Peter May - The Runner

‘Only to cheats,’ Margaret said.

Fleischer was indignant. ‘They weren’t cheating. They weren’t taking drugs. I engineered them to be better. Naturally. It’s the future, Doctor, you must know that. The enhancement of human performance by means of genetic manipulation. And not just in athletics. We’re talking about every aspect of human life. Health, intelligence, physical capability. Soon we’ll all be able to pop a pill to make us better in every way. Drugs to genetically treat those who are well, rather than those who are sick. And there’s a fortune to be made from it. Well people can work and pay for their medicines. They live longer than sick people, and so they can buy their medicines for longer. Sick people get cured or die. Either way, they stop buying medicine. Well people just get better and better. Like my athletes.’

‘Really?’ Margaret was not impressed. ‘Six of them are dead. You don’t get many corpses winning races.’

Fleischer frowned and shrugged aside her unwelcome observation like some irritating insect that buzzed around his head. ‘A glitch,’ he said. ‘One we can put right.’

Margaret dug her fingernails into her palms to stop herself from passing out. With a great effort she said, ‘You still haven’t told me how you did it.’

The German’s smile returned. ‘HERV,’ he said.

Margaret frowned. ‘HERV?’

‘You know what HERV is?’

‘Of course.’

He was positively gleeful. ‘It is so deliciously simple, Doctor, it gives me goosebumps each time I think of it. Human endogenous retroviruses comprise about one percent of the human genome. I chose the HERV-K variant, because it is known to carry functional genes. It was an easy enough matter to isolate pieces of HERV-K from blood samples, and then amplify those pieces by cloning them in a bacterium. Are you following me?’

‘Just about.’ Margaret’s voice was no more than a whisper, but her brain was still functioning, and she felt somehow compelled by Fleischer’s icy blue eyes, and the nearly mesmeric delight he took in his own genius.

‘I was then able to modify the cloned HERV, embedding in it genes with a unique promoter which would stimulate hormone production. In some cases the promoter would stimulate the athlete’s body to produce increased amounts of testosterone, or human growth hormone. In others it would stimulate increased quantities of EPO. It depended upon whether we wished to increase speed or strength in a sprinter or a weightlifter, or whether we wanted to increase stamina in a distance runner or a cyclist.’ He leaned further into the light. ‘Did you know that EPO can increase performance by up to fourteen percent? Fourteen percent! It gives an athlete a phenomenal edge. If you are already one of the top half dozen distance runners in the world, you become unassailable. You will win every time.’

In spite of everything, Margaret found the concept both fascinating and horrifying. But there were still gaps in her understanding. ‘But how? How did you make it work?’

He laughed. ‘Also simple. I re-infected them with their own HERV. A straightforward injection, and the modified retrovirus carried the new genes straight into the chromosome.’

Margaret shook her head. ‘But, if suddenly these athletes are creating excesses of whatever hormone it is you’ve programmed them to produce, they would OD on it. It would kill them.’

Fleischer was terribly amused by this. He laughed. ‘Forgive me, Doctor. But you must think I am incredibly stupid.’

‘Stupid is not the word I would have used to describe you,’ she said, working hard to maintain eye contact.

His smile faded. ‘The genes can be switched off and on,’ he snapped. ‘If you want me to be technical about it, the hormone promoter is triggered by a chemical which is recognised by the enzymes acting at the promoter to synthesise the RNA message for the protein hormone.’

‘You can be as technical as you like,’ Margaret managed dryly. ‘But it doesn’t mean I’ll understand it.’

Fleischer’s returning smile was smug. He was in the ascendancy again. ‘I’ll keep it simple for you, then. One chemical activates the gene. Another switches it off. And a second HERV is activated by a third chemical.’

‘What’s the function of the second HERV?’

‘Stimulated by the third chemical, a protease enzyme in the second modified HERV will, literally, munch up the excess hormone. It can be activated at a moment’s notice so that the presence of increased hormone in the system is undetectable. Quite simply because it’s not there any more.’ He waved a hand dismissively. ‘A mere refinement. Because at the end of the day, the IOC and all their stupid testing bodies cannot say that naturally produced endogenous hormone constitutes doping.’

Margaret let another wave of pain wash over her, and then tried to refocus. ‘So you engineered these seven athletes to produce, within themselves, whatever hormone would best enhance their particular discipline. And also the ability to flush it out of their systems at a moment’s notice, so they could never be accused of doping.’

‘Makes it sound devilishly simple when you put it like that. Don’t you want to know how they were able to switch the hormone producing genes off and on?’

‘I’ve already worked that one out,’ Margaret said.

‘Have you?’ Fleischer was taken aback, perhaps a little disappointed.

‘The bottles of aftershave, and perfume.’

His smile was a little less amused. She had stolen his thunder. ‘You’re a very clever lady, aren’t you, Doctor Campbell? Yes, the aerosols act like a gas. The athlete only has to spray and inhale, and the unique chemical content of each scent, ingested through the lungs, sends the requisite message to the appropriate gene. Hormone on, hormone off.’

‘And the breath freshener?’

‘Triggers the destructive protease to chew up the excess hormone.’ He straightened up in his seat and beamed at her triumphantly. ‘Genetically engineered winners. Virtually guaranteed to break the tape every time.’

From the depths of her misery, Margaret gazed at him with something close to hatred. ‘So what went wrong?’

And his face darkened, and all his self-congratulatory preening dissolved in an instant. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Well, not exactly. There was some kind of recombination between the introduced and the endogenous HERV. It created something we could never have foreseen. A new retrovirus which attacked the microscopic arteries of the heart.’ He was thoughtful for a long time, gazing off into some unseen middle distance. Then, almost as if realising he still had an audience, he said, ‘Of course, we did not know that at first. It was all going so well. All our athletes were winning. We were monitoring them all very closely. And then suddenly our cyclist dropped dead without warning. Of course, I knew immediately there was a problem. But the last thing we wanted was anyone performing an autopsy. So we arranged for him to die “by accident”. The body was removed from its coffin before it was burned at the crematorium, and then we were free to perform our own examination. Which is when we discovered the thickening of the microvasculature.’

‘And you knew that your retrovirus had caused that?’

‘No, not immediately. It wasn’t until the three members of the sprint relay team became ill after coming down with the flu, that I began to piece things together. We knew that the cyclist had suffered from the flu shortly before he collapsed. That was when I realised that the retrovirus was being activated by the flu virus, and that there was nothing we could do about it. We kept all three athletes at our clinic, and they died within days of each other. An autopsy on one of them, after he had been “cremated”, confirmed all my fears.’