Dead End

by Brian Freemantle

  ‘What about a name?’

  There was a further, dismissive shrug, the older man’s mouth pulled down doubtfully. ‘I don’t remember. Alan, perhaps. I think it was Alan but I’m not sure. Why?’

  ‘I thought it might be right to invite him to the funeral,’ said Parnell.

  ‘That’s kind,’ said the restaurant owner.

  ‘But I don’t have a name. Or an address.’ pressed Parnell.

  Falcone shook his head. ‘I’m sorry.’

  It had always been an outside chance, Parnell accepted. ‘If you remember …? Find something …?’

  Giorgio frowned, curious for the first time. ‘Sure.’

  ‘The FBI are investigating,’ Parnell hurried on.

  ‘They said, on television.’

  ‘They might want to talk to you.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Rebecca. They’ll want to know about Rebecca.’

  ‘Everyone loved her,’ insisted the chef.

  ‘Why did they do it?’ demanded Falcone, thick-voiced again. ‘I want them caught! I want them dead!’

  What did he want? Parnell wondered. To know why! he answered himself.

  Fourteen

  By Edward C. Grant’s edict, this New York encounter wasn’t at the corporate building but at an hotel, the Plaza on Central Park South, overlooking the park. It was booked from a reservations agency in an assumed name and paid for in advance, in cash. Dwight Newton was given the suite number by telephone, Grant’s cellphone to his cellphone, not through the hotel switchboard or traceably dialled. Surprisingly there was coffee on a separating table when Newton arrived. Grant waited expectantly for the vice president to pour. As he did, Newton said: ‘The FBI are investigating.’

  ‘I saw the newscasts, read the newspapers,’ said Grant, totally controlled, even-voiced.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ Grant had to be nervous to have arranged the meeting like this, like something out of a movie.

  Grant frowned, concerned at the other man’s nervousness, to assess which was the major reason for his summoning the stick-thin scientist yet again on the first shuttle from Washington. ‘I’m not sure about that question, Dwight.’ said the disconcerted, white-maned man. ‘Not sure we need to do anything, are you?’

  ‘The FBI are investigating, for Christ’s sake,’ repeated Newton. ‘They’ll almost certainly want to question us.’

  ‘You,’ corrected Grant, still even-voiced. ‘They’ll almost certainly want to question you. I don’t see that I’ll be able to help them very much.’

  Newton sat with his cooling coffee untouched before him, looking as steadily as possible at the other man, wondering how directly he could ask the awful question to get the awful confirmation of his every doubt. Not directly at all, Newton decided. Instead he said: ‘What shall I tell them?’

  ‘What is there to tell them? Rebecca Lang worked in your overseas unit. She was very competent, did her work well. We were very happy with her. We’re devastated by what happened.’

  ‘What if they ask about France?’

  Grant lifted and dropped his shoulders. ‘Here again, I don’t see why they should. It’s got nothing to do with what they’re enquiring into, has it?’

  Newton tensed himself, lips initially tight together. ‘Hasn’t it?’

  Grant came forward from the opposing chair, elbows on his knees. ‘Dwight, I really am finding it difficult to follow you here!’

  ‘They’ll most definitely talk to security. Learn about the telephone monitor.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Her name’s on the list, talking to Paris.’

  ‘She was in the overseas liaison unit! We’d be disappointed if she hadn’t spoken to Paris and a lot of other places abroad! The monitor wasn’t exclusively on her telephone, was it?’

  ‘No,’ conceded Newton, expectantly.

  ‘And her name isn’t the only one on the list?’

  ‘No,’ further conceded the other man, again. Fuck you, he thought. And then he thought, I wish I could – I wish so very much I could escape from the entanglement in which I am enmeshed … in which you are enmeshed.

  ‘She wasn’t being specifically targeted?’

  ‘Security came up with a lot of names,’ agreed Newton.

  ‘But none proved to be the suspected outside informant? Certainly not from any of the research-division telephones.’

  It was all so easily, so satisfactorily explainable, Newton accepted. ‘No,’ he said. ‘We didn’t find an outside informant from the checks we initiated.’

