Tainted

by Ross Pennie

  Julian looked away. “I can’t. I signed a confidentiality agreement with the company before working on the project. I’m forbidden to tell you a bloody thing about Extendo-Tox except what’s public knowledge.”

  “But seven people are dead. The brains of hundreds more could be in the early stages. And more people are getting Extendo-Tox injections every day. You can’t just —”

  Banbury scowled and stepped toward Zol. “You can’t waltz in here and tell me what I can and cannot do.” His breath blew hot and stale in Zol’s face. “And from what I’ve seen on television, this matter is out of your hands. Toronto is holding the reins. You have no business —”

  “This is still my community. And I care about the people in it.”

  Banbury’s bug-eyed face turned crimson. “What are you insinuating?”

  His heart racing, his cheeks burning, Zol stared at the web of blood vessels in Banbury’s eyes. He lifted his Parker from the inside pocket of his blazer and rolled its ebonite barrel between his thumb and forefinger. The heat gradually left Zol’s cheeks, his heart rate settled, confidence seeped into his chest. “Let me ask you this,” he said, still anxious but in control, “is it remotely possible that Extendo-Tox could be contaminated with prions?”

  Banbury shook his head, his gaze fixed on the antique pen. “Extendo-Tox is completely synthetic. That’s public knowledge. It’s bacteria-free, egg-free, animal-free, even human-free. As it says in the product monograph, it’s an artificially synthesized protein. It cannot possibly contain prions. And as you said about the gelatin, it’s in use all over the world.” He paused, then his face began to soften as though a crack of doubt were opening in his mind. “Why would Extendo-Tox cause CJD only here in Hamilton? There aren’t even any cases in Toronto. They’ve got four or five times our population and, I understand, plenty of dermatologists who use it.”

  “Because it was developed here. The first human subjects came from Hamilton. Our local doctors were the first to popularize its use.”

  The blood deserted Banbury’s cheeks. He jerked backwards, then steadied himself against his desk. “Bloody hell, man, do you know what you’re saying?”

  “Yes, sir, I do. And that’s what has me scared. Extendo-Tox has only been on the market in Europe since the spring. Not long enough for CJD to make itself obvious over there. And the drug’s not licensed yet in the U.S.”

  Banbury’s tongue flitted across his teeth. “No, you’re talking madness. It’s simply not possible.”

  Julian Banbury was the keystone of any Extendo-Tox connection. The man had to be steered past his ego. Past all his shares in Extendo-Tox, Inc. Zol eased back into the wobbly chair and braced himself with the toe of his shoe. Desperate for a whisper of inspiration, he fixed on Dr. Osler’s Parker as he wove it through his fingers. The embryo of an idea began to grow. “Prions are a type of protein, right?” he asked, fighting his anxieties and doing his best to sound collegial.

  “Correct.”

  “And . . . and they work by folding in a certain way?”

  Banbury nodded.

  “And,” Zol continued, “they cause brain damage, CJD, by folding in an abnormal way and recruiting zillions of similar proteins to fold in the same harmful pattern.”

  “That’s more or less correct.”

  “Then maybe Extendo-Tox is acting like a prion and causing a new form of CJD — your tulip pattern.”

  Banbury lost his footing and slumped against his desk. He tried to speak but his tongue only flitted across his lips. With the shifting of his weight, a pile of books and paper cups toppled to the floor. A slick of coffee shot across the linoleum. He stared at the mess and wiped his face with his handkerchief.

  Zol motioned to the chair. “Here, why don’t you sit down?”

  “No. I’m all right.” Banbury’s eyes flickered with guilt. This couldn’t be the first time he’d had misgivings about Extendo-Tox. Zol found a mug that looked fairly clean and filled it from the sink in a corner of Banbury’s office. Banbury took a sip. “You realize the significance of that theory of yours?”

  “So do you, Dr. Banbury.” Zol held the older man’s gaze. “And a mind like yours is itching to put it to the test.”

  Banbury cradled the mug and stared into its tea-stained bottom for several moments. “I’ll have to think about it.”

  “But you’ve sparked so much interest on the Internet, you can’t stop now.”

