Final Venture

'Oh, come on, John. You can spare the odd ten million.'

'When can you get it into your stupid head my father doesn't give me any money? If I want a dollar from him, I've got to wash his car.' John said this casually. We had been over the subject many times before, and Daniel never believed him. I did.

'Can't you suggest it to your old man? He can put his own money in.

'Oh, please.' John glanced at the screen full of stock prices in front of Daniel. 'Doesn't matter how long you stare at it. It's not going up.'

'You never know,' Daniel muttered.

'You've got to own half of BioOne by now,' said John.

'Unfortunately.'

'Why? You must be sitting on a big profit now, surely'

Daniel sighed. 'I bought a shit-load at fifty-eight.'

'Warren Buffet would be proud of you,' said John, smiling.

'It'll come back,' said Daniel irritably.

A shit-load to Daniel was a lot of stock. After the Initial Public Offering the stock price had shot up, increasing fourfold. For the last year it had marked time, hovering around sixty dollars, until the recent slump with the rest of the biotech sector.

'Still, our glorious partners are doing OK,' John said. 'I wonder how much their stake is worth?'

'About fifty-four million dollars between them,' answered Daniel immediately.

'Fifty-four million!'

'Absolutely. Revere invested five million in ninety-four. That five million is now worth about two hundred seventy-five million. The partners get twenty per cent of the profits and there you are.'

Trust Daniel to have the numbers at his fingertips. I knew that BioOne completely dominated Revere's other holdings. There were some successes – mostly Frank's, some big losses – mostly Art's, and a mixed bag of other investments, but BioOne was the only one that mattered.

Fifty-four million to be shared between five partners! Of course Gil would get the most. Art would get a big chunk, because he had done the BioOne deal originally, even though everything else he touched was a dog, but Frank would get a lot too. The newer partners, Ravi and Diane, would have much smaller shares.

No associate had yet made it to partner at Revere. It was a situation I desperately wanted to change.

'So, what's it feel like to have a father-in-law worth millions of dollars, Simon?' Daniel asked.

'It's all paper profits,' I said. 'And anyway I get the impression I'm not the favourite son-in-law at the moment.'

Daniel smiled grimly. 'I kinda got that impression too.'

'What does Lisa think of BioOne?' John asked.

'Not much,' I answered.

'Why?'

'She had a friend who worked there who hated it. Apparently the Technical Director is a scumbag. You know, Thomas Enever, the Aussie. He runs a regime of total secrecy there. He's the only one who knows what's going on.'

'I think she's wrong,' said Daniel.

I shrugged. Boston Peptides was a much smaller firm than BioOne, and they operated in related fields rather than being direct rivals. But Lisa had strong views about the bigger firm.

'Enever's brilliant,' said Daniel. 'Touchy, but brilliant.'

'He must be,' I said. 'I don't know the first thing about bio-tech.'

'Neither does Art,' said Daniel, laughing. And it's the only investment he's made here that's worked.'

I smiled. Daniel occasionally helped Art out on BioOne, especially when Art needed some number-crunching done, and so he was the only person apart from Art who had had contact with the company. Art had backed an old friend from his computing days, Jerry Peterson, to buy BioOne four years ago. Daniel was right, Art knew nothing about biotech, and it was debatable whether Jerry, now BioOne's chairman, did either.

It had turned out that BioOne had the most promising treatment for Alzheimer's disease, the chief cause of senility in old people. Alzheimer's was one of the most prevalent chronic diseases in the world, and although it had always existed, its diagnosis was growing all the time. Chronic diseases were good targets for a biotech company; patients just kept taking the pills year after year. That would turn into billions of dollars of sales once the drug was approved by the authorities. That was why BioOne was valued at one and a half billion dollars on NASDAQ, the high-tech stock exchange.

Art had got lucky and it was difficult to begrudge him that, especially since the whole firm was benefiting from it.

I was lying on the sofa in our small living room, an open book resting face down on my chest, my eyes closed, when I heard the door bang. I looked at the clock on the wall. Ten o'clock.

'Hi,' I said, sitting up.

'Hi.' Lisa kissed me quickly and plopped down next to me. 'It's dark in here,' she said.

It was. I had been reading by one weak lamp. I liked the room like that in the evening. The yellow light from the gas lamps on the street outside would flicker through the windows, casting shadows on the white walls and the old brick fireplace.

'Shall I turn some lights on?' I asked.

'No. It's nice. But you could get me a glass of wine.'

'Sure.' I opened a bottle of Californian red, and poured us a glass each. Lisa drank hers gratefully, and stretched out, kicking off her shoes.

'My brain hurts,' she groaned.

I kissed her temple. 'Better?'

She turned, pulled me down to her, and gave me a long slow kiss. 'A bit.'

'I wish you didn't have to work quite so hard,' I said.

'No choice. It's like a race against time. We have to get BP 56 to a point where we can attract more money before we run out of cash. We've got to get the animal data finished so we can go on to the human trials.'

'I thought you said the animal work was all done.'

'It is. And it's obvious what the results are. But we need to get everything written up for the FDA. It's a nightmare.'

'I bet.'

Lisa finished her wine, and poured herself another glass. 'You didn't resign, I take it?'

'No. You were right. I'm going to try to save Net Cop.'

'How?'

'I don't know. A guy from business school might put some money up. But we'll need a lot more than he's got.'

'You'll find it,' Lisa said. 'Any more ideas about Helen's appeal?'

'I'd like to go for it,' I said. 'She's trapped, and this really is her only hope of escaping. But we just don't have the money.'

'Do you trust her lawyers when they say they'd win this time?'

'I called the solicitor this morning. He is confident, much more confident than I've seen him before. Apparently this new expert witness is very convincing. If only all this had come up in a few years' time, when I was properly established at Revere. I'd be able to afford it then.'

'I'm sorry, Simon,' Lisa said, touching my hand. 'I wish there was something I could do.'

'You've let me blow all our savings. There's not much more than that you can do.'

Lisa seemed to hesitate.

'What is it?' I asked.

'I saw Dad today,' she said. 'For lunch.'

I felt a mild burst of irritation at this. It was another example of my wife and my father-in-law conspiring to see each other behind my back. 'You didn't tell me.'

'No. I wanted to ask him whether he could lend us some money. For Helen.'

I was shocked. My heart beat faster. 'What did he say?'

Lisa bit her lip. 'No.'

I winced. 'You shouldn't have asked him, Lisa. It was nice of you to try, but this is my family's problem. It has nothing to do with him. As he seems to realize,' I added bitterly.

'It wasn't that,' said Lisa. 'He doesn't approve of medical litigation. He thinks it's screwing up this country's medical system. I remember how Pop used to go on about it.' I had heard a lot about Pop, Lisa's grandfather, a doctor of forthright opinions. 'Dad just doesn't want to support it.'

'But Matthew's life was screwed up by some incompetent doctor!' I protested. 'Someone's going to have to pay for that for the rest of the boy's life, and I don't see why it should only be Helen.'

Lisa sighed. 'That's what I told him. But you know what Dad's like when he says no.'