Джозеф Файндер - House on Fire

“What cash is she talking about?” Hayden said to the others.

Sukie looked at Hayden now. “For the last eleven years, Kimball Pharmaceuticals has been secretly siphoning out its cash. All the cash we could afford. Transferred to shell companies in offshore locations around the world that are supposed to look like R-and-D companies. Totaling over a hundred billion in cash, right, Paul?”

“A hundred and eleven point five billion, if memory serves,” said Paul. “Wait a sec — let me double-check. Yes, I remembered right. What a relief.”

“And what if we don’t all sign this ‘legal instrument’?” Megan said.

“Then the Tallinn study gets released,” Sukie said, “and Dad goes to prison.”

Megan shouted, “You’d be tearing down our own house, you idiot!”

Hayden said, “And if we do all sign it, it stays buried, is that what you’re saying?”

“And then what?” said Megan.

“Oh, it’s going to be a beautiful narrative,” Sukie said. “The reformer daughter takes over the company. Undoes the sins of the father. Wall Street’s going to love it.”

“This is absurd,” Conrad said, folding his arms across his chest.

Megan said, “And how does the reformer daughter undo these... sins?”

“We’re going to transform Kimball Pharma into a company that makes anti-opiate drugs,” Sukie said.

I tried to suppress a smile.

“Where’s the profit in that?” Megan said.

“Where’s the profit ?” Sukie said. “Look at Vivitrol — on its way to being a billion-dollar drug. Same with Narcan. And generic naloxone nasal spray. You don’t know how big the market is? The CDC is calling for millions of new anti-opiate prescriptions. The US government has allocated billions and billions to fight the opioid epidemic. So are countries all over the world. The potential is mind-boggling.”

She paused, and for a moment no one else spoke.

“That’s insane,” Megan said.

“Actually, it’s kind of brilliant,” Hayden said.

“I think it’s genius,” Paul said.

“You see,” Sukie went on, “the only way to save the company is to change it. Look, Motorola used to make car radios, right? Now they make cell phones and computer chips. There’s a great metaphor I read once. If you leave a white fence post alone it becomes a black fence post. So if you want it to stay white, you have to keep painting it white. You want something to stay the same, you’ve got to constantly change it.”

I felt cold. A tingle began at the base of my neck.

If you leave a white post alone ... Victor, my father, had said that exact thing to me a week ago.

But when had Sukie met with Victor?

And then I remembered: Victor was the reason she came to me in the first place. He’d told her about me. She’d met him while she was doing research for her documentary about white-collar criminals.

Was this whole thing his idea in the first place?

But Sukie wasn’t done talking.

“So those billions in cash are going to found a corporation called Kimball Wellness Worldwide, Inc. And I’m going to be the CEO. A pharmaceutical firm that’s developing a new line of drugs that save people from opiates. Help people break through addictions.”

Conrad, who’d been staring at Sukie, finally spoke. “ Anti -opiate? What the hell do you know about that?”

“Let’s cut the bullshit,” Sukie said. “The opioid market is stagnant. The anti-opioid industry? Surging. Daddy, your day is over. You made a fortune selling knives. I’m going to make an even bigger fortune selling Band-Aids.”

“You... you know nothing about the pharmaceutical business,” Conrad sputtered. “What do you know about running a multibillion-dollar corporation? The biggest thing you’ve run is a shabby little film company with three employees and seven part-timers. Smaller than most hometown accounting firms.”

“You’ve always underestimated me, Dad. You all have. But now you don’t have a lot of options. You give me the keys to the car or I blow it all sky high, with you in it.”

“I don’t believe you’d do that,” Megan said.

“Try me and see,” Sukie said. “We’ll go bankrupt.”

“You’d really let that happen?” Megan said. “Why are you trying to destroy Daddy?”

“Destroy? I don’t need to destroy him. Daddy’s done. Time to retire to your yacht, Dad.”

“So you don’t give a damn about all the victims you’re always talking about?” said Megan.

“Of course I do,” Sukie replied. “But these lawsuits? Please. Most of the money goes to those greedy legal eagles anyway. And what do you think the families intend to do with their winnings? Buy a couple of double-wides? You think lawsuits are the answer? Forget it.”

Sukie had lied to me all along. She wanted the Tallinn file as leverage, yes. But really as blackmail to force her father to turn the company over to her.

As I listened, I realized that I smelled smoke. I’d been aware of it for the last few moments, while Sukie was talking, but now it was unmistakable. I noticed a slight haze in the air.

“There’s a fire,” I said, standing. “We have to move.”

Paul got up from his seat, as did Fritz.

“Fire!” Fritz shouted.

I rushed over to the door and felt it.

It was hot. The doorknob was scalding.

I knew immediately what had happened. Cameron and gasoline, two combustible substances.

By now everyone in the room had leapt up from the table. “Get down!” I shouted.

Black smoke was seeping under the door.

It seemed counterintuitive to get down, to sit on the floor, I knew, with the smoke coming in at floor level. But hot smoke rises, and the good, cooler, breathable air settles down.

“Oh, my God!” Megan cried.

Now a fire alarm upstairs began to clang. I thought of the century-old wood, dry as tinder, going right up in flames. And I knew the Ponderosa pine floor of the map room would go up soon, maybe in seconds; it was highly flammable.

“Megan, get down,” I said.

“I am not going to get trapped in here,” Megan said, racing to the door.

I saw what she was trying to do. She wanted to get the hell out of there, so she was going to open the door to run into the hallway and down the stairs. It was nearly an involuntary reaction.

And it would be a serious mistake.

“No!” I shouted. “Stop. Don’t open that door. The only safe way out is through the window.”

Natalya was waving her hands around. “My puppy! She’s in my bedroom! Somebody get her!”

“I will not get trapped in here!” Megan repeated.

“Don’t open the door!” I told her. I found it hard to stop coughing.

Fritz was helping Conrad out of his chair. The old man looked sick, sleepy. I shouted to Fritz, “Get him down on the ground!” Most people who die in fires are overcome by smoke, deprived of oxygen.

I was watching the Kimball family go into panic mode. I knew what was about to happen. I knew what the family was going to do.

Most people would react the same way.

When they’re surrounded by a fire, most people get tunnel vision. The ancient fight-or-flight instinct kicks in. They rely on muscle memory all of a sudden — they’re driven to follow old familiar pathways. In house fires, children will hide under a bed or in a closet. When people panic on airplanes, they inevitably run toward the front of the plane, where they entered. People become irrationally fixated on going out the way they came in.

So Megan and Sukie and the others wanted to open the door to the hallway, which would be a great mistake. That would pull the fire into the room. Then they would try to rush into the hall, toward the stairway, which had probably become a chimney by now.