Alchemist (63 page)

Dick Bannerman had seemed pleased when Monty suggested lunch after his flight back from Scotland. So she'd booked a
table at the Greenhouse. It was a comfortable restaurant a good distance away from the Bendix Building and she knew they could talk safely there.

She watched her father pick up the Maternox capsule she'd just tipped from its vial on to the tablecloth in front of him. He placed it in the palm of his hand and studied it.

His reaction to all that she had told him was less emotional than she'd expected. His main suspicion was over Conor Molloy's role. Mindful of his previous vitriol about Conor, she had not yet told him they were in love.

‘You're certain this is a Maternox capsule and not something else this Kingsley woman might have been taking?'

She nodded. ‘The part of the formula that Conor was able to analyse corresponded exactly to the standard Maternox capsules we used for comparison.'

He looked at her sharply. ‘So what does this American Johnny-come-lately hope to gain from all this?'

‘I don't know, Daddy,' she said truthfully.

‘You think he wants to protect his integrity as a patent lawyer? Is that it?'

‘Could be.'

Liver and bacon had arrived for her father, and fish pie for Monty. He slipped the capsule back into the vial. ‘I could do the tests in a lab at Bendix Schere; it would be much easier for me than using Berkshire. If I'm careful, no one will know what I'm up to.'

Monty shook her head vehemently. ‘It's too risky. What about the closed-circuit television cameras in all the labs? We've no idea who'd be watching.'

‘They're not going to know what I'm
doing
, for God's sake, girl! I'm running dozens of experiments all the time.'

Monty looked unconvinced.

He checked the date on his watch. ‘We're meant to fly to Washington Thursday week for this damned symposium. That's barely ten days if I start today. You think Anna Sterling's life is at risk, which means that every day counts. So I suggest I get going on this as soon as we've finished lunch.'

‘But it's
safe
at Berkshire,' she insisted. ‘Everyone knows we're still winding the old place down. No one's going to think
twice about you going off there, and no one's going to be looking over your shoulder.'

He smiled, warmly. ‘Darling, I don't know what these buggers are up to, and I wouldn't put anything past the pharmaceutical industry, but I still find it bloody hard to believe that they'd muck around doing illegal clinical trials with their biggest selling drug.'

‘Let's hope you're right,' she said. ‘For everyone's sake.'

‘And I don't think you need to worry about my safety. We both know damned well why BS took me on board: because I can knock five to ten years, if not more, off their research and development in genetic engineering. They're hardly going to bump me off for running a few tests on a drug that's about to come out of patent anyway.'

She dug a fork into the centre of her fish pie and watched the steam escape. It was like a mini volcano, she thought. ‘Let's hope you're right, Daddy,' she said again. ‘Let's hope to hell you are.'

The jewelled eyes of the black papier-mâché frog on Dr Crowe's desk seemed to be looking at him with a slightly mocking expression, Gunn thought. He stared stonily back at them as he waited for the Chief Executive to finish the phone call which had interrupted their meeting.

After a couple more minutes, Crowe replaced the receiver as delicately as if it were a fine china ornament, and turned his attention back to Gunn. ‘Yes, where were we?'

‘Mr Rowley, sir.'

‘Indeed, poor Mr Rowley. Very unfortunate; a most tragic accident. You have it all in hand?'

‘Yes I do.'

‘Any interest from the media?'

‘None at all, so far. The Hawaiians have been good as gold.'
Gunn smiled. ‘They can see it doesn't exactly enhance their tourist trade to announce such a dramatic death.'

‘Quite so. And the English media?'

‘Hundreds of British citizens die on holiday every year; very few make the press and when they do, it's usually at local level. Rowley's parents live in a Sussex village, there's a younger sister in London, and a girlfriend also in London. The parents' local paper might get on to it.' He gestured. ‘What are they going to say? The likes of the
Sussex Evening Argus or the Mid Sussex Times
aren't likely to send their cub reporters to Hawaii – even if they have reason to be suspicious, which they haven't.'

Crowe nodded. ‘And internally, here?'

