D Carpenter - Infertile Grounds

She nodded. A phone started ringing from the kitchen. “Excuse me, Ms. Burns, that might be Camilla. I should go and get that.” Albert excused himself and disappeared in the direction of the kitchen. A few moments later he was back.

“That was Camilla. She told me to tell you that she’ll be back here later than expected, but it will be before six tonight and you will both be leaving this evening.”

“Will you be joining us on the trip, Albert?” Sarah enquired.

“Not in the plane. I’ll be driving up later on tonight.”

He started to leave and Sarah said, “Albert?”

He paused and without looking at her replied, “Yes?”

“Do you know who I am?”

He turned. His brown eyes bore into her from the middle of his bald, round head. Since she had met him yesterday, his expressions always seemed forced, as if he were putting on a mask for each situation.

His gaze flickered under her well-practiced icy analytic glare as he replied, “Yes, Ms. Burns. I know you are a very good friend of Camilla’s from back at college.” The muscles on the side of his smooth scalp twitched.

Sarah smiled and turned back to her breakfast thoughtfully. This was not good. He knew everything.

Maurice ran his hands over his thinning, grey, cap-tussled hair and let out a sigh as he shook his head gently. “Let me tell you about Sarah. As you know, I was a mentor to her. She was like my daughter until her senior year. Then she became somewhat distracted – started to socialize with a different group of people and lost her focus.”

“Do you know how many infants die every year globally from malnutrition and mostly preventable diseases like malaria, tuberculosis and pneumococcal diseases like meningitis, pneumonia and sepsis, Pell?”

Pell shook his head.

“Eight million,” Maurice continued. “Sarah became obsessed with that fact. These are preventable deaths. We’ve got the medication and vaccines but access to healthcare is the real issue. Over 1 billion people have no access to healthcare. None whatsoever!”

Maurice paused for a long moment. “That’s a billion, with a capital B. It’s staggering and in developing countries, even half of those children who receive medical treatment will die anyway, if you can believe that. We’re living on two different planets.”

“Her thesis was focused on the potential for manipulating viruses and bacteria at the genetic level, potentially eradicating them all together or at least fundamentally altering their abilities and she developed a marvelous computer simulation on the impact of removing cholera, malaria, dysentery and other scourges of the developing world from the face of the earth. The results were not what she or I expected. They were shocking and I think it was that moment, after we validated her logic and assumptions, that I lost her.”

“What kind of results?” Pell asked.

Maurice stared through the far wall for a moment before saying, “Short-term benefits but mid-term disaster. There’d be no way to feed the tens of millions of people normally culled by disease – the end-result was rampant starvation, squalor, social chaos – a downward spiral that always ended in disaster.”

“Jesus,” Pell muttered as a shudder rolled down his back. “You said that was when you lost her? What happened?”

“She developed a friendship at college around that same time. I was encouraging Sarah to finish her thesis and publish. It was groundbreaking research and was important that she brought this into the public arena. But she started to become more distant and was very reluctant to finish or publish her thesis. She spent a lot of time with her new friend and less time on her work.”

“Who was this friend? Male or female? Do you remember a name?” Pell asked.

“Of course I remember her name. It was Camilla Haywood.”

“Camilla Haywood, the actress?”

“Yes, that’s her,” Maurice replied. “She and Sarah became very close. It was an odd friendship since Camilla was not a natural academic. In fact, she wasn’t an academic at all. She got into Harvard through connections, though I never could work out why she would want to be there. After all, she went on to become a famous actress, hardly a typical Harvard career path.”

“It was frustrating for me because I wanted Sarah to focus on our work. We, or really she, was formulating radical ideas and approaches to DNA – how to slice it and dice it, to use it as raw building blocks for creating new forms of life. If she has successfully taken it from theory to practice, it’s Nobel Prize material but, if she’s developed something that is not being ratified and jointly developed with the right scientific bodies, peer reviews and oversight, it could be our worst nightmare.”

“Jesus Christ,” Pell muttered. Camilla Haywood was Hollywood royalty.

Maurice said, “I loved Sarah like one of my own, but if she’s doing what you say, you must find her. I’ve always feared what is possible with biotechnology. Did you ever think about it?”

“Of course, I just thought it would come from outside the country – from the middle-east or someplace like that. And, frankly, I never considered that it wouldn’t outright kill people either. This seems almost more sinister.”

“I might have educated a monster.” Maurice covered his wrinkled face with his hands. “Sarah’s trying to avenge nature. The way she sees it, man is the problem. Back then, I thought it was typical college-campus-induced, save the world ideology. You know how blind, how naïve, college kids can be. Their interpretation of reality usually changes radically once they get into the real world. But apparently she never outgrew it. I probably gave her what she needed to accomplish her nefarious task. At the very minimum, I pointed her in the right direction.”

“I wouldn’t worry about that Mr. Andleman. She would have done it with or without you. All I know is that I’ve got to find her. Can you remember anything else, anything at all?”

Maurice slowly shook his head. “Nothing that I can think of.”

Pell sensed that the old man was holding something back but he didn’t have the time to sit and chat all day – maybe he was just upset that one of his wunderkinds was on a quest to change the world. He stood and handed Maurice his business card. “If you remember anything else, give me a call. That’s my mobile number. Use it day or night.”

“Good luck, Pell,” Maurice said.

“One more thing, Mr. Andleman. I think someone is following me. I lost them down in Boston this morning, and I don’t think that they tailed me up here, but if anyone you don’t know shows up here, be real cautious.”

Maurice grimaced.

Pell backed out of the driveway. The retired educator peered at him through the back window of the camp. He hadn’t meant to scare the old guy, but he needed time to follow up on what Maurice had told him. And if all it took was making an old man a little more cautious of strangers, so be it. Carl’s agents would come here. This was the obvious place to start.

He set out on the drive back to Boston. All he wanted to do, besides have a drink, was make a few calls. Camilla Haywood was probably going to be a dead end but she was the next logical step. How many of his friends from U Mass had he seen in the last five, or even ten, years? People change – most people at least. The odds of Camilla and Sarah still being chummy were slim to none.

He looked in the rear-view mirror and saw a police cruiser on his tail with his blues on. He glanced down at the speedometer. Busted. The cruiser tailed him onto the shoulder of the road.

Pell sat patiently, waiting for the cop to come up and scribble out a ticket. He debated whether or not to show his FBI credentials and say that he was on a case, when he heard the trooper’s voice coming over the external speaker mounted on the roof of his cruiser.