Dead End

by Brian Freemantle

  Edward C. Grant picked up on that, insisting that all subsidiaries offer every assistance to official enquiries and investigators. The promised media release had been prepared well in advance by Dubette’s public affairs division and faxed to every overseas branch. The president invited improvements, additions or corrections from every link-up. There was no challenge from any foreign division.

  ‘This has the utmost priority,’ concluded Grant. ‘I want daily input from all of you. We must know, here in New York, of everything that happens in your countries. Nothing – nothing whatsoever – is too small or inconsequential …’ He hesitated and then, as if they’d had a choice, said: ‘Thank you for participating, particularly those of you for whom your local timing is inconvenient.’

  The parent board remained in session after the closedown of the satellite connection, but the discussion was a pointless repetition of what had been debated before and after the global conference. They adjourned both for the electronic equipment to be removed and to watch the midday television news in an outer office. All three major networks carried the press release threatening legal action against malicious publication, tacked at the end of stories about the global conference. To groans from almost everyone – and the outburst of ‘shit’ from Grant – all three described it as an emergency session and listed the current stock-market loss.

  To Dwight Newton’s surprise, lunch was provided, in the restored boardroom. By the time they emerged, Dubette’s stock was down a total of ten points on the day.

  ‘Sorry I couldn’t see you yesterday,’ apologized Newton. ‘I was up in New York.’

  ‘I saw the stories on television. And read about it in this morning’s Post,’ said Parnell.

  ‘You got something on the flu research that’s going to lift our spirits and maybe our stock ratings?’ said Newton.

  ‘Not exactly,’ said Parnell.

  The vice president frowned. ‘What is it then?’

  ‘There seems to have been a misunderstanding,’ said Parnell.

  Newton’s frown remained and he felt a twitch of apprehension. ‘About what?’

  ‘When we spoke about that business from France, I understood you to say it was something that hadn’t worked.’

  ‘I don’t recall, exactly,’ said Newton, warily. ‘Why?’

  Liar, thought Parnell. ‘That’s not what I understood from the FBI guys. They thought it was something ongoing. Something that’s being adopted?’

  It wasn’t a problem, Newton decided. ‘Maybe I gave the wrong impression. Like I said, I don’t really remember. It’s some changes being made to the routine formulas coming out of France on proprietary stuff: cough mixtures, linctuses, decongestants, that sort of thing.’

  ‘What type of changes?’

  ‘Colourings, mostly. For better recognition. All placebos, but we had to check them out chemically, of course. That’s what it was, safety checks.’ Newton was sweating now under the regulation white coat, again glad he was wearing it.

  ‘At the seminar I thought the president referred to it as a way of preventing piracy of our products?’ persisted Parnell.

  There was nothing dangerous in the truth, Newton thought. ‘That too. It’s a winner, every which way. If the formula is pirated, it makes it more expensive than our competitors. If the products are bought genuinely, it makes them easier to recognize by people who can’t read too well.’

  ‘I looked on my list – everything made available to check out genetically,’ pressed Parnell. ‘I couldn’t find anything as up to date as that.’

  Newton smiled. ‘Wasn’t that list provided before we checked out the French stuff?’

  ‘Only for our French subsidiary? Nowhere else?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not across the board?’

  ‘I told you, specifically targeted. It’s in the Third World where the piracy is greatest and where the literacy and comprehension is the lowest.’

  ‘I’ll ask Russell for some samples, shall I?’

  Newton’s frown return. ‘What the hell for?’

  ‘I thought I was getting everything? That’s the arrangement, isn’t it?’

  ‘And I thought your unit had been very specifically tasked.’

  ‘It has. And we’re working on it in every way that’s open to us. I’m not for a moment suggesting we break away, certainly not on something like placebo infusion you’ve already cleared to be totally safe. I just want to stick with the working arrangement we agreed when we set my unit up, to get everything and look at everything over the course of time.’

  There was no danger, Newton told himself again. He shrugged. ‘Sure, get samples from Russ. Just don’t take your eye off the main ball, OK?’

