“So,” she said after about an hour, as she and Tony changed the lights. She trusted she’d given the scientists ample time to be lulled into complacency. “You having any luck with penicillin?”
They exchanged glances. “Slow going. Step by step.”
“Yeah, that’s what I hear from everybody.” She took a gamble. “The cousins are so much easier, don’t you find?” She focused on a lightbulb, pretending that she couldn’t get it twisted in straight.
“I wouldn’t say easy, but—”
“We don’t have time for anything but penicillin,” Dr. Frye told Dr. Rand in warning.
“You’re right about that,” Dr. Rand backtracked. “Anyway, it’s the process I enjoy.” He was the handsomer of the two, although his glasses were thicker.
“I understand.” Was this the right approach? She was new to espionage and apparently not yet very good at it. Movies, as Andrew Barnett had correctly pointed out, weren’t much help. “It seems like the process is what everyone who does this type of work enjoys most,” she said. “I once did a story with Dr. James Stanton. Either of you ever meet him?”
Again the glances, the silent questioning of each other, the doubts about what was allowed and what wasn’t. “I’ve heard that name,” Dr. Frye said slowly. “He’s…I guess you’d have to say he’s above our level. I admire him, though. His reputation, I mean. What’s he like?”
“He enjoys the process,” Claire said, shrugging to make them think she had no particular interest. “Just like you. I guess his sister, Tia Stanton, liked the process, too.”
The young doctors said nothing.
On their way to the car, Tony said, “Boy, oh boy, they must have something pretty good to hide, to build a fake lab to hide it.” Tony had proven himself adept with the equipment and Claire appreciated his healthy suspicion of authority.
“Yes, very impressive.” A colossal waste of time, Claire thought. No, worse: offensive. No room for hopes or dreams of saving Emily here; no idealism whatsoever.
Now that they were working together, Claire sat in the front seat with Tony. They drove to another pharmaceutical firm (New Jersey was thick with them) about twenty miles away, Hanover & Company. When they arrived, it was the same deal: the forest, the manicured lawns, the long curving drive, the company headquarters disguised as an English country house.
“Pretty fancy,” Tony said as he made the curve with a fast, pleasurable sweep. “I can see you’re taking me to the best places.”
“Stick with me, you won’t regret it.” Stay cheerful, play for the laugh, that was the code, and she made herself live by it.
At Hanover, they were greeted by the high-heeled, straight-backed Miss Margery Ryan, the director of public information. Miss Ryan wore a tight, gray suit and large, gold earrings. Claire had better hopes of accomplishing something here, without the company chairman intimidating the staff. But at Hanover it was the same story, the gleaming new lab, the scrubbed, polished, and playful young scientists, Dr. Jones and Dr. Evans, with one twist: Miss Ryan never left them. Vannevar Bush had forced the companies to allow Claire through their front doors, but that was as far as they would go; they’d keep their real work secret.
Claire gave it a try anyway. “So,” she said as she posed the scientists with a rack of test tubes filled with tap water, “things must really be moving along with penicillin.”
“Oh, no,” Miss Ryan said before they could answer, “we haven’t made any progress. So discouraging. We work and work, with no progress at all.” Miss Ryan was nervous, incessantly capping and un-capping her fountain pen.
“Life is tough,” Tony said.
“Oh, yes, truly. I feel sorry for these poor young men, coming here with the highest hopes,” Miss Ryan said.
The young men repressed smiles.
“Especially during a war,” Tony said. “You want to feel you’re accomplishing something during a war, not just biding your time until it’s over.” Tony straightened his uniform. He did look impressive. Most likely the scientists were exempt from the draft as essential workers, but even so, Tony managed to convey the idea that they were cowards. Slackers, was the term used on the streets. “I guess if we’re lucky, we’ll all get sent to the front and that’ll be that,” Tony added. “Or maybe the front will come to us. We could engage the enemy on that big lawn you’ve got out there.”
