Dead End

by Brian Freemantle

  Dead End

  Brian Freemantle

  To Victoria, the first who could never be last.

  One

  In such an internationally established, acclaimed and aggressive pharmaceutical conglomerate, there were obviously laboratories in every overseas division of Dubette Inc., but each was effectively a subsidiary of the North Virginia headquarters at McLean’s Priority Park, just off the 495 Beltway. That laboratory was designed to a rigid structure that provided the name by which it was universally referred to: never Research and Development but always the Spider’s Web, which was apposite. The office of the fittingly spindle-limbed, bespectacled vice president, Dwight Newton, was at the very centre of a concentric series of specialized research departments and divisions. Included here, because their cure or prevention was the Holy Grail of commercial medical research, were a variety of cancers, AIDS and its human immunodeficiency virus precursor, HIV, both A and B strains of hepatitis, the common cold and a variety of frequently mutating fatal influenza viruses. The final, outer circle was devoted to what was, with surprising unprofessionalism, suspiciously regarded as the new and unproven science of genetics and its engineering for medical benefit.

  It was here that Richard Parnell had been allocated his laboratories.

  Parnell liked America. He liked its can-do ethos and same-day deliveries of whatever he’d wanted to furnish the new, easily arranged apartment rented on the first day, and day-one car purchase – and most of all he liked the more than trebled salary that made everything affordable. And still left him with more money than he’d earned – apart, of course, from the international recognition that had resulted in his being headhunted from Cambridge – as a leading participant in Britain’s considerable contribution to the global genome project codifying human DNA.

  It was a reputation Parnell was determined to increase, which made his relegation to the outer circle an absurd and irritating dismissal he was about to rectify.

  Like the spider’s web after which it was nicknamed, the expanding circles were each linked by connected, threading corridors, all glassed and therefore all visible to everyone along his route to the vice president’s inner sanctum. As he walked the gauntlet, Parnell was aware of the attention and recognition of people on either side, and recognized the point to the pretentious, outer-space laboratory design. No one could approach the spider-like man without being seen, to initiate the paranoia. Is he being promoted over me? Have I made a dismissable mistake? Am I being reprimanded? Am I going to be fired?

  It was a good feeling, not to be afraid: to be sure enough of himself and his international reputation to do what he was about to do.

  Professor Dwight Newton was thin to the point of being emaciated, a cadaverous face dominated – almost overwhelmed – by overly heavy, black-framed spectacles, stick-thin arms protruding from the sleeves of a white laboratory coat. Forewarned by his outside secretariat, Newton was standing, a tall man although still shorter than the broad-shouldered, athletically bodied Parnell.

  ‘Good to see you again, Dick! Good to see you! Sorry it hasn’t been sooner. Must say, though, I don’t understand your memo …’ There was a helpless sweeping gesture towards the empire beyond. ‘So much to keep a handle on … never a moment …’

  ‘It’s a big operation,’ acknowledged Parnell.

  ‘The biggest, worldwide,’ said Newton. ‘And you’re part of it now.’

  Parnell said: ‘That’s what I very much want to be, part of it. But a proper part.’

  Newton’s affability went out like a switched-off light. He picked up and let drop Parnell’s meeting request and said: ‘So what’s all this about keeping all your equipment on hold and not advertising for staff?’

  ‘I’ve nowhere to put equipment. Or staff,’ declared Parnell.

  Newton gave an uncertain laugh. ‘You’ve got your own internal laboratories! What … two separate working spaces, offices, secretarial space? Everything you could want …?’

  ‘In the wrong place. I’ve been appointed Dubette’s professor of pharmacogenomics, applying what I did in England to drug development here. To do that, I need to be alongside the laboratories and the people developing those drugs. Not isolated as I have been.’

  Newton frowned. ‘Everything radiates out from what has to be the most tightly and securely controlled working area.’

  ‘I didn’t accept the offer here in order to be a totem, just a recognizable name on a staff list,’ said Parnell. ‘If I’m going to make any contribution to Dubette’s research and development, I need to be at the centre of things. If I’m not, it makes quite pointless my being here, as part of the Dubette empire.’

