Ellen Horton sat at the small conference room table of her SeptoMed lab, staring at the tables and graphs until they seemed to float in front of her. She used to look forward to these early results from the multihospital trials of her drug Oraloxin, so much so that she could hardly stand to wait for them. But as she wearily scanned the pages from Chicago, the first center reporting, she prayed only that she wouldn’t see any bone marrow side effects reported in the treatment group.

To her right, Neil Ryland leaned back with his fingers laced behind his head, casually viewing the tables and graphs as if reading the Sunday paper. On Horton’s left, Viktor Leschuk, her other lieutenant on the Oraloxin project, hunched forward and pored over the pages intently.

Horton had long been aware that the two men were a study in contrasts. Though close friends, they reminded her of two cold war adversaries from an old spy movie. Ryland was the unflappable, upbeat young American right down to his rosy cheeks. Leschuk was the brilliant, brooding Eastern European. In his late fifties, the balding, compact veterinarian-cum-pharmacologist had defected from Kiev in the early 1980s. Like other Eastern European scientists she knew, Leschuk struck her as perpetually homesick. Even though he spoke English well, most of his personal conversations were in Ukrainian. And the times Horton had gone out for dinner with Viktor and his wife, Oksana, they always went to the same Ukrainian restaurant. Horton knew, however, that Leschuk had never gone back to Kiev since the Iron Curtain fell, and he’d never spoken to her of his former life there.

Ryland’s face broke into a wide smile as he reached for a sheet in front of him. “Did you see this graph?” He beamed. “The response rate was quicker in the Oraloxin group than with intravenous vancomycin!”

“It’s only two hundred patients, Neil,” Leschuk cautioned with a wag of his finger.

Mouth agape, Ryland stared at his colleague. “You’re kidding me, Vik, right?

“What?” Leschuk frowned.

“Our oral antibiotic works faster against MRSA than the best intravenous preparation and all you have to say is”—Ryland dropped his voice an octave and assumed a Boris Badenov-like comic Russian accent—‘It’s only two hundred patients.’”

Horton bit her lip, unsuccessfully fighting back a smile.

Leschuk shrugged. “You vant I should get ze Champagne and caviar now?” he said, deliberately exaggerating his own accent.

Ryland laughed. “I just want a little grin, Vik. Even a smirk will do.”

The right side of Leschuk’s lip rose in a feigned smile. “Happy?”

“Ecstatic.” Ryland chuckled. “Vik, we’ve toiled away in this lab for a long time.” He pointed a finger around the windowless room. “Every once in a while I think it’s a good idea to celebrate the little victories.” He tapped the page in front of him. “Like this one.”