Dead End (45 page)

‘The board have got to agree the surrender period of stock options,' said Grant. ‘If we agree their immediate valuation, you'd lose a lot of money.'

‘That is a threat,' recognized Newton. ‘And you know what? I don't give a damn. I'm gone. And you know something else? There's nothing you can do about it …' He hesitated. ‘This worm's turned.' And the moment he said it, he wished he hadn't. But it didn't matter. Only getting away from Grant mattered. And he was going to do it. Going to escape.

Grant sniggered. ‘You sure as hell are upset, aren't you? I don't ever remember calling you a worm. But if that's what you think of yourself as …' He shrugged, intentionally not continuing.

‘Not as upset as you might be,' said Newton, desperate to recover. ‘Parnell knows we haven't got all the French stuff back. He wants a public warning …'

‘
What
!' exclaimed Grant, the carefully controlled anger exploding at last.

‘He wanted to come with me. Make the demand in person.'

‘Who told him?'

He'd done it, thought Newton, triumphantly: he'd knocked Edward C. Fucking Grant off his self-satisfied, unassailable perch. ‘He talked to Paris. Saby. Saby refused to say either way. Told him to talk to me. Or you.'

‘And you confirmed it!'

‘I told him it was being gotten back. I don't intend causing Dubette any more harm than it's already suffered.'

‘How about I refuse your resignation and fire you, instead? No pension, no stock-option recovery?'

‘How about I sue you for wrongful dismissal, get everything discussed in open court? Or would that make driving dangerous for me before we got there?' Brilliant! That was absolutely brilliant, and Newton knew, despite the lightheadedness, that he'd stopped the other man dead in his tracks.

Grant's face didn't redden. The reverse. It whitened, almost unnaturally, making him appear ghoulish. ‘I told you …'

‘I know what you told me,' refused Newton, astonished at his own bravery and further emboldened by it. ‘Just as I know there's no proof, no way even of tracing the money it must have cost, which was misspent anyway because it's cost you double in lost stock value. But Dubette – you personally – couldn't withstand the accusation, could you? Just as another fatal car accident – any fatal accident – would be too much of a coincidence. Don't worry. I'm not going to make any accusations, any more than you are going to fire me. You're going to accept my resignation, on grounds of ill health. And you know what I think I'd like, in addition? I'd like a reference to it, at the stockholders' meeting. Some official regret, at my departure. And an acknowledgement, appreciation for everything I've done. After all, I have done a lot, haven't I?'

‘You're right,' said Grant, hoarse-voiced. ‘The worm has turned, hasn't it?'

More than knocked him off his perch, Newton thought, euphorically. He'd done something he'd never believed possible, and emerged superior in a confrontation with Edward C. Grant. ‘What you're looking at now is its ass.'

‘I'll tie you up in so many legal restrictions and restraints, you'll think you're a Christmas turkey!'

‘You force me, I'll contest them in court,' Newton threatened back. He had to get out soon. He didn't think he could hold on much longer.

‘Get out!'

‘Don't forget Parnell wants an answer. Or what a problem he can be.'

‘Get out!'

‘I'll tell him to speak to you direct, shall I? And don't forget my official acknowledgement at the stockholders' meeting.'

Grant sat unspeaking, spectre-like, behind his overpowering desk.

Newton rose but didn't immediately turn. ‘This has almost made up for all the hell I've gone through working for you, Ed. Almost. But not enough. I don't think there'd ever be enough.'

‘Get out!' yelled Grant, yet again.

Newton thought there was a falter in the hoarseness of the other man's voice, but wasn't sure. Perhaps he was hoping too much. He had, after all, achieved more than he'd ever imagined possible. There was a water cooler in the vestibule and Newton knew he couldn't wait until he got on the plane. Hurrying to it, he gulped the third tranquillizer, grateful there was a cab immediately outside on Wall Street, because his eyes suddenly began to fog and his vision to ebb and flow.

Richard Parnell had been surprised – and encouraged – to learn from another attempt to talk to the man that Newton was in New York less than forty-eight hours after their confrontation. But within three hours of his arriving at McLean that morning, there was a deflection from his most immediate concern, with the smiling presence of Ted Lapidus at the now open office door.

