Shadow of Eden (46 page)

“As soon as it’s over.” Castell shook Morloch’s outstretched hand.

Castell sat in his limousine on the way back to the Philadelphia airport deep in thought. Since he had become Secretary, he had kept his nose clean. He knew that cabinet members came under closer scrutiny than lower federal officers and he did not want to get caught taking bribes. Besides, he was pretty well set from the Trident stock he had earned by getting the original Eden fast tracked for approval.

He had felt justified in his actions because Eden probably would have been approved anyway, so why not get a little retirement money to put away? It was not as if he had orchestrated a drug approval that wouldn’t have happened otherwise. Castell knew the time advantage by getting swift FDA approval of a blockbuster drug was worth hundreds of millions to a pharmaceutical company. Lipitor earned Pfizer up to ten billion per year at its peak and now Eden was scooping in fourteen to fifteen billion and still rising. But why would Vicktor need the follow-on compound so quickly? Castell could not figure how Trident stood to gain a financial advantage from its rapid approval. The new drug would just cannibalize sales from Eden. Maybe, as Vicktor said, it wasn’t about money after all.

Morloch had promised another allocation of Trident’s stock if he got the new version fast tracked—the same offer for Eden. But, tempting though it was, Castell did not truly need the money. The Trident stock he already had made him wealthy. Plus, he had lots of favors coming his way when he stepped down in a few years—if he stayed that long.

Suddenly, the rage and frustration at Bell’s phone call this morning returned. Already the Congressional offices he had lined up behind his housing bill were calling to back off their support. Worse, it was the secretaries and aides calling, not the Congressmen. He was fast becoming irrelevant on the hill, he knew, and it was because Bell had cut him off. He might as well resign for all the political future he had.

He realized just then how tempting it would be to take Morloch up on his offer. Then he would resign and leave them scrambling to cover his position. Bell’s move would always be a stick in his craw, but with the extra Trident stock, he would have more than enough fuck you money to retire in style.

Chapter 99

R
obert Dixon prayed as he brushed his teeth in preparation for bed. It was becoming a ritual for him; every task undertaken with a brief prayer for salvation or grace. The lit candle caught his eye. Elise had insisted on trying something called aromatherapy to calm his nerves and she had set out a fragrant candle in a glass jar. It burned with an orange-vanilla scent or it was supposed to, based on the label on the box. It was lost on him, he thought as he pulled out a length of dental floss and said another prayer. It smelled like any ordinary candle.

His stomach growled. Over dinner, Elise had pressed him to try and eat some food, and he had tried, managing half of his linguini. It simply didn’t taste good. No, that wasn’t quite right. It didn’t taste like much of anything, just salty paste that wouldn’t go down. He seemed to have lost his taste for just about everything. That, and his headaches were worse. He actually looked forward to seeing Tom Green. Perhaps he would know what to do that would help him feel better, maybe some pill or other.

As he wrapped the floss around his fingers, his right hand jerked several times and his mind briefly flooded with his desolate vision of hell. Another prayer tripped from Dixon’s lips. His jerks occurred more frequently, now. Sitting on his hands partially suppressed the arm jerks, but it didn’t prevent him from seeing hell each time and it took several seconds for him to shake the vivid image and remember where he left off. Why was the China thing causing him this much stress?

Elise had also said something about another aromatherapy treatment: lavender linen mist on the pillow so he could smell it all night. Just what he needed, Dixon thought with some amusement, to go to work smelling like flowers. What would the team say? Next, Elise would have him burning sandalwood incense in the Oval Office.

Dixon leaned over and picked up the candle to carry it in to the bedroom where Elise was reading a book. She was so worried about him. He wanted to make her think it was working. “Hi, sweetie.”

Elise looked up from the book and smiled when she saw the candle in his hand. A sudden twitch flung it onto the floor, the liquid candle wax running into the deep pile carpet. He half noticed, awash in his vision. He sunk to his knees in prayer pleading for salvation.

“Honey!” Elise exclaimed, jumping out of bed and running over to her husband and the now extinguished candle. “Honey,” she said, “It’s okay, it didn’t burn anything.” She saw her husband kneeling in prayer, his arms and shoulders twitching in the worst spell she had seen. Kneeling next to him, she clasped her arms around his head. “Robbie, it’s okay. It’s going to be okay.”

Chapter 100

S
teve boarded the late afternoon US Airways flight to Dulles Airport. Unable to resist, he stood at the door to the cockpit and stared at the captain longer than a casual passenger would.

“Please keep moving, sir,” a flight attendant said, giving Steve a searching look.

Bulging athletic bag in hand and sweatshirt hood pulled low over his head, Steve walked back to the coach section and identified his seat on the aisle next to Valenti. As he shoved his bag into the overhead bin, he thought about his family.

On the way to the airport, Valenti had handed Steve another message from Anne and Johnnie. They were both well, but missed him greatly. Steve wondered what Anne and Johnnie were doing and he palpably longed for them. That was the good news.

