BLIND TRIAL

by Brian Deer

  “Didn’t waste any time, that one. Was on his PhD—not even a post-doc—when he appeared on our radar. Approached us, he did. Came to us, of course. ‘Oh,’ he goes, ‘can you help me with this little problem?’ And, before we knew it, he turned real ugly.”

  “Seems kind of mean. Like an unscrupulous kind of vibe.”

  “You got it. ‘Unscrupulous.’ That’s the word. No scruples. Of course, he came to us. My lab published twice as much as any on all this. So, when we got a patent on something we developed, he went out and claimed we stole the idea from him.”

  Didn’t Wilson say that on Wednesday morning? Stole any patents lately? “And did you? Sorry, I mean did the company. I mean, did the company use something? I mean, what happened with that, do you know?”

  Doc Mayr ducked like a dog under a bridge. “There’s the rental place there. Don’t you go past. There. Go past and we gotta go round again.”

  He pulled into the returns lot and joined a line of vehicles. Maybe five were Nissan Sentras. An attendant waved him forward, inspected the car, and logged its barcode with a scanner.

  Ben rubbed his bruised face, unshaved for days, looked under the seats, grabbed Doctorjee’s briefcase and dumped it into a trash can. Then he helped Doc Mayr open a pack of Dorals and hauled their baggage from the trunk.

  “You reckon they’re in it together then?” he asked, as she wobbled beside him toward a Dollar shuttle bus. “I mean, you reckon they’ll make trouble for us Monday?”

  Even before she responded, he realized his premise—and recalled what she’d said on the freeway. “If our vaccine gets stalled,” she’d said, framing a conditional. “If it gets stalled,” she’d said. If.

  They were talking—both talking—as if the license might happen, as if what they learned yesterday meant nothing.

  At the steps of the bus, she dropped the cigarette and scraped it to death beneath a shoe. “They might try to make trouble for us. They might. Yes, they might. But, when all’s said and done, what does she know? Doctorjee forged a couple of SPIRE forms?”

  “Isn’t that fraud though, if it was government-funded?”

  “It’s not good, I’ll grant you. Be the end of his career in medical research, I’m glad to say. But is she going to jeopardize her own future to raise something petty like that? And she’s only got forty-eight hours.”

  Fifty

  HIROSHI MURAYAMA lay on his back and stared at the bedroom ceiling. So, this would be it? Another conversation. Perhaps worse than his grilling downtown. At least with the police he knew where the truth lay. He knew he’d prove himself innocent. But with Sumiko he feared that events may have occurred that might not be so assuredly reversed.

  For days, he’d sensed they were drifting from their moorings. Their relationship felt subtly altered. In all the hotels where they’d slept since that night in Shanghai, she was always so passionate, so loving. But here in San Francisco, with that Ben on the scene, she was distant, held back, been a stranger. Now, with the blinds pulled tight against the morning, he felt sure she was going to say no.

  She stroked his chest. She knew what pleased him. But her touch didn’t arouse him today. If they weren’t to live together, he must protect his feelings. He wanted this torment to end.

  “There’s something I must say.” She withdrew her hand. “It’s been preying on my mind. I feel that it’s time for the truth.”

  “About Mr. Louviere? Is this right? It’s him?”

  “Yes. I’m sorry. I’ve wanted to talk about it. I really have. It’s all very confusing. I’ve not been very honest, and I’m sorry.”

  So, this would be it? His suspicions were correct. All his plans were spiraling to disaster. He’d been sure on Tuesday, when he caught them outside, that he detected an energy between them. That night, and Wednesday, lovemaking was different: detached, mechanical, cold. Her body was there, but her mind was somewhere else. Where else but that fit young stud?

  “Not honest you say? About you and Mr. Louviere?”

  She touched his knee. “That’s right.”

  “You see him Thursday? He was your meeting?”

  “That’s right. Ben was my meeting. I’m sorry. You know how I value honesty above everything.”

  He rolled onto his side to face the Twentieth Street windows. He didn’t want her to witness his pain.

  “I’m sorry,” she repeated. “I’ve kept my life in compartments. I’ve been so silly. I shouldn’t have done it.”