  ‘I won’t take my eye off the main ball,’ promised Parnell, an assurance more for his satisfaction than Dwight Newton’s.

  Twenty

  Parnell tried to seize the moment and see Russell Benn that afternoon, talking generally of comparing their separate progress – not disclosing his lack of it – but the chemical research director pleaded pressure of work and postponed a meeting until the following day, which Parnell guessed to be a delay to consult with Dwight Newton, and which lost him his hoped-for advantage. Benn was waiting when Parnell arrived, his desk cleared, the coffee prepared. Once again Parnell had gone into Benn’s territory, and he continued the concession, providing his empty account first. Benn declared himself impressed by what he called the generosity of the Scripps Research Institute and the National Institute for Medical Research in sharing their research material more or less in its entirety, disclosing in return his division’s equal failure even to know where to start upon a commercial vaccine after Parnell further conceded his department hadn’t yet succeeded in synthesizing a gene from the Tokyo samples, nor produced anything worthwhile from their animal testing.

  ‘What about the complete mapping of the poultry genome?’ asked the black scientist, displaying his medical-publication awareness.

  Once more, fleetingly, Parnell had the impression of being tested. ‘It gives us – and every other researcher and group trying to do what we’re attempting – three thousand million bases, to compare against three thousand million human genetic bases, to find one, just one, that might provide a mutating-inviting host cell.’

  ‘Which you’re doing?’

  ‘Of course we’re doing it,’ said Parnell, although refusing to rise to the other man’s challenge. ‘But there are at least six different strains of domestic chicken farmed in China, quite apart from all the other global test species. But let’s just stay with China. Which, alone, gives us a multiplication of eighteen thousand million.’

  ‘I can work out the mathematics for myself,’ patronized Benn.

  ‘But not, chemically, a quicker way towards a treatment!’

  ‘Maybe neither of us will be the lucky ones,’ Benn said, with forced philosophy.

  ‘I didn’t believe we were allowed to think like that here at Dubette.’

  ‘We’re not,’ smiled the other man. ‘Don’t tell anyone I ever said it.’

  ‘I spoke with Dwight yesterday, about the work you both did on the French stuff,’ announced Parnell, impatient with the sparring.

  ‘It was just placebo additions to existing formulae,’ dismissed Benn, the confidence confirming Parnell’s belief of prior consultation with Dwight Newton.

  ‘Dwight explained. He agreed the improvements should be added to everything else I’ve been given, to be looked at genetically some time.’

  ‘Not sure we’ve got any batch samples left,’ said Benn. ‘Once we established the safety, I think they were all destroyed.’

  ‘Could you check?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘And if you don’t have made-up samples, you’d have the old and new formulae? And I could get shipped from Paris the old against the new, couldn’t I?’ insisted Parnell.

  ‘Sure,’ said Benn again. ‘Like I said, I’ll check.’

  By noon the followi
ng day, Parnell received fifteen differently name-marked phials, with the comparable number of Dubette commercially packaged and identified bottles previously produced in France. Using that comparison he quickly discovered the major differences between the old and new formulae were liulousine and beneuflous, which the pharmacological register described as expectorants, and a flavouring agent called rifofludine, which in hot climates had a limited function as a preservative when refrigeration was unavailable. There were also six colouring agents, all of which were listed as simply that, non-medically-active colourants.

  Also that day, the raw research material, each with its research notes, arrived from San Diego and London, both far more extensive and detailed than Parnell had anticipated. Parnell stored everything from Russell Benn’s division under refrigeration, separating the rifofludine for later temperature match. The whole operation took him less than an hour and was completed long before Russell Benn unexpectedly came into the pharmacogenomics unit.

  ‘Get everything you wanted?’ greeted the man.

  ‘If fifteen samples are everything I wanted, then yes, I have. Thanks.’ Parnell saw Benn looking at the just-opened packages occupying virtually all of his desk. ‘And it took all of this to discover the haemagglutinin protein of the 1918 flu epidemic.’

  ‘What are you going to do with it?’

