The Knowland Retribution

New York

Nathan Stein was angry. He hated whatever he did not understand, and now he felt that a good deal of gobbledy-gook had been shoved in his face, possibly to make him feel small, trapped, mocked, morose.

“Agar? What the hell’s ‘agar’?” he demanded, “and this ‘sorba whatever, something MacConkey’? And what the fuck is ‘smack’? I thought it was some kind of heroin. What the hell kind of equipment is that?” He’d liked this Hindu woman, or whatever the hell she was, at first glance. She was pretty as a picture: dark and sharp featured, with little green stones in her ears and a nice yellow, silky thing hanging off her shoulder. He thought she was supposed to have a dot in the middle of her forehead, but no matter. She looked like a lovely doll and stood a good six inches shorter than him, a difference he enjoyed infrequently. She’d been standing there for half an hour before she had a chance to say a word.

“Sorbitol, Mr. Stein,” she replied in a lilting, chimelike voice. “It’s called a sorbitol-MacConkey agar. That is S-M-A-C, or smack, if you will. As noted in the report before you, the agar itself is made up of agar-agar. It’s-”

“Agar-agar?” he exploded. “Give me a break! And smack is a goddamn illegal drug. Christ, Tom!” he whined, exasperated, appealing to the man on his left. “This sounds like Abbott and fucking Costello. Agar’s on first and agar’s on second.”

Big Irish Tom Maloney shifted position wearily, it seemed to Dr. Ganga Roy, perhaps in an effort to keep his suit jacket from getting stuck beneath his ample backside. She was almost as bemused by her odd little class as she was by her remarkable classroom.

The main section of Nathan Stein’s office, where they were meeting today, was twenty-five feet wide and eighteen feet deep. Its windows looked from the fifty-third floor over Manhattan north of the Battery. Stein’s battleship of a desk occupied the southeast corner of the room, and the light behind him lasted all morning long. He set it up that way purposely. The light was so bright behind him it hid his facial expression from anyone sitting in any of the four leather chairs that lined up to face him across the desk. Ten feet behind them, in the middle of the room, was a brass-fitted glass conference table surrounded by a dozen very different, very expensive chairs. Beneath that grouping a large red Bactrian rug, perhaps a hundred feet square, bespoke the anguished labor of a thousand tiny fingers. At the far end of the office were a black leather sofa, two huge chairs, and a massive sleek black-wood coffee table. Two doors, set off to the right of that furniture, led to Stein’s private bathroom and bedroom, so Dr. Roy supposed, completing his home away from all his other homes.

She’d stood and been ignored for the past twenty minutes, sunlight behind her, an easel at her side. Because she was standing, and because of the easel, where she stood became the head of the table. Tom Maloney faced her from his least favorite chair, the unforgiving mahogany number that forced his body into an awkward forward lean. He was stuck with it because Nathan had chosen the velvet to his right.

Nathan Stein was a genius at making things as difficult as possible. Today he was at the top of his game, and no wonder. The Knowland business had just hit the fan.

Not twenty-four hours ago, when Tom first called Dr. Ganga Roy, he’d modestly introduced himself as Senior Vice President and Director of Mergers and Acquisitions. “Which is,” he said, “when you come right down to it, just a lot of words.” He’d heard from a research director he knew that Dr. Roy was quite good and “quite tiny,” and hoped that the latter might have a soothing effect-that Napoleonfucking Stein, as he was known to so many at Stein, Gelb, Hector amp; Wills Securities, might find her smallness pleasing. This morning Tom had personally helped her set up the flip-chart easel she’d brought. He buzzed around her cheerfully until the others tromped in, none of them extending even the courtesy of a glance her way, and then Tom too acted as if she wasn’t there. She might have been the cleaning woman patiently waiting to make some slight move without causing notice. And so she stood for twenty minutes as the others argued, Tom took his seat, and the spectacle progressed.

She gathered that the big black man, the one Tom told her was Wesley Pitts, had incurred Mr. Stein’s disfavor. The matter had something to do with Houston. “Did you talk to Pat Grath yourself?” Mr. Stein was asking as they entered. Pitts said he’d talked to Grath and Billy MacNeal too. Now they were sitting, and she chose not to. Tom Maloney’s chubby, English-looking cheeks seemed to sag as he followed the conversation. Pitts said, “They’re all scared shitless. They’ve got hundreds of millions at stake.” Now Stein snarled most unbecomingly. “Tell me again,” he demanded.

