CHAPTER 7 ONCE THE SCANS OF THE WALLACE CODEX were completed by the Fine Arts Expert Institute in Geneva, they were put on a secure online site, which enabled Anna to commence her work by downloading and printing the 220 pages, each of which contained texts, images, or both, describing many different plants. She started her work by comparing it to the Florentine Codex, which had been executed under the orders of Bernardino de Sahagun by 20 Aztec tlacuilos or painters. Sahagun’s codex was a vast work consisting of twelve books, in which the texts were written in two columns, one in Nahuatl and the other in Spanish, illustrated with 2,686 colored images. The Aztecs who composed the codex spoke and wrote Nahuatl, Latin and Spanish, they had also benefited from the knowledge of their own Aztec libraries—since destroyed by the Spanish Conquistadors, as well as that brought from Spain by the learned friars. Cortes and his men, on entering the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan, after its fall in 1521, had been horrified by the scale of human sacrifice they discovered in the temples. They immediately ordered their destruction and all that they contained, including the vast library of books they housed. Anna continued by comparing the folios of the Wallace Codex with the Libellus, the Latin translation of another surviving Aztec text, a herbarium that described the medicinal properties of native plants in pre-Columbian Mexico, covering nearly 230 plant species, used as remedies in combination with other mineral and animal components.
It was written as a textbook in the College of Santa Cruz in Tlaltelolco, near Mexico City, then headed by Friar Jacobo de Grado. The college had been established to evangelise and educate the children of the Aztec nobility, teaching them to read and write their own language and in addition were taught Spanish, Latin and Greek. Nahuatl was traditionally written with pictographs supplemented by ideograms, which was, however, insufficient for expressing the full vocabulary and syntax of the spoken language. The Franciscans transcribed the words written and spoken by Aztec physicians and herbalists into an easily readable phonetic form developed by learned friars using the Latin alphabet. The Libellus de Medicinalibus Indorum Herbis, also known as the Badianus Manuscript, or Codex Barberini, Latin 241, was the work of two baptised Aztecs, noblemen, the first Martinus de la Cruz, a physician, herbalist and teacher who composed the work in Nahuatl, and the second Juannes Badianus, a teacher at the college who translated it into Latin. On completion the Libellus was brought to Spain by Francisco de Mendoza, the son of the viceroy, who sought to obtain concessions to sell Mexican medicinal herbs. The original Nahuatl herbarium was lost, but its translation found its way to the Barberini Library in the Vatican and was forgotten. It remained there until it was rediscovered in the library in 1929 by a certain Professor Charles Clark. The Libellus contains 185 plant illustrations with 227 plant names many of which were in Nahuatl. The text was arranged by illness and disease in 13 chapters, in which the specific properties of each plant, and in most cases their ecological habitats, were described.
The Aztecs had a long tradition in the cultivation and harvesting medicinal plants and had established botanical gardens in Texcoco, Chapultepec and the royal gardens of Moctezuma. Certain plants such as the cacao tree grew in the hot, humid, tropical forests of the south, in the Maya Lowlands. The fruit of the tree, the cacao pod, was symbolic and it represented the sacrificed human heart and chocolate blood. Its beans were not only used to make chocolate drinks, but were traded and served as a currency, or exacted as a tribute from the provinces of the Aztec empire.
CHAPTER 8 THE BOOK FAIR TURNED OUT TO BE a literary festival, at the Petit Palais, on avenue Winston Churchill, in the centre of Paris, just off the Champs Elysees. It was one of those events Dee was obligated to attend for his editors. A panel discussion and signings, three or fours hours of boredom and pseudo intellectualism as far as Anna was concerned. Leaving Dee to his business, Anna joined Pat Kennedy on the steps of the Petit Palais and they strolled down the avenue towards the Seine and the Jardins des Tuileries talking about the translation and its significance. ‘Tell me about the sacrifices Anna.’ ‘Well according to the Wallace Codex they added a concentrate of juice mixed with the blood of sacrificial victims as an offering to their gods, which was in fact drunk by priests and the emperor.’ ‘Did it have any particular significance?’ ‘Yes, the concoction offered immortality.’ ‘And did it?’ ‘Well you know what happened to Moctezuma.’ They laughed. The tragic emperor was attacked by the people of Tenochtitlan as he pleaded with them to obey the invader, Cortes. Badly wounded by spears and stones Moctezuma succumbed to his wounds a few days later in his palace.
Anna explained how a concentrate made from plant extracts prevented the blood of the sacrificial victims from congealing. The potion was drunk in honour of different gods, first was Quetzalcoatl, god of the life, light and wisdom, lord of the winds and the day, ruler of the West. Then Tlaloc, a member of the Aztec pantheon of gods, supreme god of rain, god of earthly fertility and of water, worshiped as a beneficent giver of life and sustenance. Then Huitzilopochtli, the hummingbird, the deity of war, sun, human sacrifice, and the patron of the Aztec's capital city—Tenochtitlan. ‘Quite a few gods.’ ‘Why not, ours is no less complicated … Father, Son and Holy Ghost ... all in one,’ Anna said with a wry smile. ‘All of the Aztec gods demanded human sacrifice, which were invariably accompanied by rituals including the symbolic drinking cacao mixed with blood of the sacrificial of the victim chosen to impersonate the gods, offering their blood, the source of life.’ Anna recited Bernal Diaz's story of Cortes’ meeting with the Aztec priests when he arrived in Tenochtitlan and discovered their hair matted with human blood that reeked like the stench of rancid meat. Pat was now half listening, he had already heard the story, instead he wondered whether the molecules in Solanum lycopersicum or the other plants had the effect of preventing cellular stress. ‘So if the emperor didn’t live a long time, did the priests?’ ‘We don’t know.’ Anna was amused by the crestfallen look on Pat's face, to cheer him up she added the information that Bernardino de Sahagun did live to a great age, like the other monks in his abbey.
Anna, not wanting to embarrass Pat, avoided the story of how pre-Aztec rulers pierced their penis and buttocks to draw blood as an offering to the gods. A painful process, solved by substituting slaves and prisoners in their place when the number of sacrifices required to appease the gods grew. The flesh of those sacrificed was also eaten by the priests conducting the sacrifice and by members of the ruling elite or warriors who had captured the victims. Blood and sacrifice was central to Aztec culture and Cortes himself witnessed women on the temple floor mixing amaranth grains, a kind of cereal similar to quinoa, with the streams of blood from sacrificial victims to make a paste that was shaped into figurines of the sun god and eaten by the upper classes as a delicacy. As they approached the Louvre stopped at Chez Paul, a chic cafe in the gardens. ‘Shall we stop for an coffee … or a cup of chocolate?’
