The Dolomite Solution (18 page)

Toni and Scala had checked in as brother and sister, but the smirk on the older woman's face at the counter suggested she wasn't buying that. No. They were lovers, she was certain. Either way, it worked for a cover. Toni's only concern was the Alfa Romeo in the vacant parking lot with Italian plates.

In the little room with one bed, a small table with two chairs in front of a window that led to a private balcony, and bathroom with floor space that made it difficult to close the door without a great deal of shifting around, Toni lay on the bed thinking about what she had to do that night. Scala was sitting at the table, his briefcase open for the first time, sifting through papers.

Scala had not said much since fate had brought them together almost twenty-four hours ago, and Toni wasn't sure if that was a good sign or not. She had been briefed that he was a boisterous person at times, yet she had seen none of that. Perhaps they didn't know each other well enough.

She sat up onto her elbows and watched him. Something was clicking in his great mind. “What are you thinking about?” she asked.

He startled somewhat with the silence being broken. “I should be with Leonhard now, showing what we have discovered to the people at Tirol Genetics.” He hesitated, looking at a paper with notes scribbled in the margins. “These are Leonhard's words. He wanted us to remember to bring out an important point here.” He turned and gazed at Toni. “Do you understand the importance of our discovery?”

She sat up on the edge of the bed. “I've got time. I'd like to understand.”

The scientist looked eagerly at her, as if she were his student and he wanted to plant something deep into her mind so she would never forget. He moved his chair closer to her and set the papers back in the briefcase. “We've known for some time that a particular region in Southern Tirol, or the Northern Italian Tirol to be more specific, was a special place. Even more precisely, the hamlet of Passo di Villa. The residents there were legendary. Monks tried to understand the place hundreds of years ago. Why did people live so long there? Of course back then people didn't live very long anyway, with smallpox and the plague and various other afflictions infecting the entire continent. Yet still, the villagers there lived longer than other parts of the region. Why?”

She shrugged.

“I had been trying to understand the area for a few years, taking vacations there each summer, when I got a call from Leonhard Aldo. I had heard of Leonhard, and he had heard of my interest in the area. The distinction here is that I am a biochemist with a background in recombinant DNA research, and Leonhard was a geneticist.” He noticed a confused look on her face.

“What's the difference?” she asked.

“As a biochemist I did most of the experiments at the organic level. In other words, I took the samples, isolated the DNA, and tried to extrapolate and isolate the difference in that sample from those of a control group taken from students at my university.”

“Isn't that everything?” she wondered. “I mean. What else was there?”

He rose from his chair and swung his arms up, as if looking for a chalk board to scribble something on and make a point. “That's fine if we simply wanted to find differences. But we wanted to discover the true mystery of the area. So I needed Leonhard to trace back family history on every person we contacted and took samples from. It was painstakingly tedious. Everything was computerized, which was a great help, but it was still a difficult task. But Leonhard brought much more to our team. He had a wonderful grasp of mathematics, there was no question about that, yet he had something more. A specific insight into human behavior.”

The scientist's eyes glistened, and he wiped a tear away from his right eye.

Toni wasn't sure what to do. She needed to keep him on track. “So how did you find the solution to the problem?”

He took in a deep breath and slowly released it. “About six months ago I isolated a gene on the DNA strand that was different from any other I had ever seen. That night I went to Leonhard and we proceeded to get drunk at the local establishment. I drew on a beer coaster where I had located it, and Leonhard listened carefully. When I was done saying how great I was, he simply asked, ‘And how is that significant?' I had never felt the urge to strangle anyone in my entire life, yet I was thinking about it then. I simply sat there looking at this man whom I now considered my best friend, and a realization sunk in. He was right. So what if I isolated a difference? What did it mean? After I had stewed for a moment, he smiled and congratulated me. He was truly happy, and bought me another beer. Yet it didn't take me long to convince him now that he had been correct. I had only half the answer. Maybe only a third, really. It was like looking under a microscope and seeing bacteria for the first time, without a clue that penicillin was even a possibility.” He sunk into his chair again and stared at her.

“That was six months ago,” she prompted. “How did you find the solution?”

“Leonhard found it. When he did, it was so simple we nearly dismissed it. We were taking a walk one evening up the dirt road to the mysterious valley. A little over a kilometer up the path, the two small streams come together to form one. One river is this aqua marine color and seems to glow with green hues, and the other is almost a gray or silver color. Leonhard suggested we take a closer look at the water. I'll tell you right now that the water has always been a draw for the area. Two hundred years ago it was thought that the water was magical and would cure anything that ailed you. But of course that was pure fancy and speculation.”

“Are you telling me there's something in the water that makes these people live so long without a hint of heart disease?”

“If only it were that simple,” he said, shaking a finger at her. “Then we could just bottle the water and make a fortune. No. We had more work to do. The answer was there, we were sure, but it was not that simple. We took water samples and for days and days tried to discover what was special about each river. We finally found a particular mineral in high quantities in each river sample.”

“It's a mineral, then?” she asked.

“Sort of. But the minerals didn't explain why these people had no heart disease. We checked the technical data on the two minerals and found no correlation between them and the disease. The answer had to be deeper within the chemical makeup. Perhaps they made the DNA bond differently. We weren't sure. We spent a month working well into the night, pulling our hair out. Finally, we understood. Leonhard had suggested we look at the work of the late Linus Pauling, who had won two Nobel Prizes. Pauling had worked with vitamins, and had also been one of the first to discover the helical structure of certain molecules. In fact, some suggest that if he hadn't first discovered the A-helix, then Crick and Watson would have never discovered the double helix of DNA.” He noticed she looked confused. “I'm sorry, Toni. These people mean nothing to you. Let me explain. In science, when someone makes a significant discovery it can change the direction of hundreds of research projects being conducted across the world. For some it disproves a theory they might be trying to advance, for others it peaks their interest to shift research toward a more relevant area. Pauling was the first to suggest that vitamin C could strengthen the blood vessels and prevent plaque from building up in the coronary arteries. With stronger artery walls, and no buildup, then there would be no heart disease.”

