The Deep Zone

Mr. Adelheid said, “It was unfortunate. She strayed. And yet—”

“—and yet her lawyers took everything. The house, our savings, the antiques… our dogs.”

“The Airedales, yes. And it goes on.”

“Oh, yes. On and on. Do you know, after she left me, I had to move into a condominium”—he said the word as though it were an obscenity—“in one of those subdivisions with hundreds of them, all identical, lined up. It could be Bulgaria. Every morning I drive from there to BARDA, walk the same two hundred and nineteen steps to the laboratory, and at the end of each day I walk the other way. Week after month after year. That does something to a man.” He paused for breath, aware that he had not spoken to anyone like this for longer than he could remember.

“I am so sorry.” There was something like sympathy in Mr. Adelheid’s voice.

The guest’s fingertips lifted, extended, dropped down on the edge of the deposit slip. His chest felt like thin blown glass. A red spot, wine he had spilled, stained the linen beside his hand.

He put the ticket into his shirt pocket.

Mr. Adelheid lifted his wine glass for a toast. “Welcome.”

“Thank you.” They drank.

As his latest swallow surged through him, he felt empowered. “You know who I work for. Am I permitted to ask who you work for? My guess would be BioChem.” The largest pharmaceutical, headquartered in Zurich, operating in every developed country and many undeveloped ones.

“No. Nor any other pharmaceutical concern. Are you familiar with the Dutch East India Company?”

“I know that it raped Asian countries for centuries.”

“No. It was the world’s first multinational corporation, and the first to issue stock. A government unto itself, with global reach.”

“The Dutch East India Company became corrupt and collapsed.”

“As do all empires.”

“What I meant was, you can’t be working for the Dutch East India Company.”

“A descendant.”

The waiter brought balloon snifters of cognac. Mr. Adelheid sniffed, drank, smiled with closed eyes, a bliss like lovemaking.

“I wasn’t aware it spawned any.”

“A little knowledge can be dangerous. Too much can be fatal. I can tell you that the object of our present discussion has no headquarters, no corporate papers, no employees. Only members and friends.”

“Are you talking about some kind of international cabal? Freemasons, Templars, that kind of thing?”

A barked laugh. “God, no.” Mr. Adelheid paused, considered. “Think of an enormous, invisible web. If you touch it even lightly the whole web shivers.”

“Can you give me an example?”

“I could give you many. Cancer is to our era as infectious disease was to the last. One in three persons alive will contract cancer of some kind.”

“Yes.”

“There is a cancer vaccine, though.”

“What?”

“Oh yes. Almost nine years now.”

“Can’t be. The government would not allow that.”

Mr. Adelheid laughed and the candle flames shivered.

“The government has nothing to do with it. The government houses the lowest common denominators of our species.”

“Why?” He already knew the answer, but the question asked itself. Mr. Adelheid frowned.

“Healthy people do not buy pharmaceuticals.”

A fellow worker, killed by brain cancer, had taken a medicine called Orbitrex. Thirteen hundred dollars for six small blue pills. Every week. For months.

He knew that what his host was describing was wrong, but in this moment he could believe that it did not compare to the greater wrongs life had inflicted upon him. And there still existed in him a deep, silent place where all things rang one of two ways. Mr. Adelheid’s words rang true. Really, he had always known, or at least suspected. But how could you keep going and not bury that deeper still? There was no other way.

“So we near the end of our evening together.” Mr. Adelheid stood and came to him and they clasped hands again. This time, Mr. Adelheid locked eyes and held his hand and forearm in an astonishing grip, like a tourniquet tightening.

“So pleased. More than you can know. Before you depart, I would like to show you the house. A historic place, truly fascinating. More cognac?”

“No. But thank you.”

“Very well.” They walked into the hallway, as dimly lit as the huge room they had just left, and then toward the rear of the house. At the end of that hall they turned right, into another. The passages and chambers were draped in black crepe shadows. Mr. Adelheid held a cigar that trailed blue smoke. When did he light that? The visitor could not remember. Mr. Adelheid drew on the cigar and its tip flared red. They walked and walked, along halls and through rooms, passing many closed doors. At last through one whose hinges squealed and down a narrow, creaking stairway, poorly lit, into darkness from which rose odors of damp earth and stone and decay.

He followed the red coal of Mr. Adelheid’s cigar as if it were a beacon, down one dirt-floored passageway after another, turning corner after corner, and for the first time began to feel afraid. The surface underfoot was rough, and he had to take care not to stumble. Every so often he stooped beneath massive beams.

Mr. Adelheid stopped by a door five feet high, thick, rough-hewn. He could not stop thinking of spiders and snakes. Cellars always did that to him, and this cellar… Mr. Adelheid pushed the heavy door open and ducked into the room. He followed. There were no electric lights. Candles burned in rusting sconces. Massive iron rings, affixed to walls and ceiling, scabbed with brown rust. The smell in the room was stomach- turning, heavy with filth and mold.

The stone floor sloped down toward a central drain. Mr. Adelheid walked to the drain, drew on his cigar. The tip flared red. There was the buzzing of the fly again, louder now, closer to him. For an instant he thought that he might have felt the brush of tiny wings on his lip, but he saw nothing in the gloom. He could not take his eyes off the drain.

“In rooms like this, Captain Sadler took his pleasure. An underground passage led to the Potomac. Still does. Bodies were carted down and consigned to the river, which carried them to the sea.”

“Why did you bring me here?”

“You know why. This is a very serious thing, this new realm you now inhabit. Caveat venditor.”

Let the seller beware.

Mr. Adelheid glanced around the chamber one last time. “Remarkable place, isn’t it? The kind from which you do not emerge unchanged. Nor ever forget.”

Upstairs again, they walked to the front door, which began to open as they approached.

“One more thing you should know.” Mr. Adelheid drew on his cigar, peered through blue smoke. “You will have company at BARDA.”

“You mean other… observers?”

“Yes.”

“Doing the same thing I am?”

Mr. Adelheid tilted his head, exhaled smoke. “Enough to know that they are there.”

Observing, he thought. Observing me. Is that what he means?

He needed to know something. “How do you find… people like me?”