‘You can’t influence a genetic reaction by telling someone in advance what it might possibly be! It’ll either happen or it won’t. And if it doesn’t, you’re not going to look good.’
‘I’ve already realized that.’
‘You ought to talk to people more.’
‘Maybe I should.’
Everyone was back fifteen minutes before the next scheduled culture-dish examination. Again Parnell was the first, the focus of every eye. He was even aware of Kathy Richardson watching from her separate office.
It was a warm, positively physical feeling, deep within him, as if he’d ingested something – a quick-reacting drug, even, which was an analogy that irritated him, although only for a passing second, because there was no irritation or disappointment at what he was looking at through the microscope lens. The mutation wasn’t as extensive as it had been when he’d first looked that morning – so far only three out of a total of fifteen of the newly prepared petrie dishes – but it was sufficient confirmation to substantiate his every fear. And there was every reason to be frightened, he realized, still bent over his apparatus but no longer concentrating solely on what was happening on the slide in front of him. He couldn’t remember an experiment – either one he’d conducted himself or one he’d read about, in any scientific research paper – in which a mutation occurred as quickly as this appeared to be doing.
He turned to face them, all personal satisfaction – euphoria even – gone, his attitude and mind coldly analytical. ‘I didn’t do this right, asking you to work as I did. I’m sorry. If it ever arises again, which I hope it doesn’t, it’ll be different. Give your cultures a little longer than the hour we decided upon. I’m going to analyse mine later, but particularly try to isolate if any of the three drugs that have been introduced appear to be causing the greatest damage.’
‘What sort of damage?’ asked Pulbrow.
‘France may be producing a range of Dubette-brand medicines that are going to kill people,’ declared Parnell, already on his way to the door.
As he walked further into the Spider’s Web, Parnell tried to calculate the fall-out from what he was about to do – what he had no alternative but to do – but very quickly gave up. There could only be one consideration, the ethical, diagnostic requirement; any personal repercussions were secondary, less than secondary even. Dubette should actually be eternally grateful, although he doubted that they would be; he certainly doubted if Dwight Newton and Russell Benn would be. Parnell hesitated at the door into the chemical research division, wondering whether to alert Benn first, but hurried on. The alarm, however it was sounded, had to come with the authority of Newton. To discuss it first, explain it first, to Benn would be a waste of time, and from the speed of the mutation Parnell didn’t believe there was any time whatsoever to waste. Any production of the new products had to be stopped immediately, any distribution not just halted but withdrawn, every single last bottle or pill, no matter how difficult to trace. And if that distribution were in Africa, that was going to be very difficult indeed to find.
There were still three women in Newton’s outer secretariat, all of whom looked up in surprise as Parnell burst in.
‘What …?’ trailed Newton’s personal assistant.
‘I need to see Dwight.’
The woman shook her head. ‘He’s chairing an audit meeting. And I know he wants to get away early.’
‘Tell him …!’ began Parnell but stopped, abruptly guessing there would be a damage-limitation operation. Less urgently he said: ‘Tell him that something extremely important has come up. Something that can’t wait until tomorrow: something he’s got to hear about and act upon tonight. I’ll be waiting in my office. Will you tell him that?’
‘What on earth is it?’ asked the woman.
‘Very important, like I just told you.’
Parnell did stop at Russell Benn’s unit on his way back. The research director was in his side office, notebook calculations and reference books side by side on the cluttered desk before him. Benn said: ‘You’re whipping up quite a wind, the speed you’re moving around.’
‘Hope you’re not planning to leave early tonight,’ said Parnell.
‘Why shouldn’t I?’ demanded the man.
‘I’ve told Dwight I need to see him right away. Now! You need to be included.’
‘In what?’ frowned Benn.
‘Stopping Dubette killing people,’ declared Parnell, shortly.
‘What!’ exclaimed Benn.
