by Ken McClure
Wildcard
( Steve Dunbar - 3 )
Ken Mcclure
Ken McClure
Wildcard
PROLOGUE
Edinburgh, Scotland
Paul Grossart, Managing Director of Lehman Genomics UK, was nervous. The head of the American parent company was coming to see him, rather than have him fly out to Boston, and this made him uneasy. His section leaders were ready to make presentations, outlining their groups’ research efforts with well-prepared slides and diagrams. Technical staff had made sure that the labs were free of clutter and would appear hives of industry should the visiting party care to call, and secretarial staff were making the company office smell like the cosmetics counter at Boots. Upstairs in the accounts department, the books were open and ready for inspection; their authors ready with optimistic and glowing projections for the future. The order of the day for everyone was to smile at anything that moved.
Despite all this, Grossart found that his palms were sweating as he stood at the window of his office, hands behind his back, waiting for his visitors to arrive. On the face of it, he had nothing to worry about. All UK biotech companies had been going through a hard time in the face of a business community which believed that they had been promising more than they had delivered, but Lehman had weathered the storm of disappearing venture capital better than most. They had done so because of their success in marketing several new diagnostic kits in the past two years, and their field trials of two new chemotherapeutic agents had been going well. Target dates for licences were beginning to look realistic to those in the know. But, in spite of this, Grossart still suspected that something was wrong; he felt it in his bones. The American visit had been advertised as routine but he just knew that there was more to it.
A black, S-class Mercedes saloon slid into the car park and Grossart walked over to his desk to press the intercom button. ‘Jean, they’re here. Give us five minutes, then bring in coffee and biscuits. See that the others know they’ve arrived.’
‘Will do.’
Straightening his tie, Grossart ran down the steps from his first-floor office to the entrance hall and smiled at the tall, gaunt man who entered first. ‘Good to see you, Hiram,’ he said, holding out his hand, which he’d dried on a handful of tissues in his pocket. ‘Long time no see.’
‘Good to see you too, Paul,’ replied Hiram Vance, executive vice-president of Lehman International. He gestured at the man behind him and said, ‘This is Dr Jerry Klein from our Boston lab; he’s chief of molecular medicine.’
Grossart shook hands with a small, black-bearded man who, in loose-fitting dark clothes, looked distinctly rabbinical. Grossart got the impression that Klein was almost as nervous as he was himself.
The three went upstairs to where coats were hung in the hall and they walked through to Grossart’s office, where the talk was initially about the weather and the vagaries of flying across the Atlantic in November. Grossart’s secretary brought in coffee and was introduced to the visitors, to whom she said welcome and smiled deferentially. ‘Anything else I can get you gentlemen?’ she asked.
‘That’s fine for the moment, Jean,’ said Grossart. ‘So where would you chaps like to start this morning?’ he asked as the door closed. ‘I thought maybe a tour of the labs, followed by short presentations from the research staff, then a look at the production suite and then maybe the offices?’
Vance looked at the door and asked, ‘Is there any way she can hear what we’re saying?’
‘I trust Jean implicitly,’ said Grossart, taken aback.
‘That’s not what I asked,’ said Vance.
Grossart responded by disconnecting the intercom. ‘No, there isn’t.’
Vance, a painfully thin man with a sallow complexion and dark hollows round his coal-black eyes, nodded. ‘We’ve got big trouble,’ he said.
‘Then this isn’t a routine visit?’
Vance shook his head. ‘The Snowball project’s just melted. We’re going to have to pull the plug on it.’
‘What?’ exclaimed Grossart. ‘But everything’s been going so well! And what about the arrangement?’
‘I know, I know.’ Vance nodded. ‘But Jerry here has come up with a real showstopper. Show him, Doctor.’
Klein opened his briefcase and withdrew a thin blue-covered file, which he handed to Grossart without making eye contact. Grossart flipped it open and started to read. When he finished he had to swallow before saying hoarsely to Klein, ‘You’re absolutely sure about this?’