  Pinpricks of anger began colouring Newton’s face. ‘I don’t believe Archimedes’ principle came to him when he overflowed the bath water. Research here is programmed, according to a strict schedule of antibiotic exploration. Which is the business we’re in.’

  ‘I don’t believe the Archimedes legend either. Nor see how it’s supposed to fit what we’re talking about,’ rejected Parnell. ‘It’s now been recognized that the majority of what pharmaceutical industries produce does nothing to alleviate, help or – by the very worst analysis – save the lives of people they’re supposed to help with the drugs they’re offering. If I can create the proper research team, working in proper, liaising research with medical expertise, Dubette could revolutionize diagnostic approach. It’s an approach already being tried in Europe, and one upon which I’m well advanced, from my work on the genome project.’ Parnell, resigned to the thought that his job was over before it had begun, supposed he could always stay in Washington for an extended holiday, to minimize the loss on the apartment lease, and whatever else was non-refundable, before moving on. He was probably still within his relocation budget in any case.

  There was another edge of uncertainty in Newton’s laugh. ‘You’re talking as if you can walk away if you don’t like the housing arrangements.’

  ‘That’s exactly how I’m talking.’ Parnell was glad he hadn’t advertised vacancies in his new department and given people false hopes.

  ‘You forgotten you’ve got a legally enforceable contract, studied and agreed not just by Dubette’s lawyers but your independent attorney as well?’

  ‘It very specifically sets out in that contract that I shall have every research facility I might need. Which I don’t have. I don’t intend any ridiculous breach-of-contract litigation against Dubette. I’ll just resign and we’ll both put it down to experience.’

  ‘You don’t intend any litigation!’ exploded the research director, incredulous. ‘You think this organization lets people walk away just because they don’t have a desk by the window!’

  ‘I’m not complaining about not having a desk by the window,’ retorted Parnell. ‘I’m saying I do not have my contracted working conditions and facilities. Now tell me what you’re saying. Are you telling me that if I resign, Dubette will take me to court?’

  ‘You’re damned right I am.’

  ‘OK,’ said Parnell, rising. ‘I’ll see the lawyer who negotiated for me, and get my resignation letter in to you in the next day or two.’

  ‘Sit down,’ ordered Newton, sharply. ‘You’ve scarcely been here long enough to find the washroom. Let’s not get off to a wrong start, the two of us. You want a change of location, I’ll see what I can do. But if we’re going to work together, there’s something you’ve got to understand very clearly … I don’t like – won’t have – confrontations.’

  ‘I don’t want any wrong starts or confrontations, either,’ said Parnell, easily. ‘I accepted Dubette’s approach precisely because I recognized the opportunity to extend genetic science through an international organization with huge research resources. That’s all I’m asking for, t
hat chance to do the work I came here to do. But can’t.’

  ‘Leave me to work it out.’

  ‘So, I’ll get the laboratory I want, where I want it?’ persisted Parnell.

  ‘That’s confrontational!’ accused the spindly man.

  ‘That’s honest,’ contradicted Parnell.

  ‘I said leave it with me,’ insisted the American.

  If he pushed any further – any harder – they’d both fall off the edge, Parnell accepted. ‘I’m glad we’ve had this conversation.’

  ‘So am I.’

  Liar, Parnell thought. It was a trait he’d have to remember.

  ‘I’m grateful for your staying late,’ thanked Newton, who’d spent the afternoon with Dubette’s in-house lawyers and didn’t like what he’d been told.

  ‘There’s obviously a reason for your asking,’ said Russell Benn. He was the large, black, rumbling-voiced scientific director of the predominant antibacterial research sections of the laboratory.

  ‘We’re going to have to move things around a little. Make some space,’ announced the vice president.

  Benn frowned. ‘Space for what?’

  ‘The English guy, Parnell, who’s opening up the genetics section.’

  ‘For what?’ repeated the other man.

  ‘He has to be part of the inner core, able to liaise with you.’

