside the gate that separated the property from the road, and reached the security checkpoint. Curtis rolled his window down as a policeman approached the car.

"Oh s.h.i.t," Justin murmured.

Deena turned around then, responding to Justin"s tone, and turned in the direction of the policeman.

"You have your pa.s.ses?" the cop asked.

Curtis nodded, handed three official laminated pa.s.ses through his window. The cop examined them, glanced at Deena, nonchalantly started to hand the pa.s.ses back to Curtis, then swiveled back to face Deena. He stared at her for several seconds, then jerked his head to look in the window of the backseat.

Justin lifted his baseball cap, raised his head to meet the cop"s stare. He saw Gary Jenkins"s mouth open, not to speak, simply to take in the rush of air he needed after his gasp. Justin said nothing, nor did he change his expression. Their eyes stayed locked. Then Gary lowered his gaze, handed the pa.s.ses back in through the driver"s window. Justin thought he saw the cop"s lips move-a silent prayer-as he waved the car forward.

Deena exhaled a breath, the one she"d been afraid to release since Gary had approached the car.

"We"re in," Curtis said.

"Just barely," Deena whispered.

Curtis opened the trunk, let them each lift out a collapsible ma.s.sage table. He asked if they wanted him to stick around, but Justin told him it wasn"t necessary. If they got caught, there was no reason for Curtis to be stuck in the middle of things. With a little luck, he said, they"d call him in a couple of hours to come pick them up.

Justin and Deena lugged their tables to the front desk, told the clerk whom they were there to see. The clerk dialed the room, got the okay, and directed them to suite 317 on the ocean side. A few minutes later they were knocking on the door of the suite and Frank Manwaring, wearing nothing but a white terry-cloth robe, was ushering them inside.

"I told them I wanted two ma.s.seuses ma.s.seuses," Manwaring said, agitated, as they set the tables down. "I didn"t want a man."

"Are you going to make me quote the words of the immortal Mick Jagger?" Justin said.

"I beg your pardon?"

"It"s a good lesson for you to learn. "You can"t always get what you want,"" Justin told him and, pulling out his gun and pointing it at the ex-secretary, the next thing he told him was to sit down and shut up.

Deena went into the bedroom, came out dragging a woman, who also wore nothing but a terry-cloth robe. The woman was attractive in a plain and simple way, about five foot five, straight black shoulder-length hair. She was thin and fragile looking, and right now she appeared terrified.

Manwaring immediately started telling Justin that he was making a huge mistake, that there were police all over the place, that if he was part of the protest group it was all an error, that n.o.body knew what was really going on.

"We actually know what"s going on," Justin told him. "Or at least a big chunk of it. And we"re not part of the protest group. We"re here to get some answers and I have to say, if we don"t get them I"m going to use this gun."

"If you pull that trigger you will never get past the lobby. You"ll be committing suicide."

"Mr. Manwaring, you may be right but I can"t say it scares me any. You don"t have any idea of the kind of s.h.i.t we"ve fallen into. If I pull this trigger, my guess is the only thing it can do is make me a lot more popular than I am right now."

"I know your voice," the woman in the robe now said to Justin. She had a soft, whispery tone that Justin thought could never become too harsh or too loud. "I recognize your voice."

"Congratulations," Justin told her. "Now please sit down and keep quiet while I ask my questions."

"You don"t understand," she said now, her voice rising to a higher pitch as she got more excited. "I recognize your voice. You left messages for me. Warnings. I know you!" Turning to Manwaring, her soft voice as loud as it could get, she said, "He"s the policeman, Frank." And turning back to Justin she said, "We"ve been trying to find you!"

"Who are you?" he asked.

"You"ve been looking for me," she told him. "I"m Helen Roag."

"Jesus Christ," Justin said to Manwaring. "Are you guys all all the same? Does every politician think with his d.i.c.k?" the same? Does every politician think with his d.i.c.k?"

"This is not what it appears to be," Manwaring said.

"That"s good. Because what it appears to be is that you"re a sleazeball married guy who"s being investigated for murdering his mistress, who flushed his career down the toilet, and who"s now f.u.c.king an FBI informant who everybody thinks is dead! What am I missing here?" Justin knew he was on the verge of losing it. His anger was overwhelming him. He remembered the breathing exercises Deena had taught him, part of her yoga session. He slowed down his breath, concentrated on slowing his whole body down. He felt himself getting calmer. The anger was still there, but he was in control of it. "Why were you trying to find me?"

