Bad Intentions

by Matt Lynn

  To her right, along one wall, was a grey machine, vibrating steadily, humming. Inside, there was a rack of carefully stacked vials, each two inches high, each containing a light, colourless liquid. At a steady unvarying pace, the vials rotated, the liquid inside swilling back and forth, mixed into a cocktail of disease. Tara checked the timer, and flicked a switch on the side of the machine. The humming stopped, and, in a minute or so, the rotation had ceased. She reached inside and pulled out one of the vials. Cooked, she thought.

  It struck her as ironic that Ator, a virus that much of the world went to great lengths to avoid any contact with, should be manufactured here. There was something sinister about deliberately preparing so deadly a substance. Tara held the vial between her fingers, contemplating it for a moment. The enemy, she thought.

  Still holding it, clutching it in her palms, she took it across to the stainless-steel workbench on the opposite side of the room, placing it carefully down in a test tube rack. The workbench was empty and spartan, a strip of sheer metal, with some metal racks, a microscope, a workstation and a washbasin. Before it, there was a high metal stool where Tara sat while she worked.

  Things had moved quickly in the last week. After spending days reading her way through the research documents Kizog had filed on Ator and the workings of the central nervous system, Dr Scott had freed up this viral laboratory for her sole and personal use. Back at the National Institutes, there had been only one viral lab, and time in there had been precious. At best, she had spent a few hours a month performing experiments. Here, she had the place to herself, open twenty-four hours a day, of which she had been using about fourteen for the past week; this, she knew, was her best chance of cracking the virus, and she was determined not to waste a single moment.

  She had been astounded by the amount Kizog had achieved. The store of knowledge here on the Ator virus far outstripped anything available in the academic libraries; a complete molecular map of the structure of the virus. It added up to a complete survey of the territory where a vaccine might be discovered. All it lacked was an X to mark the spot.

  Dr Scott had been right, pondered Tara. Ator was clearly a close relative of leprosy. That it was a mutation of some sort seemed inevitable. Theoretically it was possible that both viruses had evolved from a common source but Ator was so new and leprosy so ancient that it seemed more plausible that the new virus had evolved from the old. That happened all the time. A virus, like any living entity, was constantly adapting to its circumstances, finding new ways to survive and flourish. From microbes to men, thought Tara. Same principle.

  For a mutation, however, it was very sophisticated. Leprosy was a terrible disease but a slow one. It could incubate inside the body for up to twenty years before symptoms started becoming apparent. Ator would appear within two weeks maximum. Often much quicker. And once it started, the progress of the disease was rapid. A leper would suffer a slow and lingering death; the skin would start scaling up, slowly they would lose control and then possession of their limbs, but death could take years to catch up. Sometimes it never did. Ator was different. Within hours control of the limbs would start to vanish, turning the victim into a lifeless jelly. And death would follow within days.

  Tara spread a computer print-out in front of her. Combining her work with the research done by Kizog had yielded a list of possible compounds that might act against the disease. The company, uniquely in the world so far as she knew, had managed to isolate the Ator virus, in much the same way they had done for leprosy. Nobody else had yet managed to do that, making the search for a vaccine practically pointless. Now, with the virus boiled down to a liquid in a test tube, the serious work could begin. She had already, over the past few years, identified compounds that could work as a vaccine against leprosy. Since Ator was a mutation, there was no reason why one of them might not work against the new virus. That was why they had hired her. And, to be fair to the company, it was certainly worth a shot.

  It was laborious work; perspiration rather than inspiration. For the past three days she had been steadily testing, so far without success. Looking into the microscope, pulling bottles from the shelf, she concocted compound number thirty-nine on her list. Stitching the elements together, she pulled the vial towards her, and, taking care, placed it beneath a Geiger counter, testing for radioactivity. It registered. Taking the compound she had prepared, she injected the liquid into the vial. With her right hand she shook it, mixing up the two liquids.

