Dead End (3 page)

They funnelled into a lounge of easy chairs and potted plants that adjoined the commissary. Today the furniture had been rearranged to create an open communal space. Premixed drinks were already laid out on a bartended table that ran the full length of the glassed wall overlooking the grassed park and its artificial lake. Parnell noted the concentration of people helping themselves was around the mineral-water selection. He saved himself the search by asking one of the barmen for gin and tonic.

He'd separated from Rebecca Lang at the entrance to the conference room and not seen where she'd sat. He saw her now, though, among the mineral-water group. She saw him when she turned, hesitated and then made her way towards him.

Parnell said: ‘We got a cure for leprosy among what we make?'

She smiled and said: ‘That bad?'

He grinned back. ‘You're risking infection, just talking to me.'

‘I'll check our stock list, see what there is that I can take.' She had to tilt her head to look up at him. ‘You sure grew up big when you were small.'

‘I worked out and ate up all my greens.'

‘Dubette should patent the formula.'

‘You didn't tell me what you won.'

‘You don't want to know.'

There was a shift throughout the room at the arrival of the president with a retinue of division and overseas directors, a general turning in their direction. Parnell said: ‘It's your last chance to escape.'

From where he stood, and with his height, Parnell could see better than Rebecca the approaching dignitaries in their carefully stage-managed procession through the room. He said: ‘They're getting closer. Time for you to distance yourself.'

‘Don't mock me. You wanna bet upon their picking on us?'

‘You'd have lost,' said Parnell, at the group's arrival.

‘We haven't met,' announced the Dubette president. ‘I'm Edward C. Grant.'

‘I'm …' started Parnell, but the burly, white-haired man said: ‘I know who you are, Richard. And you, Rebecca.' To the woman, he gave an odd, head-jerking bow. Coming back to Parnell he said: ‘Welcome to the Dubette family.'

‘Thank you,' said Parnell. Dwight Newton was amidst the retinue, which explained how he had been identified, and the Christian-name familiarity was an Americanism he was already used to.

‘Think you're going to like it here?' demanded Grant. He had a short, staccato delivery that made everything he said sound urgent. There was no offered hand.

‘Too early to tell yet.' Rebecca had slightly withdrawn and Parnell was conscious of the concentration from everyone in the room upon him and the smaller man, who had to strain up even more than Rebecca to look at him, which Parnell guessed would be an annoyance.

‘Got everything you want?'

‘I think I have, now.' Parnell was aware of Newton's features tightening behind the president.

‘When are you going to start recruitment?'

Parnell wondered what excuse had been made for the delay, about which Grant obviously knew. ‘Virtually at once.'

‘We're expecting great things from you, Richard.'

‘I'm expecting great things from myself.'

There was an over-the-shoulder head jerk. ‘I've asked Dwight to keep me up to speed. Like to be able to talk about something at the next seminar.'

But he hadn't mentioned the creation of the new division in his keynote speech at this one, Parnell thought. ‘I've got some ideas but I don't expect things to move that fast.'

‘I'd be disappointed if you didn't have ideas,' said Grant, positive sharpness in his voice. ‘That's why we made you our offer. Why we're setting up the division and have given you the budget we have.'

‘And that's why I accepted it, expecting to be able to develop them through a company as large and extensive as this.'

‘So, we're both rowing in the same direction.'

Was that a casual remark or a very direct reference to how close he'd been to getting a rowing blue at Cambridge University, before his graduation? Parnell said: ‘Let's hope we don't miss a stroke.'

‘Let's both of us very much hope you don't miss a stroke,' echoed the other man.

‘Am I also expected to apologize?'

‘For what?' frowned Grant.

‘Being improperly dressed.'

The smile was as tight as the manner in which the man spoke. ‘You'll know next time.'

Parnell was tempted to respond but didn't. It wasn't, after all, a verbal contest.

As he led the group away, Grant said: ‘Don't forget my expectations.'