‘We haven't stopped killing mice, but we're slowing it down,' announced the Greek. ‘I'm trying not to get excited.'

Parnell was greeted in the main laboratory by the rest of the dedicated research team, all smiling as well.

Lapidus said: ‘It's Sean's show. He should tell you.'

The Japanese-American said: ‘This could be premature, a fluke. I'm not ringing any bells and don't think we should for a long time yet. But I've prolonged the life of six SARS-infected mice, so far for seven days. Two weeks ago I had same-day mortality.'

‘Vaccination?' asked Parnell, immediately.

Sato nodded. ‘There was no way – or proper reason – to imagine we could reduce the virulence. It was far too fierce. Because of that, I concentrated on killing the virus completely …'

‘The rest of us tried the Jenner approach to smallpox, infecting with something closely allied but not fatal,' broke in Lapidus, predictably. ‘Nothing worked.'

‘I boiled a selection of samples of the SARS virus in variously concentrated acids,' resumed Sato. ‘The mice I've got still alive this morning were vaccinated by the virus sample killed by an acid ratio of twenty per cent.'

‘What's their condition?' asked Parnell.

‘They're sick,' conceded Sato, at once. ‘They're going to die. But I think we're going in the right direction.'

‘How are you following it?' It could lead to a vaccine, accepted Parnell. Why, he wondered, hadn't Beverley told him of the progress? And immediately answered himself. She was part of a team – which he wasn't, yet – and hadn't allowed their personal involvement to influence her professionally. Which was the same rule that he and Rebecca had so briefly tried to follow, he reminded himself, uncomfortably.

‘Further minimal dilution,' said Sato.

‘Which I think some of us should switch over to,' said Lapidus.

‘I agree,' decided Parnell, at once. ‘You tried DNA colour-tagging?'

‘Far too soon,' frowned Sato. ‘This is the first time we've kept our mice alive for more than a day.'

‘Too impatient,' apologized Parnell, at once. ‘As Ted said, it's exciting. We're taking blood samples, though, for DNA mutations? And matching, for eventual colouring?'

‘We will be, from now on, from our six survivors,' said Lapidus.

‘We're talking SARS,' isolated Parnell. ‘What about avian flu?'

‘Bev and I have been trying the same route,' said Deke Pulbrow. ‘The avian virus is a big bastard with muscles. We're not getting anywhere.'

‘Edward Jenner virtually invented vaccination by preventing smallpox with the injection of the far less virulent cowpox, over two hundred and fifty years ago,' said Parnell, speaking the thought aloud as it came to him. ‘We've been concentrating on the 1918 virus because the haemagglutinin has been discovered. There's a lot of samples from the other two pandemics, in 1957 and 1968. Why don't we spend a little time following Jenner, obviously reducing toxicity, but seeing what happens when we vaccinate with one of the previous outbreak viruses and then infecting with this latest one?'

‘We haven't tried it so far,' said Beverley. ‘So why not?'

‘We're behind, on SARS, according to the published papers,' reminded Lapidus.

‘I thought we'd decided we're not in a race?' said Parnell. ‘There'd be more than enough room in the marketplace for two products if we came in second. Third, even.' He was thinking like a commercially orientated scientist, Parnell realized, surprised. Newton would be pleased. What he was being told
was
exciting, but it would be premature to talk about it to the research director this early.

‘At last we've got a focus, for each set of experiments,' declared Lapidus.

‘We
hope
it's a focus,' qualified Parnell. ‘I think it's good. Well done. Let's see where it takes us.'

Parnell waited until mid-afternoon before approaching Newton's office again. The secretary told him the vice president had called to say he was sick and wouldn't be returning to the office that day. He wasn't sure he would be in the following day, either.

Dingley and Benton separately compared the transcript of the automatically recorded conversation between the Metro DC control-room dispatcher and the arresting squad car with their previous interview statements from Harry Johnson, Helen Montgomery and Peter Bellamy.

Benton looked up first and said: ‘The dispatcher didn't say anything about Rebecca's car being forced over the edge of any gorge.'