"Because I suspected they were doing the same thing to you that they"ve done to me," Manwaring said.

"Which is?"

"Distort the truth. Destroy your credibility. Make sure you"re unable to reveal the things you know."

"We thought you could help us," Helen Roag said.

"We thought you could do the same for us," Deena said.

Justin walked over to a tray set on top of the television set. He took a bottle of water off the tray, opened it, and took a long sip. "I need to know what"s going on," he said. But before Manwaring could respond, the anger erupted again. "Christ," Justin said, and he stood up, looked around the room for something to throw, to destroy, couldn"t find anything, and forced himself to stop moving. "You"re one of them! Why the h.e.l.l should I believe anything you tell me?"

Manwaring didn"t say a word. Helen Roag reached over to him, touched his knee. He looked up at her and she nodded. Her eyes turned sad, deeply sad, and she nodded again. Manwaring patted her hand, turned to face Justin and Deena. "I"m a married man who cheats on his wife," he began. "Nothing else that you think is true is even remotely true."

31.

Douglas Kransten was a bona fide visionary, Frank Manwaring said. That fact was indisputable. Almost everything else about his life could most definitely be disputed. But to understand what was going on, everything had to start with Doug Kransten.

He grew up in pre-Revolutionary Cuba. His father was American, his mother Cuban. His father, a lawyer, went down to Cuba to work for an American oil company. He wound up running the company and, knowing the money to be made in the island paradise, eventually left to become a real estate developer. The Kranstens lived the life of privileged aristocrats down there. Their splendid home was in the Miramar section of Havana, and they owned a country plantation forty miles down the coast near Trinidad. Then Castro came to power. Both homes were taken away. Kransten"s father was imprisoned and then killed in an uprising. Kransten and his mother escaped to Florida, leaving behind every possession they owned. They spent three months in Miami, but Kransten couldn"t stand it there. He didn"t like being a member of the Cuban ghetto. He felt as if he had far more American blood in him, so he left his mother behind and went farther north. He settled in Georgia and started over, penniless. He was twenty-four years old.

In Atlanta, he landed a job at a pharmacy as a clerk. Fascinated by the business, he went to school, got his license, and became a pharmacist. Several years after that he went to work for Maxwell Enterprises, a small pharmaceutical company, as a sales trainee. Within seven years he was president of the company.

When he made his ascension to become head of Maxwell, Doug Kransten looked around and saw the future. What he saw was a baby-boom generation that was young and fit and spirited. They were marching in the streets and doing drugs and defying every mode of accepted fashion. And they were getting instant gratification-s.e.xually, politically, financially. What Kransten also saw, as he looked toward the end of the century, was that these baby boomers would age. They would eventually become a dominant financial power in the societal structure and they would want the same things they wanted when they were young. They were used to instant gratification, this generation, and Kransten didn"t believe age would alter that. If anything, it would intensify that urge.

He ordered the scientists working for Maxwell-its name would soon change to Kransten International-to spend their time developing pharmaceutical products that would feed into this generation"s desire for youth and pleasure. They did. They began to develop drugs that would improve s.e.xual gratification in the elderly. By the mid-nineties they had a pill that gave previously impotent men erections. Three years after the pill was introduced on the market, it generated net sales of $600 million per year-and Wall Street research showed that they had managed to tap into only approximately seven percent of the potential market. Over the years, the company made hundreds of millions of dollars easing arthritic pain with anti-inflammatories and pills that claimed to aid in cartilage regeneration. Their research department worked on creating a generic pain-relief pill. The marketing department decided to target it especially to golfers. They spent years building up brand-name recognition, knowing that all the young tennis players would one day turn to the more sedentary sport in droves-and reach for the pill whose name had been drilled into their brains via commercials and billboards. Fortunes were made with weight-loss and hair-growth products. As early as the mid-seventies, Kransten, the company, had become a corporate force to be reckoned with. By the end of the twentieth century they were a dominant global economic power.

Kransten, the man, was also a force. And he became more of one when his life changed drastically in 1970. That was when he fell in love.

Doug Kransten was thirty-six years old and Louise Marshall was twenty-eight. He was living in a house very much like the one he remembered in Havana, only this one was in the exclusive Buckhead section of Atlanta. Louise was from a small town in Mississippi. She was lovely, the very vision of a blond cheerleader, which was, in fact, what she had been all through school. Even by the time she graduated from Ole Miss, Louise did not care one whit about politics or the underprivileged or the rumblings of dissension that were starting to sweep the country. She cared about cheerleading and staying beautiful. And not just for herself. She wanted the whole world to be beautiful. So that"s what she set out to accomplish.

