‘I’ve made it perfectly clear to you that I want to know every intended genetic research project before it is initiated, not after. There could be conflict with other, parallel research…’
‘Not if it’s carried out as it should be, with total co-ordinated exchanges between every section,’ broke in Parnell.
‘I am the ultimate co-ordinator,’ said Newton. ‘I’ll decide if there’s a conflict or unnecessary duplication.’
‘What appears to be parallel duplication can’t be avoided if my section genetically compares and cross-references matching although alternative experimentation: that’s the whole purpose of pharmacogenomics being set up here, forming a part of what becomes a whole.’
‘I will co-ordinate and decide upon everything that is conducted in the research and development division of this organization,’ pedantically insisted Newton, the fingers at last scrabbling back and forth in exasperation. ‘I’ll make that clear in a written memorandum, which perhaps I should have done earlier. There seems to have been some verbal misunderstanding.’
There was no benefit in any longer revolving on this argumentative carousel, Parnell recognized. Just as he recognized the weak threat of putting this latest disagreement on written record. ‘I came here to talk about something else.’
‘What?’ demanded the research vice president, the peculiar fingers drumming out his impatience at the dispute ending on Parnell’s terms, not his.
‘Science – all sciences – benefit from exchange, from the cross-fertilization of ideas.’
‘Are you lecturing consciously to irritate or aren’t you aware how you sound!’
‘I want to set up a dedicated website,’ announced Parnell.
The hands stopped. Newton became quite still, his rising colour the only indication of his incredulity, heightened when he finally spoke by the way in which he spaced the words. ‘You-want-to-do-what?’
‘Set up a website dedicated to my section,’ repeated the more controlled Parnell. ‘Upon which…’
‘… Every competitor can log on and work out not just what you but every other Dubette research section might be working on and anticipate every patent and licence before we even apply for it! Are you actually expecting me to take you seriously!’
He hadn’t properly balanced the counter-argument, conceded Parnell. ‘I think that’s a minimal danger, dependent entirely upon how the research is set out. What I propose…’
‘Let’s hypothesize, just to amuse ourselves and show this up as the insane, absurd idea it is,’ persisted Newton, relentlessly. ‘Let’s say someone outside the company suggests something you incorporate. Whose copyright – exclusive patent or licence – will it be? How many civil courts in how many countries do you imagine we’d keep in business for the next millennium arguing infringement or plagiarism actions?’
‘Let me tell you…’ Parnell tried, yet again.
‘No!’ refused the other man, loudly. ‘You’re not going to tell me anything. I am going to tell you. You will not set up any dedicated website, now or in the foreseeable future… if, indeed, the future for you here at Dubette is foreseeable. I will put my refusal – and my reasons for it – in writing, too. And attach to it the legally binding and agreed confidentiality agreement signed by you, as a condition of your employment. To which I want a written response from you that you’ve read that agreement and fully understand it. Let’s start right now. You understand everything, every single thing, I’ve just told you?’
Parnell burned with the humiliation, accepting that he’d not only been out-argued but that the defeat was entirely of his own making. Shortly he said: ‘Yes, I understand.’
‘The next time we talk I want common sense, not nonsense,’ said Newton, warmed by the conviction that he’d irreparably punctured all the previous insufferable arrogance. He couldn’t remember enjoying himself so much for a long time.
‘It sounds like a one-victim massacre, if there is such a thing,’ sympathized Rebecca.
‘It was,’ admitted Parnell. ‘God knows what Kathy imagined I’d done when I dictated the reply Newton insisted upon.’ Kathy Richardson was the greying, middle-aged divorcee whom he’d finally engaged as his secretary, the only position Dwight Newton hadn’t insisted be considered by the appointments committee.
‘Hardly a day to celebrate,’ said Rebecca. They were eating in her uncle’s restaurant, accustomed now to the food and wine choice being made for them and to Ciro sometimes talking them through special dishes he’d created, always ‘just for you two’.
‘I wanted a change from eating crow,’ said Parnell. ‘And it was a good day until the Newton episode. I think they’re all going to come together very well.’
‘Shouldn’t you give it more than a first-day impression, like you should have given the website idea more thought?’ cautioned the woman.
‘I am only talking first-day impression,’ said Parnell. ‘And I’ve already admitted to the other mistake. I still don’t believe it represented more than a one or two per cent danger. Five tops.’
‘Darling! To a company like Dubette the one or two per cent possibility of a competitor getting into its research is a major drama. Five per cent registers ten on the Richter scale. You’re not involved in pure science any more. You’ve got to remember that.’
‘I will, in future. Believe me!’ Parnell didn’t like losing, certainly not to someone like Newton, whom he judged to be a bully. But it had been an ill-considered mistake and he was determined not to make another.
‘I asked outright,’ suddenly blurted Rebecca.
‘What?’ frowned Parnell, totally confused.
‘My section head, Burt Showcross. I asked him outright what all the secrecy was about between France and us.’
‘What did he say?’ His mind blocked by the humiliating confrontation with Newton, Parnell had forgotten his earlier conversation with Rebecca about back-channelled secrecy from Dubette’s French division.
‘That he didn’t know either but that it sometimes happened and that I wasn’t to concern myself with it – any of it – again.’
Parnell was about to say that she should let it go at that but was halted by a sudden thought. Instead he said: ‘If Paris has come up with something they’re excited about – something to which they’re attaching such a degree of priority and secrecy – it could be something which has an application to pharma-cogenomics?’
Rebecca shrugged. ‘Who knows? But guess what?’
Parnell wished Rebecca didn’t so often conduct conversations like a quiz game. ‘What?’
‘There was a mistyped report from Paris, a good enough excuse to telephone them direct. While I was chatting to the girl I normally deal with, I was told the chief executive had been recalled to New York… along with the research-division head who misdirected that one message that no one, not even Showcross, was supposed to see.’
‘I think you should do what Showcross told you. Forget about it.’
‘Maybe it’s been a bad day for both of us.’
‘Forget about it,’ repeated Parnell. He wasn’t sure he would, though.
Seven
Edward C. Grant said: ‘I needed to speak to you like this, just the two of us. Discreetly.’
‘Of course,’ agreed Dwight Newton, who had caught the first shuttle from Washington that morning, wanting to be at the Dubette corporate building before the president. He’d failed. He’d been careful to wear his seminar suit, which matched the dark grey of Grant’s. And to enter, as instructed in the summons, by the special penthouse-only elevator.
‘We’re talking risk assessment,’ announced the Dubette president.
‘I understand.’ Newton thought the football-pitch size of Grant’s desk accentuated the man’s bantam-cock shortness.
‘It was a good idea to have security check everything out as thoroughly as they did.’ It was a safeguard to let the other man imagine he’d initiated the precaution, which he hadn’t. After what Grant regarded as the one and only mistake of his life – relegating that in his mind to a lapse more than a mistake – he now took no risks.