Alchemist (75 page)

He thought hard about Bendix Schere. They were ruthless, yes, but everything they did was driven by an utterly professional commercial logic. He was not indispensable; they could replace him in days, although they would not find it easy to get someone else prepared to be dishonest with the Patent Office. Provided he carried on his business over here seemingly normally, he had a feeling they would leave him alone, at least until after his meeting with Schwab tomorrow. And that was a meeting he very much wanted to have.

Once the Patent Office had the full set of Psoriatak documents with the concealed prior art leaflet, he would have something else to hold against those bastards at Bendix. If push came to shove, it was going to give him one more powerful bargaining point with Crowe. Provided he could remain alive long enough to use it.

At 9.30 in the morning his bags were packed and he was ready. Leaving everything in his room, he walked down the corridor and through the fire door into the emergency stairwell.

He climbed up to the sixteenth floor, opened the door cautiously and looked up and down. Nothing, apart from a chambermaid's trolley stacked with towels. He walked stealthily down towards Room 1609, and saw that the ‘Do Not Disturb' sign was still in place outside the door.

He checked again that there was no one watching him, then crouched to inspect the hair he had glued between the bottom of the door and the jamb.

It was broken.

Crowe sat behind his desk, thin lips even more vividly crimson than usual against the pallor of his face, his grey eyes staring straight down the ridge of his nose at Gunn. ‘Well?'

Gunn gritted his jaws against a yawn; his body was leaden, his head ached like hell and he was so tired he was close to hallucinating. ‘We were very unlucky.'

‘
Unlucky?
' Crowe's voice was acidic.

Gunn shrugged. ‘Million to one chance.'

‘Whatever possessed you to think of a car bomb? We're doing all we possibly can to keep the lid on, and you initiate something that's going to hit every newspaper headline in the country.'

‘I think this will change your mind, sir.' Gunn was playing his trump card. He placed in front of the Chief Executive a copy of the midday edition of the
Evening Standard
. The front-page headline read:
ANIMAL RIGHTS BOMBERS TARGET LONDON
.

Crowe's eyes darted down the article. ‘How did you fix this?'

‘It fixed itself, sir. The Bannerman woman and her father have had a number of nasty attacks on their Berkshire premises in the past, as well as personal threats. Dr Bannerman once had the windows of his house broken and his tyres slashed. Animal Rights groups are back on the offensive now, targeting everything from farmers exporting live cattle to the pharmaceutical industry; some of them are pretty anarchic. One group has already claimed responsibility, and I'll bet others will for the hell of it. I felt it was the perfect opportunity –
Animal Rights Terrorists Kill Leading Geneticist's Daughter
.'

‘Except you killed two joyriders instead. And you can't find the daughter.'

‘She doesn't have too many places to go and we know them all.' He gave Crowe a sly smile. ‘And we have means of finding her.'

Crowe ignored the comment. ‘You think she went back to the lab last night?'

‘I went there at half four to tidy up and the alarm had been switched on.'

‘I suppose you set it off?'

Gunn blushed. ‘That's a very minor detail.'

‘Is it?' Crowe pressed his fingertips together. ‘Presumably the police rang the keyholders, whom I imagine to be Dr and Miss Bannerman, and found them both absent.' He looked questioningly at Gunn.

‘We don't have any worries with the police.'

‘No? I think sometimes, Major Gunn, you and I draw our confidence from different wells. Yours appears to have an abundant supply of fresh water; mine is running dangerously dry.'

Gunn said nothing.

‘Do you have any more surprises planned? Another pyrotechnic display?'

‘No, sir.'

‘Have you dispensed with the American yet?'

‘I'm waiting for confirmation.'

‘And how is the good doctor this morning?'

‘Pretty much how you'd expect. Not exactly singing our praises.'

‘I can do without the praises. But I want him to sing, very loud and very quickly.' Crowe smiled at the Director of Security.

‘Oh yes, we can make him sing, sir.' Gunn was relieved to see a thaw in his boss's frostiness. ‘We can make him sing as loud as you like.'

Washington. Wednesday 7 December, 1994

Crystal Plaza was a complex of ribbed concrete and glass high-rises from whose bland exteriors it was not immediately apparent where one building ended and the next began. The empire housed at number 2201 advertised its presence to the outside world only by modest-sized gold lettering:
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE: PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
.

There was no alternative public route into the building and besides, Conor thought, the time and place of his appointment was already known to Bendix Schere, and he was pretty sure they would have the place staked out.

As he lugged his heavy suitcase laden with documents towards the entrance, no one revealed themselves as an obvious tail. From the broken hair on his hotel room door, he was primed for trouble, but not here in this very public place; it would come later.

The interior of the building was a labyrinth of pale green corridors housing offices, libraries and the acres of file stacks which contained copies of every patent that had ever been filed anywhere in the world. In the Hall of Fame, seven floors beneath Dave Schwab's office, rows of copperplate portraits honoured those inventors whose ideas had stood the test of time, and sometimes changed the world. Sikorsky who pioneered the helicopter. Frank B. Colton who invented the oral contraceptive. Elisha G. Otis who invented the modern elevator.

One hundred and fifty examiners worked in this building, wielding the power to make or break both small-time inventors and multi-national corporations – by granting or rejecting patents for products as diverse as self-replenishing mousetraps, steam engines smaller than a grain of rice, prosthetic phalluses, or a pocket-size purifier for turning urine into mineral water.

