Dead End

Thirty-Two

D wight Newton had risked doubling the dose of the strongest tranquillizers Dubette made, welcoming the light-headed feeling of unreality and sure he could hold on for what he had to do. He was tempted to take a third but didn’t, knowing he couldn’t afford a mistake. It had been sensible as well to talk first about what he intended, with both his personal physician and his lawyer, although he was disappointed at the blood-pressure reading his doctor had insisted upon taking, despite it supporting the reason for his quitting Dubette. But because Dubette manufactured it, he knew the prescribed calcium antagonist would keep it under control. The word stayed in Newton’s uneven mind. That was what he was going to do, just minutes from now: free himself of Dubette’s control. Not Dubette’s, Newton corrected himself immediately: the tentacle-encircling control of Edward C. Grant. He smiled emptily at people he didn’t know entering the corporate building, and again in the elevator, and when Grant’s personal assistant suggested it was going to be a nice day, Newton replied that he was sure it was going to be a very nice day indeed, pleased at the quickness of his reply.

Grant was at his favourite vantage point, at the penthouse window, when Newton entered, and he stayed looking out over the Manhattan skyline for several moments, even though he knew Newton was in the room. When he finally turned, there was a faint although satisfied smile on his face, and Newton thought, the supercilious son of a bitch thinks he’s king of all he surveys.

The expression went at once. Grant said: ‘What’s so important you had to come all the way to New York when I hadn’t asked you to?’

Newton was uncertain at the quickness. He hadn’t rehearsed what he was going to say and wanted to get it over with as soon as possible, but at the same time he’d hoped for a slightly longer lead-up, to savour the eventual moment. ‘I’m resigning, asking for premature retirement, whatever you want to call it!’

‘You’re what?’ exclaimed Grant, smiling in disbelief.

‘Quitting Dubette,’ declared Newton. He took the envelope from inside his jacket and pushed it across the overly large desk towards the now seated president. ‘Here’s the formal letter.’ Newton wished his hands and face hadn’t felt so numb. Still in control, though. Knew what he was doing. Saying.

‘Sit down, Dwight,’ ordered Grant. ‘Sit down and let’s talk.’

It was practically a replay of his conversation with Parnell, remembered Newton. He didn’t like it having to appear that he was obeying the man. ‘There’s nothing to talk about.’

‘I think there’s a lot to talk about,’ said Grant. ‘I won’t have things sprung on me like this.’

Newton nodded towards the untouched envelope. ‘I’m not springing anything on anyone. I’m sick. Severe hypertension’s the most obvious. It’s all set out in there, in a supporting letter from my doctor.’

‘Hypertension is easily treated,’ dismissed Grant.

‘It isn’t my only problem.’ Or yours, he thought. He’d expected more immediate anger from the man and was glad it hadn’t come. All he wanted now was to get out, back to Washington. He’d take another tranquillizer on the plane.

‘I got the impression that things weren’t right,’ said Grant.

Newton was confused by the remark, not understanding it. ‘Then you can’t be surprised.’

‘Barbara didn’t think it was this bad.’

The response silenced Newton. His last formal assessment with Barbara Spacey had been months ago, just before the last seminar. And until now he hadn’t known Grant received personal copies. ‘My recollection is that she had little to remark upon from our previous session.’ He was sure that’s what she’d written.

‘Easily aroused irritability. A tendency to believe himself manipulated,’ quoted Grant.

‘I don’t recollect that in my copy of her assessment,’ protested Newton, his control faltering.

‘It was in my account,’ stated Grant, simply.

‘You have…?’ started Newton, running out of words in his astonishment at the apparent disclosure that those seemingly pointless, repetitive encounters with the tent-attired psychologist were Grant’s way literally to get inside selected people’s minds. ‘So, you’re not surprised,’ he managed.

‘You’re my vice president supervising everything that’s ongoing in Dubette research and development,’ said Grant. ‘Is it likely that I am going to agree to your leaving, taking with you everything that you know?’

‘You don’t have to remind me of the confidentiality agreement. I had it all re-explained to me by my lawyer, yesterday. I’m not looking for another job, with another pharmaceutical company. I’m getting out of the business. Quitting, like I told you.’

‘You’ve discussed it with your lawyer?’ Grant’s voice rose for the first time, although only slightly.

‘And my doctor.’

‘I don’t want you to go, Dwight. Won’t allow you to go. I want you to have a full medical at the centre at McLean, talk to Barbara again maybe, and we’ll get whatever seems to be the problem out of the way.’

‘I’m going,’ insisted Newton, sure his voice didn’t betray the nervousness an encounter with the other man always engendered. ‘I’ve just told you I’ve talked with a lawyer. His advice is that you can’t legally hold me.’

Grant frowned. ‘I think my lawyers might disagree.’

‘Do you want to put that to the test, in court?’ Newton’s voice still gave no hint of his inward, hollowing turmoil. It was difficult to believe he was confronting Grant like this.

‘I wasn’t threatening, Dwight. Why don’t you tell me what you want?’

The Edward C. Grant approach to any difficulty, thought Newton: beat it into submission or buy it. ‘I told you what I want. I want – intend – to leave.’

‘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.’