‘Bellamy and the woman only said they
thought
it had been mentioned,' reminded Dingley. ‘That they weren't sure.'

‘Johnson was more definite,' argued Benton.

‘It's not a smoking gun,' insisted Dingley.

‘Something that might unsettle them, along with Johnson's thumb print and the internal investigation,' said Benton.

‘We do them first or pay a visit to Edward C. Grant?' wondered Dingley.

‘Them first,' proposed Benton. ‘We might prompt another call from Johnson to New York. ‘I'd like a damned sight more than that first conversation.'

‘I'd like a damned sight more about anything,' complained Dingley. ‘We're not looking good on this, old buddy. In fact, we're looking downright fucking bad, and I am no longer as glad as I was that we got a case this high-profile.'

‘Me neither,' agreed Benton. ‘Our problem is what to do with it now that we've got it.'

‘I wish I knew,' said Dingley. ‘I wish that very much indeed.'

Thirty-Three

I
t was David Benton's idea to change the previous routine and arrange the interviews with Harry Johnson and the two Metro DC officers to a tightly controlled schedule preventing any intervening exchange between the three. The FBI agents ensured that each of the personal lawyers, as well as the attorneys for Dubette and Metro DC police, knew not just of the agenda but also its sequence, in the hope of unsettling the security chief and the two police officers more successfully than they had previously.

Johnson was first. He wore the same crisply pressed suit as before, but this time there was none of the bravado swagger. He sat in the field-office interview room between William Clarkson and Peter Baldwin, pointedly avoiding eye contact with either FBI agent, deferring to Clarkson to acknowledge the reminder that he had already been read his Miranda rights against self-incrimination, and also during the discussion about formal recording. Clarkson agreed to the tape procedure and waited until it started before stating that he was aware of the formal warning of a later court challenge from Peter Bellamy's representative, and placing on record the possibility of his entering a matching inadmissibility objection in the event of any charges being proffered against his client.

‘I also wish recorded that my client has fully co-operated whenever called upon to do so,' continued Clarkson.

‘A co-operation which is noted and which is appreciated,' said Dingley.

‘Fact is,' continued Benton. ‘We've come up with a few more things that puzzle us. That photograph, of you and Helen and Bellamy, for instance.'

‘I declined to allow my client to answer that question,' said Clarkson. ‘I continue with that advice.'

‘Why is that?' said Dingley.

‘It has no bearing on this enquiry whatsoever.'

‘It has a very direct bearing on whether Mr Johnson knew or did not know Officers Montgomery and Bellamy before they arrived at Dubette Inc. on the day they arrested Richard Parnell,' said Benton.

‘Why?' demanded the lawyer.

‘The inconsistency, between what Officers Montgomery and Bellamy have told us – that they knew your client – and his assertion that he didn't know them.'

‘I forgot,' burst in Johnson, shrugging off Clarkson's restraining hand. ‘It's as simple as that. I think that photograph was taken at my farewell party, a whole bunch of Metro DC police guys having a good time, having a few drinks. Now I've seen the pictures, of course I can remember them, but only as people I saw around. And I didn't recognize them the day they arrived at McLean to ask about Rebecca Lang.'

‘Tell us about Edward Grant?' suddenly asked Dingley.

Instantly there was the caught-in-headlights blink of the previous encounter. Clarkson looked enquiringly sideways, but Johnson didn't respond. Peter Baldwin said: ‘As the attorney representing Dubette, I'd like an explanation of that question.'

Both agents ignored him. Still talking to the security chief, Dingley repeated: ‘Tell us about Edward Grant.'

‘What about him?' said Johnson.

‘That's what we're asking you,' said Benton.

‘I'd like this explained,' Baldwin continued to protest.

‘You friendly with him, Harry? Know him socially maybe?'

‘This is ridiculous!' said Baldwin.

‘Sir!' said Dingley, turning to the company lawyer at last. ‘I think we could be very close to a criminal investigation being impeded …' He switched back to Johnson. ‘What's the answer, Harry? How well do you know the president of Dubette Inc.?'