Diamond Solitaire

CHAPTER FOUR

A Saturday evening performance in the Metropolitan Opera House, New York. Domingo and Freni in full voice, before a packed, enthralled house. The entombment scene was drawing to its climax. United in Verdi's tear-jerking "O terra addio," the tragic lovers, Radames and Aida, embraced in the crypt, while the massive stone slabs that would bury them alive were lowered inch by agonizing inch. Offstage, the priests and priestesses chanted their relentless chorus, and the unhappy Amneris prayed for Radames' eternal soul. There are moments in an opera when no one minds too much if people wriggle and sway in their seats, straining for a better view, or trying to bring relief to aching buttocks. But when Aida reaches its poignant finale, when the slave girl is expiring in the arms of Radames, and the lights are slowly dimmed to signify the sealing of the tomb, the stillness in the auditorium is palpable, from the orchestra stalls right up to the sixth tier.

Or should be.

This evening in the Center Parterre, the most expensive seats in the Met, there was a disturbance. Of all things at this heart-rending moment, a series of electronic beeps shrilled above the singing, a call-signal considerably louder than the wristwatch alarms that are always going off in cinemas and theaters. Some philistine had brought his pager to the opera.

The most absorbed of the audience ignored the source of the sound, refusing to have their evening blighted. Not everyone was so forbearing.

"Jesus Christ-I don't believe this!" a man spoke up in the row immediately behind, regardless that he was adding to the disturbance. Others took up the protest with, "Knock it off, will you?" and stronger advice.

In the third row, the source of the bleeps, a silver-haired man in black-framed bifocals, tugged aside bis tuxedo, unhitched the pager from his belt and pressed a button that silenced it. The entire incident had lasted no more than six seconds, but it could not have been more unfortunately timed.

And now the curtain was down and the performers were taking applause, and in the Center Parterre as many eyes were on the man in the third row as on Domingo. Dagger thrusts of obloquy struck at the offender. Try as he did to ignore them by energetically applauding and focusing his eyes fixedly on the stage, he could expect no mercy from the offended patrons around him. New Yorkers are not noted for reticence.

"I know who I'd bury alive."

"How do jerks like that get admitted?"

"I bought a ticket for a fucking opera, not a business conference."

The jerk in question continued vigorously clapping through six or seven curtain calls, until the house lights were turned on. Then he turned to his companion, a stunning-looking, dark-haired woman at least twenty years younger than he, and attempted to engage her in such earnest conversation that the rest of New York was shut out

She wasn't all that impressed. It was some consolation to those around as they got up and started to file out that the lady was unwilling to gloss over the lapse. In a short time, her voice was raised above his and snatches of the tongue-lashing she was giving him threatened to shake the chandeliers. "… never been so humiliated and if you think after this I'm going to tag along for dinner and a screw, forget it"

Someone called out, "Attagirl! Dump him!"

And that is what she did, flouncing off between the rows of seats, leaving her escort staring after her and shaking his head. He didn't attempt to follow. He remained seated, judiciously letting the people he'd upset get clear. And when everyone had filed out of his section of the auditorium, he took out the pager again and keyed in a set of numbers.

Having got something on the display, he delved into his breast pocket and, impervious to the surroundings, took out a cell-phone and pulled out a length of aerial.

"Sammy, were you trying to reach me, because if you were, you could have timed it better, my friend." While listening, he settled deep in the seat and propped his feet over the row in front. "The hell with that I sure hope for your sake this item of news measures nine point nine on the Richter scale."

What he then heard was enough to cause visible disturbance in Manfred Flexner. He withdrew his feet from their perch. He crouched forward as if it might enable him to hear better. His free hand raked through his hair.

Six minutes later, shaking his head and trying to stay calm, he reeled out of the opera house into the plaza of Lincoln Center and took some gulps of fresh air. At this time of night the esplanade was thick with sables and minks, the audiences from the ballet and the Philharmonic jostling the operagoers in the scramble for taxis. Flexner had his chauffeur waiting across the street with the limousine, so he had no reason to rush, but he wasn't going home yet.

He stared into the floodlit fountain for a while. Inside the last half hour he'd interrupted an opera, lost his companion and slipped forty points on the international stock markets. He needed a drink.

The world was not a happier place next morning. He watched the Alka-Seltzers fizzing in the glass on his desk and brooded on what might have been. Pharmaceuticals were Manny Flexner's business.

