risky venture, and Jeannie Ferrami had made it downright dangerous. But the alternative was to give up their dreams. There would be only one chance to turn America around and put her back on the course of racial integrity. It was not too late, not quite. The vision of a law-abiding, churchgoing, family-oriented white America could be made a reality. But they were all around sixty years of age: they were not going to get another chance after this.
Jim Proust was the big personality, loud and blustering; but although he often annoyed Berrington, he could usually be talked around. Mild-mannered Preston, much more likable, was also stubborn.
Berrington had bad news for them, and he got it out of the way as soon as they had ordered. "Jeannie Ferrami is in Richmond today, seeing Dennis Pinker."
Jim scowled. "Why the hell didn't you stop her?" His voice was deep and harsh from years of barking orders.
As always, Jim's overbearing manner irritated Berrington. "What was I supposed to do, tie her down?"
"You're her boss, aren't you?"
"It's a university, Jim, it's not the fucking army."
Preston said nervously: "Let's keep our voices down, fellas." He wore narrow glasses with a black frame: he had been wearing the same style since 1959, and Berrington had noticed that they were now coming back into fashion. "We knew this might happen sometime. I say we take the initiative, and confess everything right away."
"Confess?" Jim said incredulously. "Are we supposed to have done something wrong?"
"It's the way people might see it - "
"Let me remind you that when the CIA produced the report that started all this, 'New Developments in Soviet Science,' President Nixon himself said it was the most alarming news to come out of Moscow since the Soviets split the atom."
Preston said: "The report may not have been true - " "But we thought it was. More important, our president believed it. Don't you remember how goddamn scary that was back then?"
Berrington certainly remembered. The Soviets had a breeding program for human beings, the CIA had said. They were planning to turn out perfect scientists, perfect chess players, perfect athletes - and perfect soldiers. Nixon had ordered the U.S. Army Medical Research Command, as it then was known, to set up a parallel program and find a way to breed perfect American soldiers. Jim Proust had been given the job of making it happen.
He had come immediately to Berrington for help. A few years earlier Berrington had shocked everyone, especially his wife, Vivvie, by joining the army just when antiwar sentiment was boiling up among Americans of his age. He had gone to work at Fort Detrick, in Frederick, Maryland, studying fatigue in soldiers. By the early seventies he was the world's leading expert in the heritability of soldierly characteristics such as aggression and stamina. Meanwhile Preston, who had stayed at Harvard, had made a series of breakthroughs in understanding human fertilization. Berrington had talked him into leaving the university and becoming part of the great experiment with him and Proust.
It had been Berrington's proudest moment. "I also remember how exciting it was," he said. "We were at the leading edge of science, we were setting America right, and our president had asked us to do this job for him."
Preston toyed with his salad. 'Times have changed. It's no longer an excuse to say: 'I did it because the president of the United States asked me to.' Men have gone to jail for doing what the president told them."
"What was wrong with it?" Jim said testily. "It was secret, sure. But what's to confess, for God's sake?"
"We went undercover," Preston said.
Jim flushed beneath his tan. "We transferred our project into the private sector."
That was sophistry, Berrington thought, though he did not antagonize Jim by saying so. Those clowns from the Committee to Re-elect the President had got caught breaking into the Watergate hotel and all of Washington had run scared. Preston set up Genetico as a private limited corporation, and Jim gave it enough bread-and-butter military contracts to make it financially viable. After a while the fertility clinics became so lucrative that its profits paid for the research program without help from the military. Berrington moved back into the academic world, and Jim went from the army to the CIA and then into the Senate.
Preston said: "I'm not saying we were wrong - although some of the things we did in the early days were against the law."
Berrington did not want the two of them to take