Like Kransten, she began in sales, for a door-to-door cosmetics company. It didn"t take her long to move into the home office in Nashville, Tennessee. She became head of Sales, then head of Sales and Marketing, and then she was made president. The company was bought by a larger cosmetics firm, based in Atlanta, and Louise was brought along for the ride. By the time she met Kransten, she was running the larger company and Time Time magazine was writing about her as the most powerful woman executive in the country under the age of forty. When she met Douglas Kransten, it was the perfect merger. She spent their first two dates telling him about her vision for beautifying the world. He spent the next two dates explaining that his mission was to keep America young. Four months later, they were married. magazine was writing about her as the most powerful woman executive in the country under the age of forty. When she met Douglas Kransten, it was the perfect merger. She spent their first two dates telling him about her vision for beautifying the world. He spent the next two dates explaining that his mission was to keep America young. Four months later, they were married.

As early as 1970, Kransten had steered his company to become one of the first of its kind to turn its energies toward genetic engineering. They were at the forefront, too, in the extraordinary compet.i.tion to map the human genome. But while others thought that the gold rush would be in the storage and sale of genomic information, Kransten knew, very early on, that it wasn"t the information that was of value. Kransten staked his fortune on what he knew best: pharmaceuticals. He gambled his future on the practical applications that were now possible with the genomic miracle. And his gamble proved correct. By the mid-1980s Kransten was the third largest pharmaceutical company in the world. He had managed to buy Louise Marshall"s company and they merged philosophies, products, and bank accounts. They were worth several billion dollars.

In 1986, the U.S. economy was starting to fail. At the same time, KranMar, as the new company was now called, and several other of the top pharmaceutical and research companies were spending hundreds of millions of dollars in the attempt to eradicate disease. They all knew that the ultimate goal was a cure for cancer. If their research could provide that, there were hundreds of billions of dollars to be made.

In September of 1986, Doug Kransten and two other pharmaceutical t.i.tans, Ronald Mayberry, CEO of MayDay, Inc., and Patrick Arnold, chairman of Selwick International, were called to Washington, D.C. There were several people high up in the administration, not the president or the vice-president, but people who made it clear that they were representing the views of both elected officials. It was explained to Kransten, Mayberry, and Arnold that the government was extremely worried about their companies" activities. They were developing products and drugs that could very possibly extend people"s lives another ten, twenty, even thirty years. With the developments that were certain to come in stem-cell research and the final mapping of the genome, it was not inconceivable that men and women would routinely live to be a hundred and twenty years old. The pharmaceutical executives agreed that it was certainly possible, but they didn"t see it happening in the immediate future. The government officials stated their position a little more clearly: It was not to happen at all. Not now, not in the immediate future, not in any future that was foreseeable.

The executives were stunned. And they demanded an explanation.

They were given one. And it was simple and obvious: The world economy could not handle it.

If the population kept exploding and people"s lives were extended, the U.S. government-all governments, in fact-could not afford to keep its infrastructure functioning. The Social Security system, which was based on the premise that each generation, as it aged, would be supported by the next working generation, could not possibly survive. It was already at the point where the postbaby boomer generation, the so-called Gen X, would be working harder and harder-and longer and longer-to support the huge throngs of nonworking elderly among the boomers. We were already near the breaking point. Further medical breakthroughs would bankrupt the country and the rest of the world.

The three CEOs understood the problem. They also understood that such an agreement was ant.i.thetical to the entire capitalistic system. Not to mention their dedication to science.

A deal was made. Science went by the wayside, but capitalism was triumphant.

The companies-along with seven other pharmaceutical companies that, over the following twelve-month period, were brought into the bargain-were allowed to continue with their research and development. But there were specified limits. Cosmetic products could be developed-fat reducers and antiwrinkle creams-and even certain drugs and medicines could be elaborated upon. s.e.x enhancers would be worth billions, and the companies were encouraged to strike out in that area. In exchange for these limits, certain allowances would be made. FDA restrictions would be relaxed. Products would be let through that might not have been allowed before. They would have the opportunity to test products on a wide-ranging-and unsuspecting-public. There was a lot of money to be made if normal regulations were eased or even erased altogether.

A lot of money.