Pitts’s eyes were large and round, fraught with more than information-bulging with urgency, fighting an anxious tension. “Pat got a call from the plant manager in Tennessee. His name is Ochs.” Pitts’s extraordinarily large hands fumbled through a tiny notepad. “Floyd Ochs. One of his foremen, a guy named Wayne Korman, told him to shut down his line. He, Korman, said something about the readings being incomplete. Stuff was getting by untested. He said they’d been shipping out beef with E. coli bacteria since yesterday. He wanted to clean the whole operation, scrap the meat supply, and get new cattle before they started again. It seems they’ve been running around the clock. Ochs mentioned ‘operator fatigue’ to Grath. Anyway, Ochs told Korman not to do a fucking thing. He told him to take no action. He told him to wait for instructions. Then he called Grath. Grath told Billy Mac and Billy’s shit turned to water. The IPO-that’s all he thinks about. That’s when Pat called me. And that’s it, Nathan. That’s all I’ve got.”

“And what about Hopman?”

“I called Hopman myself,” said Tom Maloney. “He wants to hear what we have to say and that’s why we are sitting here now. That’s why we need to do this now. We need to get a handle on the scope of this problem.”

Silence at last settled into the room. They all looked at Nathan Stein and waited.

“Shit, Maloney!” he suddenly squawked in the strained, unpleasant voice of a student who understands nothing and blames that on the book. “Fucking sonofabitch!”

It surprised Dr. Roy only a little that they’d paid no attention to her, despite her doll-like beauty, despite her unconventional costume and easel. She was, she knew, a kind of servant-however well compensated. What amazed her was how freely these people talked in front of the help. She would certainly have excused her half-deaf Polish cleaning woman to ensure privacy for a sensitive phone conversation or a visit with friends. Where she came from, one accorded servants the very real respect due to those positioned to do one harm. Mid-level managers, research directors, whom she’d met by the many hundreds, did not behave this way. Now she knew those at the top were no different. Even faculty meetings were more discreet.

Now, Stein was looking at her, seeing her in his mind, she sensed, as the only one in the room not yet immersed in the troubles of Stein, Gelb, Hector amp; Wills Securities. “Sorry about all that,” he said, attempting a gracious smile, “and you are Dr. Roy. Am I right?”

Maloney shot to his feet much more limberly than she supposed he could. He ran through her credentials and introduced her to Stein (Vice Chairman of Stein, Gelb, Hector this man, she was sure, could only have gotten his crown by inheritance), and Pitts (described as the firm’s invaluable Vice President for Client Relations, whatever that might mean; he was very likely an ex-athlete, almost certainly some kind of salesman). And then there was the only female at the table, Louise Hollingsworth, a tall, stiff-necked, sharp-featured woman, small shouldered and lean, wiry hair unfortunately blonde, not at all flattered by her rich floral scent, black skirt, pink silk blouse, and heels. Maloney described Louise as “our most Senior Analyst, but in reality, much, much more.” Louise rose uncomfortably, unhappily, to shake hands. Even in her midthirties, even under the corporate get-up and ill-advised touches, Dr. Roy pictured a girl spending her best years free of lipstick and casual friends, haunting the stacks of a cozy New England college-Hampshire, Marlboro, maybe Bard-writing very long papers.

Stein got down to business by picking up the report he’d brought with him. He waved the document in the air and made his scrambled, inflamed speech about agar. The fleeting impulse to gallantry was now dead. He’d remembered what he did not understand. He continued:

“Agar’s on first and agar’s on second. No, agar’s on first, smack’s on second, crack’s on third. It reads like I don’t know what.” No one appeared to disagree. “Let me ask you this, Dr. Roy. What’s this stuff about ‘Consequential Developments’? I don’t know what the hell it means but I don’t like the sound of it. Where do you get that from anyway? How do you know what will happen?”

