The Price of Greed: Daniel & the Deadly Sins 1/3, #1

THE PRICE OF GREED

Daniel & the Deadly Sins 1:

by

Michael Clasen

PIGGIES

Have you seen the little piggies

Crawling in the dirt

And for all the little piggies

Life is getting worse

Always having dirt to play around in.

Have you seen the bigger piggies

In their starched white shirts

You will find the bigger piggies

Stirring up the dirt

Always have clean shirts to play around in.

In their sties with all their backing

They don't care what goes on around

In their eyes there's something lacking

What they need's a damned good whacking.

Everywhere there's lots of piggies

Living piggy lives

You can see them out for dinner

With their piggy wives

Clutching forks and knives to eat their bacon.

––––––––

George Harrison, 1968

GITTA

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 5

An old, gray-haired man was sitting in the subdued light of the hospital room with his daughter's hand in his. He had been sitting that way since the previous evening. His eyes had flickered a few times, but he had always quickly opened them again – by sheer force of will.

At half past three in the morning, his 40-year-old daughter breathed her last. Quietly.

He heard her strained breathing becoming shallower with every breath, and it stopped after only half a minute. It was what you might call a peaceful death.

An older nurse came hurrying in and turned on the room’s bright overhead light. She quickly checked the monitor above the bed with an experienced glance. Breathing and heartbeat had both stopped. She summoned help with the touch of a button, but immediately began to examine the patient for herself.

The tall gray-haired man got up with difficulty and walked slowly across the room without saying a word, then down the dark hospital corridor, down the stairs, and out into the dark parking lot in front of the hospital. There were only a few cars there at this time of the night, and he locked himself into his black Range Rover.

He sat in the driver's seat, staring out into the darkness. The first tears forced their way past his eyelids and slipped down his wrinkled cheeks. They opened the way for his collapse. His face twisted into a grotesque grimace, and he collapsed over the steering wheel and began sobbing loudly and bitterly in the dark autumn night. Knud Emmanuel Tranedal wept for the first time in many years. The last time was 40 years ago, when his beloved daughter Gitta was born and her mother died soon afterwards.

And now Gitta was dead, too.

*

Knud E. Tranedal – who was just called Knud E. by his family, his friends and his employees – became a father at the age of 34 years. He had lived as a bachelor for many years. But two years earlier, he had – to the great surprise of many – married the German Baroness Elise von Löwenstein, who was just 24 years old. She was the daughter of a German nobleman who invited Knud E. to his estate for a hunting trip along with some other friends. The young blonde girl and the charming man of the world were immediately taken with one another, and they were married after three months of secret meetings in various large European cities. Two years later, Elise gave birth to their only child, her daughter Birgitta, who always went by Gitta. The little girl was held over the baptismal font by the then-widowed Queen of Denmark and became the greatest love of her father's life. Elise fell into a deep post-partum depression after a few weeks and, when Knud E. was away on a business trip, took the overdose of pills that killed her.

Knud E. needed several years to recover from Elise's death, but it was mostly from his sense of duty towards his daughter that he went on living, for Gitta’s sake. Gitta became a special kind of daddy’s girl. Many believed that she was completely spoiled, which was not far from the truth. On the other hand, however, Knud E. also made great demands of her.

During her first year of school, she went to Haubjerg Grammar School and developed into a very charming and well-behaved girl. Like many other girls, Gitta was very much taken by horses and riding. She got her first pony as a gift for her sixth birthday.

Some distance from the main building of the Tranedal Estate, an old building made of large whitewashed stones had been preserved. It was here that Knud E. took care to set up the estate’s riding hall, complete with indoor and outdoor tracks for dressage and horseback riding, surrounded by large pastures for the riding horses to graze on. It was here, too, that the widely branching riding paths, which ran for kilometers through extensive woods and spacious meadows that formed part of the Tranedal Estate, began.

After a few years, Knud E. decided to send Gitta to the elite Herlufsholm School, where he himself had gone and which was now open to girls. Through her diligence and not insignificant talents, she earned the best exam results for the year at the school, where many of the country's future leaders were educated. After graduating, Gitta enrolled, at her father's advice, at Copenhagen Business School, where she studied business economics and graduated in record time and with the very highest grades. She then went to London, where she worked for an international banking firm. She fell in love with the boss's son, but they broke up after a few years, and Gitta returned home to the Tranedal Estate, sadder but much wiser.

