Requiem

by Clare Francis

  Reedy shook his head firmly. ‘I’ll stay. Otherwise you’re going to talk yourself into believing your own worst fears.’

  Dublensky didn’t want to argue – in most respects he was a mild man – but on this occasion he was going to have to insist. Dublensky got up and stood by the open door. ‘Thanks, Don, but really …’

  Reedy gave a long slow shake of his head and said, with a half laugh of disbelief: ‘If that’s what you want …’

  Dublensky closed the door behind Reedy and sat down again. His first instinct was to call Anne – he always discussed everything with her – but he realized that she’d be on her way from work to collect Tad. Lifting his spectacles, he rubbed a hand viciously over his eyes. He suddenly felt very alone. He tried to imagine himself in conversation with Anne, tried to hear her arguments. What would she recommend? They’d long since decided that it was essential for him to expose the facts about the Aurora workers. How could he have acted otherwise? The situation was impossible to ignore. One of the workers on the Silveron production line had been paid off, permanently sick, two more were on indefinite sick leave. There was the medical evidence of Burt, the local physician who had originally contacted Dublensky with his suspicions, evidence which, though clinical and in a sense circumstantial, was impressive. And then there were the testimonials of the victims themselves, which made the most alarming reading of all.

  Anne always used to say he wasn’t tough or worldly enough for corporate life, and in some senses that may have been true, but Dublensky hadn’t been so naive as to think his initial report would be well received. No one wanted bad news, far less a successful company like MKI. Up till now Dublensky had thought himself prepared for the consequences of his actions. Yet he’d never quite believed it would come to this. However you looked at it, however limited corporate vision was inclined to be, something was seriously wrong when a guy got fired for doing what was right.

  He had less than twenty minutes before starting for Gertholm’s eyrie in the main tower. He realized this might be the last time he sat at his desk, the last time he handled the projects which had become so familiar to him. He opened his briefcase and removed the work he had been planning to take home for the evening. For a while he stared at the empty case, miserable with indecision. Then, quickly, before he changed his mind, he stood up and lifted a thick pile of papers off one of the shelves. Here was the file that he had built up on the Aurora affair: the testimonials, the physician’s notes, Dublensky’s original report and copies of his memos and letters to the MKI management.

  He fingered the papers thoughtfully. He should make a copy – he must make a copy – but it would be crazy to do it here. Quite apart from the time factor, such a thing might well be noticed, particularly if he’d just been fired. No, far better to take the documents out of the building and copy them in a late-night office supply store.

  Alert to the sounds from the corridor, his heart kicking against his ribs, he placed the dossier in his briefcase and closed it. Then he sat down again.

  Yet the decision-making wasn’t over. The health of Aurora workers wasn’t the only disturbing thing he’d come across; quite by chance he’d discovered another matter which also concerned Silveron. Until now he’d left this new difficulty on the back burner, progressing it slowly, almost reluctantly and, it had to be said, secretively. He had planned on doing a great deal more research on the matter, on assembling more facts, before putting his head on the block again; he was grimly aware that, if the state of the Aurora workers’ health was unwelcome news for MKI, then this new information would be total anathema.

  He opened a lower drawer and slid out a file. Though slimmer than the Aurora file, this bundle of papers weighed more heavily in his hands. For one thing the data was company property. Its removal from the MKI premises for the sort of purposes he had in mind would be a serious offence; the company could undoubtedly bring charges. And if he did manage to get the data out and copy it, what then? Hand it to the EPA? He tried to think through the consequences of such an action, but they were too enormous, too cataclysmic to settle easily in his mind.

  The immediate decision was both impossible and disturbing. He postponed it by gazing out of the window. The snow was thicker now, swirling past the glass in whorls and eddies, the flakes illuminated by the hundreds of brilliantly lit windows of the Morton-Kreiger building.

  Five minutes to go. Impatient at his own indecision, Dublensky moved with sudden speed, opening the briefcase, placing the second file on top of the Aurora dossier and shutting the lid with a snap.

  It was done. He was committed. Curiously, he didn’t feel as terrified as he’d thought he would. If anything, his heart had lifted, buoyed by the certainty that he had done the right thing.