CHAPTER 9 DEMITRIEV HAD NEVER BEEN VERY interested in archaeology, especially that of the Mayas and Aztecs, peoples who in his eyes had not had the strength to resist a small band of Spanish Conquistadors. He was more interested in modern history, which he had however always seen from a Russian point of view, expansionist, in the 19th and 20th European tradition. It was Anna Basurko’s business card that had stimulated his sudden interest in archaeology and her link to Fitznorman, a Parisian art dealer. The other thing that puzzled him was another business card, one that he had not first remarked when he emptied Simmonds’ water sodden wallet, it had stuck behind that of Anna Basurko's in the water. It belonged to a certain Jean-Louis Favre, a Customer Relations Executive at a company called Ports Francs et Entrepôts de Genève, in Geneva, Switzerland. Demitriev was a trained intelligence agent. Officially he was a counselor for economic affairs at the Russian Embassy in Mexico City, the usual subterfuge employed in diplomatic missions for intelligence agents. He belonged to the GRU, one of the successors of the KGB, specialised in military and related affairs. His work covered a broad spectrum of interests in the Caribbean zone, from Venezuela to British interests in the Caribbean and in general Mesoamerica. It was only when he learnt that Russians like Yuri Knorozov and Anna Proskouriakoff had played key roles in the deciphering of pre-Columbian scripts did his interest pick up. He, like all agents of the Russian state security apparatus, had been trained in codes and the discovery of Knorozov’s work spurred his interest, who according to legend had as a Red
Army colonel discovered a Maya Codex in the burning ruins of the Berlin Library during the Battle of Berlin at the end of World War II. The Maya and Aztec cultures were the products of three millennia of preColumbian civilisation and the Maya had developed the most elaborate writing system of Mesoamerica, making it one of the most outstanding civilisations of the New World. Like Pat Kennedy, Demitriev had asked why so little literature remained of such brilliant civilisations, the answer lay with the Catholic Church, which saw the native population as ‘too much a child, too much a slave, too little a man’. In its zeal to convert the conquered peoples to Christianity it destroyed Aztec and Mayan libraries that contained countless books, some hundreds of years old, the cultural soul of those civilisations—religion, mythology, medicine, history, agriculture and astronomy. Amongst those that led this campaign of destruction was the friar Diego de Landa Calderon who was born in Cifuentes near Guadalajara in 1524. At the age of 16 or 17, he entered the Franciscan Monastery of San Juan de los Reyes in Toledo. In 1549, he left for the Yucatan, where over the course of the following decade he rose to become head of Franciscan Order in the Province. Compared to the gold found by Hernan Cortes, the Maya possessed another treasure which Landa described in his history Relación de las cosas de Yucatn (Yucatan Before and After the Conquest): ‘If the number, grandeur and beauty of its buildings were to count toward the attainment of renown and reputation in the same way as gold, silver and riches have done for other parts of the Indies, Yucatan would have become as famous as Peru and New Spain have become, so many, in so many places, and so well built of stone are they, it is a marvel; the buildings
themselves, and their number, are the most outstanding thing that has been discovered in the Indies.’ The success of the Franciscan can be judged when converted Maya children willingly betrayed their own fathers, denouncing them to the friars, accusing them of idolatry and orgies. Then, under the orders of the monks, they commenced the destruction of the idols, including those of their own families. In 1562 the great auto-da-fé in the town square of Mani in the Yucatan, an estimated 5,000 idols, including jeweled skulls of ancestors, were destroyed and countless books burnt. Landa wrote: ‘We found a great number of books in these letters, and since they contained nothing but superstitions and falsehoods of the devil we burned them all, which they took most grievously, and which gave them great pain.’ Tragically, in its religious fervor, the Church, fearing that the conquered peoples would revert to their own beliefs, destroyed almost all Mayan and Aztec written culture and literature in the form codices in the Aztec capital and in Landa's auto-da-fé, a wanton act of pure destruction. All that remained of 3,000 years of Maya written culture was just four books, the rest had gone up in flames, destroyed by the furiously obsessed monk, sacrificed on his burning altar and his faith in the Christian god. It wasn’t until three centuries later did explorers rediscover beneath the dense jungle large stone buildings covered with carvings and texts throwing new light on a rich but forgotten civilisation. Unfortunately not one word of the texts carved in the ancient stones could be understood.
When Landa returned to Spain, to defend himself against accusations of usurping the powers of the bishop, whilst awaiting judgement, he wrote Relación de las cosas de Yucatán, in which he described the region, its geography, flora and fauna, the little he knew of its history, the Maya writing system and their calendar. Landa was vindicated and returned to New Spain where he was appointed Bishop of the Yucatan in 1572. According to ecclesiastical sources, in spite of Landa's efforts to eradicate the tradition, the Maya were still producing codices when the Spanish finally conquered them, long after the defeat of the Aztecs. If fact, written hieroglyphic texts flourished for generations in books made of bark and coated with polished white lime on which the Mayan scribes recorded their history. In his book Landa detailed what he termed an alphabet, a phonetic version of the Maya language, using the Roman alphabet and Spanish phonetics along with written examples to demonstrate his hypothesis. His book was lost until 1862 when an abridged copy was discovered in the archives of the Spanish Royal Academy. Many attempts were made to test his hypothesis, but it was not until 1947, when with the help of Landa’s work, Knorozov finally found the key to unlock the Maya hieroglyphs. These were, however, very different from those employed in Egyptian and Sumerian scripts already known and deciphered by linguists, in that they were composed of ideographic elements and other phonetic symbols, without an alphabet. These logograms were complemented by a set of syllabic glyphs. The 18th and 19th century archaeologists who explored the Maya Lowlands mistakenly called the texts carved on the stone facades of temples
and stela hieroglyphics, for the simple reason they were similar in their minds to Egyptian hieroglyphics, although the two systems were totally unrelated. The Madrid Codex, the longest of the surviving codices, consisted of 56 pages written on both sides. Its texts, like those of the other codices, were written in the same logosyllabic script found throughout the Maya area dating from the 2nd to the 15th century AD. Knorozov's analysis of Landa’s alphabet explained that the Maya hieroglyphs, which had at first appeared to be a form of pictographic writing, using animals, birds, men, gods, symbols and composite images, arranged into blocks to make a text, was not a pictographic system in which each image represented a specific word or idea, but in fact a syllabic system.
The Russian explained that Maya words were made up of consonantvowel-consonant combinations, which enabled him to decipher a wide range of inscriptions until that moment incomprehensible. During the 1960s, other Mayanists and researchers began to expand upon Knorozov’s ideas. Then in 1973, a major breakthrough came when the syllabic system enabled linguists to decipher a list of rulers of Palanque—a vast site in the south of Mexico where the Aztec and Maya civilisations met.
