Limitless (30 page)

I stood at the back for a while, as Van Loon consulted with some of his regular people in the middle of the room. Behind me, I could hear two technicians talking as they fiddled with wires and cables.

‘… I swear to god, whacked on the back of the head.’

‘
Here?
’

‘With a blunt instrument. You don’t read the papers? She was Mexican. Married to some painter.’

‘Yeah. I remember now. Shit. That was
this
place?’

I moved away, over towards the doors – so I couldn’t hear them any more. Then I slowly drifted out of the conference room
altogether
and back into the atrium lounge.

One of the things I remembered quite clearly from that night – from near the end of it, at any rate – was walking along an empty hotel corridor. I could picture it in my mind’s eye still – the low ceiling, the patterned crimson and navy carpet, the magnolia walls, the oak panelled doors flitting past me on either side …

I just didn’t remember anything else about it.

I crossed the lounge and wandered into the lobby area. More people were arriving now and there was a heightened air of
anticipation
about the place. I saw someone I knew and wanted to avoid, so I slipped over towards the elevators, which were on the far side of the reception desk. But then, as though carried along by some irresistible force, I actually followed two women
into
an elevator. One of them pressed a button, and then looked at me expectantly, her finger hovering in front of the panel.

‘Fifteen,’ I said, ‘thanks.’

Mingling freely and somewhat sickeningly in the air with my anxiety was the scent of expensive perfume, and the always charged but never acknowledged intimacy of an elevator ride. As we hummed upwards, I felt my stomach churning over and I had to lean against
the side of the elevator car to steady myself. When the door slid open at fifteen, I stared out in disbelief at a magnolia-coloured wall. Brushing past one of the two women, I made my exit – stepping a little unsteadily out on to a crimson and navy carpet.

‘Good evening.’

I turned back, and as the two women were being closed off from view, I mumbled some kind of reply.

Left alone now in this empty corridor, I experienced something close to real terror. I
had
been here before. It was exactly as I had remembered it – the low, wide corridor … richly coloured,
luxurious
, deep and long like a tunnel. But this was
all
I could remember. I walked a few paces and then stopped. I stood facing one of the doors and tried to imagine what the room inside was like – but nothing came to me. I walked on, passing door after door on either side, until near the end of the corridor I came to one that was slightly open.

I stopped, and my heart was thumping as I stood there, peering through the chink into what I could see of the room – the end of a double bed, drapes, a chair, everything bright and cream-coloured.

With my foot, I gently tapped the door open a little wider, and stepped back. Framed in the doorway, I could see more of the same, a generic hotel room – but then suddenly, passing across the frame from left to right I saw a tall, dark-haired woman in a long black dress. She was clutching her head and there was blood pouring down the side of her face. My heart lurched sideways and I stepped back, reeling, and fell against the magnolia wall. I got up, and staggered along the corridor, back towards the elevators.

A moment later, behind me, I heard a noise and I turned around. Coming out of the room I’d just been looking into, there was a man, and then a woman. They pulled the door closed and started walking in my direction. The woman was tall and dark-haired, and was wearing a belted coat. She was in her fifties, as was the man. They were chatting, and completely ignored me as they passed. I stood and watched as they walked the length of the corridor and then disappeared into an elevator.

A couple of minutes ticked by before I could do anything. My
heart still felt as if it had been dislodged and was in danger of
stopping
. My hands were shaking. Leaning against the wall, I stared down at the carpet. Its deep colours seemed to be pulsating, its pattern shifting and alive.

Eventually, I straightened up and made my way to the elevators, but my hand was still trembling as I reached out to press the ‘down’ button.

By the time I got back to the conference room, a lot of people had arrived and the atmosphere was fairly frenetic. I wandered up to the front, where some of the MCL people had gathered in a group and were talking animatedly.

Suddenly, I heard Van Loon approaching me from behind.

‘Eddie, where have you been?’