  “My good man, it would be very difficult to prove. In point of fact, virtually impossible. I would need to isolate and characterize the prions in the brains of our seven victims. But no lab in Canada can test human tissue for prions. Guelph has a superb prion lab, but it’s licensed only for samples of food and specimens from animals.”

  “What about Atlanta — the CDC?”

  “And let the bloody Americans —” Banbury coughed the remainder of that thought into his handkerchief. “We must keep this under our hats,” he said.

  Zol stiffened at the suggestion of a cover-up. He straightened his back.

  “But of course,” Banbury added briskly, “just until we’ve got it sorted.”

  CHAPTER 23

  Zol’s weekend dragged like a slow-cooking osso buco with the salt and spices missing. A dreary stew of angst and apprehension. Hamish was still avoiding him. Banbury was thinking about testing for Extendo-Tox in the victims’ tulip CJD. Wyatt Burr was expounding on every channel about his grand revelation, still predicting a global prion plague and an international catastrophe.

  By Monday morning, Zol was glad to get back to the distractions of the office.

  “Dr. Szabo! Am I ever glad to see you,” Anne called as he passed her desk on the way in. Anxiety creased her face, and she pointed to Trinnock’s door. “The team from CTV has been setting up in there for half an hour, but Dr. Trinnock’s not coming in.”

  Zol threw her a puzzled frown.

  “Asthma. Sounded pretty wheezy when he called.”

  “But what’s CTV doing here?”

  “Canada AM. They’re supposed to interview Dr. Trinnock at eight fifteen.”

  “Live?”

  “Yes.”

  A bright light flooded through the partly opened door, and an electrical cord slithered on the floor like a black snake.

  Zol shrugged. “Well, they’ll just have to pack it all up and find some other crisis to meddle in.”

  Anne tucked a silvery strand of hair behind her ear. “Dr. Trinnock says you’re to do the interview.” She assumed her mothering look and extended her arms. “Give me your coat.”

  “Forget it.”

  Her fingers beckoned for his coat. “Dr. Trinnock made it very clear. He wants you to do it.”

  Zol loosened his scarf but went no further. “No. I shouldn’t be doing this.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m not involved. It’s Wyatt Burr’s show. Let him and the rest of them justify their own horse sh— their own horse feathers about contaminated gelatin.”

  Anne glanced sideways at the reporter standing in the open doorway.

  “Dr. Szabo?” he boomed. “Only twenty seconds to air.”

  Zol’s face tightened. He ripped off his coat and tossed it to Anne. As he headed into Trinnock’s office, the glare of halogen almost blinded him. The reporter, reeking of aftershave, checked his watch and adjusted a gadget in his ear. Before Zol realized what was happening, a cameraman had clipped a microphone to his lapel, and the reporter’s perfect teeth were barking into his face.

  “What’s it been like, Dr. Szabo, to discover you’re at the centre of an epidemic that’s on its way to destroying brains all over the world?”

  Zol’s heart rate shot up. He’d expected some sort of easy warm-up question, not this sucker punch. Maybe, he thought, they were not yet on the air. Maybe this was just some sort of sound check. “I . . . I don’t think that’s going to happen. I mean —”

  “But Doctor, we understand those chocolates have been shipped to thirty-seven cou
ntries — and counting. And we’re told that’s not the end of it. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency reports that contaminated gelatin might have made it into all kinds of foods and consumer products.” The man stared at Zol, his eyes dark and unyielding. “Won’t that make for a global epidemic?”

  This was obviously no sound check. Where was he supposed to look? At that large freckle on the reporter’s chin? At the camera lens? At the red light blinking above the lens? He fixed on the reporter’s chin, and out came the dilemma that had been plaguing him all week. “No one is certain that anything is actually wrong with the gelatin.”

  “That’s not what we’ve been hearing from Ontario’s health minister and the federal food inspection people. They’ve told us to avoid those Swiss chocolates and everything else that contains gelatin. Even certain medications, including painkillers.”

  “But there might not be any prions in those chocolates. There’s a good chance they’re perfectly harmless.”

