Tom Hyman (39 page)

The doors were cleverly hidden in the wood paneling in the bedrooms, and each one contained a small peephole.

The gallery then took a ninety-degree turn and continued inside the inner wall on the western side of the building. At the end of this first gallery another narrow flight of stairs led up to a similar gallery on the floor above.

The main part of Schloss Vogel had been built by Baron Hugo von Ullricht in 1752. He included the passageways so that he could spy on his guests. Legend had it that several rivals met with mysterious deaths during overnight visits to the Schloss. The castle was added onto by subsequent members of the family, and the custom of building in secret passages continued. A later Baron von Ullricht was said to use them to visit the bedrooms of various mistresses without raising a scandal. The last Baron von Ullricht, who occupied Schloss Vogel until 1923, was reputed to be in the habit of spying on his guests as a sexual diversion. In 1923, the baron’s wife was murdered in her bedroom under circumstances that strongly suggested that the baron was responsible. Many believed that during his voyeuristic rounds he had caught her in bed with another man. The police failed to bring charges against him, but the murder ruined him socially. He sold the castle to the von Hausers and moved to South America.

The baroness had spent a fortune restoring the estate. She had also spent a fortune on security. A high wall encompassed the entire thousand acres, and it was electronically monitored around the clock.

No one could get over the wall or through any of the three gates without his presence being detected immediately. Not that anyone would want to. A couple of dozen Dobermans and Alsatians—all trained attack dogs—were turned loose to roam the property every night. Anyone caught on the castle grounds after dark was in trouble.

With these guests the baroness wasn’t taking any risks. The dogs would be kept securely locked out of sight in their kennels for the weekend.

A security force of twenty men had been brought up from the Hauser plant in Regensburg to fill in for the dogs.

After the tour, the baroness hosted a get-acquainted cocktail party.

Most of the public rooms in Schloss Vogel, with their huge fireplaces, deep stone window casements, and high walls of stone or dark wood, were predictably gloomy and medieval in feeling.

For this first formal gathering, the baroness had picked one of the brighter chambers at the end of the south hall. She had had all the heavy wood furniture, stuffed animal heads, and coats-ofarms removed and the space redecorated in light colors, with overstuffed casual sofas and chairs, bright pillows, throw rugs, end tables, floor lamps, and wall tapestries depicting pleasant pastoral scenes. Huge vases of flowers lightened the darker corners, and large mirrors reflected and magnified the light, giving the otherwise somber hall a cautiously festive atmosphere. Drinks and canapes were served by an attentive group of waiters.

Dr. Laura Garhardt and three other members of the team of obstetricians and geneticists who were to perform the work were present to explain procedures and answer questions. The baroness knew that a success with this initial group was critical. They could be counted on to spread the word quickly among their friends.

For the same reason, failure could be disastrous.

The baroness, looking spectacular in a floor-length red gown, welcomed the group with a calculated dose of flattery. She congratulated them on being chosen for this historic event, and praised them for the pioneering role they were about to embark upon, and the enormous contribution their sacrifice was going to make to the noble cause of science. She detailed the weekend’s events, and then introduced Dalton Stewart.

He added a few welcoming remarks of his own, including a brief and very sanitized description of how this remarkable genetic program had come to be developed. It was still somewhat experimental, he warned, and of course it remained highly secret.

But he reassured them that so far their results had been extraordinary.

“Just how extraordinary I’ll now demonstrate,” Stewart said.

He glanced expectantly to his right, where one of the waiters had uncovered a large TV screen. All eyes in the room turned to follow his gaze. The screen flickered to life, and the guests saw a beautiful little girl playing the piano in a large, sunny room.

“This is Genevieve,” Stewart began. “She’ll be three years old on January first. She was the first child conceived under this program.

And I am very proud to tell you that she also happens to be my daughter….”

He spoke slowly, giving the baroness time to translate his remarks into German and French.

