Final Venture

30

I checked into a motel on the outskirts of Providence. Throughout the day I had been looking over my shoulder for a tail, but hadn't seen anyone. I had an anonymous supper in a cheap anonymous restaurant, and felt safe.

I was now pretty certain that I knew why Frank had been killed. Dr Catarro had told him of his concerns about BioOne. Frank had asked questions and someone had killed him. And then Dr Catarro, and then John. I had asked questions, and they had tried to kill me.

Who was responsible? The list of possibilities was long, but it was headed by two people: Art Altschule and Thomas Enever. But I had no proof. I still needed more information on the neuroxil-5 trial.

There was one more clinic I could visit. I wasn't sure where Aunt Zoe had been enrolled, although I assumed it was somewhere in Boston. She must have been enrolled in the Phase Three trial, so there was a good chance it would not be one of those listed in the article on the Phase Two trial in the NEJM.

Even though it was late, I dialled her number. Carl answered, sounding tense.

'Carl? It's Simon Ayot.'

'Oh, Simon, how are you?'

'I'm sorry I'm calling so late…'

'That's OK. I've just come back from the hospital.'

'The hospital?' I knew what was coming next. 'Is it Aunt Zoe?'

'Yes,' said Carl, his voice strained. 'She had a stroke last night.'

'Jesus! How is she? How bad was it?'

'It was bad,' said Carl flatly. 'She's still alive, but the doctors say the damage was massive. She's in a coma, and they don't think she'll come out of it. It's just a question of time.'

A wave of despair overwhelmed me. I couldn't say anything.

'Simon. Simon! Are you there?'

'Yes, I'm here,' I said quietly. 'I'm so sorry, Carl.'

There was silence on the. other end of the line for a moment. 'That wasn't the side-effect you were thinking about, was it Simon?'

I wanted to lie to him, tell him I didn't know, let him think that he and I bore no responsibility for his wife's stroke, but I couldn't. He'd find out soon enough.

Yes,' I said.

'Damn!' Carl exclaimed. Then he gave a sigh that shuddered down the phone. 'I guess I shouldn't have told Zoe to go on with the treatment, huh?'

'You didn't know, Carl. Neither did I. We do now, but it's too late.'

'Yeah. It is.' Carl sounded very tired.

'I'll leave you to get some sleep,' I said. 'But one last question. Which clinic was Zoe visiting?'

It was Dr Netherbrook's. The one I had seen first that morning, the one with no patients with strokes. When I had spoken to him, Dr Netherbrook wouldn't have heard what had happened to Zoe. But he would soon be filing an adverse event report. I wondered how Enever would ignore or suppress that one.

'Goodbye, Carl. Give my love to Zoe.'

'I will,' he said, and rang off.

I lay on my back on the bed in my motel room.

Another good person dying for the greater glory of BioOne.

I bought the Wall Street Journal the next morning and read it over one of those great American breakfasts that you can get in cheap diners. Out of habit I scanned the NASDAQ quotes. BioOne's stock was up nineteen dollars to sixty-three!

I searched the paper for the story. BioOne had announced a marketing agreement with Werner Wilson, a huge pharmaceutical company. Werner Wilson was going to sell neuroxil-5 in the United States, as well as 'a promising new treatment for Parkinson's disease, developed by BioOne'. That was Lisa's BP 56. The deal gave extremely favourable terms to BioOne, although it was contingent on a successful outcome of the Phase Three trial of neuroxil-5, expected in March. It would mean neuroxil-5 would be pushed out to doctors by one of the largest pharmaceutical sales forces in the country. The Wall Street analysts loved it, and so did the stock market, which was why the stock had shot up. If they only knew.

I finished my French toast, and went out to the parking lot and the little white Ford, which was doubling as an office. I called Daniel at Revere.

'What's up, Simon? Where are you?'

'On the road,' I replied. 'Listen, Daniel. I've been to some of the clinics that are participating in the Phase Three trial. And I think Lisa was right. There is a problem.'

'Jesus,' said Daniel. 'What kind of problem?'

'It looks possible that people taking the drug over a period of months suffer from strokes.'

