The Venetian Betrayal

His own marketing people had already told him the same thing. Treatment was not really an option for the ravaged third world. Stopping the spread of HIV was the only cost-effective method to attack the crisis. Condoms were the initial instrument of choice, and one of Philogen’s subsidiaries couldn’t make the things fast enough. Sales had risen in the thousands of percent over the course of the last two decades. And so had profits. But, of late, the use of condoms had steadily dropped. People were becoming complacent.

 

Corrigan was saying, “According to its own propaganda, one of your competitors, Kellwood-Lafarge, spent more than a hundred million euros on AIDS-cure research last year alone. You spent about a third of that.”

 

He threw the woman a smirk. “Competing with Kellwood-Lafarge is akin to fishing for whales with a rod and reel. It’s the largest drug conglomerate on the planet. Hard to match somebody euro for euro when the other guy has over a hundred billion in year gross revenues.”

 

He sipped his coffee as Corrigan flipped to a clean chart.

 

“Getting away from all that, let’s take a look at product ideas. A name of course, for any cure, is critical. Currently, of the sixteen symptomatic drugs on the market, designations vary. Things like Bactrim, Diflucan, Intron, Pentam, Videx, Crixivan, Hivid, Retrovir. Because of the worldwide use any cure will enjoy, we thought a simpler, more universal designation, like AZT utilized, might be better from a marketing standpoint. From what we were told, Philogen now has eight possible cures under development.” Corrigan flipped to the next chart, which showed packaging concepts. “We have no way of knowing if any cure will be solid or liquid, taken orally or by injection, so we created variations, keeping the colors in your black-and-gold motif.”

 

He studied the proposals.

 

She pointed to the easel. “We left a blank for the name, to be inserted in gold letters. We’re still working on that. The important thing about this scheme is that even if the name doesn’t translate in a particular language, the package will be distinctive enough to provide immediate recognition.”

 

He was pleased, but thought it best to suppress a smile. “I have a possible name. Something I’ve beaten around in my head.”

 

Corrigan seemed interested.

 

He stood, walked to the easel, opened a marker, and wrote ZH.

 

He noticed a puzzled look on everyone’s face. “Zeta. Eta. Old Greek. It meant ‘life.’”

 

Corrigan nodded. “Appropriate.”

 

He agreed.

 

 

 

 

 

Malone 3 - The Venetian Betrayal

 

 

 

 

 

THIRTY-THREE

 

 

VOZROZHDENIYA ISLAND

 

CENTRAL ASIAN FEDERATION

 

1:00 P.M.

 

 

 

ZOVASTINA WAS THRILLED WITH THE CROWD. HER STAFF HAD promised five thousand would appear. Instead, her traveling secretary told her on the helicopter flight, northwest from Samarkand, that over twenty thousand were awaiting her arrival. More proof, she was told, of her popularity. Now, seeing the bedlam of goodwill, perfect for the television cameras focused on the dais, she could not help but be pleased.

 

“Look around you,” she said into the microphone, “at what we can accomplish when both our minds and our hearts work in unison.” She hesitated a moment for effect, then motioned outward. “Kantubek reborn.”

 

The crowd, thick as ants, cheered their approval with an enthusiasm she’d grown accustomed to hearing.

 

Vozrozhdeniya Island sat in the central Aral Sea , a remote wilderness that once housed the Soviet Union ’s Microbiological Warfare Group, and also provided a tragic example of Asia ’s exploitation by its former masters. Here was where anthrax spores and plague bacilli were both developed and stored. After the fall of the communist government, in 1991, the laboratory staff abandoned the island and the containers holding the deadly spores, which, over the ensuing decade, developed leaks. The potential biological disaster was compounded by the receding Aral Sea . Fed by the ample Amu Darya , the wondrous lake had once been shared by Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. But when the Soviets changed the Darya’s course and diverted the river’s flow into a twelve-hundred-kilometer-long canal—water used to grow cotton for Soviet mills—the inland sea, once one of the world’s largest freshwater bodies, began to vanish, replaced by a desert incapable of supporting life.

 

But she’d changed all that. The canal was now gone, the river restored. Most of her counterparts had seemed doomed to mimic their conquerors, but her brain had never atrophied from vodka. She’d always kept her eye on the prize, and learned how to both seize and hold power.

 

“Two hundred tons of communist anthrax was neutralized here,” she told the crowd. “Every bit of their poison is gone. And we made the Soviets pay for it.”

 

The crowd roared their approval.

 

“Let me tell you something. Once we were free, away from Moscow’s choke hold, they had the audacity to say we owed them money.” Her arms rose into the air. “Can you imagine? They rape our land. Destroy our sea. Poison the soil with their germs. And we owe them money?” She saw thousands of heads shake. “That’s exactly what I said, too. No.”

 

She scanned the faces staring back at her, each bathed in bright middaysunshine.

 

“So we made the Soviets pay to clean up their own mess. And we closed their canal, which was sucking the life from our ancient sea.”

 

Never did she use the singular “I.” Always “we.”

 

“Many of you I’m sure, as I do, remember the tigers, wild boar, and waterfowl that thrived in the Amu Daryadelta. The millions of fish that filled the Aral Sea . Our scientists know that one hundred and seventy-eight species once lived here. Now, only thirty-eight remain. Soviet progress.” She shook her head. “The virtues of communism.” She smirked. “Criminals. That’s what they were. Plain, ordinary criminals.”