Dead End

Thirty-One

C riminal investigation – particularly interrogation – is surprisingly a near-science of routine: comparing one person to another, one answer against another, overlaying one human template on top of another, seeking out the misplaced word, the displaced fact, the slightest chink in the protective wall that people who see themselves in danger try to build. That is the psychological ethos inculcated at Quantico and which Howard Dingley and David Benton religiously observed with Dubette research vice president Dwight Newton, although they were never professionally to know how effective it was.

It required, as it had with the others, that Newton be brought into the FBI field office and unsettlingly accompanied by lawyers, as always Dubette’s Peter Baldwin and Gerry Fletcher, whom Newton loyally elected to retain. It was Fletcher who immediately challenged the FBI demand for their being summoned into Washington – as well as the use of a tape recording – Newton having already co-operated fully at the first interview, for which the FBI agents had courteously travelled out to McLean, and beyond which neither he nor his client could imagine any further help was possible.

‘We most definitely do not – did not – intend any discourtesy,’ said the soft-cop rehearsed Dingley. ‘There’s a lot coming in at us, from every which way – we’ve imposed upon your good nature in asking you to come here.’

‘You’re getting somewhere?’ quickly asked Newton. He hoped his suit jacket was as effective as his white laboratory coat in covering the sweat rings. They had to have something (what, for Christ’s sake!) to bring him in like this.

‘Still trying to fit pieces together,’ said Benton, the placating cliches arranged in his mind like cards in a poker game. ‘That’s how we hope you will be able to help us.’

‘How?’ said Fletcher, on behalf of his client.

‘That flight number’s our biggest problem,’ insisted Dingley. ‘I know we talked about it before, Professor Newton, but have you had any thoughts – recollections – since our first meeting, how it came to be in Rebecca’s purse?’

‘I told you then, absolutely not.’

‘You most certainly did,’ agreed Benton, as if in sudden recollection. ‘We didn’t know then that you’d accessed Richard Parnell’s personnel file the day after he was arrested. Why’d you do that?’

‘Professor Newton had every right and authority to access the records, as Richard Parnell’s immediate superior,’ said Baldwin.

‘We’re not doubting that he had,’ said Dingley. ‘Our question is why.’

‘Dick had been arrested – I’d tried to arrange his legal representation,’ said Newton, itching around his back and sides from the soaking perspiration, and exaggerating the shrug in an effort to relieve it. Not feeling able to explain that it had been personally to discover from the log – not the file that had been his excuse for consulting it – whether the omnipotent Johnson had examined it prior to the encounter in Showcross’s office, Newton desperately extemporized: ‘I wondered if there might have been anything there that could have helped.’

Dingley and Benton went through their look-exchanging formula, as if each was inviting the other to ask the obvious question. It was Dingley who spoke. ‘Mr Parnell already had independent legal representation the day after he was arrested. By noon there were newscasts indicating that the case against him might collapse. You’re not registered as having taken the records out until two ten that afternoon.’

‘And only looked at them for just under ten minutes,’ added Benton.

‘That’s how long it took me to realize that it was a stupid idea – that there couldn’t possibly be anything there,’ said Newton. ‘I was

…’ There was another irritation-relieving shoulder twitch. ‘… just trying to help. Like I said, until it was obvious how pointless it was

… I was casting around… a well-respected and loved member of Dubette had died…’

‘You were there, in Burt Showcross’s office,’ said Dingley. ‘Tell us about the arrest.’

‘I don’t understand.’ said Newton. He was being sucked down again, the water coming in more quickly to engulf him.

‘Did you get the impression there had been a lot of discussion between Harry Johnson and the two Metro DC police officers before you all got together in Burt Showcross’s office?’ asked Benton.

Yes, which was why I looked at the personnel records, thought Newton. He said: ‘I didn’t think about it… I guess there was… what

…? An affinity, I guess. They were all police officers – Harry was, once. They have a way of behaving… talking…’ He had to get out, stop this sort of questioning! He was going to be dragged down. Destroyed. He didn’t want to be destroyed by a system and an environment and people – a person – who believed himself to be God. All he wanted – the only thing he wanted – was to escape, to run away somewhere, anywhere, and hide and never be found again.

