Alchemist

  A brown envelope lay inside on his laptop. He removed a folded sheet of computer paper from it and read the wording: ‘Bendix Schere Maternox. Product Code: BS PR65789/0987. Quality Control Analysis Procedure.’

  Monty looked at it curiously. She had only ever seen the research side of the pharmaceutical industry, although she had a working knowledge of the production processes. A column of figures ran along the bottom of the sheet; along the top axis was a plot like a heart trace but with no spikes below the baseline.

  Conor shut the door. ‘OK, I need the capsules. You got the regular ones as well, no problem?’

  ‘I told my doctor I’d been trying to get pregnant for two years without success. He wrote me a prescription then and there.’

  He looked at her to see if she was joking. ‘Just like that? No tests? No examinations? No specialist?’

  She grinned. ‘He’s a family friend. Actually I told him Father needed some Maternox in a hurry to do some experiments on and it was easier than getting some sent down by the company. I think he knows me well enough to trust me not to swallow them.’

  Monty removed two vials from the small, zipped compartment inside her bag and proffered them to him. One contained the capsules she had taken from the Kingsleys’, the other, the brand new ones, from a totally different batch number.

  Conor removed the lid of the Kingsleys’ vial, coaxed one capsule into a shallow glass dish, and labelled it ‘A’. Then he replaced the cap, sealing the remaining capsules in the vial and gave it back to her. Next he took a capsule from the fresh vial, put it into an identical dish and labelled that ‘B’.

  Then he weighed the two. They were very similar. He broke open each capsule and examined the tiny granules with his naked eye, then in turn extracted a single granule from each capsule and examined them under the microscope. They still appeared identical.

  He proceeded to pour the contents of the Kingsleys’ capsule into a tiny glass tube then, using a pipette, he carefully added water to fill the tube sufficiently to cover the granules, screwed on the plastic cap, then placed it in the clamp of an electronic agitator and switched on.

  The contents of the capsule began to dissolve. After a couple of minutes the granules had disappeared completely and the solution was the colour of cod liver oil. Then, using another pipette, he drew the solution containing the dissolved drug out of the test tube and emptied it into a quartz cuvette, which he inserted into a scanning spectrophotometer. He also followed the same procedure with the second capsule.

  He worked in silence for some minutes, then switched off the machine and pointed to the Kingsleys’ vial in Monty’s hand. ‘Are you absolutely sure these capsules really are Maternox?’

  ‘I can’t be a hundred per cent sure, no. They were in this vial – and they look like Maternox, so I assumed they were. Why?’

  He shook his head, pensively.

  ‘It’s kind of weird.’

  Something about his expression sent a tiny coil of fear inside Monty. ‘What is?’

  ‘I’m getting some correlation, but it’s only partial.’ Frowning, he traced some patterns on the outside of the glass with his finger, then turned to Monty with deep concern. ‘There’s something else in here. And I don’t think it’s just some quality fault in the batch: something’s been added to the formulation. Deliberately added.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘I don’t know. Don’t even know where to start looking. I’d have to start a series of trial and error tests and see if we get lucky.’ He looked at the clock on the wall. It was ten past eleven. ‘How’s your time?’

  ‘I’m OK.’

  ‘This could take hours.’

  ‘Want me to make some coffee?’

  ‘This isn’t going to be much of a Saturday for you.’

  ‘I told you, I seem to have spent most of my life in here. Another day’s not going to make much difference.’ She smiled, masking another coil of fear.

  71

  Conor worked for several hours in deep concentration. Monty whiled away the time by reading and re-reading the Medici File on his laptop, by searching again for her father’s missing files and then by going for a walk around the campus.

  It was growing dark as she came back into the lab. She kissed Conor, who was now wearing the white lab coat she had found for him, but his attention was absorbed in holding a microfuge tube against a vortex mixer.

  He switched off the machine and held up the tiny test tube; she watched as he placed the tube inside a small blue bench centrifuge, added a balance tube containing the control sample from capsule B on the opposite side, closed and secured the lid, then switched it on. There was a sharp whine, followed by a deep thrumming sound.