CHAPTER 10 DEMITRIEV WAS ONE OF ABOUT 20,000 Russians in Mexico, one twentieth of the number in the US. The relations between Mexico and Moscow were good, but nevertheless superficial, since the commercial exchanges between the two countries could be summed up by the fact that the value of goods exchanged between them was no more than that which crossed the US-Mexican border every 31 hours. The event would mark forever the history of Mexican Russian relations was the assassination of the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky in Mexico City in 1940. Those facts were not on Demitriev’s agenda when he returned to Mexico City from California. His first priority was to speak with the cultural attaché at the embassy, Nikita Gulyayev, who was a specialist in pre-Columbian history, he hoped she could tell him more about the codices and explain what they had to do with plants, in anything. The first thing he learnt was that only 15 codices of the pre-contact period were known to exist today. Certain of which were in a multiple page Z-fold format, as opposed to modern books bound with a single spine on one side. Nikita informed him they were of inestimable value, priceless. Which begged the question as to whether or not Simmonds had one of these and if so where did it come from, had it something to do with Wallace, perhaps there other treasures that Wallace had hidden, and where? Nikita spoke Spanish and Nahuatl, she had studied Mexican and Central American history at Moscow State University's Faculty of History. She told him that a codex, which often conjured up a near mystical meaning, was
nothing more than another word for a book. Pre-Hispanic codices were written in the form of painted images, glyphs not words. Glyphs were graphic symbols which the Spanish monks transliterated in a romanised version of Nahuatl, subsequently translated into Spanish and Latin. In the codeces certain pictures represented the spoken word—logograms, whilst others showed ideas—pictograms and ideograms. ‘So how does this ideographic system function?’ Demitriev asked ‘Well, abstract concepts are represented by images, such as death for example which is represented by a body wrapped for burial, or war by a shield and a club.’ She picked up a book, Portraying The Aztec Past, opened it and stopped at a page showing the image of a codex. ‘This is the story of the codices Boturini, Azcatitlan, and Aubin. It was published by the University of Texas. Here, you can see the little scrolls coming from mouth of the person, that's speech,’ she said pointing at a symbol. ‘I see.’ ‘Then glyphs can be used as rebuses for different words with similar sounds. For example, the glyph for Tenochtitlan is represented by combining two pictograms a stone—te-tl, and a cactus—nochtli.
‘Another toponym, Huitzilopochco, an Aztec city-state, is symbolised by the picture of a hummingbird on a blue background. Blue was synonymous of the sun and by extrapolation the sun god Huitzilopochtli, whose name was Hummingbird’s South, here south means the left side of the world.’
‘Hmm ... looks like Chinese to me,' said Demitriev, trying to restrain his impatience as Nikita’s explanations flew over his head. She nodded. ‘In a certain sense you could say there are similarities, though strictly speaking there is no relationship whatsoever with Chinese.’ ‘Maya and Aztec are the same?’ ‘No, compared to Maya hieroglyphs, Aztec glyphs do not have a defined reading order, they can be read in any direction, forming sounds, followed by a marker before the next word.’ ‘What I’d like to know is what their codices have to do with plants?’ Nikita was surprised by his questions. Demitriev was not reputed as being the most intellectually cultivated members of the embassy's staff, those
GRU agents parading as commercial attachés and the like were reputed for frequenting low life and thugs, after all their role was sowing chaos wherever and whenever the Kremlin deemed necessary. Nikita was nevertheless interested in Demitriev's motivations, he was obviously hiding something. She decided to go along with him, to learn more, starting with the Libellus. She commenced with Aztec ethnobotanically records that described food plants such as amaranth, avocado, beans, black cherry, cacao, chia, chili, chirimoya, cuajilote, guaje, huazontle, Spanish bayonet, maguey, maize, mamey, squash, sweet potato, tuna fruit as well as medicinal and stimulating herbs including thistle, lobelia, tobacco. Then there was the agave, sacred to the Aztecs, known for its lifesustaining liquid, agua miel and its fermented product pulque, drunk by priests and sacrificial victims. The agave was used in more modern times for the production of tequila. Plants such as Agave, Laelia, Yucca as well as Amaranthus , Capsicum, Leucaena, and Phaseolus were all part of the Mesoamerican agricultural tradition. Even though much of Nikita’s explanation escaped him, Demitriev listened carefully, he was trained for that, seeking precious clues that would lead him to his enemies. Nikita continued described the Viceroyalty Period, during which the Spanish Crown undertook scientific expeditions and surveys in the territories of New Spain. These were called Relaciones Geográficas and were kept in the Archivo General de Indias in Seville and the Real Academia de la Historia in Madrid. ‘They are still there today?’
‘Yes, very much so, they contain references to many trees and plants and their nutritional as well as medicinal properties.’ * Until the unexpected discovery of the Wallace Codex, the Badianus Manuscript had been the first known illustrated text of traditional Nahua medicine and plants. The herbal had been compiled under Jacobo de Grado, head of the Convent of Tlatelolco and the College of Santa Cruz, and translated for Don Francisco de Mendoza, son of Don Antonio de Mendoza, the viceroy of New Spain. Mendoza sent the Latin manuscript to Spain, where it was deposited in the royal library. There it presumably remained until it came into the possession of Diego de Cortavila y Sanabria, pharmacist to King Philip IV. Later it appeared in the library of the Italian Cardinal Francesco Barberini, where it remained remained until the library became part of the Vatican Library. Now, four centuries after leaving Mexico, the Libellus is kept in the National Institute of Anthropology and History in Mexico City, returned to its home by Pope John Paul II. ‘The Badinus manuscript only deals with the medical conditions and curative aspects of the plants, for various ailments,’ Nikita said slyly quoting the text, ‘including, stupidity of the mind, goaty armpits of sick people, lassitude, and medicine to take away foul and fetid breath.’ Demitriev wrinkled his nose, ignoring any insinuation. ‘Another codex is the Historia natural de la Nueva España compiled by Francisco Hernández de Toledo, the physician of Phillip II of Spain,’ Nikita continued. ‘Hernández participated in the expedition that took place between 1571 and 1576, during which he collected data on more than 3,000 plant species and amongst 500 animals, including 230 species of birds.’ ‘It was the most important compendium of Nahuatl plants and their medicinal properties and other uses practiced by the Mexicans.’
‘Unfortunately,’ she regretted, ‘the original manuscript was lost in the 17th century when the library of the Escorial Castle, the royal palace near Madrid, burnt down, and much of invaluable treasures went up in smoke.’ ‘It seems the Aztecs were not as primitive as the Spanish described them,’ Demitriev grudgingly admitted. ‘Strictly speaking the Aztecs, as we call them were not alone, but it was they who dominated the empire and its many ethnic groups that lived around Tenochtitlan and Lake Texcoco, these included the Mexica, Culhua, Acolhua, Tepaneca, Matlazinca, to name a few.’ ‘They were in reality a mixed group, all of whom traced their ancestry to a place called Aztlan, from where we got the word Aztec.’