  Carefully she put it back under the Geiger counter, her eyes fixed on the dial, watching for any movement. Should the compound she had just prepared prove to have any effect on the virus, the radioactivity would fall, a simple measure of a reaction taking place between the two molecules. This time, for the thirty-ninth time in a row, nothing happened. The dial wobbled, registering a brief movement, then stabilised, back exactly where it had started. Tara carefully picked it up and put it back on the rack. Turning to the computer, she logged the information on to the screen.

  'Test sample negative,' she typed. Again, she thought.

  Behind her, she heard a noise. Turning, she looked to see another person standing in the airlocked doorway. Masked behind the silver anti-viral suit, she couldn't make out who it was. The green light flashed, and the man walked inside. Tara looked closely, peering into the Perspex covering his face. 'Dr Scott?' she said.

  'How is it progressing, Tara?' he asked.

  'Slowly,' she replied.

  He rested his hand on her shoulder. 'It always is,' he said sympathetically.

  'Thirty-nine tests so far with nothing to report. But it is just a matter of patience I think. We are on the right track, I'm sure of it. It is just a matter of completing the tests.'

  'How many do you have on your list?' asked Dr Scott.

  'The computer has listed out 1,892 variations on the basic formula I worked out,' she said. 'But who knows. We could get lucky and find it at the one thousandth attempt.'

  'How long is each test taking?' asked Scott, his voice sounding worried.

  Tara shrugged. 'An hour or two.'

  His brow furrowed as he made the calculations. 'So it could be months.'

  'Assuming I'm working fourteen hours a day, seven days a week,' replied Tara. 'Which I am.'

  Dr Scott sighed, and tried to rub his chin through the anti-viral suit. He walked closer to Tara and leant over the desk, peering down at the list of formulations lying on the print-out on the desk. His mind was still full of the meeting with the Chairman yesterday, and he was painfully aware that this was taking too long. They needed a vaccine quickly.

  He ran his fingers through the list, a mass of chemical symbols, his eyes squinting as he worked out the formulae. Halfway through he stopped, resting his left hand on the list. He turned to the computer, and keyed into the database. After peering into it for a few moments, he punched several keys. Tara could faintly hear the sound of the hard disc crunching its way through the calculations. Three minutes later, a list appeared. It contained eighty-six different compounds.

  'Try this,' he said.

  Tara looked up at him, the questioning expression on her face hidden by the mask. 'You know something?' she asked. 'Something you aren't telling me?'

  Dr Scott shrugged. 'Call it a hunch,' he deadpanned. 'Remember, I have been doing this far longer than you have.'

  'What did you do?' she demanded.

  'I took out one of the molecules you were including. My guess is that it is active in the creation of leprosy, but not in Ator. That narrows the range of compounds considerably.'

  Tara peered down at the new list. She noted the one change he had made, and shrugged. It made sense, she thought, but no more sense than the earlier list. She knew even from her limited experience that when you came this close to a discovery there was no way of knowing what would work and what wouldn't. Only trial and error. Mostly error.

  Reaching back up on the shelves, she started preparing the compound. Elements were squeezed together unde
r the microscope, shaken, and poured out into a clean vial.

  Tara could feel Dr Scott behind her, watching while she worked. She turned to face him, holding the liquid in her fingers. 'Your choice, Dr Scott,' she said. 'Would you like to try it?'

  He shook his head. 'This is your project, Tara.'

  She took another vial of Ator from the machine, and carried it carefully over to the workbench to get another reading. Placing it under the Geiger counter, she registered the level of radioactivity, and placed it on the rack before her. Taking the vial, she mixed in the liquid, and closed the stopper. Holding it in her fingers, she looked again at Dr Scott. 'What do you think?' she asked.

  'You can't tell by looking at it,' he answered. 'You never can. Test it and see.'

  Tara turned back and put the compound under the Geiger counter. Her eyes locked on to the dial, heavy with anticipation. Even after countless tries she still found this moment exciting. The dial jumped, lurching suddenly forward, then it fell back again. There was no consistent reading. She took the vial from the rack, and went back to the computer, logging down another failure.