  He stood the briefcase at the side of his desk, ready to retrieve immediately after the interview. Then, like the Greek messenger, he went to receive his punishment.

  The interview was brief – a bare five minutes. It passed for Dublensky in a haze of astonishment. MKI in all its might, embodied by the thin expressionless face of Gertholm, was pleased with him. His initiative and persistence were commendable. He was to be promoted. Chief chemist at the Allentown Chemical Works in Virginia and a raise of fifteen thousand dollars a year. With immediate effect. Removal expenses, hotel bills, relocation payment.

  He was so astounded that the interview was almost over before the still small voice of caution made itself heard. What would happen to the Aurora dossier, he asked. Would it be acted upon?

  This question was met with immediate reassurances. Although it would be impossible to postpone the launch, the company was going to commission an independent rerun of one of the basic toxicology trials. It was also going to keep a close check on health and safety procedures at the Aurora plant.

  Dublensky returned to the south tower in a state of exaltation and stupefaction. He entered his office to find that Reedy had returned and was sitting in his chair. On hearing the door, the senior chemist swung sharply round and got hastily to his feet.

  It was a moment before Dublensky, numb with disbelief, was capable of communicating his news.

  ‘I knew it,’ Reedy said with a congratulatory smile. ‘I knew they’d never let someone of your calibre go.’

  After a while Dublensky, settling into a pleasant state of shock, allowed Reedy to help him on with his jacket and walk him down the corridor. He was hardly aware of setting off on the drive home to Evanston. The road conditions were treacherous, the visibility poor, but he registered little until he passed the sports store and remembered his son’s birthday. He turned back and bought Tad a Prince tennis racquet. Then, because this was a day for celebration, he added a set of Adidas tennis shoes, socks, shorts and shirt.

  He arrived home jubilant. His exhilaration lasted twenty minutes, the time it took to tell Anne and Tad the full story, and for Tad to ask questions about Allentown, Virginia.

  ‘They’re buying your silence,’ Anne said quietly.

  Dublensky, taking some wine from the ice box, pulled an aggrieved face. ‘Why d’you say that? I told you – they’ve followed up my report.’

  ‘That’s what they’re telling you. But how do you know they’ll progress it? You won’t be around to find out, will you? You’ll be tucked away in Virginia.’

  Dublensky felt a flutter of resentment at the swiftness with which she had managed to put a dampener on things. At the same time he had great respect for his wife’s judgement. Slowly, almost reluctantly, he considered the possibility. ‘You’re saying that all this is just a way of getting me to keep my mouth shut? But there’s no reason to say that. They haven’t asked me to drop the Aurora report. They haven’t suggested a deal. I mean … you’d have to have an abysmal opinion of people to believe something like that.’

  ‘Not of people. Of large corporations dedicated to profit.’

  It was typical of Anne to be categorical. In fact, if Dublensky didn’t love and respect her so much, he’d say she ha
d a tendency to oversimplify things. ‘You’re seeing villains round every corner, sweetheart. I mean, they wouldn’t go to all this trouble in the hope of keeping me quiet.’

  ‘Wouldn’t they? I’d have thought it was exactly the kind of thing they would do.’

  Dublensky pulled the cork on the wine and poured two glasses. Already the celebration had gone a little flat. Now that the seeds of uncertainty were sown, doubts were beginning to creep in on him, each one weightier than the last. ‘But I’ll soon hear if nothing gets done,’ he said in an attempt to reassure himself as much as Anne. ‘I’ll keep in touch with the sick production workers, with some of the other Aurora people. And with that doctor, Burt … One way or another, I’ll know what’s going on.’

  Anne took her glass but did not drink. ‘Oh, I’ve no doubt they’ll introduce some puny new safety measures at the Aurora plant and go ahead with trials of some description. But what does that prove? The trials will probably be meaningless.’

  ‘Meaningless?’ Now she had provoked him in so far as it was ever possible to provoke Dublensky. ‘A trial is a trial. You can’t alter results.’

