The Deep Zone

“And I… yes, me, too.”

He watched her leave, moving through space as though without weight.

“To the victors go the spoils.” Mr. Adelheid raised his glass again.

“God in heaven.” He drank, eyes closed.

“Would you like to learn more?”

“That’s why I came.”

Mr. Adelheid nodded. “Fine. But let us enjoy this good food first. We should never rush our pleasures.”

“Live our lives.”

“Indeed.” Mr. Adelheid did something in the air with his right hand, some ancient benediction, and picked up his knife. They ate in an island of light in the great shadowed room. With a silver knife he cut the venison and forked to his mouth pieces dripping with sauce. They ate and did not speak, the only sounds in the room those of their chewing and breathing and the insistent buzzing of one invisible fly.

TWO

THE LIGHT IN THE ROOM RIPPLED, CANDLE FLAMES DANCING with currents of air. He ate, drank wine, so overwashed with pleasures he forgot for long moments who and where he was.

After a time, with half of his venison uneaten, Mr. Adelheid laid down his silver, dabbed his lips. His fingers were slim and very long, tendrils with shining tips.

To leave food like that. His own plate had been clean for some minutes.

“Well. We would be very grateful for your help.”

“Leave BARDA and come to work for you?” He did not know who Mr. Adelheid worked for. But surely it would be made clear. Or would it?

“No. Not leave BARDA.”

“A mole, then.” Crude. He regretted it immediately, blushed.

The fly, buzzing again. An expression passed across Mr. Adelheid’s face, like clouds scudding over the moon. “An observer.”

“What would you want me to observe?”

“Most antibiotics today are derived from one original source, is that not true?”

“Yes. Actinomycetales. Discovered in 1940 by Selman Waksman. He got the Nobel for that work.”

“But germs are winning the battle. So I have heard.”

“Hundreds of thousands of people die every year from bacterial infections we can no longer treat. In the U.S. alone. Other places, the numbers are… appalling.”

“Hundreds of thousands of reported deaths. The true total is much higher, isn’t it?”

“Of course. Did renal failure or hospital-acquired infection kill Mr. Jones? One checkmark in a different box on a report. An easy choice for dirty hospitals. Which most are.”

“And your facility—BARDA—is trying to produce an entirely new family of antibiotics.”

“Among other projects. But yes, that is one main thrust of the work.”

Mr. Adelheid smoothed his ascot. How old was the man? The visitor could not say with any certainty. Forty or sixty. His skin was smooth, eyes bright, movements lithe. But there was something ancient about him, Sphinx- like, an inscrutable repose.

“Consider this. The new currency of power is information,” Mr. Adelheid said.

“Really?” The Laphroaig and the wine were making him bolder. “So given the choice between a ton of gold and a terabyte of information, you’d take the terabyte?”

“On the surface, an easy choice. A ton of gold today is worth $45 million. No paltry sum. But: what if you have golden information? Do you have any idea how much money has been made from Dr. Waksman’s antibiotics?”

“Billions, I would guess.”

“Trillions.”

“Don’t you have politicians who can help you?”

“Of course we have politicians. And others. But no one like you.”

“So what do you need, exactly?”

“Exactly? At this very moment? Nothing. But there will come a time. Very soon, we think.”

Keeping his eyes on the table, he said, “You want me to be a spy.”

Mr. Adelheid made a sound as if clearing something unpleasant from his throat. “Spies make death. Our wish is not to take lives but to save them.”

“For a profit.”

“Of course for a profit.” His tone suggested that any alternative would be irrational, like living without breathing. “What are millions of human lives worth?”

“Priceless.”

Mr. Adelheid regarded him in silence for a moment. “You know of Reinhold Messner? The great mountaineer?”

“I know he climbed Mount Everest solo.”

“And without oxygen. In Europe, a god. Messner said, ‘From such places you do not return unchanged.’ ”

“I don’t climb.”

“Mountains are not the only realms from which we may not return unchanged.”

Mr. Adelheid reached into his blazer, produced a slip of green paper the size of a playing card. He slid it to the middle of the table. A deposit ticket from Grand Cayman National Bank for Fifty thousand and 00/100 dollars, payable not to a name but to an eleven-digit alphanumeric sequence.

“An appreciation for the pleasure of your company this evening. You need only the PIN. Which I will give you.”

“For doing what?”

“For joining me tonight.”

“Fifty thousand dollars for a few hours?”

“Of course.”

It was dizzying, but another question had to be asked. “How much for doing the… observing you mentioned?”

Mr. Adelheid named a figure that made his heart jump. For a moment the room blurred and sang like a plucked string. He put his hand on the table, a few inches away from the green slip. Thoughts skittered in his head.

So this is how it feels. He watched as his hand, possessed, slid toward the green paper.

“I urge you to think carefully.” Mr. Adelheid’s voice made a strange echo in the chamber. Or was it the whiskey and wine? “This threshold, like Messner’s realm, is one you cannot recross. Be certain.”

It came out, quick and harsh, as though he had been waiting most of his life to tell someone. “I have a doctorate from a good university. Nineteen years of government service. I make eighty-seven thousand, four hundred and seventy-six dollars a year. I have been passed over for promotion three times. I do not want to die having had only this life.”

Mr. Adelheid regarded him thoughtfully. “And there was that unfortunate business with your wife. Forgive me: former wife.”

So he knows. Of course. He would know everything. He bit off each word: “Yes. The ‘unfortunate incident.’ ”

It had been nine years, but like a gangrenous wound, this one would never heal; in fact, like such a wound, it seemed to grow deeper and more foul as time passed. Even Mr. Adelheid’s veiled reference made his rage flare. And not just rage. A hot and breathless shame for the losses—and for being one who’d lost the great things.