Brian Freemantle - Dead End

The line went silent again for what seemed longer than before. Finally Grant said: ‘If that was a threat, the thread by which you’re hanging just started to fray, Dwight.’

‘It wasn’t any sort of threat,’ retreated the vice president, weakly. ‘Have France gone into production… started to distribute?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘It’s got to be stopped… all of it.’

‘Of course it’s got to be stopped!’ said Grant, irritably. ‘You call them, right now. Wake Saby up.’

‘I thought you’d want to do that,’ said Newton. He was soaked in perspiration, bowed forward over his desk with his free hand supporting his forehead.

‘It’s your responsibility, Dwight. Everything’s your responsibility. You’ve got the authority. Exercise it.’

‘You going to tell the board?’

‘Of course I’m going to have to tell the board. And you’re going to be here when I do, explaining it.’

Newton felt physically sick, swallowing against the bile at the back of his throat. ‘What about Parnell?’

‘What about Parnell?’ echoed the other man from New York.

‘Hopefully he’s prevented a potential catastrophe. Shouldn’t he be thanked… congratulated?’

There was yet another hesitation, although shorter this time. ‘Did you thank him?’

‘Yes.’

‘That’ll do, for the moment.’

Until you’ve worked out your escape from every danger and pitfall, you bastard, thought Newton. ‘OK.’

‘Talk to me about Parnell,’ demanded Grant. ‘Is he a whistleblower?’

Newton at once saw the chance to unsettle the other man. ‘He’s certainly got a lot of principles. All he kept on about today was stopping everything.’

‘You ask him why he made the check that he did?’

‘Of course. He worked the weekend, in his own time. Said he did it because the stuff was just there, in his laboratory. That there was no positive reason.’

‘You believe that?’ asked Grant, his voice betraying that he clearly didn’t.

‘I’m telling you what he said,’ insisted Newton, uncaring about the petulance. He felt drained, too exhausted to keep his thoughts in order.

‘What else did he say?’ persisted the president.

Newton weighed the questioning. ‘He wanted to run his tests of everything from France when he learned that there was some stuff he hadn’t been shown.’

‘Let him,’ instructed Grant. ‘I don’t want him thinking anything’s being kept away from him.’

‘I was obviously going to anyway,’ said Newton.

‘They were in it together, weren’t they?’ abruptly demanded Grant. ‘Parnell and that damned girl, probing together. And now he’s discovered this! If he tells the FBI, the FBI will tell the Food and Drug Administration, who’ll tell whoever’s responsible for licensing in France. And we’re dangling from a high branch.’

Newton felt a surge of satisfaction at the fear that was coming clearly down the line. Unusually emboldened in his own desperation – sure there was nothing left for him to lose – Newton said: ‘We’d better hope he doesn’t suffer an accident to make the FBI – and the media – even more curious than they already are, hadn’t we?’

The line went dead from the other end.

David Benton described Parnell’s call as coincidence, because they’d intended contacting him to arrange another meeting.

‘You got something?’ demanded Parnell, at once.

‘Just touching bases,’ side-stepped the FBI man. ‘Guess you’ll need to liaise with your attorney. Get back to us asap.’

Barry Jackson’s secretary didn’t know when he would be out of court. Parnell asked for the lawyer to call back, juggling in his mind all the things he had to do, smiling to himself as Benton’s phrase intruded into his mind – trying to remember all the bases he had to cover. It was a bitty, fragmented schedule. He supposed he should add to it the promised phone call to his mother. That morning there had been two replies from England to his apology letters – one, from someone he’d worked with on the genome project in Cambridge, asked why he didn’t come back. There was a position available. All he had to do was officially apply and it was his. Sublime academia awaited. Parnell thought it truly sounded sublime, as well as knowing he wouldn’t make the application.

First on Parnell’s list of things to do was to reassure his unit after what Beverley had told him. He waited for everyone to arrive, Beverley being the last, before going out into the communal laboratory, conscious of their waiting expectantly.

‘I told you yesterday that what happened then won’t happen again,’ reiterated Parnell. ‘Now I’m telling you one more time, because I know there’s some concern. You all know now that it was necessary. And why it was necessary. But I’ve made it clear to the vice president how and why it had to be done. He’s grateful. Now we get back to the assignment we’ve been given.’

‘Has everything been stopped in France?’ said Lapidus.

‘The vice president was talking to New York overnight,’ said Parnell.

‘So, what’s the answer?’ demanded Lapidus. ‘I – none of us – want to get caught up in a licensing situation.’

It was career concern, which was understandable, accepted Parnell. Positively, he said: ‘That’s not going to happen either.’

‘It surely had to go before the licensing authorities in France?’ said Sato.

‘These are things I’m going to find out,’ promised Parnell. ‘I have to…’

‘Find out today?’ broke in Peter Battey. ‘We none of us know what the hell’s going on. Which isn’t any way to work. How we came here to work.’

Another base to cover, thought Parnell. ‘If I can. I’m waiting to hear from the vice president. We didn’t get the whole range of French products made up from the new formulae. When we do – something else I’m hopefully arranging today – I’ll personally do the testing, no one else. After all, we scarcely need confirmation.’

‘Everything requires confirmation,’ contradicted Beverley.

‘Which Dwight and Russell can provide, after my initial examination,’ suggested Parnell.

‘You involved us,’ said Lapidus, close to an accusation. ‘We found the bad science, we’re caught up now in bad science. Your professional reputation’s established. Ours isn’t.’

‘What is it you want?’ asked Parnell.

‘Written acknowledgement that this unit – each of us named – found and exposed the bad science,’ declared Lapidus.

There couldn’t have been more than one smoky-bar-room or wine-and-cheese session to have reached that decision, decided Parnell.

Beverley said: ‘Get real, for Christ’s sake, Ted! You think you’re going to get something like that on paper from Dubette!’

Beverley hadn’t been in a smoky bar room or had cheese and wine, Parnell knew. ‘I’ll try to get it, in the form of an official letter of thanks, which is the best I imagine I can hope for. If I can’t even get that…’ He hesitated, embarrassed at what he intended to say. ‘If I can’t get that, taking into account my professional reputation, will you all accept individually written letters from me to each of you?’ From the uncertainty that went through the group before him, Parnell guessed none of them had anticipated such an offer.

Lapidus, clearly once more the dominant figure, said: ‘I think we need to consider that.’

‘I don’t,’ said Beverley. ‘I don’t think I need any sort of letter. I think this is fucking ridiculous!’

‘I’d be happy with something from you,’ Sean Sato told Parnell.

‘So would I,’ agreed Mark Easton.

Parnell shook his head. ‘Do what Ted suggests, think on it. While you’re thinking on it, keep always in mind that I’ll do everything possible, everything in my power, to avoid your careers being affected by this. I don’t, in fact, see why your careers should in any way be affected, apart from being bettered, but obviously it’s something worrying you…’