Klein nodded and said in an accent that sounded like New York Jewish, ‘I’m afraid so. The sequence appears to be part of the host genome, but it’s not. Just look at the homology.’
‘Jesus Christ,’ murmured Grossart. ‘I should have known it was too good to be true. It’s too late to put out a recall. Where the hell do we go from here?’
‘All production will have to be stopped immediately,’ said Vance. ‘But…’
‘But what?’ said Grossart, still looking at Klein’s papers and feeling dazed.
‘Maybe that’s as far as it should go,’ said Vance, watching closely for Grossart’s reaction.
Grossart looked up from the file, his eyes unsure and questioning. ‘Are you saying that we should say nothing?’ he asked tentatively.
‘I’m suggesting that we be practical,’ said Vance. ‘It’s too late to do anything about the material that’s been used. If we start confessing all we’ll be crucified, the company will go down the toilet and we’ll go with it. The lawyers will see to that. I take it you have
… commitments, Paul?’
Grossart was having difficulty in coming to terms with the situation. He forced himself to concentrate on the question. Of course he had commitments. He had a mortgage on the wrong side of a hundred and fifty thousand, two children at public school and a wife who enjoyed the good things in life, but…
‘This company will do far more good for humankind if it stays in business,’ said Vance. ‘Think about it, Paul.’
Grossart clasped his hands under his chin and rocked slightly in his chair as he wondered what to do. He could actually feel his bowels start to loosen. He’d had such faith in the Snowball project that he’d sunk all the cash he could get his hands on in taking up company share options. Okay, so he’d been cutting every corner he could to speed things along, but that was business: he was in a race. It wasn’t really dishonest; it was just… business. But now it had all gone belly-up. Suddenly and without warning he was in this position and he was scared.
‘Christ, I don’t know!’ he exclaimed. ‘I feel I want to throw my hands up and apologise… but like you say… it won’t do any good in the long run if it’s already too damned late.’
‘Believe me, we’ve all had these thoughts, too,’ said Vance soothingly. ‘If there was anything we could do to turn back the clock we would be in there winding, but there isn’t, Paul, there just isn’t.’
‘Who knows about this?’ asked Grossart.
‘Just the three of us. Jerry came to me first with his findings and we decided we’d sit on it until we had talked to you. The UK’s the only place where we’ve “been on line”, so to speak.’
Grossart tapped his fingertips together rapidly while his mind raced, but he couldn’t think straight; there was just too much to take in. Rather than appear weak and indecisive, he decided that the other two had had time to think things through so they must have reached the right conclusion. He’d go along with them. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I agree. We keep quiet.’
‘Good man,’ said Vance. ‘Company loyalty like that won’t go unrewarded come annual bonus time.’
Grossart suddenly felt dirty. He looked at Vance, feeling sick inside, despising himself, but there was now no t
urning back. He swallowed and looked away. ‘So that’s it, then,’ he said.
Vance cleared his throat unnecessarily and said, ‘Not quite, I’m afraid. There is one other problem.’
Grossart felt as if he were already on overload. He badly needed to go to the lavatory. ‘What other problem?’ he croaked.
‘The routine blood samples you sent in from the people working on the Snowball project…’
‘What about them?’
‘Jerry here re-tested them for our little problem as soon as he knew about it. Two came back positive.’
‘You’re telling me that two of my people are at risk from this damned thing?’
‘It’s a possibility,’ said Klein.
‘So what the hell do we do?’
‘We can’t risk them falling ill here and people putting two and two together,’ said Vance. ‘With your co-operation, we’ll transfer them immediately — just as a precaution, you understand. They’ll have the best of care, should they need it. I promise.’
‘And what do they tell their families?’ asked Grossart.