Pharmaceuticals.

And here he was relying on the product of a rival company. He'd worked all his life in the expectation one day of finding a market leader like Alka-Seltzer mat would become a steady seller for the foreseeable future. His was the traditional story of a Lower East Side boy with a head for business who'd made some bucks driving taxis, lived frugally for a time and invested his earnings. Realizing, as all entrepreneurs do early in life, that you get nowhere using self-help and savings, he'd borrowed from the bank to buy a share in a small business supplying labels to pharmacies. When self-stick labels came in, he'd just about cornered the market, and made enough to borrow more cash and move into the supply side of pharmaceuticals. The 1960s and 70s had been a prosperous time in the drug industry. Manny Flexner had taken over a number of companies in the U.S.A. and expanded internationally, buying shrewdly into Europe and South America. One of the Manflex products, Kaprofix, a treatment for angina, had become a strong source of income, a steady seller throughout America and Europe.

The story had a downturn. The pharmaceuticals industry relies heavily on the development of new drugs; companies cannot survive without massive research programs. In the early eighties, scientists working for Manflex had identified a new histamine antagonist with potential as a treatment for peptic ulcers. It was patented and given the proprietary name of Fidoxin. The potential market for antiulcer drugs is enormous. At that time, Smith Kline's Tagamet dominated the field with sales estimated at over a billion dollars. Glaxo was developing a rival product called Zantac that would eventually outsell every drug in the world. But Manny Flexner was in there and pitching.

The early research on Fidoxin was encouraging. Manflex invested hugely in studies and field trials designed to satisfy the federal panel that advised the Food and Drug Administration, for no drug can be marketed without the FDA seal of approval. By 1981, Manflex was set to beat its rivals in the race to a billion-dollar market. Then, at a late stage, long-term side effects were discovered in patients taking Fidoxin. Almost every drug has unwanted effects but the possibility of serious renal impairment is unacceptable. Reluctantly, Manny Flexner had cut his losses and abandoned the project.

Too much had been gambled on that one drug. Through the 1980s Manny had been unwilling to sink so much into any research project. The recession in 1991 had hit Manflex harder than its rivals. Thanks mainly to the old standby, Kaprofix, the company still rated in the top ten in America, but had slipped from fourth to seventh. Or worse. Manny didn't care to check anymore.

Today was the worst yet He had the Wall Street Journal in front of him. Overnight, his stock had plummeted again in Tokyo and London. The reason?

"The biggest firework display in history is what they're calling it," he told his Vice Chairman, Michael Leapman, throwing the paper to him. "A twenty billion lire fire. The flames could be seen thirty kilometers south of Milan. How much is that, Michael?"

"About twenty miles."

"The lire, for God's sake."

"Not so bad as it sounds. Say seventeen million bucks."

"Not so bad," Manny repeated with irony. "An entire plant goes up in smoke, a quarter of our Italian holding, and it's not so bad."

"Insurance," murmured Michael Leapman.

"Insurance takes care of plant and materials. There were research labs in that place. They were testing a drug for depression. Depression. I hope to God some of the stuff is left because I need some. Research is irreplaceable, and the market knows it. Do we have" any news from Italy? Is it a total write-off?"

Leapman nodded. "I spoke to Rico Villa an hour ago. The scene is a heap of white ash now." He crossed the room to the drinks cabinet and took out the scotch. "Can I pour you one?"

Manny shook his head and indicated the Alka-Seltzer.

"Then you don't mind if I do?" Thirty-seven, six foot two, and blond, Michael Leapman was less volatile than his boss. He was half Swedish. Supposedly the Swedish half kept him from throwing tantrums. He'd joined Manflex five years ago through no action of his own, when Flexner had bought the small company he managed in Detroit; Leapman had proved to be the only valuable acquisition from that takeover, a creative thinker with fine organizational skills. He'd developed a good rapport with his tough little boss. Within a year he'd been invited to join the board.

"Anyone died yet?" Manny enquired in a voice that expected nothing but bad news that day.

"Apparently not. Seven people were hospitalized, two of them firemen. They inhaled fumes. That's the size of it."

"Environmental damage?"

Leapman raised an eyebrow. His boss wasn't known for his green sympathies.