  ‘Study it. Hope to get an idea – a possible path to follow at least. Somewhere among all this is the specific attempt by the Scripps Institute and the London School of Medicine to match the chicken genome. If they’d done it already, it would have been announced. I’m hoping we’ll get a lead from everything they’ve done, from which we might find a different approach for our particular needs.’

  ‘And if you don’t?’

  ‘We go on stumbling about in the dark.’

  ‘You get a lead I could follow as well, I’d appreciate your telling me …’

  ‘If I get any sort of direction, I’m not going to keep it to myself,’ assured Parnell.

  There was an overwhelming temptation to start on the material at once, but Parnell remained strictly professional, actually helping Kathy Richardson make duplicates not just for the four seconded to the specific influenza team, but for Mark Easton and Peter Battey as well. He included the two men in the regular end-of-day general discussion, offering each their full dossier cases and suggesting their spare-time input.

  ‘What spare time?’ mocked the pebble-spectacled Battey.

  ‘Coffee breaks, lunch periods, those sort of times,’ Parnell partially mocked back. ‘I don’t know if we’re ever going to get anywhere, but if we don’t it won’t be for want of trying.’

  ‘I’d certainly like to get out of the cul-de-sac I’m in at the moment,’ complained Sato, whose Internet find the 1918 genetic discoveries had been. ‘All I’m doing is killing mice.’

  ‘What are you cutting your genetic strings down to, for ease of working?’ asked Lapidus.

  ‘Ten thousand at a time,’ said Sato. ‘You?’

  ‘Five.’

  ‘This way we’ll still be comparing when we’re old and grey,’ said Beverley Jackson.

  ‘Maybe we take a break from routine practical application and instead go through this stuff looking for a new approach,’ proposed Parnell. ‘The source notes alone might lead us somewhere. One, or both, will have already covered a lot of the ground that we’re duplicating.’

  ‘Is that an order?’ asked Beverley.

  ‘Let’s give it a shot, stop our eyes glazing over,’ said Parnell.

  They all worked on late that night, with Parnell the last to leave, taking more files with him to continue working on at home. It had become a no-longer-unsettling habit to check his surroundings crossing the now sparsely occupied car park and constantly to check his mirrors once he began moving. He drove with his mind hedge-hopping between what he’d been studying – none of which had given him any new ideas – and stray, unconnected thoughts. Enquiring when he could have his own car back would give him an excuse to speak to the FBI agents in the hope of learning of any progress. There hadn’t been any mention of the second autopsy at their last meeting, but the funeral wouldn’t have been allowed unless it had been completed. He had no doubt that Russell Benn had been forewarned of his approach about France, which made nonsense of the man’s prevarication about there not being any surviving samples when there blatantly had been. How – why – had Rebecca had the Air France flight number? It had to be significant. But how? Why hadn’t she done as she’d promised and stopped probing? Had those headlights now in his rear-view mirror been there as long as he imagined? He slowed, eyes constantly flickering to the mirror, the more so when the lights grew bigger, brighter, but abruptly the following car pulled out and past with an impatient blast on the horn. No hurry to get home. No one waiting for him. He supposed he should eat, although he wasn’t hungry. He couldn’t remember what prepacked meals he had in the refrigerator. He’d choose something he could cut one-handed, with just a fork, so he could eat and read at the same time. He was still less than halfway through the San Diego material. He had to avoid the growing temptation to go out of sequence and read all the source notes instead of waiting for their numbered listing in the developing research narrative. Had Dwight Newton and Russell Benn told him the truth? He’d look further than the pharmacological register to find out more about liulousine, beneuflous and rifofludine. And the supposed harmless flavourings. But carefully. Unsuspected – unseen – by anyone. Rebecca’s murder was unquestionably connected to Dubette. And despite every FBI and lawyer’s warning, Parnell remained determined to discover that connection. Until he did, he was going to have his eyes a lot on the rear-view mirror, watching for headlights closing behind.