  “So?” He spoke toward the clock on the nightstand. “What is it you tell me now?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. How do I say this? It’s complicated.”

  “Please, keep nothing hidden. Please tell me the truth. The whole truth.”

  “Yes, you’re right.” Behind him, her legs moved. “I’ll be glad to get it off my conscience.”

  “Go on, please tell me it all.”

  “You see, he’s here on an assignment. A special assignment. Very hush-hush. For the company.”

  That wasn’t the whole story. Her tone said as much. She was keeping something back—something dark. “No, I do not think this is only a work assignment. It was him last night. He calls you at one o’clock. After one o’clock. You didn’t fool me.”

  “Yes, okay, it was him. But I am telling the truth. I want to.” She pressed his spine between the fourth and fifth vertebrae. “He’s been investigating the trial. That’s why Dr. Mayr’s here. He’s her special assistant.”

  Hiroshi rolled over and studied Sumiko’s eyes. “He calls you after one o’clock to talk about a clinical trial? No, I don’t think so. No, not correct.”

  She smiled thinly, but warmly. He loved her smiles. She was so very beautiful, his Sumiko.

  “Honestly. There’s been a problem with Wilson. They’ve been investigating irregularities at the center. I reported him to the company. It’s all a huge secret because of their license next week. They’ve been doing source data verification.”

  “And this brings him here?”

  “I’m not supposed to say. I feel guilty about telling you at all.”

  “At one o’clock in the morning?”

  “Yes.”

  Hiroshi sat up and they faced each other. “A problem with phase III?” He kissed her nose.

  “It’s all a total shambles. Really shocking. Things they’ve been doing you actually wouldn’t believe.”

  He kissed her again. “You must tell me.”

  She kissed him back. “I will.”

  Hiroshi rose and moved to the foot of the bed. He grabbed her ankles and pulled.

  Sumiko fell back, her arms above her head. She lay naked beneath his gaze.

  Then he pulled her further and knelt on the floor as her beautiful knees moved apart.

  AFTER TEN or more minutes of greedy pleasure—writhing, moaning, twisting, gasping—she retreated to the living room and the Banggai cardinalfish, where her secret sisters had their say. Where had her mind gone to? Not to one man, nor the other. To sensation: to selfish enjoyment. She’d rolled and wriggled and squeezed Hiroshi’s ears. She’d clutched his hair tight between her fingers. But who was really down there? Were they really connecting? Why did she see those eyes?

  Blue eyes.

  She lifted the lid of the aquarium and squatted. Tangs and royal grammas darted to safety. Confusion swirled as she sprinkled tropical food flakes. Hiroshi was so kind, so attentive. She watched air pumping, bubbling to the surface. He knew how much she adored it. She could never forget that night in Shanghai. But Ben had thrilled her too.

  Were two men more different? One, the Japanese scientist: the fierce intellectual, six years her senior; her teacher, guide, and mentor. The other, the young American: the athlete and artist; with those puppydog hands and that smell. Both had such strengths, such desirable qualities. What woman wouldn’t wallow in their virtues? But they spoke to different parts of her. Two vocabularies. Two languages. And she’d had the
m here speaking at once.

  A thump from the bedroom, bare feet in the corridor, then Hiroshi appeared naked in the doorway. “Tell me now about the assignment. Everything. I like this. I think this is good. Very good.”

  She rose from the tank and shut the lid as fish nibbled and sucked around the reef. “Let’s take a shower, and I’ll tell you over breakfast. There’s a place I know by the water.”

  “Yes, we go out.” He jumped on the settee. “But you keep me too long in suspense. Tell me about Trudy Mayr.”

  She turned from the aquarium. “It’s really very shabby. It all started with Wilson. I’ve told you about Frank Wilson, I think.”

  “Many times. How could I forget? What goes around, comes around. Inga ōhō.”

  “He’s such an asshole. You wouldn’t believe. And we were losing so many volunteers at the center. Then Doctorjee turns up, and have you heard of SPIRE?”

  “Sustaining Participation, Involvement, and Retention Endeavor?”

