Lethal Dose (3 page)

4

BioTech Five is one of seven research buildings in the Virginia BioTechnology Park in Richmond, Virginia. One block north of the Coliseum, it's tucked between a group of horseshoe-shaped buildings to the east and south, and BioTech Three to the west. The entire third floor, almost twelve thousand square feet, is dedicated to the corporate offices of Veritas Pharmaceutical. The office of Bruce Andrews, CEO of the company, occupies the southeast corner, with a partial view of the Coliseum and City Hall. But the view was the last thing on Andrews's mind this particular Wednesday morning. He sat with his back to the window, peering at his computer screen.

An imposing man, over six feet four, Bruce Andrews had the body of a pro linebacker—for a good reason. For two years he was one, playing for the Pittsburgh Steelers, crushing opponents into the natural turf and enjoying every minute of it. He was selected to the Pro Bowl in his sophomore year, but one of his own teammates was flattened by a running back and fell back, landing on Andrews's knee and tearing the anterior cruciate ligament. A professional sporting career was erased in a few seconds of agonizing pain. The upside was that Andrews had a 3.8 GPA in the sciences even as he was playing college ball at Stanford. He took his degree and entered the pharmaceutical business as a researcher.

Andrews was a good catch. He was bright, well-connected, and extroverted. His face was well proportioned, with a prominent chin and inquiring eyes. He had an easy smile, which disarmed most people within a few seconds of meeting him. And in the research industry, where most of the staff are graduates of college chess and glee clubs, a physically attractive employee with good social skills was worth his weight in platinum, not gold.

Looking at the career offers on the table, Marcon was his first choice, and when they offered him a position in R&D working at the new one-hundred-million-dollar research facility bordering Harvard Medical School, he had to control his shaking hand as he signed the contract. Four years later, he reluctantly closed the door behind him as he left for Frezin, one of Marcon's top rivals and another of the Big Pharma companies. Frezin's offer was too generous to turn down: his own research group, an excellent salary, bonuses for meeting or exceeding expectations in Phase I and Phase II trials, and totally flexible office hours.

He excelled at Frezin, clearing the way for two new cholesterol drugs, one of which found a spot on the crowded shelves of America's pharmacies and generated almost six hundred million in sales before the patent expired and the generics jumped in. His success in the research labs led to a high-level management position, at which he immediately excelled. He reworked the Frezin mindset on R&D, modeling it after what he had seen at Marcon.

It worked. It worked very well. Frezin passed Marcon on the Standard & Poor's 500 Index and the bellwether Domini 400 Social Index, putting Frezin in the enviable position of being the new benchmark in pharmaceutical research and development. His salary went through the roof, and his bonuses eclipsed his wages. He had found his niche and was enjoying huge personal success, despite the public's dislike and distrust of the pharmaceutical giants. Bruce Andrews often looked back on the day that 260-pound lineman crushed his knee as a great day in his life.

But even with all the perks and the money, he was, in his own mind, still a lowly vice president. He coveted the top position, but after a few years he realized that he was not moving in that direction. The upper echelons of Frezin were powerful and connected, and he was not one of the chosen. He realized that if he were to ever achieve the position of CEO, it would entail moving to a competitor. He found a heavyweight headhunter and the search to find a company that needed a CEO was under way.

Veritas Pharmaceutical was not a major player in the industry, but neither was it a lightweight. Four drugs with household names were under patent, and three more were in the pipeline. Wall Street was behind Veritas and investor confidence was high. What they lacked was vision. And when the board of directors interviewed Bruce Andrews, they knew they had found their visionary.

Andrews's agent drafted a ten-year contract, collected a huge finder's fee, and disappeared back where he came from. Andrews planted himself in the corner office and took stock of his new empire. The company had annual sales of six hundred million, which Andrews considered low, considering the company had four drugs still under patent on the market. Their R&D budget was $162 million, marketing $73 million, and administration $12 million. Legal fees and payments on class-action suits ran to almost $200 million, courtesy of an FDA recall on Haldion, a drug that was designed to reduce blood pressure but actually caused heart palpitations. Not heart attacks or death, at least not that had been proven—simply palpitations. Veritas had pulled the drug from the market, but the damage was done. The ambulance chasers were all over it, and tort suits kept appearing, even seven years after the negative reports had chased Haldion from the shelves.

Andrews rearranged the financing within his first three months as CEO. R&D remained constant at just under $170 million, but marketing shot up to $240 million. He brought in a team of image consultants and lawyers, and focused on stopping the bleeding from the class-action suits on Haldion. The first tort action against Veritas after he took the helm was from a medium-size law firm in Kansas. Andrews unleashed his new legal team on the unsuspecting lawyers and let them know that the free ride was over. Every legal action against Veritas as a result of a client suffering from the side effects of Haldion would be vigorously challenged in court. No more cash.

