Brian Freemantle - Dead End

‘How is this board going to look if it does become public knowledge?’ demanded the man with the regulations still in his hand.

‘Like a responsible body of responsible men operating as it is legally empowered to do, to protect its shareholders’ interests and investments, as well as reacting promptly to prevent any harmful effects from a mistaken batch issue,’ said Grant. ‘I invite a vote on the course I am proposing.’

It was unanimous.

A buffet lunch was arranged to follow. At least half the board left without eating anything. Those who remained picked and sampled, the most token of token gestures. What conversation there was was mumbled, serious-faced, with a lot of head-shaking. Newton ate nothing and drank club soda. At his shoulder, as the room thinned with tight, perfunctory farewells, Grant told Newton: ‘Don’t go, not until we’ve talked.’

‘Where can I go?’ asked Newton.

‘Nowhere,’ said Grant, refusing the self-pity.

It was a further hour before they got yet again into the president’s office. As soon as the door closed behind them, Newton said: ‘You hung me out to dry back there.’

‘You deserved to be hung out to dry. You fucked up. There wasn’t a member of the board, me included, who didn’t want to sacrifice you. What I did instead was save your ass.’

‘Yours with it,’ fought back Newton. ‘I didn’t say anything about other meetings like this.’

‘Because there was nothing to say. I told you all along everything had to be safe. You didn’t ensure that it was. You still got a job. Be grateful.’

What right had this manipulative, never-guilty-of-anything motherfucker to treat him with contempt, Newton asked himself. ‘What did you want me to stay on for?’

‘Parnell called Saby direct. Asked about getting everything back. Saby thought Parnell was on the inside. Somehow Parnell knows about the box-number route – he obviously got that from that damned woman.’

‘You heard from Saby direct?’

‘How the hell else would I know?’

‘What did you tell Saby to do?’

‘Send the stuff, as they discussed. I couldn’t do otherwise.’

‘What else did Saby tell him?’

‘That it could be got back – that’s what Saby told me. With the taps lifted, we don’t know exactly what was said, not any more. We got too many loose ends, Parnell the loosest.’

It never appeared to have occurred to anyone at the board meeting to thank Parnell for what he’d possibly prevented, Newton suddenly realized. But then, he accepted, officially it had been an un official, unrecorded meeting, which he supposed meant any corporate gratitude was impossible. ‘You going to see Parnell? There’s enough reason.’

‘Arrogant son of a bitch,’ said Grant.

Not an arrogant son of a bitch, mentally corrected Newton – someone who wasn’t afraid of Edward C. Grant and who hadn’t been sucked into the imploding black hole of Dubette Inc. ‘Are you?’ he repeated.

‘Have Johnson set up some surveillance on him again. Let’s find a weak spot.’

Grant’s modus operandi, thought Newton. ‘What if he hasn’t got one?’

‘Everyone’s got a weak spot,’ insisted the president.

Newton wondered what Edward C. Grant’s weak spot was. Then he thought it was time – long after time – that he tried to evolve some personal protection for himself. But what?

‘Talk time again!’ announced Barbara Spacey, sailing into Parnell’s office on a gust of nicotine.

‘I’m busy.’

‘That’s good. A lot of psychologists deny it, but work is often a good stress reliever. Would you believe that?’

‘I’ll believe anything you tell me.’

‘I’m not asking you to go that far. So, how are you?’

‘As I was when we met last time, I’m fine.’

‘How are you sleeping?’

‘Like a baby.’

‘How do you occupy your spare time?’

‘With the stress-relief of work.’

‘You miss Rebecca?’

‘That’s an offensive question. Of course I miss Rebecca.’

The woman appeared unperturbed. ‘The police getting anywhere?’

‘It’s not a police investigation. It’s the FBI.’

‘The FBI getting anywhere?’ There was no reaction to the correction.

‘They don’t take me into their confidence,’ lied Parnell, suddenly attentive to the questioning. Before she could ask something else, he said: ‘This is the third time we’ve talked. You normally interview staff this many times?’

‘You’re the first staff member to be involved in a murder. A hell of an unusual murder, at that.’

‘I think you misdiagnosed my other assessments,’ he goaded.

‘You’re allowed to lodge an objection. Seek a secondary opinion, even,’ reminded the woman. ‘Don’t forget the Freedom of Information Act. No one can sneak any more!’

‘Didn’t think it important enough. You get many objections?’

‘A few.’

‘How’d you score?’

‘Pretty good. I’ve still got a job.’

‘What happens to these assessments?’

‘They go on your personnel file.’

‘So, who has access to that file?’

‘Personnel. Senior executives,’ Barbara Spacey gestured towards the outside laboratory. ‘You’ve got the authority to see your guys’ assessments.’

‘I didn’t know you’d made any.’

‘I haven’t, not yet. About to start.’

‘Who else has access?’ persisted Parnell.

‘Legal department… Security.’

‘Seems a lot of people.’ suggested Parnell.

‘Dubette’s a caring company.’

‘I think you told me that already. Some people would say it was an inquisitive company.’

‘Is that what you think?’

‘It wouldn’t be difficult for me to think just that.’

‘Which I might judge to be paranoia.’

‘Do,’ invited Parnell. ‘Are you familiar with a very famous book by an English author named George Orwell, about a control State? It’s called…’

‘Nineteen Eighty-Four,’ she finished for him. ‘Yeah, I’ve read it.’

‘How’d you diagnose that?’

‘How about paranoia?’

‘I thought it was about the danger of a control State.’

‘I don’t remember Winston Smith, who tried to fight the system, coming out of it all that well,’ said the woman.

Richard Parnell didn’t set out upon a warned-against personal investigation, although there was something about the last meeting with Barbara Spacey that stayed in his mind, like a distracting noise for which he couldn’t locate a source. But there suddenly seemed to be a lot he found distracting. Although he fully understood his mother’s concern, her insistence upon such regular contact was intrusive and he found it irksome having to respond to letters from former vague acquaintances in England who’d obviously got his Washington address from closer, genuinely concerned colleagues, and written as if it were a members’-club obligation. The most positive, persistent distraction of all, of course, remained the discontinuity within his unit. The lack of a single, feasible experimental idea to further the influenza research had made the previous night’s end-of-day discussion virtually pointless, although he’d thought Sean Sato’s suggestion of a combined discussion with Russell Benn’s unit worth pursuing, until being told by Benn that morning that his scientists didn’t have anything to contribute either. Parnell was increasingly accepting Ted Lapidus’s view that they weren’t ever going to find a treatment as objective logic rather than impatient defeatism, although he hadn’t yet openly admitted it.

It was the persistent nag of uncertainty from his meeting with the psychologist that prompted Parnell to go to the personnel department, in a part of the complex so remote he had to use the wall guides. As he moved through connecting corridors, he supposed it would have been a courtesy to tell Wayne Denny that he was coming, but accessing his own personnel file – without any positive reason for doing so – scarcely justified bothering the department director.