Miracle Man (39 page)

“That’s your take on it, Perrone, and in the twisted world you live in, maybe that makes sense to you. But right now, it’s not important. Just find her for me.”

Perrone and his crew took four days to find Christina since she wasn’t using any credit cards that could be traced and she didn’t have a cell phone registered to her name that could pinpoint her location. What
gave the clue to where she was, were cash withdrawals on her debit card. It took only one phone call for Perrone to get her bank to alter the program on her accounts so that no more than one withdrawal of only $20 could be made from any particular ATM. He figured this would ensure that she would need to make multiple withdrawals from a succession of ATMs, thereby leaving a geographically traceable trail. That led them to Ogunquit, a small coastal town in Maine, halfway between Portsmouth and Kennebunkport. Perrone dispatched four agents to scour the seaside village and find out where she was staying. They located her at a motel called “Peg Leg.”

Susan made the drive to Ogunquit in under two hours, arriving at nine in the evening. After scoping out Peg Leg, she checked into a roadside motel about a quarter mile away. By eight the next morning, Susan was in her car parked across the street from Peg Leg, sipping coffee and eating donuts. She waited and watched as she listened to an oldies radio station. Finally, just after 11 AM, she saw Christina exit a room on the second floor and walk down the stairs to her car. She followed Christina at a distance, along Route 1, an old road that hugged the dramatic coastline, until she pulled off and entered the parking lot for the Ogunquit Museum of Art. Susan waited for Christina to go into the museum, and followed a few minutes later.

Susan stood back and observed Christina in one of the galleries. She looked so different. The confident vivacious beauty who radiated energy and spirit wasn’t there anymore. In her place, was a pale
young woman whose hair was pulled back severely and pinned down in as unbecoming a manner as possible. She looked gaunt and tired and wore no makeup. Formless clothes hung loosely on her thin frame and successfully obscured her figure. As Christina sat on a gallery bench staring vacantly at a painting on the wall, Susan came up behind her. “I never really got Rothko. I can look at his work, but I feel nothing coming back to me.”

Christina didn’t turn around. She kept staring at the painting. “He was a very troubled artist. Even after becoming famous, he killed himself.”

Susan sat down next to Christina and put her hand on top of hers. “Hello, sweetie. I tried to call you. I had to see you.”

Christina didn’t say anything or even look at Susan. She didn’t ask how Susan had found her. She bowed her head. Finally, she turned toward Susan and her green eyes were awash in tears. “I’m so ashamed. I feel so terrible. I wish I was dead.” As she burst into sobs that shook her entire body, Susan pulled her close, gently cradling her head against the crook of her neck and patting her.

“You have nothing to be ashamed of, honey. You’re a good person. And you’ve done nothing wrong. Nothing at all.” Susan held her and stroked her head and then, after a few minutes said, “Let’s get some air. I think there’s a beautiful view of the water from the back of this place.”

They climbed out over the glacial boulders that protected the museum from the pounding surf and sat down on one of the huge rocks facing the sea.

Her voice still shaky, Christina said, “I would never do what Bobby thinks I did.”

Susan put her arm around Christina’s shoulders. “Honey, there’s a lot that you don’t know about Bobby and a lot that he doesn’t know about you. Those things make a real difference. When I spoke to Bobby, I told him about your past because he needed to know that.”

Christina broke the embrace and sat up straight. “What did he say?”

“He was shocked. He felt horrible. But you also need to know things about Bobby so you can understand him better, and understand his reactions. You remember you told me that he was going to show you the secret storage trunk he had in his apartment? Did
you ever get to see it?”

“No.”

“Unfortunately it got destroyed like everything else when that blast went off. But I spent the last few days doing research and I printed-out a bunch of stuff that was in that trunk. I want you to look at it now.” Susan handed Christina a thick packet.

Christina frowned as she felt the weight of the envelope. “Do I have to look at all this stuff now?”

“It’s important. Take your time and read it.”

A half
hour later, Christina finished reading and said, “This is horrible, but what’s it got to do with what we’re talking about?”

“The baby in the garbage bag was Bobby,” Susan said softly.

Christina’s face paled.

“And no one would adopt him because everyone thought there’d be something wrong with him. So eventually, he was put into foster care. Then from age four, he was in a special boarding school— ostracized from society at large, a misanthrope, a freak. His parents died at eleven, then Joe Manzini died when he was nineteen. Then Varneys threw him out of the Institute because Bobby wanted to devote himself to medical research. Again, he was all alone. He denied himself everything over the years, working like a slave. Do you get the picture?”

Christina stared at Susan, as Susan continued, “You were his entire world. His connection with life and some semblance of normalcy and happiness was you. When he thought that none of that was real because you were playing a role, it devastated him. That’s why he acted as badly as he did. Because that’s how much you mean to him.”

Christina looked down at the frothing sea. “Why didn’t he tell me?”

“He’s told no one. He didn’t even tell me. I found out by accident. The fact that he said he was going to tell you—-that says an incredible amount right there. But you’re no better. Why didn’t you tell him about yourself?”

“I was going to. But –I know this sounds terrible. I was ashamed. After all these years, I still was ashamed.”

Susan’s head wagged disapprovingly. “Just like Bobby. As crazy as that is for both of you—there you have it.”

Both women were silent and in their own thoughts.

Then Susan said, “Bobby went to see Varneys.”

Christina’s eyes widened. “I can’t believe he’d do that. He hates him so much.”