I turned around. There was a look of genuine surprise on his face.

‘Jesus, Eddie, what happened? You … you look like you’ve seen—’

‘A ghost?’

‘Well, yeah.’

‘I’m a little stressed out here, Carl, that’s all. I just need some time.’

‘Look, Eddie, take it easy. If anyone’s earned a break around here, it’s you.’ He clenched his fist and held it out in a gesture of
solidarity
. ‘Anyway, we’ve done our work. For the moment. Am I right?’

I nodded.

Van Loon was then whisked off by one of his people to talk to somebody on the far side of the podium.

I floated through the next couple of hours in a kind of
semiconscious
daze. I moved around and mingled and talked to people, but I don’t remember specific conversations. It all felt
choreographed
, and automatic.

When the actual press conference started, I found myself at the top of the room, standing behind the Abraxas people, who were seated at the table to the right of the podium. At the back of the room – and over a sea of about 300 heads – there was a phalanx of reporters, photographers and camera-men. The event was going out
live on several channels, and there was also a webcast and a
satellite
feed. When Hank Atwood took the podium, there was an
immediate
barrage of sound from the cameras at the back – clicking, whirring, popping flashbulbs – and this din continued uninterrupted throughout the whole press conference, and even intermittently during the question-and-answer session that followed. I didn’t listen carefully to any of the speeches, some of which I had helped to write, but I did recognize occasional phrases and expressions – even though the relentless repetition of words such as ‘future’, ‘transform’ and ‘opportunity’ only added to the sense of unreality I now felt about everything that was happening around me.

Just as Dan Bloom was finishing at the podium, my cellphone rang. I quickly took it out of my jacket pocket and answered it.

‘Hello, is this … Eddie Spinola?’

I could barely hear.

‘Yes.’

‘This is Dave Morgenthaler in Boston. I got your message from this morning.’

I covered my other ear.

‘Listen … hang on a second.’

I moved to the left, along the side of the room and through a door about half-way down that led into a quiet section off the atrium lounge.

‘Mr Morgenthaler?’

‘Yeah.’

‘When can we meet?’

‘Look, who are you? I’m busy – why should I take the time out to see you?’

As briefly as I could, I pitched him the story – a powerful, untested and potentially lethal drug from the labs of the company he was about to go up against in court. I kept it unspecific and didn’t describe the effects of the drug.

‘You haven’t said anything to convince me,’ he said. ‘How do I know you’re not some nut? How do I know you’re not making this shit up?’

The lights were low in this section of the lounge and the only other people nearby were two old guys engrossed in conversation. They were sitting at a table next to some huge potted palm trees. Behind me, I could hear voices resounding from the conference room.

‘You couldn’t make MDT up, Mr Morgenthaler. This shit is real, believe me.’

There was a pause, quite a long one, and then he said, ‘What?’

‘I said you couldn’t—’

‘No, the name. What name did you say?’

Shit
– I shouldn’t have said the name.

‘Well, that’s—’

‘MDT … you said MDT.’ There was an urgency in his voice now. ‘What is this, a
smart
drug?’

I hesitated before I said anything else. He knew about it, or at least knew
something
about it. And he clearly wanted to know more.

I said, ‘When can we meet?’

He didn’t pause this time.

‘I can get an early flight tomorrow morning. Let’s meet, say … ten?’

‘OK.’

‘Somewhere outside. Fifty-ninth Street? In front of the Plaza?’

‘OK.’

‘I’m tall and—’

‘I’ve seen your photo on the Internet.’

‘Fine. OK. I’ll see you tomorrow morning then.’

I put the phone away and wandered slowly back into the
conference
room. Atwood and Bloom were together at the podium now, answering questions. I still found it hard to focus on what was going on, because that little incident up on the fifteenth floor –
hallucination
, vision, whatever – was still fresh in my mind and was blocking everything else out. I didn’t know what had happened between me and Donatella Alvarez that night, but I suspected now that as a
manifestation
of guilt and uncertainty, this was only the tip of a very large iceberg.