Miss Ryan regarded him with annoyance. Claire felt that she and Tony had the makings of a great professional team.
They continued with their sham work in the sham lab, going through the motions, taking photos, moving lights, varying the angles. Claire continued to make meaningless conversation. When they had done all they could do and were repacking the equipment, she said to the scientists, “You fellows having any luck with other antibacterials? I keep hearing about them. Lots of research being done, progress being made, breakthroughs everywhere.” What was a little exaggeration at a time like this?
“That, Mrs. Shipley, is an inappropriate question, if I may say so,” Miss Ryan said.
“Forgive me, Miss Ryan.”
“You came here to photograph our new penicillin work, which we are showing you.”
“Indeed, Miss Ryan. But all part of the same family, I should think.”
“Not in my opinion.”
“Obviously.”
The scientists kept their heads down, but Claire caught their amusement.
“Are you quite done now, Mrs. Shipley?”
“Why, yes.” They finished packing, and Tony carried the bags, yet another benefit of his companionship.
In the hallway leading to the reception area, Miss Ryan abruptly strode ahead to meet two gray-haired gentlemen walking down the opposite hallway. She swayed on her heels, and the clicking of her shoes echoed in her path. “Good afternoon, Mr. Hanover,” she called when she was within earshot.
Introductions were made when Miss Ryan reached the two men, and in her fawning over them, she appeared to forget Claire and Tony.
“Come on,” Tony said. “We don’t need to wait around for her to kiss us good-bye. We can sneak up a back staircase, find out what’s really going on.”
“I appreciate your sense of intrigue, Tony, I really do, but let’s wait.” In her frustration, Claire wanted to see who got to visit the real labs, who Hanover & Company fawned over, since they certainly didn’t fawn over her. Claire and Tony walked closer and closer….
“Why, Claire, wonderful to see you!” It was her father, attired in a robin’s-egg blue linen suit. The suit was custom made, she suspected from the jacket’s smooth flow over his shoulders. He gave off an aura of comfortable self-assurance. “Look at you, hard at work and looking great!”
Why was he here? She felt more than taken aback. She felt shocked. What role was he playing in the game taking place around her?
“Hanover, meet my daughter, Mrs. Claire Shipley, famous photographer for Life magazine.”
“How do you do, Mrs. Shipley, a pleasure.” Hanover was a short man with a large middle and thinning hair gleaming with pomade. He appeared thoroughly relaxed, at ease within the confines of his fiefdom. “Sorry I didn’t have time to meet you earlier. I was with your father. Who would have guessed? Well, Rutherford, we put on quite a show for her. Miss Ryan here presented everything we’re doing.”
Miss Ryan preened for Rutherford, giving Claire the sickening feeling that she was attempting to seduce him, great wealth being the ultimate aphrodisiac.
“This is Tony Pagliaro, my assistant.”
Rutherford said, “Good to meet you, Tony. Glad you’re watching out for my girl.”
Claire could have lived without that, but Tony and her father shook hands on it with great seriousness, two men allied in their protection of her. “Thank you, sir,” Tony said.
Hanover said to Claire, “My driver’s taking your father to the station. Need a lift?”
“Thank you, but no. We have a car.” She couldn’t avoid it, she turned to her father. “Can we d
rive you back to the city?”
“Why, yes, that’s terrific. Thank you. Damn gas rationing. I love to drive, but I had to take the train out.”
“Happens to the best of us,” Hanover agreed.
“Gas rationing’s not a problem for me in the military,” Tony said, a little too glibly, but she understood his feelings, listening to these rich men complain about their struggles. Pagliaro’s Bakery probably had trouble getting enough gas to complete its daily deliveries.
Tony said he’d bring the car around to the front to pick up her father, and Claire went with him, using the excuse of stashing the equipment.
“I think I’d better sit in the backseat with my father,” she said as they were arranging the bags in the trunk. “Please don’t be offended.”
