F. Paul Wilson - All the Rage

At least he would if he could make his legs work. Dragovic's words had left him weak in the knees. Had that… that ape been tailing him? That could be the only explanation. One of Dragovic's men must have followed him to Sotheby's and called his boss when Luc started bidding. Dragovic had sat home and outbid him.

Why? Luc wondered. Certainly not because his Slavic palate could appreciate a fine Pomerol. The only reason could be… simply to frustrate me.

Again, why? Because I don't tremble whenever he looks my way?

If the wine episode was meant to drive home that Milos Dragovic was not a man to be taken lightly, he'd wasted his money. Luc had been forced to accept that.

Brad Edwards moaned as he stepped to the door and relocked it. "How did we ever get involved with this maniac?"

"You know how," Kent Garrison said. He mopped his florid face on his shirtsleeve. "And you damn well know why."

Brad nodded slowly, sorrowfully. "Yes, I do." He dropped his tidy frame back into a chair. "But what's worse, I don't see how we'll ever be free of him."

"I do," Luc said, finally finding his voice.

His partners sprang upright, chorusing, "You do? How?"

"By not supplying him with any more Loki."

"Not funny, Luc!" Brad said, holding up a manicured hand as if to block the words in midair. "Don't even joke about that!"

"I'm not," he said, feeling the dread slip over him. "We may not have a choice."

The sound of Kent's nervous swallow filled the tiny room. "You mean what you said about the source drying up? You don't think that's happened, do you?"

"No. We're safe this time. I would have been informed to the contrary." At least Luc hoped Oz would have called. "But I have my doubts, serious doubts, about next time."

"Oh, God!" Brad said, visibly trembling. "You mean this could be it? In four weeks we come up empty? Dragovic will kill us!"

"Yes," Luc said softly. "He probably will. Or at least try."

But he'll have to find me first, Luc thought.

He could get lost in Provence where no one, especially a Serb swine, would find him. But Kent and Brad…

Kent made a noise that sounded like a sob. "We have to tell him, prepare him, convince him that it's not our fault!"

"Do you really think you can do that?" Luc said. "The man is an animal. But despite all his threats we've had nothing to fear from him because we are the world's only source of Loki. But once we stop supplying him he'll think we're either holding out for a higher price or we've found another buyer—that's the way they do things in his world. And if he can't have it, he'll finish us. Our only hope is to stabilize the Loki molecule. If we—"

"But you can't!" Brad cried, his voice rising toward a wall. "You've been trying to stabilize the molecule since you discovered it and you've failed every time. We spent a fortune on that lab of yours. For what? Nothing! And then that Macintosh fellow couldn't do it either. So let's face facts—the Loki molecule can't be stabilized!"

"It can. The problem simply needs a new approach. The new researcher I've hired is quite brilliant and—"

"And what?" Garrison said, his face as red as his hair. "If she's so smart she'll learn too much and then try to blackmail us like Macintosh."

"Nadia is not the type."

When their salesman, Gleason, had mentioned Nadia Radzminsky as a replacement for Macintosh, Luc had been instantly interested. He remembered her for more than that one wild afternoon back in his professor days; she had been a standout student with an intuitive feel for molecular biology. He'd seen her name—second or third in the queue, to be sure—on a number of groundbreaking papers over the last few years. And after her first interview, during which she'd discoursed on his own recent papers so perceptively, he'd known she was their only hope.

"And besides, I've added extra encryption to my personal files. She'll know only what I tell her." He looked around the table. "And we're all onboard about her bonus?"

The other two nodded, Brad a bit reluctantly. "Helluva bonus," he said.

Kent leaned back and ran both hands through his damp red hair. "Worth every cent if she does it." He cast a sharp look at Luc. "And doesn't try to screw us."

Luc wasn't worried about Nadia. Her reverence for him was touching. He'd use that and the bonus—and throw in some warmth and intimacy, just for the delicious hell of it, perhaps—to keep her on track.

"Christ,',' Brad said. "We only have four weeks. When does she start?"

"I'm introducing her to the Loki molecule today. She'll start work on the new template molecule tomorrow."

"Four weeks," Brad whispered. "It can't be done!"

"It can," Luc said.

It must , he thought.

The walls of the small room suddenly seemed to close in on him. Brad had had it built as soon as they'd started dealing with Dragovic. A good idea, too, since all too frequently they had to meet to discuss delicate matters— felonious matters—and an electronically shielded, soundproof room fit the bill. But the lack of windows gave Luc a caged feeling, and now the air seemed to be going sour.

He rose and headed for the door. "As a matter of fact, I'm supposed to meet her now in the dry lab."

He unlocked the door and pushed it open slowly in case someone was hurrying down the hall. They'd had to reverse its swing in order to assure a soundproof seal when it was closed. He stepped into the hall and breathed the cooler air. At least it seemed cooler. But still he felt weak.

He leaned against the wall and wondered how it had all gone so wrong.

When Kent and Brad had approached him to be part of a new venture, to lend his name and reputation to the company they were starting up, the future had looked so bright. All things seemed possible. Now it was all turning to shit. He wanted to scream.

To think that an innocent investigation into a strange-looking creature's blood had brought him to this nadir point in his life—a drug trafficker, a murderer. How much lower could he sink?

It was up to Nadia now. He'd tried every way he could imagine to stabilize the molecule but had run up against a wall. Maybe he was too old; maybe his creative juices had dried up; maybe it was the stress dealing with Dragovic and the constant sense of impending doom, the realization that his whole world could implode at any second. Whatever the cause, he'd found himself incapable of breaching that wall.

But a new mind, brilliant, unfettered by such oppressive concerns, might succeed where he'd foundered.

Four weeks… Luc squeezed his eyes shut, You must not fail me, Nadia. Everything depends on you.

7

Nadia sat alone in the darkened room, a bulbous shape floating in the air before her: a molecule of lovastatin, the cholesterol-lowering drug that had gone off-patent; Merck originally had an exclusive on it as Mevacor, but GEM now sold its generic equivalent at a much lower price.

Without taking her eyes off the molecule, Nadia tapped her keyboard, rolled her trackball, and an extra methyl group appeared and attached itself to one end of the larger mass. She rotated the 3-D image 360 degrees in two planes to make sure the new group had the proper orientation, then: voila —lovastatin had become simvastatin, Merck's other lipid-lowering agent, Zocor. But Zocor was still patent-protected, so that one was off-limits to the production department. For now, at least.

Nadia loved the dry lab and all its state-of-the-art equipment. No jars of reagents, no pipettes, no ovens or incubators—every experiment and chemical reaction in this small spare room was virtual, thanks to the holographic molecular imager. Nadia knew it had to cost a fortune, far more than any other pharmaceutical company GEM's size would spend. But Dr. Monnet had told her that GEM had made a commitment to original research. They weren't going to be a me-too company forever. The dry lab was ample proof of that.