After the question-and-answer session had been wrapped up, the crowd began to disperse, but then the place became more chaotic than ever. Journalists from
Business Week
and
Time
were floating around looking for people to get comments from, and executives were slapping each other on the back and laughing. At one point, Hank Atwood passed and slapped
me
on the back. He then turned, and with an outstretched arm pointed an index finger directly at me.

‘The future, Eddie,
the future
.’

I half smiled, and he was gone.

There was talk among the Van Loon & Associates people about going out somewhere for dinner, to celebrate, but I couldn’t have faced that. With the events of the day so far, I had assembled the possible makings of a full-blown anxiety attack, and I didn’t want to do anything stupid now that would actually precipitate one.

Without saying a word to anybody, therefore, I turned around and strolled out of the conference room. I crossed the atrium lounge and the lobby area and just walked right out of the hotel on to
Fifty-sixth
Street. It was a warm evening and the air was thick with the muffled roar of the city. I went over to Fifth Avenue and stood at the foot of Trump Tower, looking up the three blocks towards
Fifty-ninth
Street – at Grand Army Plaza and the corner of Central Park. Why did Dave Morgenthaler want to meet me there? Out in the open like that?

I turned and looked in the opposite direction, at the streams of traffic, dipping and rising, and at the parallel lines of the buildings, trailing towards some invisible point of convergence.

I started walking in this direction. It occurred to me that Van Loon might try to reach me, so I took out my cellphone and switched it off. I kept walking along Fifth, and eventually made a right on to Thirty-fourth Street. After a few blocks, I had reached what I supposed was my new neighbourhood – which was what? Chelsea? The Garment District? Who the fuck knew any more?

I stopped at a dingy-looking bar on Tenth Avenue and went inside.

I sat at the bar and ordered a Jack Daniel’s. The place was nearly empty. The barman poured me the drink and then went back to watching the TV set. It was bracketed high on to a wall just over
the door leading to the men’s room, and there was a sitcom showing. After about five minutes – during which time he had laughed only once – the barman picked up the remote and started flicking through the channels. At one point I caught a sudden flash of the
MCL-Parnassus
logo, and I said, ‘Wait, go back to that for a second.’

He flicked back and then looked at me, still aiming the remote up at the TV set. It was a news report of the announcement with footage of the press conference.

‘Hold it there, for a minute,’ I said.

‘A
second
, now a
minute
, Jesus,’ he said, impatiently.

I glared at him.

‘Just this segment,
all right
? Thank you.’

He dropped the remote down on to the bar and held his hands up. Then we both turned our attentions back to the screen.

Dan Bloom was at the podium, and as the voice-over report described the scale and importance of the proposed merger, the camera panned slowly to the right, taking in all of the Abraxas
executives
sitting at the table. In the background, there was a clear view of the company logo, but that wasn’t all you could see. There were also several people in the background, standing, and one of them was me. As the camera moved from left to right, I passed across the screen from right to left, and then disappeared. But in those few seconds, you could see me clearly, like in a police line-up – my face, my eyes, my blue tie and charcoal grey suit.

The barman looked at me, obviously registering something. Then he looked back at the screen, but they had already returned to the studio. He looked at me again, with a dumb expression on his face. I lifted my glass and drained it.

‘You can change the channel now,’ I said.

Then I put a twenty on the bar, got up off my stool and left.

T
HE NEXT MORNING
I
TOOK A CAB
to Fifty-ninth Street, and on the way I rehearsed what I was going to say to Dave Morgenthaler. In order to keep him interested, and to buy some time, I would have to promise that he could have a sample of MDT. Then I’d be in a position to make my approach to someone in Eiben-Chemcorp. I was also hoping that by talking to Morgenthaler I might be able to get some idea about
who
in Eiben-Chemcorp I could approach. I got to Grand Army Plaza at ten minutes to ten and walked around, occasionally glancing up at the hotel. In my head, I had already left Van Loon and the merger behind – at least for the moment.