Parnell decided not to reply to that, either.

Rebecca waited until the presidential party was beyond hearing before closing the gap between them. Parnell said: ‘I warned you to go under the wire when you still had a chance.'

‘At least he knows my name now.'

‘Maybe not for the right reason.'

‘I've thought about our stock list,' Rebecca shrugged. ‘We don't do a leprosy treatment.'

‘We wouldn't, would we?' invited Parnell, refusing to pick up on their earlier lightness. ‘It's largely eradicated except in underdeveloped countries. And we've just been lectured that there's no profit trying to sell to the Third World.'

‘Ouch!' grimaced Rebecca.

‘You want to risk having dinner?'

‘What time?'

Rebecca chose the restaurant, Italian just up Wisconsin Avenue from M Street, and said she'd meet him there instead of his going all the way out to Bethesda to pick her up. Parnell arrived intentionally early, which gave him time to study the menu, which looked good, and get through most of a martini before she arrived.

She laughed the moment she saw him and said: ‘We've got to start getting this dress code right!' She wore jeans and a suede shirt: he'd changed into a blazer – with the Cambridge University breast-pocket motif – and grey trousers.

Parnell said: ‘Let's keep surprising each other.'

Rebecca nodded to a matching martini and Parnell ordered a second. He offered the menu but she said: ‘I know what I'm going to have. I worked through college as a waitress here. I get special treatment.'

She did. The owner, Giorgio Falcone, genuinely Italian-born, personally returned with the drinks and kissed her and shook Parnell's hand effusively and recommended the veal, which Parnell accepted. Rebecca and the owner conversed in Italian and the moustached chef, who was introduced only as Ciro, was brought from the kitchen to be introduced as well.

When they were finally alone Parnell said: ‘I'm impressed!'

‘You're supposed to be. I'm showing off.'

‘Why?'

‘Just because,' she said.

‘Fluent in Italian?'

‘Difficult not to be. Mom was Italian …' She nodded to the departing owner. ‘He's my uncle: looks after me. You do me wrong, you get a contract put out on you.'

Parnell laughed with her, liking the atmosphere. ‘So, a local girl with connections?'

‘Georgetown University, reserve intern at Johns Hopkins for a year, then Dubette for fame and fortune,' listed Rebecca. ‘Short on the fame at the moment but the money's good and there was a promise of more this morning, remember?'

Was this the moment to put the questions? he asked himself. It might puncture the mood and he didn't want to risk that, not yet. Edging towards it though, he said: ‘Quite a lot to remember from this morning.'

‘What do you think?'

‘I told you what I think. I think the place is knee-deep in bullshit and posturing.'

‘And you don't like bullshit and posturing?'

They paused for their first courses and for Parnell to taste the Barollo, another owner recommendation. ‘It's not going to affect me. Or what I've taken the job to do.'

‘You always been this confident?'

‘I've always known what I wanted to do, from the day of my first science lesson. Specialization came at university.'

‘How?'

Parnell hesitated. ‘Genetics was comparatively new. A lot of opportunities.'

‘Quickly to become known in the field,' she finished. She raised her glass and said: ‘Here's to ambition.'

‘You have a degree in psychology?'

‘Native intuition. I've told you about me. Tell me about you.'

‘Brought up by my grandmother while my abandoned, unmarried mother qualified as a solicitor. Grammar school … I don't know what the equivalent is here, in America … scholarship to Cambridge University, graduated in time to become involved in the genome project. Worked with a lot of very qualified and clever guys. Learned everything I could from them …'

‘And achieved the fame?' she quickly finished, again.

‘I finished off what a lot of those very qualified and clever guys began. Which I said at the time.'

‘I read it. You were very generous.'

‘Honest,' he insisted.

‘I think that's been noticed.'

Their plates were changed, more wine poured. Deciding the remark made the timing right, Parnell said: ‘Am I missing something?'

