Brian Freemantle - Dead End

‘The FBI are investigating, for Christ’s sake,’ repeated Newton. ‘They’ll almost certainly want to question us.’

‘You,’ corrected Grant, still even-voiced. ‘They’ll almost certainly want to question you. I don’t see that I’ll be able to help them very much.’

Newton sat with his cooling coffee untouched before him, looking as steadily as possible at the other man, wondering how directly he could ask the awful question to get the awful confirmation of his every doubt. Not directly at all, Newton decided. Instead he said: ‘What shall I tell them?’

‘What is there to tell them? Rebecca Lang worked in your overseas unit. She was very competent, did her work well. We were very happy with her. We’re devastated by what happened.’

‘What if they ask about France?’

Grant lifted and dropped his shoulders. ‘Here again, I don’t see why they should. It’s got nothing to do with what they’re enquiring into, has it?’

Newton tensed himself, lips initially tight together. ‘Hasn’t it?’

Grant came forward from the opposing chair, elbows on his knees. ‘Dwight, I really am finding it difficult to follow you here!’

‘They’ll most definitely talk to security. Learn about the telephone monitor.’

‘So?’

‘Her name’s on the list, talking to Paris.’

‘She was in the overseas liaison unit! We’d be disappointed if she hadn’t spoken to Paris and a lot of other places abroad! The monitor wasn’t exclusively on her telephone, was it?’

‘No,’ conceded Newton, expectantly.

‘And her name isn’t the only one on the list?’

‘No,’ further conceded the other man, again. Fuck you, he thought. And then he thought, I wish I could – I wish so very much I could escape from the entanglement in which I am enmeshed… in which you are enmeshed.

‘She wasn’t being specifically targeted?’

‘Security came up with a lot of names,’ agreed Newton.

‘But none proved to be the suspected outside informant? Certainly not from any of the research-division telephones.’

It was all so easily, so satisfactorily explainable, Newton accepted. ‘No,’ he said. ‘We didn’t find an outside informant from the checks we initiated.’

‘But we’ve every right to be vigilant?’

‘Yes.’ Newton had the irrational impression of being stuck in a sucking morass, mud too thick to get out of, with the rising water creeping up to engulf him.

‘Could you get me another coffee, Dwight?’

The vice president poured, ignoring his own almost full cup. ‘They could come across the French things.’

‘Along with every other research experiment we’re conducting!’ exclaimed the Dubette president, genuinely incredulous. ‘But let’s stay with that, for a moment. Tell me about rifofludine. Does it have a preserving quality, in hot climactic conditions?’

‘To a degree,’ allowed Newton, reluctantly.

Grant sighed, theatrically. ‘Does it have a preserving quality, in hot climatic conditions!’

‘Yes.’

‘And the colouring additives make dosage administration and recognition easier in Third World countries?’

‘Yes.’

‘Which means we’re providing a necessary service – improving our products – for a specific market?’

‘Yes.’

‘I really thought we’d already talked all this through, Dwight?’

‘I suppose we had.’

‘We got anything more to talk through?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘You really sure about that, Dwight?’

‘Yes, I’m really sure.’

‘I’m glad about that. Really glad we’re understanding each other. Now tell me about Parnell.’

‘I haven’t seen him yet. He rejected our attorney, Gerry Fletcher. But Baldwin kept Fletcher in court to represent Dubette’s interests.’

‘Why didn’t Parnell want our guy?’

‘Fletcher thought the only way was to enter a plea.’

Grant nodded, but didn’t immediately comment. ‘Parnell’s an ornery son of a bitch and isn’t that the truth?’

‘I guess.’ How much further – how much more – was he expected to capitulate?

Grant said: ‘That was a good move, keeping Fletcher in court to watch our backs. Important to keep ourselves up to speed on anything and everything that might adversely affect the company. There’s too much publicity: I’m worried about it affecting the stock. Let’s get the legal department to ensure a legal heavyweight better than Fletcher, in case we need him.’

‘Need him for what?’ risked Newton.

‘Unchallenged situations, getting out of hand. We’ve got nothing to hide, everything to protect. You understand what I’m saying?’

‘I think so.’

‘Get public affairs working. Give the media full access to what Rebecca Lang did: I don’t want Dubette fouled up in any mystery theories that her death had anything to do with what she was working on, OK?’

For a brief moment it was difficult for Newton to find the words, any word, to respond. ‘Don’t you think that might be difficult, in the circumstances?’

‘Tell public affairs full co-operation, with every media outlet. Maybe you head up a press conference. After all, we’ve got nothing whatsoever to hide. Remember that.’

‘Nothing whatsoever,’ echoed Newton, flatly. The water had to be almost up to his chin now. He wasn’t sure whether he wanted to strain upwards to save himself or put his head down, to drown.

‘What do we know about Rebecca Lang? Family, friends, stuff like that?’ briskly demanded Grant.

Now it was Newton who frowned. ‘She and Parnell were going to get married, according to the papers and what he said on television. Her mother and father are both dead. Next of kin is listed on the personnel records as an uncle. Lives locally, in the DC area.’

‘Get personnel involved. Wayne Denny himself. Dubette will pick up all the bills. Whatever sort of funeral they want, they get. Reception afterwards, their choice, whatever, wherever. You attend. Showcross too, of course. Anyone else in the unit who wants to go.’

‘I understand.’ Oh God, do I understand! thought Newton.

‘Tell Parnell to take as much time off as he wants. Get Denny, anyone else you can think of, involved here, too.’

‘OK.’

‘How about you, Dwight?’

‘Me?’

‘What’s happened is horrifying. A member of Dubette staff – your staff-murdered. An attempt made, apparently, to incriminate a department head. Understandable that it would have gotten to you. It’s gotten to a lot of us, one way and another.’

‘I’m OK,’ lied Newton. He was anxious now to get away, no longer to feel he was drowning, to be part of whatever he feared himself to be part of.

‘That’s good to hear,’ said Grant. ‘Very good indeed.’ He came forward once more across their intervening table, arms on his knees, intense. ‘I want you to tell me something, Dwight. Something it’s very important for me to know – totally and completely believe. You don’t think – don’t believe – that anyone in Dubette is in any way involved or connected with whatever happened to Rebecca and almost happened to Dick Parnell, do you?’

‘No,’ Newton finally surrendered, as he’d known all along that he would, the nausea a physical sensation deep in his stomach. ‘I don’t think that at all.’ What would have happened to him, he wondered, if he’d said anything otherwise?

No one seemed to know how to react to his return. Parnell had accepted during the ride to McLean that he would inevitably be the focus of everyone’s attention, from the very moment of his arrival at the Dubette gatehouse, but hadn’t known how it would register. It started with uncertain looks – or pointedly no looks in his direction at all – from other drivers as he parked the rented Toyota only four spaces from where he’d left his own car three days earlier. There were more hesitant, early-warned faces at the windows and, as he got closer to the building, he was conscious of a lot of doubtful, needing-to-be-guided faces. Very occasionally there was a half wave or gesture of encouragement from people he didn’t know. In front of the elevator bank, three people – a man and two women – held back for him to get a car to himself. There were more half smiles and a few inconclusive gestures as he walked the gauntlet of the overlooked corridor into the Spider’s Web.