Tom Hyman (17 page)

Such a generous sum would be possible because he planned to charge the first couples $500,000 per treatment—payable in advance. The rich wouldn’t quibble with the price. Indeed, their ability to afford such an expensive medical service would in itself be a status symbol. And having a genetically superior child would be, among other obvious advantages, the very ultimate status symbol. Stewart anticipated a sizable waiting list within months.

At its present size and staff level, Goth’s clinic would be able to handle comfortably a dozen couples a week. That would generate grosses in the neighborhood of $25 million a month. Within the first year Stewart planned to expand the clinic to handle as Juler s LurJ

many as forty-eight couples a week. That would quadruple income to around $100 million a month. The procedure was a relatively expensive one, since each treatment required extensive DNA analysis and genetic surgery; but at those rates the profit margins would still be enormous.

Start-up and development costs would be earned out in the first two or three weeks of operation.

After that, salaries and operating expenses would consume less than two or three percent of the gross take each month. Bribes, commissions, finder’s fees, and local “taxes” to Despres would eat up another three to four percent. That left a net profit per month in the range of $90

million.

There would be no U.S. taxes. The money would be channeled into a foundation that Ajemian had established for the purpose called the Coronado Genetic Research Institute. The institute would keep its money in bank accounts already set up for it in Panama, the Bahamas, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein.

After a few years, when the carriage trade began to thin out, Stewart would build a series of satellite clinics around the island and set lower prices so that the world’s vast middle-class market could be tapped. Fees could then be lowered to something like fifty thousand dollars per treatment.

The details of the broader marketing program would all be carefully worked out at the appropriate time. But one thing was certain: if the formula worked as Goth claimed, it would generate more money than any single product or service ever offered to anybody anywhere. There were many millions of potential customers. Stewart estimated the program could gross as much as a trillion dollars in its first decade. It was an absurdly astronomical sum, but he and Ajemian had brainstormed it several times. He estimated that in those ten years he could plausibly increase his own personal worth to two hundred billion dollars.

Two hundred billion dollars.

It would be the financial killing to end all financial killings-one of the greatest transfers of wealth in history. In one decade it would make him the richest person on earth—arguably the richest individual who had ever lived. Since no one had ever accumulated that much wealth, there was nothing to compare it to, no way to measure its potential. But it would be breathtaking.

The prospect made him giddy.

A permanent financial arrangement still remained to be hammered out with Goth, but Stewart saw no special difficulties in that area. Goth was as happy these days as a six-year-old on Christmas morning.

Stewart Biotech had come to his rescue, and Stewart was counting on the likelihood that Goth would not want to see that relationship terminated. Once Goth had the women in the pilot program pregnant, Stewart would close a deal with him.

He would offer him a fat yearly salary and expense account, plus a two-percent share of net profits from Jupiter. This would very quickly make the doctor very rich.

If Goth was greedy and held out for more, Stewart would be generous and up the doctor’s percentages a fraction, but he wasn’t about to make any major concessions. He wouldn’t have to. He had the doctor in a legal and moral armlock. The new foundation owned the hospital and everything in Goth’s labs. And all relevant government officials—including President Despres himself—were now on the foundation’s payroll. If Stewart chose, he could kick the doctor off the premises—shut him out completely—and there wouldn’t be a thing Goth could do about it.

The one potential threat—Baroness von Hauser—seemed to have vanished without a trace. That bothered him. The baroness had a reputation for persistence.

The next few weeks would be an extremely anxious time. He had overextended himself perilously, as Ajemian continually reminded him.

If Jupiter was a failure, he’d be in trouble.

Everything now depended on that child growing inside Anne’s womb.

Anne Stewart propped another pillow under her neck and sank back against the sofa, trying to find a more relaxed position. She rested her hands on her swollen belly and took a deep breath.

The pregnancy had gone so fast and so smoothly, she found it hard to believe that the baby would soon be due. Despite the tensions with Dalton, she had never known a more serene period in her life.