“That shows you, honey. The fact that after all these years, he would go see Varneys to confront him shows you how much you mean to him. Varneys will confirm what you told Bobby—right?”

Christina nodded, her voice now soft. “Unless he lies. But what difference does it make? It’s all ruined. It will never be the same again.”

Susan took Christina’s hands in hers and squeezed them as she looked directly into her eyes. “That’s not true. I told you a long time ago—love is stronger than secrets. Everything happens for a reason. I believe that and I’ve always told Bobby that. The two of you were destined to be together. The circumstances that brought you together are immaterial—that was just the vehicle. The only thing that matters is that you found each other.”

Christina looked down. “He hurt me so badly.”

“Do you love him?”

The emeralds looked up at Susan. “I’ll always love Bobby.”

“Then promise me this. When he comes to you. And he will come to you…”

Christina cut Susan off and nodded.

“I’ll keep my heart open. But I need time, Susan.”

“So does he, honey.”

64

B
ack from Washington, Bobby was emotionally exhausted and overwhelmed by remorse. He desperately wanted to see Christina or at least speak to her, but Susan told him she wasn’t ready. So, Bobby did what he had done so often in the past. He retreated from the emotional turmoil in his life by immersing himself in a punishing and unrelenting regime of work.

Bobby estimated that tuberculosis was only six years away from becoming a worldwide pandemic that would dwarf cancer and AIDS in its destructive power. He called it “the sleeping giant of diseases.” While it wasn’t too long ago that the scientific community thought they were close to eradicating the disease, the landscape was dramatically altered by two things: new mutant “smart strains” of the Tubercle Bacillus that are multi-drug resistant, and the weakened immune systems of tens of millions of people infected with HIV that makes them particularly susceptible to TB and transforms them into fertile breeding grounds for the highly contagious disease. Sitting in his lab, Bobby knew that there were now more cases of TB in the world than at any other time in history, with one-third of the world’s population already infected and a person dying from it every second.

Perhaps it was Bobby’s sleep deprivation, fueled by his nightmares, and the absence of Christina to help him cope, but as the months of grueling work progressed, he felt increasingly detached from the present. As Bobby watched through his microscope as the
Mycobacterium Tuberculosis
mutated to become more and more resistant to the newest and most powerful antibiotics, he found himself experiencing an emotion that he never felt in his research.

He became angry. “Look at you. You think you’re so damn smart. You think you’re going to destroy the whole human race, don’t you?” he muttered contemptuously to the microscopic creatures occupying the drop of water on the slide. As Bobby stared intensely at the small piece of glass on the microscope stand, he began to feel increasingly uneasy. It was three in the morning but he sensed he wasn’t alone. Silently and invisibly, a force of destruction was performing its dark miracles in a drop of water right in front of his eyes. The intellect behind this energy of mayhem astonished Bobby with its efficiency and perverse elegance. Nothing was wasted. There were no mis-steps. It all took place with effortless precision. Was the lab getting colder? He whipped around to look behind him. He dropped to his knees to look under the desks and consoles. There was nothing there that he could see, but he felt a presence bearing down on him, like someone or something was standing very close. A wave of nausea surged through him and he began to shiver even though his body was wet with perspiration. He was scared. But the fact is, he had been scared for a long time. The more he learned and the more he struggled against this omniscient force of negativity, the more scared he became.

Bobby knew that formulating a new antibiotic was a waste of time. At best, it would work for a few years, after which the bacteria would have built up its immunity so it would be even stronger to take on the next drug. A vaccine was needed—one that could be taken orally and would work on all age groups. Bobby wanted it to be something fitting for this killer with grandiose aspirations. He wanted it to be nasty and punishing. He turned to the neglected science of bacteriophage, which was gaining ground in the 1920s and 1930s, until it was abandoned in the Western hemisphere with the advent of antibiotics. What appealed to Bobby was how it worked. The phage, a type of virus, hijacks the metabolic machinery of the bacterium, forcing it to produce hundreds of new phages that take up so much room inside the bacteria that they cause the bacterial cell walls to literally explode.

While the science of bacteriophage is aimed at finding a virus that already exists in nature to fight a particular bacteria, Bobby wasn’t interested in this haphazard process—instead, he would modify, through genetic engineering, a series of readily available phages so that they would target the full array of bacteria that cause TB. To ensure that the bacteria couldn’t escape detection by the phage, Bobby would seek to identify numerous unique characteristics of the TB bacteria, each of which would be capable of triggering the phage’s appetite. This was his plan for the vaccine against the plague about to come.

65

T
hree months had passed since Bobby and Christina had broken up. When Susan got to the lab, she found Bobby pacing nervously in her office waiting for her. His voice strained, he pleaded. “I can’t live like this. I can’t go backwards. I’ve got to see her. You know where she is. Tell me.”

Christina’s absence, coupled with the pressures of his work had taken its toll on Bobby. Susan looked at him pitifully as she wagged her head. “I shouldn’t do this,” she said, writing down an address and handing it to him. As he rushed out of her office, she yelled after him, “Take a shower, shave and change your clothes first. You look terrible.”

Bobby made the drive to Providence, Rhode Island in less than an hour and a half. He pulled up to a nondescript three story building in a run-down part of town. A cheaply made sign affixed to the structure bore the name, Harmony House. Bobby walked through the institutional glass and aluminum door into a small reception area.