At the age of 27 years – the year after her father turned 70 – she was ready to enter into the management of the estate. Knud E. was very happy. His beloved lost daughter had finally returned to him. And she had also returned to her heritage and her place in the family dynasty. Even though he was physically and mentally vigorous and healthy, it was time for the future of the estate to be decided. He drew up plans for his daughter's gradual takeover of the management of the estate. However, he never mentioned to Gitta that she was also expected to produce an heir.

She had furnished the old manor house in accordance with all the rules of art and fashion and worked as her father's long arm in the operation of the estate. Knud E. rapidly ceded one area of management after another to his daughter, who never complained, but on the contrary quickly mastered the new areas of work. Knud E. delighted in his quiet thoughts, and often told himself what a wonderful daughter he had. In the beginning, Knud E. wondered about his daughter's leadership style. He had always guided the operation of the estate from his office in the main building, and only ventured into the woods, fields and barns a few times a year for business reasons. Many of the staff barely knew the boss from events other than the Christmas and Harvest Festivals, where he thanked them for their efforts, but otherwise only offered toasts! Gitta, on the other hand, made sure to leave the administration office every week, put on rubber boots and walk in the fields and stalls with the various managers. It was clearly a different and more modern style of work than his own, but there was nothing that Knud E. could do to correct his daughter's path. He was overjoyed that the change of generations seemed to be running smoothly. He had no influence over the next generation, so he just tried to stop thinking about it. And now it was all overturned at a single blow.

One week earlier, Gitta had gone on one of her routine rides around the lands and woods of the estate on her favorite horse, the six-year-old stallion Caesar, riding as she had done so many times before.

The forests were clothed in their most colorful autumn colors, but there were torrential rains on this Friday afternoon. Deep puddles had grown in many places, and many of the trails in the hilly terrain had turned into slippery mud. Even though both rider and horse were experienced and cooperated well with one another, the accident happened where they had often ridden together. Caesar slipped in the mud and fell. Gitta wound up pinned beneath the large animal, who panicked and struggled to raise himself up again. When Caesar trotted into the courtyard without a rider, a frantic search began in the estate’s three SUV’s. Knud E. found his daughter at the place she had fallen – muddy, injured, and with a compound fracture of her thighbone. The ambulance took half an hour to arrive, and Gitta was hospitalized at Haubjerg Hospital, where she was immediately brought to the operating table.

The doctors almost immediately put her thighbone together again with various silver surgical parts and stainless steel screws. Knud E. sat alone in the somber waiting room. After an hour, the surgeon was able to inform him that the surgery had gone well and that Gitta was still half anaesthetized and just needed peace and quiet.

Come back tomorrow was the message.

*

On the Friday after Gitta's death, she was buried from the small chapel in the side wing of Tranedal's main building. The little baroque chapel was filled to capacity, and many of the guests had to stand outside during the ceremony. The coffin was carried by Knud E., with a face as expressionless as a mask, and by the top five officers of the estate. Mourners followed the coffin down to one of the far ends of the park, where the family’s burial plot was located in a semi-circle of old oak trees. Gitta was buried there next to her mother, whom she had never known. During the wake at the riding hall, it was noticed that Knud E. was not present. On Monday morning, he went to the hospital, where he had an appointment with the senior physician.

SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT

MONDAY, OCTOBER 16

Knud Emmanuel Tranedal was born in 1942. He never saw his father, who died on the Russian Front as an officer in the collaborationist Danish Free Corps. He was raised by his anemic mother, who had him taken care of by various nannies until he was old enough to go to boarding school.

Knud E. was the sole heir to the Tranedal Estate, which was located about 25 kilometers west of the town of Haubjerg. The estate included broad lands – extensive forests, fields and meadows – as well as several rental homes in the surrounding area. Nysø Hegn and its lake also belonged to Tranedal. The estate included three large farms, each one run by a manager who reported directly to the landlord. There were large facilities on all three farms where tens of thousands of pigs were produced every year with the most up-to-date methods. On a fourth farm – Gerdasminde –. Knud E.'s manager ran a mink farm.

In addition to his agricultural properties, Knud E. owned a number of large shareholdings in highly respected and profitable Danish companies, some connected with the agricultural sector and others of a more industrial type. He sat on the boards of four of these companies, and was Chairman of one of them. His largest total shareholding was in the world-famous pharmaceutical company, SanoDan.

He had formed many friendships during his secondary school years at Herlufsholm, and he had kept in touch with many of his friends over the course of the years. There were, of course, many people he didn’t see very often any longer, but many people did participate in Tranedal's legendary hunts followed by after-hunt parties that members of the Royal Family and many other representatives of the wealthiest and most influential members of the Danish elite also frequently attended. Over the years when Gitta was busy growing up and being educated, her father was also busy. He had been chosen to be Chairman of the Danish Pig Producers Association, and he was as such automatically named Vice Chairman of the powerful agribusiness organization that had been rebranded with the popular name 'Earth to Table'.