“This scene was shot at our home in Long Island,” Stewart continued.

“Genny, as we call her, has never had any piano lessons. She plays entirely by ear. If she hears a song once, she can reproduce the melody perfectly. Of course, her hands aren’t yet large enough for her to reach all the keys, so her chord accompaniment is necessarily limited.”

After a few minutes of piano, the camcorder cut to a new scene, showing Genny reciting by memory in a child’s singsong tones a passage from Shakespeare’s The Merclant of Venice. The third scene showed Genny being handed a children’s book by her nanny, Mrs. Callahan.

“You’ve never seen this book before, have you, Genny?”

Genny looked the book over. “No, ma’am, I have not,” she responded in a very adult and authoritative tone. The guests chuckled appreciatively.

“Then turn to page five and read what it says there, please,” Mrs.

Callahan said.

Genny turned to page five, studied it with a concentrated expression, then began reading the words out loud: ” ‘Isn’t it funny how a bear loves honey. Buzz, buzz, buzz, I wonder why he does.”

Hey,” she added. “It rhymes!”

The guests laughed. Stewart saw the amazed delight on their faces.

He continued his narration through several more taped scenes.

One showed Genny climbing through a jungle gym and swinging on a trapeze bar. It was immediately apparent that her speed, grace, and agility far surpassed what would be expected from a child of three.

Genny’s mother was conspicuously absent from the video.

Stewart had recorded all the scenes at his Lattingtown estate during one of the weekends Genny was in his custody.

Stewart made a few closing remarks about Genny’s high IQ t 1

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and robust health, and the probability, based on the genetic enhancements of the program, that she would live to be a hundred or more. He apologized for not being able to have his daughter there with him in the flesh, but promised that they might well meet her in the near future. No mention was made of Genny’s heightened sensory acuity.

Stewart himself remained unaware of it.

Following the video presentation, the guests were ushered into a lavish banquet in the castle’s enormous dining hall. Despite their worldly sophistication, they were all quite astounded by what they had seen and heard. The dinner table buzzed with enthusiastic talk about Genny Stewart, the program, and their own imminent participation in it.

The guests inundated the baroness, Dr. Garhardt, and Dalton Stewart with questions and praise for several hours, and went off to bed, finally, sated and weary, but excited.

Later, Dalton Stewart found the baroness in her upstairs study.

“I’m going back to Munich tonight,” he said.

The baroness had changed into a melon-colored peignoir and done up her hair. She was reclining on a small chaise and studying what looked like a financial report of some kind. She looked up at him. Her light blue eyes seemed to examine him with unusual intensity. It was a look he had seen before: concealed anger. “It’s late,” she said. “You should stay.”

Stewart shook his head.

She picked up a black plastic RCD from the end table beside her and handed it to him. “We finally received your copy of Jupiter from New York. I have it right here.”

Stewart took it and looked at it, confused. “Did they encode it already?”

“It’s blank.”

“What do you mean?”

“There’s nothing on it. No Jupiter program. It’s blank.”

“Somebody sent the wrong cartridge, then.”

“No. This was the only one in the safe in your office. That’s what I was told.”

“That can’t be. Did you speak to Hank Ajemian?”

“No. I’d like you to.”

“I will.”

“Because I believe he has stolen it.”

“Nonsense.”

“Does anyone else have access to your safe?”

“No,” Stewart replied, raising his voice. “But if Ajemian were going to steal it, he’d have made a copy, for chrissakes, not sent you a blank. He’s not stupid.”

The baroness stared at him. Obviously she didn’t believe him.

She waited a few beats and answered him in a soft voice: “All I know is that your copy is now missing.”

“I’ll talk to him. There must be a simple explanation.”

“I hope so. You realize this could ruin everything.”

“I’ll talk to Ajemian tonight.”

Stewart left the baroness and drove back to Munich. By the time he reached his apartment, it was two-thirty A.M. It would be eightthirty P.M. in New York. He dialed Ajemian’s home number.

