‘They weren’t professional – cut corners,’ declared the woman. ‘They should be called to account for that.’
‘Not everything was made available to us. I’ve asked that it should be.’
‘You going to go over their heads, complain to New York?’
‘I hadn’t thought of doing that,’ admitted Parnell. ‘That’s what Newton said he had to do, talk to New York.’
‘Let’s hope he does it.’
‘He can’t avoid it!’ exclaimed Parnell.
‘You’d be surprised what someone will do to keep five hundred thousand a year and stock options.’
‘He can’t avoid it,’ insisted Parnell, although another sand speck of doubt settled in his mind.
‘It’s late,’ Beverley suddenly announced.
‘We should eat,’ accepted Parnell. Giorgio’s restaurant was less than a hundred yards up Wisconsin Avenue. It was unthinkable that he should go there with another woman, totally innocent and uninvolved though they were.
‘I’ve got something ready at home,’ said Beverley.
Parnell later decided that it was probably the thought of Giorgio’s trattoria and the celebration he’d planned with Rebecca there that prompted his response. ‘You mind if I drive home with you? In your car, I mean?’
Beverley looked steadily at him, understanding immediately. ‘You are taking it seriously, aren’t you?’
‘If I’d been with Rebecca that night, she would probably still be alive.’
‘Or you’d both be dead.’
‘I prefer it my way.’
Beverley took his arm again on their way back to Washington Square but Parnell could feel a stiffness. Beverley’s apartment was off Dupont and they drove there in silence. As she parked she said: ‘I didn’t like that.’
‘I’m sorry. I’m being overreactive.’ He made no attempt to get out of the car.
‘There’s enough for two,’ said Beverley. ‘I was going to butterfly it anyway.’
It was, coincidentally, rib-eye steak, large enough easily to be shared between the two of them. There was salad and a Napa Valley red but not a lot of conversation.
As he helped her clear away, Parnell said: ‘I’m sorry if I frightened you.’
‘It’s OK,’ said Beverley, in a voice indicating that it wasn’t.
‘We’ve only been out together twice,’ said Parnell, trying to lift the mood. ‘Maybe we should avoid each other from now on.’
Beverley held him for several moments with one of her direct looks. ‘Maybe,’ she said, in the same voice as before.
‘I’m at dinner, with guests,’ complained Edward C. Grant.
‘This can’t wait,’ insisted Dwight Newton. He could hear people in the background.
‘What?’
Newton told him. Unsettled by the length of the silence from the other end, Newton said: ‘You still there?’
‘I’m going into the study. Wait.’ The line went dead and then picked up again, without any background noise. Grant said:‘You told me it was safe, Dwight. You said you and Benn had run all the checks and that it was safe.’
‘I double-checked Russell’s tests,’ tried Newton.
‘But you didn’t, did you?’
‘He didn’t do this test.’
‘Why didn’t you? You take two weeks and tell me everything’s kosher, Parnell takes two days and discovers it’s fucking fatal!’
‘It’s a genetic discipline.’
‘This … whatever it’s called … is known not to affect mice, upon which Benn did test, but it does affect humans, right? That’s what you said.’
‘I know what I said.’ Newton wished he hadn’t sounded so uncertain.
‘So, it would have been obvious to do the comparison.’
‘It wasn’t done,’ capitulated Newton.
‘You know I should fire you? And Benn?’
‘Yes.’ But you wouldn’t, Newton thought.
‘But that I can’t, because of the attention it would attract.’
‘You want us to resign?’ That wasn’t possible either.
‘Still too much risk of publicity. You’re hanging on by a thread, both of you. Hanging on by default. You hear what I’m saying?’
‘Yes.’
‘Benn with you?’
‘No.’
‘You tell him what I’m telling you.’
‘You pressed me on this … wanted the decision you got,’ said Newton, clumsily.
The line went silent again for what seemed longer than before. Finally Grant said: ‘If that was a threat, the thread by which you’re hanging just started to fray, Dwight.’