*

The hospital's parking lot was always crowded during the daytime. It was meant to accommodate all the vehicles of the employees, outpatients, and visitors, and apparently nobody had noticed that the hospital was close to one of Haubjerg's main shopping streets. And, since the hospital had undergone a major expansion a few years earlier, more than a hundred parking spaces had been eliminated.

Knud E. therefore parked his black Range Rover in the underground city parking lot some distance from the hospital and strolled over in the bright morning sun. It was clearly an older man walking through the city. Tall, with a commanding posture and a gait that marked him as a man accustomed to others moving to the side and out of his way. He was wearing a German-made woolen coat and high laced boots. He was bareheaded, so you could see his half-length gray hair which, despite his age, was still thick and free of bald spots. His face, with a powerful cleft chin, was carefully shaven. The doctor stood in the corridor, ready to greet him. With a humility that didn’t match his status, he showed Knud E. into his office and introduced himself:

Jens Nielsen. His name plate said Head Physician. He obviously knew who he was dealing with. He started by bowing slightly: Cup of coffee?

No thanks! You just asked me to come here. What can I do for you, Dr. Nielsen?

Well, we thought it was best that we talked about ... about your daughter's unfortunate ... How are you getting along, Mr. Tranedal?

Thank you for your interest, but you shouldn't mix me up right now! Just get to the point: What are we going to talk about?

The doctor blushed unintentionally and cleared his throat several times.

Yes, as you see, Mr. Tranedal, your daughter's fracture was, of course, one of the more serious kinds, but it wasn’t complicated in a surgical sense, and the surgery also went exactly as it usually does – that is to say, without complications. The doctor looked into Knud E.’s eyes before continuing. As you know, it was only a few days later that things began to go wrong. The injury to your daughter's leg clearly became infected and, after another two days, the inflammation developed into regular blood poisoning. Knud E. was impassive during the explanation as he closely watched the nervous doctor.

I know all that, Doctor. Please get to the point!

We treated your daughter with the most potent antibiotics we currently have, Mr. Tranedal, but that just didn’t help!

As yet another sign that he was completely aware of the fact, Knud E. sighed deeply and looked pointedly at his Rolex watch. The doctor was now on sure ground and didn’t let Knud E.'s behavior distract him. He asked him in a firm voice:

Does MRSA CC398 mean anything to you, Mr. Tranedal?

My farm raises over 200,000 pigs a year, so what do you think? Knud E.'s tone had also become sharper.

And your daughter spent time in the pig houses?

Of course.

Had she been infected with any infectious diseases recently?

She was strong and healthy, as she usually was.

Not exactly. We were able to determine that she had been under a broad-spectrum antibiotic treatment for a severe abdominal infection she suffered from in recent weeks. She didn’t tell you about that?

After a moment's hesitation, Knud E. answered dismissively:

That's not something we used to talk about, Dr. Nielsen. But what does that have to do with her ... That is to say, her death .... He swallowed. With her death? You don’t just die from abdominal infections, do you?

No, not unless an antibiotic treatment had wiped out all of your healthy bacterial flora, which will normally overpower an infection caused by MRSA CC398!

*

After lunch, Knud E. went down to the estate’s graveyard alone, followed only by his old and arthritic Labrador, Lucky. Gitta’s grave was completely covered with bouquets and wreaths in autumn colors. He sat down on the stone bench and stared listlessly at the sky. The dog wearily lay down next to him. He was unable to say whether it was because of the autumn wind, but a single tear rolled down his cheek.

And to think that it took nothing but a simple riding accident to overthrow all his plans. The whole meaning of his life’s struggles had been tied up with Gitta and her happiness. And now she was just lying there! It was unbearable.

MRSA CC398! If only he had known about that! But he hadn’t. The doctor's judgment was clear: Gitta died because of an MRSA CC398 infection. The staphylococcus bacteria, called MRSA CC398, is known to the public – perhaps a bit unfairly – as the pig bacteria. MRSA bacteria have also appeared in hospital environments, where they have been fought for many generations. On the other hand, they have mainly flourished on most of the country’s pig farms. The hospital's investigations had shown that the bacteria that killed Gitta originated from one of the pig houses she managed at the Tranedal Estate. Knud E.'s thoughts wandered back in time.

