Dead End (7 page)

‘What?' demanded the research vice president, the peculiar fingers drumming out his impatience at the dispute ending on Parnell's terms, not his.

‘Science – all sciences – benefit from exchange, from the cross-fertilization of ideas.'

‘Are you lecturing consciously to irritate or aren't you aware how you sound!'

‘I want to set up a dedicated website,' announced Parnell.

The hands stopped. Newton became quite still, his rising colour the only indication of his incredulity, heightened when he finally spoke by the way in which he spaced the words. ‘You-want-to-do-what?'

‘Set up a website dedicated to my section,' repeated the more controlled Parnell. ‘Upon which …'

‘… Every competitor can log on and work out not just what you but every other Dubette research section might be working on and anticipate every patent and licence before we even apply for it! Are you actually expecting me to take you seriously!'

He hadn't properly balanced the counter-argument, conceded Parnell. ‘I think that's a minimal danger, dependent entirely upon how the research is set out. What I propose …'

‘Let's hypothesize, just to amuse ourselves and show this up as the insane, absurd idea it is,' persisted Newton, relentlessly. ‘Let's say someone outside the company suggests something you incorporate. Whose copyright – exclusive patent or licence – will it be? How many civil courts in how many countries do you imagine we'd keep in business for the next millennium arguing infringement or plagiarism actions?'

‘Let me tell you …' Parnell tried, yet again.

‘No!' refused the other man, loudly. ‘You're not going to tell me anything.
I
am going to tell
you
. You will not set up any dedicated website, now or in the foreseeable future … if, indeed, the future for you here at Dubette is foreseeable. I will put my refusal – and my reasons for it – in writing, too. And attach to it the legally binding and agreed confidentiality agreement signed by you, as a condition of your employment. To which I want a written response from you that you've read that agreement and fully understand it. Let's start right now. You understand everything, every single thing, I've just told you?'

Parnell burned with the humiliation, accepting that he'd not only been out-argued but that the defeat was entirely of his own making. Shortly he said: ‘Yes, I understand.'

‘The next time we talk I want common sense, not nonsense,' said Newton, warmed by the conviction that he'd irreparably punctured all the previous insufferable arrogance. He couldn't remember enjoying himself so much for a long time.

‘It sounds like a one-victim massacre, if there is such a thing,' sympathized Rebecca.

‘It was,' admitted Parnell. ‘God knows what Kathy imagined I'd done when I dictated the reply Newton insisted upon.' Kathy Richardson was the greying, middle-aged divorcee whom he'd finally engaged as his secretary, the only position Dwight Newton hadn't insisted be considered by the appointments committee.

‘Hardly a day to celebrate,' said Rebecca. They were eating in her uncle's restaurant, accustomed now to the food and wine choice being made for them and to Ciro sometimes talking them through special dishes he'd created, always ‘just for you two'.

‘I wanted a change from eating crow,' said Parnell. ‘And it was a good day until the Newton episode. I think they're all going to come together very well.'

‘Shouldn't you give it more than a first-day impression, like you should have given the website idea more thought?' cautioned the woman.

‘I am only talking first-day impression,' said Parnell. ‘And I've already admitted to the other mistake. I still don't believe it represented more than a one or two per cent danger. Five tops.'

‘Darling! To a company like Dubette the one or two per cent possibility of a competitor getting into its research is a major drama. Five per cent registers ten on the Richter scale. You're not involved in pure science any more. You've got to remember that.'

‘I will, in future. Believe me!' Parnell didn't like losing, certainly not to someone like Newton, whom he judged to be a bully. But it
had
been an ill-considered mistake and he was determined not to make another.

‘I asked outright,' suddenly blurted Rebecca.

‘What?' frowned Parnell, totally confused.

‘My section head, Burt Showcross. I asked him outright what all the secrecy was about between France and us.'

‘What did he say?' His mind blocked by the humiliating confrontation with Newton, Parnell had forgotten his earlier conversation with Rebecca about back-channelled secrecy from Dubette's French division.