  From behind she felt a padded palm pat her on the back of the neck. 'Just keep trying,' said Scott. 'You'll get there soon enough.'

  SIX

  The lights dimmed. In the background, Jack could hear the ripple of piano music, music he couldn't place, fading into obscurity, washed away by the babble of chatter and speculation as the journalists found their seats in the conference room of the Dorchester Hotel. Along the side of the hall, three TV crews were busy setting up their cameras and lights, trailing wires and searching for plugs.

  He was standing at the back, almost too tired to pick up on what was happening around him. The last ten days had been exhausting. Ever since the Chairman had announced the takeover, the head office had been a mass of activity; teams from the two merchant banks advising on the deal had been working round the clock, firing off questions which Jack and the other two special assistants had to pick up and run with. It had been chaotic but fun. Until this morning.

  He had found a note on his desk asking him to call Dani Fuller. Reluctantly, he had put the call through. She would see him later, she told him curtly. She would decide where. It was still preying on his mind. Somehow, amid all the activity, he had managed to put her request to the back of his mind. Its return to life was unwelcome, he decided. Most unwelcome.

  Up ahead, Sir Kurt Helin limped on to the stage, his head bowed and his back arched. Under his arm he was carrying a sheaf of papers, haphazardly stacked, looking as though they might fall from him at any moment. The professorial act, thought Jack; one of the many guises under which the Chairman travels, this one calculated to create an air of other-worldly distance, a careful deception, aimed at relegating his own role to one of gentle, distracted brilliance. He was followed – at a respectful distance – by Sam Taylor, Ralph Finer and Dr Peter Scott, men whose halting pace showed they were uncomfortable walking as slowly as the Chairman, yet were reluctant to move ahead of him. The Chairman sat down, poured himself a glass of water from the jug on the table, and peered hesitantly around the room, his eyes flashing from place to place. In front of him, the journalists were quieter now, the whispers down to a trickle.

  'Good morning, and thank you for joining us here today,' he began. The tone was measured, stately, and the words amplified, so that they echoed around the room, bouncing back a split second after they had been spoken. 'As you are no doubt already aware, the purpose of this meeting here today is to discuss the offer that this company, Kizog, has just made for our Swiss rival, Ocher. Our bid is worth roughly £12 billion. Rather less this morning, considering the initial reaction of the stock market to the announcement we have made.' The Chairman smiled, a thin, forced smile, and there was a chuckle around the room. He raised a hand. 'That is not as I would wish it to be but I am not unduly concerned because not all the relevant information has yet been released to the markets. Recent scientific developments in our research laboratories have made this offer particularly timely.'

  The Chairman slipped a sideways glance towards Dr Scott, sitting a yard or so to his left. Scott had disposed of his usual brown suit and M&S tie, replacing it with a double-breasted grey suit and a club tie, one Jack couldn't recognise. Wheeler and the PR girls have been at him, he thought.

  Dr Scott was ill at ease talking in public, slurring his words and stumbling his way through his sentences. He sat down through his talk, shifting in his chair, his eyes buried into the text laid out in front of him, reading each phrase carefully before pronouncing it. His expression was lost somewhere between enjoyment and denial. 'The growth rate of Ator since the virus was first identified five years ago has turned this disease into perhaps the greatest human health challenge now facing us,' he began.

  Behind him, a slide flashed up on the screen. It showed a photograph of an Oriental child – Vietnamese, thought Jack, but who could tell – its limbs sagging and eyes despairing. The child was being cradled by its mother, wrapped tightly in her arms, while across the image a thick black line sloped sharply upwards.

  'Projections made by the World Health Organisation, and by other respectable experts in the field, now concur that Ator is likely to become a major world-wide pandemic unless action to control the spread of the disease is taken immediately.'

