Dead End (43 page)

‘You sound hopeful,' pressed the Dubette lawyer.

‘We're always hopeful,' said Benton. ‘We got an eighty-five per cent success record, Howie and me. We work hard to stay that way, at the top of the league.'

‘I hope you can with this,' said Newton, in a brief flash of belligerence.

‘We will,' predicted Benton. ‘So, you were happy with the way Professor Parnell was treated?'

‘I didn't make a judgement!' protested Newton, further hoping to recover. ‘How do you expect me to know how police are supposed to behave …?'

‘Just by …' started Dingley but was stopped by Fletcher.

‘This isn't your investigation,' insisted the lawyer. ‘This line of questioning belongs to the civil action.'

‘For which we understand you've been served with a witness subpoena?' said Benton.

‘What importance do you attach to that?' said Baldwin, overly intrusive.

‘None,' said Dingley, calmly. ‘Just making a comment.'

‘Was Ms Lang considered a problem employee at Dubette?' suddenly asked Benton.

‘My client declines to answer that inappropriate question,' refused Fletcher.

‘Someone murdered Ms Lang,' reminded Dingley. ‘So far, we haven't been able to discover any motive for such a murder … any murder.'

‘My client cannot help you on that,' blocked Fletcher.

‘Why can't Professor Newton answer for himself?' asked Benton. ‘He is vice president in charge of the McLean installation. He was Ms Lang's ultimate boss. He's in a position to know if Ms Lang was a problem employee, surely?'

‘Rebecca Lang was an exemplary employee,' said Newton.

‘Thank you,' smiled Benton. ‘Here's another question I hope you can help us with, as vice president of Dubette research and development. Upon Dubette's premises at McLean there are very dangerous things … viruses, disease samples … infectious agents …?' generalized Benton.

‘Kept, preserved and protected in conditions of total safety,' insisted Newton, comfortable for the first time on territory in which he felt safe.

‘If they were released into the environment, into the atmosphere, could what is kept, preserved and protected at Dubette cause a major health risk? Infection? Contagion?' asked Benton, the question pedantically phrased.

‘If some of the experimental cultures were to escape into the environment, there could potentially be public-health concern,' replied Newton, just as pedantically. ‘The method and safety precautions in which such samples are housed makes such accidental release impossible. All are kept in individual chambers within chambers, each separation alarmed to trigger an immediate alert in the event of the most minuscule escape. At each level there is a shutdown procedure, doubly sealing the penetrated section. If the leakage were to continue – which is an impossibility in the event of an accident – the final section is incendiarized. It is automatically heated to two hundred degrees centigrade. No known bacillus or virus can survive such a temperature.'

Both FBI agents listened patiently through the exposition. When it was over, Dingley said: ‘Dubette has a total of twelve overseas subsidiaries?'

‘Yes,' agreed Newton at once, believing he could anticipate the questioning.

‘How often is material of the virulence that we are discussing passed between those overseas subsidiaries and McLean?'

‘Extremely rarely,' said Newton, confidently. ‘Any such transfer is always contained within protective, crash-resistant outer casings tested to the destruction capability of a major explosion. Each container is equipped with a similar triggering mechanism to that at McLean, to self-destruct if the casing is breached …' He smiled at the two agents. ‘And I'm sure you'll be reassured to know that no such shipment has moved in either direction between Dubette or any of its overseas divisions in the last eighteen months.'

‘We are reassured,' agreed Dingley. ‘You know that and now we know it. But a potential terrorist group able to learn when and how shipments were going back and forth wouldn't know it, would they?'

‘For me to answer that question beyond its hypotheses, you'd have to define the extent of that capability,' said Newton, his stomach hollowing again. ‘Dubette is highly protective of its research and development. There is no such leakage within McLean or any of Dubette's overseas subsidiaries.'

‘If you suspected that there were, you'd move immediately to seal it, of course?'

‘Of course,' said Newton, with insufficient thought.

‘You couldn't, though, if you hadn't uncovered the source of such leakage, could you?' Benton pointed out.

