Were these people lookalikes of famous world figures? Ben wondered. Doubles? Yet that wouldn't explain the infusions, the training.
Something else.
He heard the Dr. Reisinger clone voice saying something to the Justice Bateman clone about "the Court's decision."
This was no clone. This had to be Justice Miriam Bateman.
So then what was this place? Was this some sort of health spa for the rich and famous?
Ben had heard of such places, in Arizona or New Mexico or California, sometimes Switzerland or France. Places where the elite went to recover from plastic surgery, from alcoholism or drug dependency, to lose ten or twenty pounds.
But this-?
The electrodes, the IV tubes, the EKG screens ... ?
These famous people-all, except Arnold Carr, old-were being closely monitored, but what for?
Ben came upon a row of Stair Masters on one of which an ancient man was moving up and down at top speed, just as Ben regularly did at his health club. This man, too-no one Ben recognized-was clad in gray sweats. The front of his sweatshirt was darkened with sweat.
Ben knew young athletes in their twenties who couldn't sustain such a grueling pace for more than a few minutes. How in the world was this old man, with his wrinkled face and liver-spotted hands, able to do it?
"He's ninety-six years old," a man's voice boomed. "Remarkable, isn't it?"
Ben looked around, then up. The person speaking was standing on the catwalk, just above Ben.
It was Jorgen Lenz.
Chapter Forty-Six
A soft, low chime filled the air, melodic and sedate. Jurgen Lenz, resplendent in a charcoal suit, blue shirt, and silver tie, under a neatly pressed white doctor's coat, strolled down wrought-iron stairs to the main floor. He glanced over at the treadmills and Stair Masters The Supreme Court Justice and the former Secretary of State and most of the others were beginning to finish their exercise sessions, dismount from the machines, nurses removing the wires from their bodies.
"That's the signal for the next helicopter shuttle to Vienna," he explained to Ben. "Time to return to the International Children's Health Forum they were so kind as to depart. Needless to say, they're busy people despite their age. In fact, I'd say because of their age. They all have much to give the world-which is why I've selected them."
He made a subtle hand gesture. Both of Ben's arms were suddenly grabbed from behind. Two guards held him while another expertly frisked him, removing all three weapons.
Lenz waited impatiently as the weapons were confiscated, like a dinner-table raconteur whose tale has been interrupted by the serving of the salad course.
"What have you done with Anna?" Ben asked, his voice steely.
"I was about to ask you the very same thing," Lenz replied. "She insisted on inspecting the clinic, and of course I couldn't refuse. But somehow, along the way, we lost her. Apparently she knows something about evading security systems."
Ben studied Lenz, trying to determine how much of this was truth. Was that his way of stalling, of refusing to bring him to her? Was he negotiating? Ben felt a surge of panic.
Is he lying? Fabricating a story he knows that I'll believe, that I'll want to believe?
Have you killed her, you lying bastard?
Then again, that Anna might have disappeared to investigate what was happening in the clinic was plausible. Ben said, "Let me warn you right now, if anything happens to her "
"But nothing will, Benjamin. Nothing will." Lenz put his hands in his pockets, head bowed. "We are in a clinic, after all, that is devoted to life."
"I'm afraid I've already seen too much to believe that."
"How much do you really understand of whatever you've seen?" Lenz said. "I'm sure that once you truly grasp the work we're doing, you'll appreciate its importance." He motioned for the guards to let Ben go. "This is the culmination of a lifetime's work."
Ben said nothing. Escaping was out of the question. But in fact he wanted to remain here.
You killed my brother.
And Anna? Have you killed her, too?
He became aware that Lenz was speaking. "It was Adolf Hitler's great obsession, you know. The Thousand-Year Reich, and all that nonsense though it lasted, what, twelve years? He had a theory that the bloodlines of the Aryans had been polluted, adulterated, because of interbreeding. Once the so-called 'master race' was purified it would be extremely long lived Rubbish, of course. But I'll give the old madman credit. He was determined to discover how he and the Reich's leaders could live longer, and so he gave a handful