His bratty-student voice rose even higher. “Isn’t that a medical conclusion? You’re a Ph. D., right? Rockefeller Institute?” He held up the cover of the report and pointed to her name.

“That is correct. I am Ganga Roy, Ph. D.”

“Well, damnit, that’s what I mean!” Stein exploded. “What we’ve got here is just some technical bullshit. Thank you Dr. Roy for your technical report. But all this crap about consequences-am I confused or what? Isn’t that a medical thing? A medical kind of judgment? Don’t we need a medical expert to make a call like that?” He stared at the Indian woman, eyes expectant, all but asking, “Aren’t we one man short here?”

She could not have imagined a more delicious turn to the conversation.

“Oh, I certainly agree. I certainly do.” She flicked an eye toward her new friend Tom, to see whether he was in touch with the joy of the moment. He gave no sign of it. “And most certainly you have the medical opinion upon which you rightly insist. I am also Ganga Roy, MD. I am also a medical doctor, you see. Much like agar-agar, Mr. Stein, you may wish to regard me as doctor-doctor. And, if I may add, with some modesty, I consult for many firms as well as your own, precisely because I am qualified to provide the very thing that you have aptly identified, which is to say, an expert opinion.”

Which was, after all, why Tom Maloney had called her yesterday requesting a “detailed and complete” briefing on the subject of potential problems associated with E. coli contamination in ground beef. Dr. Roy, a fellow at the Rockefeller Institute and professor of medicine at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, consulted with many firms. She billed on a “per day” basis: fifteen hundred dollars for research and reports (plus a thousand more should she appear at a meeting, like this one, to explain her work); five thousand a day for depositions or court appearances. Last year this arrangement brought her eighty thousand in extra income, which included nine thousand in research fees from Stein, Gelb, Hector several of whose functionaries had, in recent months, asked her to investigate the practices of companies in which Stein, Gelb had taken an interest. She reported that the objects of their interest did or did not pollute, were or were not at risk for regulatory sanction. Something like that, she presumed, drove Tom Maloney’s agenda now.

Until yesterday she hadn’t heard of Tom Maloney. During their initial chat, he insisted with unexpected force, though never impolitely, that she present the following day. She told him her schedule would not permit. He doubled her rate to offset the inconvenience. She resisted. He persisted. She gave in before he got to the point of indicating the dollar value of those who sought her counsel. She would have guessed that the woman got a million or two; the black man something more than that; the others even more. Her guesses would have been far short of reality. Further, he did not mention the name of the specific firm in which they had taken an interest. He did emphasize that her audience would be unacquainted with the subject matter. This input was unnecessary. Dr. Roy understood that Stein, Gelb, Hector amp; Wills Securities did not, themselves, process meat.

She followed her rebuke to Nathan with a slight, charming smile. That crossed his wires sufficiently to quiet him for a moment. Tom saw his opportunity and slid a hand onto Stein’s shoulder.

“Just part of the job,” he thought, “but not just part of the job.” Keeping Nathan Stein on an even keel in times of crisis had become Tom Maloney’s most important task. It hadn’t always been so. Twenty years ago, Tom recalled, Nathan had been just as hard-ass about things, equally as aggressive, maybe more so, and probably meaner than he was now. But it played better in his late twenties than in middle age. Ambition is a garment best worn by the young. Tom knew that just as well as he knew who Nathan Stein was the first time he met him.

Tom was standing at the crowded bar waiting for the bartender to make his drinks. His friends were seated across the busy, noisy barroom. Lancers was the name of the place. It had changed names a half dozen times since then, but in those early, heady days it was the Wall Street equivalent of a cop bar. But Lancers, instead of serving as a home away from home for the city’s armed and dangerous blue-collar workers, was filled with stock traders and brokers unwinding as they came off the floor, trying to do two things at the same time-overhear any nugget of news they might make money with, and looking to get laid. Naturally there were the secretaries seeking to better themselves, carefully deciding who to fuck and who not to. The raptors, of course, were there too. Raptors was the name given to people like Nathan Stein. They already had the power and they still had their youth. Some of them made it on their own. Many had more than a little help here and there. A few, like Nathan, were lucky enough to be born into it. Their name was on the door. “Grandson of Ben.” Everybody knew him as that.