‘That he didn't know either but that it sometimes happened and that I wasn't to concern myself with it – any of it – again.'

Parnell was about to say that she should let it go at that but was halted by a sudden thought. Instead he said: ‘If Paris has come up with something they're excited about – something to which they're attaching such a degree of priority and secrecy – it could be something which has an application to pharma-cogenomics?'

Rebecca shrugged. ‘Who knows? But guess what?'

Parnell wished Rebecca didn't so often conduct conversations like a quiz game. ‘What?'

‘There was a mistyped report from Paris, a good enough excuse to telephone them direct. While I was chatting to the girl I normally deal with, I was told the chief executive had been recalled to New York … along with the research-division head who misdirected that one message that no one, not even Showcross, was supposed to see.'

‘I think you should do what Showcross told you. Forget about it.'

‘Maybe it's been a bad day for both of us.'

‘Forget about it,' repeated Parnell. He wasn't sure he would, though.

Seven

E
dward C. Grant said: ‘I needed to speak to you like this, just the two of us. Discreetly.'

‘Of course,' agreed Dwight Newton, who had caught the first shuttle from Washington that morning, wanting to be at the Dubette corporate building before the president. He'd failed. He'd been careful to wear his seminar suit, which matched the dark grey of Grant's. And to enter, as instructed in the summons, by the special penthouse-only elevator.

‘We're talking risk assessment,' announced the Dubette president.

‘I understand.' Newton thought the football-pitch size of Grant's desk accentuated the man's bantam-cock shortness.

‘It was a good idea to have security check everything out as thoroughly as they did.' It was a safeguard to let the other man imagine he'd initiated the precaution, which he hadn't. After what Grant regarded as the one and only mistake of his life – relegating that in his mind to a lapse more than a mistake – he now took no risks.

That amounted to praise, Newton decided. ‘I thought so.'

‘I had the same done in Paris. That was useful, too.'

‘You've seen everything I sent up, about the website proposal?'

Grant nodded, tapping a folder on the left of his desk. ‘You did good there, too, Dwight. I wish others had.'

Newton was quite relaxed, which he rarely was in Grant's presence, certainly on a one-to-one basis. But he'd calculated the situation from every which way and concluded that he was probably the only person who couldn't be accused of mistake or misjudgement. It certainly seemed that way from the conversation so far. Guessing the other man's reference, he said: ‘What's the take from Paris?'

‘Buck-passing,' replied Grant, at once. ‘I hauled Saby back, for a personal explanation. And Mendaille, obviously.'

Newton was surprised, properly realizing how seriously the president was treating the misdirected communication. Henri Saby was the chief executive of the French subsidiary. Georges Mendaille was head of research in Paris and the man personally responsible for the mistake. ‘What do they say?'

‘Saby entirely blames Mendaille. Mendaille says it was a simple but understandable mistake, that out of habit he mishit the automatically logged email address, sending it to Washington in the normal way instead of personally to you, which was the specific instruction.'

‘If it was the specific instruction, Mendaille shouldn't have been hitting keys from habit,' said Newton. ‘He should have been concentrating.'

‘Exactly!'

Toadying bastard, thought Grant. But hadn't he made everyone with whom he had to deal a toadying bastard?

‘You firing him?'

Grant shook his head. ‘Dismissed, he'd be resentful, wanting to hit back, a potential whistle-blower. I want him where I can see him, know what he's doing all the time …' The man paused. ‘Mendaille's our hostage, we're not ever going to be his. That's the way it always works.' There was another pause. ‘Which brings us back to your problems.'

Newton shifted uncomfortably at it being described as his problem, recognizing that no blame or culpability for anything would ever be traceable to Edward C. Grant. There'd be no record, not even a diary entry, of this meeting. Newton accepted, too, that despite everything being already set out in the file upon Grant's desk, it all had to be talked through.