  The reporter gaped. His oversized chin dropped. “That’s quite a statement, Dr. Szabo, considering the strength of the warnings from the authorities.”

  At the sound of his name being broadcast across the country — virtually in the same breath as the minister of health and the CFIA — his knees quivered. He stepped backward, and his thighs bumped against Trinnock’s antique desk. He was trapped.

  The unyielding mouth in front of him wouldn’t let up. “You must be in possession of information that government agencies are not aware of.”

  Prickly sweat streamed down Zol’s cheeks as the lights bore down on him. He pictured Julian Banbury, scurrying bug-eyed inside his cluttered lab, fussing over the latest data on Extendo-Tox. Of course Zol had information the Ministry hadn’t heard about. He thrust his hands into his pockets and balled his fists. “All I know is that the tests on the chocolates have not been completed. We have no proof they contain prions.”

  “So, you’re saying that the public warnings about contaminated gelatin have been a waste of time? To use your own words, just horse feathers?”

  “I didn’t say . . .” But, of course, he had. Outside the office, off-camera. And the reporter had heard him. As his cheeks flared like lanterns, he could feel the guilt plastered all over his face.

  The reporter lunged for the kill. “It seems you take exception to the information coming from Chantal Ferguson’s office. You think the minister and the CFIA acted too hastily.”

  “Well, it’s not my place to contradict the minister of health; it’s just that —”

  “Have you got a theory of your own, Doctor?”

  Zol nodded, then tried to take it back with a quick shake of his head.

  The reporter lifted his eyebrows and smiled like an old salt sensing that a good-size fish had grabbed his hook. “Tell us about it, Dr. Szabo.”

  “Let me just say that . . . that I’m pursuing another lead.”

  “But Doctor, lives are at risk all over the world. In the interest of public safety, let us in on your concerns.”

  Zol felt the edge of Trinnock’s desk press into his thighs. He couldn’t back away, and he wasn’t going to shrug the questions off like an arrogant so-and-so. Yet he couldn’t breathe a word about Extendo-Tox. Not at this stage. To announce it now would end his career; Trinnock and the health minister would see to that. And the lawyers who worked for Extendo-Tox would have a heyday suing him into homelessness.

  But he couldn’t keep staring into the camera like a ninny while all of Canada watched. He had to answer with something truthful even though he knew it wouldn’t set him free. He gulped a breath of the stifling air and fixed his eyes on the camera lens. “I’m hoping to have something more to say in a few days. For now, that’s it.” He grabbed his lapel mike and yanked it off.

  The reporter scowled, then set his massive jaw as the camera eyed his perfect teeth. “There you have it, Canada,” he said in a tone that made it clear he was never short of answers. “The official who uncovered the epidemic that’s destroying brains in an upscale Ontario community says his government has mishandled the investigation. Dr. Zol Szabo says we’ve all been handed a load of horse feathers. It’s clear that this story, one of global proportions, is far from over. Dr. Szabo will have more to tell us later this week. Stay tuned.” The reporter cupped his hand over his electronic earplug and smiled into the lens. “Now back to you, Vanessa.”

  The spotlights clicked off; the reporter removed the gadget from his ear; the cameraman swung his equipment to the floor. Coloured spots swirled before Zol’s eyes. He fumbled for the door, his stomach roiling with anger and humiliation.

  The reporter stepped forward with his hand extended, his lips forming a grin not mirrored in his eyes. “That was great, Doctor,” he said. “Thanks very much.”

  Zol recoiled, refused the outstretched hand.

  The reporter turned on his heel and swooped his hand into the inside pocket of his jacket. He pulled out a sheet of paper and studied it. Probably his day’s agenda. A hit list of other lambs he was preparing to sacrifice.

  “For God’s sake, man,” Trinnock said as Zol responded to the ringing of his office phone two minutes later. “Horse feathers?” Trinnock blustered between wheezes. “Have you lost your mind?”

  Zol dropped into his chair as his ear filled with the raspy crescendo of Trinnock’s coughing.

  “What were you thinking?” Trinnock continued. “You were only supposed to give them harmless local colour.”

  “I got broadsided. Half a minute’s warning and I’m on national television — interviewed by a Rottweiler.”