Nathan could have done as some did: played golf and fucked every woman he could. And there was no shortage of them to be found at Stein, Gelb and every other firm in the neighborhood. He might have paid little or no attention to the real business of business. Tom often wondered how some men could squander opportunity in such a manner. “Good Christ,” he thought. Had he been fortunate enough to be a son-of or grandson-of, he would surely have done what Nathan Stein did. He would have grabbed that golden ring in his cradle and… just give me the chance! Tom wished. He didn’t know him personally, but he admired Nathan Stein. What he didn’t know was that Nathan Stein admired him.

Nathan didn’t have big dreams. He had big plans. He knew, and so did Tom Maloney, the difference between the two. Anyone could dream. Only the powerful could make plans. And Nathan had every reason to believe he would bring his to fruition right on schedule. After all, his name was on the door. He viewed Stein, Gelb, Hector amp; Wills Securities as the major leagues, the NFL, and he saw the rest of the financial world as his farm system, his own private version of college football. He scouted, spotted talent, watched it develop and mature, then drafted accordingly. Although Maloney didn’t know it, Nathan had his eyes on Tom for a while. Maloney was a definite first-round draft choice.

“Maloney,” said Nathan Stein, maneuvering his way next to the big Irishman. He stuck out his hand. “Nathan Stein.”

Tom said, “Good to meet you. I’m Tom Maloney.”

“I know who you are and you’ve no idea how good it is… for you.”

“Beg your pardon?” The bar was very noisy and the two had to shout at each other only inches apart to be heard. “What?”

“Come see me tomorrow, early as possible,” said Stein, handing Tom his card. “You’re coming to work for me.”

“I am?”

“Give them your notice, Tom. We’ll work it out in the morning.” Then Nathan Stein looked into Tom Maloney’s eyes in the way only the wealthy can when they see someone who is not, someone who has just hit the jackpot. “You’re a rich man now, Tom.”

That memory ran through Tom’s mind as he kneaded Nathan’s shoulder gently and looked at the lovely Indian woman. He said, “Dr. Roy, if you please, start from the beginning.”

“Yes, thank you Mr. Maloney. I shall.”

She’d stayed up all night fine-tuning her notes, preparing several dozen flip charts framing brightly printed words, illustrations, and simple diagrams. She referred to these as she went along.

“Bacteria,” she began, “is the dominant life form on earth. I’m sure you all know that cockroaches and sharks have remained essentially unchanged for hundreds of millions of years. They are newcomers, I assure you. Bacteria have been here for billions of years and will be here for billions more. Oh, yes! When our planet is only dead rock it will teem with bacteria. They will have evolved, mutated, no matter the conditions. Imagine a life form so quick to protect its own interest that when you kill it you instantly make its kind stronger, the more difficult to kill again. The more ways you find to kill it, the stronger you help it to be. Bacteria as a life form is impervious to destruction.”

She paused very briefly to gauge the room. They might be masters of money, but they were now her students. Even this disordered Stein could not resist the music in her voice, or the menace in her words.

“Did you know that NASA has tested the viability of bacteria during interplanetary travel? A species of bacteria called Bacillus subtilis withstood the rigors of space trapped in an absolute vacuum for more than six years. It emerged alive, and, as it were, ready for action.”

She flipped the NASA experiment chart over.

“And here on earth,” she continued, energized by the concentration flowing to her, “you know all about the Great Plague of the fourteenth century. Did you also know Napoleon lost an army of twenty thousand in Haiti without a single battle? Did you know twenty million died in the year 1918 from influenza? Imagine that. What we cannot imagine are all the plagues over millions of years, all the millions of humans, pre-humans, non-humans taken with none to remember and none to record.”

She took a slow, deep breath through her nose, exhaling from her mouth. It satisfied her like iced lemonade on a hot, dry day. But the ecstasy she felt was in the teaching.

“Now,” said Ganga Roy, “let us think about E. coli.”

She explained that as bacterial cells are everywhere, many will, in the normal course of their travels, acquire genetic information from various sources. The flip chart listed these sources: bacterial viruses, plasmids, slices or chunks of DNA floating around and about.