There was one other catch, of course: This arrangement had to be secret. Absolutely, one hundred percent hidden from the public. Yes, people cared about the economy. But if word got out that the administration-any administration-was bartering with the length of life itself, well, it went without saying what would happen. It would be very difficult for any politician to win an election if it were known that he was lopping twenty years off the lives of his const.i.tuents.

The deal was done.

And it continued for years.

From one administration to the next. It didn"t matter which party; they were all politicians. They could all see the future and the same political dangers. It was a matter of their own survival.

Brewster Ford was the link, Manwaring explained. His financial ac.u.men and his ability to interpret the world economy were legendary and near infallible. His agenda was never political, which was why he was trusted by both parties. His focus was strictly, unrelentingly, on the economic picture-past, present, and future. When Ford spoke about money, the whole world listened.

Some administrations were easier to convince than others, Manwaring said. Some were cynical and receptive to anything that benefited big business, no matter the consequences. Some expressed horror at the deal but overcame their moral indignation when the political consequences became so clear. Some presidents were more detail oriented and more involved in policy decisions than others. Some didn"t want to know the specifics. One insisted on an elaborate, private presentation from Ford. But the previous three presidents had ultimately capitulated. Politics took a backseat when it came to preserving their own positions of power.

The current administration was easy. Manwaring believed that the president had no idea about the bond between the pharmaceutical companies and the government. But it didn"t matter. There had, over the past several years, been a tremendous swell against science from the religious right. Even Darwinism was under attack in several states. The president tended to share these antediluvian beliefs but, more important than embracing and spreading core philosophies, he wanted the vote from that const.i.tuency, many of whom had previously become disenfranchised from the party. His advisers-those who were aware of the backroom dealing-only had to steer him in the direction his instincts were already leading him. The president basically killed off stem-cell research in America without even being aware that he was continuing the fifteen-year-old contract. He simply was allowed to believe that he was doing the moral and politically expedient thing. There was no problem keeping the arrangement going.

And then two things occurred.

First, he, Manwaring, was named secretary of Health and Human Services. He was an old friend of this president and he liked him very much, even if he did not always share the man"s black-and-white view of the world.

Several months after he was approved by Congress, Manwaring was asked to come to a meeting at the White House. There he met with the president"s chief of staff and Brewster Ford. To his surprise, his predecessor-a liberal, from the other party-was also present. As was Chase Welles, the new head of the Food and Drug Administration. At this meeting, the arrangement with the pharmaceutical companies was explained to him and to Welles. Ford laid out the entire potentially devastating scenario. Welles seemed to have no problem with any of it. But it disturbed Manwaring. His predecessor as secretary saw his resistance and, in answer to one of Manwaring"s questions about the real necessity for the pact, said, "Necessary? Here"s how necessary this is. Forget about the government trying to ban ban cigarettes. Pretty soon we"ll have to make smoking obligatory, just so we can kill off a few billion people." cigarettes. Pretty soon we"ll have to make smoking obligatory, just so we can kill off a few billion people."

Manwaring was deeply troubled, morally and politically, by the implications of what he heard. But he accepted it. He understood that he was a crucial piece in this puzzle because so many of his decisions, so much of his work with the FDA, would be directly affected by what he was hearing. He weighed the pros and cons, listened to the arguments- all from people he respected and trusted-and he decided that he could live with such an arrangement. He decided that he was dealing with two evils, but one was definitely greater and more damaging to the world as a whole.

But things changed.

Accepting something in theory was quite different from accepting it in practice. The FDA, led by Chase Welles, approved several drugs and supplements that caused severe adverse effects. Several deaths, yes, but also many recorded cases of liver damage and heart failure. An anti-depressant, released by MayDay, drove eleven people to suicide over a three-month period. A drug that was widely used in the treatment of breast cancer, released by Selwick, damaged kidneys and caused strokes. Still, Manwaring told Justin and Deena, he remained silent. The logic, he kept telling himself, was the same that applied during wartime. It was acceptable to sacrifice the few to save the majority.

After September 11, however, he clashed with Kransten. KranMar held the patent for a drug that was extremely effective against anthrax. They did not have the facilities to make enough of it-or at least enough to satisfy a public that was panicking and desperately needed rea.s.surance. During the first few months after the World Trade Center attacks, it was nearly impossible to determine potential threats. No one knew what the terrorists were capable of or willing to do. There was a legitimate fear that anthrax could be used, via mail or via the water supply, to wipe out millions of people. Manwaring lifted KranMar"s patent, allowing a Canadian company to make a generic version of the drug. The action enabled millions more people to have access to it. But Manwaring was called into the Oval Office and told, by the president himself, that this was never to happen again. Manwaring argued-never telling the president the truth behind the pressure that was being placed on him, strictly explaining the need for such actions-but his arguments did no good. It became clear to him that the lesser of two evils could quickly become, and might already have become, the greater danger.