‘Where was Aztlan?’ ‘We’re not very sure where Aztlan was, but most evidence puts it in the southwest US from where the Aztecs migrated south into Mexico over the centuries.’ ‘I see,’ he said thinking of Southern California and its adjoining regions. ‘They all spoke, and still speak Nahuatl and its various dialects. Like English today or French or Latin in the past, Nahuatl spread into many other cultural and ethnic areas. By the time the Spaniards came, even the Maya spoke Nahuatl in addition to their own languages. ‘We use a lot of those words today in Russian or English, words like chocolate, tomato, avocado, chilli, coyote, ocelot, atlatl-that’s a throwing stick, guacamole, or from the Mayan- cacao, shark, cigar. ‘I still don't get all this story about plants.’ ‘Well, it started when Philip II of Spain sent Francisco Hernandez, one of his physicians, on the scientific mission to New Spain, Hernandez was instructed to investigate its medicinal plants and their use, how and where they grew, and their effectiveness.’ ‘He arrived in Mexico in 1570 and stayed seven years. It was a huge task. Hernandez interrogated native physicians and did his own evaluations according to the Galenical theory current in Europe at the time.’ ‘Galenical?’ ‘Galen of Pergamon was a Roman physician, surgeon and philosopher. He expanded Hippocrates’ medical theory of the human body, which he believed was made up of four humors—blood, phlegm, black and yellow bile.’
Demitriev had never heard of Galen or his humors, but the name Galen said something to him ... Galenical, Galenus, Galenium. He wracked his brain, hadn’t he overheard it at the Getty Center, at the bar? Ageing and longevity have been central to the concerns of Western natural philosophy since the time of Hippocrates, developed by Galen, in his theory of ageing and health in old age. ‘So this Hernandez was interested in medicinal plants.’ ‘You could say that.’ Demitriev recalled medicinal plants had been an important subject of the conference at the Getty Center in Santa Monica. ‘The original version of his book,’ Nikita told him, ‘was a huge work describing Aztec medicinal plants, minerals, and animals, with its irreplaceable illustrations, which was destroyed in the fire in 1671. What we now have is an incomplete copy made in 1648.’ She recalled how Hernandez had marveled at the huge number of herbs unknown to the Spanish in the New World, some with known uses and others without, almost all of which were named and described by Aztec herbalists. He wrote: ‘Although, as in many other medical systems, including our own, illnesses were treated by imploring the gods and using magical remedies, the Aztecs also had knowledge based on research and experience. The Aztecs had considerable empirical knowledge about plants. The emperor Moctezuma I established the first botanical garden in the 15th Century and as the Mexica conquered new lands, specimens were brought to these and other botanical gardens. Natives of newly conquered areas were also brought to tend plants from their areas. Among other things these
gardens were used for medical research; plants were given away to patients with the condition that they report on the results.’ Demitriev concluded he would have to get closer to Anna Basurko and her friends to learn their secrets, which he was now certain existed.
CHAPTER 11 ‘TELOMERES PAT,’ SAID MICHEL MOREL, ‘did you know there are more than 20,000 scientific articles published about telomeres?’ ‘Is that good or bad?’ Morel laughed ‘How do these telomeres work?’ ‘Well they shorten each time a cell copies itself, though the DNA stays intact. In the end, telomeres get too short to do their work, causing cells to age and stop functioning normally. So you see telomeres act like a biological clock in every cell, counting down the time until it reaches that fateful moment predetermined by nature.’ Pat nodded. His mind wandered, he saw the terrifying image of his boyhood idol, Aidan McGrath, a Christian Brother, a hurling champion, who now walked with a Zimmer frame, old, sick, a helpless aged man, a paltry thing, a tattered coat upon a stick, incontinent with spittle drooling from the side of his trembling lips, and now stalked by the virus. It was a reminder his own clock was ticking, how long would it be before he descended into decrepitude, like Dorian Gray in his portrait, ‘withered, wrinkled, and loathsome of visage’, as in the story told by Pat’s Irish compatriot, Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde, better know as Oscar Wilde, not that Pat was given to hedonism and corruption like Wilde’s protagonist. ‘Have you ever heard of the Hayflick limit?’
‘No,’ said Pat after a moment, snapping out of his trance. ‘The Hayflick phenomenon, is the number of times our cells divide before cell division stops. Leonard Hayflick, was an American anatomist, he demonstrated that a normal human fetal cell population will divide between 40 and 60 times in cell culture before entering a senescence phase.’ Morel explained how each time a cell undergoes mitosis, that is to say when it splits, the telomeres at the end of each chromosome shorten and once they've shortened to a critical length, cell division ceases. Hayflick’s discovery pointed to aging at the cellular level which corresponded with the overall physical aging of an organism which goes with the shortening of telomeres on each division, known as cellular senescence. ‘Can we stay young forever, or get back our youth?’ asked Pat ‘Maybe,’ said Morel, politely humouring Pat, ‘recently an important step in the telomerase enzyme catalytic cycle discovered that this cycle determines the ability of the human telomerase enzyme to synthesize DNA repeats onto chromosome ends, which effectively creates cell immortality.’ Pat whistled softly, that was beyond him, he was a banker, not a scientist. ‘Basically cells are mortal, that means they die, they cannot renew themselves forever. You see as Hayflick showed, human cells have a limited reproductive lifespan, with older cells reaching this limit sooner than younger cells. The Hayflick limit of cell lifespan is directly related to the number of unique DNA repeats found at the ends of the genetic material-bearing chromosomes. These DNA repeats are part of the protective capping structures called telomeres, which protect the ends of chromosomes from unwanted and unwarranted DNA rearrangements that would deregulate the genome.’
That’s too complicated for me,’ said Pat. ‘But what about all those products they advertise to make you younger?’ Morel suppressed a laugh. ‘We all want the secret to healthy, glowing, youthful skin don’t we?’ Pat shrugged. ‘It’s what’s inside us that counts. Our diet and hydration play a vital role in the health of our skin. So, if you’re looking to retain your youthful looks for even longer Pat, then a plant-based diet is recommended. ‘How do we age?’ asked Pat ignoring the advice. ‘As I told you, if you want a scientific answer it’s in the death of our cells, which happens everyday, even as we talk. During our lives cells reproduce, but for a limited number of times.’ It was a complex process and Michel Morel summerised, ‘Telomeres are markers of health and longevity. The better your telomeres, the younger you are. The more damage to the telomeres, the more you age.’ Pat seemed to have lost interest, health foods and all that shit did nothing. ‘So if you want to live better and healthier,’ Michel droned on, not realising he had lost Pat, ‘whilst we are waiting for a cure to aging, the solution is to lead a clean life, protect our telomeres, avoid the negative factors that shorten these telomeres. ‘A plant-based diet doesn’t just protect our telomeres from shortening but can actually elongate them. ‘Avoid eating meat Pat, eat nuts, seeds, pulses, quinoa which are all good sources of plant proteins. Avoid animal-based and proceeded food as well as from a sedentary lifestyle.’
‘Fuck nuts,’ Pat thought, he practiced sport and had a Chinese diet with little red meat, it hadn’t stopped him catching the virus, and nuts wouldn’t prevent him from dying at three score and ten years or thereabouts.’