‘Simply that their project demands that they carry out some work at one of our field stations, say the one in North Wales. We’ll invent something for them to do in order to keep them there, out of the way, until we know they’re in the clear. We’ll sweeten the deal with money — double their British salary for the duration, if you like. That’s the least we could do.’
‘The very least,’ said Grossart. ‘Who are these people?’
Klein looked at his notes. ‘Amy Patterson and Peter Doig.’
‘Know them?’ asked Vance.
‘Of course I know them,’ snapped Grossart, his nerves getting the better of his natural deference. ‘Patterson’s been a post-doc with us for the best part of three years. Doig’s a medical technician who joined us from one of the local hospital labs about nine months ago. Both are good people.’ He got up. ‘If you’ll excuse me, I really must
ONE
British Airways Flight, Ndanga-London Heathrow
Humphrey James Barclay had not been feeling well for the past few days, and it was making him irritable. Not even the fact that he was flying home, after what had seemed an interminable working visit to Central Africa, could compensate for it.
‘Ye gods!’ he muttered under his breath as the stewardess discovered that she had run out of tonic and mouthed her request with exaggerated lip movement to a colleague further down the aisle, followed by the standard British Airways smile. ‘Won’t be a moment, sir. Ice and a slice?’
Barclay nodded, biting his tongue as he seethed inwardly that she could run out of the stuff after serving only three rows.
Half a dozen small tins of tonic were duly delivered by a colleague, and the stewardess handed Barclay his drink. He took it without acknowledgement and hurriedly snapped open the tonic to splash a little into the gin. He downed it in two large gulps and put his head back on the seat to close his eyes for a moment. The burning sensation of the alcohol in his throat was helping, but he still felt unpleasantly hot and ached all over. The muscles in his arm hurt when he reached up to increase the airflow from the overhead vent, causing him to grimace and beads of sweat to break out on his forehead. He tugged angrily at his shirt collar and found that the button defied his attempt to undo it. This brought on another wave of frustration and he yanked at it so hard that the button shot off and hit the back of the seat in front before spinning off somewhere. But he had achieved his objective, and he didn’t bother looking for the button before putting his head back on the rest. The smartly dressed woman in the seat next to him concentrated unseeingly on her magazine and studiously pretended that she hadn’t noticed anything amiss.
Don’t make it flu, Barclay prayed silently as he closed his eyes again. Please don’t make it flu. If I don’t have my report on Sir Bruce bloody Collins’s desk by tomorrow teatime I can kiss my bloody career goodbye. From Foreign Office to dole office in the blink of an eye; now you see him, now you don’t. Sweet Jesus, Marion will just love that, her and her poxy stuck-up family.
Barclay rolled his head from side to side, fighting against growing nausea and dizziness. ‘Christ, give me a break,’ he murmured, as he persistently failed to find a comfortable position. Just a couple of days, dammit, and then I can take to my bed for a week — a bloody month, if necessary. He tried concentrating on what he was going to say in his report, mind over matter. Don’t bloody go, he concluded bitterly. No one in their right mind should go to that bloody hellhole called Ndanga. The whole damned country is run by a bunch of two-bit crooks who are more interested in opening Swiss bank accounts than in doing anything to help the people they pretend to represent. Foreign aid would turn into Mercedes cars and Armani suits before you could say Abracadabra.
That was what Barclay wanted to say, but of course he wouldn’t. It wasn’t the job of a junior official at the Foreign Office to formulate policy. That had already been decided for Ndanga. HM Government was extending the hand of friendship and good fellowship. It was offering aid, not for the usual reason that Ndanga had oil or vital minerals that we wanted but because it had an airstrip and associated facilities in a strategically important position. The Ministry of Defence had decided that HM forces might find that very useful if things were to get out of hand in countries to the south, as they seemed destined to in the not too distant future. A generous financial package had been agreed, and the Foreign Secretary himself would be going there in the next few weeks to give the new regime the UK seal of approval. Barclay had been sent out to Ndanga to smooth the way and make sure that the arrangements for the visit were progressing satisfactorily. Mustn’t have the Foreign Secretary running out of toilet paper in darkest Africa.