‘Rebecca Lang's in a relationship with Parnell,' he began. ‘Sometimes she stays at his place, sometimes – usually weekends – he stays over with her in Bethesda …'

‘We got photographs?' cut in Grant, who already knew the answer from his direct contact with Harry Johnson, the head of Dubette security. The question was to bind Newton into any future action that might be necessary.

‘Coming and going from both places,' confirmed Newton. That wasn't in the file, so perhaps there was after all a purpose in talking it through. ‘She asked Showcross outright what was going on. He told her it was beyond her clearance and nothing to do with her …'

‘But then she rang Paris?' cut in Grant, again.

‘On a cockamamie excuse about a transmission screw-up that could have been sorted out in a second by email.'

‘We know who she spoke to in Paris? What was said?'

Newton humped his thin shoulders. ‘Just the phone log, recording the outgoing call. It lasted six and a half minutes.'

‘Long time to sort out a simple transmission misprint,' judged Grant.

‘Too long,' agreed Newton. ‘You think we should get Saby or Mendaille to find out who she spoke to – what was discussed?'

‘We need to know,' said Grant. ‘But I don't want any more curiosity in Paris than might already have been aroused by my bringing Saby and Mendaille back.'

Not my problem or my decision, thought Newton, thankfully. ‘I think we've got to assume Rebecca will have told Parnell.'

‘Told him
what
?' seized Grant, at once. ‘Is there any way she could have seen anything other than that one misdirected message?'

Newton didn't answer at once, trying to assess the commitment being forced from him. Then he said: ‘No. No, I'm sure she couldn't.'

‘And what could she infer from what she
did
see?'

‘Only that there was an out-of-the-ordinary exchange going on at the highest level between Paris and Washington.' You were the guy who mentioned France publicly at the seminar, thought Newton.

Grant pulled a sheet of paper from another folder, gazing down at it for several moments before reading aloud: ‘
Welcome your assessment of our detailed security proposal
. And it's signed Mendaille.' He didn't speak for several more moments, and Newton remained silent, too. ‘No,' the bulky, white-haired man abruptly decided. ‘By itself it wouldn't mean anything.'

‘I think I'll keep security on to things – ensure that she does as she's been told. Warn Showcross that I want to be told if she shows any more curiosity.'

‘Do that!' agreed Grant, who'd already given the order to the security chief. ‘What about Showcross? He likely to become too curious?'

Newton shook his head, positively. ‘Showcross knows where his salary cheque comes from.'

‘Keep the security check on Parnell, too. Let's watch for any interest there shouldn't be from him.' There was another pat on the Washington dossier. ‘I really do think you handled that website business very well, too. What I find unbelievable is that the son of a bitch actually suggested it in the first place.'

‘He's got a lot of adjustments still to make to living in the commercial world. But I'm knocking him into shape. I've set up some other things,' openly boasted Newton.

‘Keep on the job, Dwight.'

‘I always do.'

‘And I'm always grateful.' There was a too obvious look at his watch. ‘Sorry I can't offer you lunch …' Grant put a hand tight beneath his chin. ‘I'm up to here.'

It would have risked his New York visit becoming too publicly known, acknowledged Newton. ‘I need to get back anyway.'

‘We'll keep in close touch – the closest,' insisted the president. ‘I don't want to lose control of this.' Control, of everything and every one and every cent, was Edward C. Grant's watchword.

‘I'm not clear on one thing,' said Newton, briefly refusing the dismissal. ‘Are we going to go ahead with the French idea?'

Grant gave himself time to compose the reply. ‘Commercially it makes very good sense. But the medical decision has got to be yours, Dwight. If it is medically safe, as the French insist, there's no reason why we shouldn't do it. But we can't, obviously, risk being caught out.' Which is why you're being given the total responsibility, thought Grant.

It put his name very firmly – and provably – on the proposal, Newton realized. So he couldn't relax – the very opposite, in fact. ‘If I decide there's a chemical danger, we don't go ahead?'