  ‘But we’ve every right to be vigilant?’

  ‘Yes.’ Newton had the irrational impression of being stuck in a sucking morass, mud too thick to get out of, with the rising water creeping up to engulf him.

  ‘Could you get me another coffee, Dwight?’

  The vice president poured, ignoring his own almost full cup. ‘They could come across the French things.’

  ‘Along with every other research experiment we’re conducting!’ exclaimed the Dubette president, genuinely incredulous. ‘But let’s stay with that, for a moment. Tell me about rifofludine. Does it have a preserving quality, in hot climactic conditions?’

  ‘To a degree,’ allowed Newton, reluctantly.

  Grant sighed, theatrically. ‘Does it have a preserving quality, in hot climatic conditions!’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And the colouring additives make dosage administration and recognition easier in Third World countries?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Which means we’re providing a necessary service – improving our products – for a specific market?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I really thought we’d already talked all this through, Dwight?’

  ‘I suppose we had.’

  ‘We got anything more to talk through?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘You really sure about that, Dwight?’

  ‘Yes, I’m really sure.’

  ‘I’m glad about that. Really glad we’re understanding each other. Now tell me about Parnell.’

  ‘I haven’t seen him yet. He rejected our attorney, Gerry Fletcher. But Baldwin kept Fletcher in court to represent Dubette’s interests.’

  ‘Why didn’t Parnell want our guy?’

  ‘Fletcher thought the only way was to enter a plea.’

  Grant nodded, but didn’t immediately comment. ‘Parnell’s an ornery son of a bitch and isn’t that the truth?’

  ‘I guess.’ How much further – how much more – was he expected to capitulate?

  Grant said: ‘That was a good move, keeping Fletcher in court to watch our backs. Important to keep ourselves up to speed on anything and everything that might adversely affect the company. There’s too much publicity: I’m worried about it affecting the stock. Let’s get the legal department to ensure a legal heavyweight better than Fletcher, in case we need him.’

  ‘Need him for what?’ risked Newton.

  ‘Unchallenged situations, getting out of hand. We’ve got nothing to hide, everything to protect. You understand what I’m saying?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Get public affairs working. Give the media full access to what Rebecca Lang did: I don’t want Dubette fouled up in any mystery theories that her death had anything to do with what she was working on, OK?’

  For a brief moment it was difficult for Newton to find the words, any word, to respond. ‘Don’t you think that might be difficult, in the circumstances?’

  ‘Tell public affairs full co-operation, with every media outlet. Maybe you head up a press conference. After all, we’ve got nothing whatsoever to hide. Remember that.’

  ‘Nothing whatsoever,’ echoed Newton, flatly. The water had to be almost up to his chin now. He wasn’t sure whether he wanted to strain upwards to save himself or put his head down, to drown.

  ‘What do we know about Rebecca Lang? Family, friends, stuff like that?’ briskly demanded Grant.

  Now it
was Newton who frowned. ‘She and Parnell were going to get married, according to the papers and what he said on television. Her mother and father are both dead. Next of kin is listed on the personnel records as an uncle. Lives locally, in the DC area.’

  ‘Get personnel involved. Wayne Denny himself. Dubette will pick up all the bills. Whatever sort of funeral they want, they get. Reception afterwards, their choice, whatever, wherever. You attend. Showcross too, of course. Anyone else in the unit who wants to go.’

  ‘I understand.’ Oh God, do I understand! thought Newton.

  ‘Tell Parnell to take as much time off as he wants. Get Denny, anyone else you can think of, involved here, too.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘How about you, Dwight?’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘What’s happened is horrifying. A member of Dubette staff – your staff-murdered. An attempt made, apparently, to incriminate a department head. Understandable that it would have gotten to you. It’s gotten to a lot of us, one way and another.’

  ‘I’m OK,’ lied Newton. He was anxious now to get away, no longer to feel he was drowning, to be part of whatever he feared himself to be part of.