He answered after eight rings.

“It’s Dalton. We’ve got a problem.”

“I could have guessed.” Ajemian sounded depressed.

“The RCD you sent to Munich—the baroness says its blank.”

“That’s not possible.”

“Did you check it?”

“No, but no one else can get into the safe.”

“Is it possible it was already blank when I put it in the safe?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Well, the baroness thinks you stole it.”

“That figures. She’s been dying to nail me on something.”

“What else could she think?”

“Maybe she’s lying. Did you check the RCD yourself?”

“No.”

Stewart pressed a hand against his forehead. He had a sharp headache.

“I don’t know what the hell to think, Hank. I was hoping maybe it was a mix-up. That you took the cartridge out to make a copy before sending it over here, and then you just sent the wrong RCD.”

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“I did copy it—just to protect us. But I’m positive I sent over the one that was in the safe.”

“Did you check the copy you made?”

“No. But I will, as soon as I get into the office.”

“Couldn’t you have switched them by mistake?”

“No. And if the one in the safe was blank, then my copy will be too.”

“Will you check it?”

“I said I would.”

“Let me know right away.”

“A blank RCD’s not your only problem,” Ajemian said. “Unless we can renegotiate a better repayment schedule out of her than the one you agreed to, Biotech is going to default.”

“I’ll take it up with her.”

“Do more than that. Get us better terms.”

“I’ll do what I can. Just find that RCD, Hank.”

There was an awkward silence. Finally Ajemian spoke. “Get out of there, Dalton, for chrissakes. Before it’s too late. Cut your losses.”

“Just find that goddamn missing cartridge!”

Stewart dropped the telephone receiver back onto its cradle and sank down onto a sofa. He felt an overwhelming fatigue. He propped his elbows on his knees and rested his head in his hands.

If Ajemian couldn’t find the copy, then all copies of Jupiter would now be in the baroness’s hands.

He was damned if he was going to let her cut him out of Jupiter. He had to do something. Thank God at least he still had Genny.

Anne surveyed the narrow, cramped apartment room she had converted into a study. There was a desk with a computer and a printer on it, a small table stacked high with manuals, RCD cartridges, and journals, and two bookshelves so crammed with books that it was physically impossible to wedge one more in, vertically or horizontally.

She had been working here on her own for months, trying to unravel the mysteries of the Jupiter program. The effort had given her an immediate sense of purpose, and had helped keep her from brooding about her failed marriage and from worrying about the future.

Now, thanks to Axel Guttmann and a one-word access code he refused to divulge, her effort seemed at an end. For the past three days she had wrung her hands in anger and frustration, trying to come up with some plausible way she might still get Guttmann to give her that one crucial word.

She had asked Lexy for help, but Lexy’s advice always came back to the same thing—give Guttmann what he wanted. For a while she had seriously considered it. But even if she could overcome her loathing long enough to submit to him, she had to reckon with the possibility that he might try to string her along indefinitely, or even mislead her with phony code words. And there was always the possibility that he might be dangerous as well as loathsome.

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The only other approach was to try to guess what the code word might be.

She had tried the obvious words, like “Jupiter,” “Goth,” “Genome,”

“Nobel,” and “DNA,” hoping for a lucky break. Each attempt was tedious and timeconsuming, since it required testing each new word by feeding her genome and Dalton’s genome into the database all over again and seeing if she got a result that matched Genny’s genome. She knew the effort was futile. There were just too many possibilities. The word could be the name of someone Goth knew. It could be a nonsense word.

It could be anything. She could spend years trying to find it.

But she couldn’t let it alone, either. Each day, she’d come back to the computer and try a few more, hoping for a miracle.

She reread all Goth’s published works, underlining words he seemed to use often, making lists of names and subjects and places and anything else that potentially interested him, looking for some pattern that might at least let her narrow her search.

After days of fruitless effort, she was taken by a new inspiration.