The Alfa Romeo seemed to glide and float out of the mountains following the famous Brenner Pass. They had been delayed at the border by a huge accident involving more than twenty cars and trucks, closing the northbound lanes entirely. Toni and Professor Scala had sat by helplessly as workers unraveled the mess and removed countless victims from the wreckage. Toni couldn’t help thinking how if she had been driving a few miles per hour faster they would have been in the wreck. Even faster yet and they would have never seen the accident at all. Fate was a strange thing indeed, Toni knew.
Toni had not said a word to Professor Giovanni Scala since slowly pulling away from the accident scene. As they had sat paralyzed in the traffic jam, she had told Scala about his friend and colleague’s death that morning. He was still numb, not sure at first if he should believe her, and then realizing that she had nothing to gain by lying.
She found herself driving slower than normal now.
Clouds swirled around the setting sun, exposing the valley below in an eerie hue of blue and green.
Toni was thinking about asking him more about his research, which he had managed to avoid up to this point. She had already told him she planned on sticking with him until he could present his findings to his sponsor, Tirol Genetics, in the morning. He had seemed somewhat comforted by that thought.
“Do you have a copy of everything?” she finally asked, breaking the silence.
“What?” He turned, confused.
“Do you have a copy of all your research?”
“I would be a fool not to. Wouldn’t you say?”
“What about Leonhard? Did he have copies made?”
He thought for a moment, having a hard time thinking of his friend, whom he had worked so closely with for two years, in the past tense. “We knew our studies were important, but didn’t expect someone to try to kill us for the results.”
“Is that a no?”
“I don’t know,” he screeched, showing a side she had not seen in the man. He took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. We made copies of everything we did on the computer. That was my fault. I still don’t trust machines. I was the consummate note taker. Leonhard transposed my notes into the computer and made a copy for me.”
She thought about visiting Leonhard Aldo’s house that morning, and how she had found no computer disks. “Did you have a lab at Passo di Villa?” She knew the answer already, but he didn’t need to know that.
“We immersed ourselves into the village,” he said. “As you probably know, much of my work is done studying empirical data based on our DNA samples. We would send our blood samples to the university once a week, our graduate research assistants would do the initial isolation, and then Leonhard and I would follow up on the weekends. We had talked about setting up a lab, and even moving into the same house to save expenses. But we thought to really understand what made the place special, how to unfold the mystery, was to become one of them. We even rented houses on opposite sides of the village so we could maintain an objective eye. It worked. I’m certain of that.”
“So are a lot of other people,” she said. “You’ve made a number of groups of people nervous.”
He raised his brows. “How could we have done that?”
Toni watched the rearview mirror. An ambulance was approaching swiftly with its lights flashing but no siren. She held the steering wheel with both hands as the ambulance flew by, sending her car sideways in the vortex.
“This thing you’ve discovered in Passo di Villa,” Toni started. “This wonder. Is making a lot of medical professionals question whether they’ll have a job in a few years. There’s no need to do all those heart bypasses and other expensive procedures if people can keep their arteries clear of plaque with a simple pill.”
He looked horrified, as if he’d seen his own death ahead. He started to say something, and stopped.
“You didn’t think I knew about that? I also know about the independent research you and Leonhard did conduct at the University of Milan when you came down out of the Dolomites. You found the answer to the mystery of Passo di Villa sooner than your superiors at the university knew, and before your sponsor at Tirol Genetics knew. But you wanted to make absolutely sure that you were correct. So you tested the solution on rats in Milan and that research confirmed your beliefs. The next step was humans.” She paused and glanced for a reaction, which was unmistakable disbelief.
“How could you know this?”
“Let’s just say I’m good at what I do.” That sounded a bit arrogant. Yet, she suspected he was equally so, or he would have never reached the position he had. Narcissism was a trait of nearly every great mind.
“So you know of our human testing?”
“Yes. That wasn’t too difficult to find out, really. Europe has more liberal standards when it comes to bringing drugs to market, but to really make a huge impact, and for Tirol Genetics to make a huge profit, was to get U.S. FDA approval. After all, Americans drop dead faster than any other class of people from heart disease. Now I’m sure that the FDA go-ahead is years away, considering how slow those bureaucrats are. However, with the international patent pending on the solution, Tirol Genetics stands to make big bucks in Europe and the rest of the world for a few years before American dollars start really flowing in. My guess is that there would be a hell of a bootleg market for the stuff in the interim.”
He looked horrified at that thought. “You’re wrong about one thing, though.”
“What’s that?”
“It won’t be a pill.”
She checked her mirrors again. There was only one car way back behind them. “What would it be then?”
The professor turned sideways on the seat. “We had thought of a pill because that’s what people would expect,” he said. “But we had a problem keeping the DNA alive in a pill production, based on our data, and then with stomach acid. The acid would have killed it for sure.”
Toni was confused. “I’m sorry. I don’t understand.”
The professor was like a true teacher now, using his hands as much as his words. “We used recombinant techniques, splicing the isolated gene that we discovered and attaching it to a minor virus. Then we injected the virus into the host, in our case our human volunteers, and the virus spread throughout the person’s system, along with the new DNA strand. Our biggest hurdle was finding a virus that was innocuous enough to not hurt the human, and yet one that would stick around within the body long enough for the new gene to take hold.”
It finally hit her. “You’re talking about gene splicing here?”
The professor laughed. “My God. Don’t look at me like that. I’m not Dr. Frankenstein. Gene therapy is used every day safely.”
That might be true, she thought. But she still wasn’t sure if she wanted it done on her. “You said injected. Wouldn’t a lot of people be afraid of getting a shot?”
“Perhaps. But if it meant living longer without the fear of heart disease they will do it. Besides, we’ve come up with a better way. Nasal spray.”
“Really?”
“Really. Most viruses enter the human body through the nasal passages. We simply combine the relatively inert virus with the gene and squirt it up. The body’s white blood cells work to kill off the virus, while the gene interacts and changes the person’s genetic makeup. The entire process takes only about three days. The recipient puts up with a little discomfort for a virtual guarantee of increased longevity.”
“Virtual guarantee?” she asked.
The scientist shrugged. “We still haven’t discovered the cure for cancer, war, famine, and hundreds of other life-threatening illnesses. Not to mention car accidents.” He turned away, thinking about his colleague Leonhard Aldo.
She kept her eyes on the road, but couldn’t help thinking about what the scientist had just told her. Had science advanced that far? It was so far removed from the world she lived in. As an expatriate living in Rome for so long, she didn’t even own a television. She didn’t have time to watch it anyway, considering all the late hours she spent watching people, trying to bring some normalcy to a world that often was far removed from any semblance of uniformity. She was glad that Professor Scala had confided in her. He obviously trusted her now. She only hoped she wouldn’t have to follow the orders she had been given.
Toni noticed the large blue sign for Innsbruck. They were still twenty kilometers away.