'Ooh,' said Daniel. 'That's bad.'

'Very bad.'

'Did you see the BioOne stock price this morning?' he asked.

'Yes. Sixty-three.'

'It's not going to be up there very long if this gets out.'

'No, it isn't. But keep it quiet for now, Daniel. I don't have hard evidence. I really need the clinical trial data on the Phase Two trial, and the adverse events on Phase Three. There must be some way you can get that from BioOne. Revere is its biggest shareholder, for God's sake.'

'I don't know, Simon. You know what Thomas Enever is like.'

'It's important, Daniel. Steal it if you have to.'

There was silence at the other end of the phone.

'Daniel?'

'I'm sorry, Simon. This is getting heavy. You getting fired. People getting killed. I don't think it would be smart to steal BioOne documents.'

'Daniel! Come on, this is important.'

'Sorry, Simon. Got to run. Later.'

The bastard hung up.

Shit! I had expected too much of Daniel's friendship. As usual, he was thinking of himself first. Bastard!

We hadn't discussed Daniel's personal holdings of BioOne stock directly. At sixty-three dollars he was finally in profit. I was sure he would sell. If he did, I supposed he would technically be insider trading, but that was his problem, not mine. I was furious that I had given him the information to dig himself out of that hole, when he had been unwilling to lift a finger to help me.

Who else could I talk to at Revere? Art was out of the question. So was Gil. He had made clear his displeasure at my attempts to find out what was wrong with BioOne. I would go to him when I had proof, not before. Ravi? I didn't know him well enough to count on his support; he would be much more likely to follow Gil's line. And the last thing I wanted to do was go to Diane for help.

I started the car, and drove north to Cambridge. I stopped opposite BioOne's gleaming building. The information was in there, somewhere, but how could I get at it? I had seen the security. There was no way past that.

I had an idea. I called Craig, and persuaded him to meet me at Marsh House that afternoon.

I drove out to Woodbridge, bought some groceries at the Star Market, and drove on to Marsh House. It would be foolish to go back to my apartment in Boston if I wanted to stay alive. This seemed like a good place to lie low. But even here I didn't feel completely safe.

It was a crisp clear day. The autumnal light reflected off the yellows and oranges of the marsh grass, so that the marsh itself seemed to shimmer. The creek twinkled at the end of the jetty. No one was about. Just the white egrets and me.

I used Lisa's key to unlock the door. The house had not been touched since I was last there. It was cold. I found some wood, fed the stove, and lit it. I made myself a sandwich for lunch, and waited for Craig. The peace of the place settled around me.

Craig came armed with a powerful laptop computer. He set it up on the kitchen table, and in no time he was up and running, and looking for BioOne's web site.

'How long will this take?' I asked him.

'No idea. Hours. Days, maybe. We'll see.'

'Will you be able to get in there?'

'Oh, yes. At Net Cop we monitor all the new tricks as soon as they're discovered. That's the only way we can keep our own switching systems secure. Something will work here.'

I watched him as he nosed around the BioOne web site, taking note of e-mail addresses, and so on.

'Can I help?' I asked him.

'Yeah. Let's do this properly. Pizza. Extra anchovies. And good coffee.'

So I drove into Woodbridge and got a pizza. There was a kind of deli which ground exotic coffees, so I bought a quarter pound of arabica and returned to the house with it. The kitchen was soon full of the smell of brewing coffee and extra anchovies.

'How are you doing?' I asked him.

'I think I can see a possible way in,' he said. 'There's a new link between BioOne's network and Boston Peptides', isn't there?'

'Yes. BioOne took them over very recently'

'Excellent. That means they probably haven't got a cast-iron connection. It would really help if I had the password of someone in the Boston Peptides network,' Craig said. 'You don't know Lisa's by any chance?'

'No. I could guess. But won't she have been kicked off the system by now?'

'Probably,' Craig agreed. 'Anyone else?'

'Hold on.'

I called Kelly. She didn't sound pleased to hear from me.

'You shouldn't call me at work,' she whispered urgently.