  ‘I need all the space I’ve got,’ protested Benn.

  ‘This is how it’s got to be, Russ: how I want it to be.’ Newton enjoyed the power, knowing that people were actually frightened of him, as he, in turn, was frightened of Edward C. Grant. Newton promised himself he’d manipulate Parnell as he would a piece of modelling clay, until Parnell was as pliably obedient as he’d made everyone else in the research and development division.

  Benn, who was trying to put three of his five sons through private school and had a mortgage lapping up to his chin, shrugged and said: ‘It’s going to upset things. My guys like their routines: knowing where they are.’

  ‘It’s what I want,’ insisted Newton.

  ‘If it causes problems, I’ll need to talk to you about it,’ said Benn, anxious to pretend he was not as intimidated as everyone else enmeshed in the Spider’s Web.

  ‘Do that!’ urged the director, sincerely. ‘The moment there’s a problem, a conflict, I want to know about it.’ That afternoon the legal opinion had been that professional disruption affecting major research nullified Parnell’s breach-of-contract claim and provided Dubette with a matching pressure to keep him in line: an outer, not an inner line.

  Two

  Richard Parnell’s reassigned research area was directly in line with the vice president’s office, which Parnell supposed was intended to be intimidating but wasn’t. He was far more interested in the newly arrived equipment, everything he’d requested without a single budgetary challenge. Which was what he told Russell Benn at their first meeting after his transfer.

  ‘Glad you’re satisfied,’ said the other man, the voice seeming to come from deep within him.

  Parnell at once discerned the resentment. ‘I’d like to think we’re going to get on together.’

  ‘So would I.’

  ‘Why don’t we establish our parameters right now?’

  ‘Why don’t we?’ echoed Benn.

  He was pushing against a closed door, thought Parnell. ‘I’m here to head up a new pharmacogenomics division, right?’

  The black scientist nodded.

  ‘That involves me – or the people who are going to join me – employing what was discovered during the genome project to drug development. Which is your division, so we’re going to have to work pretty closely together, wouldn’t you agree?’

  ‘You really think you can make a contribution genetically to what we do here?’ demanded Benn.

  ‘You accept that more than ninety per cent of the drugs produced – drugs we produce – are only effective upon between thirty to fifty per cent of the people for whom they’re prescribed!’

  ‘I’ve heard the figures. I think they’re debatable.’

  ‘And you’ve heard of single-nucleotide polymorphisms?’

  ‘Genetically matching a person to the most efficacious drug? Sure I’ve heard of it.’

  ‘But aren’t impressed by it?’ challenged Parnell.

  ‘I’m waiting to be convinced.’

  ‘Abacavir,’ threw back Parnell, at once.

  ‘OK,’ conceded the other man. ‘So, genetically it has been established that abacavir is a drug that could, potentially, be fatal to about five per cent of HIV sufferers in AIDS treatment.’

  ‘And brings out violent skin reaction, rashes, in those to whom it isn’t fatal?’ persisted Parnell.

  ‘I’ve read the findings and the stats.’

  ‘Scientifically accepted findings and statistics,’ insisted Parnell. ‘Like there’s general scientific acceptance that single nucleotide polymorphisms could not only test people’s vulnerability to a particular drug’s side effects but also whether or not it will work at all.’

  ‘You want coffee?’ the other man invited suddenly, making a vague movement to a percolator on a side table upon which several mugs, all loyally marked with the Dubette logo, were laid out in readiness.

  Parnell recognized it as a gesture. ‘Coffee would be good.’

  ‘You know your stuff,’ said Benn, as he poured.

  ‘You were testing me!’ accused Parnell.

  ‘Wasn’t that what you were doing with me?’

  ‘No!’ denied Parnell. ‘I was trying to build a bridge for both of us to cross.’

  ‘Seems to me you’re arguing against superbug resistance?’

  The awkward bastard was still testing, Parnell decided. ‘I think – and intend to prove – that pharmacogenomics could become successful enough to reduce antibiotic resistance or rejection.’