As Chairman of the Danish Pig Producers Association, he had gained many opponents, if not outright enemies. He had come before the public for many years as the essence of the most ruthless and short-sighted business interests to be found in the entire country. He had fought for his business interests with half truths, three-quarter truths, and rhetorical distortions. His form of debate, which you can often find on television, on the radio and in the press, was aggressive and populist, using outright lies and bulldozer tactics. As one of the country's largest pig raisers, he often appeared on the firing line. Many people remembered – even after several years – his appearance on one television program where he mocked and ridiculed environmentalists and scientists who had warned about the dangers of MRSA, threatening to put a bomb under antibiotic treatments, not just in this country, but throughout the world as well. He finished the debate by stalking out of the television studio with the arrogant remark that he probably knew much better than these students and readers of the elite Danish newspaper Politiken.

During those years, more and more citizens became aware that modern agriculture was far removed from what they had learned about in school. At the very time that an ever smaller portion of the country's GDP came from agriculture, the profession had gone over to industrial methods. The agriculturalists (there was no longer any reason to call them farmers) referred to their livestock as production units and treated them as such. Lakes, streams and fjords were contaminated by fertilizers and toxins that washed out from farmlands. Animal rights became a foreign concept. Agribusiness acted as if it owned the entire country and should receive financial compensation for even the simplest and most basic operations. On the whole, the farmers appeared to be the greediest and most reckless group of people in the entire country. It couldn’t be true that it was the nature-lovers, granola eaters, and aging hippies that were right, could it? All those years that he had spent on pig farms and had had hardly even one sick day! Could his own cocksureness and economic interests really have been a contributing factor to his beloved daughter’s premature death? That just wasn’t right. Confused thoughts went through Knud E.'s head as he walked home in the twilight.

BACTERIA

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 9

During the following month, it was difficult for the company's employees to contact their boss. He instructed his second-in-command to find and hire a person who could take over Gitta's duties.

And then the riding horses of the estate were to be sold off, each and every one of them.

And then he also announced that he was not to be disturbed for any reason; he was thinking! And he did just that. Every day, regardless of the weather, he went down to Gitta's grave, where he sat quietly on the bench for a long time, gazing into space. His posture or facial expression did not reveal what was going on in his head. The personnel of the estate debated quietly among themselves whether he had lost his mind from grief. No, he had not. On the contrary, he had begun to make plans for the future at his advanced age – 74 years.

During a brief period of transition, he considered casting all the reins away from himself, retiring from all positions, and setting up a board to operate the estate while he retired, but he quickly came to have other thoughts. His usual sense of obligation told him that he had to correct the serious and fatal mistakes he had made. And for that purpose, he needed all the platforms, networks and positions of power he had available to him. His first decision was that he would never again participate in debates about the use of drugs and chemicals in agriculture. Never again would he make comments about MRSA. There were others who were ready to assume his role in this connection, and there would be only a few nerds wondering about where Knud E. had disappeared to.

Instead, he started a completely different project: He was Chairman of the Board of the pharmaceutical company SanoDan, which had offices, research departments and factories on four continents. The largest unit, however, was still in Sletved, about 50 kilometers south of Haubjerg, which employed more than 3,000 people. The meetings of the board were also held there.

Lars Krebs was the head of one of the most secretive research departments. Lars was the son of one of Knud E.'s old friends from the prestigious Herlufsholm School who had tragically died in the crash of his private plane when his son Lars was a young boy. Lars Krebs' 40 international researchers were puzzling over the development of immunology, among other projects. It was hardly possible to see how SanoDan could benefit from it, but you never know. Lars Krebs had been invited to the well-known Tranedal Hunt for many years, but Lars had sent a decline every year since Knud E. had been highly involved in his campaign aimed at MRSA critics. On a dark and rainy November evening, Knud E. called Lars Krebs, who sounded clearly surprised.

I'd rather not talk so much on the phone. Would you like to come over and have a talk?

Of course!

*

Knud E. opened the imposing door of the main building himself and ushered Lars Krebs into the large hall. The two men greeted each other with a firm handshake and firm eye contact.

Once in the drawing room, Knud E. poured a large vintage cognac for each of them. They sat in the deep, well-worn Chesterfield chairs beneath the stuffed hunting trophies and took time to savor the aroma and the first, precious drops of the cognac. There was a fire in the open fireplace, and his hunting dog Lucky basked in the radiant heat.

Lars Krebs was in his mid-fifties, of slight build, wore glasses, and was almost completely bald. He had an irritating habit of clearing his throat frequently when he was speaking. He had a wife and two teenage daughters at home.