‘Controlled release. I think the lid is on pretty firmly.'

Crowe looked satisfied. ‘You had something you wanted to tell me about the Bannerman woman?'

‘This is not so good, sir. On Thursday Mr Molloy from Group Patents and Agreements checked into a small Paddington hotel, where he stayed just three hours then checked out again. My monitoring crew picked his change of routine up on Data Tracking and sent someone to check it out.'

‘Was he seeing a woman?' Crowe asked. ‘Or did he just not like the wallpaper?'

The information Gunn was about to relate had cost his man a fifty pound cash bribe to the hotel porter but he didn't bother the Chief Executive with that detail. ‘Neither, sir; he was on the phone.'

‘To whom?'

‘To us, sir. To the Bendix Schere computer log-in number.'

Crowe stiffened. ‘From a hotel room?'

‘It would seem so.'

‘Presumably to access something he shouldn't be accessing?'

‘That's the only assumption I can make, sir. I got the system manager to run a log audit, but he can't find any trace of Molloy being on the system at that time.'

‘Presumably his audit must have shown up the dial-in from the hotel number?'

‘Apparently not, sir. Either we have some fault in the system
which is temporarily preventing Molloy's activity from showing up, or –' He took a breath, knowing Crowe would not be happy: ‘Or Molloy knows how to cover his tracks. Which would indicate that he's a lot hotter about computers than his CV suggests.'

‘And here's me thinking that our computer system was impenetrable, Major Gunn.'

‘No system is totally impenetrable, sir, unless the hardware and software is updated every single day; that's how fast modern technology is progressing. I believe we've got one of the most secure systems in the world, and we're scheduled to upgrade in the spring. I have to work within a budget, as you constantly remind me.'

Crowe stared at him impassively. ‘Go on.'

‘Late on Friday, Data Tracking showed that Mr Molloy visited Miss Bannerman's cottage in Berkshire and stayed the night. On Saturday morning, accompanied by Miss Bannerman, he drove to the campus of Berkshire University, spent the whole of the day and early evening at the Bannermans' old lab, then returned to her cottage where he again spent the night.'

‘What were they doing in the lab?'

‘We weren't able to ascertain.'

‘Didn't your man take a listening device?'

‘We only have a limited number, sir, because of costs. Miss Bannerman and Mr Molloy are only two out of thirty staff members around the country whom we're keeping under surveillance at present. We've got problems with one of our senior virologists at Northumberland who we think is feeding information to another company. He could do us very serious damage; then there's a dodgy lab technician at Plymouth, four people down at Reading, plus –'

Crowe raised a hand, cutting him short. ‘I have all your reports, thank you. Did your man get into the Bannerman lab?'

‘No. He was unable to gain access to the premises after they'd left because of the risk of activating the alarm system.'

Crowe clenched his knuckles. ‘Don't you think it would have been
worth
that risk, to find out what they were doing?'

Gunn shook his head. ‘No, I don't want them to have any inkling that they're under observation. We'll find out in good time.'

Crowe gave him a dubious look but said nothing.

Gunn continued. ‘On Sunday afternoon, sir, they drove to a hotel in Berkshire, where Molloy checked in and out within an hour, and where he again dialled into the Bendix computer. Then they visited the deputy news editor of the
Thames Valley Gazette
, who happened to be Miss Zandra Wollerton's boss. After that they visited the flat of one of our security guards, Winston Smith, who was one of our early Beta testers, and who is currently at the Bendix Hammersmith. Miss Bannerman tried to see him there, but was prevented.'

Crowe sat quietly absorbing the bad news. ‘It would seem we have a problem, Major Gunn,' he said finally.

‘Yes, we do. I want to put both of them under twenty-four-hour surveillance, but I need to take on another fifty men to do that.'

‘
Fifty?
'

‘For a round-the-clock job on two subjects, that's the bare minimum. Ml5 use fifty per person on twenty-four-hour surveillance. Three cars, with two per car on eight-hour-shifts – that's eighteen men for starters.'

