True-Life Adventure

going somewhere in the world. I thought of asking if I could go with her, but I lost my voice for a moment there.
    “Mr. Haas? Mr. Koehler is expecting you.”
    What do you know? There was a receptionist there. The ace investigative reporter hadn’t even noticed.
    Steve Koehler came out to meet me, which, I felt, showed a reasonable amount of class. He had an Ivy League accent, nice manners, and the uniform that went with them— gray flannel slacks, blue blazer, and cranberry tie. A walking cliché.
    He was a tall dude, and skinny, kind of gaunt around the cheeks like a serious runner, but slightly soft around the middle like he wasn’t so serious. I figured he was about my age, but he had less hair, and what he had was dark and vaguely curly. His eyes were sort of filbert-colored and the only interesting thing about him so far.
    Women probably liked them, but I didn’t. They belied the impression of substance he’d cultivated so carefully.
    Back in the recesses, he sat me down and gave me coffee.
    “Sorry my brother can’t make it. He said to give you his apologies.”
    “Let’s start with you, then. I take it you run the business.”
    “Yes.”
    “What’s your background?”
    “Oh, Harvard Business School, a little time in the family business back in Chicago, and then Silicon Valley. I got lucky. I met up with a couple of computer wizards who were working out of their garage at the time, got into silicon chips, and made enough money to help Jacob start Kogene.”
    “What’s the family business?”
    “Real estate.”
    “Are you married?”
    “Divorced.”
    “Age?”
    “Forty-one.”
    “Where do you live?”
    “San Francisco. Telegraph Hill.”
    “And your brother?”
    “My brother?”
    “Where does he live?”
    “We don’t usually give out that information. The truth is, Mr. Haas, my brother is something of a recluse. You know how these geniuses are— wrapped up in their work and not very sociable.”
    “He’s lucky to have you to fend people off.”
    Steve didn’t answer. Just gave me a filbert-eyed stare. I looked at my notebook. “Let’s see. Did I ask if you have any scars or other distinguishing marks?”
    He let a corner of his lip turn up, just to be polite. The result was a fourth cousin to a smile.
    “Nobody ever likes these preliminaries, but we have to have little facts to go between commas. You know, like ‘Steve Koehler, forty-one, a native of Chicago.’ Which reminds me— how old is your brother?”
    “Forty-three.”
    “Okay, let’s talk about Kogene a bit. You mentioned that you made enough money to help Jacob found it— was that a long-standing dream of his?”
    “Not exactly, no. Scientists don’t really think in terms of making money. They just do research, and when they’re done doing it, they do more research.”
    “So the company was your idea?”
    “Primarily, yes. But Jacob is very happy with it, of course. He has more freedom this way.”
    “How many employees do you have?”
    “About fifty, I think.” Fifty! Genentech had several hundred and it was a lot smaller than Cetus.
    “You see, Mr. Haas, we’ve deliberately kept ourselves small. At the moment we are primarily a research firm, and our research is very specific.”
    “Oh?”
    Again the smile-cousin. “We hope to have a product on the market within a couple of years. A very, very important product.”
    I’d read that some gene-splicer or other had already whipped up bacterial insulin, and there were a few other offerings in the health field, as well as schemes to invent new plants that would fertilize themselves and maybe grow in salt water. But the potential product with the most razzle-dazzle was biosynthetic interferon, a protein that might or might not cure cancer, and maybe the common cold and herpes as well. If anyone could make it do any of those things, he’d have a very important product indeed. But every scientist in the field was trying to do that. Surely if that’s what the Koehlers were on to, Steve would have said so. Just in case, I gave him another chance.
    “Interferon?”
    This time he smiled a real smile. I’d said something that made him happy. “No. Oh, we’re working with it— everyone is— but the product I mean is something else. Unfortunately, I’m afraid I’m not currently at liberty to tell you what it is. I can tell you, though, that we’ll be making an announcement in the very near future. We also plan to make a public stock offering