  Monty watched it for a few moments, then her gaze wandered along the wooden benches and tables, the silent machinery, the racks of tubes and vials and bottles. Her mind drifted back to the horror of Jake Seals and she shuddered.

  There was a click and the centrifuge began to slow down. Conor opened the lid, lifted out the Kingsley Maternox sample and held it up to the overhead light. The contents had separated into three distinct layers; the bottom a yellow liquid; the centre interface a white suspension, and the top a clear, aqueous liquid.

  Using a micropipette he drew off the top layer and squirted it into another microfuge tube resting in a rack. Then he added two and a half times the volume again of ethanol, stoppered it, shook it gently by hand, then placed it into the centrifuge, repeated the procedure with the control sample, and switched it on.

  He left it to spin for ten minutes. While they waited they exchanged only a few words, the air thick with tension. The timer eventually clicked and the centrifuge slowly came to a standstill. There was a moment of suspense, then Conor lifted out the tiny tube and again held it up to the light. The top three quarters was a clear solution, the bottom a solid white pellet. He drew off the liquid, immersed the tiny pellet in water, capped the tube, duplicated the procedure with the control sample and vortexed them again.

  ‘OK,’ he said suddenly, breaking a long silence. ‘Moment of truth coming up.’

  He walked several paces and stopped beside a flat, clear perspex gel box, a piece of apparatus with which Monty had become very familiar over the years. He mixed gel powder agarose with salt solution and microwaved it for four minutes; then he poured it into a gel tray. While it was still liquid he put in perforated Perspex combs, then, leaving it to set, he checked out the darkroom. When the gel was set he removed the combs leaving sets of slots in the gel, and put the tray into the gel box.

  Next he added blue dye to both Maternox samples, and to a calibration standard solution. Then, carefully and laboriously, one drop at a time, he put the Maternox and the calibration standard into adjacent slots. Finally he plugged the machine into a power pack and switched on. Tiny inky blue marks appeared where the solution lay in the gel. Slowly, over the next fifteen minutes, the blue began to migrate towards the right.

  ‘Fancy some fresh air?’ he asked Monty, when he was satisfied it was running properly. ‘It’s going to take about another forty minutes.’

  Monty nodded, gratefully. She was ravenous and they headed across to the university’s almost empty refectory. Here they sat, comfortably out of earshot of anyone else, with two large bowls of hot goulash.

  In spite of their privacy, Monty kept her voice low. ‘Conor, I keep thinking there must be a reason for calling it the Medici File. I mean, they’ve used Polyphemus, who was one of the Cyclops, and so the connection there’s pretty evident. What’s the logic behind Medici?’

  Conor dug a spoon into his goulash. ‘The Medicis were a powerful family in Florence during the Renaissance, right?’

  ‘Yes. Pretty brutal but big patrons of the arts, literature and learning in general.’

  He raised the spoon to his lips and blew on it. ‘I guess that’s probably the significance.’

  Monty shook her head. ‘I think there’s something more.’

  ‘Like wh
at?’

  ‘I don’t know. Polyphemus is kind of a sick joke, but it has a logic to it. I think we’re going to find the same thing with Medici.’

  He chewed slowly and swallowed. ‘What about the other file, the one that I couldn’t access: Latona? Does Latona mean anything to you?’

  ‘Latona?’ She repeated the word a couple of times. ‘Yes! Isn’t it in Ovid’s Metamorphoses? The Roman name of Leto, mother by Jupiter of Apollo and Diana? The legend is that she was insulted by Lycian shepherds who were then turned into frogs.’

  Frogs.

  As she said the word, she felt deeply uncomfortable, suddenly reminded of the frog that had come into her kitchen the other night. ‘God, that’s weird,’ she said.

  Conor gave her a strange half-smile, obviously recalling the same incident. ‘You have a thing about frogs, right? They terrify you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Have you ever been up to Dr Crowe’s office?’

  She had to think for a moment. ‘No – I’ve only been to Rorke’s. Why?’

