Aphrodite

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—sexually, 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 sexual 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 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 competition 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 titans, 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 post–baby 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 antithetical 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. Sex 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 constituents.
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 acumen 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 constituency, 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 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 reassurance. 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 bypass the body’s system entirely. It was an extraordinary success from the first day the television advertisements 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 Institute, a subsidiary of KranMar, for several years. She had a research background but was asked to assume more of a managerial role than she had anticipated. She was stunned at the raises she was given, so she rarely argued about the responsibilities they were assigning 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 assignment. 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 participated 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.
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 assigned 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 shell 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 goddess 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—sexually 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 “ungodly” 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 Chinkle. 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 passing 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 passed 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.
The intern was Maura Greer.
That was when Manwaring took center stage again. He explained that he had met Maura several times when he’d gone to meetings at the Hubert Humphrey Building, the home of the FDA. She was flirtatious, she was attractive. They’d begun an affair several months before Maura had spent the weekend with Helen. After a while, Maura came to Man-waring and told him about the conversations she’d had with Helen. This was exactly at the time when he was struggling with his own conscience and suspicions. He encouraged Maura to become Helen’s contact and to pass all information on to him. He didn’t know what to do with it; he didn’t know exactly to whom he could turn. But he knew he had to do something. And he knew he had to turn somewhere.
Then all hell broke loose. Maura was killed. He, Manwaring, was set up and his credibility destroyed. He explained that the powers that be even managed to provide women who told the media that he’d been having affairs with them, that he’d become violent when they had discussions about leaving his wife. He’d never even met any of those women, he told Justin and Deena. Never met them, never heard of them. They were complete and utter fabrications. But they were smart fabrications. Manwaring had been unfaithful, and with women other than Maura. It was his weakness, and they were able to exploit it to their advantage. He knew that the more he denied these specific affairs, the more likely it was that other women would step forward to denounce his credibility. Once the media jumped on board and he became the favorite topic of talking heads and tabloid headlines, he was fairly helpless to combat the smears. Everything was a brilliantly executed ploy, organized by masters of manipulation, to remove him from office and stop him from talking, and to install Chase Welles, who would go along with any and all cover-ups.
Helen was then close to panic mode, she said. She wasn’t sure whom she could talk to next. She waited for two weeks, then went to one person. One of her college professors. A mentor. His name was Joseph Fennerman. She showed him files she had stolen and notes she had compiled. He was the only person she knew who might have the scientific knowledge to perceive what was happening and the connections to do something about it. She was afraid he would laugh at her but after listening to her and studying the material she gave him, he didn’t laugh. He told her he had people he could see in Washington and that he would look into it. He called her to say that he had made two appointments. One was with a scientist who worked for one of the top pharmaceutical companies. It was someone Fennerman trusted. The second appointment was with the head of the FDA. He would get to the bottom of this, he told Helen. Don’t worry.
Three days after he told her not to worry, Dr. Fennerman was mugged and murdered after a lecture in London.
“I felt trapped,” Helen said now. “I couldn’t prove that Dr. Fennerman’s death was connected to Aphrodite. But I knew that it was. I felt responsible for the deaths of two people. Two people I cared about.” She sipped at a glass of water, her lower lip trembling at the memory. “Also,” she said, putting down the glass, “I was afraid that somehow they’d find out what I’d been doing. And that I’d be next.”
“I’d say you were right to be afraid. What did you do?” Justin asked.
“Maura had dropped a lot of hints about her …relationship … with Frank. I knew that she trusted him. So, despite everything that was in the press, that everyone was saying about Frank, I decided to go with Maura’s instincts.”
“She got in touch with me,” Manwaring said. “I didn’t really know how to help her, so I urged her to stay at Aker and to keep reporting to me. Directly to me, this time.”
“Which you did,” Justin said.
“Until Maura’s body was discovered. Then I got too scared. So I ran. To Frank. I didn’t know anyone else I could trust. Or who’d even believe me.”
“How the hell,” Deena spoke up, “could this possibly get so out of hand? It’s insane!”
“It’s the nature of business and government,” Manwaring said. “This is the reality now. It’s the way things play out.”
“No more rules?” Deena asked. “Just greed and chaos?”
“There are rules,” Manwaring said. “But both sides broke the rules. That’s why it all happened. And then it became a race against time. Kransten needed to keep his new product under wraps until it was perfected—because if it was announced to the public and it didn’t work, the damage would be irreparable. Unless he could prove that what he’d developed was legitimate, and make that proof as visible as possible, the FDA would shoot it down and destroy it because of the financial danger it presented. If that happened, his company would go under. The government—using the FBI—eventually understood that Kransten was ignoring their longtime agreement, and they were determined to prevent his experiments and product from ever being revealed. It’s why Kransten disappeared. He wasn’t only protecting his formula, he was trying to stay alive until he could go public. Both sides had been successful for so long playing their little game. Both sides had stopped outsiders from interfering or discovering too much. Or if they had discovered too much, they were stopped from revealing it. Both sides have played to a draw so far. But now the game’s coming to a close. And both sides are determined to win.”