  The other scientist fixed him with a direct stare, unspeaking for several moments. Then he said: ‘Am I hearing what you’re saying?’

  ‘It’s a self-defeating ladder, developing stronger antibiotics when resistance makes useless those that already exist. Making cocktails of drugs, a lot of the constituents of which are totally ineffective and can even be harmful, is bad medicine. The logic can only be the build-up of even greater resistance which in turn needs even greater – stronger – antibiotics. It’s happened worldwide with methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus. We’re breeding our own superbugs from superbugs, not eradicating anything.’

  ‘Eradicating?’ picked out Benn, at once.

  ‘Isn’t eventual eradication the focus of medical science?’ frowned Parnell.

  ‘Medical science,’ heavily qualified Benn. ‘Our focus is pharmaceutical research and developing and improving drugs to combat known diseases.’

  ‘Aren’t they allied?’

  ‘I suppose that’s a point of view,’ allowed the section director, doubtfully.

  ‘It’s always been mine.’

  ‘You haven’t yet been to a company seminar, have you?’ asked Russell Benn.

  ‘Not yet,’ said Parnell.

  ‘There’s one soon. You’ll find it interesting.’

  ‘I am finding this conversation interesting,’ said Parnell, directly. ‘Interesting as well as confusing.’

  ‘Did you know that years ago tyre manufacturers perfected a tyre that never wears out: if they were fitted to cars and trucks they’d last the lifetime of the vehicle.’

  ‘No, I didn’t know that,’ encouraged Parnell, who did, but wanted the analogy expanded.

  ‘Planned obsolescence,’ declared Benn.

  ‘Yes,’ said Parnell.

  ‘I think you’re right,’ declared Benn, on another tangent. ‘I think there could be work we could do together.’

  ‘There can’t be any doubt: we’re virtually the left and right hand, each having to know what the other’s doing and how we can each realistically decide how to complement the other, towards a successful development.’ He’d gone
straight from Cambridge University into the rarefied atmosphere of pure medical research, Parnell reminded himself. But he wasn’t in any rarefied atmosphere any longer. He was in the real, hard-headed commercial world now. How difficult would the adjustment be?

  * * *

  ‘Hi!’

  Parnell looked up from Science Today, beside his unseen, stabbed-at lunch, to the dark-haired girl smiling down upon him. ‘Hi.’

  ‘This seat taken?’

  ‘Help yourself.’ He stood politely, taking her tray as she unloaded the sandwich and a pickle, the same choice he’d made. He saw there were several alternative empty tables throughout the commissary.

  ‘My name’s Rebecca.’

  ‘I know,’ said Parnell. The ID tag hanging from her neck chain matched the nameplate on her white laboratory coat, both reading ‘Rebecca Lang.’

  ‘And I know that you’re Richard Parnell,’ she said, reading his identification.

  ‘Name badges, one of the great American innovations,’ acknowledged Parnell. He closed the journal.

  ‘You don’t have to do that – stop reading, I mean.’

  ‘Of course I do.’ He sliced his sandwich, salt beef on rye, more easily to eat.

  ‘Now I feel uncomfortable.’ She bit into her sandwich without cutting it.

  ‘No, you don’t.’

  She smiled again, her teeth a tribute to attentive dentistry and teenage torture. Confident that she didn’t need any more facial help, Rebecca wore only a light lipstick, pale pink like her nail colouring. ‘All right, so I don’t. Want to know a secret?’

  ‘Sure.’ Parnell heard his own word and thought it sounded American. An early resolution was that he wouldn’t let himself relapse into any idiom. It was one of several preconceptions.

  She nodded generally around the restaurant. ‘It was a bet, who got to talk to you first.’

  ‘Talk to me first!’

  ‘The mysterious and famous foreigner publicly known for his work on the genome project!’

  ‘And you won?’

  ‘I’m here talking to you, so I guess I did.’

  ‘I’m English, which is hardly mysterious. And a lot of people are known for what they did on the genome project. It was an international effort, involving many people.’