The majority of claims against Haldion had already been initiated and settlements reached, and his company was now fighting an attack by hundreds of small law firms with one or two clients. The power of numbers was lost now that the large tort suits had been dealt with, and the image spin doctors sent a clear message to the press. Sue Veritas and you've got a fight. The Kansas lawyers took one look at their return on the suit and dropped the case. One by one the lawsuits disappeared as legal firms across the country realized they would have to face Veritas in court. The bleeding was stemmed. Two hundred million dollars a year in savings. Investors liked what they saw, and Veritas's stock shot up.

The new image that Veritas and its market-savvy consultants began pumping out to the public was that they were a modern-day Marcon, taking over where the pharmaceutical giant had once stood. They were sympathetic to the little guy and committed to bringing down the price of drugs, especially for seniors and those on fixed incomes. Andrews coaxed his legal hound dogs to get creative and find new ways of extending patent lives on three of the company's existing drugs. When they did, by patenting the metabolite synthesized by the drugs once in the patient's body, it guaranteed Veritas over seven hundred million in income for another three years.

Wall Street noticed. A new and aggressive Marcon had been born, and investors lined up like lemmings to grab chunks of Veritas before it punctured another hole in the ozone layer. Veritas surged into the Fortune 500 list, and Bruce Andrews's face was plastered on the covers of
Financial Times, Forbes
, and
Time.
Life at Veritas was perfect. Except for one small detail.

Everything about Veritas was a lie.

Haldion
did
cause palpitations, and those palpitations sometimes led to cardiac arrest, which in turn occasionally led to the morgue. The claims against Veritas, while now ineffective, were often legitimate. And while the image Veritas portrayed to the public was one of a corporation that cared, people were dying because of the drug. And that wasn't the only FDA-approved drug with problems. Triaxcion was a disaster looking for a home. The antibalding drug, which halted the conversion of testosterone to dihydrotestosterone, also caused clotting factors to fail in some people with A-positive blood. So far, the image experts had held their fingers in the proverbial dike, but the waters were threatening to overflow the dam itself. And now, as Andrews sat at his keyboard, he knew they had a problem inside the company.

Being a cautious man, he had covertly asked one of his programming staff to insert a packet sniffer into the company software. It ran a constant stream of cross-correlations and nonlinear filters, looking for any employee who accessed the confidential research files on any drugs, whether FDA approved or in Phase IV or later development. Andrews wanted to know who the whistle-blowers were before they had time to type up a demand letter. And now he had one.

Albert Rousseau. One of the research rats working in their statin department on the latest cholesterol drugs. His computer had accessed a number of restricted files over the past few weeks. On each occasion, he had inserted a few lines of code in his search engine, spoofing the detection software to other terminals belonging to other employees. But the sniffer was one byte smarter than Rousseau. Because it was nonlinear, it recognized patterns otherwise untraceable. And the one thing Andrews was certain of was that Albert Rousseau was positioning himself to deliver a pay-or-suffer letter to Veritas. That was something that Bruce Andrews could not allow to happen.

He picked up his phone and dialed a number from memory. It was time for Albert Rousseau to take a vacation.

A permanent one.

5

Evan Ziegler hit the mute button on the television remote and gave his wife a quizzical look. She was standing at the end of the couch with her hand cupped over the mouthpiece on the cordless telephone. She did not look happy.

“It's that East Coast client,” she said quietly. “Remember, Ben's birthday is tomorrow.” She handed him the phone and disappeared into the kitchen. The sounds of pots banging and dishes rattling followed.

“Good evening, sir,” Evan said in a cheerful voice. “What can I do for you?”

“Hello, Evan, I hope I didn't interrupt anything.” The caller didn't wait for a reply, just kept talking. “We've got a situation here, and I hope you can free up a few days. We've just brought on a new division in Richmond, and they need their new copiers immediately.”

“I'd rather not leave today if possible. It's my son's nineteenth birthday tomorrow. I could fly out after his party.”

“Tomorrow night is fine, Evan. When can I give you the details on the order?”

“I'll make a quick trip back to the office. Be there in an hour. I'll call you once I'm there.”

“Fine. I'll talk to you then. And thanks, Evan.”

Evan clicked the talk button and the phone died. He hoisted himself off the couch and joined his wife in the kitchen. “I've got to make a quick trip to the office to go over a new order, but I don't have to fly out until tomorrow night. After Ben's party.”

Louise Ziegler smiled, released a relieved smile, and gave her husband a hug. “He's a nice man, Evan. You're lucky to have clients like him.”

He returned the smile and the hug, staring into her eyes from only a few inches away. His wife was aging, almost forty, but she still looked great. Her hair was deep brown and hung to her shoulders; she refused to cut it short, thinking that to do so was admitting middle age had set in. Her eyes were deep brown, with tiny wrinkles ebbing out from the edges and disappearing under her hair. Her skin was olive and her lips thin, but just right for the contours of her face. He kissed her, pushed off, and headed down the hall to his son's room.