  ‘That’s good to hear,’ said Grant. ‘Very good indeed.’ He came forward once more across their intervening table, arms on his knees, intense. ‘I want you to tell me something, Dwight. Something it’s very important for me to know – totally and completely believe. You don’t think – don’t believe – that anyone in Dubette is in any way involved or connected with whatever happened to Rebecca and almost happened to Dick Parnell, do you?’

  ‘No,’ Newton finally surrendered, as he’d known all along that he would, the nausea a physical sensation deep in his stomach. ‘I don’t think that at all.’ What would have happened to him, he wondered, if he’d said anything otherwise?

  No one seemed to know how to react to his return. Parnell had accepted during the ride to McLean that he would inevitably be the focus of everyone’s attention, from the very moment of his arrival at the Dubette gatehouse, but hadn’t known how it would register. It started with uncertain looks – or pointedly no looks in his direction at all – from other drivers as he parked the rented Toyota only four spaces from where he’d left his own car three days earlier. There were more hesitant, early-warned faces at the windows and, as he got closer to the building, he was conscious of a lot of doubtful, needing-to-be-guided faces. Very occasionally there was a half wave or gesture of encouragement from people he didn’t know. In front of the elevator bank, three people – a man and two women – held back for him to get a car to himself. There were more half smiles and a few inconclusive gestures as he walked the gauntlet of the overlooked corridor into the Spider’s Web.

  Initially the indeterminate attitude existed even in his own pharmacogenomics department, where everyone was already assembled in greeting, which they didn’t know how to make once he got there. It was Beverley Jackson who broke the impasse, coming towards him with both hands outstretched to prompt his reaching forward in response, leading the rest to follow with awkward handshakes and shoulder slaps.

  ‘We don’t quite know what to say – what to do,’ Beverley unnecessarily admitted.

  ‘I don’t know that there’s anything to say or do,’ said Parnell. ‘I seem to be causing some embarrassment.’

  ‘Whatever you want … need … just …’ Ted Lapidus’s offer trailed away, into more awkwardness.

  ‘I think I want to get back to work. Catch up on whatever needs to be caught up with.’

  ‘You quite sure you’re …?’ started Sean Sato, halted by the look on Parnell’s face.

  Parnell said: ‘We just got a new unbreakable rule for the department. No one asks me if I’m OK, OK?’

  Only Deke Pulbrow said: ‘OK,’ and then he said: ‘Oh shit!’

  The Japanese American said: ‘I’m sorry. It’s just that … just that …’

  ‘Just that there’s nothing else to do or to say,’ Parnell finished for him. He allowed space into the discomfort, hoping to puncture it. ‘Thanks, all of you. To borrow Deke’s word, it’s been a shit time and will probably go on being a shit time for I don’t know how long. Whatever, I want things to go on here, without me if it’s necessary, with me, if and whenever it’s possible …’ He looked to Kathy Richardson. ‘Anything I need to do, need to know?’

  ‘A lot of media calls yesterday and already today. I’ve logged them.’

  His newly installed answering-machine loop at Washington Circle had been exhausted by the time he’d got back from Georgetown the previous evening. Parnell hadn’t responded to any and let the tape fill up again without picking up the receiver. He shook his head in refusal and said: ‘Nothing else?’

  The matronly secretary looked fleetingly at Beverley Jackson. ‘Your lawyer called. Said he was at the office number you have and would be, for most of the day, if you want to talk.’

  ‘Anything from Dwight’s office?’

  The woman shook her head. ‘You want me to check?’

  ‘He’s not due back until this afternoon,’ accepted Parnell. ‘Just thought his schedule might have changed.’ He looked around the people still gathered around him, knowing they were expecting something from him but not able, at that precise, brief moment, to formulate anything in his mind. It was going to be difficult to force the pace, the dispassion even, but Parnell acknowledged that he had to evolve a way of conducting himself to make happen what he wanted to happen, for his life to go on at two separate, equally important levels, as unlinked and independent of each other as possible. Were the two levels equally important? Of course not. Finding Rebecca’s killer – who’d tried to incriminate him, as well – was the most important, his absolute priority. The department – this department – that had once, all too recently and far far too much, consumed him and his every thought was secondary now – very secondary indeed – to avenging Rebecca. Forcing himself to be still – certainly striving for a lightness that wasn’t there – Parnell said: ‘So, who’s made the breakthrough that’s going to make us all famous?’