  Trinnock’s gasping accentuated his ferocity. “The minister’s going to be furious.”

  Zol’s stomach tightened at the thought. “I know, but —”

  “But nothing.” Zol pictured his boss’s face, purple with rage and lack of oxygen, his tiny eyes watering. “And — I can’t protect you,” Trinnock said.

  Couldn’t or wouldn’t? And how much protection would Zol need if the tests showed that the prions were in the Extendo-Tox and not the chocolates? Who knew? The actions of politicians weren’t guided by logic.

  Trinnock gasped again. “Hold on.” His phone clattered onto a hard surface. There was a whoosh-and-suck, whoosh-and-suck as he puffed at an inhaler. And then a pause before he continued, “What’s all this about a new lead? You damn well better not be chasing after Extendo-Tox.”

  Trinnock didn’t really want the truth, so Zol wasn’t going to give it to him. Not today, anyway. “Just a foolish hunch,” Zol replied. “I won’t trouble you with it.”

  “Out with it, Szabo. That’s an order.”

  Zol stroked at the cleft in his chin. What could he tell Trinnock? He had to say something to get Trinnock off his back. He lifted his pen from his pocket and rolled the barrel between his thumb and forefinger. His mind filled with an image of the bustling aisles of Four Corners before the store had been forced to pull down its blinds and lock its doors. He saw shelves of bundled Chilean asparagus.

  Trinnock let fly a wheezy cough. “Szabo — you still there?”

  Zol winced. “Yes, still here, sir.”

  “So?”

  “Chilean vegetables.”

  “What?”

  “I’m worried about the manure they use in Chile. You know, on their cash crops. If it’s cow manure, it could leave a residue of prions on the vegetables they ship to us.”

  “What vegetables?”

  “Things that grow close to the ground. Asparagus, for instance.”

  “For God’s sake. They don’t have mad cows in Chile.”

  “Can we be sure?”

  “Prions in manure? Hell, that’s lunacy.”

  Trinnock was taking the bait. “Like I said,” Zol replied, “maybe it’s a foolish hunch.”

  “Well, for God’s sake keep it quiet. The Swiss are hopping mad about their chocolates. We can’t have the Chileans gunning for us as well.” Trinnock was hit by another fit of coughing, then recovered and add
ed, “I’ve decided I want you off this case completely. I’m serious, Szabo. If I find you within a mile of this investigation, I’ll have you out on your ear. For good.”

  Half an hour later Zol stepped out of the lunchroom with a mug of steaming coffee. At first, he’d retreated to his office behind the locked door. He’d stared out the window at the litter and the garbage bins. He’d made up his mind to take the rest of the day off, then realized that brooding would do nothing to cool his anger. Hiding out at home would merely delay the inevitable embarrassment of encountering colleagues abuzz with the story of his TV performance. It was better to face them today, get the initial awkwardness over and done with.

  As he headed along the corridor from the lunchroom, he spotted Natasha walking toward him. When their eyes met, she dipped her gaze to the carpet.

  “I see you heard about the horse feathers,” Zol said as she reached him. He tried to chuckle, but it fell flat.

  Natasha stopped, looked up, then hunched her shoulders like a distressed rabbit. “Oh, Dr. Zol, Anne said they put words in your mouth.”

  “Kind of. But it was my own fault. They must have heard me ranting outside the door before we got started.” He beckoned toward the empty lunchroom, and a wave of coffee slopped from his mug. “Damn. Can’t do anything right today,” he said. He slurped at his overfilled mug, then raised his eyebrows. “At least I didn’t let anything slip about the connection with you-know-what.”

  Natasha’s face brightened a little. “Any news from Dr. Banbury?”

  He put a finger to his lips. “Hunting for prions is a slow business. I don’t expect to hear anything until later this week.”

  “Oh my gosh, that seems like a century.” She fidgeted with her pendant and looked around to be sure no one was listening. “I heard about another case.”

  “What?”

  “I guess I’m not really supposed to know. Well, not yet, anyway.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “My cousin works on the neuro ward at Caledonian. She’s nursing a woman the neurologist said might have variant CJD.”