  ‘I just happened to notice – actually you can’t miss it – he has a papier-mâché frog on his desk. It’s kind of weird looking.’

  ‘Hey!’ she said. ‘Sir Neil has a frog on his desk too – looks like gold plate or something. Horrible! It’s probably some incredibly expensive sculpture, but it did nothing for me.’

  ‘So we have connections between a Cyclops, a frog and the Medicis. That’s some puzzle to be going on with.’

  ‘Maybe someone just has a very bizarre sense of humour,’ she mused.

  ‘I would say that humour is very low down Bendix Schere’s list of priorities,’ Conor replied.

  Back in the laboratory, the horizontal cobalt-blue migration lines shown up by the dye were well advanced along the gel box. Conor studied them in silence before unplugging the machine and taking it through into the darkroom.

  Once it was placed on top of the transilluminator, which looked like a photographic enlarger, they each put on protective vizored helmets. There was brief darkness when the main light went out, then the room filled with a purple glow from the transilluminator. Monty looked at the gel box and saw, to her surprise, some bands in the gel which were glowing a vivid orange.

  Conor took a Polaroid photograph. When he switched off the ultraviolet and turned on the overhead light again, she could tell from his expression that he was deeply disturbed. ‘What is it?’ she asked.

  He turned to Monty, who was watching him anxiously. ‘It’s DNA; not a protein, and it’s about six kilobases long. You saw the migration lines in the gel box? The way they went bright orange under the lamp?’ He looked deadly serious. ‘DNA does that.’

  ‘You’re not saying there’s DNA in the Maternox capsules?’

  ‘Yes. They’re carrying DNA and some kind of delivery system.’ He gave it to her straight. ‘We’re talking genetic engineering. The Maternox capsules are genetically engineering something into the women who take them. They’re carrying a gene complete with delivery instructions.’

  Monty opened her mouth in shock, but nothing came out. A curdling chill travelled through her veins instead. ‘Wh-what kind of gene?’

  ‘Can’t say – this is out of my league. It needs someone really experienced in molecular biology.’

  ‘How experienced?’

  ‘I guess someone like your father.’

  She swallowed. ‘Conor, I don’t know what we’re getting into here, but whatever it is I don’t want him involved.’

  Conor leaned forward and looked into the microscope again. ‘Your friend Anna’s on that list, right?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said bleakly.

  He looked back at her and the colour seemed to have drained from his face. ‘Monty, I can’t even begin to speculate what’s going on here. I had a hunch about the DNA, and it proved right. That’s all I can tell you for sure.’

  ‘What do you think it could be?’

  ‘Remember Joseph Mengele? The Nazi who conducted medical experiments in Auschwitz?’

  Monty brought to mind some of the harrowing accounts of the mad doctor’s horrific human experiments, in his attempts to serve his Führer’s desire to engineer a master race. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, unless what’s in these Maternox is some kind of freak contamination accident,’ Conor said, ‘there’s someone in Bendix Schere who makes Dr Mengele look like an amateur.’

  72

  North London. 1953

  ‘Where are you going, Daniel?’

  ‘Out.’

  ‘You go out too much. If your father were alive he wouldn’t let you leave me like this.’ His mother’s face darkened. ‘Are you going to a sinful place?’

  Daniel walked towards the front door.

  ‘God will see you. God will know if alcohol passes your lips. He will punish you for your sins the way He has punished me.’ She leaned into the wash tub and pulled out a sheet, holding it pinched between the metal hoops of her two artificial hands.

  Daniel just glanced contemptuously at the pewter crucifix that dominated the hall wall, then at the framed Lord’s Prayer sampler that hung beside it.

  ‘You don’t care, do you, boy? Fear God and keep His commandments: for this is the whole duty of man. Ecclesiastes.’

  Daniel pulled on his coat. ‘My lover is to me a sachet of myrrh resting between my breasts.’

  His mother’s face flared. ‘May God strike you dead for your filth!’

  He stared wilfully back at her. ‘Solomon’s Song of Songs. Book One. Verse thirteen.’ Then he slammed the front door behind him.