  The heads-lowered hesitation was the criticism he didn’t need of how wrongly placed the remark had been. It was Beverley who hurried in, trying to cover his difficulty, talking of three experiments she’d conducted upon mice with Dubette’s products without finding an immediate way of introducing a genetically linked improvement, which gradually opened the discussion among the others. It quickly became apparent to Parnell that virtually no experimental avenues had emerged to follow, which he hadn’t expected anyway, but it took away the atmosphere caused by his mistaken remark and he was grateful.

  It was hard for him to concentrate as fully as he knew he should upon their individual accounts, but he managed sufficiently to ask the necessarily comprehending questions. More than once Ted Lapidus remarked that everything Parnell was being told had been fully discussed and agreed in the committee-style manner in which they had decided to operate.

  Sean Sato was the last to contribute and almost from the moment the man began talking, Parnell’s attention became absolute. ‘Avian influenza?’ he queried, interrupting the man. ‘I thought you were focusing on Hepatitis C?’

  ‘We got a visit from Russell Benn, soon after you …’ Lapidus halted. ‘… on Monday. Tokyo’s heading up a project decided on by the company, the species-jumping of flu from fowls and wild animals to humans that causes epidemics that start in Asia virtually every year. The World Health Organization are warning that if a human being already suffering influenza becomes infected with bird flu, the two viruses could integrate and mutate into an unknown – and currently untreatable – strain transmitting from human to human very easily, to become a global pandemic like the one that killed more than twenty million people after the First World War.’

  ‘What direction is the project taking?’ asked Parnell. He wasn’t letting his mind drift now – properly, committedly, back at work. It felt good.

  ‘A vaccine,’ said Sato.

>   ‘For humans? Or birds?’ asked Parnell.

  ‘Both, if possible,’ said Lapidus.

  ‘H5N1, the avian virus that emerged in early 1997, is too lethal to be grown in chicken eggs, even to hope to create a vaccine,’ Parnell pointed out.

  ‘That’s why Benn’s been tasked with producing something a different way,’ said Lapidus.

  ‘And why he wants us on board,’ finished Sato. ‘Everything Tokyo’s tried should be arriving later today or tomorrow.’

  ‘We’d better prepare the sterile laboratory,’ said Parnell.

  ‘Already done,’ said Lapidus.

  ‘I know none of you need to be told, but have you warned Kathy it’ll be out of bounds?’ asked Parnell, indicating her office, to which the secretary had already returned.

  ‘Very clearly,’ said the balding, pebble-bespectacled Peter Battey.

  ‘I like the way you’ve worked, while I wasn’t here,’ thanked Parnell, sincerely.

  ‘I …’ started Lapidus but at once corrected himself again. ‘We talked about it and decided hepatitis could wait. This is our first chance to get involved in a current priority programme.’

  And he hadn’t been here when it was formulated, thought Parnell. But he was now. ‘Do we know if the competition are trying to do the same as us?’

  ‘Not at this level,’ said Mark Easton, the former Johns Hopkins geneticist. ‘But it’s an easy guess that they are. We’re talking megabucks on a global scale. Thailand – just one of seven or eight Asian countries farming chicken – exports one and a half billion dollars worth of poultry every year. Europe imports a third of the chicken Thailand produces.’

  ‘It’s good to be involved, even if it’s because our traditional colleagues across the corridor recognize that they need all the help they can get,’ said Parnell. ‘But from the rundown you’ve just given me, Sean’s working on it alone. If it’s a priority, with red lights flashing, shouldn’t we make up our own definition of a task force?’

  ‘Thought about that, too,’ assured Lapidus. ‘As I said, we don’t yet have the specimens to begin work, which we should be able to do tomorrow. Sean’s doing the groundwork. Now you’re back, it’s obviously your decision, but I was intending to join him, along with Beverley.’