At five minutes past, a taxi pulled up at the kerb and a tall, thin man in his early fifties got out. I recognized him immediately from the photos I’d seen in archive articles on the Internet. I walked towards him, and although he saw me approaching, he surveyed the vicinity for any other possible candidates. Then he looked back at me.

‘Spinola?’ he said.

I nodded, and stuck my hand out. ‘Thanks for coming.’

We shook hands.

‘This better be worth my while.’

He had jet-black hair, quite a lot of it, and wore thick-rimmed glasses. He looked tired and had a kind of hangdog expression on his face. He was in a dark suit and a raincoat. It was an overcast day and there was a breeze blowing. I was about to suggest looking for a coffee shop, or even going into the Oak Room of the Plaza, seeing as how it was right there – but Morgenthaler had other ideas.

‘Come on, let’s go,’ he said, and started crossing over towards the park. I hesitated, and then caught up with him.

‘A walk in the park?’ I said.

He nodded yes, but didn’t say anything, or look in my direction.

Walking briskly, and in silence, we went down the steps into the park, around by the pond, up by Wollman Rink and eventually over to Sheep Meadow. Morgenthaler selected a bench and we sat down, facing the skyline of Central Park South. Where we were sitting was exposed and uncomfortably windy, but I wasn’t about to start complaining now.

Morgenthaler turned to me and said, ‘OK, what’s this about?’

‘Well, like I said … MDT.’

‘What do you know about MDT and where did you first hear about it?’

He was very direct in his approach, and obviously intended to interrogate me as he would a witness. I decided that I would play along with this until I had him in a position where he couldn’t just walk. In the way I answered his questions, I got several key ideas across to him. The first was that I knew what I was talking about. I described the effects of MDT in almost clinical detail. He was
fascinated
by this, and had pertinent follow-up questions – which also confirmed for me that
he
knew what he was talking about, at least in terms of MDT. I let it be known that I could supply the names of possibly dozens of people who had taken MDT, subsequently stopped and were now suffering acute withdrawal symptoms. There would be enough cases to establish a clear pattern. I let it be known that I could supply the names of people who had taken MDT and had subsequently
died
. Finally, I let it be known that I could supply samples of the actual drug itself for analysis.

When we got to this point, I could see that Morgenthaler had become quite agitated. All of the stuff I’d told him would be
dynamite
if he could bring it out in court – but of course at the same time I had been tantalizingly non-specific. If he walked away now, he’d be walking away with nothing more than a good story – and this was precisely where I wanted him.

‘So, what next?’ he said. ‘How do we proceed?’ And then added,
with the merest hint of contempt in his voice, ‘What’s in this for
you
?’

I paused, and looked around. There were some people out jogging, others walking dogs, others pushing strollers. I had to keep him
interested
, without actually giving him anything – not yet, at any rate. I also had to pick his brains.

‘We’ll come to that,’ I said, echoing Kenny Sanchez, ‘but first, tell me how
you
know about MDT.’

He crossed his legs, folded his arms and leant backwards in the bench.

‘I came across it,’ he said, ‘in the course of my research into the development and testing of Triburbazine.’

I waited for more, but that seemed to be it.

‘Look, Mr Morgenthaler,’ I said, ‘I answered your questions. Let’s build up a little confidence here.’

He sighed, barely able to hide his impatience.

‘OK,’ he said, assuming the role of expert witness, ‘in taking
depositions
relating to Triburbazine, I spoke to a lot of employees and ex-employees of Eiben-Chemcorp. When they described the
procedures
for clinical trials, it was natural for these people to give me examples, to draw parallels with other drugs.’

He leant forward again, obviously uncomfortable about having to do this.

