Two Graves

Only then did Pendergast take in the rest of his son: the clean, fresh-pressed work shirt and plain canvas trousers of a simple cut, the braided leather belt and sturdy, handmade leather boots. His clothes, curiously, contrasted strongly with the finely cut, expensive gray suit worn by Fischer, with his gold rings, watch, and lighter.

Finally, Fischer spoke. “May I have the pleasure, Agent Pendergast, of formally introducing you to your son Alban?”

Alban stood there, gazing at him. It was impossible to tell what was in those eyes of his, what emotion he might be experiencing, if any; he was so perfectly in control. “Hello again, Father,” he said in a deep, pleasant voice, without the rough accent so apparent in Tristram’s speech.

Pendergast said nothing.

There was a sharp rap on the door.

“Come in, Berger,” Fischer said.

A small, very thin man with a blade-like face entered, carrying an old-fashioned doctor’s bag in one hand and a folding table in the other. Behind him—being prodded forward by the butt of a submachine gun—was Egon. His hair was matted and stiff, and his face was white and creased with anxiety. A hunted look was in his eyes.

The guard closed the door, then stood in front of it, weapon at the ready. Fischer waited while Egon was bound to the wall in the same fashion as Pendergast. Then he turned back to the agent.

“You appear to be a man possessed of great scientific curiosity,” he said. “In this respect, you are not unlike ourselves. So: Do you have any observations to make? Any questions? Because once we begin there won’t be an opportunity for you to speak.”

“Where is Tristram?” Pendergast asked. “Is he alive?”

“Tristram? So you have given der Schwächling a name. How nice. How domestic of you. If you’re referring, as I assume, to Forty-Seven: naturally he’s alive. He’s carrying all of Alban’s spare parts. For that reason, and that reason alone, he’s a very important boy. Rest assured he is safely back in the fold. His moment of freedom undomesticated him somewhat, but he’s been retamed and is now doing just fine.” Fischer paused. “Actually, his kidnapping and return served three purposes. It brought him back to us, a future donor bank for Alban. We also knew that his kidnapping would draw you, like a moth to a flame. And at the same time, successfully spiriting Forty-Seven out from your own house, from under your own guardianship, would be a fitting end to the final phase of our work. Such admirable economy of action! How might you put that in English: killing three birds with one stone?”

“The final phase of your work,” Pendergast said in a toneless voice. “You used that phrase earlier. I assume you refer to what you call the beta test?”

For a brief moment, Fischer seemed surprised. Then he smiled. “Excellent, excellent. Yes, I was referring to our beta test.”

“What is it, exactly?”

“Surely you can guess the answer to that already. For more than half a century, we’ve been following in the footsteps of Doctors Mengele and Faust, continuing their great work on twins.”

“Work that was started on helpless victims, held in concentration camps,” Pendergast said.

“Work that began during the course of that unfortunate war, which we later carried here to Brazil. Work that is now complete—thanks in part to you.”

“And the scientific principles involved?” Pendergast asked, coolly.

Fischer put a finger to his chin. “Simple in theory, exceedingly difficult in practice. Following conception, after the first mitosis, the two daughter cells are separated and begin to develop independently, creating the path toward identical twins. When the two embryos reach the morula stage, the really delicate work begins. We initiate a process of transferring genetic material between the embryos. In the good embryo, we augment the genetic material with the very best from the other embryo, swapping out the inferior stuff, which goes in turn into the bad embryo.”

“But if they are identical twins,” asked Pendergast, “how is there any difference between the two embryos?”

A smile illuminated Fischer’s fine features. “Ah, Mr. Pendergast, you have precisely identified the central question our scientists have struggled with for years. The answer is this: The human genome carries three billion base pairs. Even among identical twins there are errors: bad copies, reversed sequences, and so forth. We augment that variation by slightly irradiating the unfertilized egg and sperm before union. Not so much as to create a freak; just enough to give us the variation we must have to swap genes. So instead of mixing and matching genes randomly, as nature does so crudely, we can build a man or woman according to careful specifications.”

“And the ‘bad’ embryo?”

“Nothing is wasted. The bad twin develops into a baby as well. Your, ah, Tristram is a perfect example.” Fischer chuckled. “He or she is raised for menial labor in the camps and fields, a useful and fulfilled member of society. Arbeit macht frei. And of course this bad twin, der Schwächling, is an excellent repository of organs and blood in case the good twin is damaged or requires a transplant. Naturally, these are isograft transplants, the most perfect kind, which ca

“Iterations,” Pendergast said. “In other words, sets of twins, intermediate steps in the process, that weren’t yet up to your exacting specifications. Human beings to be liquidated.”

“Not at all. You can see them every day in our village, living out useful and productive lives.”

“You can also see their doppelgängers in your underground concentration camp.”

Fischer cocked an eyebrow. “My, my, you were busy last night.”

“And Alban? I assume he is the acme, the pi

Fischer could hardly disguise his pride. “Indeed he is.”

“Which means he himself is the beta test.” Pendergast answered his own question.

“Yes. Dr. Faust volunteered his own family—a true man of science. The Faust-Esterhazy line proved exceedingly rich. But I must say the Pendergast line proved even richer. The union between you and Helen, accidental though it was, produced a most remarkable product. Most remarkable, exceeding all our expectations.” Fischer shook his head. “We had allowed her parents to move to America and live there freely, raising their children. It was an early experiment to see how our subjects might function in outside society. It was a catastrophic failure. When Helen grew up, she went rogue on us. Her body had already been prepared to always bear twins—that was easy. When she accidentally got pregnant, she was forced to return here. Otherwise her fetuses would have died, without certain special treatments necessary for her to carry them to term. But she returned to Brazil more than eight weeks’ pregnant, too late for the blastocyst cell treatment we’d developed here at Nova Godói. This forced us to try something new—a tricky and highly experimental technique of shifting genetic material between more developed fetuses. You’ll appreciate this irony, Herr Pendergast, but it was the very lateness that led to our crowning success. We had always believed the genetic work had to be done early, no later than the first few weeks. And yet the delayed work on Helen’s twins proved to be our breakthrough.” Fischer paused. “Helen could never accept the fact that we would not let her take her children back to America. We had to keep them, of course. Even at such an early age, Alban was so promising.”

Throughout this back-and-forth, Alban had been listening, a neutral expression on his face.