“It’s not where you are with bioscience. It’s who you are.”
“Do you think she’d actually do this?”
“Absolutely.”
8:04 am PDT Malibu California
When Sarah awoke, she went out onto the balcony off her bedroom. The sun was rising to the east behind the house. She was an east coast girl so it seemed unnatural, the sun should rise, not set over the ocean. The horizon was a deep purple blue haze making it difficult to distinguish the water from the sky. The crisp air lacked the bite of northern Maine. It was softer more laid back. California air. She placed her hands on the cool, dewy iron railing. Goose flesh crept up her arms and down her body.
After a few minutes, she went back inside, put on a robe and walked downstairs. As she entered the dining room, the smell of freshly ground coffee greeted her. The table had been set with croissants, fruit and a pitcher of freshly squeezed juice. No one else was in the room, and she assumed that Camilla was not up yet.
She sat down and poured herself a glass of juice. The morning’s LA Times lay on the table, and she skimmed it. What a life Camilla led – staff on hand to cook, to drive her around, to organize her days, to wait on her and attend to her every need.
A large cut glass vase filled with brilliantly red oriental poppies, roses and tulips stood in the middle of the table and filled the room with a sweet, sensual aroma. She was anxious to see Seth tonight. She was still annoyed about all of the recent near disasters, but that couldn’t fully suppress her excitement about the future, near and far.
Albert came into the room quietly and she jumped as he said, “Good morning, Ms. Burns.”
“Good morning, Albert.”
“I didn’t expect you up this early.”
“I’m still on East Coast time,” she replied. “This is a wonderful breakfast you’ve laid out here.”
“Camilla requested that I prepare it for you.”
“Is she up?”
“Yes, but she had an early appointment. She told me to tell you that she’d be back around ten, and then you two can get ready to leave.”
“Excellent. It’s awfully early for a meeting, isn’t it?”
“Sometimes it’s easier to get people’s attention first thing in the morning.”
“Do you want to join me?” Sarah asked. She wanted to know exactly how much he knew about her and Gen96.
“I would love to, but I have to prepare Camilla’s bags for your trip later today,” he replied as he stirred two heaping teaspoons of brown sugar into his coffee. “She says she’ll be gone for a couple of weeks. Does that sound right to you?”
She nodded. A phone started ringing from the kitchen. “Excuse me, Ms. Burns, that might be Camilla. I should go and get that.” Albert excused himself and disappeared in the direction of the kitchen. A few moments later he was back.
“That was Camilla. She told me to tell you that she’ll be back here later than expected, but it will be before six tonight and you will both be leaving this evening.”
“Will you be joining us on the trip, Albert?” Sarah enquired.
“Not in the plane. I’ll be driving up later on tonight.”
He started to leave and Sarah said, “Albert?”
He paused and without looking at her replied, “Yes?”
“Do you know who I am?”
He turned. His brown eyes bore into her from the middle of his bald, round head. Since she had met him yesterday, his expressions always seemed forced, as if he were putting on a mask for each situation.
His gaze flickered under her well-practiced icy analytic glare as he replied, “Yes, Ms. Burns. I know you are a very good friend of Camilla’s from back at college.” The muscles on the side of his smooth scalp twitched.
Sarah smiled and turned back to her breakfast thoughtfully. This was not good. He knew everything.
11:28 am Lake Horace, New Hampshire
Maurice ran his hands over his thinning, grey, cap-tussled hair and let out a sigh as he shook his head gently. “Let me tell you about Sarah. As you know, I was a mentor to her. She was like my daughter until her senior year. Then she became somewhat distracted – started to socialize with a different group of people and lost her focus.”
“Do you know how many infants die every year globally from malnutrition and mostly preventable diseases like malaria, tuberculosis and pneumococcal diseases like meningitis, pneumonia and sepsis, Pell?”
Pell shook his head.
“Eight million,” Maurice continued. “Sarah became obsessed with that fact. These are preventable deaths. We’ve got the medication and vaccines but access to healthcare is the real issue. Over 1 billion people have no access to healthcare. None whatsoever!”
Maurice paused for a long moment. “That’s a billion, with a capital B. It’s staggering and in developing countries, even half of those children who receive medical treatment will die anyway, if you can believe that. We’re living on two different planets.”
“Her thesis was focused on the potential for manipulating viruses and bacteria at the genetic level, potentially eradicating them all together or at least fundamentally altering their abilities and she developed a marvelous computer simulation on the impact of removing cholera, malaria, dysentery and other scourges of the developing world from the face of the earth. The results were not what she or I expected. They were shocking and I think it was that moment, after we validated her logic and assumptions, that I lost her.”
“What kind of results?” Pell asked.
Maurice stared through the far wall for a moment before saying, “Short-term benefits but mid-term disaster. There’d be no way to feed the tens of millions of people normally culled by disease – the end-result was rampant starvation, squalor, social chaos – a downward spiral that always ended in disaster.”
“Jesus,” Pell muttered as a shudder rolled down his back. “You said that was when you lost her? What happened?”
“She developed a friendship at college around that same time. I was encouraging Sarah to finish her thesis and publish. It was groundbreaking research and was important that she brought this into the public arena. But she started to become more distant and was very reluctant to finish or publish her thesis. She spent a lot of time with her new friend and less time on her work.”
“Who was this friend? Male or female? Do you remember a name?” Pell asked.
“Of course I remember her name. It was Camilla Haywood.”
“Camilla Haywood, the actress?”
“Yes, that’s her,” Maurice replied. “She and Sarah became very close. It was an odd friendship since Camilla was not a natural academic. In fact, she wasn’t an academic at all. She got into Harvard through connections, though I never could work out why she would want to be there. After all, she went on to become a famous actress, hardly a typical Harvard career path.”
“It was frustrating for me because I wanted Sarah to focus on our work. We, or really she, was formulating radical ideas and approaches to DNA – how to slice it and dice it, to use it as raw building blocks for creating new forms of life. If she has successfully taken it from theory to practice, it’s Nobel Prize material but, if she’s developed something that is not being ratified and jointly developed with the right scientific bodies, peer reviews and oversight, it could be our worst nightmare.”
“Jesus Christ,” Pell muttered. Camilla Haywood was Hollywood royalty.
Maurice said, “I loved Sarah like one of my own, but if she’s doing what you say, you must find her. I’ve always feared what is possible with biotechnology. Did you ever think about it?”