Barclay tugged open another button on his shirt as he felt a trickle of sweat run down his cheek.
‘Are you feeling all right?’ came the quiet, solicitous enquiry from the woman next to him.
Barclay turned his head to look at her but had difficulty focusing. She seemed to be framed in a halo of brightly coloured lights. ‘A bit of flu coming on, I think,’ he replied stoically.
‘Bad luck,’ said the woman, returning to her magazine, but almost visibly shrinking away from him, and putting her hand to her mouth, more as a psychological barrier than any practical one. ‘Perhaps you should ask the stewardess for an aspirin.’
Barclay nodded. ‘Maybe I will.’ He gave a symbolic glance over his shoulder and added tersely, ‘When she’s ready.’
Still struggling against the odds, he opened his briefcase with great effort and took out a sheaf of papers. He felt he had to jot down some points he wanted to stress in his report. ‘Security at Ndanga’s main airport is poor,’ he wrote. ‘Recommend that-’ He stopped writing as a large drop of blood fell from his nose and spread on the page. He was mesmerised by the sight of scarlet on white for a moment, before murmuring under his breath, ‘Shit, what bloody next?’
He brought out a tissue from his pocket and held it to his nose in time to catch the next drop. He kept the tissue there as he put his head back again on the rest. God, he felt ill. Pressure was building up inside his head and making his eyeballs hurt and now another sensation… dampness… He felt wet; his trousers were wet. He put his hand slowly between his legs and got confirmation. Oh my God, the humiliation of it all. Oh my God, not that — anything but that. The flush that came to his cheeks did nothing to help lower his already climbing temperature. But how could he have wet himself without knowing it? He pondered this through a haze of discomfort. He contracted his sphincter muscles and found that he still seemed to have power over them, so how could he have done? God! He was never going to live this down. He started making plans to limit his embarrassment. When they landed he would stay in his seat until all the other passengers had disembarked… Yes, that was what he’d do. With a bit of luck the cabin crew would not even remember who had been sitting in that seat.
His jumbled train of thought was again interrupted
as the pain in his head became almost unbearable, but through it something registered about the wet feeling between his legs. It wasn’t just wet, it was… sticky. He withdrew his hand and half opened one eye to look at it. It was covered in blood.
The sight of Barclay’s bloody hand spurred the woman next to him into action. She gasped and her hand shot to the call button above her head: she pushed it repeatedly until two stewardesses came running.
‘His hand… It’s covered in blood,’ stammered the woman, trying to keep at as much distance as she could. ‘He said he’s getting flu, but look at him!’
Barclay was now unaware of what was going on around him. His soaring temperature had induced a delirium in which successive waves of pain and nausea swept in to torment him.
‘Can you hear me, sir?’ One of the stewardesses, Judy Mills, was bending over him. ‘Can you tell us what’s wrong?’
Barclay’s eyes rolled open in response to the voice in his ear. He opened his mouth but no words came out. Instead he voided the contents of his stomach in a projectile vomit over Judy, who recoiled in disgust, her professionalism deserting her momentarily as revulsion and anger vied for its place.
‘Can’t you move him somewhere?’ asked the woman in the inside seat.
‘The flight’s full, madam,’ replied the second stewardess, Carol Bain.
‘You’ll have to do something, for God’s sake. He’s covered in blood.’
The woman had a point. Barclay’s untended nosebleed had covered his lower face and shirt front.
‘See if you can stop the bleeding,’ said Judy, who had done her best to sponge the mess off the front of her uniform and had returned. Carol put Barclay’s head back on the headrest, carefully avoiding putting herself in the firing line. She held a wad of tissues over Barclay’s nose and made eye contact with Judy. ‘What now?’ she whispered.
‘Just keep him like that. I’ll see if there’s a doctor on board.’