as steadily as the Mona Lisa stares down her admirers in the Louvre. It was the Raphael. The Portrait of a Young Man rested on a crate with German stencilling, propped against the damp stone wall as if it were a worthless canvas awaiting the dumpster or a yard sale.
He swung his legs and sat up. His head was pounding but he was able to stand. The room was about the size of Odile’s sitting room, cluttered with crates, rolled carpets and a hodge podge of bric-a-brac: candle sticks, vases, lamps, even a silver tea service. He picked up a candle stick and it was awfully heavy.
Christ, he thought, solid gold.
There was the clunk of a bolt unlocking and the door creaked open.
Bonnet and his son again.
They saw he had a candlestick in his hand. Bonnet pulled a small pistol from his pocket. ‘Put it down,’ he demanded.
Luc snorted at him and tossed it hard on the floor, denting it. ‘There goes half its value.’
‘Who has this letter you say you wrote?’ Bonnet asked again.
Luc thrust out his jaw. ‘I’m not saying anything else until I see Sara.’
‘You need to tell me,’ Bonnet said.
‘You need to screw yourself.’
Bonnet whispered into his son’s ear. Both men left and locked the door again. Luc had a better look around the room. The walls were stone, the floor concrete. The door was a solid-looking affair. The ceiling was plastered. Maybe there was an opportunity there. It wouldn’t be hard to climb up onto the crates and poke around. Then in the corner behind some cardboard boxes he noticed a jumble of hardware and cables. He swore out loud. His computers!
The door opened again.
This time Sara was there with Odile behind her. ‘Ten minutes, that’s all,’ Odile said, giving Sara a small shove. The door slammed again and they were alone.
She looked small and frail but at the same time she beamed at the sight of him. ‘Luc! My God, it’s you!’
‘You didn’t know I was coming?’
She shook her head and lowered it to hide her tears.
He moved forward and pulled her to his chest so she could cry against it. He felt her sobs with the palms of his hands pressed against her shuddering back. ‘It’s okay,’ he said. ‘It’s going to be okay. You’re not alone anymore. I’m here.’
She pulled away to dry her eyes and managed to smile again. ‘Are you okay?’ she asked. ‘Did they hurt you?’
‘No, I’m fine. Where are we?’
‘I’m not sure. I haven’t seen anything but the inside of a room like this one and a tiny loo. I think we’re underground.’
‘I’ve been sick with worry about you,’ Luc said. ‘You fell off the face of the earth. I had no idea what happened. I went to your flat. I called your boss. I tried to get the police to investigate.’
‘I never made it out of Cambridge,’ she replied weakly.
She’d stayed at Fred Prentice’s side in the bustling corridor of the Nuffield Hospital. Luc had told her there’d been an emergency back in France. Something bad, nothing more. He had to go, he was sorry. He’d call when he knew the facts, and then he was gone.
Fred saw she was shaken, and in his fractured state, he was the one consoling her.
‘I’m sure it’ll be all right,’ he said.
‘Fred, for God’s sake, don’t worry about me!’
‘You look upset. I wish you had a chair. Maybe they can bring one.’
‘I’m fine.’ She leaned over his railing and patted him on his only uninjured limb. ‘Why don’t you tell me what you found?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It’ll do us good to distract ourselves with a bit of science. Have you ever heard of the FOXO3A gene?’
‘No, sorry.’
‘How about SIRT1?’
‘Not in my lexicon, I’m afraid.’
‘Not to worry. It’s a bit specialised. I’m not an expert either, but I’ve been reading up since your sample lit these targets up on our test panel like Piccadilly Circus.’
‘You’re saying there was additional activity beyond the ergot alkaloids?’
‘The ergots were only the beginning. Your broth has quite a few interesting properties. I’d describe it as a cornucopia of pharmacology. Had that phrase on one of my PowerPoint slides, actually. Thought it was apt.’
She wanted him back on track. ‘The genes…’
‘Yes, the genes. Here’s what I know. They’re called survival genes. SIRT1 is the Sirtuin 1 DNA-repair gene. It’s part of a family of genes that control the rate of ageing. If you activate it by revving it up with a chemical activator or, curiously, by calorie-depriving an animal, you can achieve remarkable longevity results. They work by repairing the damage done to DNA by the normal wear-and-tear of cellular processes. You know how it’s said that red wine makes you live longer?’
‘I’m a devotee,’ she chuckled.
‘There’s a chemical in red wine, especially Pinot Noirs: resveratrol.’
She nodded. ‘I’ve heard of it.’
‘Well, it’s an activator of the SIRT1 gene. Hard to do the experiment in humans, but give enough of the stuff to mice and you can double their life spans. And it’s not even all that potent a chemical. Presumably there are better ones waiting to be discovered. And by the way, as a plant person, you’ll be interested in knowing that the Japanese knotweed root is a richer source of resveratrol than wine.’
‘I’ll stick with my wine,’ she scoffed, but he had her attention. ‘And the other gene, FOX something?’
‘FOXO3A. It’s another member of that family of survival genes, maybe a more important one than SIRT1. Some describe it as the holy grail of ageing. There aren’t too many known activators of FOXO3A other than polyphenols in green tea extracts and N-aceytlycysteine so there haven’t been any direct experimental studies done manipulating the gene. But there’s some interesting epidemiology. A study of Japanese men who lived to ninety-five or over compared to chaps who popped off at a normal age showed that the old boys had extra copies of the FOXO3A gene.’
She squinted in thought. ‘So if you could boost this gene artificially, you could achieve longevity.’
‘Yes, perhaps so.’
‘Could a man live as long as two hundred and twenty years?’
‘Well, I don’t know. Maybe if he took your broth!’
‘Okay, Fred,’ she said with rising excitement. ‘What makes you say that?’
‘As I told you, the broth lit up these genes on our screens. It’s not like I’m a genius for testing for SIRT1 and FOXO3A. Our robotic screens test hundreds of potential biological targets all in one go. Once I had that result, I did serial dilutions of the broth and retested for activity, and this is the really exciting thing, Sara: whatever chemicals possess the gene-activating properties, they are extremely potent. Many, many times more potent than resveratrol. And forget about green tea extracts. Not in the same league. Whatever’s in the broth is really extraordinary.’
‘You don’t know what it is?’
‘Heavens no! Our screens only detect activity. It will probably require a small army of smart organic chemists to identify the chemical or chemicals responsible for activating SIRT1 and FOXO3A. These structural elucidations can be devilishly difficult but the academic and commercial interest will be immense. What I would have given…’ His voice trailed off.
She stroked his good shoulder again. ‘Oh, Fred…’
‘My lab, gone. Everything, gone.’
She fished a tissue from her handbag and he daintily dabbed his eyes with it.
‘Do you think it’s coming from the redcurrants? The bindweed?’
‘There’s no way of telling without an awful lot of grunt work. Maybe there’s one compound activating both genes. Maybe two or more compounds. Maybe the molecule or molecules don’t come from either plant but from a chemical reaction involving heating all the ingredients in the soup, as it were. Maybe the ergots from the Claviceps
