Sweet Talking Money. Harry Bingham
the room. ‘Good. Third question. The way Cameron talks, you and she are on the cutting edge of research in this area. How do you know? Maybe there are scientists in, I don’t know, California, Germany, Japan who are ahead of you.’
‘Possible. That’s always possible. All I can say is, we’ve never heard anything of the sort. There are others in the field, of course, but no one even approaching our level of success. And then, of course …’
‘Of course?’
‘There’s Cameron. She’s not just good, you know. She’s extraordinary. Passed out in the top two per cent of every exam she’s ever taken. She got bored during her Harvard medical training – would you believe that? She got bored – and did a PhD in biochemistry at the same time. The same time. Without even telling them. It’s unbelievable. She’s not just good, she’s the best.’
Bryn breathed out and sat back. The glare left his eyes, and Larousse began to relax. Cameron, peering round the corner from the kitchen, re-entered the room.
‘A fourth question,’ said Larousse. ‘You said you had four questions.’
‘Right, you’re quite right. Kati, do you know anywhere round here we can get some pizza?’
2
Despite the hour, the pizza restaurant was busy. It was as though, all across the city, the snow pattering down outside had stimulated people to go out into the whitening streets in search of food. They took seats in the window, and watched cars glide by them in silence across the dim, phosphorescent snow. Kati had just pulled warm clothes over her nightwear, and the flannel collar of her pyjama top poked upwards out of her jumper.
The two women claimed not to be hungry, and agreed to share a no-cheese, no-flavour, thin crust Marinara, while Bryn ordered a fourteen-inch Massachusetts Gobbler Special and a pitcher of beer. The two scientists sat together, wondering why they were here, wondering about Bryn.
He wolfed the first slice of pizza and downed a long draught of beer. ‘That’s better,’ he said with a belch. ‘Cameron, you ought to be famished. No? OK. You want to know what on earth is happening. More to the point, you want to know what the bloody hell I’m doing here.’
Kati nodded, and Cameron looked alert.
‘First the bad news. Brent Huizinga and Corinth Laboratories have sabotaged your research. They’ve done it once. They’ll do it again. They’ll go on doing it until they’ve driven you from the scene.’ Bryn gestured broadly with a wedge of the Massachusetts Gobbler. Dollops of ground beef and chilli dropped off on to the melamine table. He took another bite, and with his mouth full asked, ‘That night you found Kovacs in your laboratory, you know what he was doing?’
Cameron shook her head.
‘He was planning to screw up your experiment. Kill off your rats, or whatever. Don’t know, doesn’t matter. Wherever you go, whatever you do, Huizinga is after you. He’s got a hundred billion dollars to protect, so even if it costs him a few million bucks to do it, he’s going to silence you.’ He prodded at her with his lump of pizza. ‘This time. Next time. The time after that and the time after that.’
The colour – what little colour there was – emptied from Cameron’s face in less than a second.
‘How dare you –’ began Kati, but Cameron interrupted her with a gesture.
‘It’s not true what you say,’ she said icily. ‘From here, our next step is human research. Nobody’s going to believe that we fake results there. Every single patient we work with will be able to corroborate us.’
‘Yes.’ Bryn took another vast bite. ‘And how much will it cost, the next phase?’
‘Five million bucks, maybe ten,’ said Cameron.
‘And who’s paying?’
‘Anyone,’ said Cameron, ‘anyone at all.’ She tore a crust off her pizza and rolled it into a ball, rolling it round and round her palms like a six-year-old with Plasticine.
‘As far as the world believes, you did some experiments with rats which failed. You faked the results, wrote them up, and had your paper rejected. That’s not worth five million bucks. That’s not worth anything at all.’
‘For God’s sakes,’ said Kati to Cameron, ‘we don’t need to sit and listen to this.’ But once again, Cameron motioned her silent. This was a duel she had to fight.
‘So who?’ said Bryn. ‘Who’s going to fund you?’
‘OK,’ she whispered. ‘It’ll be tough. Either the people funding me at the moment will go on doing it, or else I’ll need to repeat my animal work using independent labs and outside experimenters. That way, no one can possibly accuse me of cheating.’
‘To repeat your animal work elsewhere you need money, which you don’t have. And Huizinga can infiltrate outside labs even more easily than he can get into your own. Wherever you go, whatever you do, he’ll make sure he finds a Duaine Kovacs to foul up your experiments. No one will need to accuse you of cheating, because your tests will fail.’
Cameron’s voice had shrunk away to nothing. It was the ghost of a whisper, the echo of a croak. ‘Then the people who are funding me now, the biotech crowd, will go on. They’ll believe me, not Kovacs.’
‘Cameron, I know for a certain fact that your funding is about to be cut off.’
Her voice had vanished, but her eyes asked how.
‘Go easy,’ warned Kati. ‘Take care.’ But Bryn ignored and overrode her.
‘I know, because I’m working for the buyers, remember? I’ve worked on their acquisition plans. I’ve sat in on their strategy meetings. They’re going to cut you off.’
‘That’s not what they … Every decision … its own merits.’ Her voice faded in and out of audibility.
Bryn bashed away one last time. The family motto: if at first you don’t succeed, thump it. ‘Of course they say that. They want to close the deal. They’ll say anything. I tell you, I know their plans. They’re doing the whole deal for one drug, Biloxifan. They’re going to sell a couple of the other drugs in development. They’re going to relocate some research staff. Then –’ He snapped his fingers. ‘They’ll fire everyone else, sell the buildings. I know, Cameron, I know. I’m their banker.’
‘It was your idea, wasn’t it?’ said Kati, eyeing him sharply. ‘You told them what to do and they’re doing it.’
Bryn denied nothing. ‘I advised them in their commercial best interest. It’s my job. When I advised them, I hadn’t met Cameron and I hadn’t met you.’
‘I’m finished,’ said Cameron. ‘You’re quite right. Thanks to you, I’m totally finished.’
Her voice began to turn into a yell, and from round the restaurant people began to stare.
‘You should be ashamed of yourself!’ said Kati furiously. ‘Don’t you think she’s suffered enough tonight without you rubbing her face in it?’
‘Rubbing her face in what?’ asked Bryn, tearing off another gigantic slice of pizza. ‘Don’t you even want the good news?’
3
And so, at a quarter past two on a snowy night in Boston, Bryn outlined his plan.
Crazy as it sounded, Bryn had made up his mind. He wouldn’t stay at Berger Scholes. He wouldn’t take the jobs his headhunter was bringing him. He’d quit. Wave goodbye to his deferred bonuses. Wave goodbye to banking, where every year is a bumper year, every bonus bigger than the last.
‘I don’t get it,’ said Cameron. ‘I see why I benefit. I get funding.