Ford took another step towards her.
“And … You’re sure … I mean, there’s no danger, right?”
She looked down at Sunny.
“It’ll work. I wouldn’t have used it otherwise. They’ve done tests at Stern. Marcus, this stuff, it’s…”
Ford remembered West’s words: it’s like casting a spell.
“And I’ve been calling in a lot, talking to Lee. He’s not that discreet, in fact. I know what he’s been trying, and I’m certain there’s no chance of interference with the other drugs.”
She touched Sunny’s hair.
“It’s been inside her for about four hours.”
“Four hours?”
“I came here directly from the laboratories. Came in here and told Gloria the whole story. She knew what to do. I know it’s kind of a bizarre way of doing things, but I knew about Sunny’s deadline, and I didn’t…”
She paused. But Ford knew what she was going to say. She hadn’t wanted to talk to him. She would have been too ashamed. A ripple of anger went through him as he remembered how she had treated him.
There was an embarrassed silence. Then he said, “And … what’s going to happen? At Stern. They’re going to know, aren’t they?”
Helen gave a shrug.
“Kernahan will know a bottle’s missing. He’ll recall our talk. They’ll check the digital inputs from the security-pass log. I’ll be in there at six-fifteen, stamped and dated. I’ll tell them I came back to get my scarf.”
She looked at him.
“And they won’t believe me.”
“So…?”
“Look, what are they going to do? They still come out winners. I know too much about this whole thing. There’s no way they’re going to litigate. For one thing, they’d have a little trouble proving this was all their own work. Their research notes’ll only show they were barking up the wrong tree. It’s going to be tough enough convincing the patent office. If anyone contests their application, they could have a real problem.”
“So they’ll just leave it at that?”
Helen sighed.
“They’ll fire me probably. Or ask me to leave. But … I guess I was finished with them anyway. Don’t worry, I don’t come away empty-handed. Anything but. I’ll still get the stock options they’ve promised me.”
Ford gripped the rail at the end of Sunny’s bed and looked at the bump made by her feet under the blanket.
“But what about the police? They’ll find traces of the drug in that case, all over the parking lot.”
“No, they won’t,” Helen said. “The active component of Ribomax is genetically engineered RNA. It’s delicate. Fling it around a wet parking lot, freeze it in a forensics lab, and all you’ll end up with is a soup of amino acids. Even if the Homicide Bureau’s smart enough to have it treated like a regular DNA sample, they’ll never work out what they’re actually looking at.”
Ford slowly shook his head. She was always ahead of him, anticipating, adapting. Again he had a sense of something almost predatory about her.
“So you get stock options, and Stern gets the drug.”
“Yes.”
“But it doesn’t belong to Stern, Helen. They … You stole it from Novak.”
He saw something contract in her, saw the hardness he had always found so attractive.
“Well, that’s not exactly true, is it? They bought Helical when the drug was already a viable product. Novak effectively stole it from them.”
She looked at him for a moment, and he could tell she was debating whether to say something more.
“Look, Marcus. I did this. I did this for Sunny, and I did this for you. I’m not expecting a medal or anything, but I … I did it.”
“I understand. But…”
“What I’m trying to say is, I’m not such a great person. I know that. But I … I don’t want you to think badly of me. That’s very important.”
“You walk away from the company, but you keep the money. Just as simple as that.”
“That’s about the size of it.”
“And what about…?” He opened his arms, indicating the hospital and everybody in it. “What about all the sick people here?”
“Stern will bring this to market as soon as they can,” Helen said. “Especially if there are rumors about an antisense drug already being used. Here at the Willowbrook, for example. They’ll have no way of knowing that Sunny was treated with the drug I stole. They know nothing of our … connection. For all they know, it might be the work of the competition. They’ll be in such a hurry to stake their claim … I give it a month, at most.”
She let this sink in for a moment.
“Now, if you walk out of here with Ribomax, tell everybody what you know, the whole thing could get tied up in red tape. There’d be litigation. Think of all those investors in Helical who never got their due. Stern wasn’t alone in being cheated. It could be years before the drug got into the market.”
Ford shook his head in disbelief.
“So even Sunny’s recovery works in your favor.”
He felt a moment of complete rejection, and total acceptance—the two feelings quite distinct, with no confusion between them. She had always been able to surprise him in this way, and in these moments he always felt the same loss of control, the same sense of her power.