‘I certainly am, with that question,' protested Rebecca.

‘About Dubette. It's as if there's a second meaning behind everything that's said or done. All this dress code and understood rules and family crap … crap because there's an atmosphere, an impression, that people are insecure. Frightened almost, which is me compounding the nonsense …'

‘Dubette are big payers … the best in the business. People with commitments, kids, don't want to lose big-paying jobs.' Rebecca began twirling her glass between her fingers, her meal forgotten, looking down into the wine.

‘Why should they lose their big-paying jobs, unless they screw up? You get a good job, you do it properly, do it well,
not
to lose it.'

‘Dubette expect the biggest commitment to be to them. Total loyalty. You signed the confidentiality contract, didn't you?'

‘Of course I did. It's pretty standard commercial practice, according to the lawyer who negotiated for me. I don't see how it alters my argument. Or affects yours.'

‘I think you might have given the impression that you're too independent … that you're … oh I don't know, not respectful enough.' A flush came briefly to her face, showing up freckles around her nose.

‘Because I got my laboratory where it should have been in the first place and didn't wear a jacket and tie to Edward C. Grant's party! Come on, Rebecca!'

‘I was just offering a thought. What about the laboratory? You get included in this afternoon's tour?'

Parnell shook his head. ‘Passed me by.'

‘How do you read that?'

‘I don't. And won't,' said Parnell. ‘But who were the bastards you kept on about this morning?'

‘You were set up, to go into the seminar like you did. Newton should have told you. Or Benn. Or someone.'

‘Someone like you.'

‘Someone like me,' she accepted. ‘Only I didn't think I'd have to.'

‘I already told you, I'm not going to become part of it.' He had asked enough questions to indicate otherwise, Parnell conceded.

‘Don't you think we've talked enough shop?' she suddenly demanded.

‘More than enough,' agreed Parnell.

Rebecca had used her own car to get in from Bethesda, so she drove him home, refusing to start the car until he had fastened his seat belt. ‘That's how Mom and Dad died, driving without their belts done up.'

He didn't suggest she come up to his apartment for a final nightcap, which she didn't appear to expect. She kept the engine running and said she'd probably see him the following day – in a voice from which he inferred she wouldn't be particularly concerned if she didn't.

When he did arrive that following day at the office he'd allocated to himself, adjoining the main, general research area, there were four responses to his genetics specialists advertisements and three for the secretarial vacancy.

There was also an email from the personnel director, saying that a psychological assessment appointment had been made for him for three o'clock that afternoon at Dubette's fully staffed medical centre.

Four

‘W
hat psychological assessment?' demanded Parnell.

‘It's a provision, under the employment contract,' reminded the personnel director. His name was Wayne Denny. From their one previous encounter, when the man had been one of the selection panel, Parnell remembered a small, almost diminutive man who blinked a lot through thick-lensed glasses and found it necessary to consult papers and documents he never appeared able to locate.

Parnell knew such assessments were contractual provisions from the earlier guidance given by his lawyer when he'd seriously considered terminating his appointment before it had even begun. ‘Psychological assessments come
before
employment, not after. If I flunk it – although not having transgressed any company policy – you going to pay me off with a two-year salary compensation? That's the severance term, isn't it?'

‘Is there something medical – or mental – you haven't been totally forthcoming about?' asked the man from the other end of the telephone.

‘What's the real question behind that question?' refused Parnell.

‘You seem very uptight: resistant.'

‘I've got a job to do, a department to set up. I want to get on with it.'

‘So, there's nothing you have withheld?'

‘Honesty is a legal requirement in the contract,' said Parnell, a reminder of his own.

‘Yes it is,' agreed the man.

Surely they weren't, for whatever reason, legally seeking cause to get rid of him! Paranoia, he thought at once. ‘Why not invoke it?'

‘Why oppose the assessment?'

‘I'm not opposing any assessment. Just any further unnecessary time-wasting.'