Кэтрин Коултер - Whiplash

He said quietly, "Do you know that in the U.S., about one hundred and fifty thousand people are diagnosed with colon cancer every year? I've written letters, sent e-mails, made phone calls to my elected representatives, to the FDA, until all I wanted was to shoot myself. No one seems to care except for the oncologists, the patients, and their beleaguered families, and they're powerless. I don't really know why I'm here. I knew you'd understand, Erin, but what can you do? What can anyone do to force the drug company to start up Culovort to full production again?"

"What we need," Erin said, drumming her fingertips on the little banged-up desk she'd bought from Goodwill in her sophomore year at Boston College, "is to get hold of solid proof they know damned well what they're doing, and that they are profiting from it. Then the media will sit up and pay attention. They love drug company scandals, but they like them much more when they're presented on a nice big platter complete with fines of hundreds of million dollars."

She rose, took both his hands in hers. "I don't know yet what I'm going to do, sir, but I do know that I'm going to try my best to find something that will help. Let me think about this, all right?"

She knew he'd left without much hope, but she was fired up, her brain cooking. She spent three hours that evening on the Internet searching out everything on the Culovort shortage, but found little more than Dr. Kender had already told her. Everywhere the same thing, in other words, the company line: Production line problems , overexpansion, it was being worked on, but it would take time. It was when she read about how the oncology departments at major university medical schools were beginning to ration Culovort that she kicked her desk.

Why didn't someone in power question what the drug company said? Didn't any of these vaunted medical reporters remember the drug companies' record of gross misconduct-hiding negative data from the FDA, practically bribing physicians, failing to publish negative results, ghostwriting journal articles-and start waving red flags immediately, when it might make a difference? Didn't they remember the Vioxx scandal? How many people had died before Merck was forced to pull that drug?

Was this simply the way all drug companies operated worldwide? Come to think of it, was this the way politicians operated? Was self-interest the only driving force?

She was depressing herself.

What she needed was rock-solid proof that Schiffer Hartwin was doing this knowingly, and for profit. By midnight, she'd decided her old lock picks were her best shot at getting proof and forcing the Culovort production line to get up-and-running again.

STONE BRIDGE, CONNECTICUT

Monday morning

As Erin chewed on her English muffin, she reread the nineteen pages she'd photocopied from the Project A file. There was plenty there, even explanations the PR people were to give for the breakdown in Culovort production they knew would impact cancer patients. Caskie Royal had been wonderfully thorough in his To Do list, including one bulleted sentence that summed it all up: Given current worldwide Culovort supplies and current production levels at our facility in Spain, we estimate it will require four months for Culovort shortages to develop in the U.S. Shortages will force many oncologists to switch to Eloxium.

And then they shut down production in Spain!

Erin frowned. She realized all of this would make much more sense if Schiffer Hartwin also owned the patent for the enormously expensive oral drug Eloxium.

But they didn't. A French pharmaceutical company, Laboratoires Ancondor, produced Eloxium. Dr. Kender had told her one hundred and fifty thousand people in the U.S. were diagnosed with colon cancer each year. The income from Eloxium would end in more zeros than she could count.

But why would a German pharmaceutical cut way back on its Culovort production in its U.S. and Spanish facilities so a French pharmaceutical company could reap the profits?

Clearly, antitrust laws wouldn't allow them to profit directly. Was there some other way they were scratching each other's backs? Were there payoffs involved? Swiss bank accounts? Or were they so arrogant as to believe there would be no legal action if they violated the antitrust laws?

Erin smeared more crunchy peanut butter on her English muffin as she read about Serono, a Swiss biopharmaceutical company, that had tried to bring an AIDS drug to market "by concocting a dubious medical test," U.S. Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales had alleged. The company "put its desire to sell the drug above the interests of patients." Serono had even offered doctors an all-expenses-paid trip to France to prescribe the drug.

Did she have to add doctors to the growing list of endlessly greedy professions?

She laid aside the stack of printouts that documented incredibly creative bad deeds by the pharmaceutical companies. What she needed now was to act. She began to refine her list of media people to contact with the papers she'd copied off Royal's files. It was going to be tricky since she didn't want to go to jail for breaking into Caskie Royal's computer. She finally selected Paul Bradley at The Wall Street Journal and Luther Gleason of The New York Times, as both had reported on the Culovort shortage. None of the major TV stations had reported on the Culovort shortage and its consequences to colon cancer patients. When this story broke in the newspapers, though, Katie Couric, in particular, would be all over it.

Her head snapped up when she heard a TV reporter say, "The body of a man was discovered two hours ago in Van Wie Park-"

Van Wie Park was right behind Schiffer Hartwin's American headquarters. She grabbed her cup of tea and sat down in front of the TV. A reporter shoved his microphone into a man's face. "This is Special Agent in Charge of the New Haven field office, Bowie Richards. Special Agent, what do you know about this death? Was it murder? Why is this in the hands of the FBI and not the Stone Bridge police department? Have you identified the victim? Do you believe it connects to the break-in at the U.S. subsidiary headquarters of Schiffer Hartwin last night?"

Agent Bowie Richards looked both pained and grateful at the reporter's shotgun approach, Erin thought, since it allowed him to pick and choose. "The FBI was called in because the victim was found in Van Wie Park, which is federal land. The FBI and the local police department will be working together to solve this brutal crime. That's all I have to say at the moment." He turned and nodded to a portly middle-aged man the reporter introduced as Police Chief Clifford Amos, who didn't seem at all happy that the victim had the bad judgment to get whacked on federal land.

"Chief, have you identified the victim?"

Police Chief Amos said, "The FBI wishes to withhold his identity until the family is contacted. As Special Agent Richards said, my department will be closely involved in this case."

Yeah, sure you will, Erin thought. If she were Bowie Richards, she'd keep the local cops as far out of the loop as possible. A dead guy murdered in Caskie Royal's backyard and I was there, or maybe close by, when it happened. I could have stumbled over the body, maybe run headlong into the murderer. They'll find out I was in Caskie Royal's office, lifting documents from his computer, and they'll think I murdered him. I'll go to jail and Dr. Kender's father will have to sell his house to pay for the Eloxium and - Slow down, slow down. Was the murdered man an employee of Schiffer Hartwin? The way the world worked, she'd bet the last bite of her English muffin on it, with an extra spoonful of peanut butter smeared on top.