Read The Immortalist for Free Online Page A

I acknowledge that. But Phillip Eden’s been very fair to me. I don’t see how I could double-cross him.”
    â€œFair? Hah! He’s double-crossed you , Charles.”
    â€œHow?”
    â€œLook at this.” On cue, Niedermann scooped up the thicker of the two manila folders from under his chair. “These are confidential files from the Aeterna acquisition. Secret memos. Minutes of late-night meetings. They’ll open your eyes. You’ll see the hardball tricks Eden played with you. The maneuvers of his army of lawyers. The Doomsday Plan he had to tear the Vector out of your hands if you didn’t play along. Look at it, Charles. Then tell me how much you owe it to him to be fair.”
    Niedermann held out the folders, but Gifford made no move to take them. “I’m sorry, Jack. I can’t accept that. It wouldn’t be ethical.”
    How could Gifford be so naive?His air of superiority set Niedermann’s teeth on edge. Brainy guys like him never acknowledged that they had started out life as lottery winners. Sure, Gifford was just the son of a couple of schoolteachers in South Podunk, Indiana. But his IQ set him up as securely as any trust fund. Look at his trajectory: University of Indiana for his bachelor’s; UCLA for his MD; Stanford for his PhD; Johns Hopkins for his postdoc; a hotshot section directorship at the NIH; and then his own lab at Acadia Springs, all before he was thirty-five years old. Niedermann had never had advantages like that. He got where he was by taking risks and putting his life’s blood on the line for every deal and every promotion.
    Now was no exception. He had hocked himself up the wazoo to buy stock options in the company. His bank account had less liquidity than a mirage in the Sahara. So far, he had managed to hide the situation from Elaine, but with a son in the Francis Parker School, a daughter at Brown, and an astronomical mortgage on a nine-bedroom Tudor in Glencoe, the repercussions of a screw-up would be instantaneous. And brutal. Eden could go into full Caligula mode if you crossed him. Blacklists. Lawsuits. News leaks. Criminal prosecutions. One plant manager in Chicago was rumored to have committed suicide over what Eden did to him. Gifford would never understand pressures like that.
    Niedermann set the thick file on his lap and reached down to pick up the thin one. “At least look at this.” He extended it to Gifford. “This is my offer to you. Everything I’ve promised. In writing.”
    â€œI’ll look at it. But don’t get your hopes up.”
    Niedermann’s fingers dented the folder as he held it out, so much so that Gifford had a hard time pulling it from his grip.
    â€œDr. Gifford,” came Mrs. Walls’s scratchy voice over the intercom, “your next interviewer is ready. Ms. Betty Osterson, from People magazine.”
    â€œScience editor from People ?”
    â€œI don’t think People has a science editor, Dr. Gifford.”
    Gifford sighed. “All right. Show her in.”
    Gifford stood up as the door opened and a pert redhead in a blue pantsuit came through. She was followed by Mrs. Walls, who brought with her a plastic bottle of spring water, its screw-top preloosened, carrying it not in her hand but on a silver tray. Niedermann sneered at the sight of it. He knew that Gifford made a fetish of drinking eight twelve-ounce bottles of water every day.
    Fuck it, thought Niedermann. The conversation wasn’t over—not by a long shot. When Gifford accepted thirty percent of the company from Eden, he became a player, like it or not.
    Niedermann shoved the thick folder under his arm. As he stood up to go, his eye was caught once again by Gifford’s doodles on the sheets spread out on his desk. It was the same thing over and over: a small black insect, with oversize hind legs bent like a Greek letter, lambda.
    What was the name of that woman out by the gate?