vincristine:'
Kelly's brows rose with recognition. 'Used in the treatment of Hodgkin's disease, lymphomas, and many childhood cancers:'
Nate nodded. 'These drugs save thousands of children every year. But the plant that generated this life- saving drug is now extinct in Madagascar. What if these properties of the rosy periwinkle hadn't been discovered in time? How many children would have needlessly died?'
'Like I said, the periwinkle is a rare finding:'
'And how would you know? With all your talk of statistics and satellite photography, it comes down to one fact. Every plant has the potential to cure. Each species is invaluable. Who knows what drug could be lost through unchecked deforestation? What rare plant could hold the cure to AIDS? To diabetes? To the thousands of cancers that plague mankind?'
'Or perhaps even to cause limbs to regenerate?' Kelly added pointedly.
Richard Zane frowned and stared into the flames. 'Who can say?'
'My point exactly,' Nate finished.
Frank stepped up to the flames, seemingly oblivious to the heated debate that had been waged over the campfire. 'You're burning the fish,' the tall man said, pointing to the black smoke rising from the forgotten frying pan.
Manny chuckled and pulled the pan off the fire. 'Thank goodness for the practical Mr. O'Brien, or we'd be eating dry rations tonight:'
Frank nudged Kelly. 'Olin almost has the satellite feed hooked to the laptop.' He checked his watch. 'We should be able to connect stateside in
another hour:'
'Good:' Kelly glanced over to where Olin Pasternak was busy around a compact satellite dish and computer equipment. 'Perhaps we'll have some answers from the autopsy on Gerald Clark's body. Something that will help.'
Nate listened. Maybe it was because he was staring into the flames, but he had a strange foreboding that maybe they all should have heeded the Yanomamo shaman and burned the man's body. As Richard Zane has said
CHAPTER FIVE
Stem Cell Research
AUGUST 7, 5:32 PM.
INSTAR INSTITUTE, LANGLEY VIRGINIA
Lauren O'Brien sat hunched over her microscope when the call came from the morgue. 'Damn it,' she mumbled at the interruption. She straightened, slipped her reading glasses from her forehead to the bridge of her nose, and hit the speaker phone.
'Histology here,' she said.
'Dr. O'Brien, I think you should come down and see this:' The voice belonged to Stanley Hibbert, the forensic pathologist from Johns Hopkins and a fellow member of MEDEA. He had been called in to consult on the postmortem of Gerald Clark.
'I'm somewhat busy with the tissue samples. I've just started reviewing them:'
'And was I right about the oral lesions?'
Lauren sighed. 'Your assessment was correct. Squamous cell carcinoma. From the high degree of mitosis and loss of differentiation, I'd grade it a type one malignancy. One of the worst I've ever seen:'
'So the victim's tongue had not been cut out. It had rotted away from the cancer:'
Lauren suppressed a nonprofessional shudder. The dead man's mouth had been rank with tumors. His tongue had been no more than a friable bloody stump, eaten away by the carcinoma. And this was not the extent of the man's disease. During the autopsy, his entire body was found to be riddled with cancers in various stages, involving lungs, kidneys, liver, spleen, pancreas. Lauren glanced to the stack of slides prepared by the histology lab, each containing sections of various tumors or bone marrow aspirates.
'Any estimate of the onset of the oral cancer?' the pathologist asked.
'It's hard to say with certainty, but I'd estimate it started between six to eight weeks ago.'
A whistle of appreciation sounded over the line. 'That's damn fast!'
'I know. And so far, most of the other slides I've reviewed show a similar high degree of malignancy. I can't find a single cancer that looks older than three months:' She fingered the stack before her. 'But then again, I've still got quite a few slides to review.'
'What about the teratomas?'
'They're the same. All between one to three months. But-'
Dr. Hibbert interrupted. 'My God, it makes no sense. I've never seen so many cancers in one body. Especially teratomas:'
Lauren understood his consternation. Teratomas were cystic tumors of the body's embryonic stem cells, those rare germ cells that could mature into any bodily tissue: muscle, hair, bone. Tumors of these cells were usually only found in a few organs, such as the thymus or testes. But in Gerald Clark's body, they were everywhere-and that wasn't the oddest detail.
'Stanley, they aren't just teratomas. They're teratocarcinomas:'
'What? All of them?'
She nodded, then realized she was on the phone. 'Every single one of them:' Teratocarcinomas were the malignant form of the teratoma, a riotous cancer that sprouted a mix of muscle, hair, teeth, bone, and nerves. 'I've never seen such samples. I've found sections with partly formed livers, testicular tissue, even ganglia spindles:'
'Then that might explain what we found down here,' Stanley said.
'What do you mean?'
'Like I said when I first called, you really should come and see this for yourself.'
'Fine,' she said with an exasperated sigh. 'I'll be right down:'
Lauren ended the connection and pushed away from the microscope table. She stretched the kink out of her back from the two hours spent stooped over the slides. She considered calling her husband, but he was surely just as busy over at CIA headquarters. Besides, she'd catch up with him in another hour when they conferenced with Frank and Kelly in the field.
Grabbing her lab smock, Lauren headed out the door and descended the stairs to the institute's morgue. A bit of trepidation coursed through her. Though she was a doctor and had worked as an ER clinician for ten years, she still grew queasy during gross necropsies. She preferred the clean histology suite to the morgue's bone saws, stainless steel tables, and hanging scales. But she had no choice today.
As she crossed down the long hall toward the double doors, she distracted herself with the mystery of the case. Gerald Clark had been missing for four years, then walked out of the jungle with a new arm, undoubtedly a miraculous cure. But contrarily, his body had been ravaged by tumors, a cancerous onslaught that had started no more than three months prior. So why the sudden burst of cancer? Why the preponderance of the monstrous teratocarcinomas? And ultimately, where the hell had Gerald Clark been these past four years?
She shook her head. It was too soon for answers. But she had faith in modern science. Between her own research and the fieldwork being done by her children, the mystery would be solved.
Lauren pushed into the locker room, slipped blue paper booties over her shoes, then smeared a dab of Vicks VapoRub under her nose to offset the smells and donned a surgical mask. Once ready, she entered the lab.
It looked like a bad horror movie. Gerald Clark's body lay splayed open like a frog in biology class. Half the contents of his body cavities lay either wrapped in red-and-orange hazardous-waste bags or were resting atop steel scales. Across the room, samples were being prepped in both formaldehyde and liquid nitrogen. Eventually Lauren would see the end result as a pile of neatly inscribed microscope slides, stained and ready for her review, just the way she preferred it.
As Lauren entered the room, some of the stronger smells cut through the mentholated jelly: bleach, blood, bowel, and necrotic gases. She tried to concentrate on breathing through her mouth.
Around her, men and women in bloody aprons worked throughout the lab, oblivious to the horror. It was an efficient operation, a macabre dance of medical professionals.