Lexy Tate spread some beluga caviar on a triangle of toast and offered it to her. The hotel had sent up a table loaded with a variety of treats and delicacies, and Lexy was determined to take advantage of it.

Anne shook her head. “No thanks. I’ll never develop a taste for that stuff.”

“Pity,” Lexy replied. She made a wolfish grin and stuffed the wedge greedily into her own mouth.

Anne felt a twinge of guilt. On her invitation, Lexy had come to El Coronado two weeks ago, moving into a suite on the same floor of the hotel as the Stewarts. She had planned to fly home to New York yesterday; but since the birth was now so close, Anne had begged her to stay on until the baby was born.

“The biggest New Year’s Eve in a thousand years and he goes to a party without you,” Lexy said. “I think it’s pretty shabby.”

“You know how he is about me taking chances. He still hasn’t gotten over the attic stairs incident.”

“That’s no excuse. You’re completely ambulatory. There’s no 135

reason he couldn’t have taken you. My mother, for godsakes-she played golf right up until her water broke. She insisted on finishing the round before she’d let them take her to the hospital.

I was born in the golf cart on the way back to the clubhouse.”

Anne laughed. “You were not. You were born in Doctors’ Hospital on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. And your mother was in labor for twenty-three hours.”

“Who told you that?”

“Your mother.”

“She’s a terrible liar.”

“Why didn’t you go with Dalton?” Anne demanded. “He did ask you.”

Lexy piled caviar on another piece of toast. “He was straining to be polite.”

“I hate for you not to be out celebrating because of me.”

Lexy shrugged. “I really don’t mind. I’ve been to enough parties—New Year’s and otherwise—to last me until the next millennium. I’ve seen it all. And felt it all too. I was once goosed at a dinner party by the President of the United States—did I ever tell you that? I’ve also been groped under the table by a Belgian ambassador, and been barfed on by a senator from a state I won’t name. Jesus, that guy was a jerk! And I once danced cheek-tocheek with a president of Italy, who whispered obscene suggestions in my ear. At least I think they were obscene; my Italian isn’t that great. Oh, and I once let an English MP

have his way with me in a third-floor bedroom of my parents’ house.

That was a drunken New Year’s Eve a very long time ago.”

“Which Italian president was it?”

Lexy stuck out her tongue. She grabbed the TV remote, punched the On button, and began flicking impatiently through the channels.

All stations were focused on the impending Big Event. One channel was covering street parties in the capitals of Europe, where the early morning hours of January 1, 2000, had already arrived; another was interviewing the leader of a group of endof-the-worlders standing vigil on a snow-swept mountaintop in Northern California; a third was running a documentary reviewing events of the past hundred years. On a fourth station a moderator was asking a panel of distinguished academics to predict what the next thousand years might have in store.

The panelists’ predictions were not upbeat. The consensus was that Homo sapiens was in for some hard years. Man had so plundered and fouled the planet during the century now ending that the only real hope for the future seemed to lie in a quick and substantial reduction in the human population. The betting of the panel was that the early decades of the next century would witness a kind of apocalypse in slow motion, in which crime, disease, war, starvation, and environmental catastrophes would proliferate to such a degree that the human species, like an insect that had exceeded the carrying capacity of its habitat, might experience a massive dieback. Estimates of the size of the decline varied among the panel members from twenty to sixty percent of the earth’s present population.

“That’s a lot of funerals,” Lexy said. “I should tell my broker to get me into mortuary stock.”

Anne didn’t laugh. There was so little good news these days. It was depressing to be reminded of the state of the world into which her daughter was about to be born.

The litany of horrors was lengthy. The TV panelists unburdened themselves like prosecution witnesses testifying to the criminal depredations of the human race. The evidence of guilt they presented was overwhelming.

“God, what a bummer,” Lexy mumbled. She flicked through the channels again, and left the set tuned to the station broadcasting the European parties. “Might as well get drunk—what do you say?”

Anne rubbed her stomach. “Not supposed to.”

“One little drink won’t hurt. Especially at this late date. Come on.