Conor sat in the functional metal-framed visitor's chair in his friend's untidy office, and stared across a desk piled high with bulging folders, all marked with the file number of his application. US Patent Office examiners were strictly discouraged from lunching with patent agents and attorneys. A cup of coffee in the office was all that was permitted before the boundary into bribery was deemed to have been crossed.

Conor had finished his coffee an hour ago, but Schwab still had not refilled the empty percolator next to the crash helmet on the table behind him.

Instead Schwab sat hunched over the desk, picking on trivial point after trivial point. He was as sloppily dressed as ever, wearing a baggy grey and white striped shirt with the cuffs rolled up and a tie at half mast. In deference to modern style, his hair looked as if he had just received a severe electric shock.

Conor was finding it hard to concentrate; Schwab seemed even more pernickety than usual today and they were progressing at a snail's pace. Conor's thoughts were almost entirely about Monty, hoping to hell she had made it safely to an airport and on to a plane.

He glanced at his watch. 11.30. That made it 4.30 p.m. London time. If she'd caught a direct flight at nine in the morning her time, the earliest she'd get here would be midday local time. It would take half an hour to disembark and get through immigration and baggage claim, at the very least. Fine, she'd have to wait in the bar, that would not be a problem. More of a problem was his uncertainty about whether the airport would be watched. But no one would have any reason to suspect she was coming here ahead of schedule, would they? Unless they'd actually followed her to the airport at her end, of course.

A waving hand caught his eye and he looked at Schwab with a start.

‘Hello, Conor. Are you on this bus with me?'

Conor smiled thinly. ‘Sorry,' he said.

‘You look tired – been partying? Old age creeping up? You can't take this gadding around; I can't either. If I don't get in
bed by ten-thirty I'm a wipe-out next day.' He looked back down at the document he was studying. Then he nodded at the bundles Conor had unloaded on to the flat table behind him. ‘OK, let's move on; so what you got buried in there?'

Conor eyeballed him, trying hard not to look as if he was hiding anything, but his heart was not really in the game. ‘Buried? Oh, c'mon, man.' His voice sounded forced and he knew it.

Schwab smiled. ‘Hey, c'mon yourself.' He tapped his chest with a massive index finger. ‘Do I look like some kind of root vegetable or something? You dump five piles of prior art on me when you know I've only got a couple of hours' reading time left and you're gonna pretend you're not hiding something in there?'

‘Nothing important; I'm not going to pull something like that on you.'

Schwab shrugged. ‘It's your neck in the noose.'

‘I know.' Conor stared out at the dreary view of another high-rise, twenty yards away. He wanted out of here, out of this cluttered office with its lousy view, and its empty coffee machine, and this old friend of his who had grown so goddamn self-righteous.

He wanted to tell Schwab that Bendix Schere stank and he should throw the entire application in the trash can, but this was no moment to start burning his bridges. So he forced himself to sit tight, as if this was a normal meeting like any other.

‘Conor, what we need to do now is work right through the application and deal with all the points, and then sort this prior art out.' Schwab removed a bundle from a folder and slipped off the elastic bands holding it together. ‘OK, here's the first problem – only a small one. The E-coli – you state here in the application and I'll quote: “Comprising and consisting essentially of …”' He looked up at Conor quizzically. ‘I'm afraid I'm going to need you to change the wording from
comprising and consisting of
to just
comprising
. It's bad use of language.'

Conor looked at him in amazement. ‘But what the hell does that have to do with the actual application?'

Schwab had the grace to look apologetic. ‘Yah, I agree, its a nit-pick. I'm afraid it's the Group Director's new peeve – it's really not worth arguing if you want this to get through quickly.'

Conor nodded at a row of certificates on the wall. ‘I don't believe this, Dave. Is that what you got those certificates up there for? Good grammar? You get the Split Infinitive Award of the Month or something?'

Schwab grinned and Conor saw a trace of his old friend come through. ‘You gonna spend the rest of your life in this place?' he asked him.

‘No way – didn't I tell you over the phone when we spoke – couple of years and I'm outta here. Julie and I are heading out to Oz when she finishes her postdoc.'

‘Sure, I forgot.'

Schwab leaned forward. ‘You're forgetting a lot of things today, man – you OK? I mean you sure it's just jet-lag? You look like shit.'

‘I'm OK.'

Schwab looked at him thoughtfully. ‘You want to take care of yourself, Conor. Don't go overdoing it. These big companies work the ass off bright guys like you. I've had patent attorneys break down in tears right in that chair where you're sitting. Not worth it. Got to take time out to smell the roses, huh?'

Conor nodded and said nothing.

‘Even the biggest bastards in history gave their staff time off, you know. You have to relax sometimes, lighten up. Even the goddamn Medicis gave their henchmen a break.'

Conor stared back at him, startled. ‘
Medicis
?'

‘Yup – and they were real bastards.'

‘I forgot,' Conor said. ‘You used to be a Renaissance freak.'

‘Still am.'

‘Tell me something, Dave, did the Medicis have any connection with the pharmaceutical industry?'

‘Well, there were plenty of alchemists trying to turn metal into gold and to find cures for disease, but there wasn't any pharmaceutical industry in the fifteenth century.' Schwab rolled his tongue around his mouth, looking pensive.
‘Although I guess you could say the Medicis were pretty well up to speed with the medical knowledge of their time.'

‘In what way?'

‘They used it to their advantage, the way they used everything to their advantage. Like they had a kind of neat trick for keeping their domestics: when new staff first joined, they poisoned them.'

‘Come again?'

‘Secretly. They gave them a drink laced with a very slow-acting mercury-based poison. Then they gave them the antidote in their food.'