“Mrs. Shipley, you can’t offend me.”
“Thanks.”
They were back on Route 1 before Claire or Rutherford spoke.
“Nice guy, Hanover,” Rutherford said.
“He seemed to be.” Claire paused. “What were you doing there?” Even she heard the inappropriate level of suspicion in her voice, but her father took it in stride.
“I could ask you the same question.”
She decided to play along with him: “Ask.”
“What were you doing there?”
“Secret. Government work.” She made it into a joke.
“I figured, with the military driver.” He looked pleased, and he was. Seeing her improved his day, he couldn’t deny it. Her vibrant presence, her verve, her skeptical curiosity…he might not have known her when she was growing up, but she was his daughter through and through, no doubt about it, and he was proud of her.
“Actually the work is for the magazine, too. But for after the war. Whenever that may be.”
“Understood,” Rutherford said. The Germans were pushing ahead on the Eastern Front. They’d taken Kharkov and Sevastopol. In North Africa, they were in Tobruk. For the Allies, a long slog lay ahead, and even the experts (and he had access to the experts) couldn’t predict the results. In a year’s time, German or Japanese tanks could be patrolling Route 1. He didn’t want this to happen, but as a businessman he had a responsibility to plan ahead. Win or lose, Rutherford knew he’d be okay. Claire and Charlie, too. His strategy would be public collaboration, while in the background, behind the scenes, he’d support the resistance. He wondered what John D. Rockefeller Jr. would do if German troops took up residence in Manhattan, or how Henry Ford, with his outspoken anti-Semitism, would react if the Nazis became the managers of his Detroit factories. Well, Rutherford couldn’t worry about them. He had enough to worry about, protecting his family, his employees, and, if he could, serving the country. He glanced at his lovely daughter. His job was to make certain she and Charlie were safe and had enough to eat no matter who won the war. He wouldn’t talk to Claire about his concerns for the future. He wouldn’t worry her with theoretical possibilities, or even with the practical considerations he confronted each day.
“Maybe you can explain this,” Claire said with more anger than she’d intended to reveal. “I went to both Hanover and Merck today, and neither one of them showed me what they’re really working on. Only brand-new labs, never used. Fake labs. They kept the actual work to themselves.”
“That’s no surprise,” Rutherford said. “The companies have their proprietary rights to protect. They don’t want photographers or reporters in there. Does Vannevar Bush think the companies are going to shout their business secrets from the rooftops?”
“What makes you bring Dr. Bush into it?”
“Anything to do with medical breakthroughs and the military means it’s approved by Vannevar Bush. Let me share a little secret with you, sweetheart: he needs the companies a lot more than they need him, and the companies know it. His bluster doesn’t scare them. I have to laugh. Penicillin production is the worst-kept secret I’ve ever come across. Wherever I go, men are discussing it. Could simply be the places I go,” he added. “Anyway, the companies will do their duty and get their penicillin to the troops, but as soon as they can, they’ll be turning their full attention to other antibacterials.”
“Are they already turning their attention to other antibacterials?” she asked, trying to sound as if she didn’t care.
“Not that I’ve heard,” he lied, also trying to sound as if he didn’t care, while wondering if each was actually spying on the other. Hanover had dozens of scientists working on the cousins. Rutherford, however, wouldn’t reveal company secrets even to his family. When it came to business, sometimes a protective lie was necessary. Plenty of time to tell the truth later. “The fact is, whoever does crack the other medications is going to end up with quite a tidy profit.”
“How much of a tidy profit?”
“My dear daughter, what’s the price of a human life, do you think?”
“The price of a human life?” The price of Emily’s life? Claire didn’t like to think of herself as naive, but she would never put a price on Emily’s life. Were there actually people in this world who put a price on the lives of others? “I have no idea.”
