Page 95 (1/2)

"I’ain and wiped hisme Probably I deserved it"

I felt my stomach drop On the other hand, if he’d known it was me, he would have already said so "Don’t be ridiculous She was probably just going to see her"Yeah, well, last tio to Connecticut"

I had failed to consider this There was nothing to say

"That’s not the reason I asked you out here, though," he went on "I’m sure you’ve heard the stories aboutjoke Well, they’re wrong"

"Maybe this isn’t the day for this, Jonas"

"Actually, it’s the perfect day I’m close, Tim Very, very close There’s a site in Bolivia A teends say there’s a grave there, the body of afor It’s nothing new--there are lots of stories like that Too , in ot hard evidence now A friend at the CDC came to me a few months back He’d heard about ht would interest roup of four American tourists showed up at a hospital in La Paz All of them had what looked like hantavirus They’d been on so They all had ters You know, do the stuff you alanted to do before you check out"

I had no idea where he was headed "And?"

"Here’s where it gets interesting All of them recovered, and not just frolioblastoma, leukemia with full lymphatic involvement--not a trace of it was left And they weren’t just cured They were better than cured It was as if the aging process had been reversed The youngest one was fifty-six, the oldest seventy They looked like twenty-year-olds"

"That’s quite a story"

"Are you kidding? It’s the story If this pans out, it will be the most important medical discovery in history"

I was still skeptical "So why haven’t I heard about it? It isn’t in any of the literature"