  “That’s the one. You wouldn’t believe what they were doing with that.”

  “If Trudy Mayr is involved, I believe anything.”

  “So, she’s looked at our database this week and found Doctorjee was signing lost to follow-up forms, pretending to be relatives of the volunteers, and mailing them to SPIRE himself. He was actually forging their signatures.”

  “Yes. Yes. What we expect in American company.” Hiroshi fell backward on the settee and pumped his legs. “Ja no michi wa hebi.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Snakes will follow the paths of a snake.”

  “Yes, well, the whole place is a shambles. Wilson’s a disgrace. Grahacharya’s a research cheat. Probably they both are.”

  “This is good.” Hiroshi leaped up and danced round the ottoman. “Doctorjee forge papers. Most excellent.”

  “And think, this is the Clinical Evaluation Center. We’ve got more than sixteen hundred volunteers. That’s six percent of the entire enrollment. It’s the lead center for the whole trial. I think we should do something. Report it.”

  Hiroshi quit dancing. “Do something? Report it?” He stepped toward her and stroked her hair. “Report what?”

  “All of it. Everything.”

  “I don’t understand. Report everything to who?”

  “Well, there’s FDA, or Health and Human Services, the Inspector General’s office, the Office of Research Integrity at NIH, because a lot of it is government money.”

  Hiroshi slumped on the settee and slapped his knees. “No. I don’t think so. We have no time. Mr. McKechnie says we have much to do. We serve the hotel with papers, and find last room guests, and get names of floor staff. We’re still holding the room for a private detective and forensic specialists from New York. Sanomo chairman personally insists.”

  “Later then. I’m not going to let this rest.”

  He rose from the settee and circled the room. “Yes, we have good sport with this. Tell this joke to many people. Wilson screws up phase III and Doctorjee forges papers. Excellent. Very good. Very funny.”

  “But it’s more than a joke. It’s a scandal.”

  “Oh, my darling, I really do love you.” He stroked her cheeks and kissed her nose. “But this is not so strange. We must look to the big picture. The strategic picture. A dog does not eat a dog.”

  Fifty-one

  KNOLL REFF Profiles, which furnished the BerneWerner Building, stopped at the door to the chief executive’s suite. After that, every element was unique. The focus of her office was a bird’s-eye maple desk, with a swivel-and-tilt armchair in scarlet leather, and a three-seat scarlet leather couch. Between a bathroom and a rack of, mostly empty, chrome shelves squatted a chrome-legged conference table.

  Marcia Gelding turned away from a wall of plate glass where for the last five minutes she’d stood in bare feet on a silver carpet watching Saturday evening traffic on the freeway. The sun hung low behind the Downtown Connector, glowing orange in the table legs and shelves.

  She tiptoed to the desk, slumped in the chair, and buried her face in her arms. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken us?” Her British accent resonated in the maple. “My God, my God, it’s ruination.”

  Mr. Hoffman looked up from the scarlet couch, where he was licking the backs of his hands. “Will you make the call? Or you want me to do it? Or you want to wait for Trudy and talk?”

  “My god, I’m sure she’s told them already. My God. The FBI’s probably on the way now.”

  “Hold on, Marcia. I’m not so sure. There’d be a cruiser outside already.”

  She raised her face, took a string of deep breaths, tugged a Kleenex from a box, and blew her nose. “I’ll need to phone Richard in London as soon as possible. If I’m moving back to the UK, I don’t want him selling the house.”

  Her general counsel fingered his knuckles as she tapped a PC screen. She’d already Googled California’s laws of homicide, and the meaning of “obstruction of justice.” Now she searched for the company’s duty to report adverse events to FDA.

  “So, let’s at least get this right. Exactly when did Doctorjee first know about this syndrome thing?”

  “Not too sure. Maybe eight, nine, months ago. Something like that. I’m guessing.”

  “My God.”

  She scrolled through a chapter on new drug applications in the Code of Federal Regulations. “In that case, we’re done for. God almighty. Title 21, section 312. And I quote.