“By chance or purpose, bacteria have the knack of continuous self-improvement. They pick up information. This information may come in handy. It may help them survive, which is all that they really care about. The term ‘E. coli’ describes a group of bacteria. And that, I fear, brings us to the very unfortunate connection between E. coli and human beings.”

The next sheet contained a blue-bordered box, surrounded by an attractive swirl of multi-colored dots. Inside it she had artfully printed these bright red letters and numerals: O157: H7

“This,” said Dr. Roy, “is the primary cause of danger to humans emanating from the E. coli world. How has it become such a dangerous organism? Long ago a single cell acquired a bacterial virus, a virus adapted to life within bacterial organisms. This particular virus had the ability to insert its own DNA into the bacteria’s chromosome without harming the bacterium, and it did, remaining there over the countless generations ever since. Each time this bacterial cell divides, the virus DNA, which is now part of the bacterial DNA, is part of every succeeding cell. These daughter cells of the originally infected bacterium constitute the E. coli strain of which we speak: O157: H7.” She decided to skip the E. coli testing process-the agar and sorbitol and smack-leave it for later, avoid another outburst. At this point she could not imagine it helping the flow. Briefly, she checked the group. She wanted no loose ends distracting them now. Nathan Stein obliged her with a swagger. “So all of these E. coli come from the first one.”

“Precisely,” she said, rewarding him with her first unguarded smile. “Much to our distress as human beings, this virus’s genetic information-the virus that is now inseparable from the bacteria-contains instructions for the production of a toxin, or poison, which is called ‘Shiga-like toxin’ or ‘SLT,’ also called ‘Vero toxin.’” By now they were all taking notes, except Tom Maloney.

As her next flip chart illustrated, “Our friend the E. coli O157: H7 has no choice at all but to produce this toxin. Why is that bad for us?” she asked Nathan Stein, paying him the improbable courtesy of suggesting that he might know. “The toxin is a protein,” she said. “That protein can cause severe damage to intestinal epithelial cells-cells that line the wall of the gut.”

“What kind of damage?” again she pretended to ask Nathan Stein, presenting her next sheet, simple but disturbing. “The protein degrades the epithelial cells, causing us to lose water and salts. But does it stop there? I am afraid not. It damages our blood vessels as well. The result? Bleeding. A very great deal of bleeding.”

She cast her glance around the room, grappling every eye to her own, preparing them for the capper:

“Hemorrhaging!” she declared, showing the sheet with the terrible word leaping off the page.

The next sheet depicted children at play-elegant, inventive, stick-figures of children.

“Those in the most danger are children. Why? They are often too small to fight the effects of blood loss and loss of bodily fluids. And what else may happen to them?”

Dr. Roy knew they were now on terrain where Nathan Stein was likeliest to rebel. They’d arrived at the section of her report entitled “Consequential Developments.” She introduced a more somber note to her voice.

“In some cases another syndrome may also be involved. It’s called hemolytic uremic syndrome, or HUS.” And there they were, all three letters: large, red, ornately inscribed. HUS

“HUS is characterized by kidney failure and loss of red blood cells, and is most dangerous to children. Perhaps 5 to 10 percent of the littlest ones will progress to this stage of disease. In the most severe of these cases, they will suffer permanent kidney damage.”

Now came two more stick figures, one in a bed, one stooping over a walking cane.

“The presence of the E. coli we are concerned with also presents potential for traumatic events among the elderly and people with chronic debilitating disease. For older people who suffer with respiratory or heart disease, or one of many conditions weakening their immune systems, to become infected with E. coli 0157: H7 is often deadly.”

She paused. The sudden unease in the room was positively physical.

“Deadly?” asked Louise Hollingsworth in a hushed, and surprisingly but distinctly disgusted, voice. “ How deadly? I don’t mean how do they die; I mean how many of them die.”

The next few flip charts presented the numbers.

“The latest available data from the Centers for Disease Control show seventy-three thousand cases of this kind of E. coli contamination for the latest year studied.”

Dr. Roy became brisk, even cheerful again, referring her group to the flip chart pages, and to the tables at the end of her report.