"That could really put us in trouble," Manny explained. "Remember Seveso? The dioxin fumes? Wasn't that Italy? How many millions did the owners have to shell out in compensation?"

Leapman helped himself to a generous measure of Scotch. "No poison fumes reported yet."

The tension in Manny's face eased a little. He took off his glasses and wiped them with a tissue that he took from a Manflex dispenser.

"We can ride this," Leapman said confidently. Providing reassurance was one of his most useful talents. "Sure, it's going to bruise us. The markets will mark us down for a week or two, but we're big enough to absorb it. The Milan plant wasn't a huge moneymaker. Rico kept reminding us it was in need of modernization."

"I know, I know. We were going to inject some capital later in the year."

"Now we can give priority to the two plants near Rome."

Manny replaced his glasses and studied Leapman. "You don't think we should rebuild in Milan?"

"In the present economic climate?" His tone said it all. Rebuilding was out.

"You're right. We should consolidate with what we have out there. We can sell the Milan site." Having weighed the options, Manny seemed satisfied. "What I want now is for someone to go to Italy and tidy up, sort out the staffing problems, salvage anything we can from this mess." He hesitated, as if casting about for a name. "Who do you think? Would you say David can handle it?"

"David?" The name wrongfooted Leapman. He was fully expecting this assignment for himself.

"My boy."

"No question." He knew better than to try and talk the boss out of handing the assignment to his son, whatever he privately thought Young David Flexner-young, but by no stretch of imagination still a boy-conspicuously lacked his father's enthusiasm for the business world, yet Manny cherished the unlikely hope that he would make a contribution eventually. After four years in business school and three on the board of Manflex, David should have been ready for responsibility. In reality, all his energies went into amateur filmmaking.

Towards the end of the morning, the screens in the large office adjacent to Manny Flexner's were registering some improvement in the group's ratings. Taking its cue from Tokyo and London, Wall Street had overreacted to the first news of the fire. Now the market was taking a more measured view. The Manflex group was showing a sharp fall, but it wasn't, after all, in dire trouble.

Manny exhibited his positiveness by treating his son to lunch at the Four Seasons. Manny was twice-divorced and lived alone. Technically alone, that is to say. In reality he had a string of women friends who took turns to join him for dinner in New York's top restaurants and afterwards passed the night in his house on the Upper East Side. So he knew where to eat well. And the diet had to be good to keep up his stamina. He was sixty-three.

But lunches were strictly for business.

"I recommend the salmon with sweet-hot mustard. Or the duck salad with sour cherries. No, try the salmon. It really is something. You heard about the fire in Milan?"

Clearly his son hadn't looked at the business section of whichever newspaper he read. David had gone past the stage of youthful rebellion. He was a grown-up rebel, with dyed blond hair that reached his shoulders. Blond hair looked wrong on a Jewish boy, in Manny's opinion. The dark green cord jacket David had put on was a concession to restaurant rules. He often attended Board meetings in a T-shirt.

Manny filled him in with the painful essentials and told him his plan for dealing with the Italian end of the problem.

"You want me to go there? That could be difficult, Pop," David said at once. "How soon?"

"Anything wrong with tonight?"

David smiled. His engaging smile was both an asset and a liability. "You're not serious?"

"Totally serious. I have up to two hundred people without a job, unions to deal with-"

"Yes, but-"

"An insurance claim to file and for all I know, lawsuits pending. Things like this don't get sorted if you ignore them, David."

"How about Rico Villa? He's there, and he speaks the language."

Manny pulled a face and shrugged. "Rico couldn't close a junior softball game."

"You want me to fly out to Milan and wield the hatchet?"

"Just point out the facts to these people, that's all. Their workplace is a pile of ash now. There's no future in rebuilding it If anyone is willing to transfer to Rome, fix it. Talk to the accountants about redundancy terms. We'll give the best deal we can. We're not ogres."

David sighed. "Pop, I can't just drop everything."

Although Manny had expected this, he affected surprise. "What are you saying, son?"

"I have commitments. I made promises to people. They depend on me."

Manny gave him a penetrating stare. "Do these commitments have anything remotely to do with Manflex?"

His son reddened. "No, it's a film project. We have a schedule."

"Uhhuh."

"I'm due on location in the Bronx Zoo."

"Filming animals, huh? I thought you said you made promises to people."

"I was talking about the crew."