‘It wasn’t any sort of threat,’ retreated the vice president, weakly. ‘Have France gone into production … started to distribute?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘It’s got to be stopped … all of it.’
‘Of course it’s got to be stopped!’ said Grant, irritably. ‘You call them, right now. Wake Saby up.’
‘I thought you’d want to do that,’ said Newton. He was soaked in perspiration, bowed forward over his desk with his free hand supporting his forehead.
‘It’s your responsibility, Dwight. Everything’s your responsibility. You’ve got the authority. Exercise it.’
‘You going to tell the board?’
‘Of course I’m going to have to tell the board. And you’re going to be here when I do, explaining it.’
Newton felt physically sick, swallowing against the bile at the back of his throat. ‘What about Parnell?’
‘What about Parnell?’ echoed the other man from New York.
‘Hopefully he’s prevented a potential catastrophe. Shouldn’t he be thanked … congratulated?’
There was yet another hesitation, although shorter this time. ‘Did you thank him?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’ll do, for the moment.’
Until you’ve worked out your escape from every danger and pitfall, you bastard, thought Newton. ‘OK.’
‘Talk to me about Parnell,’ demanded Grant. ‘Is he a whistleblower?’
Newton at once saw the chance to unsettle the other man. ‘He’s certainly got a lot of principles. All he kept on about today was stopping everything.’
‘You ask him why he made the check that he did?’
‘Of course. He worked the weekend, in his own time. Said he did it because the stuff was just there, in his laboratory. That there was no positive reason.’
‘You believe that?’ asked Grant, his voice betraying that he clearly didn’t.
‘I’m telling you what he said,’ insisted Newton, uncaring about the petulance. He felt drained, too exhausted to keep his thoughts in order.
‘What else did he say?’ persisted the president.
Newton weighed the questioning. ‘He wanted to run his tests of everything from France when he learned that there was some stuff he hadn’t been shown.’
‘Let him,’ instructed Grant. ‘I don’t want him thinking anything’s being kept away from him.’
‘I was obviously going to anyway,’ said Newton.
‘They were in it together, weren’t they?’ abruptly demanded Grant. ‘Parnell and that damned girl, probing together. And now he’s discovered this! If he tells the FBI, the FBI will tell the Food and Drug Administration, who’ll tell whoever’s responsible for licensing in France. And we’re dangling from a high branch.’
Newton felt a surge of satisfaction at the fear that was coming clearly down the line. Unusually emboldened in his own desperation – sure there was nothing left for him to lose – Newton said: ‘We’d better hope he doesn’t suffer an accident to make the FBI – and the media – even more curious than they already are, hadn’t we?’
The line went dead from the other end.
Twenty-Three
David Benton described Parnell’s call as coincidence, because they’d intended contacting him to arrange another meeting.
‘You got something?’ demande
d Parnell, at once.
‘Just touching bases,’ side-stepped the FBI man. ‘Guess you’ll need to liaise with your attorney. Get back to us asap.’
Barry Jackson’s secretary didn’t know when he would be out of court. Parnell asked for the lawyer to call back, juggling in his mind all the things he had to do, smiling to himself as Benton’s phrase intruded into his mind – trying to remember all the bases he had to cover. It was a bitty, fragmented schedule. He supposed he should add to it the promised phone call to his mother. That morning there had been two replies from England to his apology letters – one, from someone he’d worked with on the genome project in Cambridge, asked why he didn’t come back. There was a position available. All he had to do was officially apply and it was his. Sublime academia awaited. Parnell thought it truly sounded sublime, as well as knowing he wouldn’t make the application.
First on Parnell’s list of things to do was to reassure his unit after what Beverley had told him. He waited for everyone to arrive, Beverley being the last, before going out into the communal laboratory, conscious of their waiting expectantly.
