Brian Freemantle - Dead End

He’d sold his soul to a man who was beyond imagination or parody, Newton realized. At once he wondered why it had taken him this long to realize it. ‘I need to make the heat test on rifofludine.’

‘Saby says it’s OK.’

‘I’m signing it off, right?’

‘Right.’

‘Then I should confirm the experiment and its result. As I should test upon human volunteers.’

‘We got a sudden problem here, Dwight?’ asked Grant.

Newton’s stomach dipped again. ‘We need to consider the company and its global reputation, don’t we?’

‘Always,’ said Grant, at once.

‘That’s what I’m doing.’

‘Of course you are,’ said Grant, the smile as tight as the bitten-off words. ‘How about this? It’ll take a while to get French licensing approval. You finish off what you feel you have to do in the laboratory while Paris goes through the formalities. That way we’re on the block ready to take off the moment we get the go ahead.’

He was a puppet in a responsibility-clearing performance, accepted the research vice president: the decision had already been made to go ahead with manufacture for Africa. ‘What happens if I don’t confirm Saby’s insistence on the preservative?’

‘I’ve already given you my word, Dwight. We scrap everything.’

‘That’s what I have, your word?’

‘That’s what you have: what you’ve always had.’

‘OK,’ agreed Newton, as he’d known he would agree from the beginning.

‘We’ve got other things to talk about,’ announced Grant, hand on the familiar, although expanded, file to the left of his desk.

‘Security put a trace on Rebecca Lang’s office phone,’ started Newton, knowing what Grant expected. ‘Got the full transcript of a conversation with the girl she talks to in Paris, Stephanie Paruch…’

Grant pulled the extract from the file, flicking the edge of the paper with an irritated finger. ‘ Your great mystery,’ he paraphrased. ‘ I’m going to keep on until I find out… known here as a smoking gun… You know the trouble with guns, Dwight? They go off and hurt people. That’s when they smoke.’

Newton hesitated, briefly unsure how to respond. He took his own copy of the transcript from his briefcase and, reading from it, quoted: ‘ It’s the talk of the division here. Benn and Newton have locked themselves away: haven’t been seen for days. It’s got to be something big…’ He looked up. ‘I don’t like that, my name being on the record. I don’t like that at all.’

‘What about Parnell?’ Grant hurried on.

‘Caught Benn in the elevator a day or two back. Asked him outright what was going on.’

‘What did Russell say?’

‘That it was an experiment that wasn’t working out.’

‘Parnell accept that?’

‘Asked if pharmacogenomics were going to get a look at it. Russ said there wasn’t any point.’

Grant sat silently for a long time, the only sound the increasingly rapid click of his irritated flicking against the paper edge. Finally he said: ‘Is it true, what she said? That it’s the talk of the division?’ There was an unquestionable benefit, repeating the questions he’d already put to Harry Johnson, the security director with whom he was talking, personally and only ever one-to-one, with increasing frequency…

‘It’s not my reading. Or Benn’s. Security – Harry, personally – are tapping all outgoing calls from the floor. I’ve told them we suspect a competitor informer. Rebecca Lang’s the only person who’s shown any interest in France – spoken to Paris, even.’

‘Not Parnell?’

‘No. But they’ve got to be talking, haven’t they? They can’t just screw all the time.’

‘She’s a goddamned nuisance!’ angrily declared the Dubette president, who’d had a contradictory conversation with Harry Johnson, whose professional experience and opinion he trusted more than an amateur like Newton.

‘You think I should officially warn her off?’

‘No!’ refused Grant, still angry. ‘That’ll just make her more curious.’ She certainly had to be stopped. It was not something to discuss with Newton. Not even, he thought, with Johnson. There were special people he employed for special things.

‘What then?’

‘Just finish off what you’ve got to…’ Grant brightened. ‘Looks like France came up with a good one. Had the figures calculated. We stop the piracy, reduce it even, in Africa and Asia, we could save as much as ten million dollars in a full year. And that could even translate into a matching loss to our opposition, if they become the alternative targets. That’s a damned good day’s work…’ There was an abrupt reflective darkening. ‘And why it isn’t going to be jeopardized

…’

‘You want security to go on watching her?’

‘Keep the telephone taps on, throughout the department. Hers particularly. And obviously keep an eye on Parnell. Leave me to worry about everything else. And Dwight…?’

‘Yes?’

‘You’re doing a hell of a good job.’

That morning Newton didn’t make the mistake of trying to leave through the wrong door.

‘Sorry I haven’t got back to you before now,’ apologized Newton.

‘Not a lot for us to discuss so far,’ accepted Parnell.

‘Enough,’ said the vice president. ‘You seem to have everything parcelled up pretty efficiently.’ Newton hadn’t set out intending this meeting. His mind hadn’t gone beyond the New York encounter and what there was to discuss with Edward C. Grant. It was only afterwards, on the return Washington shuttle, when he was still very much thinking of that discussion and Grant’s numbing cynicism during it – and of his openly being named on the security eavesdrop – that the idea came of personally speaking to Parnell. And trying to assess what suspicion or curiosity the Englishman might disclose.

‘Still a long way to go.’ Why the sudden summons, after playing the invisible man?

‘Looks to me like you’re working to an agenda.’

‘Trying to create one that’s practical,’ qualified Parnell. ‘I thought the best initial contribution we might try was on some of the most current research, to complete an entire package.’

Was that a veiled reference to Paris? ‘Sounds a sensible approach. How many have you got in mind?’

Parnell was sure he prevented the frown. ‘Those that I’ve already memoed you about.’

‘Sure,’ said Newton, awkwardly, gesturing to a disordered pile of paper on his desk. ‘You think there’s anything likely?’

‘Nothing that’s leapt out of the petrie dish at us, but then we neither of us expect Archimedes-style discoveries, do we?’

Newton forced the smile, sure the other man was mocking him. ‘Still be nice.’

‘The exchange system appears to be working well, between Russell’s section and mine.’

That had to be a reference to France. ‘Sure you won’t be overwhelmed?’

‘No,’ answered Parnell, honestly. ‘That’s why we’re working to an agenda, trying to keep up to speed with what’s ongoing, allowing space to go back to earlier stuff when we’re able.’

He had to force it along, Newton decided. ‘I’m afraid Russ has been a little preoccupied lately. Me, too.’

‘He told me.’ The quick halt was intentional, to lure Newton into saying more.

‘Turned out to be a waste of time. It’s all being scrapped,’ insisted Newton.

Parnell didn’t believe Newton any more than he’d believed Russell Benn. ‘Gastrointestinal is where pharmacogenomics might have a real place.’

The son of a bitch was trying to trick him! ‘It was respiratory. A decongestant.’

‘Of course! Russell told me. My mistake.’

‘You think of any way things could be improved for you?’