The Blue Zone. Andrew Gross
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They leaned back over the double scope. There was only one cell left—larger, squiggle-shaped Tristan. The defective lymphoblast had virtually disappeared.
Tina whistled, impressed. “If that happens in a living model, there’s got to be a Nobel Prize in this.”
“In ten years, maybe. Personally, I was just hoping for a graduate dissertation.” Kate grinned.
At that moment her cell phone started to vibrate. She thought it might be Greg, who loved to e-mail her funny photos from rounds, but when she checked out the screen, she shook her head and flipped the phone back into her lab coat.
“If it’s not one thing it’s a mother …” she sighed.
Kate led Tina into the library, with about a thousand recorded iterations of the stem-cell line on digital film. “My life’s work!” She introduced her to Max, Packer’s baby, the cytogenetic scope worth over $2 million, which separated chromosomes in the cells and made the whole thing possible. “You’ll feel like you’re dating it before the month is through.”
Tina looked it over with a shrug of mock approval. “I’ve done worse.”
That was when Kate’s cell phone sounded again. She flipped it out. Her mom again. This time there was a text message coming in.
KATE, SOMETHING’S HAPPENED. CALL HOME QUICK!
Kate stared. She’d never gotten a message like that before. She didn’t like the sound of those words. Her mind flashed through the possibilities—and all of them were bad.
“Tina, sorry, but I gotta call home.”
“No sweat. I’ll just start the small talk rolling with Max.”
With a jitter of nerves, Kate punched in the speed dial of her parents’ home in Larchmont. Her mom picked up on the first ring. Kate could hear the alarm in her voice.
“Kate, it’s your father.…”
Something bad had happened. A tremor of dread flashed through her. Her dad had never been sick. He was in perfect shape. He could probably take Em at squash on a good day.
“What’s happened, Mom? Is he okay?”
“I don’t know.… His secretary just called in. Your father’s been arrested, Kate. He’s been arrested by the FBI!”
They took the cuffs off Raab inside FBI headquarters at Foley Square in Lower Manhattan, leading him into a stark, narrow room with a wooden table and metal chairs and a couple of dog-eared Wanted posters tacked to a bulletin board on the wall.
He sat there staring up at a small mirror that he knew was the two-way kind, like on some police drama on TV. He knew what he had to tell them. He’d rehearsed it over and over. That this was all some kind of crazy mistake. He was just a businessman. He’d never done anything wrong in his entire life.
After about twenty minutes, the door opened. Raab stood up. The same two agents who had arrested him stepped in, trailed by a thin young man in a gray suit and short, close-cropped hair, who placed a briefcase on the table.
“I’m Special Agent in Charge Booth,” announced the tall, balding agent. “You’ve already met Special Agent Ruiz. This is Mr. Nardozzi. He’s a U.S. Attorney with the Justice Department who’s familiar with your case.”
“My case …?” Raab forced a hesitant smile, eyeing their thick files a little warily, not believing he was hearing that word.
“What we’re going to do is ask you a few questions, Mr. Raab,” the Hispanic agent, Ruiz, began. “Please sit back down. I can assure you this will go a lot easier if we can count on your full cooperation and you simply answer truthfully and succinctly to the best of your knowledge.”
“Of course.” Raab nodded, sitting back down.
“And we’re going to be taping this, if that’s okay?” Ruiz said, placing a standard cassette recorder on the table, not even waiting for his response. “It’s for your own protection, too. At any time, if you like, you can request that a lawyer be present.”
“I don’t need a lawyer.” Raab shook his head. “I have nothing to hide.”
“That’s good, Mr. Raab.” Ruiz winked back affably. “These things have a way of always going best when people have nothing to hide.”
The agent removed a stack of papers from the file and ordered them in a certain way on the table. “You’ve heard of a Paz Export Enterprises, Mr. Raab?” he started in, turning the first page.
“Of course,” Raab confirmed. “They’re one of my biggest accounts.”
“And just what is it you do for them?” the FBI agent asked him.
“I purchase gold. On the open market. They’re in the novelty gift business or something. I ship it to an intermediary on their behalf.”
“Argot Manufacturing?” Ruiz interjected, turning over a page from his notes.
“Yes, Argot. Look, if that’s what this is about—”
“And Argot does what with all this gold you purchase?” Ruiz cut him off one more time.
“I don’t know. They’re manufacturers. They turn it into gold plate, or whatever Paz requests.”
“Novelty items,” Ruiz said, cynically, looking up from his notes.
Raab stared back. “What they do with it is their business. I just buy the gold for them.”
“And how long have you been supplying gold to Argot on Paz’s behalf?” Agent in Charge Booth took up the questioning.
“I’m not sure. I’d have to check. Maybe six, eight years …”
“Six to eight years.” The agents glanced at each other. “And in all that time, Mr. Raab, you have no idea what products they make once they receive your gold?”
It had the feel of a rhetorical question. But they seemed to be waiting for an answer. “They make a lot of things.” Raab shrugged. “For different customers. Jewelry. Gold-plated stuff, desk ornaments, paperweights …”
“They consume quite a lot of gold,” Booth said, running his eye down a column of numbers, “for a bunch of desk ornaments and paperweights, wouldn’t you say? Last year over thirty-one hundred pounds. At roughly six hundred forty dollars an ounce, that’s over thirty-one million dollars, Mr. Raab.”
The number took Raab by surprise. He felt a bead of sweat run down his temple. He wet his lips. “I told you, I’m in the transaction business. They give me a contract. All I do is supply the gold. Look, maybe if you tell me what this is about …”
Booth stared back, as if bemused, with a cynical smile, but a smile, it appeared to Raab, that had facts behind it. Ruiz opened his folder and removed some new sheets. Photographs. Black-and-white, eight-by-tens. The shots were all of mundane items. Bookends, paperweights, and some basic tools: hammers, screwdrivers, hoes.
“You recognize any of these items, Mr. Raab?”
For the first time, Raab felt his heart start to accelerate. He warily shook his head. “No.”
“You receive payments from Argot, don’t you, Mr. Raab?” Ruiz took him by surprise. “Kickbacks …”
“Commissions,” Raab corrected him, irritated at his tone.
“In addition to your commissions.” Ruiz kept his eyes on him. He slid another sheet across the table. “Commissions in the commodities market run, what? One and a half, two percent? Yours go as high as six,