“You think of everything, don’t you?” he said.
And with her uncanny sense of what he wanted, Helen crossed the room and took his hands. But he couldn’t move. The memory of all the badness seemed to freeze his joints.
“I know,” she said. “I wouldn’t blame you if you never wanted to see me again.”
Ford looked away, swallowing the hot feeling of self-pity that rose in his throat.
“You played me for a fool,” he said, “and I let you.”
She leaned back a little at this.
“No, Marcus. That’s not true. I mean, not really. I used you. I’m not denying that. At least that’s how I started out. But the things I said … I meant every one of them.”
She looked down at their linked fingers.
“What I said about your hands, that was true. What I said about you being a good man, that was true.”
“What you said about yourself, that was true too,” he said.
She looked up at him.
“What was that?”
” ‘Sometimes bad means bad,’ ” he said. “Wasn’t that it?”
The sun was coming up when they walked out into the parking lot. Helen turned to face him.
“You’re sure you don’t need a lift?” she said, unlocking the door.
Ford shivered in the chill dawn air.
“I’m going to stick around for a while. Make sure everything’s going okay.”
Helen tried to smile.
“You look as though you could sleep for a week,” she said.
“When this is all over, that’s probably what I’ll do.”
She got into the car and was about to close the door, when he spoke.
“Helen.”
She looked up at him, and he could see her vulnerability.
“I’ll call you,” he said.
He watched her drive out towards Wilmington Avenue. The light traffic of LA’s early risers kept her pinned in the entrance for a moment, and then she was gone, carried away like a piece of debris on a stream. He stood for a while watching the cold yellow light beyond the freeway. The storm had cleared the air, but there were banks of clouds away to the east. A battered compact pulled into the entrance and Ford remembered that his own car was still up at the Aurora Clinic. It could stay there, for all he cared. He checked his watch. It was just after six and the Willowbrook was beginning its new day.
He was turning back towards the entrance when he saw Conrad Allen’s gray Sunbird. It drew up fifty yards from where Ford was standing.
Ford could see by the set of his shoulders as he came across the asphalt that Allen was not looking forward to his day. When he saw F
ord, an expression that was close to actual pain passed over his face. Ford realized that his friend would rather be anywhere in the world than where he was right then. He took a step towards him.
“Conrad, are you okay?”
Allen shrugged.
“Didn’t sleep much, that’s all.” He looked down at his shoes for a moment. “How about you?”
Ford smiled.
“What?” said Allen, putting his head on one side. “What is it?”
Ford touched him on the shoulder.
“Let me buy you a cup of coffee,” he said.
EPILOGUE
Three weeks later, on November 3, Stern Corporation held a press conference at their offices on Santa Monica Boulevard. The conference was well attended, in spite of the fact that the press releases had been sent out only two days earlier. Many of the reporters and camera crews were forced to jostle for places at the back of the room or squat at the foot of the makeshift dais erected especially for the occasion.
The purpose of the conference was to announce the successful development of a “new generation” antibiotic, to be called Ribomax—this in spite of the fact that a patent had only that very morning been filed and was still many months away from being conferred. In his statement, CEO Randolph Whittaker explained that this highly unusual step was being taken in response to the “medical emergency” afflicting healthcare facilities in southern California. Although clinical trials had not yet even begun, preliminary tests had indicated that Ribomax, a genetically engineered RNA molecule, was effective against a wide range of aerobic and anaerobic bacteria, including pathogens of the genera Clostridium, Staphylococcus, and Streptococcus. Provided patients and their families were prepared to sign liability waivers, Whittaker said, Stern would make Ribomax available to the affected hospitals upon request. Asked how long the company had been in a position to deploy the drug, prior to that day’s announcement, Whittaker replied that the first laboratory tests had been completed just a matter of weeks earlier. The fact that Ribomax had come along at a time when such a drag was so urgently needed, he put down to “happy coincidence, or just possibly the hand of God.”
For many of the journalists present, this explanation was less than convincing. During the preceding weeks there had been intense speculation that Stern was in possession of a lifesaving new antibiotic, speculation that the company itself seemed unwilling either to confirm or deny. According to rumor, a number of critical cases had been successfully treated with the drug at the Willowbrook Medical Center in South Central Los Angeles (although how medical staff had obtained it was not clear). The rumors were enough to send Stern’s stock price up nearly thirty percent over the period. Commentators suggested that Stern had been forced into a premature announcement by the pressure of public interest.