Parnell nodded at the shelves of textbooks behind the other man. ‘Look up hypoxanthine guanine phosphoribosyl transferase. And get a message through to Dwight that you want to be there when he and I speak.’
Everyone had completed their initial analysis by the time Parnell got back to his own department. Lapidus said: ‘How did you know?’
‘I didn’t,’ admitted Parnell.
‘What’s causing it to happen?’ asked Beverley.
‘I don’t know that, either. I just know it is happening, that in humans, at this rate of mutation, it’s potentially fatal. And that it’s got to be withdrawn.’
‘You mean it’s already in production?’ said Pulbrow.
‘I think it might be.’
‘Why? How?’ said Beverley.
‘I guess it comes down to money,’ said Parnell.
Twenty-Two
Parnell had anticipated that Russell Benn would already be in Dwight Newton’s office when he arrived, seated oddly at the side of the vice president’s desk, which gave the impression of a two-against-one confrontation. He’d expected it to be that, too, an initially belligerent confrontation, but it didn’t begin that way.
Quietly, without hectoring, Newton said: ‘What’s this about Dubette killing people?’
‘You told me everything added to the French formulae were placebos? That you and Russell had run all the checks and cleared them as safe.’ Parnell decided as much as possible against it appearing a challenge, although he guessed it wouldn’t be easy.
‘They are,’ insisted Benn, at once, more forceful than the vice president.
Benn at least considered himself to be challenged, Parnell accepted. ‘What animals did you test on in your clinical trials?’
‘Mice,’ said Benn. ‘They’re the most compatible.’
Parnell nodded. ‘You look up hypoxanthine guanine phosphoribosyl transferase, as I suggested?’
‘A growth enzyme,’ identified Benn.
The man had not looked beyond the dictionary definition, Parnell guessed. ‘Present in mice and humans. And essential. People born without it rarely reach maturity. Over-production of it can lead to all sorts of genetic imbalances – can even cause tumours or leukaemia. And the human body has no HPRT control mechanism …’
‘I told you we tested on mice,’ insisted Benn. ‘There was no harmful effect whatsoever.’
‘Mice have a control mechanism. Why or how hasn’t been isolated …’ He looked directly at the black scientist. ‘I’ve tested everything you gave me, made up from the new French formulae, on human blood. Everyone else in my department has done the same today, independent blind tests. All with the same unequivocal results. In about two hours there is a rapid increase in the production of HPRT … an increase a human body couldn’t control. Administration, quite obviously, will be fatal. Production in France has got to be stopped, immediately. I hope to God distribution hasn’t already begun …’
‘There must be more … different … independent experiments,’ blustered Benn, all truculence gone.
‘Production, distribution, has got to be stopped right away,’ insisted Parnell. ‘I extended my tests, separately upon liulousine, beneuflous and rifofludine. By themselves they don’t cause any HPRT increase. There has to be some chemical effect when they’re combined in the cocktail, or maybe with the colouring agents, although I doubt the colorants contributed.’ Parnell hesitated, unsure if he’d left anything unsaid. Quickly he added: ‘I’ve obviously kept all the te
sts, all the cultures, for you both to examine.’
‘Why did you do this?’ asked the virtually silent Newton, still quiet-voiced. ‘You – your unit – had been given a specific assignment.’
Parnell felt the rising anger but suppressed it, having hoped the absurd demand wouldn’t be made but, deep within himself, believing himself adjusted now to Dubette thinking and Dubette rationalizing, he was not truly surprised that Newton had asked it. Tightly, careless of their inferring contempt or disgust in his tone, Parnell said: ‘Which we have been working upon, uninterrupted, except for two or three hours today. And that interruption was upon my very definite instructions, to confirm my initial personal findings. I worked here on Saturday. Russell had made the samples available to me after our conversation, Dwight, about France. I did the tests on impulse, because the samples were there, right in front of me. You really want to talk about why I did it – my having just told you there was no positive reason – when I’ve just also told you what Dubette are manufacturing in France? And what the result of that manufacture will be?’ He didn’t feel like the explaining schoolboy any longer. Instead he very much felt himself the castigating schoolmaster addressing careless, culpably inattentive students. They even looked like caught-out, culpable, inattentive students, no longer unchangeable senior pharmaceutical executives. It didn’t give Parnell any satisfaction.
