Tom Hyman Read Online Free

offshore diploma mills that used to crank out second-rate American doctors before it lost its accreditation back in the mid-eighties.
    The only other individual on the premises besides Goth appeared to be a short, perpetually frowning darkhaired female lab assistant who didn’t look old enough to have finished high school.
    Stewart followed the four other visitors into a cluttered, dimly lit laboratory. The research assistant was busy in a far corner, fiddling with something on a counter top.
    Five folding metal chairs, their seats blistered with rust, had been arranged for the visitors in a semicircle facing a battered oak school desk. The desk was buried under a haphazard pile of computer printouts and dog-eared books and manuals of every size and description, their pages bristling with reference markers made from torn shreds of paper.
    Stewart brushed off the seat of the chair nearest the door and 20
    sat down on it. There was no air conditioning, and the oppressive heat was made all the more stifling by the accumulated odors of chemicals, mildew, and human sweat. He pulled a white cotton handkerchief from his pocket and patted his brow.
    Stewart was the principal owner of Stewart Biotech, a conglomerate of chemical and biological manufacturing and research facilities. He was forty-six years old, tall and trim. His dark, handsome face and self-confident smile had graced the covers of many magazines, from Fortune and Forbes to Time and People.
    He was a modern American success story. From a small, debtridden Long Island drug supply house he had bought with some money borrowed from an uncle, he had built an empire. It was a tribute to his skill at self-promotion that his personal net worth was estimated variously to be anywhere between one billion and three billion dollars. In fact, he was worth considerably less than a billion. How much less depended on the day of the week and the month of the year, because his fortune was in a constant state of flux. Like many entrepreneurs, he was an active, high-stakes gambler whose plunges could win or lose him millions every week. Even the banks who backed his financial adventures never knew for certain how much money he had.
    Whatever his actual wealth, he was widely admired as a businessman with drive and imagination. His energy and enterprise —and his flair for publicity—had won him an international reputation and many powerful friends. Wherever he went, he was accustomed to making his presence felt. He projected an enormously appealing image of strength, charm, and sophistication.
    Despite all these outward manifestations of success, Stewart was not a particularly happy man. He had been married three times, and he had no children. Behind the dashing, worldly image lurked an apprehensive, hungry soul, pursued by childhood insecurities and cravings that no amount of success seemed able to still.
    At this precise moment, Stewart felt especially unhappy. He was beginning to suspect that he had made a dumb mistake coming here.
    But still, he was curious. Dr. Harold Goth was one of the world’s greatest biologists. Or at least he had been. The file put together by Stewart’s research department in New York presented a picture of a brilliant scientist in decline. As a leading figure in the fields of molecular biology and genetics, Goth had held important positions at three of the most prestigious universities in the world.
    He had written two books on genetics that were regarded as classics.
    He was also responsible for developing several breakthrough laboratory procedures and held a patent on a special apparatus he had invented to speed up the process of gene splicing. In 1984 he had been awarded the Nobel Prize in biology.
    But like many men of genius, Goth was a maverick—a man who preferred to pursue his own goals. He was single-minded, egotistical, and contemptuous of anyone who disagreed with him.
    Former colleagues who had once admired his work thought that in the last