The hotel’s left us a whole case of Dom Perignon. A whole case! How many chances are you going to get to celebrate the beginning of a new millennium?”

Lexy went to the refrigerator in the suite’s small kitchen and returned with a bottle and two champagne glasses. She popped the cork expertly and tipped the fizzing liquid into the glasses.

“Here’s to that baby of yours, Genevieve Alexandra Stewart,” Lexy said, holding up her glass. “May she be as sweet and beautiful as her mother, and as big a smartass as me.” Lexy drained her glass and refilled it. “How did you settle on the name Genevieve, by the way?”

“She was the patron saint of Paris. And I’ve always loved the sound of the name. I’m not sure why, but it makes me think of beauty and strength. I knew that if I had a girl she’d have to be a Genevieve.”

Anne took a tentative sip of champagne and then suddenly stopped, as if she had heard something. A look of absolute astonishment transformed her features. She put her glass down, sat up, and leaned forward. “Oh my God,” she whispered.

Lexy jumped up. “What? What’s the matter?”

“My water just broke!”

At 10:45 P.M. Heinz Hoffmann wheeled the rented van into the hospital parking lot and parked it next to the new wing that housed Dr. Harold Goth’s laboratory.

Hoffmann and his two partners, Dolf Greiner and Ernst Feldmann, had been in Coronado for three days, casing the hospital and working out a plan of attack.

Greiner, sitting on the passenger side, rolled down his window.

It was a cloudless night, with no moon. The breeze off the ocean was damp and a little chilly. Light blazed from the windows of Goth’s wing.

Feldmann, sitting in the middle, bent his head forward to peer out the windshield. “The stupid pig is still working in there,” he said. “On New Year’s Eve.”

Hoffmann looked at his watch. “We’ll just have to wait.”

“What if he doesn’t leave?”

“He’s got to leave sometime.”

Dalton Stewart pushed his way through the crowd toward one of the bars.

Hundreds of guests in formal evening dress milled about, shrieking and laughing and bumping into one another.

The decibel level, building steadily since the early evening, was Juplter s Laugnher ù l inching into the red zone. The orchestra, set up on a low stage at the far end of the palace’s gigantic ballroom, was playing something, but Stewart couldn’t hear a note. The thirty-foot-high ceilings and marble walls echoed and amplified every noise into a smothering, cacophonous din. He wished he had brought ear plugs.

Famous faces seemed to beam at Stewart from every direction

—ambassadors, American congressmen and senators, movie stars, European royalty, jet-setters. Stewart was amazed that President Despres could command such a glittering attendance.

After a long wait amid a forest of outstretched arms and beseeching voices, Stewart rescued a scotch and soda from an overworked bartender at one of the dozens of bars scattered about the rooms of the main floor. Coddling the drink close to his chest, he maneuvered back through the crush of bodies, nodding and grinning absently as he went.

He pushed open one of the French doors at the far end of the ballroom and stepped outside onto a large stone terrace.

From this side of the palace, the view was breathtaking. Across an immense sweep of lawn, the Caribbean sparkled darkly under the stars.

A warm, soft breeze rustled the neat rows of palms that formed a border between the lawn and beach.

In less than one hour a new millennium would begin. It had been talked about so much in the past weeks and months, and examined so exhaustively by the media, that Stewart was heartily sick of the whole subject. Technically, the third millennium didn’t begin until the following year, 2001; but nobody was paying much attention to that inconvenient little detail. The human race was celebrating the event tonight. It was certain to be the biggest drunken hinge in human history.

Religious fanatics were predicting much bigger things, of course. Many believed that at midnight the heavens would be rent asunder and the entire earth engulfed in the fires of Armageddon.

Stewart thought the idea of the world coming to a fiery end precisely at midnight quite laughable. But he felt a sense of foreboding nevertheless. It was a vague, unfocused anxiety—a fear, not of Armageddon, but of some undefined lesser catastrophe. He supposed it was related to Anne’s pregnancy and the impending birth of their baby girl, Genevieve. So much was riding on that event.