‘No,' admitted Newton. ‘But there wasn't one!'

‘Dwight!' said Baldwin, close to shouting across the car on their way back to McLean. ‘I'm talking to you!'

The slumped scientist came out of his reverie. ‘Sorry. What did you say?'

‘I said that I thought that went very well,' repeated the company lawyer.

‘I didn't. They think I'm hiding something.'

Baldwin, at the wheel, chanced a look towards the other man. ‘That's ridiculous! You've got nothing
to
hide, have you?'

‘No,' said Newton, hoping the doubt didn't sound in his voice.

‘Then I don't know what you're talking about. It went well. Believe me.'

Even if Parnell's later-discovered HPRT effect had been known, the exchanges between McLean and Paris would not have required self-destructing packaging, Newton tried to convince himself. But the protection should have been more substantial than the standard polystyrene and cardboard wrap. How could he get out? Where was his escape, a way – a place – to hide?

There was not, in fact, a lot coming in from every which way for Howard Dingley and David Benton to examine, although they had initially expected their entire weekend to be taken up reviewing the 1996 Metro DC police internal corruption investigations. Ironically the delay was caused by the necessary police records having to be duplicated to comply with the quite separate court order obtained by Barry Jackson to pursue the false-arrest action. And by the time it was all assembled, they risked being overwhelmed by its arrival coinciding with the forensic results from the searches of Harry Johnson's Anacostia apartment and his Dubette workplace. Their resolve was roughly to divide it, Benton taking the Metro DC police material into his separate office, leaving Dingley with the forensics report. Dingley, with less than his partner, finished first but needed the time for a lengthy telephone discussion with the FBI laboratory at the J. Edgar Hoover building. He'd just finished when Benton returned.

Benton handed his partner a five dollar note and said: ‘You won the bet. Johnson was investigated on suspicion of improper use of equipment – using Metro DC police computers to access records of other forces – and for accepting bribes. Everything collapsed for lack of evidence but he was invited to retire …'

‘Didn't anyone examine the bank account?' broke in Dingley.

‘Apparently not,' said Benton. ‘Don't forget it was an internal enquiry, carried out by people who knew each other. According to Parnell, Johnson's the man who picks up shipments to the separate box-number address. He'd know whenever a special consignment was arriving, wouldn't he? Just the sort of terrorist information we were talking about to Newton.'

‘Too circumstantial,' judged Dingley.

‘I know,' accepted the other agent. ‘Would you say this is?'

The photograph he handed across the desk was one of three that had been among the surrendered material. It showed Johnson, in uniform, with his arm around Helen Montgomery, also in uniform. Peter Bellamy was among a smiling group in the posed background.

‘I'd say I'm surprised Johnson had so much trouble remembering Helen Montgomery and Peter Bellamy as former colleagues,' said Dingley. ‘Looks to me as if he's got his hand under her left tit and she's enjoying it. What about those two?'

‘One enquiry, again failed, into Bellamy. Complaint of undue and unreasonable force during an arrest. Montgomery was his partner. It was her evidence, denying everything, that got the accusation thrown out.'

‘Might help Parnell's civil case. Doesn't do much for us.'

‘None of it does unless Johnson tells us where he's got his quarter of a mill from. And we sure as hell know he ain't going to do that. He wouldn't shift from careful saver and lucky gambler, not if we pulled his fingernails out.'

‘Lucky gamblers aren't careful savers.'

‘Psychology isn't evidence,' reminded Benton. ‘You any luckier?'

Dingley smiled. ‘The half thumb print on the flight number is Johnson's. Perfect match for prints off the handles of both flick knives, the knuckleduster, and on the butt of the Smith and Wesson in his uniform holster.'

Benton smiled back. ‘And he told us, on tape, that he didn't know anything about that piece of paper!'

‘It's not all good,' cautioned Dingley. ‘Forensics took both flick knives to pieces. Not a scrap of fibre in either to match Rebecca's cut seat belt. The grey paint debris from the bottom of his locker drawer isn't from Parnell's car. And the sheet of paper from his pocketbook isn't a match to that on which the flight number is written.'