“The hospitalization rate for cases with extreme complications, meaning a progression to HUS, is a jot less than three tenths of one percent. Very few developed HUS. Among those who did, however, 28 percent died. That means the annual total of deaths attributed to O157: H7 was sixty-one. For all patients progressing to HUS, considering all causes, the death rate is between 3 and 5 percent. Among the elderly,” Dr. Roy said, “it will kill about half.”

“Half?” Stein cried out with startling force. “You mean half the old people getting E. coli are going to die?”

“No,” Dr. Roy told him, unruffled, quickly taking in the others. Pitts looked grave, but by no means threatened. The morbid cast to Louise’s brown eyes had deepened, and perceptibly. Maloney kept his focus on Stein, reacting only marginally to the unhappy news in the air.

She thought she’d made the figures clear. Perhaps they were misunderstood. Most likely, Mr. Stein had jangled their nerves and their brains. She wanted to say, “Now, everyone, take a deep breath.”

Instead, she raised her small right hand in calming benediction. “Those estimates are only for the demographic group generally referred to as elderly and infirm,” she explained, as though it were truly excellent news. “And it only includes those within that group who contact the E. coli, and then become ill and progress to hemolytic uremic syndrome, or HUS.”

She attempted a reassuring smile.

“And why is that again?” asked Wesley Pitts.

“Excellent question, Mr. Pitts.” She was handing out bon-bons to everyone now. “Contact with E. coli 0157: H7 is most often only mildly harmful. However, ingestion of it through a ground beef product introduces the bacteria to the digestive system. It may subsequently leave the digestive system and enter the bloodstream, where it may break down red blood cells with its SLT or Vero toxin. After that, the damaged cells lodge in the kidney, causing kidney failure.”

“Can you tell us,” asked Pitts, “how you assess the risk mathematically?”

She was off the flip charts now.

“If your meat was contaminated, it would be about one death for every twelve hundred people hospitalized. I said there were about seventy-three thousand people hospitalized yearly with E. coli symptoms. But that figure reflects 150 million cases of food poisoning. Maybe more. Many get sick from agents less harmful than E. coli. Among those exposed to E. coli, we’re talking only about confirmed cases with hospital admission. Many others fall ill but never go to the hospital. Even when they do, many are undoubtedly misdiagnosed. Clinical medicine is often hit or miss. The heart stops in everyone who dies, but not everyone who dies does so from heart failure.”

“So, it’s not too bad,” said Nathan Stein hopefully.

“As I understand it,” said Louise Hollingsworth, “there is some potential for a bad outcome, but the numbers are actually quite favorable.”

Dr. Roy nodded. “In my opinion, the science indicates that it would take many thousands of people with food poisoning to result in a single death.”

“I know it’s in your report,” Tom said. “Tell us again how you test for E. coli.”

“In order to do that, one must be able to make a definitive identification. For that, one must conduct a stool test using the sorbitol-MacConkey agar. This is a substance resembling gelatin, in which the test may be performed. Without such testing no positive finding for the presence of E. coli bacteria can be asserted.”

“Does that mean,” asked Maloney, “that in the absence of such a test, any claim that E. coli was present would have no legal validity?”

She smiled the smile that she always smiled when declining to render legal advice. “I am not a lawyer, Mr. Maloney. What I can say is that no scientific credibility would attach to such a claim without the SMAC test. I don’t believe a trained medical professional, Ph. D. or MD, would testify to the presence of E. coli without testing-proper testing-as I have described it.”

“Tell me,” said Maloney, “how readily available is the sorbitol-MacConkey agar in small-town hospitals in the southeastern part of the country?” Maloney had certainly read the report, quite likely more than once.

“It is readily available,” Dr. Roy replied. “I would anticipate no difficulty in testing for E. coli in even the smallest of cities. Samples could be sent to any large hospital in the region. Any doctor who suspected E. coli poisoning could get immediate help from Atlanta or Birmingham or Charlotte, for example, or any full-service general hospital.”

“We need a month,” said Stein.

“I’d like a lot longer,” added Wesley Pitts.

“Let me ask you this,” said Tom, “in your expert opinion, what would be likely to happen if a substantial supply of E. coli -infected meat was widely distributed in the southeastern states in the next week?”

She should, of course, have seen this coming.