  Over Dr Scott's shoulder, synchronised seamlessly with his words, the screen flashed again. This time it showed a collection of newspaper and magazine headlines: 'Mystery Virus Strikes Two', 'March of the Killer Bug', 'New Plague Feared as Ator Hits Britain' and so on. Scott took a deep breath and continued. 'The challenge to the pharmaceutical industry, perhaps the greatest challenge it has ever faced, is to find a way of stopping the virus before it becomes a world-wide pandemic on the scale of the black death. At Kizog we have realised that our responsibility, whatever the potential for profit or loss, has been to find a cure for this disease. That is why we are delighted to announce that an intensive research effort by our laboratories around the world has resulted in what we believe is the first safe and effective vaccine for Ator.'

  He looked around the room; the pens were alert, scribbling in their thin notebooks, and the mikes had their machines held out close to catch every word. Dr Scott turned towards the Chairman; throughout the scientist's talk he had been sitting still, saying nothing, with no more than a half-smile fixed rigidly on his face. In the background, the graph lingered, hanging behind him like a dark cloud.

  The Chairman nodded at Dr Scott. He peered first up at the graphs, a sense of astonishment playing on his face, and then, his expression turning to one of high seriousness, he turned to face his audience. From a distance, Jack found himself marvelling at the old man's grasp of theatre.

  'And so we come to the real reason behind the take-over offer for Ocher announced this morning,' the Chairman began. 'Eradicating Ator from the world is going to be a major challenge for this company. Alone we do not believe we have the size, resources or scope to manufacture the vaccine on the scale that our estimates suggest will be needed. But by combining the resources of Ocher with our own we believe it is a feasible task.' The Chairman raised a finger towards his audience. 'I can make a promise this morning that Kizog will not attempt to profiteer from its involvement with Ator. It is not our desire or our intention to make any more than a minimum amount of money from lifting this world-wide threat. I must point out, however, that even a very slim return on a product manufactured ·in these volumes will still earn a satisfying return for the shareholders in the company.'

  His eyes took a sweep around the hall, rooting through the assembled hacks, burrowing for any dissent, searching for any sceptics. 'This is why I believe that this merger between these two leading pharmaceutical companies is in the best interests of both their owners, the shareholders, and of the world.' Finishing, the Chairman folded his arms and rested his case.

  'Terrific drama,' said Layla.

  Jack turned. She had appeared at his si
de during the presentation, but he had not noticed her. 'I suppose so,' he answered hesitantly.

  'Great opportunities,' she said playfully. 'For you in particular.'

  'What have you heard?' asked Jack.

  She smiled. 'Just that you are working on a crucial project,' Layla replied. 'For the Chairman. Tell me about it.'

  Inwardly Jack sighed. 'I'd like to,' he replied. 'But I can't.'

  Weird, thought Jack, old Wheelie's office being on the fifth floor. A flak rolling around here, up among the big wheels. It was one of the great Kizog mysteries that the corridor gossips Jack mingled with had never quite been able to crack.

  Geoff Wheeler, the director of corporate communications, to give him his proper name, was into his fifties now. It showed. The hair was greying, and going fast. The lines around his face were crashing into each other, jostling for space, unsure where to go next. And the skin colour. A reddish-grey hue, only found at the back of pubs. Too much sauce, thought Jack.

  He had been at the company for about twenty years now, as long as anyone could remember. Before that he was believed to have spent a few years at the Financial Times. He had, according to the legend anyway, been brought here personally by the Chairman; one of the very first appointments he had made. Wheelie was certainly reputed to be very close to the Chairman; the only person who could be regarded as invulnerable. There was never any gossip about Wheelie's head being about to roll. A true survivor. One of the few.

  Give him this, he does a good job, thought Jack. The coverage Kizog received in the press always seemed to be very favourable. There had been the occasional bout of sniping in the business sections about the relative underperformance of its share price in the last two or three years. But the rest of the media was sweet on the company; the result of its high-profile community and charity work. Work which Wheelie made sure everybody knew about.