Newton said: ‘It’s late in France. Gone midnight.’
‘Wake people up,’ insisted Parnell.
‘I think …’ began Newton, but stopped.
‘What?’ demanded Parnell.
‘I should talk to New York,’ finished the skeletally thin research vice president.
‘You do whatever needs to be done. If the French production isn’t stopped it will destroy Dubette as an international pharmaceutical conglomerate.’
‘Yes,’ accepted Newton, dully.
Just as dully, practically to himself, Benn said: ‘We cleared everything as safe.’
Caught by a sudden uncertainty, Parnell said: ‘Did I have everything? Or was there more?’
‘More,’ admitted Benn, unhesitatingly. ‘Some children’s decongestants. Some linctuses.’
‘It’s all got to be stopped. Withdrawn,’ demanded Parnell, frustrated by their apparent failure to understand the urgency.
‘Yes,’ said Newton again.
The other two men were virtually shell-shocked, Parnell decided. Careless now of patronizing or challenging or even demanding, he said: ‘It will be done, won’t it? You will speak to New York or Paris or whoever you need to warn? Tonight?’
Newton made a physical effort to recover, straightening in his chair, although yet again all he managed to say was, ‘Yes.’
‘Do you want me to be part of any link-up, technically to explain what’s happened – and the effect of it?’ asked Parnell.
‘No,’ refused Newton, recovering further. ‘It’s scarcely technical.’
‘I think my unit should examine all that we haven’t so far tested of what France was going to distribute,’ persisted Parnell, a tiny, irritating sand grit of doubt settling in his mind. He looked once more directly at Russell Benn. ‘And that you should start again, from the beginning.’
‘You’ve made your point well enough,’ bristled the man, emerging from his lethargy. ‘You want me to tell you we fucked up? OK, we fucked up! Satisfied?’
‘I will be when I’m sure nothing’s being distributed throughout Africa. Or that anything that has is being withdrawn and destroyed,’ said Parnell. ‘I’m not scoring points, looking for admissions of mistakes. I’m trying to stop a potential disaster.’
‘I accept that. And thank you,’ said Newton.
‘What about the cultures?’ asked Parnell. ‘Do you want to examine them now?’
‘I’m prepared to take your word for the moment,’ said the vice president. ‘The calls I’ve got to make are more important.’
Only Beverley Jackson was in the pharmacogenomics unit when Parnell returned. She said: ‘By yourself?’
‘Dwight has calls to make.’
‘We thought they’d want to see for themselves – that it would be more discreet if as few as possible were around.’
‘It is eight o’clock,’ Parnell pointed out. He calculated that it would be two a.m. in Paris.
‘From the way you talked on Saturday, you’re an authority on the bars of Georgetown. You fancy buying a girl a drink on her way home?’
‘Sure,’ accepted Parnell, surprised as well as pleased.
‘I’ll follow you.’
It meant he didn’t have to worry about lights in his rear-view mirror, Parnell supposed, as he led the way back into the city. One thought prompted another. Apart from the first two or three days after having his lawyer’s warning confirmed by the FBI, Parnell had increasingly found it difficult completely to believe he was in any physical danger, the more so as the days passed, although he still did what he considered to be taking care. But the FBI had been serious. So, too, had Beverley’s ex-husband. From which it was logical that anyone was exposed by association with him. He took his normal route home, crossing at the Key Bridge, but didn’t find any convenient parking in Georgetown itself, so he continued on to his reserved slot at Washington Square. There was a second space for Beverley practically outside the apartment.
He held her door open for her and said: ‘I hope you don’t mind the walk.’