Whatever the truth, the deployment of Ribomax during the following months probably saved the lives of hundreds of people. Many more who had been facing the prospect of dangerous or crippling surgery were spared the ordeal, although in some cases the progress of their infections had advanced so far as to leave them permanently disabled. By the end of February the following year, the county health department felt in a position to announce that the resistance emergency was, for the time being at least, over.
The questions surrounding Ribomax, however, were slower to die down. In January, following allegations of corruption and conspiracy involving public employees, the governor of California established a special commission to investigate official dealings in antisense research and development.
Among those who testified was Marshall West, whose involvement in a fatal shooting outside the Willowbrook Medical Center the previous October had given rise to much colorful speculation. West had described the death of Craig Denman, his driver and bodyguard, as a tragic misunderstanding, brought about by Denman’s “overzealous” reaction to what he believed to be a threatening situation. West rejected out of hand suggestions that he himself had succeeded in gaining access to Ribomax or that his nephew had been treated with the drug. His version of events seemed to be confirmed when the Aurora Clinic’s records were produced. No mention of Ribomax, or anything like it, was found there. West admitted being aware of the rumors surrounding antisense research and being “passionately interested” in learning the truth, but he denied being in receipt of any privileged information, let alone the drug itself. If the drug had been in his possession, he asked, why would he have initiated the investigation of Apex Inc.? Executives at Stern Corporation, also interviewed, professed ignorance of any illegal or improper dealings and maintained that antisense research had been a field of particular interest at the company for a number of years.
The commission concluded that there had been no conspiracy either to illegally procure the drug or to conceal its existence. West nevertheless resigned his post at the county health department “for personal reasons.” According to some newspapers, his unilateral initiation of the Apex investigation and persistent questions about his activities had combined to make his position untenable. West returned to the East Coast with his family and joined a public-relations consultancy specializing in political lobbying. Contrary to long-standing expectations, he never offered himself as a candidate for elected office.
The county sheriff’s department and the LAPD continued to search for the killers of Charles Novak and Scott Griffen, but neither succeeded in making an arrest. Carpet fibers from Craig Denman’s car matched those found at Professor Novak’s house, and the LAPD were able to confirm that Denman had entered Scott Griffen’s premises no more than forty-eight hours before his murder. However, the identity of any accomplice was never established. Nor did it prove possible to establish the source of the money Novak had obtained upon his departure from Helical Systems in 1992. After a decent lapse of lime, both cases were transferred to the Unsolved files.
The county health department investigation into the death of police officer Raymond Denny at the Willowbrook Medical Center was terminated after just one day of testimony. Dr. Marcus Ford was immediately reinstated as director of the Trauma Unit, but resigned six weeks later in favor of a teaching position at LA County USC Medical Center. He was succeeded at the Willowbrook by his colleague, Dr. Conrad Allen. Ford’s daughter Sonia made a full recovery, although it was not until after Thanksgiving that she was strong enough to return to school. She continued to suffer from weakness and lethargy for several months afterwards.
Ribomax finally received its patent in early March. Within weeks it was being marketed by Stern representatives in more than sixty countries. The continued impact upon Stern’s stock price, and the cash flow generated, made it possible for the company to launch a successful takeover of Apex Inc. the following summer. This was followed by smaller acquisitions in Europe and Asia. The deals turned Stern into the third largest pharmaceutical company in the world.
By this time press interest in Ribomax had shifted from its immediate past to its long-term future. Journalists from the scientific press began to ask how Stern proposed to minimize the possibility of bacteria developing resistance to the new drug, as they had to the drugs that had gone before. In a magazine interview Randolph Whittaker declared that the company would take “every practicable step” to ensure that Ribomax was administered only “in appropriate circumstances and in appropriate ways.” However, he refused to be drawn out on whether the company would insist upon the kind of directly observed therapy being recommended by the World Health Organization and others. He said that the company would continue to work closely with the medical profession, but was “not in a position to give orders.” Regulation, he concluded, was a matter for governments.
One year after the interview was published, the first Ribomax clones became available over-the-counter from unlicensed traders in Shanghai and Hangzhou….
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