“And that’s what we did first,” she said. “Identified our projected market.”

She folded back the blank top sheet on the pad affixed to the easel, revealing a chart.

“These figures represent the latest incidents of worldwide HIV infections.”

REGIONS-NUMBER

North America-1,011,000

Western Europe-988,000

Australia-Pacifica-22,000

Latin America-1,599,000

Sub-Saharan Africa-20,778,000

Caribbean-536,000

Eastern Europe-2,000

Southeast Mediterranean-893,000

Northeast Asia-6,000

Southeast Asia-11,277,000

Total-37,112,000

“What’s the data source?” Vincenti asked.

“World Health Organization. And this represents the total current market available for any cure.” Corrigan flipped to the next page. “This chart fine-tunes the available market. As you can see, the data shows roughly a quarter of worldwide HIV infections have already resulted in a manifestation of acquired immune deficiency syndrome. Nine million HIV-infected individuals now have full-blown AIDS.”

REGIONS-NUMBER

North America-555,000

Western Europe-320,500

Australia-Pacifica-14,000

Latin America-573,500

Sub-Saharan Africa-6,300,000

Caribbean-160,500

Eastern Europe-10,800

Southeast Mediterranean-15,000

Northeast Asia-17,600

Southeast Asia-1,340,000

Total-9,306,900

Corrigan flipped to the next chart. “This shows the projections for five years from now. Again, this data came from the World Health Organization.”

REGIONS-ESTIMATE

North America-8,150,000

Western Europe-2,331,000

Australia-Pacifica-45,000

Latin America-8,554,000

Sub-Saharan Africa-33,609,000

Caribbean-6,962,000

Eastern Europe-20,000

Southeast Mediterranean-3,532,000

Northeast Asia-486,000

Southeast Asia-45,059,000

Total-108,748,000

“Amazing. We could soon have one hundred ten million people infected, worldwide, with HIV. Current statistics indicate that fifty percent of these individuals will eventually develop AIDS. Forty percent of that fifty percent will be dead within two years. Of course, the vast majority of these will be in Africa and Asia.” Corrigan shook her head. “Quite a market, wouldn’t you say?”

Vincenti digested the figures. Using a mean of seventy million HIV cases, even at a conservative five thousand euros per year for treatment, any cure would initially generate three hundred and fifty billion euros. True, once the initial infected population was cured, the market would dwindle. So what? The money would be made. More than anyone could ever spend in a lifetime. Later, there’d surely be new infections and more sales, not the billions the initial campaign would generate, but a continuous windfall nonetheless.

“Our next analysis involved a look at the competition. From what we’ve been able to learn from the WHO, roughly sixteen drugs are now being used globally for the symptomatic treatment of AIDS. There are roughly a dozen players in this game. The sales from your own drugs were just over a billion euros last year.”

Philogen owned patents for six medicines that, when used in conjunction with others, had proven effective in arresting the virus. Though it took, on average, about fifty pills a day, the so-called cocktail therapy was all that really worked. Not a cure, the deluge of medication simply confused the virus, and it was only a matter of time before nature outsmarted the microbiologists. Already, drug-resistant HIV strains had emerged in Asia and China.

“We took a look at the combination treatments,” Corrigan said. “A three-drug regimen costs on average about twenty thousand euros a year. But that form of treatment is basically a Western luxury. It’s nonexistent in Africa and Asia. Philogen donates, at reduced costs, medications to a few of the affected governments, but to treat those patients similarly would cost billions of euros a year, money no African government has to spend.”

His own marketing people had already told him the same thing. Treatment was not really an option for the ravaged third world. Stopping the spread of HIV was the only cost-effective method to attack the crisis. Condoms were the initial instrument of choice, and one of Philogen’s subsidiaries couldn’t make the things fast enough. Sales had risen in the thousands of percent over the course of the last two decades. And so had profits. But, of late, the use of condoms had steadily dropped. People were becoming complacent.

Corrigan was saying, “According to its own propaganda, one of your competitors, Kellwood-Lafarge, spent more than a hundred million euros on AIDS-cure research last year alone. You spent about a third of that.”

He threw the woman a smirk. “Competing with Kellwood-Lafarge is akin to fishing for whales with a rod and reel. It’s the largest drug conglomerate on the planet. Hard to match somebody euro for euro when the other guy has over a hundred billion in year gross revenues.”

He sipped his coffee as Corrigan flipped to a clean chart.

“Getting away from all that, let’s take a look at product ideas. A name of course, for any cure, is critical. Currently, of the sixteen symptomatic drugs on the market, designations vary. Things like Bactrim, Diflucan, Intron, Pentam, Videx, Crixivan, Hivid, Retrovir. Because of the worldwide use any cure will enjoy, we thought a simpler, more universal designation, like AZT utilized, might be better from a marketing standpoint. From what we were told, Philogen now has eight possible cures under development.” Corrigan flipped to the next chart, which showed packaging concepts. “We have no way of knowing if any cure will be solid or liquid, taken orally or by injection, so we created variations, keeping the colors in your black-and-gold motif.”

He studied the proposals.

She pointed to the easel. “We left a blank for the name, to be inserted in gold letters. We’re still working on that. The important thing about this scheme is that even if the name doesn’t translate in a particular language, the package will be distinctive enough to provide immediate recognition.”

He was pleased, but thought it best to suppress a smile. “I have a possible name. Something I’ve beaten around in my head.”

Corrigan seemed interested.

He stood, walked to the easel, opened a marker, and wrote ZH.

He noticed a puzzled look on everyone’s face. “Zeta. Eta. Old Greek. It meant ‘life.’”

Corrigan nodded. “Appropriate.”

He agreed.

THIRTY-THREE

VOZROZHDENIYA ISLAND

CENTRAL ASIAN FEDERATION

1:00 P.M.

ZOVASTINA WAS THRILLED WITH THE CROWD. HER STAFF HAD promised five thousand would appear. Instead, her traveling secretary told her on the helicopter flight, northwest from Samarkand, that over twenty thousand were awaiting her arrival. More proof, she was told, of her popularity. Now, seeing the bedlam of goodwill, perfect for the television cameras focused on the dais, she could not help but be pleased.

“Look around you,” she said into the microphone, “at what we can accomplish when both our minds and our hearts work in unison.” She hesitated a moment for effect, then motioned outward. “Kantubek reborn.”

The crowd, thick as ants, cheered their approval with an enthusiasm she’d grown accustomed to hearing.

Vozrozhdeniya Island sat in the central Aral Sea, a remote wilderness that once housed the Soviet Union’s Microbiological Warfare Group, and also provided a tragic example of Asia ’s exploitation by its former masters. Here was where anthrax spores and plague bacilli were both developed and stored. After the fall of the communist government, in 1991, the laboratory staff abandoned the island and the containers holding the deadly spores, which, over the ensuing decade, developed leaks. The potential biological disaster was compounded by the receding Aral Sea. Fed by the ample Amu Darya, the wondrous lake had once been shared by Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. But when the Soviets changed the Darya’s course and diverted the river’s flow into a twelve-hundred-kilometer-long canal-water used to grow cotton for Soviet mills-the inland sea, once one of the world’s largest freshwater bodies, began to vanish, replaced by a desert incapable of supporting life.