As Steve sat down the hole in his stomach reminded him of the bad news. It had been in the paper this morning—Sheridan Labs, burned up in a gas explosion. Investigators speculated to reporters that arson was under consideration. After reading that it had been caused by a massive natural gas explosion, Steve had no doubt about who was responsible. It triggered a flood of vivid recollections of his house exploding and his trying to get Anne and Johnnie out safely.

The report noted that the night guard was missing, making him either dead or a suspect, probably dead, Steve guessed, buried somewhere inside the lab’s wreckage—Eden’s latest victim. He wished he had never dragged Sheridan into this whole mess. Doing so had put his friend’s life at risk and now his precious lab, built with scarce money cobbled together from private donations, had gone up in flames. The loss would devastate Amos, he knew. Valenti, however, had been prescient. They had Sheridan’s Eden data on a compact disk with a duplicate stored in a bank safe deposit box. And Sheridan was off in parts unknown, hopefully watching his backside.

The other bad news had come from yesterday’s medical board hearing. It had gone as expected. Steve’s attorney had been unable to get a postponement and without Steve’s being present to defend himself, the board said it had no choice other than to suspend the license. The attorney said they would appeal the decision when he was out of danger, but as of now, he was branded as an unfit physician. Apparently the Republic thought he was still newsworthy. They had slotted his suspension on the front page next to the lab explosion article.

Steve pushed his ruminations out of his mind and pulled out the printed articles on Trident and Morloch that he had downloaded from Trident’s website and other news articles he had found on the Internet. In addition, he had compiled a list of Trident’s board of directors and senior officers. For all its billions in sales, Trident was still a small, one product pharmaceutical company. He was thankful he wasn’t facing a Lilly or a Merck with its hundreds of people in senior management positions.

Steve’s thoughts turned once again to his disagreeable conversation with Trident’s safety officer. “Hey, I think I know how they finger the problem doctors.”

“How?” Valenti looked up from his own stack of articles.

Steve looked a little sheepish. “Well, I can’t remember his name, but it’s the safety officer, the one I talked to when I reported Eden. I must have spilled my guts to him, naming Sheridan and Walker.” Steve chastised himself. “How stupid.”

“How the hell would you know he’d send the hit squad after you? But if you could think of that guy’s name, it would make my job a little bit easier.”

“I just remember he was arrogant.” The plane began accelerating for take-off.

“And no doubt he told you there was nothing to your rampant speculations.”

“Of course.”

“And every doctor would call that person asking about problems with Eden?”

Steve thought a minute. “Yeah. That’s got to be how they know who’s made the Eden connection.”

The airplane gave a sudden lurch and Steve grabbed the armrests.

“I saw you check out the pilot,” Valenti chuckled. “So the safety officer’s a prime suspect.”

“I would guess. Anyway,” Steve added, “I thought of something else; how they kept the info partitioned. Back then, Trident was a small biotech company and biotechs outsource lots of their early work, you know, rats and things. If something came up suspicious or abnormal, Trident would pay the vendor and tear up the results. Then they would farm out the same test to a different contractor. This time they’d substitute another compound for Eden or dilute the concentration and the new contractor would then give Trident a clean report, which goes to the FDA.”

Valenti nodded. “Sounds plausible. Here’s what I want you to do tomorrow at the Library of Congress. Find out as much as you can on Trident’s early days, focusing on the senior staff. Look for people, officers really, who quit the company and who may have a piece of the puzzle, plus anything else you can dig up. Also more on Morloch. I’ll also ID the safety guy you spoke to.”

“Okay, but it’s a big place. I’m not sure I can find my way around.”

“I’ve arranged for someone to help you. Now,” he said, pointing at the articles Steve had given him. “From what I’ve read, the big hurdle is getting the FDA to approve a drug. And Eden got fast-tracked. Is that unusual, or common with this situation?”

Steve frowned. “The fast-track status may be unusual considering it fundamentally alters the chemistry of the body.”

“But, fast-tracking a drug means more money for the drug company, right?”

“Sure. It would mean a difference of hundreds of millions for the drug company. So, even though it was a needed class of drug, it still seems a little precipitous, particularly with all the bad press weight loss drugs have received.”

“You mean like Fen-Phen?”

Steve nodded.

“Look, Doc, it all comes down to people. We find the right one and the whole stack of cards comes tumbling down. That’s when we get the whole story.

“But why would Morloch do all of this?”

Valenti cocked his head as if the question was obvious. “Money.”

“Just money?”

Valenti laughed. “That’s ninety percent of what we did at the FBI. We chased perps who wanted more of that folding green and weren’t too particular what they did to get it.”

Steve shook his head. “I just don’t understand.”

Valenti playfully punched Steve’s shoulder. “That’s why I like you so much, Doc. You don’t think like most people. There’s something charming about that. Really charming.”