'Kelly, I need your password for the computer system.'

'You've got to be kidding!'

'I'm serious. I'm pretty sure now that Lisa was right about neuroxil-5. To be certain, I need to get into BioOne's computer. To do that I need your password.'

'But I don't have access to that data. That would be in the Clinical Trials Unit.'

'Don't worry about that. It'll give us somewhere to start.'

'No, Simon. Ill get fired.'

'Kelly. Patients will die.'

There was silence. 'OK. But it's kind of embarrassing.'

'Tell me.'

'All right. Leonardodicaprio. One word.'

'Ah. I see what you mean.' Craig passed a note in front of me. 'Oh, and try to use the system as little as possible over the next twenty-four hours.'

'How am I going to do that?'

'Please, Kelly.'

She sighed. 'OK.'

'All right!' said Craig. 'Now what I'm going to do is try to log in to BioOne's connection from here, pretending to be Boston Peptides' machine.'

'Can't the BioOne machine tell the difference?'

'Normally, yes. But using one of my programs I can guess the packet number from the Boston Peptides system. BioOne will identify my message as coming from Boston Peptides and send an acknowledgement back to them. So what I'll need to do is flood the Boston Peptides system with fake messages, so that it doesn't receive the BioOne acknowledgement and realize something's wrong.'

'How long will all that take?'

'With the program I have, about a minute,' Craig smiled. 'Watch.'

He typed furiously, and then with a flourish, pressed enter. Numbers were dialled, modems screeched, lines of meaningless letters and ungrammatical word combinations scrolled down his screen. After about a minute, it all came to a stop.

'We're in!' exclaimed Craig.

'I'm impressed.'

'There's a ways to go yet, but we're getting there. Let's start with this guy Enever's e-mail.'

It took a while, but eventually the screen was filled with Enever's e-mails. We opened a few at random. Enever was not one of the great e-mail diplomats. His missives were terse, rude and managed to phrase the most simple message as an order rather than a request.

'OK, which ones do you want?'

There were hundreds of them. 'I can't tell without reading each one,' I said, shaking my head.

'OK. We'll download the lot, then.'

Craig began the process of stealthily downloading Enever's e-mails from the BioOne server in Cambridge on to the Net Cop machine in Wellesley, all from the rickety kitchen table in Marsh House.

When he'd finished, he rubbed his hands. 'Now for the Clinical Trials Unit.'

I'd asked him to look for data on the Phase Two clinical trial for neuroxil-5, and any early results for the Phase Three trial. It proved to be difficult. After a couple of hours, he took a break.

'This is going to be much harder,' he said, pouring himself a cup of coffee. 'It's much better protected than Enever's e-mail.'

'I really need that clinical trial data,' I said.

'I'll get it.'

Four hours later, he still hadn't. It was nearly midnight. I was exhausted, but I felt morally bound to stay awake and be supportive.

'Shit!' shouted Craig. 'I don't believe this!'

'Still no luck?'

Craig rubbed his eyes. 'These bastards know what they're doin'.'

I yawned. 'Look, Craig. You've tried hard, I really appreciate it. But let's just give up.'

'No way,' said Craig. 'I'm not quittin' till I get you that data.'

'But you'll be up all night!'

'Probably,' said Craig. He smiled. 'I've done it before. Many times. But you get some sleep.'

'No, I'll stay up with you.'

'Simon. You yawning your head off a couple of feet from my ear does not constitute help. Trust me. Go to bed.'

He was right. I was exhausted and useless. At least if I got some sleep, I might not be quite so useless in the morning.

'Thanks, Craig. Good night. But wake me if you get anywhere.'

I went to sleep disappointed. I had pinned so much faith in Craig being able to get hold of hard data, data that would prove neuroxil-5 was dangerous, that would prove there was a major problem that someone had tried to cover up.

I had hoped to be woken in the middle of the night by a triumphant Craig, but it was the alarm clock that jolted me out of my sleep at six thirty. I pulled on some clothes, and went downstairs to the clatter of Craig's fingers on the keyboard.

'No luck?'

Craig turned to me. 'No,' he snapped. He didn't look tired, but he looked angry.