‘Think about it now,’ urged Dingley. ‘Parnell’s arrest doesn’t seem right to us – almost as if it had been decided upon in advance.’

‘Is that a focus of your investigation?’ demanded Fletcher. ‘That’s surely a matter for the separate enquiry initiated against the two officers by Mr Parnell?’

‘Difficult not to cross boundary lines,’ smiled Benton, in empty apology. ‘We’re troubled by what seem to have been assumptions, without obvious evidence to support the action that was taken.’

‘I don’t see how my client can possibly help you with that,’ said Fletcher.

‘No,’ quickly said Newton, seizing the more immediate, open-door escape. ‘I can’t help you with any of this Honestly, he said: ‘I was shocked by it all… by Rebecca’s death… how she died…’

‘How was that?’ persisted Benton, at once. ‘When the officers told you… more importantly, when they told Parnell. Exactly what did they say had happened?’

Newton hesitated, trying to anticipate the pitfalls. ‘That there’d been a traffic accident. That Rebecca had died.’

‘Did they give any details of the accident?’ asked Dingley.

Where was the trap? The thing he should or shouldn’t say? ‘I think they said there’d been a collision… I can’t properly remember… that Rebecca’s car had been forced into a canyon, I think… I’m not sure…’

‘Forced into a canyon?’ echoed Dingley.

What were the implications of those words? ‘Something like that. I told you, I can’t properly remember… can’t swear to anything…’

‘You’re not being asked to swear to anything, Professor Newton…’ said Dingley.

‘Not yet,’ finished Benton.

‘Do you have a case to make against anyone?’ demanded Baldwin, at once.

‘Not yet,’ said Dingley, in a tone indicating that it could be imminent.

‘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.

‘What’s the difficulty?’ demanded the Frenchman, the clipped English perfectly modulated.

‘I don’t know that there is one,’ said Parnell.

‘What, then?’

‘I received the missing test samples.’

‘You acknowledged that. And gave me the results,’ reminded Saby.

‘When we talked the last time, you told me there were batch designations from which you could tell if everything had been withdrawn? If, in fact, there had been any release?’ reminded Parnell, in return.

‘Yes?’

‘I thought by now all the checks and comparisons would have been carried out, through your marketing division and against their records?’

‘Is French marketing a matter for the head of Dubette’s pharmacogenomics?’

Too quick an answer – and the wrong answer, decided Parnell, feeling the first lurch of positive concern. ‘Yes, when Dubette’s pharmacogenomics unit discovered what could have caused human, not to say a commercial, damage to that marketing!’

‘I’m sorry,’ the Frenchman immediately retreated. ‘I did not wish to sound discourteous. I have already been in contact with New York. And with your vice president.’

‘Yes?’ questioned Parnell.

‘I think we’re straying outside the proper channels of communication, as I believe we did when we last spoke.’

‘It’s a simple question,’ persisted Parnell, careless of the irritation. ‘Have you got it all back or haven’t you?’ He didn’t need to be told, Parnell decided.

‘Let’s remain within the proper channels of communication,’ refused Saby, outright.

‘You’re…’ started Parnell, too loudly, but stopped.

‘What were you about to say?’ demanded the Frenchman.

‘We’re in the wrong channel of communication,’ said Parnell. Certainly you are, you evasive bastard, he thought, only slightly venting his feelings by slamming down the telephone. He slammed the office door, too, startling everyone in the laboratory on his way out.

Parnell was prepared for another waiting-room sit-in, but Dwight Newton didn’t keep him waiting, frowning up at the obvious anger when Parnell thrust into his office.

‘It got out, didn’t it?’ challenged Parnell, immediately. ‘Some of that French shit got distributed and hasn’t all been got back? How much? Where? What’s being done?’ Parnell ended with his hands on Newton’s desk, leaning over towards the man, who visibly pulled back in his chair.

‘Sit down,’ said Newton, weakly. ‘Why don’t you sit down?’

‘I don’t want to sit down! I want the answers to the questions!’ Why had he left it? There’d always been the nagging doubt, but he hadn’t responded to it, as he should have done. Which virtually made him as guilty as everyone else.

‘Please sit down,’ repeated Newton. He felt beaten, exhausted, too tired to use his authority or fight any more.