“At any cost,” Justin said.
“Now you’ve got it,” Frank Manwaring said. “And now you know most of the story.”
“Most?” Justin was sitting in a chair across from the secretary. “What’s the rest?”
“You’re the rest.”
Before Justin could ask exactly what he meant, there was a knock on the door. Everyone froze, then they heard the words “Room service.”
Manwaring glanced at his watch, relaxed and nodded: “I ordered lunch for twelve-thirty. After our massages were supposed to be over.”
“Just leave it outside the door,” Justin called out. “We’ll get it in a minute.”
They waited five minutes; then, as Justin kept his gun in his hand, Manwaring went and opened the door. All that was there was a serving cart.
Manwaring wheeled it in. “I only ordered for two,” he said. “I didn’t realize we’d have company.”
“What do you mean, we’re the rest of the story?” Deena asked.
“I mean that I’m a middle-aged bureaucrat given to intellectual obfuscation. I’m fairly helpless when it comes to translating my knowledge into action. They’ve also rendered me impotent. My access to the White House is gone, the media has turned me into a pariah, and the police consider me a murder suspect. I wouldn’t be believed by anyone, even if I could get anyone to listen to me.” He nodded in Justin’s direction. “You, on the other hand, have managed to beat them so far. Or at least equalize the playing field.”
“So far. The closer I get, the more they’re going to turn up the heat.”
“Probably. But now that you know what’s really transpiring, maybe you can do something about it.”
“Such as?”
“Find Doug Kransten and stop him.”
“Stop him how?” Deena asked.
Manwaring stared pointedly at the gun in Justin’s hand. “However you can. You’ve got both sides after you. The government will do anything to keep the Aphrodite project secret. And Kransten will do anything to prevent it from being sabotaged. Right now, both of them see you as their number-one enemy. That’s my definition of a rock and a hard place. But if Aphrodite is … abandoned, shall we say, you’ve eliminated any reason for either side to keep squeezing.”
“And just coincidentally,” Justin said, “you’ll manage to escape their squeeze too.”
“I’m not pretending I don’t have a personal interest in this,” Man-waring said. “But I’ve done quite a bit of thinking about this and I don’t see any other choice.”
Justin was shaking his head as if trying to clear it, but also to show that he was resisting what he’d been hearing. “There are just too many connections I can’t get my mind around.”
“Such as?” Manwaring asked.
“I’m as cynical as the next person about politicians. But this … Democrats and Republicans can barely be civil to each other. How the hell can they join forces for a conspiracy like this?”
“I’ve spent most of my life in politics,” Manwaring said. “People don’t understand what really motivates those of us who run this country. Not just politicians, but business and financial leaders too.”
“So tell me.”
“Two things. One is simple and practical: demographics. Even before Kransten’s Aphrodite project began, the elderly were the fastest-growing segment of the population. Their political and buying power can’t be underestimated. If there’s one sacred trust, for the left and the right, it’s Social Security. Screw around with that, you’re out of public life. But now think if the elderly, who are facing death and frightened as hell about it, get a chance to escape it. For twenty, thirty, forty more years. Screw around with that, you’ll be crucified.”
“What’s the second?”
“Fear. And it’s even more powerful than the first. We’re all afraid of failing. Of losing our power or our access to power. Of public humiliation. Of becoming … insignificant. Fear is a much greater force among these people—me included, I’m ashamed to say—than any kind of political philosophy.”
“Why haven’t you done anything up till now?”
“Because when I finally realized how desperate the situation was, I didn’t have the means.”
“And I’m the means?”
“It’s why we wanted to try to find you,” Helen Roag said.
“It’s a sick and deadly game they’re playing. But you seem to know how to play it using their rules,” Manwaring said, lifting the silver covers off the two serving dishes.
“Why do you think he’s doing this?” Justin asked, half to himself. “Kransten’s made his fortune. Why break the agreement and risk everything?”
“If you stumbled onto the fountain of youth,” Manwaring said, “what would you do? Jump in or board it up so no one could find it?”
Justin didn’t answer. Wasn’t sure he could answer. He ran his fingers through his hair, pulled tight at the ends. When he put his hands down, the expression on his face was set and determined. All he said was, “Do you know how to find Kransten?”
Manwaring and Roag shook their heads.
In the ensuing silence, the aroma of the food began to fill the room.
“I hate to sound gauche,” Deena said, “but I’m starving.”
“You’re welcome to it,” Manwaring said. “It’s lobster Newburg. It’s their specialty here. Absolutely delicious.”
Manwaring began doling out a portion onto a plate for Deena, but Justin stood up and grabbed his hand, stopping him.
“What did you say this was?”
“What we ordered?”
“Yes,” Justin said. “Say it again.”
“Lobster Newburg,” Manwaring told him. “Is something wrong?”
Justin turned to Deena. “Remember what I told you about criminals, how they always make one stupid or arrogant mistake? How they can’t resist wordplay?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Well, we just found our mistake. I can’t believe I missed it.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Manwaring asked.
“Make sure you enjoy this lunch,” Justin said. “Because it just told me how to find Kransten.”