these people is an antibody for that extracellular part of the ERB-2 oncoprotein.”
“You’re losing me,” Janet admitted.
“Let’s give it a try,” Sean said. “Maybe I can show you. It will only take a moment since I have some of the ERB-2 oncoprotein from the Key West lab. Let’s see if Helen Cabot’s medicine reacts with it. Remember that I wasn’t able to get it to react with any natural cellular antigen. The only thing it would react with was her tumor.”
As Sean quickly prepared the immunofluorescence test, Janet tried to absorb what Sean had said so far.
“In other words,” Janet said after a pause, “what makes this medulloblastoma cancer so different is that not only is it manmade, it’s curable.”
Sean looked up from his work with obvious admiration. “Right on!” he said. “You got it. They created a cancer with a tumor-specific antigen for which they already had a monoclonal antibody. This antibody would react with the antigen and coat all the cancer cells. Then all they’d have to do was to stimulate the immune system both in vivo and in vitro to get as many ‘killer’ cells as possible. The only minor problem was that the treatment probably made the symptoms worse initially because of the inflammation it would undoubtedly cause.”
“Which is why Helen Cabot died,” Janet said.
“That’s what I’d guess,” Sean said. “Boston kept her too long during the diagnostic stage. They should have sent her right down to Miami. The trouble is that Boston can’t believe someone else might be better for any medical problem.”
“How could you be so sure of all this?” Janet asked. “By the time we got back here you hadn’t any proof. Yet you were sure enough to force the Masons over here by gunpoint. Seems to me you were taking a huge risk.”
“The clincher was some engineer-style drawings of viral capsids I saw in the lab in Key West,” Sean explained. “As soon as I saw them, I knew it all had to be true. You see, Dr. Levy’s particular area of expertise is virology. The drawings were of a spherical virus with icosahedral symmetry. That’s the kind of capsule an SLE virus has. The scientifically elegant part of this vile plot is that Deborah Levy was able to package the oncogenes into the SLE viral capsule. There wouldn’t be room for more than one oncogene in each virus because she’d have to leave much of the SLE virus genome intact so that it would still be infective. I don’t know how she did it. She also must have included some retroviral genes as well as the oncogene in order to get the oncogene to insert into the infected cell’s chromosomes. My guess is that she transformed a number of the viruses with the oncogenes and only those brain cells that were unlucky enough to get all the oncogenes simultaneously became cancerous.”
“Why an encephalitis virus?” Janet asked.
“It has a natural predilection for neurons,” Sean said. “If they wanted to cause a cancer they could treat, they needed a tumor which they could count on giving early symptoms. Brain cancer is one of them. Scientifically, it’s all quite rational.”
“Diabolical is a better term,” Janet said.
Janet glanced over into the glass-enclosed office. Dr. Mason was pacing the room although carefully avoiding the desk and the flask in the ice bath. “Do you think he knows all this?” she asked.
“That I don’t know,” Sean said. “But if I had to guess, I’d say yes. It would be hard to run this elaborate operation without the director knowing. After all, it was a fund-raiser in the final analysis.”
“That’s why they targeted CEOs and their families,” Janet said.
“That’s my assumption,” Sean said. “It’s easy to find out which health insurance company a large firm uses. It’s also not difficult to find out someone’s social security number, especially for quasi-public figures. Once they had the subscriber’s social security number, it would be an easy step to get their dependents’.”
“So that evening when we were here copying the charts and heard the word donor, they were referring to money, not organs.”
Sean nodded. “At that moment our imaginations were too active,” he said. “We forgot that specialty hospitals and associated research centers have become increasingly desperate as NIH grants are getting harder and harder to come by. Creating a group of wealthy, grateful patients is a good way to make it through to the twenty-first century.”
Meanwhile, the immunofluorescence test involving the ERB-2 and Helen Cabot’s medicine had registered strongly positive, even stronger than it had with the tumor cells. “There you go!” Sean said smugly. “There’s the antigen-antibody reaction I’ve been searching for.”
Next Sean turned back to his hundreds of samples in the two thermocyclers.
“Can I help?” Janet asked.
“Definitely,” Sean said. He showed her how to handle a twelve-channel pipette, then gave her a series of oncogene probes to add to the thermocycler wells.
They worked together for almost three-quarters of an hour, concentrating on the meticulous work. They were both physically exhausted and emotionally overwrought from the magnitude of the conspiracy they suspected. After the final well was probed and analyzed for its luminescence, they’d uncovered two more oncogenes: Ha-ras, named after the Harvey sarcoma virus which normally infected rats, and SV40 Large T from a virus usually found in monkey kidneys. From the RNA studies in the second thermocycler, where Sean had run a quantitative polymerase chain reaction, it was determined that all the oncogenes were “mega” expressed.
“What an oncogene cocktail!” Sean said with awe as he stood and stretched his weary muscles. “Any nerve cell that got those four would undoubtedly become cancerous. Dr. Levy was leaving as little to chance as possible.”
Janet put down the pipette she was holding and cradled her head in her hands. In a tired voice she spoke without looking up: “What now?”
“We give up, I guess,” Sean said. As he tried to contemplate the next step, he glanced into the office at the Masons who were arguing again. Mercifully, the glass partition dampened the sound of their voices considerably.
“How are we going to manage the giving up?” Janet asked sleepily.
Sean sighed. “You know, I hadn’t given it much thought. It could be tricky.”
Janet looked up. “You must have had some idea when you came up with this plan.”
“Nope,” Sean admitted. “I didn’t think that far ahead.”
Janet pushed off her seat and went to the window. From there she could see down into the parking lot. “You got that circus you wanted,” she said. “There are hundreds of people out there, including a group in black uniforms.”
“They’re the ones who make me nervous,” Sean admitted. “I’d guess they’re a SWAT team.”
“Maybe the first thing we should do is send the Masons out to tell them that we’re ready to come out.”
“That’s an idea,” Sean said. “But you’ll go with them.”
“But then you’ll be in here alone,” Janet said. She came back and sat down. “I don’t like that. Not with all those black-uniform guys itching to come charging in here.”
“The biggest problem is Helen Cabot’s brain,” Sean said.
“Why?” Janet asked with a sigh of exasperation.
“It’s our only evidence,” Sean said. “We cannot allow the Forbes people to destroy the brain which I’m certain they’d do if given the chance. My guess is that I’ll not be very popular with anybody when we end this. During the confusion there’s a good chance the brain could get into the wrong hands. I doubt anyone is going to take the time to stop and hear me out.”
“I’d have to agree,” Janet said.
“Wait a second!” Sean said with sudden enthusiasm. “I’ve got an idea.”
13
It took Sean twenty minutes to convince Janet that the best thing for her to do was join the Masons in the office. It was Sean’s hope that the idea she’d been coerced would be easier to put forth if she was considered a hostage. Janet was skeptical, but in the end she relented.
With that issue decided, Sean packed Helen Cabot’s brain in ice and put it in the cooler he’d used to transport
