Elixir. Part 26

Wally spent the next two days replaying the interlude with Roger/Chris in his head. It wasn't that he didn't believe him. On the contrary, he was convinced, and what did it was the video of the lab animals. He had Roger replay them several times to dispel any suspicions of trick photography. Wisely, Roger had doc.u.mented each sequence by affixing that day's Boston Globe front page to the animals' cages, occasionally closing in on the date. Also, there was no switching of younger animals for older ones since they were nearly as distinguishable as people up close. Jimbo had a missing left incisor, a hole on his left ear, and a scar above his right eye-none of which could have been faked. Furthermore, the animals clearly became younger-looking and more vigorous as the newspapers became more current. And, of course, there was Roger, or Chris. Every visible aspect of the man's being denied his chronology. Even the youngest-looking fifty-six-year-old man has some giveaway-wrinkles, hair, skin, flesh, musculature, posture, stiffening body movement-a feature or combination that verifies his fifth decade of life. Roger Glover had none.

At fifty-seven years of age, Wally Olafsson saw himself as a rapidly aging organism, living out the rest of his life alone. He was overweight, his cholesterol was 312 at last checkup, he had high blood pressure, he drank and ate too much, and he got no exercise. Much of his decline came with the breakdown of his marriage. His wife had won custody of Todd and moved two hundred miles away. Wally had a few male friends, but he did not feel desirable to women, especially younger ones. While he tried not to think about death, he envisioned his future as a featureless tunnel, constricting like an occluded artery.

Now, he had an option to push back the clock and jam its mechanism.

Suddenly he began to think young again. About getting back into life, in the words of the old Depends ad. He could join a health club, get into shape, maybe meet some nice fortyish women. There was golf-a game he had always wanted to take up, and a good way to enhance business contacts. (All he had for a social life now was a men's book group.) And maybe he'd take up skiing again. He had hung up his poles ten years ago when he took a bad fall. Todd had been after him to return to the slopes, take refresher lessons so they could do something fun together besides an occasional movie or UW football game. He might even go off on one of those discovery vacations, an Earthwatch expedition. And with Todd-a father-and-son high-adventure getaway.

He didn't think too long-range-like how he'd explain to his son and friends why he didn't grow old. But it crossed his mind that he could make a killing on the stock market. He could sell out in twenty or thirty years and take on a new ident.i.ty while investing his earnings for another twenty years. Keep that up for a while, and he'd be as rich as Bill Gates by the end of the twenty-first century. And still only fifty-seven years old, and looking thirtyish.

By Friday, Wally had made up his mind: He was Go on Elixir.

He would live his life all the way up.

He would make up for lost time. Would he ever!

At 1:30 on Friday afternoon, Roger called Wally at the office and instructed him to drive to the empty parking lot of St. Jerome's Roman Catholic Church on Preston Street where he would find a shopping bag behind the statue of the Virgin Mary. Inside was a cell phone.

Wally did as he was told and retrieved the bag with the phone. The lot was empty and n.o.body followed him.

At two o'clock, Roger called him with instructions to drive to the Silver Pines motel on Route 61 and to keep the line open all the way so that Wally could not make a quick call to the police before arriving. Roger was a man devoid of trust. Thirteen years on the run would do that, Wally guessed.

At 2:36, he arrived at the motel and entered room 217 with the phone line still open.

Roger was waiting for him, phone in hand. Wally's face was s.h.i.+ny with excitement. "What do you think?" Roger asked him.

"You know what Woody Allen said: 'I'm not afraid of dying; I just don't want to be there when it happens.'"

Roger smiled. "So, you're on?"

"Yeah, but on one condition-that I get my own supply to draw from."

Chris shook his head. "Nope, I can't do that."

"Why not?'

"The entire supply stays with me. That's the way it is."

"You afraid I'm going to blackmarket the stuff?"

"No, but if something should happen to you and it falls into the wrong hands, it could be duplicated. And that can't happen."

"Then I'm dependent upon you for my life."

"As I am with you. It's what'll keep us honest."