‘Several people, in this context, made reference to a series of trials that had been done on an anti-depressant drug in the early Seventies – trials that had gone disastrously wrong. The man responsible for the administration of these trials was a Dr Raoul Fursten. He’d been with the company’s research department since the late Fifties and had worked on LSD trials. This new drug was said to enhance
cognitive
ability – to some extent anyway – and at the time, it seems, Fursten had spoken endlessly about his great hopes for it. He’d spoken about the politics of consciousness, the best and the brightest, looking towards the future, all of that shit. Remember this was the early Seventies, which were still really the Sixties.’

Morgenthaler sighed again, and exhaled, seeming to deflate in the process. Then he shifted on the bench and got into a more
comfortable
position.

‘Anyway,’ he went on, ‘there had been some serious adverse
reactions
to the drug as well. People had apparently become aggressive and irrational, some had even suffered periods of memory loss. One person intimated to me that there had been fatalities and that this had been covered up. The trials were discontinued and the drug – MDT-48 – was dropped. Fursten retired and apparently drank himself to death in the space of a year. None of the people I spoke to can prove any of this, no one will confirm anything. It has the status of hearsay – which of course, in terms of what
I’m
trying to do, is of absolutely no use.

‘Nevertheless, I talked to some other people in the weird, wonderful world of neuropsychopharmacology – try saying
that
when you’ve had a couple of drinks – people who shall remain nameless, and it turns out that there were rumours floating around in the
mid-Eighties
that research into MDT had been taken up again. These were only rumours, mind …’ – he turned and looked at me – ‘… but now, what, you’re telling me this stuff is practically on the fucking
streets
?’

I nodded, thinking of Vernon and Deke Tauber and Gennady. Having been quite evasive about my sources, I hadn’t mentioned anything to Morgenthaler about Todd Ellis, either, and the
unofficial
trials
he’d
been conducting out of United Labtech.

I shook my head.

‘You said the mid-Eighties?’

‘Yeah.’

‘And these trials would be … unofficial?’

‘Clearly.’

‘Who’s in charge of research now at Eiben-Chemcorp?’

‘Jerome Hale,’ he said, ‘but I can’t believe he’d have anything to do with it. He’s too respectable.’

‘
Hale
?’ I said. ‘Any relation?’

‘Oh yeah,’ he said, and laughed, ‘they’re brothers.’

I closed my eyes.

‘He worked with Raoul Fursten in the early days,’ Morgenthaler went on. ‘He took over from him, in fact. But it’s got to be someone working under him, because Hale’s more of a front-office guy now.
Anyway, it doesn’t matter, it’s Eiben-Chemcorp – it’s a
pharmaceutical
company withholding selective information in the interests of profit. That’s the case we’re making. They manipulated information in the Triburbazine trials, and if I can prove they did the same with MDT and show a pattern … then we’re home free.’

Morgenthaler was allowing himself get excited about the
possibility
of winning his case, but I couldn’t believe that in his
excitement
he had so easily passed over the fact that Jerome Hale and Caleb Hale were brothers. The implications of that seemed
enormous
to me. Caleb Hale had started his career in the CIA in the mid-1960s. In my own work for
Turning On
, I had read all about the CIA’s Office of Research and Development, and of how its
MK-Ultra
projects had secretly funded the research programmes of various American drug companies.

The whole thing suddenly took on an unwieldy, headachy scale. I also saw just how far out of my depth I was.

‘So, Mr Spinola,
I
need your help. What do
you
need?’

I sighed.

‘Time. I need some time.’

‘For what?’

‘To think.’

‘What’s there to think? These bastards are—’

‘I understand that, but it’s not really the point.’

‘So what
is
the point, money?’

‘No,’ I said emphatically, and shook my head.

He hadn’t been expecting this, obviously assuming all along that I
had
wanted money. I sensed a growing nervousness in him now, as if he had suddenly realized that he might be in danger of losing me.

‘How long are you staying in town?’ I asked.

