Brian Freemantle - Dead End

Initially the indeterminate attitude existed even in his own pharmacogenomics department, where everyone was already assembled in greeting, which they didn’t know how to make once he got there. It was Beverley Jackson who broke the impasse, coming towards him with both hands outstretched to prompt his reaching forward in response, leading the rest to follow with awkward handshakes and shoulder slaps.

‘We don’t quite know what to say – what to do,’ Beverley unnecessarily admitted.

‘I don’t know that there’s anything to say or do,’ said Parnell. ‘I seem to be causing some embarrassment.’

‘Whatever you want… need… just…’ Ted Lapidus’s offer trailed away, into more awkwardness.

‘I think I want to get back to work. Catch up on whatever needs to be caught up with.’

‘You quite sure you’re…?’ started Sean Sato, halted by the look on Parnell’s face.

Parnell said: ‘We just got a new unbreakable rule for the department. No one asks me if I’m OK, OK?’

Only Deke Pulbrow said: ‘OK,’ and then he said: ‘Oh shit!’

The Japanese American said: ‘I’m sorry. It’s just that… just that …’

‘Just that there’s nothing else to do or to say,’ Parnell finished for him. He allowed space into the discomfort, hoping to puncture it. ‘Thanks, all of you. To borrow Deke’s word, it’s been a shit time and will probably go on being a shit time for I don’t know how long. Whatever, I want things to go on here, without me if it’s necessary, with me, if and whenever it’s possible…’ He looked to Kathy Richardson. ‘Anything I need to do, need to know?’

‘A lot of media calls yesterday and already today. I’ve logged them.’

His newly installed answering-machine loop at Washington Circle had been exhausted by the time he’d got back from Georgetown the previous evening. Parnell hadn’t responded to any and let the tape fill up again without picking up the receiver. He shook his head in refusal and said: ‘Nothing else?’

The matronly secretary looked fleetingly at Beverley Jackson. ‘Your lawyer called. Said he was at the office number you have and would be, for most of the day, if you want to talk.’

‘Anything from Dwight’s office?’

The woman shook her head. ‘You want me to check?’

‘He’s not due back until this afternoon,’ accepted Parnell. ‘Just thought his schedule might have changed.’ He looked around the people still gathered around him, knowing they were expecting something from him but not able, at that precise, brief moment, to formulate anything in his mind. It was going to be difficult to force the pace, the dispassion even, but Parnell acknowledged that he had to evolve a way of conducting himself to make happen what he wanted to happen, for his life to go on at two separate, equally important levels, as unlinked and independent of each other as possible. Were the two levels equally important? Of course not. Finding Rebecca’s killer – who’d tried to incriminate him, as well – was the most important, his absolute priority. The department – this department – that had once, all too recently and far far too much, consumed him and his every thought was secondary now – very secondary indeed – to avenging Rebecca. Forcing himself to be still – certainly striving for a lightness that wasn’t there – Parnell said: ‘So, who’s made the breakthrough that’s going to make us all famous?’

The heads-lowered hesitation was the criticism he didn’t need of how wrongly placed the remark had been. It was Beverley who hurried in, trying to cover his difficulty, talking of three experiments she’d conducted upon mice with Dubette’s products without finding an immediate way of introducing a genetically linked improvement, which gradually opened the discussion among the others. It quickly became apparent to Parnell that virtually no experimental avenues had emerged to follow, which he hadn’t expected anyway, but it took away the atmosphere caused by his mistaken remark and he was grateful.

It was hard for him to concentrate as fully as he knew he should upon their individual accounts, but he managed sufficiently to ask the necessarily comprehending questions. More than once Ted Lapidus remarked that everything Parnell was being told had been fully discussed and agreed in the committee-style manner in which they had decided to operate.

Sean Sato was the last to contribute and almost from the moment the man began talking, Parnell’s attention became absolute. ‘Avian influenza?’ he queried, interrupting the man. ‘I thought you were focusing on Hepatitis C?’

‘We got a visit from Russell Benn, soon after you…’ Lapidus halted. ‘… on Monday. Tokyo’s heading up a project decided on by the company, the species-jumping of flu from fowls and wild animals to humans that causes epidemics that start in Asia virtually every year. The World Health Organization are warning that if a human being already suffering influenza becomes infected with bird flu, the two viruses could integrate and mutate into an unknown – and currently untreatable – strain transmitting from human to human very easily, to become a global pandemic like the one that killed more than twenty million people after the First World War.’

‘What direction is the project taking?’ asked Parnell. He wasn’t letting his mind drift now – properly, committedly, back at work. It felt good.

‘A vaccine,’ said Sato.

‘For humans? Or birds?’ asked Parnell.

‘Both, if possible,’ said Lapidus.

‘H5N1, the avian virus that emerged in early 1997, is too lethal to be grown in chicken eggs, even to hope to create a vaccine,’ Parnell pointed out.

‘That’s why Benn’s been tasked with producing something a different way,’ said Lapidus.

‘And why he wants us on board,’ finished Sato. ‘Everything Tokyo’s tried should be arriving later today or tomorrow.’

‘We’d better prepare the sterile laboratory,’ said Parnell.

‘Already done,’ said Lapidus.

‘I know none of you need to be told, but have you warned Kathy it’ll be out of bounds?’ asked Parnell, indicating her office, to which the secretary had already returned.

‘Very clearly,’ said the balding, pebble-bespectacled Peter Battey.

‘I like the way you’ve worked, while I wasn’t here,’ thanked Parnell, sincerely.

‘I…’ started Lapidus but at once corrected himself again. ‘We talked about it and decided hepatitis could wait. This is our first chance to get involved in a current priority programme.’

And he hadn’t been here when it was formulated, thought Parnell. But he was now. ‘Do we know if the competition are trying to do the same as us?’

‘Not at this level,’ said Mark Easton, the former Johns Hopkins geneticist. ‘But it’s an easy guess that they are. We’re talking megabucks on a global scale. Thailand – just one of seven or eight Asian countries farming chicken – exports one and a half billion dollars worth of poultry every year. Europe imports a third of the chicken Thailand produces.’

‘It’s good to be involved, even if it’s because our traditional colleagues across the corridor recognize that they need all the help they can get,’ said Parnell. ‘But from the rundown you’ve just given me, Sean’s working on it alone. If it’s a priority, with red lights flashing, shouldn’t we make up our own definition of a task force?’

‘Thought about that, too,’ assured Lapidus. ‘As I said, we don’t yet have the specimens to begin work, which we should be able to do tomorrow. Sean’s doing the groundwork. Now you’re back, it’s obviously your decision, but I was intending to join him, along with Beverley.’

The Greek had very definitely adopted the role of deputy leader, Parnell recognized. Which was good, providing it didn’t arouse any jealousy or resentment among the others. And that didn’t seem to have happened so far. ‘Sounds a good plan to me,’ agreed Parnell. ‘I’ll go across the corridor sometime to see how Benn and his people are working…’