Parnell insisted everyone take the third full weekend off and was glad when Rebecca announced she’d prefer to cook in at Bethesda on the Saturday night. They had drinks on the deck and he fell asleep in the colonial wicker chair when she went into the kitchen to prepare the meal. She woke him in mock protest that if he was as tired as that he wasn’t going to be much use to a girl as denied as she had been.
‘I was just recovering my strength.’
‘How much longer do you think you’re going to have to work like this?’
Parnell shrugged. ‘A long time.’
‘You won’t be able to keep up the pace. The other guys are going to get pissed off.’
‘They’re working their asses off at the moment.’
‘You’ve got to cut some them some slack.’
‘I’ll watch it.’ He paused. ‘I’m surprised at Newton – Benn too, for that matter – by his apparent lack of interest after all the bullshit about knowing everything I’m doing.’
‘They’re too busy,’ said Rebecca. She grinned, conspira-torially. ‘And I think I know why.’
‘You promised to back off!’
‘I don’t think I did!’
‘I think you did.’ She’d cooked pot roast and Parnell realized that in his annoyance he was facing her across the table with his knife and fork held upright, like weapons. He put them down, pouring wine for them both.
‘I didn’t go around asking any more questions,’ said Rebecca, defensively.
‘What then?’
‘I had coffee in the commissary with the filing clerk in Benn’s section: she’s the girl I deal with all the time. And she said Benn’s locked himself away in a laboratory and no one knows what he’s doing.’
‘And you’re surmising it’s the great French mystery!’
‘It all fits, doesn’t it?’
‘No,’ refused Parnell. ‘You’re making it fit. And I want you to let it go. It’s becoming an obsession.’
‘It’s not an obsession! I’m just curious.’
Parnell looked at her suspiciously. ‘You spoken to Paris again?’
‘Not about this.’
‘So you have spoken to Paris!’
‘A regular samples shipment went missing. I had to confirm the waybill number.’
‘By phone!’
‘Why not?’ The defensiveness was back.
‘When? Before or after coffee in the commissary with the file clerk?’
‘The day after. But it was a coincidence, believe me.’
Parnell didn’t. ‘And all you talked about was a missing samples shipment and a waybill number?’
‘There’s a lot of curiosity in Paris, too. Their top guy wouldn’t have been called to New York if it wasn’t important, would he?’
‘You said anything more to Showcross?’
‘He knew I called Paris. And why. By reconfirming the waybill number, I was able to track down the samples.’
‘I want a solemn promise that you’ll keep to this time. I want you to stop.’
‘Why’s it such a big thing with you?’ Rebecca demanded, showing her own irritation.
‘Because I think it is approaching an obsession. Whatever the French thing is, it’s something they’re keeping under wraps. Which is entirely logical and understandable in a pharmaceutical company whose whole existence and future is based on exactly that, keeping as totally controlled and secret as possible what might be an advance. The way you’re behaving you could far too easily become suspected of being a competitor informant. And if that happens, you’re out.’
‘So?’
‘Where do you think you’re going to work next, with that albatross around your neck? You’d be an untouchable pariah, never trusted. Nor in pure science, even if you could get a place.’
Rebecca remained looking at him for several moments, her barely eaten meal abandoned, her wine glass untouched. Finally she said: ‘You really meant all that, didn’t you? About protecting me… and stuff…?’
‘Yes, I really mean it!’
She went back to her wine glass like a clairvoyant studying a crystal ball. ‘Does that mean we’re moving on, into a commitment?’
‘You’re the resident judge of that – it’s your chosen word.’
Rebecca remained engrossed in her glass for several more moments. Then she said, crack-voiced: ‘It sounds like it is.’
‘You’re the judge,’ repeated Parnell. Was that what he was offering, a commitment? He didn’t think the conversation had started out in that direction. He pushed aside his own, now cold, pot roast, which wasn’t anyway an American speciality he liked.
‘I just delivered the judgement.’
‘You don’t sound very sure about it.’
‘It wasn’t supposed to come out that way… like… oh shit…!’ she stumbled.
‘You any idea where we’re going with this?’
‘No.’ Rebecca’s voice was now mouse-like.
Parnell wasn’t sure about anything: about how they’d stumbled into this quicksand in the first place. ‘Now we’ve got this far, beyond the refusal, why don’t we wait a while, decide what we both want?’
‘OK,’ accepted Rebecca, mouse-voiced still.
‘That was quite a loop.’
She smiled, uncertainly. ‘I guess it was.’
‘And now we’re back at the beginning.’
‘I’ve almost forgotten what that was.’
‘No you haven’t. No more spy games, OK?’
‘I keep saying that.’
‘Say it again.’
‘OK.’
‘Mean it. Don’t commit professional suicide over some stupid non-mystery.’
Rebecca opened her mouth to speak but stopped. ‘I won’t say OK one more time. I promise. But this time I really, really mean it. I’ll forget about France.’
‘Good.’
‘I know I shouldn’t be, but I feel… I don’t know… embarrassed, I guess… now that we’ve…’ She floundered to a halt. ‘What do you feel?’
Parnell only just stopped himself from saying OK, which wouldn’t have been right in any context. ‘I feel you and I have got to talk a lot and laugh a lot and, in our own time, without any hurry or pressure, decide a lot.’
‘You don’t like pot roast, do you?’
‘It’s not my favourite.’
‘We’re deciding already.’
Parnell supposed taking pot roast off the menu was a start.
Irrationally Parnell felt uncomfortable taking the weekend off, and compensated by getting to McLean around six every morning the following week, and on the Wednesday ran for the elevator that was taking Russell Benn to their shared floor.
‘Sorry. Didn’t mean to frighten you,’ apologized Parnell, surprised at the medical research director’s startled reaction to his door-thrusting arrival. ‘I had to wait more than five minutes for a car to come back yesterday.’
‘Not used to people this early,’ said the black professor, recovering.
‘This your usual time?’ asked Parnell.
‘Varies,’ said the man. ‘Usually try to make an early start.’
‘Came across the other day. But you were busy.’
‘I’m still going through your stuff. Look forward to talking about it.’
‘You on to something new?’ asked Parnell.
‘What?’
‘What you’re working on. I was told you couldn’t be interrupted. Which I understood.’
Benn made an awkward, arm-lifting gesture. ‘Seemed a possibility. Doesn’t appear to be working out.’
‘What?’ demanded Parnell, directly.
There was a hesitation. ‘It’s a respiratory thing: a chest-muscle relaxant. Like I said, doesn’t seem to be working out on mice trials.’
‘We going to get a look at it on our side of the fence?’
‘I’m not getting anywhere, so it looks like a no-no. I would have thought you’ve got enough with what we’ve given you.’
‘Always room for more.’ The man was lying, Parnell knew.
Nine
Dwight Newton observed the previous protocol, catching the first New-York-bound flight from Washington and entering the corporate building on Wall Street using the unobserved, code-controlled penthouse elevator intentionally shielded from CCTV range. As before, Edward C. Grant was there ahead of him, waiting on the other side of the overpowering desk.