  “The sponsor must also notify FDA of any unexpected fatal or life-threatening suspected adverse reaction as soon as possible but in no case later than seven calendar days after the sponsor’s initial receipt of the information.”

  Mr. Hoffman half nodded and half shook his head. “Okay, I’m following you there. But he never told us. Him and Wilson did this thing without us knowing one thing about any of it. Data was coming over clean to the Athens trials unit.”

  “That makes no difference. You know the position. Dr. Grahacharya is a director and principal officer of BerneWerner Biomed. What he knows, the company knows.”

  “Okay, strictly you have a point. Sure. But I’ve had one of my people look into this and been assured there’s nothing in writing. No emails on the servers. Nothing. And even if the company does take some heat and those two assholes go to jail, that doesn’t have to mean you and me.”

  “Listen, if we get hit under Title 21, that’s it. It’s curtains for all of us. The company’s down the loo. I’m out of work. You’re out of work. Just imagine the scandal.”

  “Hasn’t gotta be that way, necessarily.”

  “No? One news report—one Tweet—about the vaccine making people sick, and our share price will drop like a brick down a well. And when it hits the value of the Columbian zloty, Sanomo, or the Chinese, will take us over, sack the staff, shut the labs, and leave nothing but a drawer of brand names, trademarks, and copyrights to show we ever existed.”

  “Sure, this isn’t looking too good from where we are now. I agree. But I think you might be overreacting. We can play this thing smarter than that.”

  “Overreacting?” She stabbed the screen on her desk. “You realize even failing to notify FDA about that woman getting sick can mean three years in prison? And that’s before we get to the murder part of it.”

  “Government will settle. Always do.”

  “And it was you, I might remind you, who brought him to us in the first place. You recommended him personally. Not only to me but, after I expressed reservations, you recommended him again under ‘any other business,’ as I recall.”

  “Me? I recommended him as Vice President, Research, out at Athens. You made him EVP and put him downstairs.”

  “That was Dr. Poyser. I went along for a quiet life. And now look where we are.” She swiveled in the chair. “And I’ll tell you something else. If, by some blinding miracle, we scrape through this business, your scholarship scheme is history.”

  “I don
’t see the connection.”

  “Biochemistry degrees, microbiology, pharmacology. That’s what we’ll pay for. Look at this. We’ve got a twenty-six-year-old boy running around with enough information to have everyone arrested and put me on welfare.”

  “Yeah, well right, it’s tricky. I see that. But he’ll be okay. The kid’ll come through. Me and him, we’ll do us some talking.”

  “And what about this dreadful Sumiko woman?”

  “Dr. Honda? Nothing. Doesn’t know jack. Reply forms for SPIRE. Paperclip stuff. Got nothing on the Glinski case at all.”

  A MUFFLED rapping interrupted the conversation: knocking on the outer office door. Marcia got up and retreated to the bathroom while Mr. Hoffman admitted Trudy and Ben Louviere.

  The sound of running water didn’t mask Trudy’s voice. The Director of Vaccine Development was on the warpath. “So, where is he? Where is he? Where’s that murderer? Is he here? I warned you about that man, that beast.”

  Marcia returned to the desk, dabbing her face with a towel. “Now, all in good time. We’re going to call police headquarters and find one of our people there. It’s not easy to raise them over the weekend. But first, let’s sit down for a moment and let’s think of what we’re going to say and, gosh, Mr. Louviere, your face.”

  “Accident ma’am. Nothing. Thanks for asking.”

  She returned to the window and looked toward west Atlanta, where the sun now touched the horizon. A curtain of cloud was building from the south. AccuWeather forecast rain.

  Trudy lowered herself onto the scarlet couch and set down her shoulder purse beside it. “All I want to know is why he did it? Why? That’s the question. Why?”

  “All in good time,” Marcia said. “Why hardly matters now. I think we’re beyond that. What matters now is where we are and what we do.”

  “Does matter. I’ve thought about this. Alright, it’s true even one case like Helen Glinski would have caused us mighty big problems. Would have lost us a bunch of volunteers. Delay in the results, unquestionably. License delay, too. Unquestionably. But we might still have ironed all that out, given more time.”