“Neither do I,” he said—although he was learning fast. “But you can be sure a man like George Merck has got some accountant in a back room right now figuring it out. And I’ll wager it’s going to be quite a lot. Enough to make one shot of a penicillin cousin cost, say, twenty dollars or even two hundred dollars, even if the drug itself costs two cents to produce, which it will, sooner or later. Never underestimate American ingenuity, I always say.”
“If it costs two cents, then selling it for two hundred, or even twenty, dollars is profiteering.”
“One man’s profiteering is another man’s rational business planning. What the market can bear, etc. We’re fighting for free markets in this war among other delightful appurtenances of our society.”
At two hundred dollars a dose, most people would have to steal to get these medications for their families. Could she have afforded it for Emily, in the days before she knew her father? She would have sold the house to get it—if she could have found a buyer in the three days before Emily died. To tamp down her outrage, she forced the conversation in a different direction. “And you?” she asked.
“Pardon?”
“Your turn. To tell me what you were doing at Hanover.”
“Ah, yes.” He turned his hands palm upward, as if happily shrugging at the obvious. “Business.”
“What kind of business?”
“The moneymaking kind. The best kind. The war’s been great for business, I’m not ashamed to say. We’re on a roll. The Depression is over and the business class is on Roosevelt’s side now.” Businessmen had hated Roosevelt for what they considered the implicit socialism of his New Deal legislation. “Hanover’s trying to raise capital. Looking to expand, take on the giants. A good time for it, lots of medical stuff needed for the war effort. Sulfa drugs, aspirin, antiseptics, bandages. I got an earful, I can tell you. I’m going to get involved. To tell you the truth, I’m going to buy him out.”
“Really? That’s exciting,” she said sincerely. Here was a man who had enough money simply to buy a company if he wanted to, and one that produced useful products, too. There was something wonderful about him. She felt carried back to the days when she was younger and searched the business pages of newspapers and magazines, hoping to find her father’s name.
“Yes, I made an offer old man Hanover couldn’t refuse. I won’t change the company name, though. The place has a reputation worth preserving. And I’ll keep Hanover on as president and manager of day-to-day affairs. In my position, I don’t worry about shipping labels and lightbulbs. I do my work at a different level.”
In that split second, reinforcing his previous lie, Rutherford made a decision: he’d keep his cards close for now. He wouldn’t reveal to her the real reason he was buying Hanover. No, he wouldn’t tell Claire about the acre of soil samples in jam jars that he’d seen, the dozens of antibacterial substances makin
g their way through the standard testing protocols. He knew that breakthroughs were just around the corner—breakthroughs that he now owned. He’d keep all that as a surprise for her. He’d share it with her when he actually had something more than dreams and expectations to show for his investment. When he actually had a medication to take to the marketplace. The truth was, his investment in Hanover was for her. And for Emily and Charlie, too. He was making an investment in their futures. A double investment. First, creating a medication that could save their lives—and the lives of all humanity. Second, guaranteeing the family’s wealth for all time. This double investment would be his greatest gift to her, his beloved daughter.
“You see any penicillin?”
He gave her a slow grin. Penicillin was supposed to be a government secret, but she’d probably been fully briefed anyway, so he could talk about it. The cousins, however, were a business secret, and he wouldn’t talk about them. “Wasn’t I the one in the know? Hanover took me around to see the equivalent of a city block or two of milk bottles layered with green mold, and all the while I’m thinking, Sure am glad my girl got me in on this before the curve. Do you know, there’s an actual shortage of milk bottles in New Jersey? They’re all going to penicillin production, at a dozen different companies, at quadruple the usual price. The dairies don’t know what to do.”
Claire would have to report this conversation to Bush and Barnett, she realized. And she’d tell them about her father’s stake in Hanover, although she suspected that with their wide sources of knowledge, they didn’t need her to provide them that sort of information. Was she betraying her father? She didn’t think so. Surely he wasn’t doing anything illegal.
A Fierce Radiance Page 31