  Anne didn’t reply but gave him a dry look. Dublensky was on the point of arguing until he remembered the slim file he’d put in his briefcase. The contents effectively challenged his own argument, and, throwing back a great gulp of wine, he sank despondently onto a kitchen chair.

  Anne sat down next to him. ‘How about keeping a copy of all the documentation?’ she suggested earnestly. ‘And using it if nothing gets done?’

  ‘I was going to,’ he admitted. ‘I got the files ready – that was when I thought I was going to get fired.’

  ‘Where are they? Have you got them with you?’

  Dublensky had to think for a moment. In the confusion of leaving the office and Reedy’s kindness in seeing him off, he realized what had happened. ‘They’re still at the office. In my briefcase.’

  Anne sat back with a harsh sigh. ‘Well, that’s the last we’ll see of them then.’

  Dublensky shot her a horrified look, dismayed at the implication. ‘This isn’t the Mob, you know. This isn’t some kind of Mafia that makes things disappear overnight. Those documents will be there in the morning. Believe me. I’ll bet my last dollar on it. They’ll be there.’ Even as he said it, the doubts flourished. Was it possible? Would someone actually remove the documents? If so, who? MKI’s security people? No, they wouldn’t know what to look for. Reedy then? No. Tough he might be, but a collaborator in dark matters of chicanery he was not.

  ‘Listen,’ Dublensky added. ‘If those documents aren’t there in the morning I’ll make one hell of a stink, believe me! One hell of a stink.’ Dublensky had never made a real stink in his life – he preferred to raise awkward matters on paper – but on this issue he was pretty certain he could raise enough steam to propel himself into action.

  Anne was silent; but then her silences were far worse than anything she might say because she reserved them for her moments of greatest displeasure.

  Dublensky drained his glass and poured himself another. A moderate drinker, he had the sudden urge to throw prudence aside and take the consequences. ‘Listen, let’s just wait until tomorrow, shall we?’ he said plaintively. ‘Let’s just wait and see.’

  He woke early the next morning with an unfamiliar headache and a dry mouth, and hurried out of the house before seven. The ploughs were barely out, the dawn little more than a glimmer, but the snow had stopped and the sky was hard and clear. Apart from a section of uncleared drift on Lincoln Avenue, he had a smooth run across town to the familiar copper roofs of the MKI building.

  The security man in the main lobby glanced up and gave him a perfunctory nod. Dublensky felt a small burst of relief. In some of the wilder nightmares that had haunted him during the long night, the security men had refused him entry to the building. Now, amid the sounds of floor polishers and the chatter of the cleaners, his fears seemed absurd. They were promoting him, weren’t they? They’d hardly give him the lock-out treatment reserved for abrupt departures.

  Nevertheless his heart beat a little harder as he approached the security gate. He inserted his card. The green light flashed on, the gate opened, and he was through. When the elevator disgorged him at the sixth floor, his confidence had returned. Anne would be proved wrong; the documents would still be there.

  The door of his office was open, an electrical cable snaking in from the passage. A cleaner was in the centre of the room, vacuuming in a desultory manner. Dublensky side-stepped the cleaning trolley and the cleaner and peered at the side of his desk. The briefcase stood there, just as he’d left it. He pulled it onto the desk and opened it. He allowed himself a small smile of relief and triumph.

  Untouched.

  He pulled the Aurora file to the top and opened it, just to be sure.

  Complete. He’d known it. Anne had overreacted. There was nothing sinister going on at all. There never had been.

  Nevertheless he would take the documents to the office supply store on his way home that evening, and get them copied, just in case.

  After the uncertainties of the night, he felt a surge of euphoria which manifested itself in a spurt of manic energy, and he set about putting his papers into some sort of order, ready for the new incumbent, whoever that might be.

  It wasn’t long before he found out. Soon after eight thirty there was a knock and Don Reedy entered with a young woman.

  ‘Well, how’s our new man in Virginia?’ Reedy said with forced joviality. Dublensky thought he looked strained. ‘John – meet Mary Cummins,’ said Reedy. ‘She’ll be taking over from you here.’

  ‘Where have you come from, Mary?’ Dublensky asked.

  ‘Pharmaceuticals.’

  ‘Been there long?’

  ‘A couple of years.’