Three months after that, KranMar introduced a pill that was marketed as one that caused fat to bypa.s.s the body"s system entirely. It was an extraordinary success from the first day the television advertis.e.m.e.nts ran. Within a year, twenty-eight people had died after using the pills. Manwaring ordered production held up so more testing could be done. He had an extraordinary clash with Chase Welles, who publicly hinted that Manwaring was being bribed by rival pharmaceutical companies who were developing similar products. The White House did not back Manwaring, instead siding with the Food and Drug Administration chief. False information was disseminated to the media and Manwaring found his integrity and judgment attacked from both the left and the right. Still he was a good soldier and said nothing. He kept trying to look at the bigger picture and the ramifications of going public with what he knew.

Then he was contacted by Maura Greer.

At this point in the story, Helen Roag stepped forward. She had changed into a pair of khaki pants and a cotton blouse. Manwaring still wore his robe.

Helen said that she had been working at the Aker Inst.i.tute, a subsidiary of KranMar, for several years. She had a research background but was asked to a.s.sume more of a managerial role than she had antic.i.p.ated. She was stunned at the raises she was given, so she rarely argued about the responsibilities they were a.s.signing to her. She knew she was being paid two, three, even four times the amount someone in her position should have been paid.

At some point, she was asked to have lunch with Douglas Kransten himself. She was dumbfounded but, no question about it, flattered. He praised her work to the skies, and then, midway through the meal, he began to talk to her about a special a.s.signment. One that he said was a little tricky. There was some risk involved, he said, but its scientific value was incalculable. He said that as early as 1970, he had become convinced that human growth hormones were the key to eradicating many of the problems that struck the human body as it aged. He"d had a team of scientists working on it since that time. Kransten told Helen that they"d done some experiments around the country, beginning as early as 1972. They"d had astonishing success with some of their subjects. He showed her that, in the northeast region alone, eighteen subjects-ten males, eight females-had lived to be over one hundred years old. Kransten was convinced-no, more than convinced, absolutely certain-that his people had discovered a way to slow down the aging process.

He showed her some of the experimentation. Groups of people had been fed and injected with various combinations of such supplements as L-arginine and glycine and L-ornithine and L-glutamine. There were some miraculous results at first. Wounds healed, immune responses to bacteria, viruses, and tumor cells improved. The loss of skeletal muscle diminished, as did fatigue. Gradually, the results became even more miraculous. Many of those who had partic.i.p.ated in the experiments were living longer. The aging process had been delayed, in some cases substantially. Helen had looked at the data, agreed that it was interesting and impressive, but she disagreed with him that the proof was absolute.

It"s not ready to be released to the public, he told her. There are problems. But the problems are close to being solved.

We are on the verge of doubling the life span of the normal human being, Kransten told her. And there is absolute, undeniable proof. And there is absolute, undeniable proof.

She asked to see it, but he just shook his head. The proof is overseas, he told her. Someday she would see it. But not yet.

He told her what he wanted her to do and she agreed. The money he added to her salary was the main inducement, but so was the scientific value of his experiment. Everything had to be done in strict secrecy. They were doing a good thing, Kransten said, but the government did not agree. They will never allow this, he told her, until it"s absolutely safe and proven. But it was a Catch-22. The only way to reach that stage was to continue with the forbidden experimentation. She accepted his logic.

She was a.s.signed to half of the eighteen survivors of the early 1970s testing. She saw each of them every three months. If they needed her they could contact her via Growth Industries, a sh.e.l.l corporation set up only to distance KranMar from the subjects. All of the elderly subjects were living at different old-age homes. Their expenses were fully paid. They were given anything they needed to make their lives easier and pleasurable. When she saw them, she not only collected new data, she was charged with giving them their hormone injections. The experiments had continued all these years. What was being injected varied, as testing and information had gotten so much more sophisticated over this period. But the ones who survived continued to survive. Several of them outlived the managers of their homes. She had one subject, in Vermont, who was now 122 years old-and healthy and vital.

But the more involved she became, the more misgivings she began to have.