"h.e.l.l, Chris, I'm not going to turn you in. You were framed, and I believe you. I went back the feds as I said. There's no way I'd betray you."

"Maybe in a few years when things have settled, but for the immediate future, I will dole it out. And the name's Roger."

"But what if something happens to you-you know, you get into an accident, a car crash or something?"

"I'll leave instructions with people I trust to send you a key to a locker containing enough serum to last for centuries. That key and the serum's location will be sent to you if and only if I die by accident."

"Who are these people?"

"Blood relatives and trustworthy."

"What if you're caught by the feds?"

"Let's hope that I'm not. But if that happens and it's clear you had nothing to do with it, you'll be sent the key. On the other hand, if I learn you were instrumental in my capture or the capture of my wife or son, you'll never get any."

"Then what?"

"Then you'll die."

"Jesus, you don't trust anybody."

Roger grinned. "It's how I'm going to live to a ripe old age." He produced the ampule and lay it on the table. Wally took a long look at it. He then picked it up and inspected the wax seal on the septum with his finger print deeply incised in it. It was clean and unbroken.

"Was the FBI convinced?"

"I think so. I gave it my best shot." Wally rolled up his sleeve.

"Before we do this, I want you to understand that if you tell anyone, I'll cut you off and you'll be dead in a matter of weeks."

"Gee, that's comforting."

They both chuckled, and Roger felt something pa.s.s between them-an inviolable trust of his old friend.

For a second time Roger explained that the first shot would be of high concentration to be followed up in three days. Then three days after that, followed by a fourth shot on the tenth day. The idea was to build up a plateau in his system. In a few days he would begin to feel the first rush of rejuvenation. The follow-up shots would be administered at different motels. In an emergency-any unexpected side effects-he gave Wally the number of an answering machine whose messages Roger would check periodically.

Wally took it all in, then he opened his arm as Roger applied a tourniquet. He wore surgical gloves. In fact, he had arrived with them on so as not to leave prints.

Roger removed the protective wrapper from a new syringe then sc.r.a.ped away the wax seal. He inserted the needle through the septum and extracted four ccs of Elixir.

"Ready?"

"Forever and ever," he chuckled nervously. "Famous last words."

Then Roger injected the contents into Wally's arm.

"Now what?"

"Now we're friends for life."

25.

The woman bounded like a gazelle. She was a sleek, long-limbed creature whose silver Spandex highlighted the muscles and curves of her body. Her face and shoulders glistened with sweat, her eyes fixed on herself in the mirror as she pounded the treadmill in a strong, clean stride at eight miles per hour. She was pretty in a gamine kind of way with short, swept-back hair and sweatband. But she wasn't very friendly, projecting an air of cool superiority.

Wally had tried to strike up a conversation at the water dispenser, but she was too busy timing her pulse. When he said that he'd just joined the club and wondered if she'd explain the treadmill program, she reluctantly stabbed a few b.u.t.tons and suggested he hire a trainer. Then she snapped on her headphones and proceeded to stretch elaborately, never once looking his way, but making certain he got to appreciate the full wonders of her body. When she was through, she jumped onto her machine and into a brisk run.

Meanwhile, in his new white shorts and tank top, Wally Olafsson looked like the Pillsbury dough boy waddling on the treadmill beside her. His joints squeaked and clanged as he slowly turned up the pace to a pathetic 3.5 MPH walk, hoping he could keep it up. He had a mental flash of himself stumbling off in cardiac arrest as Wonder Woman continued to bound away, refusing to break stride to administer CPR and-G.o.d forbid!-mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

At one point he caught her studying herself in the side-wall mirror, no doubt admiring what a perfect specimen of womankind she was-firm in body and mind, wors.h.i.+pped by men of all ages, the envy of the entire female breed. When she caught him smiling at her, she flashed a disdainful look and snapped her head forward.

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 G.o.ddesses 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, fles.h.i.+er 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 members.h.i.+p 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 pa.s.sage 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 b.u.t.ton 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 a.s.s 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 embarra.s.sed, 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 m.u.f.fler 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."