David Dun: Unacceptable Risk

Her work area was in a large room with over twenty cubi cles, each with at least an eighteen-inch computer screen, some with two or even three. Most of one wall was glass and beyond the glass was a large array of computer equipment. In addition, the complex held a large conference room, a lunch-room complete with cooking facilities, and a dorm- like sleeping room.

The place was a self-contained fortress. Indeed, all the of fice's perimeter walls were lined with Kevlar beneath studs laid over a heavy concrete wall. The windows in the outer walls-small openings above head height-were covered over with a so-called bulletproof plastic material. The place didn't have a true name; the people who worked there just called it "work" or "the office."

It secretly pleased Grady that Harry often picked the corner of her cubicle as a parking spot when Sam was in the of fice. He'd returned less than an hour ago, and she'd not seen him yet.

Her phone rang. That would be Sam, ready to be briefed on Bowden.

"We have some people coming in and I want you to brief them."

"Really? Nobody ever comes here."

"Sometimes the CIA does. Scotland Yard does."

"Sheesh. When?"

There was a long silence.

"I know. It's a secret and it'll happen when it happens."

The sound of cell doors slamming had become common place for Benoit Moreau. She did not live in squalor or misery, but the modern, antiseptic prison felt desolate. On her cell walls she'd hung art torn from magazines: photos of the Swiss Alps, the Pyrenees, and a picture of the Tour de France. There was also a picture of herself so that she would not forget what she was supposed to look like.

Benoit mostly lived in her mind and not in her cell. She had an exceptional ability to visualize what was not, but what might be, and consequently she never gave up. In the words of a writer of the New Testament, with which she had become familiar as a child, she knew both how to be abased and how to abound. It was a tribute to her otherwise ques tionable character that she did not allow the trampling of her personal pride to dismantle her psyche. She had thought long and hard about how she'd gotten here, and she dwelled particularly on the men she had bedded and duped along the way. Of them, she was really interested in only one, and she determined that she would find her way back to him. Life, she decided, was the sum total of many small choices and she had made many bad ones to get to this place.

Before her life with DuShane Chellis and his company, Grace Technologies, she had been a rising executive, before that a student with many honors, including being named prenier, graduating avec mention particuliere du jury, and having her examination paper published in Le Monde. A se ries of jobs in the computer industry and related medical ap plications had resulted in her rapid rise. She had acquired a reputation as a smart, aggressive young woman who could get things done. Born Bernice, she called herself Benoit, a man's name.

On a bright full-moon night in December she met DuShane Chellis at a party. Attending the event had been an after thought, and when she arrived, there was a buzz-people were talking about the consummate executive who was building a conglomerate faster than any businessman in French history. Some called him a savage because of his corporate takeover practices, but to Benoit, on that first evening, he was a charm ing savage. At the party, the first time he saw her, he kept his eyes on her. People noticed and opened a small path so that he could make his way to her. His attention and intensity were infectious; after a few minutes all those around him were glancing at her.

Within a few days she was hired as his assistant and within months a vice president. In six months the relationship became personal.

Benoit remembered him in the early years as uncompro mising, determined, passionate, and seemingly without weak ness. He could always concentrate and was never distracted, or so it seemed. He was a large man in every way, and when he walked into a room, he seemed to fill it. He knew how to relate to the man on the street and a prime minister. He seemed to Benoit to be the perfect corporate personality.

Like others who have lost control of their ego, as Chellis's success increased, he changed, became self-absorbed, abu sive, and paranoid. For Benoit the day came when the thought of being near his power was replaced by the thought of taking it.

That day did not start out bad. Reports from Malaysia re garding the genetic technology-vector technology it was called-were never more optimistic. A brilliant young French scientist by the name of Georges Raval had discovered some thing amazing. He had taken two macaque monkeys and traded their hearts in simultaneous heart transplant surgeries. Both monkeys accepted the new heart without rejection and with out the use of immunosuppressants. They had reprogrammed the immune systems of the two monkeys using a process familiarly known as "Chaperone." They expected that it would work on humans as well and would allow doctors to alter a patient's cells genetically in ways that made the expressed protein fundamentally different, and then allow the immune system to accept the altered tissue that resulted from the gene therapy-a genuine medical miracle.

She had walked into DuShane's office with two of the staffers that helped her administer the program. He was alone but on the phone yelling at a banker. He was in fair condition for age fifty-two, and he kept his salt-and-pepper gray hair impeccably groomed, swept back with natural waves. His face was unrounded by fat, more distinguished than pleasant. With his serious, dark eyes and the flat line of his mouth, he appeared to be a man who counted his conquests, a predator.

"I can always go across town. Don't ever forget that. And don't you dare ask me for more fees again." He slammed down the phone and looked at Benoit, then at her assistants.

"I have some very good news from Malaysia," Benoit began.

"Have you received Boudreaux's budget yet? The costs over there are out of sight."

"I mentioned that the budget will be here day after tomor row. You agreed."

"I ask for a simple thing and I can't get it!"

"Well, we wanted to share with you the great news concerning the research of Georges Raval, a young scientist."

"I already know about it. You were supposed to have those reports. I ask for things around here and people pay no attention."

"We discussed it and you agreed…"

"Then all I get is goddamn arguments. How can you do this and call yourself an executive? And why do you bring your damn toadies in here?" He dismissed the two assistants with a wave of his hand.

"That was rude and embarrassing."

"Don't fucking tell me what is rude. Rude is not getting the damn reports in on time. I have to run this whole com pany myself-do it all. Nobody else gets anything done. I have to watch, watch, watch. A bunch of damn children still shitting their pants."

"If you would not like to hear about-"

"Don't ever bring your flunkies in here unless I ask," he shouted.

"I am leaving "

"You are not leaving. Ever since I promoted you, you have been building a little empire. You think you're really doing something over in Malaysia. Well, I will tell you I started that when you were still a snot-nosed intern over at a bullshit company. So, now you want to run in here and tell me the good news as if you had something to do with it."

"We know it was your idea. I just thought it was important that-"

"Get on the couch. We're going to do what you're really good at."

"We're working."

He slapped her hard.

"I made you," he said. There was blood on her face. He continued to work himself into a rage. She did not deny him the sex he demanded and during the days to follow continued to offer it under less violent circumstances, and for that as much as the other bad choices, she still loathed herself.