“Was he right?”

“Not entirely. The first problem, when he was conducting his study, was there was no simple way to see if his hypotheses were correct without either doing a dangerous angiogram, or cutting the subject open. He had to rely on postmortem results. And by that time it was too late. His results were mixed. But that's beside the point. It pushed us in the right direction. Minerals have a similar affect on tissues, they strengthen our cells at an organic level.” He seemed to be losing her. “I'm sorry if I'm boring you.”

“Not at all,” Toni said. “It just got me thinking about something. I'll explain later. Please continue.”

The scientist positioned himself more comfortably on the chair. “To make a long story short, if that's possible in this case, the minerals we discovered did work to strengthen the artery walls, but it also had another important affect. They seemed to work to clear any blockage that was already there.”

“That's amazing.”

“But I'm not through,” he said. “There were side effects. In order to work as we thought they should, it required mega-doses of the minerals. Those high doses led to liver problems. So to save one vital organ, we had to sacrifice another. That's obviously unacceptable.”

Toni was starting to feel ill. She remembered now why she finished her undergraduate degree at NYU in international relations, and considered herself educated enough. Professors, however well intentioned, could be frustrating. “So, how'd you find the solution?”

He smiled. “It was not as simple as you might think. The minerals in the area were important, but Leonhard looked back at members of the village who had married locals and moved there. There were incidents of some of them dying of heart attacks, even after having lived there for twenty years drinking the water. Yet, their children, who had the genetic code on their DNA from the local parent, did not have heart disease. Don't you see. It was the minerals. They had affected a change in the basic DNA, and through natural selection, the DNA with that genetic code had survived.”

Toni was beginning to understand, but something wasn't right with the reasoning. “Are you saying you'd have to take small doses of these minerals from birth in order to protect yourself?”

“We're not sure about that. That would take decades to determine. We didn't have time for that. I was able to use recombinant DNA techniques to find the answer.”

“Are you talking gene splicing again?”

He laughed. “Afraid so. Remember on our drive I told you about using the gene therapy on the virus?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I used the techniques to discover the solution. I'm sorry if I've confused you. Scientists are notorious for confusing the laymen. That's why companies hire technical writers to write directions and advertising copy. Suffice it to say that you don't need to know how a clock works to know what time it is.”

“True.” She was anxious to ask him a question, but wasn't sure how he'd take it.

“You have something on your mind, Toni. I can tell.”

“Assuming this works.”

“It does.”

“Okay. What does our planet do with all these people who are living longer?”

He looked stumped. “I don't know. I'm not a sociologist. Maybe we should stop having so many children. Besides, there are always new afflictions. And mankind always finds a way of killing one another in war.”

“I'm sorry. I didn't mean to imply that your discovery was not important. I was just wondering what we'll do without that disease.” Then she thought about another problem. The reason her government had sent her after Scala and Aldo in the first place. “Did you and Aldo consider the opposing factions?”

His brows rose and he said, “Who would be opposed to curing heart disease?”

“Surgeons who make a living cutting people open, for one group.”

“You have a devious mind, Toni Contardo. These are doctors you are talking about.”

“That's right. Doctors with huge houses who want to send little Johnny and Susan to prep school and the Ivy League. Doctors were just one example. Think about all the drug companies, other than the one Tirol Genetics will deal with exclusively, who will lose millions of dollars not selling heart medicine. Not to mention all those life insurance actuaries who'll have to recalculate their life expectancy tables. They're gonna lose a lot of money in lengthened annuity payouts. Same is true for retirement funds which will now have to pay for a longer period of time. Our American Social Security fund is already strapped, could you imagine all of our baby boomers living even longer?”

Scala shot up. “What would you like us to do?” he yelled. “Nothing? Should we let people die?”

Rising to meet him, her hand on his shoulder, Toni said, “Not at all. I'm on your side, here. I just wanted you to know there are people out there who would like to see you fail.”

“Like those two men in Milano?”

“Right. They were not from Interpol. They were not your friends. They were killers. And they would have done to you what they did to your friend, Leonhard. Believe me, I've dealt with a lot of people like them.”

Slipping back down to his chair, Scala looked defeated. “I don't know what to do.”

She went to the window and looked out over the small village below. The clouds had thickened, making it even darker outside. It looked like snow, she thought. “You have a contractual agreement with Tirol Genetics,” she said, turning back toward him. “You must get the information to them.”

“But why didn't we just go there this morning? Present the data like Leonhard and I had planned?”

She wasn't sure how to answer that without scaring him. “You need to be cautious. Those men in Milano knew who you worked for. They would have been waiting for you there. Let me meet with Otto Bergen tonight, and we'll work out a safe transfer. Between now and then, we have work to do.”

She told him exactly what she wanted him to do. He listened carefully and then agreed.

Jake leaned back in the park bench along the river watching the noon sun sparkle off the riffles and the ducks fighting against the strong current. His left knuckles were sore from striking the man's gun in the fight. He hadn't realized it at the time, but one of the blows to his face had made stronger contact than he thought. Just below his left eye a welt had raised up. It wouldn't be a full-blown shiner, but it would go through the normal black, blue and yellow stages.