When Krebs lost his father, Knud E. had helped him financially with his studies and had since recommended him to a position at one of SanoDan's microbiological research departments. From there, Krebs worked his way up to his current well-paying and responsible position as the head of one of SanoDan's top secret departments. Group management did not expect large profits from the highly specialized research that was conducted under Krebs' leadership. The biologists and chemists in the department were selected from among the best in the world, and they had a virtually free hand in choosing what scientific puzzles they wanted to solve. If it turned out that they found results that could be applied to the practical world, that was fine, but if they merely contributed to new discoveries in basic science, the Board of Directors and the board considered it a natural obligation for a company of their size with its corresponding obligations to society. Krebs' entire department, in contrast, was bound by the strictest non-disclosure measures. Everyone in the pharmaceutical industry knew about the risk of industrial espionage, and SanoDan had an entire department that kept the company's golden eggs secret until the day they were ready to be hatched. Even the Board of Directors and its chairman Knud E. were only informed at a superficial level.

Knud E. started the conversation.

I know very well, Lars, that you have disagreed with my views on MRSA. And you probably didn't like the way I presented them, either. Of course, I have noticed your refusals to my invitations over recent years. No, don't interrupt me now! I know you don’t share my views, and I certainly respect that. And I've missed your company at our hunting parties. You know that Gitta died and I have to tell you something that you mustn't tell others: Gitta died of blood poisoning caused by MRSA! The doctors are in no doubt, and the strain of bacteria comes from one of our own pig farms! No, let me speak first and then you can say whatever you want. Ever since I heard about the cause of Gitta's death, I've speculated like a madman, and I have to confess that I have completely changed my opinions. I have become ready to join in the fight against MRSA, but I'm missing vital knowledge to react to it. So I'm asking you to bring me up to speed about the background and the status of this scourge and to present it in language understandable to an old farmer!

Several minutes of silence followed before Krebs cleared his throat and said:

My dear Knud E., you have no idea how much I feel about your loss need and your grief over Gitta's death. On the other hand, I am glad that you are prepared to revise your old views, which were completely ignorant and irresponsible. I say this in full awareness of the fact that you were my father's old friend, that you have helped me to move forward in the world, and that you are my highest superior: you have pushed yourself forward like a bull, being both selfish and short-sighted. Now we can finally speak plainly.

Forget the past now: just teach me everything I haven't learned yet.

For the next two and a half hours, Lars Krebs explained to his old mentor what he had been wrong about and how the bacteriological world hangs together without any regard for parochial business interests.

"Bacteria are everywhere. And fortunately so! Without bacteria, there would be no other living things on the earth. The world of bacteria is truly diverse, and they are present in millions of vastly different species. Bacteria are extremely small and cannot be seen with the naked eye. And yet, all of the world's bacteria together weigh 2,000 times more than all of mankind! You and I and all other people have about a pound of bacteria in each of our digestive tracts. This may sound both dangerous and disgusting, but we could not survive without them. The vast majority of bacterial species are completely harmless to us, and a great many are directly beneficial. Certain bacteria are absolutely necessary for us in order for us to be able to digest our food and to produce essential vitamins. We are, in short, filled with billions of bacteria – and this number is no exaggeration –. from our mouths to our rectums. And that's just fine – if they just stay in the digestive tracts and don’t get into our bloodstreams.

Just one single bacterium can develop into an entire community: since they multiply by division, they don’t need any partner. As you obviously know, of course, there are also some bacteria that can make us sick. Naturally, they have been investigated more thoroughly than the beneficial bacteria. The list of diseases caused by bacterial infections is extremely long and they have cost millions of people their lives over the course of history. Science has named all the known bacterial species in Latin, and the bacterial species that caused Gitta's death is called Staphylococcus aureus, which means 'golden staphylococcus'. There are bacteria that multiply much faster, but a single staphylococcus can nevertheless divide and duplicate itself every twenty minutes. In other words, a single MRSA bacterium can develop to no less than about 10²¹, or just under five sextillion, in a single day, which can be written as a five followed by 21 zeros!"

Knud E. followed his guest's presentation in silence, but nodded occasionally to indicate that he understood. Lars Krebs went on:

"During World War Two, people began to treat bacterial infections with penicillin. This was a fungus culture that secreted a substance that inhibited the growth of certain bacteria. Later, other drugs were added, and this entire group was given the name antibiotics. The appearance of these drugs completely revolutionized medical science. Diseases that had previously been fatal could now be cured with the new drugs, more and more of which were developed.