Gary Braver - Elixir

Wally felt a fleeting pang of remorse. He was nearly inured to female rejection. Not only was he out of the league of young good-looking women, but he had convinced himself that they were a different species: porcelain goddesses whose siren smiles were reserved for Alpha males-those young studs bench-pressing half the building at the other end of the room. In her mind Wally was some fat bald middle-aged creep gawking up the Great Chain of Being.

But that was okay, he told himself. His body cells were humming with renewal. In the week since his first shot, he had dropped three pounds to 218. At this rate, he'd be down to his target weight of 180 in a few months. Except for high blood pressure, also correctable with diet and exercise, he was in general good health. He had never been to the hospital and only once sought medical care-for actinic keratosis, a condition besetting fair-skinned Scandinavians, which had been remedied with the removal of a few frecklelike papules on his forehead and nose, the consequence of too much sun as an adolescent.

Even though he was nearly as bald as a honeydew melon, Roger had said something about the possibility of hair regeneration. It had happened with lab monkeys. Even if not, he could always check out hair clinics. Wouldn't that be something-a head full of hair again? Why not? Miracles were happening in his body by the minute. He swore he could glimpse signs of lost youth in the mirror-the fading of the wrinkles around his eyes, fleshier lips, smoother complexion, the sharpening of his jawline. He looked better by the day. And, best still, he could feel it inside.

It had begun on the sixth day with an odd euphoric lightness as Roger had predicted. Then strange fluidy sensations throughout his muscles-sensations that peaked in nearly uncontrollable urges to move about, to exercise, to feel his blood race. Sensations that led him to his membership here at UltraFit, the in yuppie health club in La Crosse. Sensations that kept him marching to the oldies on his headphones, determined to turn his body into a temple of health.

For the first time in his adult life Wally Olafsson looked forward to the passage of time. For the first time in years he no longer had old-man thoughts. He couldn't wait to see what the next weeks would bring-how his body would harden and his face thin down. How his mind would sharpen. How his will to live would heighten.

As he jacked up the pace to 4.0, he could not help but be amazed at how a chance encounter at the wrestling tournament last month had brought him to this machine with a head full of tomorrows.

The plan was to meet at different motels over the next several weeks. They were entering the critical stage of stabilization, Chris explained. And timing was everything. Soon only a one-day window would be allowed before reversal patterns set in. This meant, of course, that Wally could not leave town nor be late for treatments.

On his headphones the Beach Boys were celebrating the special charms of California girls which took him back but without the old sad longing. He turned up the volume.

A few minutes later Wonder Woman got off her treadmill. "Have a good run?" he asked pleasantly. She mopped her brow with a towel and guzzled some chi-chi water from her bottle. "Always do," she said smartly, and walked away to join her Alphas.

Wally smiled to himself as he admired her chrome-plated buns in the mirror. When you're old and gray, he thought, and covered with liver spots and hanging on a walker, I'll still be doing eight-point sprints, my child.

"I'd say he's lying."

Mike Zazzaro had seen the tape twice already in the last few minutes, but Eric Brown punched the play button again. It was his first day back from the conference.

"Look at his face and hands. His eyes."

"I'm looking," Zazzaro said. "What about them?"

"The big innocent Orphan Annies," Brown said. "And the way his voice picks up. He's too loud, and his hands keep moving too much. He's all exaggeration. He protesteth too much." He switched to slow motion. "There: See how he wipes his mouth when he says it's only a resemblance?"

"Yeah?"

"An unconscious gesture, like trying to rub off a lie."

"A one-week conference on cult psychology, and you come back Sigmund Freud. Maybe he spit on his chin."

"He's faking."

"Eric, the guy's nervous and feeling like a horse's ass for fingering an innocent man. That's what's going on."

"Maybe, but I've got a hunch there's another agenda behind that guy's face."

"Like what?"

"Like fear. Like he's scared something will happen, or he's been threatened."

Zazzaro pushed his face to a foot from the monitor again. "He's embarrassed, not scared," Zazzaro said. "Besides, you saw his video of Glover. He's twenty-five years too young-plain and simple. The wrong man."

But that's what didn't make sense to Brown. He paused the tape on Wally Olafsson with his hands floating in front of him, his face full of remorse. When Brown had interviewed him, there was nothing ingenuous in his manners or expression. He looked convinced that Glover and Bacon were one and the same. In fact, he was belligerent about it. Now he's a bundle of nerves, insisting they call off the investigation.

"I know that face, the hairline, body movements, the gestures."

Zazzaro and Bill Pike had gone into the shop two days later. Pike drove the surveillance car. In his report Zazzaro had noted the birthday photo of Glover with the Life magazine that would make him thirty-eight, not fifty-six.

"What color were his eyes?"

"Brown."

"Both of them?"

"Yeah."

"He said one was brown, the other green."

Eric nodded, thinking that he could have been wearing colored contacts. But without due cause, they couldn't bring him in because no judge would grant a warrant on the possibility of tinted lenses.

Mike crossed the room and poured himself some coffee from the Braun machine.

"We get a good print on the guy?" Brown asked.

"Yeah. He had on the gloves when I went in, but Billy walked by earlier and saw him handling the fern pot bare-handed. Prints were all over it."

But there was nothing in the Bureau's database for either Roger Glover or Christopher Bacon.

"I have no opinion of this Roger Glover," Brown said. "But it's possible our friend Wally is a flake. He looks good on paper-marketing VP of Midland Investments, active in civic circles, on the hospital board, blah blah blah. But he could also be running around in his mother's undies and insisting the Midas Muffler guy down the street killed JFK."

"So, it's case closed."

"Not yet. I want you and Billy to stay on him a little longer."

"Come on, man. We've got a Net memo to check out the Fiskers. This is going to eat up our time."

Yesterday a directive from central headquarters in Clarksburg alerted all offices to keep watch over followers of a Maryland based group called Witnesses of the Holy Apocalypse. Ever since the millennium, they had gotten such alerts a few times a month. Most were just fire-and-brimstone preachings. But people in this group had ties with paramilitary organizations. The danger was that its leader, a Colonel Lamar Fisk, had a warlord mentality and exhorted his followers to take an active part in the battle of Armageddon. What concerned the Agency was that Fisk knew guns and preached violence.

"That can wait a day," Brown said, staring at the freeze frame of Olafsson in a broad gesture. "Just to get the bug out of my ear."

Because the case was thirteen years old, nobody was actively working on it. The Boston agent in charge had retired from service, which meant that it was Brown's case now.

"So, what do you have in mind?" Mike asked.

"Have the prints sent to Clarksburg for a hand check on the Bacon file. It's possible there might be some unidentified latents they can cross-ref with what you got."