“Okay, I just checked the Department of Homeland Security for explosions or terrorist incidents in the Chesapeake Bay area at that time. Nada. It’s beginning to look like a straightforward industrial accident. It wasn’t reported because they don’t want their rivals in the industry to find out they’ve had a problem, or because they don’t want their shareholders to know, or because they’re too goddamned scared of what this thing will do now it’s out.”
Clive Waxman returned, carrying a sheaf of papers.
“Okay, people,” he said. “Here it is. During that period no university in the area took out a patent with those keywords. But I got nineteen candidate companies. I thought we could start by seeing what the patents are about. Maybe we can eliminate some of them straight away. I’ve printed out the full texts. This is a job for you guys.”
Waxman placed the papers in front of Terry and Maggie, who immediately divided the pile in two and started to go through them. Milner beckoned to Waxman and they had a quiet word by the window while the others were at work.
Each patent was headed “US Patent and Trademark Office”. This was followed by a number, a date, and the name of the applicant or applicants. Below that was a title and an abstract, followed by addresses and the detailed specification. Waxman had stapled together the pages of individual applications. They worked rapidly, setting each application aside as they eliminated it.
“A lot of these are totally irrelevant,” Maggie whispered.
“I know. You only have to look at the abstract in most cases.”
Terry finished first. There were no papers left in front of him. Maggie noticed and passed him a couple of hers. She seemed to be reading one in more detail. She finished and they compared notes.
“I didn’t find anything,” said Terry.
“Nor did I. Let’s ask Clive over. Clive?”
Waxman broke off his conversation, came over, and sat down with them. Milner remained at the window, peering out between the louvres of the plastic blind.
“You found something?”
“No, nothing,” Maggie replied. She drew one of the patents over. “This one was the closest to what we’re looking for. It describes an expression cassette containing the gene for an oral form of insulin, for insertion into E. coli.” She added, for Clive’s benefit. “That’s a bacterium.”
“I’ve heard of it. Doesn’t it cause food poisoning?”
“Certain strains do but the usual form is a normal part of our gut flora. It’s become one of the basic tools of molecular biology. You can modify it in such a way that it can’t survive outside the lab; then it’s quite safe. The thing is, I’m not used to patent specifications, so I just wasn’t expecting this amount of detail. There are pages of it. And it ends up with a complete nucleotide sequence for the DNA construct and the primers, everything.”
“What are you saying?”
“Well, if for any reason a company wanted to keep a discovery like this quiet they wouldn’t publish a complete specification like this, would they? I mean, with the right sort of setup anyone could make it. I suppose a rival could do it in such a way as not to infringe the patent. Or maybe they simply wouldn’t bother, especially if they were in a country where the patent wasn’t valid.”
Terry looked at her. “You think we may be barking up the wrong tree?”
“We could be. Maybe this company relies on secrecy. They didn’t reveal that they were working on this organism in the first place. When there was a serious escape they could easily cover that up too, because nobody even knew it existed.”
“Well, if there’s no patent on the organism,” Terry said, “we’re back at square one. We’ve ruled out university spin-offs, but aside from that all we can say is that it’s a company that makes biologicals, pharmaceuticals or chemicals. It could be big or small.”
Waxman thought for a moment. “No, it has to be a large company.”
“Why?”
“Look, research and development takes a lot of money. It’s unusual, but only a large company would be in a position to make that sort of investment in a product that wasn’t protected by a patent. A young company would have to be launched with venture capital; the backers would certainly insist that they patented anything they had, so as to safeguard their investment.”
Terry nodded. “That makes sense, I suppose. But if we don’t have a patent how do we find out who’s making the organism?”
“There must be a limited number of the right sort of companies with a subsidiary in the Chesapeake Bay area,” Waxman replied. “In fact our trawl only came up with these. Let me have a look at that patent. At least it’s in the right line of country.”
Maggie pushed the stapled set of sheets over to Waxman. He picked it up, glanced down the first page, then replaced it on the desk and pointed.
“These names are the individuals who are making the application; they’re the inventors. The first address is the patent agent who drew it all up and handled the correspondence; in this case it’s an agency: Otis, Digby and Preiss. This address here is the assignee, the company that owns the patent: Vance Pharmaceuticals, of Lexington, Massachusetts. I think it’s time I did some digging. I should have something by tomorrow. Can we meet up here again in the morning?”
Terry looked at Milner, who was still standing at the window but had clearly been following the entire conversation. He turned and nodded.
“Sure thing,” he said. “We’ll drop these two off at their hotel now and then go back to HQ.”
Fifteen minutes later Milner pulled up at the hotel entrance and Maggie and Terry got out. He lowered his window.
“I’ll pick the pair of you up here tomorrow morning, oh-nine-hundred sharp. I won’t go in this time. Just come straight out when you see the car.”
They said “Thanks, Sam,” but the car was already on the move with the window rolling up.
CHAPTER 38
Next morning they gathered around the same table, in the same faintly petrol-smelling, minimally furnished room.