The waiter arrived a split second before Manny was due to erupt Father and son declared a truce while the gastronomic decisions were taken. David diplomatically elected to have the salmon his father had recommended. It would be no hardship. When they were alone again, Manny started on a different tack. "Some of the best films I ever saw were made in Italy."

"Sure. The Italian cinema is up there among the best. Always was. The Bicycle Thief. Death in Venice. The Garden of the Finzi-Continis."

"A Fistful ofDollars."

David gave a fair imitation of the sphinx. "All-you mean spaghetti westerns."

Manny nodded and said with largess, "You could get among those guys. Take a couple of weeks over this. Tidy up in Milan, my boy, and you have a free hand. Go to Venice. Is that a reasonable offer?"

Such altruism from a workaholic was worthy of a moment's breathless tribute, and got it.

Finally David confessed, "I know you want me to step into your shoes some day, Pop, but I think I should tell you that the drugs industry bores the pants off me."

"You're telling me nothing."

"But you won't accept it"

"Because you won't give the business a chance. Listen, Dave. It's the most challenging industry there is. You stay ahead of the game, or you die. It's all about new drugs and winning a major share of the market."

"That much I understand," David said flatly.

"One breakthrough, one new drug, can change your whole life. That's the buzz for me."

"You mean it can change a sick person's life."

"Naturally," Manny said without hesitation. "Only what's good for sick people is good for my balance sheet, too."

He winked, and his son was forced to grin. The ethics may have been clouded, but the candor was irresistible.

"Research teams are like horses. You want to own as many as you can afford. Once in a while one of them comes in first. But you can never be complacent. When you have the drug, you still need government approval to market it." Manny's eyes glittered at the challenge. He didn't smile much these days, but occasionally a look passed across his tired features, the look of a man who once picked winners, but seemed to have lost the knack. "And in no time at all the patent runs out, so you have to find something new. I have teams working around the globe. Any moment they could find the cure for some life-threatening disease."

David nodded. "There was a strong R &D section in the Milan plant."

Manny said with approval, "You know more than you let on.

"I guess you really believe I can handle this."

"That's why I asked you, son." He gestured to the wine waiter. When he'd chosen a good Bordeaux, he told his son, "This trouble in Italy has gotten to me. I always believed that someone up there was on my side. You know what I mean? Maybe I should think of stepping down."

"Pop, that's nuts, and you know it Who else could run the show?" Then David's eyes locked with his father's penetrating gaze. "Oh, no. It's not my scene at all. I keep telling you I'm not even sure that I believe in it. If it was just a matter of making drugs to help sick people, okay. But you and I know that it isn't. It's about public relations, keeping on the good side of politicians and bankers. Thinking of the bottom line."

"Tell me a business that doesn't. This is the world we live in, David."

"Yes, but the profits aren't in drugs that cure people. Take arthritis. If we found something to stop it, we'd lose a prime market, so we keep developing drugs to deaden the pain instead. They're not much different from aspirin, only fifty times more expensive. How many millions are being spent right now on me-too arthritis treatments?"

Manny didn't answer. However, he noted with approval his son's use of the trade jargon. A "me-too" drug was an imitation, slightly reconstituted to get around the patent legislation. There were more than thirty me-toos for the treatment of arthritis.

David was becoming angry. "Yet how much is invested in research into sickle-cell anemia? It happens to be concentrated in Third World countries, so it won't yield much of a profit"

"I was idealistic when I was your age," said Manny.

"And now you're going to tell me you live in the real world, but you don't, Pop. Until something like AIDS forces itself on your attention, you don't want to know about the real world. I don't mean you personally. I'm talking about the industry."

"Come on, the industry was quick enough in responding to AIDS. Wellcome had Retrovir licensed for use in record time."

"Yes, and hyped their share price by 250 percent."

Manny shrugged. "Market forces. Wellcome came up first with the wonder drug."

David spread his hands to show that his point was proved.

The waiter approached and poured some wine for Manny to sample. After he'd given it the nod, Manny said slyly to his son, "You know more than you sometimes let on. When you become chairman, you'll be God. You can try injecting some ethics into the drugs industry if you want."

David smiled. All these years on, his father still had the chutzpah of a taxi driver.

"So we'll get you a seat on tonight's Milan flight," said Manny, taking out his portable phone.