The Malthus Pandemic

by Terry Morgan

CHAPTER 34

  With Anna telling me she felt hungry again, we left the hotel to find a restaurant. But I wasn't in a good mood. Anna knew something was bothering me.

  "Mister Look-Lap - I can see you are not enjoying your dinner. You are very quiet. What is wrong? Don't sit there like that. You make me feel I say something wrong or maybe I not say something right. Maybe I upset you. If something is wrong then you must sort it."

  Anna was right. The restaurant was not busy and we were sat at a quiet, corner table overlooking the main Sukhumvit Road and rows of stalls selling everything from crafts and underwear to tee shirts and CDs. Outside it was hot and noisy. Inside, it was cool and peaceful.

  "Yes, Anna." I said. "You are right. I have something on my mind. It's spoiling my dinner and I can see it's spoiling yours. I need to phone America."

  So that's what I did. Charles Brady's mobile phone in Chicago, or wherever he was, was answered surprisingly quickly.

  "Charles, it's Daniel Capelli. I'm still in Bangkok."

  "Yes, Amos told me you might phone."

  "Can you talk, Charles?"

  "Yes. I'm at the airport - the plane is delayed." Yes, I thought. Never book a flight that Charles Brady is already booked on.

  "I'm getting nowhere, Charles," I said. "And I hate the feeling I'm not earning my fee."

  "Yes, Amos told me."

  "I need more from you. I might be wrong but the feeling persists that there is more going on here than just the loss of some research material. And you've now lost a researcher, Charles - just like Biox."

  "Yes," said Charles Brady.

  "So? Can you let me in on a bit more?"

  "What do you suspect?"

  "For Christ's sake, Charles. Give me a break. There's more isn't there? What is it about Virex and Biox? I thought you were competitors but from where I'm sitting you look like just one big organisation working in similar fields with similar problems. And you are both located in Boston - a mile away from each other. Don't you talk? Don't you share anything with Josh Ornstein?"

  I waited for a response but there was nothing. Silence.

  "Then if you don't mind, Charles, I'm going to ditch this very unsatisfactory arrangement with Virex and pursue a few other things that I've uncovered in the last few days. For one thing, I'm going to talk to Biox and when I'm finished there, I'm going to find out a bit more about another company I suspect you are familiar with - namely Livingstone Pharmaceuticals.

  "What have you found?" Brady now sounded like a bear with a sore head.

  "It's nothing to do with Virex, Charles, so I can't tell you - breaches of confidence and all that."

  "But......" Charles Brady seemed about to say something else but I didn't give him a chance.

  "Why send me to the conference, Charles? Yes, it was interesting but I'm not that keen on becoming an epidemiologist or a virologist at this stage of my life."

  "We thought you might find a few leads at the trade exhibition."

  "Charles," I said, "Please. Stop messing me about. If you know something, tell me. I'm not inexperienced in this business, you know. I can usually tell if I'm being bluffed or led up a garden path blindfolded. I've had clients who have left it right to the end to tell me something they could have told me right at the start and made it far easier for everyone. I think you're one of them."

  Suddenly, Charles Brady seemed to break. I heard a sound as if he may have stood up from where he was sitting.

  "It's Livingstone Pharmaceuticals, Daniel, I'm damned sure of it. That's what Josh Ornstein thinks as well."

  "So you talk regularly to Biox and Josh Ornstein do you, Charles? I wish I'd known that earlier. How much do you share?"

  "We share a lot, Daniel. But some of it is commercially sensitive."

  "You mean plans for technical co-operation, merger, acquisition, take over?"

  "Remember, Daniel you are subject to the confidentiality agreement you signed." The sore-headed bear had returned.

  "Then spill the beans, Charles. Tell me something that will help because I am very tempted, as I've said, to go off on a tangent, on my own, unfettered by confidentiality agreements or other red tape. I am damned sure there is something going on out here which I suspect is far bigger than Virex losing a scientist and few grams of something pink in a test tube."

  "It's Livingstone," said Charles Brady. He now sounded like baby bear of Goldilocks and the three bears.

  "Yes, you said that. What about Livingstone?"

  "The guy who owns them has been the subject of FBI investigations."

  "You mean Gregory O'Brian?"

  "You know?"

  "Get on with it Charles. I want you to tell me something new."

  "He's probably developing a new research facility somewhere."

  "Yes, I know."

  "You know that, too?"

  "It's what you're paying me for, Charles. I call it background research. Anything else?"

  "I think he's poached David Solomon, Guy Williams and now our guy, Jan."

  "Yes, I thought so. Anything else?"

  There was another noticeable pause.

  "They all think the same - politically."

  "Ah," I said. "Progress. What does their shared politics look like?"

  "Green issues, the environment."

  "Can you be a little more precise?"

  "Population control, natural resource - they are all professionals - biologists, virologists and experts on infection control and epidemiology and they belonged to the same club. "

  "What club?" I asked.

  "Boston University - Malthus Club."

  I didn't want to upset Brady too much. I pleaded ignorance.

  "It's a society that discusses population control, the environment, international issues, that type of thing." said Brady.

  There we have it, I thought. Solomon is still around somewhere and putting messages up onto the Malthus Society website. I smiled at Anna and gave her a thumbs up sign. She smiled back and, at last, tucked into the tom yung kung.

  I then decided to cut out some of the crap Brady might have been tempted to introduce before we arrived where I thought we were heading.

  "So what could Livingstone Pharmaceuticals, a company whose owner is hardly known for respectable ethical practice, possibly offer a few scientists with interests in the environment?"

  "Money?" whimpered Brady.

  "Anything else? And let me now ask you the big question, Charles. Do you think Livingstone is the guilty party - the one who has got its sticky little hands on your pink liquid?"

  "Could be."

  God, this man was a struggle. "Probably?" I pushed.

  "Yes, and......" Brady paused, "....an opportunity to do something about their opinions on the environment?"

  It was a question from Charles Brady. It was not a statement made with any real conviction.

  "And how could Livingstone - or, to be more precise, Gregory O'Brian - offer them an opportunity to do something about the environment? He hardly seems the sort of person to worry about the destruction of rain forests."

  I actually thought I already knew the answer and that Charles Brady didn't. It was something that Colin had said about GOB. "A criminal psychiatrist might say it's failed political ambitions," Colin had said. "He never got his dreamed-of job in a new Irish Government. Since then he's dabbled in other ways to change the system - anything radical gets his attention. You've got an extreme plan that might upset someone? GOB will go for it. A fighting fund for anything extreme that might yield a profit years into the future? GOB's definitely your man."

  But as I expected, Charles Brady's reply to my last question was another, "I don't know." I decided to help him out.

  "How about paying them well, helping them fulfil their ambitions - whatever they are - and, at the same time, channelling everything into making him an even richer man?"

  "Yes," said Brady, "I can see that."

  At last, I thought. I was still firmly on track.
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