‘I told you yesterday that what happened then won’t happen again,’ reiterated Parnell. ‘Now I’m telling you one more time, because I know there’s some concern. You all know now that it was necessary. And why it was necessary. But I’ve made it clear to the vice president how and why it had to be done. He’s grateful. Now we get back to the assignment we’ve been given.’
‘Has everything been stopped in France?’ said Lapidus.
‘The vice president was talking to New York overnight,’ said Parnell.
‘So, what’s the answer?’ demanded Lapidus. ‘I – none of us – want to get caught up in a licensing situation.’
It was career concern, which was understandable, accepted Parnell. Positively, he said: ‘That’s not going to happen either.’
‘It surely had to go before the licensing authorities in France?’ said Sato.
‘These are things I’m going to find out,’ promised Parnell. ‘I have to …’
‘Find out today?’ broke in Peter Battey. ‘We none of us know what the hell’s going on. Which isn’t any way to work. How we came here to work.’
Another base to cover, thought Parnell. ‘If I can. I’m waiting to hear from the vice president. We didn’t get the whole range of French products made up from the new formulae. When we do – something else I’m hopefully arranging today – I’ll personally do the testing, no one else. After all, we scarcely need confirmation.’
‘Everything requires confirmation,’ contradicted Beverley.
‘Which Dwight and Russell can provide, after my initial examination,’ suggested Parnell.
‘You involved us,’ said Lapidus, close to an accusation. ‘We found the bad science, we’re caught up now in bad science. Your professional reputation’s established. Ours isn’t.’
‘What is it you want?’ asked Parnell.
‘Written acknowledgement that this unit – each of us named – found and exposed the bad science,’ declared Lapidus.
There couldn’t have been more than one smoky-bar-room or wine-and-cheese session to have reached that decision, decided Parnell.
Beverley said: ‘Get real, for Christ’s sake, Ted! You think you’re going to get something like that on paper from Dubette!’
Beverley hadn’t been in a smoky bar room or had cheese and wine, Parnell knew. ‘I’ll try to get it, in the form of an official letter of thanks, which is the best I imagine I can hope for. If I can’t even get that …’ He hesitated, embarrassed at what he intended to say. ‘If I can’t get that, taking into account my professional reputation, will you all accept individually written letters from me to each of you?’ From the uncertainty that went through the group before him, Parnell guessed none of them had anticipated such an offer.
Lapidus, clearly once more the dominant figure, said: ‘I think we need to consider that.’
‘I don’t,’ said Beverley. ‘I don’t think I need any sort of letter. I think this is fucking ridiculous!’
‘I’d be happy with something from you,’ Sean Sato told Parnell.
‘So would I,’ agreed Mark Easton.
Parnell shook his head. ‘Do what Ted suggests, think on it. While you’re thinking on it, keep always in mind that I’ll do everything possible, everything in my power, to avoid your careers being affected by this. I don’t, in fact, see why your careers should in any way be affected, apart from being bettered, but obviously it’s something worrying you …’
‘Some of us!’ qualified Beverley.
‘However, I’m looking beyond this,’ picked up Parnell. ‘I could not be happier, more satisfied, with the way this unit’s worked out. We’ve considered what’s worrying … some of you … Now hear what’s worrying me. What’s worrying me is that this is going to fuck up what we’ve had going, thus far. I don’t want it to. And I hope you don’t want it to – won’t let it – happen either.’ He looked at Beverley. ‘What we’ve done for Dubette should establish us, not knock us off balance, damaging what we’re building between us. Have I made myself clear?’
‘I hope we both have,’ said Lapidus.
* * *
Parnell decided a further hour without contact from Dwight Newton was sufficient. Refusing to wait any longer – or risk being fobbed off on the telephone by one of the man’s protective secretariat – Parnell made another unannounced approach into the centre of the Spider’s Web. This time he did stop off at the chemical research unit and wasn’t surprised to be told Russell Benn was with the vice president. At Newton’s outer office, the man’s personal assistant, an indeterminately aged woman with crimped hair, not wearing a wedding band, said the vice president was in conference and could not be disturbed, under any circumstances. Parnell said he would wait but asked that the woman tell Newton that he was doing just that, waiting in the outer office.