  She seemed rather young for the job, though Dublensky was far too polite to say so. ‘Welcome,’ he said amiably. ‘I wish I’d had longer to get things straight for you.’ He glanced apologetically at the disorder of his desk. ‘If you can give me a couple of hours …’

  ‘Sure,’ Reedy answered for her. ‘In the meantime it would help Mary if she could get on with some reading.’

  ‘Of course, of course,’ Dublensky said, surveying his cluttered shelves. ‘Where would you like to start?’

  They picked their way through product performance reports, field reports and projects in hand – mainly toxicology trials on development products.

  ‘That should keep you busy,’ Dublensky smiled.

  ‘It’ll make a good start,’ Mary Cummins said earnestly.

  Reedy looked over the selection. ‘Oh, and do you have the Aurora file, John? I need to have a look at it. Then I’ll pass it on to Mary. Now we’re doing this rerun.’

  Dublensky’s smile faltered. ‘Sure.’ His eyes were held by Reedy’s, and for an instant he felt like a rabbit caught in the lights of a car. He forced himself to look away, only to find he was staring down at his open briefcase. The Aurora file, complete with inscribed title, gazed up at him.

  Dublensky felt his heart banging against his chest just as it used to when, in his teens, he’d attempted to challenge his father’s awesome authority. He felt the same sort of paralysis, too, a progressive deadening of the will that always seemed to overcome him in moments of stress.

  ‘Er … give me a moment, would you?’ With an enormous effort, he lifted his head and made a show of looking over the shelves. ‘I’ll have to think …’

  No one spoke. The pause extended and intensified. Reedy stood back, waiting stoically; Dublensky could almost sense his determination. What was behind this doggedness? Was it just a matter of professional competence? Or was Reedy forcing the matter? In which case … Dublensky shied from some of the more uncomfortable conclusions.

  Moving back along the shelf, Dublensky stole a glance at Reedy. He was beginning to look irritated, though this could well have been in response to Dublensky’s embarrassing display of inefficien
cy.

  The next moment Reedy gave an unexpected laugh and said to Mary Cummins: ‘I’m afraid John here is not the most organized of people.’ Approaching, he clapped a friendly hand on Dublensky’s shoulder and beamed at him. ‘But he’s done a fine job, and we shall miss him.’

  Dublensky stared dumbly. Even before Reedy glanced down towards the desk, Dublensky knew what was going to happen, and his heart squeezed painfully.

  ‘Here!’ Reedy exclaimed. ‘What’s this?’ He picked up the Aurora file. He gave a small indulgent shake of the head. ‘Wasn’t so far away after all.’

  Dublensky could hardly breathe. Watching the file being removed was like seeing his own child kidnapped. The suddenness of it, the loss of all his painstaking work, overwhelmed him.

  Yet – wasn’t he overreacting? The file was coming to no harm, after all; it was just changing hands. But even as he tried to convince himself of this, he could hear Anne’s weary sigh and harsh reproaches. She would say he’d been gullible and foolish. And he was depressingly aware that she might be right.

  Reedy tucked the file under his arm and made for the door. Dublensky realized that, by some tacit arrangement, Mary was to remain in his office.

  Reedy paused. ‘Oh, and there are some documents which I can’t seem to lay my hands on,’ he said pleasantly. ‘I thought you may have them, John. Perhaps you could look them out for me later this morning?’

  He handed a sheet to Dublensky. On it was a list and there, among the ten or more items, were three documents belonging to the slim file still remaining in Dublensky’s briefcase.

  ‘Sure.’ Dublensky tried to sound normal. ‘Sure. By the end of the morning.’

  It was two hours before Dublensky could persuade himself that it was safe to tuck the file in among some other documents and slip away. He remembered having seen a large automatic photocopier in the anonymous recesses of the west tower when he had visited the sales department some months before.

  Perspiring, unable to prevent himself from glancing over his shoulder, he made his way across. Twice he had to ask for directions and then, having located the copier, he found himself explaining his visit to the clerk. A mumbled story about broken copiers and a meeting in the west tower seemed to suffice and, five minutes later, he had a duplicate in his hands.