The original series of experiments in 1972 was given the appellation Aphrodite, named after the ancient Greek G.o.ddess of love and beauty. They were conducted in upstate New York, near Binghamton, in a private hospital owned by Kransten. As Helen learned more about them- from discussions with her subjects and, gradually, from the files she either had access to or managed to steal-she began to realize the extent of the damage that had been done. Yes, there were eighteen survivors of the initial experiments. But over a hundred subjects had died as a direct result of the treatments.

Then something happened that forced her into action. She had noticed that Kransten and his wife were spending much time in Europe, particularly at their house in England. She arranged a meeting with one of Kransten"s researchers, a young and attractive man named Lonnie Parker, who had been spending time in the England lab. It wasn"t anything out of the ordinary; it was part of her job to remain current on research matters. But Dr. Parker was-and here Helen hesitated, had the grace to blush slightly, before continuing on with her story-interested in her. Romantically interested. Well-and Helen blushed again-s.e.xually interested. She saw him several times. He would only give her minor details about the experiments taking place in England. She learned that the main lab was actually in Kransten"s home, which she hadn"t realized. But, although she sensed he wanted to talk, he shied away from revealing anything substantive. On their third date, however, he had too many margaritas and he began to talk about what he"d seen in England. He still wouldn"t come out and tell her exactly what was going on, but he used a strong word for a scientist. He used the word "unG.o.dly" when he described the program known as Aphrodite.

The next morning, when Lonnie Parker sobered up, he begged her not to repeat anything he"d said. He told her it would be dangerous for her if any rumors were traced back to her. "Dangerous?" she asked, and she remembered laughing. Parker didn"t laugh. He told her he was going to resign. That he was not able to deal with what he had seen and done over the past few months. He was going to resign that very day.

"What happened to Dr. Parker?" Justin asked. "Where is he now?" Helen Roag shook her head. "I never saw him again," she said. "We were supposed to have dinner that night. After he resigned. He never called."

"Did you call him?"

"Of course I did. I left messages on his answering machine for two days. Then it stopped picking up. I went by his house one afternoon. There were two men in there. I only talked to one of them-he opened the door-but I could see the other one, off to the side in the den. He was looking through Lonnie"s bookcase. The man I spoke to said that Lonnie didn"t live there anymore. He asked if I wanted to leave my name, that he"d be speaking to Lonnie and would give him a message."

"Did you?"

She shuddered. "Something told me that I didn"t want them to know who I was."

"And you never heard from Parker again?"

"No."

"What do you think happened to him?"

"I think they killed him," Helen said. "I think they couldn"t let somebody walk away from Aphrodite, not someone who they sensed might talk about it. So they killed him."

She went to the FBI after that, she said, to the Boston bureau and told her suspicions to the agent in charge, Wanda c.h.i.n.kle. Wanda spoke to her superiors. She asked Helen to remain in Kransten"s employ, to keep doing exactly what she"d been doing, but to report in regularly to the FBI and to keep them informed of anything that happened with Aphrodite.

She did exactly as they asked. Partly, she said, out of fear. She was afraid to leave after what had happened to Lonnie Parker. But after a year of pa.s.sing along information, of keeping her eyes open, her suspicions all began to seem foolish to her. Maybe Lonnie really had simply left town. Maybe she"d just become paranoid because of the odd nature of her job and the strange area of experimentation she was involved with. Then, her fear and suspicions rose again. Several of her subjects- and those tended to by Ed Marion-died. But that wasn"t all. There were other deaths, and many of those she was certain were connected to the Aphrodite project. People at the old-age home suddenly died in their sleep. Friends of the subjects were in fatal car accidents or fell down the steps of their home. She became certain that not only was Kransten protecting his secret by killing those who discovered it, she began to realize that the FBI was also protecting his secret. They were not using her information, she realized, to put Kransten in jail. The info she pa.s.sed along was disappearing down a black hole. When she pressed her FBI contacts, they turned evasive, even threatening. And she noticed another pattern emerging: Drugs developed by KranMar that were not yet ready for public consumption were being approved by the FDA and released into the marketplace. She tried to tell herself she was being paranoid but couldn"t talk herself out of her conviction that some kind of huge web of deceit was being played out.

Helen had a close friend from college. They were two years apart, Helen the elder of the two. She got an e-mail from her friend saying that she was interning at the FDA. The friend came up to Boston for a weekend, for a reunion of college pals. On Sunday night, Helen got very drunk and told her friend all about her suspicions. The friend said that she might be able to sniff around and see what was what. She had access to a lot of people as well as a lot of information. She was just an intern, she told Helen, so no one took her seriously. She might really be able to find the truth and stay under the radar.