  Her voice followed him down the garden path: ‘Remember Job, Daniel? Remember?’ She was screaming. ‘I was eyes to the blind and feet to the lame. I was a father to the needy; I took up the case of the stranger. I broke the fangs of the wicked and snatched the victims from their teeth.’

  Daniel walked blindfolded, guided by unseen figures who each held an arm, gently but firmly. He sensed the terrain beneath his feet change, felt the chill of the night air replaced with the warmth of candle wax and the rich scent of incense.

  He also sensed the presence of many people. Tonight was the most important night of his life. They had all come to witness and support him; he could scarcely breathe, scarcely swallow.

  Nerves jangled his insides. One minute he felt strong, excited in the knowledge that he was approaching his destiny; the next, he felt unaccountably afraid. Even more afraid than on the first occasion he had ever come here.

  He was filled with anxiety about the initiation ritual that lay ahead. He had never slept with a woman; he worried whether he would get an erection, feared they might laugh at the size of his penis, which seemed so small compared to the gigantic phallus of the Magister Templi. And he was very concerned about whether he would be able to contain himself long enough to pierce her virginity.

  A group of boys at school had been talking about sex only a couple of days ago. One had an elder brother who had gone with a prostitute but had ejaculated before he’d entered her. Daniel was scared of the shame and embarrassment if the same thing happened to him now.

  Through the rope cords that bound his hands, he pressed his fingers together for meagre reassurance. A door closed; bolts clanked home. Then the solitary peal of a gong resounded.

  It was followed by a loud male voice: ‘In nomine Dei nostri Satanas Luciferi exelsi!’

  The incantation seemed to hang in the air, growing in strength, then, finally turning into an echo of itself, it slowly faded away.

  Another voice said: ‘Hail Satan, the Ruler of the earth.’

  This was the signal for a thunderous chant from all around Daniel: ‘HAIL SATAN!’

  The gong rang again. Then it was followed by the male voice.

  ‘Tonight Brother Theutus will become the forty-second Initiate, the forty-second Assessor, the forty-second Adept of the Temple of the New Order of Satan. If anyone present dares to challenge his application, declare now your objection or forever live in
the threat of permanent oblivion. Speak up in the name of Satan!’

  There was a long silence. Daniel held his breath. One and a half years. One and a half long years he had waited as an initiate. Now he was finally to become a first-degree adept. Tonight! 30 April; Walpurgis; the second holiest night of the year.

  A hand-bell rang out shrilly.

  There were more Latin incantations. Then he felt his robes being lifted from his shoulders so that he was completely naked, except for the blindfold. Soft hands began to rub oils into his skin in sensual upward motions; silken fingers touched his penis, rubbing something on it that produced a burning sensation. He struggled hard for control, aware that he was starting to feel sharp arousal in the pit of his stomach. He concentrated, reminding himself of all the people in the room, but he could feel his penis swelling and beginning, jerkily, to rise as if it had a life of its own.

  At this point the Magister Templi’s voice rang out imperially: ‘His Satanic Majesty commands you, Initiate Theutus, to prove your knowledge by reciting the nine Satanic Statements!’

  Daniel waited as he had been bidden in rehearsals. The gong rang. He drew in a deep breath and in as loud a voice as he could muster said: ‘Satan represents indulgence instead of abstinence!’ Gong! ‘Satan represents vital existence, instead of spiritual pipe dreams!’ Gong! ‘Satan represents undefiled wisdom, instead of hypocritical self-deceit!’

  He waited for the next gong, then said at the top of his voice, free of all inhibition now: ‘Satan represents kindness to those who deserve it, instead of love wasted on ingrates!’ Gong! ‘Satan represents vengeance, instead of turning the other cheek!’ His voice soared, rolled around the room, came back at him from the walls. ‘Satan represents responsibility to the responsible, instead of concern for psychic vampires!’

  He felt the vibrations of the gong rippling through him. ‘Satan represents man as just another animal. Sometimes better, more often worse, than those that walk on all-fours. And who, because of his divine spiritual and intellectual development, has become the most vicious animal of all!’