CHAPTER 12 DEMITRIEV WAS PERSUADED THAT Anna Basurko was linked to Simmonds’ visit to San Sebastian. According to the Honorary Consul, Jacques Gautier, she was a close friend of a successful writer, Pat O’Connelly, who lived in Paris and owned a large property near Biarritz. Both were friends of the billionaire Pat Kennedy who in turn was linked to Sergei Tarasov, a rich Russian who too had made his money in banking. Checking the guest list at the Hotel de Londres in San Sebastian for the date that corresponded with Simmonds’ visit to the city he found Kennedy’s name. What the hell were people like that doing with an insignificant small-time lawyer from Belize? he asked himself, deducting there was definitely something going on, but what? Checking and crosschecking news reports linked to Kennedy he found nothing remotely related to Simmonds or Wallace. Then looking through Belize news archives he discovered Kennedy's yacht had dropped anchor in Belize City the previous year and Kennedy had been present at the country’s Independence Day celebrations in the company of Anna Basurko and a French archaeologist, René Viel. There was even a photo of Simmonds looking on whilst Kennedy shook hands with Audrey Joy Grant, the governor of the Belize Central Bank. Local newspaper archives showed that Kennedy was returning from an expedition in the Alta Guajira in Colombia where he had discovered amongst other things a jade head of Kinich Ahau, the Sun God, a Mayan divinity, similar to that found in a tomb at Altun Ha in Belize.
Perhaps Simmonds had discovered a Mayan treasure? As Demitriev racked his head he received a message from the Gautier informing him he had learned Basurko and her friend would be attending a conference at the Getty Museum in Santa Monica the following week. He decided it was time to make acquaintance with Anna Basurko, at least from a distance. * Anna had persuaded Pat ‘Dee’ O’Connelly to join her for a symposium at the Getty Center in Santa Monica entitled ‘Tenochtitlan and the daily life of the Aztecs’ where Luis Gutierrez was to make a presentation followed by a round table discussion on medicinal and aromatic plants in Mexico, and after which she planned to follow up with a visit to Luis’ botanical garden in Palm Springs. In reality Dee didn’t need much persuading, he had been promising his New York publisher, Bernsteins, he would do a couple of TV interviews and in addition attend a couple of book signing events in San Francisco. It was also a belated opportunity to catch up with the usual obligations related to his home on Telegraph Hill where they would be staying during their visit. A couple of weeks later, once Dee fulfilled his business engagements and settled the details concerning his home in San Francisco, they hit the road in the direction of Big Sur. They had booked a couple of nights at Shutters in Santa Monica, a short ride away from the Getty Center Campus where the conference was being held, before continuing their trip to the botanical gardens and reserve in Palm Springs. *
‘Of all the countries on Earth,’ Luis commenced, ‘Mexico is endowed with an extraordinary biodiversity. It is the home to a great number of plant species including those essential for much of the world’s food today, maize, beans, peppers and tomatoes, and many rare plants known only to a few privileged botanists of which I am lucky enough to be one.’ Luis went on to talk about the kind of flowers popular amongst gardeners and collectors including cacti, dahlias, salvias and poinsettias. But they were just a very small part of the 18,000 plant species in the country, half of which were endemic, more than the United States and Canada combined and more than twice as much as all of Europe. He told his listeners between 3,000 to 5,000 of those plants had been used for medicinal purposes since pre-Columbian times by the many different peoples and cultures that occupied that vast territory which ran from the northern deserts of Texas and Nevada to the tropical forests of Guatemala. Some 3,000 species had medicinal uses in Mexican traditional medicine compared to over 1,500 by the Mayas, 800 by the Nahuas, and 3,000 by the Zapotecs. Before the arrival of Spanish, Luis told his listeners, the inhabitants of Tenochtitlan had a considerable knowledge of the flora of their and nearby regions which was used to cure many illnesses and during ceremonies to invoke the Aztec gods. Botanical gardens existed not only in Tenochtitlan, but also in Chapultepec, Huastepec, Ixtapalapa, Penon, Tetzcoco and Atlixco. A profound knowledge of medicinal plants together with that of the human body helped Aztec doctors, known as ticitls, to produce cures from herbs, roots and barks, often in the form of dried plants which they ground to make medicines. These ticitls were also skilled surgeons who performed operations and used their plant remedies to speed healing.
‘When the Spaniards arrived in the 16th century, they marveled at the knowledge of the Aztecs and their use of medicinal plants to treat disease,’ Luis continued, describing how Francisco Guerra wrote a detailed account of Mexican medicine shortly after the Conquest in his work Aztec Science and Technology which was developed to a degree that led many educated Spaniards to believe it was equal to or superior to European medical knowledge, especially in the field of plants and herbs employed to care for the sick and their ailments. However, magic and religious rituals were also part of the Aztec’s healing process and to a greater degree than in Old World religions that continued to see disease as a punishment for sins, invoking god and the saints for forgiveness. Francisco Guerra’s work was founded on two massive codices, first the Libellus de Medicinalibus Indorum Herbis and second La Historia Universal de las Cosas de Nueva España. This considerable biological, medical and botanical base served Francisco Hernandez’s scientific expedition to Mexico undertaken during the period 1570-1577. Of course, the use of magic and religious rituals conflicted with the teachings of the Catholic Church, the influence of which overwhelmed local cultural traditions and the treatment of illnesses using the knowledge and traditions of the Aztecs was condemned.
‘Today we know herbal concoctions for medicinal purposes have been used in many other civilisations,’ concluded Luis, ‘those of ancient Egypt, China, Babylon, Greece, and Rome. We should remember less than 2% of the world’s botanical resources have been exploited for bioactive molecules and this 2% is linked to a quarter of all prescription medicines!’ There was a round of solid applause and the participants were invited for refreshments in an adjoining reception space where drinks and snacks were served. * Amongst those at the bar was Arkady Demitriev who had flown into LA for the conference. He was registered as a Canadian academic—an expat from
Mexico City. It was a role he occasionally used, speaking perfect American English and Latino Spanish. Though he found the theme of the conference interesting, he was puzzled in the sense that it had nothing to do with Belize. That is until Gutierrez spoke about the Badianus and Sahagun codices, of which he knew nothing, however, when images of the codices were projected onto the screen he recalled the story he had been told on a visit to the archaeological site Palanque in the south of Mexico, of how two Russians had played a role in the research into the archaeological story of the Mayas. First was Tatiana Proskouriakov, ‘Duchess’ to her family and ‘Tania’ to her friends. The second was Yuri Valentinovich Knorozov, a Soviet linguist, who found the key to decipher the Maya script. Knorozov, who was born in 1922, became a renowned Soviet linguist epigrapher and ethnographer. He gained international fame for the pivotal role his research played in the race to decipher the script. Born into a family of Russian intellectuals in a village near Kharkiv, in the newly formed Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic, Knorozov had been a bright and creative child. In 1940 at the age of 17, he left Kharkiv for Moscow. There in the capital of the Soviet Union he commenced as an undergraduate in the newly created Department of Ethnology at Lomonosov Moscow State University, where his friends recalled that he had been fascinated by writing systems and paleography, especially Egyptian hieroglyphs. On Sunday, 22 June 1941, Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union, opening up hostilities along the Eastern Front. Knorozov was enrolled in the Red Army as an artillery spotter in 1944. Then, as the war Knorozov drew to an end, he entered Berlin during the final assault on the Nazi's last stronghold.