“Vance Pharmaceuticals,” Clive Waxman announced, using his fingertips to align the edges of the small stack of sheets he’d placed in front of him. “You may have heard of them – they’re one of our bigger pharmas. They have subsidiaries overseas and they have various manufacturing and research facilities here in the States – including the one in the Chesapeake Bay area. That facility’s called Genon, and it’s not far from Richmond, Virginia. It might interest you to know that it’s also close to a river.”
Terry and Maggie exchanged glances.
“Now,” Clive continued, “how do big pharmas like Vance keep abreast of new technologies like genetic engineering? They buy in the expertise they need by taking over companies that already have it. Seven years back, they swallowed up a company called AB Genetics. Among other things, AB Genetics held a patent for this oral insulin thing. Obviously that’s now been reassigned to Vance. Whether Vance is making the actual product down in Richmond, I wouldn’t know.”
Maggie shrugged. “It doesn’t really matter, does it? That isn’t the organism we’re looking for.”
“I know, but there’s more. Over the next few years Vance made a series of smaller acquisitions. I had a quick look at each of them and most are irrelevant but there’s just one that could be interesting. Exactly four years ago they took over a small company called Biomolecular Technologies, based in Texas.”
“Four years ago,” Maggie said slowly. “And the organism got out about eighteen months later.”
“We talked about that, didn’t we, Clive?” Milner said. “The timing fits. If Vance acquired the organism as a result of the takeover, they could have been in production with it at the time it escaped.”
Terry asked, “This company they took over – what was it called again?”
“Biomolecular Technologies.”
“Yes, did it have any patents?”
“Sure, that’s the next question to ask. It wouldn’t have come up in our original search
because I restricted that to the Chesapeake Bay area and these guys were in Texas. I looked them up. Biomolecular Technologies had only been around for a couple of years when they were taken over. At that time they held two patents. Neither one had anything to do with nitrogen or ammonia. I’ve got them here.”
He separated some of the sheets and passed them over to Maggie. They waited quietly while she perused them.
“No, you’re right,” she said, straightening up. “They’re interesting, and they are in the right sort of area, but they’re not the organism.”
“But if they did have the organism, wouldn’t they have patented that, too?” Terry asked.
“You’d have thought so,” Waxman replied, “but they may not have been ready yet. A patent like that takes a lot of working up – you’ve seen the sort of thing that’s required. This is our only good lead so far so I thought it was worth a closer look.”
“What did you find out?” Maggie asked.
“Basically it was a start-up company, but it wasn’t a university spin-off. The two prime movers were listed as a guy called Rod Hillman and another guy called Zak Gould. Hillman had an MBA, he was the CEO, and he seems to have run the business side. Gould had a PhD and he was designated the Research Director. In terms of intellectual property they probably patented the two main discoveries they had at the time they were launched. They never registered a trademark so I’m assuming they weren’t ready to go to market. There certainly wasn’t any money rolling in – that’s confirmed by the accounts: the only revenues were the payments from their backers. Plenty of outgoings, though. There’s no doubt they were in financial trouble. Vance paid next to nothing for them, in company terms.”
“Impressive,” Terry said. “I don’t know how you come by this sort of information so quickly.”
He shrugged. “You just have to know where to look. I’ve done some work for the SEC – that’s the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. You’d be amazed at the creative accounting some of the big companies get up to, spreading losses around to hide them from shareholders, giving directors back-dated options, all that sort of thing. I’ve investigated outfits a lot more complicated than this.”
There was a short silence then Milner spoke:
“Well, it fits pretty well with what we know about when and where this organism got out. I think it’s worth following up.”
“It sounds like the Research Director would be the best person to talk to,” Maggie said. “Do you think the staff of Biomolecular Technologies were absorbed into the bigger company?”
“Possibly,” Waxman replied, “but you can’t rely on it. We’re inclined to go for this Hillman guy. As CEO he would know what deal was struck and who went where.”
“Can we find him?”
Milner nodded. “We think so. We have Social Security numbers, Driver’s Licence details, and last known address for both Rod Hillman and Zak Gould. Hillman has moved to Boston. I’ll get in touch with the Boston police this morning – we have to work together on this, otherwise they get touchy. We could pull him in and interview him at the local station but he’d probably clam up. Better if we treat him as a potential witness and interview him at his home. We can fly up this afternoon.”
“Can we come too?” Maggie asked.
“That’s what I meant by ‘we’. Clive will be staying in Washington; we can contact him if we need more information. Once we’ve found this Hillman guy we’ll know for sure whether or not we’re on the right track.”
“At last it feels like we’re making some progress,” said Maggie later as they sat in the hotel bar awaiting their taxi to the airport.
“Agreed,” Terry responded. “Let’s just hope this Hillman guy can give us some clues about the organism. Something we can use.”
His phone buzzed across the table. He picked it up and looked at the caller ID.
“It’s John Gilchrist, I asked him to keep me updated on the ammonia levels.” He clicked open the phone.
“John? Hi, how’s it going?”
Terry listened, his brow furrowing. After a few minutes he said goodbye and clicked the phone shut. He sat there quietly for a few moments.
“Well?” said Maggie. “What’s going on?”
