The Third Twin - Ken Follett [148]
Charles passed her a tall, cold glass, then took one himself and sat down. “May I call you by your first name?” he said.
“Please do.”
“And I hope you’ll do the same.”
“Sure.”
They sipped their lemonade, then he said: “Jeannie—what is this all about?”
She put down her glass. “I think it’s an experiment,” she said. “Berrington and Proust were both in the military until shortly before they set up Genetico. I suspect the company was originally a cover for a military project.”
“I’ve been a soldier all my adult life, and I’m ready to believe almost anything crazy of the army. But what interest could they have in women’s fertility problems?”
“Think of this. Steve and his doubles are tall, strong, fit, and handsome. They’re also very smart, although their propensity to violence gets in the way of their achievements. But Steve and Dennis have IQ scores off the scale, and I suspect the other two would be the same: Wayne is already a millionaire at the age of twenty-two, and the fourth one has at least been clever enough to totally evade detection.”
“Where does that get you?”
“I don’t know. I wonder if the army was trying to breed the perfect soldier.”
It was no more than an idle speculation, and she said it casually, but it electrified Charles. “Oh, my God,” he said, and an expression of shocked comprehension spread over his face. “I think I remember hearing about this.”
“What do you mean?”
“There was a rumor, back in the seventies, that went all around the military. The Russians had a breeding program, people said. They were making perfect soldiers, perfect athletes, perfect chess players, everything. Some people said we should be doing the same. Others said we already were.”
“So that’s it!” Jeannie felt that at last she was beginning to understand. “They picked à healthy, aggressive, intelligent, blond-haired man and woman and got them to donate the sperm and egg that went together to form the embryo. But what they were really interested in was the possibility of duplicating the perfect soldier once they had created him. The crucial part of the experiment was the multiple division of the embryo and the implanting into the host mothers. And it worked.” She frowned. “I wonder what happened next.”
“I can answer that,” Charles said. “Watergate. All those crazy secret schemes were canceled after that.”
“But Genetico went legitimate, like the Mafia. And because they really did find out how to make test-tube babies, the company was profitable. The profits financed the research into genetic engineering that they’ve been doing ever since. I suspect that my own project is probably part of their grand scheme.”
“Which is what?”
“A breed of perfect Americans: intelligent, aggressive, and blond. A master race.” She shrugged. “It’s an old idea, but it’s possible now, with modern genetics.”
“So why would they sell the company? It doesn’t make sense.”
“Maybe it does,” Jeannie said thoughtfully. “When they got the takeover bid, perhaps they saw it as an opportunity to move into high gear. The money will finance Proust’s run at the presidency. If they get into the White House they can do all the research they want—and put their ideas into practice.”
Charles nodded. “There’s a piece about Proust’s ideas in today’s Washington Post. I don’t think I want to live in his kind of world. If we’re all aggressive, obedient soldiers, who’s going to write the poems and play the blues and go on antiwar protest marches?”
Jeannie raised her eyebrows. It was a surprising thought to come from a career soldier. “There’s more to it than that,” she said. “Human variation has a purpose. There’s a reason we’re born different from both our parents. Evolution is a trial-and-error business. You can’t prevent nature’s failed experiments without eliminating the successes too.”
Charles sighed. “And all this means I’m not Steve’s father.”
“Don’t say that.”
He opened his billfold and took out a photo. “I have to tell you