It suddenly dawned on her that she had not been involved in a remotely normal corporate consultation. She was not, and had not been, merely an academic fan-dancer doing her stuff, as she had done so often, for corporate mediocrities whose breadth of mind encompassed little more than expensive lunches and modes of theft.

Whatever this was, the brilliant Dr. Ganga Roy felt entirely out of her depth. She was now almost certainly being asked about real people dying.

She rallied, but not without effort, not without some of the mischief deserting her spirited manner. “The symptoms of this type of food poisoning caused by E. coli O157: H7 usually begin appearing in two to four days. Serious complications within a week; deaths thereafter.”

She felt a little lightheaded now, but plucked up the courage to ask, “What do you mean by ‘widely distributed?’”

“Hard to say, exactly,” said Maloney. “These people make ground beef for a variety of brand names. Most of them house names, named for whatever chain it’s being sold in. It’s hard to keep track of everything.”

“Not entirely,” said Louise Hollingsworth, her voice more robust than before. “Competing supermarkets in the same city sell the same product under their own names. Shoppers don’t know where it comes from. But the company knows. And the distributors know. They know where every bit of it goes. Of course, at the store level, it often gets mixed together with meat from other suppliers, and that could make positive identification difficult.”

“They said that it was only one line,” said Nathan Stein. “How much meat could that be?”

Dr. Roy had command of herself again. “If we are talking about a processing plant, there is no such thing as a small problem involving a single machine or production line.”

Magically, she seemed to have forgotten the tangible corpses at issue and focused again on relatively cold facts. “Let us say that a single line has reported a problem. Those on other lines may or may not have recognized it as well. They may or may not have seen fit to report what they saw or suspected. Inspectors may find some and miss others. Moreover, if one machine or one product line has E. coli, it is likely to have spread. The entire plant is suspect.”

“And that means what, Dr. Roy?” said Maloney, not bothering, or able, to suppress the slight quaver that persisted as he spoke. “Let’s say that tens of thousands-perhaps hundreds of thousands-of pounds, maybe millions, get distributed to hundreds of outlets, maybe more. That means what?”

She did not respond.

“Dr. Roy?” The others were bearing down, straining from their seats, Louise on her feet, Stein poised to spring like a feral cat, restrained only by Tom Maloney’s heavy hand. But it was Maloney who spoke again.

“Let us say, Dr. Roy, that a universe of three hundred thousand people eat this meat. If everyone among the three hundred thousand gets sick, and I realize that’s farfetched, and let’s say that half are children and elderly, about nine hundred would end up in the hospital. Am I right? Of the nine hundred, perhaps forty-five would advance to HUS. Of that group, with a death rate of 3 to 5 percent we might expect between one and a third and two and a half deaths. Since we can be fairly certain that all three hundred thousand will not become ill-if only half do-that brings the projected deaths to less than one person, doesn’t it?”

“You must understand,” she said. “If the numbers give us one death for every twelve hundred infected people, that doesn’t predict which of the twelve hundred will die. It could be the first or the last. It could be the first ten who die, then ten thousand who don’t.”

She continued, looking to Maloney as the only one with whom she had any personal link. “Based on your scenario, it is not realistic to suppose that there will be no deaths. There will be deaths. People will die. Some people will die.”

“And what’s the worst that could happen?” Maloney asked, shockingly calm again.

“Well, the worst,” she said, looking over their heads, thinking what she had just said was already in the worst class, “would be that you are not dealing with E. coli as we know it. The very worst, if that is what you are asking, would be a newer, stronger, heat-resistant E. coli. Bacteria are killed by heat. That is why steam at high temperature is employed in the slaughter of beef. If you cook beef to a hundred and sixty degrees you will kill the E. coli. Not all bacteria are killed at the same temperature. Salmonella, for instance, requires a higher temperature than E. coli. If our E. coli bacteria mutated to the point at which it could withstand higher temperatures, we could have quite a crisis. Other mutations are also possible, perhaps probable. You should be aware that this deadly strain of E. coli was first identified in 1982, and, while we have learned much about it, that is not long ago. A newer, mutated form of the bacteria may also have a highly increased level of quorum sensing.”

“What is that, ‘quorum sensing’?” asked Pitts.

