Jeff Buick - Lethal Dose

He was quiet for a minute. “No, but I’m getting hungry. How about Chinese?”

She took a good look at his leg. “After we get something to bandage that and get you some painkillers.”

“It’s a flesh wound,” Gordon said, putting some pressure on it and wincing. He saw the look on her face and grimaced. “Okay, first the leg, then dinner.”

The cabdriver, whose name was Eric, found an ATM on the southeast outskirts of Richmond and Gordon withdrew three thousand dollars. He counted out fifty twenties and handed them across the front seat. Eric slipped them into his pocket with a nod of his head and a grin.

“They already know where we are, so this is probably a good time to stock up on cash,” he said to Jennifer.

He had the cabbie stop in front of a pharmacy, and Jennifer ran in and stocked up on extra-strength Tylenol and some compresses and white tape. She carefully bandaged his leg in the backseat of the cab and he took two of the pills. She had a close look at his wound while applying the gauze. Gordon was right-the damage was mostly superficial. The bullet had gone right through and the muscle was damaged, but the bones were intact. When they were finished, Gordon asked Eric, “You know where we could get some authentic Chinese food?”

“Hey, I live on Chinese. I know the best places. You care which part of the city we end up in?”

“Get us away from the ATM I just used,” Gordon said. “Other than that, I don’t care.”

“What happened to the guys chasing us?” she asked.

“You don’t want to know.”

They lapsed into silence and watched the darkened city flash by. Everything so normal: cars stopping for red lights, couples out walking their dogs. But for them things were far from normal. They both knew that this fight had become a fight for their life. And Bruce Andrews was not going to stop. Somehow they had to take him down. But the question that was running through both their minds as Eric pulled up in front of a restaurant was How? How can we convince someone in a position of power that Andrews is corrupt? They had the SEC on his tail with the accounting irregularities and they now had samples of the virus taken from the White Oak lab, but whom did they go to with the evidence? It was a million-dollar question.

Eric told them he preferred to sit in his car and ordered some takeout while they were in the restaurant. They sat in a booth tucked away in a corner, and when the server came around with Chinese tea, Gordon asked her, “Is there anyone here who speaks and reads Mandarin?”

She gave him a strange look.“This is a Chinese restaurant. We all speak Mandarin, and a couple of the cooks speak Cantonese.”

“Okay, is there anyone on your staff with a technical background? Medical, sciences, that sort of thing?”

“Sure, that would be Kelly, one of our waiters. He’s in his third year at university, majoring in biology. Want me to send him over?”

“Yes, please.”

A few minutes later, a young Chinese man approached with a puzzled look on his face. “You were asking for someone who speaks Mandarin and knows something about biology?” he asked.

Jennifer slipped the CD from her pocket and held it up. “We need to know what’s on this disk. We’ll pay you to translate it.”

“I’m working right now,” he said. “I can do it tomorrow.”

Gordon pulled out the remainder of the cash from the ATM withdrawal. “Three hundred dollars says you plug that into your computer and do it now.” He set the money on the table and placed a saltshaker on it.

Starving university students love cash. Kelly smiled and said, “Give me a minute. My computer’s in the back.” He returned a minute later with a Sony laptop and set it up on the table adjacent to Gordon and Jennifer’s. He took the disk and slipped it into the CD drive.

“This goes nowhere but between us and you,” Gordon cautioned him.

“For three hundred bucks, I don’t have a problem with that. I’ll even get them to throw a few extra shrimp in your chop suey,” he said, a huge grin pasted across his face. Fifteen minutes later, he joined them at their table. He wasn’t smiling. “Do you know what’s on here?” he asked.

“We have our suspicions,” Jennifer said, setting down her chopsticks. “What did you find?”

Kelly ran his hand through his hair and shook his head. “This is really serious stuff. Really serious.” He looked upset and his hands were shaking.

“We suspect that there are research notes on that disk for a hemorrhagic virus,” Jennifer said. “A lethal virus that was developed by a Chinese research scientist for a local pharmaceutical company. Is that fairly close?”

Kelly swallowed, his hands shaking so badly he set the disk on the table.“Yes.That’swhat is on the disk. How did you know that?”

“It’s a long story. But you can trust me when I say we’re the good guys here. We’re trying to nail the people who created this bug.”

“Is there anything else on the disk?” Gordon asked.

“Just a footnote at the end.” He dug into his shirt pocket and pulled out a napkin with some writing on it. “I jotted down the translation.” He handed it to Jennifer, who was closest to him.

“ ‘He has someone of great influence and power working with him. I am convinced it is one of the four.’ ” She read it one more time and asked Kelly, “The reference to ‘one of the four’- does that mean anything in Chinese?”

Kelly, who had stopped shaking, thought for a minute, then said, “No. There’s nothing in Chinese culture that emphasizes anything about ‘the four.’ I don’t think it’s on the disk simply because the author was Chinese.”

“Okay, thanks,” Gordon said, retrieving the disk from the table and handing the money to the young man. As an afterthought, he said, “Here,” and handed him another two hundred dollars. “Don’t say anything about this. Okay?”

Kelly looked scared. “Absolutely no way am I saying one word about this. I read the newspapers and watch television. I know what this is all about and I don’t want to be involved.”

“Thanks, again,” Gordon said. The waiter disappeared into the kitchen and Gordon turned to Jennifer. “Well, what now? What do you think Dr. Wai was saying with that little quip?”

Jennifer was slow to answer. When she did, it was with carefully chosen words. “I think the ‘he’ and ‘him’ in the message refer to Bruce Andrews. Certainly, it was Andrews who had Dr. Wai develop the virus so they could get Zancor through FDA approval. But who is ‘of great influence and power’?”

“I’m still in some sort of a state of disbelief that this whole thing was about getting a drug approved. I can’t believe people would kill just to get an FDA approval.”

“It’s all about money, Gordon,” Jennifer said. “You have no idea what goes on behind the scenes with the pharmaceutical companies and the regulatory boards. Veritas and the other Big Pharma have enormous influence in D.C. and in Congress. But there are times when drugs get stalled in the NDA and someone digs in their heels. When that happens, the company can either accept the hundred-or two-hundred-million-dollar loss for the R amp;D that went into the drug’s development and move ahead, or they can resort to slimeball tactics to try to get it through. Sometimes they’ll dig up dirt on the FDA employee who’s keeping the approval from going through. In some instances, they’ve been known to physically threaten people. And you heard what Elizabeth Ripley over at the SEC said about that young woman with three children.”

“So they’re willing to kill in order to get their drugs to market. Christ, what a bunch.”