Parnell did sit but stayed forward in his chair, demandingly. ‘What are the answers, Dwight. Saby’s just told me you know it all.’

The research vice president shook his head. ‘Not everything. People are still working on it, to get it all back. It’ll get done.’

‘Where?’ demanded Parnell.

‘Africa. Just Africa.’

‘Just Africa!’ echoed Parnell, incredulous. ‘Africa’s an entire fucking continent! Which countries in Africa, for Christ’s sake?’

‘I don’t know, not precisely. New York does, I think. I guess it’ll be East Africa. That’s where the French have their colonial links, isn’t it?’

Parnell forced the control, determined against overlooking anything in his fury. ‘How much?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘How much, Dwight?’

‘I told you I’m not sure. Maybe a few thousand doses.’

‘A few thousand doses of each? Or a few thousand in total?’

‘I’m not sure,’ parroted Newton. ‘I’ve told you, it’s being gotten back.’

‘It’s been weeks now! There’s no way of knowing how much has been used – what’s been started!’

He knew how to escape, Newton abruptly decided. All very simple, very easy. Why had it taken him so long? Too long. Still time. He’d just get out. Quit. Grant couldn’t force him to stay. No one could. Premature retirement, like Harry Johnson from the police force. Be simple enough to get a physician’s note if he needed one. Couldn’t imagine that he would. Maybe something official involving his pension or severance or stock-option valuation. His lawyer could handle all that. His lawyer and his doctor – that was their job. Newton actually felt a physical relief at the jumbled thoughts, unaware that he was slightly smiling.

‘What the hell’s so funny?’ demanded Parnell.

‘I’m sorry… nothing… I wasn’t smiling.’

‘You’re not making sense!’ protested Parnell.

‘I don’t know it all. New York’s handling it. But I know it’s under control.’

‘How the hell can it be under control when there are thousands of doses unaccounted for!’

‘I told you, they’re being gotten back.’

‘There’s got to be a public warning!’ insisted Parnell. ‘Everything’s got to be named and warnings issued, to prescribing doctors and pharmacies. Public notices.’

Newton felt quite calm now, as if he were discussing something in which he was quite uninvolved. ‘You’re probably right. But I don’t have that authority. Only New York could initiate a programme like that.’

‘Then New York’s got to do it,’ insisted Parnell.

‘I’ll speak to them,’ said Newton.

‘Do I have your word on that, Dwight? We’re talking urgency here!’

‘I know. You’ve got my word. I promise I’ll speak to New York. If they can’t assure me everything’s been recovered, I’ll talk about public warnings.’

‘Maybe we should both speak to New York?’

‘I’ll suggest that, too,’ undertook Newton.

‘Don’t suggest it!’ pleaded Parnell. ‘Make it happen!’

‘Or what?’ picked up Newton. In a week – just days – he’d be away from all this.

‘Or someone’s got to,’ said Parnell.

‘ Yes?’

‘ Are you alone? Able to talk?’

‘ Yes. What is it?’

‘ They want to see me again. ’

‘ So?’

‘ It’s something about forensics. ’

‘ So?’

’I don’t know what they’ve got, Mr Grant.’ The tone was wheedling, subservient.

‘ What could they have?’

‘ Nothing, I don’t think. ’

‘ We’ve talked everything through. ’

‘ I don’t want anything to come out wrong… for Dubette, I mean. ’

‘ I don’t want that either, Harry. That’s why we’re talking like we are talking now. Why you have this number, so we can protect Dubette at all times. You got anything more to tell me?’

‘ I want to know you’re with me. ’

‘ When have I ever not been?’

‘ I just want to know. ’

‘ You know. What about Clarkson?’

‘ He’s OK ’

‘ He’s top of the tree. ’

‘ I guess. ’

‘ When are you seeing the FBI again?’

‘ Coupla days. Three. ’

‘ Let me know. ’

‘ It’ll be the flight number… something about the fucking flight number. ’

‘ Remember. ’

‘ Yes. ’

‘ It happened. What’s the problem?’

‘ OK.’

‘ Let me know, OK?’

‘ OK.

‘Edward C. Grant, the president of Dubette Inc. himself!’ said Benton, turning off the wire-tap replay.

‘I haven’t been up to New York in quite a while,’ said Dingley.

‘Time we went again,’ said Benton.