‘It hardly counts as a walk.’
She took his arm almost automatically as they went back into Georgetown. He chose the bar he’d found on his first few days in the city. The student he’d got to know wasn’t there any longer. Beverley asked for beer and he had the same.
She said at once: ‘I didn’t wait on at work accidentally. I’m the elected spokesperson.’
To say what?’
‘To ask what,’ she corrected. ‘Why’d you test that particular batch of stuff, rather than anything else?’
The question brought Parnell’s mind back to his thoughts about inherent danger on the way in from McLean. ‘I was thinking, on the way here. Rebecca was murdered. The Bureau and Barry both think I could be targeted, too.’
‘Why?’
Parnell humped his shoulders. ‘No one’s worked out yet why Rebecca was killed. Or why anyone would want to kill me. But if I’m at risk, then so must be anyone who’s with me.’
‘Me, you mean!’ She sounded surprised.
‘You’re with me.’
She sniggered an uncertain laugh and actually looked around the crowded bar. ‘It’s not easy to take that on board.’
Parnell said: ‘That’s what I did, the first time I was warned – actually looked around me as if expecting to see someone coming at me.’
‘Has anyone? Come at you, I mean?’
‘No.’
‘Maybe there was something …?’ Beverley stopped, looking awkwardly into her drink.
‘I think that’s a big part of the investigation, trying to find out if there was anything in Rebecca’s past,’ guessed Parnell. He definitely had to use the excuse of getting his own car back to talk to Howard Dingley or David Benton.
‘I’m sorry … I wasn’t …’ Beverley stumbled.
‘It’s OK.’
‘It seems unreal … talking about murder and the possibility of someone trying to murder you. Talking of terrorism! All unreal. I don’t think I ever believed it … properly took it in … when Barry used to talk about cases … killings.’
‘I thought it was right I should tell you.’
‘Thank you.’ She sniggered again. ‘This seems unreal as well, doesn’t it – you warning me I might get hit by a bullet meant for you?’
‘They go in for car accidents,’ corrected Parnell.
‘You didn’t answer my question, about testing those French formulae improvements. It was something to do with Rebecca, wasn’t it?’
‘She was curious about it, that’s all.’
‘With good reason.’
<
br /> Parnell shook his head. ‘Not because she thought there was anything wrong with them. They went outwith the normal delivery system.’
‘Hardly sufficient to become curious.’
‘It doesn’t seem to be, not now,’ accepted Parnell. ‘It did to her.’
‘What did you mean about everything coming down to money?’
That had been a stupid, unthinking remark, acknowledged Parnell. ‘I don’t want you – any of you – to get mixed up in this, any more than you already have been. I’m sorry now that I asked you all in the first place. It had to be done in a hurry, for the confirmation I needed to get it stopped.’
‘To get what stopped?’
‘The production and distribution.’
‘Distribution where?’
‘Stop it, Beverley.’
‘We – the unit – are involved.’
‘No more.’
‘Did Dwight Newton and Russell Benn sign it all off as being safe?’
Parnell refused to reply. She was back in her last-word mode, he decided.
‘You know what I find strange?’ she continued, undeterred. ‘If I was head of an entire division, a vice president, or the research director, and a guy told me that something I’d cleared as safe could – would – kill people for whom it was prescribed, the first thing I’d do would be to demand it be proven to me under proper laboratory conditions.’
‘It was more important to put a stop on it – on the production and marketing.’
‘I’d have still wanted proof before I did anything.’
‘I offered them the opportunity. They didn’t take it. My priority was getting it halted.’
‘The other guys were uneasy about what happened today.’
‘I gave them – and you – my word it won’t ever be that way again. And it won’t.’
She sipped her beer in silence for several moments. ‘It’s a pretty impressive success for the department, isn’t it?’
‘I suppose it is.’ It was the first time he’d thought of it being that.
‘What did Newton say?’
‘They were both numbed. But he did thank me.’
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