The Aztec Heresy by Paul Christopher Page B

or old paintings. The only thing embedded in the streets of Paris is used bubble gum. It is as it ever was: it is all about money. The Inquisition was about greed and power. It still is.’’
    ‘‘Will you help us?’’ Finn said bluntly.
    ‘‘Certainly,’’ said Jumaire with a shrug. ‘‘Why not?’’
    ‘‘That was easy enough,’’ said Finn. ‘‘Why the sudden trust?’’
    ‘‘Kerzner told you we were coming,’’ said Billy, suddenly understanding. ‘‘He called to warn you.’’
    ‘‘Of course. He described Miss Ryan perfectly.’’
    The old man struggled to his feet, balancing himself on his canes. ‘‘Turn the sign on the door, throw the bolt, and pull down the blind,’’ he instructed Billy. The reverse of the OPEN sign read Entrailles pas Fiables : uncertain bowels. ‘‘It covers a multitude of situations and rarely invites questions,’’ explained Jumaire. He came out from behind the counter and headed through the stacks. ‘‘Follow me, if you please. I have rooms in the back. I’ll make coffee for us.’’
    Max Kessler sat in Jack Kennedy’s bomb shelter and examined the file he had assembled on Harrison Noble and his father. It made interesting reading. Noble Pharmaceuticals had begun as a family business almost a hundred years before, trafficking in patent medicines of all kinds but specializing in nostrums, pills, powders, and tonics, a number of them containing opium derivatives, several based on cocaine and one extremely popular concoction used for distress related to ‘‘a particular periodic occurrence’’ named Lady Helen’s Tonic, which contained a healthy dose of heroin. Over the decades Noble Pharmaceuticals added to its fortunes, expanding into a variety of over-the -counter products but maintaining a solid base in patent medicine of all kinds, especially its flagship product, Noble’s Mixture, a cure-all that was still being sold well into the fifties. In 1960 Conrad Noble, the family patriarch, died, and James Jonas Noble took over. His first act was to change the names of almost all their products. Thus, Noble’s Mixture became Nomix, Grady’s Hair Tonic became Brillamine, and Noble’s Liver Pills became Heparine. Under James Noble’s guidance the company slowly phased out the old quack items and began the manufacture of generic prescription drugs, carefully watching the growth of antipsychotics and antidepressants based on the ever-expanding volume of new diseases being listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, generally referred to as the DSM and presently in its fourth incarnation, DSM-IV, in which ‘‘shyness’’ had become something called Social Anxiety Disorder, or SAD.
    Every time a new DSM mentioned a new disease, Noble found a drug for it or adapted someone else’s. Prozac and Paxil became Danex, Zoloft became Antipan, and Celexa became Cytoloft. A drug by any other name made billions. By the year 2000 Noble Pharmaceuticals was the eighth largest drug manufacturer in the world, and their motto, ‘‘We Feel Your Pain,’’ had been adopted by Late Night with David Letterman and spoofed regularly on Saturday Night Live. The humorless lawyers for Noble Pharmaceuticals assured James Noble that he had grounds for a lawsuit, but the CEO told them not to be silly, it was free advertising on an enormous scale.
    Harrison Noble, James Noble’s only child, was only a faint reflection of his father, and some of the gossip columnists said the only things he’d inherited from his father were a strong chin and a weakness for blondes. A student at Yale and a member of Skull and Bones only because of his father, Harrison Noble had no particular interests except spending his trust fund and seeing how many debutantes he could sleep with, until he started sleeping with the daughter of the president of the United States and managed to get her pregnant. The silencing of the scandal of both the pregnancy and its termination led