‘Shit!' said Benton. ‘What about other fingerprints on the flight number?'

‘None. Just Johnson's half print.'

‘That doesn't fit!' insisted Benton at once. ‘There would have had to be Rebecca's mark on it!'

‘I know,' agreed Dingley. ‘So do forensics. They checked every other article in Rebecca's purse. Every one had her prints on it.'

‘You think it's time we had another little chat with Harry Johnson?' suggested Benton.

‘Not immediately,' decided Dingley. ‘Why don't we tell his lawyers we want to see him again in, say, three or four days: that something's come up during ongoing forensic examination that we don't understand? And then listen to the phone taps to hear who he calls?'

‘Right!' agreed Benton, at once. ‘Why don't we do that?'

‘We're killing a lot of mice,' said Ted Lapidus.

‘To save a lot of human lives,' said Parnell.

‘Mice are genetically our closest match, right?'

‘Yes?'

‘What happens if they ever take over, start killing us off with their experiments to save their lives?'

‘I saw the movie,' said Parnell. ‘I thought it was crap.'

‘The mice would have loved it.'

‘I gather nothing's happening, apart from killing mice?' questioned Parnell.

‘Nothing,' confirmed the Greek geneticist.

‘Anything from Russell Benn?'

‘A hollow echo.'

A week ago, days ago, the impatience would have welled up within him, but now Parnell didn't feel any frustration – not, that is, with his own unit's efforts. But there were outside concerns which he was increasingly coming to believe he had professionally to confront – was remiss, in fact, for not having already done so. ‘You got any improved ideas, a quicker approach, I'm listening.'

‘I haven't,' Lapidus at once conceded. ‘We're expecting too much of ourselves.'

Parnell accepted that wasn't in any way intended as personal criticism, but just as easily recognized it could be taken as such. Although he had not intended to – couldn't remember doing so – he supposed he could have infused his own unrealistic, overambitious expectation into the rest of his team. It would have been a bad professional mistake, if he had. Scientists in a hurry missed things – sometimes the most obvious – and almost invariably made mistakes, went the wrong way. And he was, Parnell acknowledged, thoroughly pissed off with misdirections, reverses instead of progress and, overall, too many dead ends. He couldn't, though, declare a change of approach.
Sorry guys. Got it wrong. Don't go at it like a rat up a drainpipe. Relax. Take every weekend off, leaving early on Friday, start whenever you choose on Monday. Illogical to drive you, as I have been driving you. Too soon out of research science. This is my first managing position. That's my problem. Sorry, like I said
. Unthinkable, Parnell recognized. The sort of soul-baring that would once more – although worse this time – risk the cohesion he believed rebuilt from his last mistake.

He'd talk it through with Beverley. He'd become very comfortable – reliant was a word he refused to consider – in his relationship with Beverley. The guilt hadn't gone but he'd got it compartmented now, packaged and locked away, everything under control.

He wasn't sure – didn't in fact believe – that Paris was under control – that what should have been called back had actually been withdrawn. With no contribution he could make to any of the eliminations or tests that were being conducted in his department, he crossed the corridor for another unannounced visit to Russell Benn, endured the coffee ritual, and after thirty minutes got the same impression as Lapidus, that the chemical and biological division were not only blocked in a dead end like his own, but that, unlike his own, were content to stay there, gazing at a blank wall until they got an exit map drawn or suggested by someone else.

‘You heard from Paris?' Parnell demanded, finally.

‘About what?' asked Benn.

‘Their misconceived idea.'

Benn's face became fixed. ‘Do you see any point in talking about that any more? I thought you'd got your acknowledgement?'

‘I don't want acknowledgement. I want to be told – and convinced – that none of it got out on to the market.'

‘Ask Paris. Or Dwight. I'm very definitely out of that loop and don't want to be caught up in it again.'

Which was what Parnell did the moment he returned to his own unit, curious at the strength of Benn's rejection. As on the one previous occasion, Parnell's connection to the French chief executive was immediate, although Henri Saby's response was noticeably more restrained on this occasion.