There, according to the oft recited story, Knorozov, in the aftermath of the battle, pulled a book from the flames that were engulfing the German National Library. It was a rare edition that contained reproductions of the three famous Maya books— the Dresden, Madrid and Paris codices. At the end of the war Knorozov returned to Moscow where the book formed the basis for his pioneering research into the Maya script. The truth was more prosaic, revealed by Knorozov, shortly before his death in 1999, to the Mayanist epigrapher Harri Kettunen: ‘Unfortunately it was a misunderstanding: I told the story to my colleague Michael Coe, but he didn’t get it right. There simply wasn’t any fire in the library. And the books that were in the library, were in boxes to be sent somewhere else. The fascist command had packed them, and since they didn’t have time to move them anywhere, they were simply taken to Moscow. I didn’t see any fire there.’ Further the ‘Codex’ was not a codex, but a rare edition of a book containing reproductions of three Maya codices—the Dresden, Madrid and Paris codices. As for National Library, it was in fact the Preußische Staatsbibliothek, the largest scientific library in Germany. During the war some 350,000 volumes destroyed and a further 300,000 disappeared, more precisely ending up in Soviet and Polish collections, and in particular in the Russian State Library in Moscow. The facts show there wasn’t any fire at all and the books were already prepared for shipment to Moscow. Worse still there was little evidence to show that Knorozov had even been in Berlin, according to his military records, his army unit was based close Moscow.
The truth is after the war, in 1945, he went on to complete his undergraduate studies at the MSU. His thesis on the Shamun Nabi Mausoleum and the associated oral and written tradition based on his fieldwork in Chorasmian in Uzbekistan, as a member of an archaeologicalethnographic expedition. An aircraft of the Chorasmian Expedition in 1949 above the early medieval site of Adamli-kala in Uzbekistan In 1949, he moved to St. Petersburg where he was appointed junior research fellow at the Museum of the Ethnography of the Peoples of the USSR. About that time, Knorozov became fascinated by the question of Maya hieroglyphs. While studying the manuscript written by Diego de Landa, the Bishop of Yucatan, he realized that Landa’s alphabet of Maya hieroglyphs contained readings of several syllabic signs.
Knorozov then turned to the published Maya codices, identified the same signs in these manuscripts, and succeeded in deciphering new syllables and discovered that Maya writing was logo-syllabic. * The story of Tatianaovna Proskouriakoff, who contributed to breaking the code of the Mayan language, was much more fascinating. By the strangest of destinies she followed a path that led her to becoming one of the remarkable figures in the study of Mayan history. She was born at the beginning of 1909, in Czarist Russia, at Tomsk in Siberia, very far from the steaming jungles of Honduras. With the start of the Great War everything changed, her father was commissioned by the New Russia government to oversee the production of armaments in the US bought by the czarist regime and the family was sent to New York. They arrived in early 1916 and soon moved to Ohio. Then, in 1917, a series of events took place in Russia that were to lead to the October Revolution, starting with the abdication of the Czar, then the fall of the Kerenski government and finally the Bolsheviks seizure of power, at which point there was no question of the family returning to Russia. After the Proskouriakoffs became US citizens, Tania was enrolled at Pennsylvania State College to study architecture, where she graduated just after the Crash of 29 and the start of the Great Depression. During the early 1930s, Tania volunteered for drafting work at the University of Pennsylvania Museum, and was sent to undertake the work of drawing the materials collected on the Piedras Negras expeditions along the Usumacinta River on the border between Mexico and Guatemala.
In 1930, aerial photographs from Charles Lindbergh’s flight over the Maya region had shown hitherto unmapped archaeological sites in the jungles. As a result the museum sent a team to explorer the sites. Then, Piedras Negras was chosen for the museum’s first major Maya project, where the glyphs on the sculptures led to Tania Proskouriakoff deciphering the texts. * The next day immediately after breakfast Anna and Dee left Santa Monica for Palm Springs, a pleasant two hour drive, arriving in the mid-morning desert sunshine. Luis together with Angela Valladares was already waiting to give them guided a tour of the botanical gardens. Anna was eager to see the real plants after having spent the previous weeks looking at illustrations in the codex. ‘Tell us about how plants are collected, what kinds of plants grow in the desert, how the desert varies from one place to another,’ she asked Luis. ‘First I must tell you Greater Palm Springs is a plant-lover’s paradise, when people think of a desert they think of cacti, they also think of a grim desolate wasteland, rattlesnakes and the burning heat of the sun, that of course exists, but the real desert is full of life, sunshine, gentle winds, incredible landscapes, thorny plants that have survived millions of years, adapting to heat and drought, bursting into flower when rain does fall.’ ‘Fantastic,’ Anna exclaimed as he led them into one of the glasshouses filled with flowering plants. ‘Besides our greenhouses and gardens here, we have a three thousand acre conservation area with plants of every kind from different geographical regions, including the Colorado, Mojave and Chihuahua deserts.’