‘Running fifty men costs about one million pounds a year, Major Gunn. I'll have to put it to the Board.'

‘Yes, sir. But I can't keep adding to the list of those under full surveillance without adding to my team. Either I have those men or something has to give. Or –' His voice tailed.

They exchanged a brief glance expressing what was left unsaid, then Gunn continued: ‘I've never felt comfortable about Molloy, and I'm now convinced the Bannerman woman is on to the Medici Trial. I've been unhappy ever since her lunch with Seals. I have a feeling she's a very tough little cookie, and that we're not going to like what we find.'

‘She is tough,' Crowe said. ‘Her father hardly dares say
boo
to her. She was a hard negotiator when we did the deal.' He frowned. ‘But why would she go to see this security guard? He wouldn't have any information on Medici.'

‘I don't know, sir. But I intend finding out.'

Crowe pulled a slim black notebook from his inside pocket and jotted something down. ‘I'll raise the issue of your financial requirements at this Thursday's Board meeting, Major Gunn. If you could let me have precise details of your revised budget by then?'

‘Of course, sir.' Gunn smiled.

At ten to five on Monday afternoon, Conor's phone rang. He picked up the receiver. ‘Conor Molloy,' he said, and immediately heard the faint hiss of a transatlantic line.

‘Hi, it's Dave Schwab.'

The caller had a quiet, serious voice that mirrored his personality. Aged thirty-four, he was one of the younger examiners in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, and Conor considered him a friend.

They had first met doing their PhDs in Molecular Biology at Carnegie Mellon. Their paths had crossed from time to time since, and Conor surmised from the fact that he was getting this call now that the patent application he had filed in the United States for Psoriatak had been assigned to Schwab.

He viewed this as a mixed blessing. Because of their friendship, he might be able to push arguments further with Schwab than with other examiners, and Schwab might take more trouble over the application; but conversely, Schwab was a man of integrity, and in an anxiety not to be seen as granting favours he might well be over-pernickety with Conor's application.

Conor did a quick mental calculation. Washington was five hours behind London. It was ten to twelve there. He could picture Schwab clearly. He would be in his office, back to the window, surrounded by tiers of documents, wearing a baggy shirt, cuffs rolled up and no tie. The guy only ever dressed formally for meetings.

‘Dave! Hi, how you doing?'

‘OK, how's England?'

‘England's good. How's Julie?'

‘Julie's good, too.' There was a silence, then Schwab said: ‘So – I – got assigned your application for Bendix Schere.' He paused. ‘Ah – that's – ah – number 08/190/790; you got that number right?'

Conor grabbed a folder off the floor and frantically scrabbled through it. ‘Yup, came through in the confirmation of receipt. That tallies with our docket MA68 1459 01, Psoriatak, right?'

‘Correct.'

‘You guys have moved fast on this one,' Conor said. ‘I appreciate it.'

He was met for some seconds by the static hiss of the line, then Schwab spoke again, his tone cooler. ‘I think we have quite a few problems on this one; we're going to need a meeting.'

This news did not surprise Conor. He frankly believed Bendix Schere would be very lucky to get the application through at all, and if they did, it would be heavily modified. But he was paid to fight the Bendix corner, and that's what he was doing. He needed to show Crowe that he was giving it his best shot. ‘On which specific areas, Dave?'

‘I'm not happy with the prior art, and I think you're asking too much in the application; you're going to have to shave the sides off quite a bit.'

‘I understand that. Yup.'

‘You're going to have to elect a single group.'

‘Time is at a real premium on this one, Dave. I'll be guided by you. How about if we ditch everything except the gene sequence itself?'

‘The plasmids and transform bacteria can stay with that, OK?'

‘Sure, that would be appreciated.'

‘OK, this is getting more straightforward now. I could get you an Office action out within a week.' He hesitated. ‘My problem is I'm away the week after next until the New Year.'

Conor glanced at the agenda his department boss had plotted on his wall chart. A tight time scale had been set by Dr Crowe for the filing and prosecution of US patents on Dick Bannerman's work. ‘Could we move things forward by meeting before you go?'