‘He told me he wasn’t to be disturbed under any circumstances,’ repeated the woman, making no move towards Newton’s office.
‘And you told me,’ said Parnell.
‘I’ve no idea how long it’ll be.’
‘As long as it takes,’ said Parnell, settling himself in an easy chair in direct line with Newton’s office door. He ignored the magazines on a side table, near a tall plant with polished leaves, reminiscent of the FBI field office, inwardly unsettled by the doubt of the previous evening’s conversation with Beverley. Surely Newton had called New York – spoken to Edward C. Grant! It was inconceivable that Newton wouldn’t have made the call. Salaries and stock options didn’t come into the consideration – any consideration. For Newton to have hesitated, looked for an excuse or an escape, would be criminal. Literally criminal, opening him – and Dubette – up to both criminal and civil prosecution. But what if Newton hadn’t telephoned New York? Had looked – was still looking – for a way out? Should he go over the vice president’s head, as Beverley had asked if he would? He’d have to, Parnell accepted. He’d have no alternative. Another recollection from the previous night swirled into his mind, his now embarrassing insistence upon travelling home with the woman in her car. About which he shouldn’t be embarrassed, he told himself. The danger did exist. Without any reason, any evidence, for the speculation, he asked himself if it would increase, become any clearer, if he did go directly to New York? He didn’t have to, he realized. There was an intended meeting with the FBI team. He wasn’t sure – didn’t care – if it came within their jurisdiction. They’d have to take some action if he told them. It would, after all, amount to possible mass murder.
‘Would you do me a favour?’ he called to the obstructive personal assistant. ‘Would you just slip a message to Dwight and tell him I’m waiting out here. That the FBI are waiting on me to fix a meeting?’
‘He doesn’t want to be interrupted.’
‘Just tell him that,’ insisted Parnell.
‘He doesn’t want to be interrupted,’ the woman repeated.
She hesitated, looked for guidance to the other secretaries, each of whom shrugged, refusing advice or involvement, and finally got to her feet. She reappeared almost immediately at Newton’s office door, smiling with relief. ‘He says to come in.’
‘What meeting with the FBI?’ demanded Newton, virtually as Parnell crossed the threshold.
‘They want to see me again.’
‘What about?’
Russell Benn was beside the desk again and Parnell thought they looked like two boys exchanging secrets. ‘They didn’t say. I was told you were in conference. I thought I might have been invited.’
‘You were just about to be.’
‘Fortunate I came by, then. Have Paris been stopped?’
‘Yes.’
Parnell was unsure whether to believe the man. There was a possible way of finding out, he thought. ‘Had any been distributed?’
‘They’re checking.’
‘They don’t know?’ queried Parnell, disbelievingly.
‘It was the middle of the night!’ said Benn.
‘Now it’s getting towards the middle of their day!’ insisted Parnell.
‘They’re checking,’ repeated the vice president.
‘You haven’t yet seen the cultures.’ The overnight HPRT production was enormous.
‘I’d like to go over them in my laboratory,’ said Benn, unable to meet Parnell’s look as he spoke.
To avoid an accusing audience, thought Parnell, at once. The cultures weren’t sterile, so there was no reason why they shouldn’t be transferred. No reason, either, why Newton or Benn should be humiliated further. ‘Sure. Did you tell Paris we want everything that hasn’t been tested?’
Newton said: ‘I’m going to speak to Saby again, later. I haven’t forgotten.’
‘I’ve already prepared a schedule of what’s to come,’ added Benn, supportively, offering the single sheet of paper from which Parnell quickly saw that there were still six missing items. All were for child treatments.
‘They need to be withdrawn, ahead of any examination.’ said Parnell.
‘That’s what I’ve told Paris, that everything’s got to be stopped,’ assured Newton.
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