‘We also have trees and shrubs, like Yucca brevifolia that’s the Joshua tree from the Mojave, Yucca, Creosote bushes and Ocotillo from the Colorado, or palms like the Washingtonia filifera.’ Creosote, that recalled something in the Wallace Codex. ‘Creosote, that’s a very old plant,’ said Anna. ‘If you mean it lives a longtime, you’re right. We'll see it tomorrow. I promised you some adventure and we’ll start exploring tomorrow, commencing with our conservation area which lies within the Joshua Tree National Park. There we can explore the biosphere, its ecosystems and multiple niches and overnight in our desert lodge.’ Back in their hotel Anna checked out her translation of the Wallace Codex on her laptop. The creosote bush was known by the Aztecs for its medicinal properties, they used it to treat chicken pox, tuberculosis,
sexually transmitted diseases, menstrual pain in women, snake bites, colds, diabetes, skin sores, arthritis, sinusitis, gout, anemia, fungal infections, and cancer. That sounded like a snake oil cure-all remedy, in fact many of the plants in the codex were claimed to be miraculous cure-alls. But there was something else, something more sinister—the leaves and sap of the creosote bush were used by the priests, mixed with the blood of sacrificial victims, as a symbolic offering by the emperor to appease Huitzilopochtli, the god of war, sun, human sacrifice, the patron of the city of Tenochtitlan. Over dinner she recalled the creosote bush, and pushed Luis for more details. ‘It grows in the Mojave, we’ll see it in the conservation area,’ he replied, amused by her insistence. ‘Scientifically it’s called Larrea tridentata, a desert shrub, a perennial flowering bush. You can always spot it by the yellow flowers and its pleasantly pungent perfume when it rains. ‘In fact there are several varieties, those in the Mojave Desert which have 78 chromosomes, then Sonoran Desert variety which has 52 chromosomes, and those in the Chihuahuan Desert with only 26. ‘They can live thousands of years, the oldest, the King Clone colony, is believed to be an incredible 11,000 years old. It can also survive long periods without water. It’s a native of the Mojave, a desert chaparral ecosystem, to the north of us.’ ‘It’s described on one of your sheets Anna,’ said Angela. Anna nodded. After diner back in their hotel Anna checked the medicinal properties of the Larrea tridentata. She read the creosote bush was rich in simple
bisphenyl lignans and tricyclic lignans known as cyclolignans. Compounds that were shown to be powerful agents against certain viruses, age related diseases and aging in general. It was also rich in Nordihydroguaiaretic, NDGA, a phenolic antioxidant found in its leaves and twigs, which had a long history of being used as a traditional medicinal by the Native Americans and Mexicans. * The next morning as they set off for the conservation area, unknown to them they were followed by Arkady Demitriev driving a passepartout rental SUV. He had not slept well that night Sedov’s friends were furious, their Dominican passports, without which they could not travel to the EU, were not forthcoming. Dominica—known as the Nature Isle of the Caribbean, besides being a small sparsely populated island, between the French islands of Martinique and Guadalupe, known for its crystal clear rivers, and its spectacular mountain landscape cloaked in the Caribbean's last remaining primary tropical rainforest—was seeking to establish itself as an offshore tax haven, offering in addition to financial services, investor citizenship. The fault lay in the fact that Wallace was dead, killed before he could complete the formalities, in addition the company set-up by Simmonds had not been able to transferred the funds, he too had been killed in the unfortunate accident caused by the fools Demitriev had sent to question him. The bad news was compounded as Cyprus announced the scrapping of its investor citizenship scheme and threatened to revoke citizenship of certain passport holders suspected of wrongdoings. The news came after a top Cyprus official and the parliamentary speaker were filmed in undercover sting, promising full backing for a passport
application from a fictitious Chinese investor who had supposedly been convicted of money laundering. The so-called ‘golden passport’ scheme, which had been riddled with corruption and kickbacks, automatically granted holders of Cyprus citizenship and passports access to the entire 27-member European Union, a scheme that had issued more than 4,000 earning billions of euros for the Cyprus government, their crooked politicians and middlemen. Cyprus, a member state of the European Union, had long been criticism by the European Commission for trafficking EU citizenship, especially to Russians, for financial gains. Now, in addition to scrapping the scheme, the Cyprus Security and Exchange Commission recommended that authorities revoke citizenship granted to several wrongdoers—individuals who submitted forged documents in their application, amongst them were Sedov’s friends. Demitriev put aside those worries as he stalked his prey. The sun was now high as he watched Anna Basurko and her friends through his binoculars. He was crouched on a bluff about half a mile to the west as they arrived at a lodge situated on the edge of a fenced off botanical conservation reserve. According to a panel at the gate, the property belonged to a company called Phytotech with a contact address in Palm Springs. The Russian had spent most of the morning observing them driving around, stopping here and there, looking at plants and trees. It was a strange outing for an archaeologist and a writer, as strange as their attendance at the Getty Center conference.
CHAPTER 13 ‘OUR STUDIES ON NDGA ARE PROMISING, but we are still looking for some kind of catalyst that will stop telomer losses without provoking cancer as is what happens with telomerase,’ Michel Morel explained to Pat. ‘Well we might have something there,’ announced Pat with a flourish. They looked at him surprised. Pat was a resourceful man, but the study of plants and phytochemistry was not his domain. ‘As you know Anna Basurko has been studying the history of Mexican and Central American medicinal plants and has discovered the descriptions of what could be interesting plants used by the Aztecs up until the time of the Conquest.’ They said nothing. Disguising their skepticism. Pat was not deterred, he smiled and pushed on telling the story of how the Aztecs used a concoction of drinks made from plants, one of which was a sacred brew reserved for the emperor and certain high priests. These drinks were described on their codices which were unfortunately destroyed in various acts of auto-da-fé by fanatical friars like Diego de Landa. Henri had followed Anna's investigation into the Wallace Codex and was familiar with the history of the Florentine Codex, and whilst plant biology and pharmacology was his field he had never gone into the manuscripts in any detail to speak of. ‘According to Anna,’ Pat told them, ‘Bernadino and certain other monks, who lived in the Colegio de Santa Cruz in Tlatelolco, lived to great ages,
which was very unusual at that time. Anna suspects they had discovered the secrets of the royal codices that described the medicines reserved for the elite.’ ‘That’s a possibility,’ said Henri shrugging, though he was now more listening more closely. ‘Well,’ said Pat, ‘what I’m about to tell you is strictly between us. One section of the Wallace Codex describes herbs and medicines reserved for the emperor and the high priests that describes the plants sent by the Mictlantecuhtli, the god of death, the lord of the Underworld, which would bestow on his faithful servants on Tonantzin—the earth, their mother, the secret of eternal life.’ ‘Ah, Gilgamesh.’ ‘What?’ ‘Nothing.’ ‘Anyway, Anna cross-referenced details concerning the friars in question with the records stored in Seville and confirmed many of them lived to the age of 90 and over, which was quite extraordinary in the harsh world ruled by the Conquistadors.’ ‘So can we ask where the Wallace Codex is Pat?’ ‘Yes, but I won’t tell you for the moment,’ said Pat smiling, enjoying his little game. ‘But I do have a copy of the folios and their translation into English,’ he said dipping into his document holder and triumphantly producing several colour facsimiles. ‘As I said, this is most confidential, I don’t want anybody outside of this room seeing the whole document.’
They nodded. Pat was the Chairman of the Board of LifeGen and its largest shareholder. ‘Perhaps this identifies the species of the Zygophyllaceae family that contains NGDA and other molecules that made up the potion prepared by the Aztec priests?’ ‘Anna is of course not a botanist, but she is a scientist with a long experience in Spanish documentary records and the history of the New World.’ They nodded in agreement. 'Yes Pat, perhaps this can save us years of research if we can identify the exact plants and analyse their properties.' ‘Excellent, I’d like you to give this priority, find the plants mentioned in Anna’s report,’ he said producing a folder containing an outline of Anna’s research.
CHAPTER 14 PAT ARRIVED AT LIFEGEN FOR A PROGRESS update on their work and was greeted by Henri Ducros. ‘So what’s new?’ he asked with false bonhomie. In reality he was in a hurry, pressed for time, in more senses than usual. ‘There’s a lot of work what with the thousands of plant species we have to cross-reference.’ He was eminently qualified to speak, a leading botanist specialised in plant biology and pharmacology ‘Really.’ ‘Just a tiny percentage of this botanical bounty has been exploited for medical purposes,’ he recalled, ‘and yet it represents the vast majority of medicines produced by science and industry today. In all 74% of medicines are derived from plants, 18% from fungi, 5% from bacteria, and 3% from animals such as snakes or frogs.’ Pat smiled humouring him, he had heard Henri’s story more than once. ‘Take places like Central America, for example the Guanacaste conservation area which is situated in north-west Costa Rica, it’s one of the richest biotopes on the planet. Apart from jaguars and spider monkeys, its the tropical forests, which range from the Pacific coast to the Caribbean, the conservation area is an incredible reservoir of flora and fauna waiting to be studied by medical science, an incredible source of wealth to be preserved for posterity.’