'Have you been at it all night?'

'I went for a walk about three. Didn't help.'

'Here, let me make you some breakfast,' I said. 'Toast, OK?'

'Yeah,' said Craig, getting up from his computer and stretching.

'Thanks for trying,' I said.

We cleared a space at the table, sat down, ate toast and drank coffee. Craig munched noisily, his eyes glazed, his mind still on the problem. I felt refreshed by my sleep and the coffee. The blackness outside was turning slowly to grey as dawn crept over the marsh.

'Don't worry about it, Craig,' I said. 'You never know, there might be some stuff in Enever's e-mails. Someone might have sent him some of the clinical trial.'

Craig stopped in mid slurp, spilling drops of coffee over his chin. 'That's it!' He exclaimed. He pushed the breakfast out of the way, and leaped back to his keyboard, fingers flying.

'What are you doing?'

'Composing a message from Enever, asking the Clinical Trials Unit for the data. They send it. We read it.'

The message was sent. It was still early. We had to wait for the people in the Clinical Trials Unit to get in to work, read their mail, and do something about it.

We stared at the screen, waiting.

At last, at 8. 33 a. m., a response came. We looked at it.

Dr Enever

Here is the summary of the data you requested. Can I give you the rest in hard copy, or do you need it in spreadsheet form?

Jed

A large spreadsheet of figures was attached. It looked quite comprehensive.

'Well I think we need the rest in spreadsheet form, don't you?' said Craig with a smile as he composed a response.

We sent it and watched for a response from the Clinical Trials Unit.

It didn't come. Instead, Message Sent flashed on the screen.

'What message?' I looked at Craig.

He checked the 'Copy of Sent Messages' file. It was from Enever, the real Enever this time, to Jed in the Clinical Trials Unit.

Jed

What's all this data? I didn't ask for the data. Who told you to send it to me?

Enever

'Oh, oh,' said Craig. 'Time to go.'

He quickly downloaded Jed's first e-mail and its spreadsheet attachment, and left BioOne's system. 'Will they know we were there?' I asked.

'I hope not,' Craig said. 'But I don't want to risk going back in.'

'That's OK. I'm sure we've got a lot of good stuff already.'

Craig stretched and began packing up his computer and the scraps of paper he had been scribbling on.

'Are you going home now?' I asked.

'Oh, no. If I can't pull an all-night hacking run any more, I'm not fit to run the company.'

'Thanks again for all your help.'

'No problem.' He paused at the door. 'Stay alive,' he said, and was gone.

I started on the BioOne files right away, using my own laptop. Craig had given me a password so that I could access them in the Net Cop system any time I wanted from anywhere I wanted.

There was a mass of information. Many of Enever's e-mails had meaty attachments to them. And then there was the Clinical Trial Unit's data, columns of dense figures and statistics. If this was the summary, I wondered what the complete data was like. It was good stuff, but I couldn't understand most of it. I had to stop and think about what every document referred to. Someone else would have to look through this. Someone who would instantly be able to sort the interesting from the irrelevant, and who could analyse whatever they found there.

The time had come to see Lisa.

I had held off physically tracking her down until I had something concrete to give her, evidence that I hadn't changed, that I was still the man she had married, that I hadn't killed her father. I was now pretty close to having that evidence. And I needed her help if I was to make sure that more Alzheimer's sufferers like Aunt Zoe didn't die.

I was excited at the prospect, but also nervous. I was confident in my ability to persuade the old Lisa that I was innocent, especially with all that I had now discovered. But the Lisa who had turned her back on me, who had suffered so badly from her father's death and taken it out on me? I wasn't so sure.

From my conversation with Kelly, I guessed that part of her behaviour was due to the effects of the BP 56 she had been taking. Perhaps the greater part. If she had stopped the drug when she'd moved to California, perhaps she'd be more amenable to reason.

I could only hope.

I wrote a one-page note and stuck it in an envelope, packed my bags and left. I drove to the airport and left the Ford in a car park. There were seats on the next flight to San Francisco, and two hours later I was in the air.