  Parnell had always intended to stop when he’d reached that part of the San Diego material in which the attempts had been made to connect – and then intrude – the spike-shaped haemag-glutinin protein into a receptive human host cell, and awoke at two a.m., startled, cold and disorientated, to discover he’d sprawled across the table, too close to the remains of a now near-sickening, pre-cooked lasagne. The last litre bottle of wine, now empty like the glass, was on the table beside it. Parnell ached, from how he’d slumped for however long it had been, and his stomach churned from the smell of the abandoned food. His eyes felt as if there was grit or sand in them every time he blinked, and blurred when he initially tried to focus upon the papers to see what section he’d reached. Parnell forced himself to clear the table and dispose of the debris of the meal, leaving his clothes where they fell, almost literally to crawl into bed, his last conscious thought that he’d reached that part of the research from which he most hoped to find a way forward – everything he remembered reading before epitomized the purity of research science, but hadn’t taken his mind any further forward in any direction.

  Parnell awoke again, later than he had intended, still gritty-eyed but glad he’d cleared away and didn’t have to leave the previous night’s litter festering in his urgency to get back to McLean. He was still the first to arrive, deeply into what he’d expectantly decided to be the genesis for their specific interest, before Beverley came into the unit, closely followed, almost in procession, by everyone else.

  Parnell waited until they were at their benches before emerging from his office. ‘I know I’m going against our established schedule but anyone had any startling revelations overnight from what you might have read?’

  There was no immediate response. Then Deke Pulbrow said: ‘We’re not big enough, don’t have sufficient resources, to do what we’re trying to do. You count how many countries contributed to decode the domestic chicken genome? Six countries, with all the resources of six leading scientifically advanced institutions. Competing against which there’s just six of us – six ordinary people, not six countries – you making up the seventh, Dick. What chance do you think we’ve genuinely, practicably, got?’

  ‘It comes down to fractions,’ admitted Parnell. ‘You saying, becau
se it’s fractions, we shouldn’t try?’

  ‘No,’ denied Pulbrow, at once. ‘What I’m saying is that we’re pissing into the wind to imagine we’ve a chance in hell of finding anything, no matter how hard we try. And I can’t imagine anyone trying any harder than us guys are trying.’

  There was another brief silence. Parnell said: ‘Deke’s point is taken. Anyone else?’

  ‘I’m not proposing I break away from the new regime, reading all that there is here for us to read, but I’d like to run another string through the synthesizer,’ said Sato.

  ‘Go ahead,’ agreed Parnell at once. ‘Anyone else?’

  This time there was no response. Parnell said: ‘OK, let’s keep reading. Anyone get any brilliant ideas, let’s hear them right away.’

  As he read, with growing acceptance that he wasn’t going to get a lead, Parnell felt the disappointment of the others at San Diego’s unsuccessful efforts to find link between their 1918 flu discovery and the genome map they’d chosen from one of the most commonly eaten Chinese chickens, although conceding immediately that the connection was not the direct focus of their investigation but a naturally ongoing – and maybe ultimately successful – progression of it. Initially the only movement in the outside laboratory had been Sean Sato moving around his equipment, but that soon ended. No one bothered to leave for a coffee break, all accepting Kathy Richardson’s offer to bring it in. Lunch was more to rest wearily fogged eyes than to eat. No one took more than half an hour away from their desks or benches.

  Without any conscious decision, six o’clock had evolved into the time for their end-of-day review, and that Friday night Parnell stuck rigidly to it, coming out of his side office precisely on time and bringing everyone up with the cry of: ‘OK, guys. Day’s over, as well as the week. Make it a full weekend. I know you’re going to take stuff home, like I am, but keep it light. The way we’re working we’re going all of us to end up brain-dead, and brain-dead we’re no use to anyone, certainly not to wives or partners or loved ones …’ He was instantly aware of the abrupt attention from everyone at the remark, not sure himself why he’d said it. It had just come naturally and there hadn’t been any clog of emotion when he’d said it. He hadn’t even been thinking of Rebecca. ‘Let’s clear our minds and our heads and start again on Monday,’ he concluded.