‘I’ve been to Costa Rica on many occasions,’ said Pat dryly. ‘Let’s pass onto our research.’ LifeGen used different biotechnologies to model complex diseases, test new promising new molecules extracted from plants and carried out research that could lead to the discovery of new treatments for people with age related diseases. Certain of its technologies frightened some people, these included genetically engineered mice that have partly human immune systems and produced human antibodies which could be used in a cocktail to fight cell degeneration. ‘Starting with we know about NDGA?’ added Pat getting down to business. Michel Morel appeared and joined them as they went into the meeting room. ‘In our last briefing,’ Michel said, looking over the top of his glasses, wondering if Pat ever read anything they sent, ‘we mentioned the different NDGA derivatives that we're working on.’ ‘Oh, so have you discovered something new?’ retorted Pat, skeptical in spite of his manner. ‘Well, discover is not the word, as you know it’s an extremely complex subject. That said, we have found a very small naturally occurring plant molecule that irreversibly binds to the end of the telomer chain in healthy cells, protecting the cells and lengthening the telomeres, without uncontrollably copying them as what happens in cancer cells. In other words healthy cells, as opposed to cancer cells, can continue controlled division forever … at least in theory.’
‘So what does that mean?’ ‘Immortality my dear Pat, immortality!’ ‘So where does this new molecule come from?’ ‘Well as I mentioned it’s small, very small, and is present in one particular variety of the creosote plant, like NDGA, but so small it was never detected before. Thanks to your friend Steve Swarz, we were able to make considerable progress using their new Cryo-Electron Microscope at Montpellier.’ ‘Swarz?’ ‘Yes, Pierre’s friend.’ ‘Of course, Steve.’ ‘He called it Galenus-1.’ ‘Galenus?’ ‘Yes, Galenus was an ancient Greek physician and Telephus his friend was a grammarian who lived to be 100 years old.’ ‘Hmm.’ Pat wasn’t too up on ancient Greeks. ‘Yes, we used their Cryo-Electron Microscope combined with their supercomputer simulations we can get to near atomic-level detail.’ ‘Great,’ exclaimed Pat perking up. ‘It looks promising Pat,’ Henri told him. ‘NDGA and Galenus-1 are extracted from the leaves of this particular creosote plant identified in the
Wallace Codex, it's part of the Zygophyllaceae family of plants that include trees, shrubs or herbs.’ ‘It’s an unknown variety then?’ ‘As far as we know, according to Luis Gutierrez there’s around 285 species in the Zygophyllaceae family. So it’s been a long business testing samples, looking for Galenus-1, a process of trial and error.’ ‘It would be nice if there was some short cut,’ Pat said in forlorn hope. ‘There is,’ Henri paused for effect, ‘we have synthesised the molecule.’ ‘That’s fantastic,’ said Pat brightening up, ‘And how did you do that, remember I’m not a scientist.’ ‘To tell the truth there’s nothing new, historically all civilisations like the Egyptians, Greeks, Chinese, Aztecs and Mayas, unconsciously used syntheses to produced their different needs, extracting and mixing plant, animal and mineral ingredients to produce food, medicines, dyes, and make tools and weapons, even though they didn't understand the processes. ‘Today, we do the same thing, but we have a better understanding of the processes that we use to make medicines to replace scarce biologically active natural substances. ‘A well-known example is anti-cancer properties of Taxol originally isolated from Taxus brevifolia, the Pacific yew tree. The scarcity of the naturally produced molecule in the tree led to its ultimate laboratory synthesis. ‘Here in LifeGen, in practical terms we use a lab scale cryogenic reactor, the quantities of the molecules, that is active substance, we need are very very small.’
They led Pat to a laboratory where a mass of stainless steel pipes, plastic tubes and instruments surrounded a separation column and a cylindrical reactor vessel, all of which were set in a metal framework together with an instrument panel. ‘There we are Pat, a cryogenic synthesiser, that’s what we use to produced Galenus-1.’ He presented a small transparent plastic flacon and shook it. It contained a small quantity of what looked like fine brown sugar. ‘There, these are the kind of crystals that are produced by this reactor. ‘The different active ingredients are mixed together to carry laboratory tests and tests on animals.’ ‘When will we have results,’ said Pat, becoming serious, pressing the scientists, his scientists, after all it was his company. ‘Three or four months,’ Morel replied a little uneasily. ‘I’d like to see something sooner, mid-August,’ Pat said, it was not a suggestion, but a veiled order.
CHAPTER 15 THE FRENCH VACATION SEASON WAS in full swing when Pat returned to Beaulieu and drove over to Sophia Antipolis for a progress report on LifeGen’s work. He was not in his usual good form in spite of the fact the French seemed to have put the virus behind them. ‘So where are you with your cocktail as you call it?’ he asked Michel Morel. ‘As we’ve reported we’ll be carrying out standard tests on animals, but this is not a new kind of drug or a vaccine, we could classify it a herbal medicine. What we hope, is its properties will counter aging, senescence, which is not classified as a disease, at least in the normal sense of the word, by health authorities.’ ‘Has your work shown any significant progress to prove it will counter aging?’ ‘As I told you Pat this is something new, it has nothing to do with swindlers, hucksters and snake oil, nothing to do with the usual dietary supplements or alternative medicines. NDGA had been around for quite some time now and there has been a considerable amount of serious scientific research into its effects on senescence. ‘That said, the molecule we have extracted from Larrea tridentata associated with Jatropha dioica, otherwise known as dragons blood, and various plants with powerful antioxidants—identified thanks to the Wallace Codex, show a remarkable gain in longevity in laboratory animals
like mice. It’s why we decided to test it on primates, Rhesus monkeys, study the effects on stem cells. But it’s a relatively lengthy business.' ‘Is there any risk of toxicity.’ ‘Not that we know of, individually the substances are nontoxic to humans, but for approval from the Federal Drug Administration and other agencies we have to follow procedures.’ ‘Could I take it?’ ‘I wouldn't suggest that Pat.’ ‘Look I have to tell you something lads,’ Pat said adopting a quiet more intimate tone, ‘Robert will confirm it, but I am facing some health problems, the consequences of which are unpredictable and I’d like, firstly to progress this work, and secondly if there any benefits from this compound, I’d like to test it.’ They looked shocked and confused. ‘As I said, nothing is confirmed, it’s one of those things, no one lives forever, for the moment,’ he said smiling to soften the news. The two scientists looked at each other. ‘Is that wise Pat?’ asked Michel. ‘Yes,’ he replied emphatically. ‘We can’t recommend that Pat, but its up to you.’ Kennedy his face set was unmoved.