‘I have to get back this evening, but—’

‘Let me call you in a day or two.’

He hesitated, unsure of how to answer.

‘Look, why don’t—’

I decided to head him off. I didn’t like doing it, but I had no choice. I
did
need to get away and think.

‘I’ll come up to Boston if necessary. With everything. Just … let me call you in a day or two, OK?’

‘OK.’

I stood up, and then he did as well. We started walking back towards East Fifty-ninth Street.

This time I was the one stage-managing the silence, but after a few moments something occurred to me and I wanted to ask him about it.

‘That case you’re working on,’ I said, ‘the girl who was taking Triburbazine?’

‘Yeah?’

‘Did she … I mean, was she really a
killer
?’

‘That’s what Eiben-Chemcorp is going to be arguing. They’re going to be looking for dysfunction in her family, abuse, any kind of
background
shit they can find and dress up as motivation. But the fact is, anyone who knew her – and we’re talking about a
nineteen-year-old
girl here, a college student – anyone who knew her says she was the sweetest, smartest kid you could meet.’

My stomach started churning.

‘So, basically,
you
say it was the Triburbazine, they say
she
did it.’

‘That’s what it comes down to, yeah – chemical determinism versus moral agency.’

It was only the middle of the day, and yet because the sky was so overcast there was a weird, almost bilious quality to the light.

‘Do you believe that’s possible?’ I said. ‘That a drug can override who we
are
… and can cause us to do things that we wouldn’t otherwise do?’

‘What I think doesn’t matter. It’s what the jury thinks. Unless
Eiben-Chemcorp
settles. In which case it doesn’t matter what anyone thinks. But I’ll tell you one thing for free, I wouldn’t like to be on that jury.’

‘Why not?’

‘Well, you get called in for jury service and you figure, OK, a few weeks’ break from my crappy job, and then you wind up having to make a decision on something of
this
magnitude? Forget it.’

After that we continued in silence. When we got back to Grand Army Plaza, I told him again that I’d phone him soon.

‘A day or two, yeah?’ he said. ‘And please
do
, because this could really make a difference. I don’t want to push you, but—’

‘I
know
,’ I said firmly, ‘I know.’

‘OK.’ He held up his hands. ‘Just … call me.’

He started looking around for a taxi.

‘One last question,’ I said.

‘Yeah?’

‘Why all this outdoor, park-bench stuff?’

He looked at me and smiled.

‘Do you have any idea what kind of power structure I’m up against in Eiben-Chemcorp? And what kind of money is at stake for them?’

I shrugged my shoulders.

‘Well, it’s a lot, on both counts.’ He stuck his arm out and hailed a taxi. ‘I’m under constant surveillance from these people. They watch everything I do, my phones, e-mail, my travel itinerary. You think they’re not watching us now?’

The taxi pulled up at the kerb. As he was getting into it, Morgenthaler turned to me and said, ‘You know, Mr Spinola, you may not have as much time as you think.’

I watched the cab drive away and disappear into the flow of traffic on Fifth Avenue. Then I took off in that direction myself, walking slowly, still feeling a bit nauseous – not least now because I
realized
that my plan was unworkable. Morgenthaler may have been slightly paranoid, but it was nevertheless clear that threatening to play hardball with a huge pharmaceutical company was not a good idea. Who would I be approaching in any case? The Defense Secretary’s
brother
? Apart from how complicated that made things, I couldn’t see a company like Eiben-Chemcorp standing for
blackmail
in the first place, not with all of the resources they’d have at their disposal. This, in turn, made me think of how Vernon had died, and of how Todd Ellis had left United Labtech and then
conveniently
been run over. What had happened there? Had Vernon and Todd’s little scam siphoning off and dealing supplies of MDT been found out? Maybe Morgenthaler wasn’t being paranoid after all, but if that was how things really were I was going to have to come up
with another plan – something a little less audacious, to say the least.