“Bacteria, E. coli included, communicate with their own kind. They talk to each other. Dr. Bassler at Princeton has shown that in concentrations above a certain point, E. coli O157: H7 gang up, coordinate behavior, and act together, in community, to regulate virulence. They do this using a technique called quorum sensing. This E. coli is a formidable enemy and it can only improve. Perhaps today it will kill ten times as many as it did yesterday. Tomorrow, perhaps a hundred times. I’m sure that one day, somewhere, we will encounter such a strain-a bacteria that may perhaps kill everyone it touches. The worst possible scenario would be that today is that day and your meat company is that somewhere.”

Dr. Roy was now depleted, but she looked to Tom Maloney and said, “If I may say so, Mr. Maloney, surely there’s a scientific as well as a moral obligation to deal with such an event by notifying the public and recalling the meat as soon as possible and insuring that no more of it is distributed. Lives may be saved.”

Maloney brought the meeting to a close. On behalf of everyone at Stein, Gelb he thanked Dr. Roy for her “super” contribution. Clearly, he explained, this situation required immediate and ongoing attention.

Then he put his hand, protectively, featherlike, on her very narrow, yellow silk shoulder, and spoke almost in a whisper, not secretively, but in confidence. He would remember speaking to her this way years later, when Walter Sherman spoke in very much the same confiding way to him near the kitchen door in Billy’s Bar.

“Dr. Roy,” he said, “we will need your exceptional expertise, perhaps at a moment’s notice, for the next thirty days at least. I know you have a busy schedule. Still, I would like you to make yourself available as needed.”

“I regret to say that I do have a full schedule. Perhaps I could-”

“We would expect you to bill us as though you were in court seven days a week, until further notice. Before you leave, I will have Mr. Stein’s secretary give you a check for a month’s fee at five thousand dollars a day. Can I count on you?”

As a very young child, Ganga Roy had had the same dream several times. In it, she was reading a book her mother had told her not to read. As she turned the pages, she grew fearful, certain that something bad would leap from one of those pages and do her great harm. But so overwhelming was her curiosity that she could not stop. As she turned the pages, they began to turn themselves. She awoke from each of these dreams drenched in perspiration, trembling uncontrollably, never having known what it was that leapt at her from the pages.

Tom was smiling down at her, piteously, it seemed. If ever a man stood in need of a helping hand it was certainly he. “Very well,” she said, in what she hoped was a cool, offhand tone, “I shall make arrangements.” She started to take down her flip charts, but Tom touched her arm.

“Thank you again, everyone,” Tom said. “And before you go I’ll need your notes. Leave them here with your copies of Dr. Roy’s report. I’ll need a communications review on your computers, and this is,” he added sternly, “a ‘voice only’ matter.”

Wesley Pitts and Louise Hollingsworth left empty-handed, without further conversation, each nodding politely to Ganga Roy.

“Dr. Roy,” said Tom Maloney, Nathan Stein at his side, “I’m so happy you’ll be helping us. If I could have whatever copies of your report are in your possession… and if you could get me your notes, I’ll need them as well. And I’d like to keep those, too. ” He nodded at the easel. She handed him the reports.

He asked if she’d used a computer to prepare for this presentation. She nodded.

“At the institute or the school?”

“At home. Last night.”

“It might be best if you removed everything relating to this matter from your hard disk. Copy it to one of ours. If you need computer time we’ll give you whatever you need right here. My office will call you to make arrangements. Let’s try to keep our work in the building.”

“But of course, Mr. Maloney,” she smiled again, theatrically. They shook hands and she left.

“Tom,” said Nathan Stein when Dr. Roy was gone, “what the hell was that? What do we need from her?”

“Loyalty. Silence.”

“Are we looking at a shithouse?”

“Could be, Nathan. Yes.”

“Then why not give her some real money? If we need to buy her, let’s do it.”

Maloney shook his head. “Nathan, you make too much fucking money. You got what, forty-three, forty-four million last year?” Maloney smiled. “You’ve lost all perspective. We just gave her a check for a hundred fifty-five thousand dollars. To normal people that is real money. And it’s money she is honor-bound to earn.” Nathan looked unconvinced until Tom said, “Take my word, she belongs to us.”