He grimaced. “Latest measurements just came in. We’re at seventy-three per cent of threshold.”
CHAPTER 39
A car met them at Boston’s Logan Airport and they drove straight to police headquarters. Milner spent some time in the Chief’s office while Terry and Maggie waited by a row of mismatched filing cabinets and other clutter in the corridor outside. He winked at them when he emerged but said nothing until they were standing outside the station.
“All fixed. Our hotel’s on Tremont Street. We’ll check in there first then a couple of uniforms will pick us up in 30 minutes. Okay?”
“Fine, no time to lose,” said Maggie.
“How did you explain us?” asked Terry.
“No need – he wouldn’t be expecting me to work on my own. I told him all we needed was information. When we get to the house he wants an officer up front. Then if the guy’s cooperative, we go in.”
“And if he isn’t cooperative...?”
Milner gave a sardonic smile. “Off the record? We go in anyway.”
The patrol sergeant who called for them was driving a van-like eight-seater from the car pool. He had his partner in the front; Milner was alone in the middle seats; Terry and Maggie sat in the back. They drove to Belmont, a suburb west of Boston, and down a street lined with chestnut trees.
The houses here were mansions, individually designed to a general plantation theme, each with a wooden veranda. Terry thought the gardens and the spaces between the houses were surprisingly small for the type of neighbourhood. Some of the properties were beautifully maintained, their lines softened by trees and shrubs. The one they stopped at was, by comparison, neglected; the garden was overgrown and the pale blue paint on the verandah was peeling.
The sergeant said “Wait here” and got out.
Terry watched him go up the path. He was overweight. This, together with the ironmongery he carried on his belt, enforced a sort of swagger, arms carried wide like a Western gunslinger. The effect was heightened by the way he unsnapped his holster before he rang the bell. They saw the front door open and there was a brief conversation. Then the sergeant came to the rail of the verandah and beckoned to them.
Milner whispered, “Okay, come on.”
Milner strode up the path ahead of them and the wooden steps of the verandah creaked under his weight. By the time they’d joined him he was already introducing himself.
“Mr. Hillman?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“My name’s Sam Milner. I’m with the FBI.”
He flashed the FBI shield. Hillman barely gave it a glance. He turned and led them to a sitting room. The policeman remained standing at the door, evidently prepared to stop anyone coming in – or out.
Rod Hillman was younger than Terry expected, in his early thirties, so far as he could judge. He looked like someone who led a sedentary life: his skin was pallid, and although he was slight the short-sleeved shirt was already smooth and taut around his abdomen. The blue trousers clearly belonged to a suit – he’d probably stripped off his jacket and tie when he returned from work. He indicated the chairs and smoothed his hair back with the palms of his hands. It was a brief, nervous gesture, but then he was entitled to feel nervous, Terry thought, with a policeman, a large FBI man, and two strangers descending on him.
Milner took in the spacious room with its high ceiling.
“Nice house,” he said.
He may have intended the remark to sound conversational but it had the opposite effect, heightening the tension.
“Yes,” Hillman replied. “Look, I don’t know what this is about but I hope it’s not going to take long. I have some guests arriving soon for dinner.”
Milner smiled patiently as he sat down.
“
Please relax, Mr. Hillman,” he said in a tired drawl. “I want to be quite clear you’re not under investigation here. We’re simply making some routine enquiries into the business dealings of a large company, Vance Pharmaceuticals. We’d like to ask you a few questions about your own contacts with them. Oh, by the way, these are my associates from London; they’re shadowing me on this case. I hope you don’t mind.”
Hillman glanced in their direction but Milner’s tone had left him little choice.
He returned to Milner. “Okay. What do you want to know?”
“Well, let’s see. Maybe you could tell me something about Biomolecular Technologies. You know, how you got started, that kind of thing?”
Hillman shrugged. “I was working for a management consultancy at the time. They sent me along to speak at Texas South-Western. The university was keen on technology transfer. I gave a seminar on protection of intellectual property. While I was there I met this guy, Zak Gould. We got on well. He had a lot of ideas and I thought some of them could be patented. We arranged to meet again. I was thinking of leaving the company anyway and I thought we could partner each other in a start-up.”
“Presumably the university would have preferred to keep an interest.”
“I didn’t want that sort of deal. I looked at the intellectual property issues with Zak. He’s the sort of guy who likes to do several things at once. In my view he wasn’t under any legal obligation – not for the stuff that interested me. He resigned from the Faculty and I raised some venture capital. That’s how we got started.”
“And did it work out?”
“Frankly, no. I worked my butt off to raise money and he enjoyed himself in the lab.”
“He was idle?”
“Oh no, I’m not saying that. He put in the hours, all right, but he never seemed to finish anything. He’d do a bit of this and a bit of that, and then he’d have a new idea, and he’d get all excited about that for a while, and so it went on. My backers were getting impatient. They wanted results. When I tried to tell him he’d just say ‘You can’t conduct research to order’. It costs plenty to run a lab. We were getting in deep but he didn’t seem to care. I was the one losing sleep.”
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