Ben Ziegler hadn't moved an inch in the last couple of hours. In fact, he hadn't moved in almost three years. Not since the day he had dived into the pond at Shilling Creek without checking first for submerged rocks. He grinned as Evan entered the room, one of the few movements his damaged spinal cord allowed.

“Hi, Dad,” he said. “What's up?”

“Nothing much, just came in to say hi. I'm surprised you're still inside on such a nice spring day.”

“Didn't much feel like going out,” his son quipped back. “Couldn't decide what to wear.”

Evan sat on the bed next to the wheelchair. He ran his hands through his son's hair, gently massaging the scalp under the thick thatch of dark brown locks. The top of Ben's head was the one spot he still had feeling, and he loved it when someone, especially his father, touched him there.

“I've got to head into the office for a while, Ben,” he said, kissing his son on the top of his head. “See you later.”

“Sure, Dad,” Ben said, grinning. “Remember, it's my birthday tomorrow.”

“Yeah, son, I know. I'm here for you.”

He left the room, his teeth clenched and the tears ready to flow. His son, his only child, paralyzed. He fought back the tears, but they still came. His wife, knowing how he hated her to see him cry, kept her eyes on the cutting board as he walked through the kitchen to the garage door. He brushed the tears from his eyes as he backed the Audi out and shifted into first gear. He wound out the first two gears, then eased off the gas. His neighbors didn't complain, but he knew they watched his driving with narrow eyes. He slowed at the corner stop sign, his emotions slowly coming under control.

Ben Ziegler had been the brightest light in a good marriage. Always a star athlete and top of his class in all the required subjects, Ben was touted as the one who would carve new paths in the business world. He was never without his patented smirk, a look that said he knew something no one else knew. Teachers adored him, classmates respected him, and the telephone was constantly ringing, girls giggling as they asked for him.

Until the accident.

Evan steered through the evening traffic, the Denver freeways their usual jam of vehicles. It was Wednesday, but that hardly mattered anymore. The streets were always busy; too many people, all in a rush. He glanced in the rearview mirror and looked into his own eyes. They were a delicate shade of blue, not deep or cold, but soft and understanding. His brown hair was receding slightly, but the high forehead suited him. And what hair was left was thick and wavy. He wore it slightly over his ears, but not what would be considered long. His face was chalky white from the long winter months, but a tinge of sunburn showed on his cheeks, the result of mowing the grass the day before.

A nondescript office condo appeared on the north side of the freeway and he took the off-ramp, reducing his speed and steering hard right at the first access road. The entrance to the parking lot was three short blocks down, and he pulled in, the only car in the lot. He switched off the ignition, slipped out of the car, and unlocked the door immediately under a sign displaying a couple of large photocopiers. The printing between the two pictures read
Mile High Copiers.
He locked the door behind him and slid behind the desk in the first office on the right. A picture of Ben in his high school jersey hung on the wall, and Evan felt the sadness again as his eyes swept over it.

An office phone with buttons for numerous lines sat on the desk, but he unlocked one of the desk drawers and lifted out a second phone. Its cord was attached to a black box about six inches square: a scrambling device. Evan dialed a longdistance number and leaned back in the soft leather chair, waiting for the voice he knew would answer.

“Are you on the secure phone?”The voice belonged to Bruce Andrews.

“Yes. What can I do for you?”

“I have a problem, Evan. One I need handled quite quickly.”

“Where can I pick up the package?”

“The Commonwealth Park Suites Hotel, in Richmond. It's at the front desk under Brent Saunders.”

“Anything else?”

“Just that this person poses a very real threat to the direction I want our research to go. And if that happens…”

Evan's voice was terse. “I read in the newspaper that you were scaling back on your biotech division—that your investment into brain chips was waning.”

“Don't believe everything you read, Evan.” Andrews's voice had gone cold. “Just get to Richmond and take care of my problem. Let me worry about getting your son out of that wheelchair.”

“You do that,” Evan said as the line went dead. He replaced the phone in its cradle, returned it to the drawer, and locked the handle. A solitary copier sat in the corner of his office: an old relic just for display. He walked across the carpet, opened the front access panel, and pulled on a colored handle. The copier's guts slid out on a metal track. He reached in behind the array of gears and lenses and pulled on the toner tray. Inside was a package, wrapped in thick cling wrap. He set it on top of the copier and peeled open the wrapping. Inside were a passport, two credit cards, a driver's license, and a large bundle of cash. He checked the identification, all of which displayed his picture and a different name, for expiry dates. Then he pocketed the ID and two thousand dollars. He phoned in a reservation on United Airlines from Denver to Richmond, departing Denver at 10:23 P.M. the next day, locked the outer office door, and headed home. Only for a brief moment did he wonder one thing.

What had this person done that they now had to die?