Final Venture

'Jesus! How is she? How bad was it?'

'It was bad,' said Carl flatly. 'She's still alive, but the doctors say the damage was massive. She's in a coma, and they don't think she'll come out of it. It's just a question of time.'

A wave of despair overwhelmed me. I couldn't say anything.

'Simon. Simon! Are you there?'

'Yes, I'm here,' I said quietly. 'I'm so sorry, Carl.'

There was silence on the. other end of the line for a moment. 'That wasn't the side-effect you were thinking about, was it Simon?'

I wanted to lie to him, tell him I didn't know, let him think that he and I bore no responsibility for his wife's stroke, but I couldn't. He'd find out soon enough.

Yes,' I said.

'Damn!' Carl exclaimed. Then he gave a sigh that shuddered down the phone. 'I guess I shouldn't have told Zoe to go on with the treatment, huh?'

'You didn't know, Carl. Neither did I. We do now, but it's too late.'

'Yeah. It is.' Carl sounded very tired.

'I'll leave you to get some sleep,' I said. 'But one last question. Which clinic was Zoe visiting?'

It was Dr Netherbrook's. The one I had seen first that morning, the one with no patients with strokes. When I had spoken to him, Dr Netherbrook wouldn't have heard what had happened to Zoe. But he would soon be filing an adverse event report. I wondered how Enever would ignore or suppress that one.

'Goodbye, Carl. Give my love to Zoe.'

'I will,' he said, and rang off.

I lay on my back on the bed in my motel room.

Another good person dying for the greater glory of BioOne.

I bought the Wall Street Journal the next morning and read it over one of those great American breakfasts that you can get in cheap diners. Out of habit I scanned the NASDAQ quotes. BioOne's stock was up nineteen dollars to sixty-three!

I searched the paper for the story. BioOne had announced a marketing agreement with Werner Wilson, a huge pharmaceutical company. Werner Wilson was going to sell neuroxil-5 in the United States, as well as 'a promising new treatment for Parkinson's disease, developed by BioOne'. That was Lisa's BP 56. The deal gave extremely favourable terms to BioOne, although it was contingent on a successful outcome of the Phase Three trial of neuroxil-5, expected in March. It would mean neuroxil-5 would be pushed out to doctors by one of the largest pharmaceutical sales forces in the country. The Wall Street analysts loved it, and so did the stock market, which was why the stock had shot up. If they only knew.

I finished my French toast, and went out to the parking lot and the little white Ford, which was doubling as an office. I called Daniel at Revere.

'What's up, Simon? Where are you?'

'On the road,' I replied. 'Listen, Daniel. I've been to some of the clinics that are participating in the Phase Three trial. And I think Lisa was right. There is a problem.'

'Jesus,' said Daniel. 'What kind of problem?'

'It looks possible that people taking the drug over a period of months suffer from strokes.'

'Ooh,' said Daniel. 'That's bad.'

'Very bad.'

'Did you see the BioOne stock price this morning?' he asked.

'Yes. Sixty-three.'

'It's not going to be up there very long if this gets out.'

'No, it isn't. But keep it quiet for now, Daniel. I don't have hard evidence. I really need the clinical trial data on the Phase Two trial, and the adverse events on Phase Three. There must be some way you can get that from BioOne. Revere is its biggest shareholder, for God's sake.'

'I don't know, Simon. You know what Thomas Enever is like.'

'It's important, Daniel. Steal it if you have to.'

There was silence at the other end of the phone.

'Daniel?'

'I'm sorry, Simon. This is getting heavy. You getting fired. People getting killed. I don't think it would be smart to steal BioOne documents.'

'Daniel! Come on, this is important.'

'Sorry, Simon. Got to run. Later.'

The bastard hung up.

Shit! I had expected too much of Daniel's friendship. As usual, he was thinking of himself first. Bastard!

We hadn't discussed Daniel's personal holdings of BioOne stock directly. At sixty-three dollars he was finally in profit. I was sure he would sell. If he did, I supposed he would technically be insider trading, but that was his problem, not mine. I was furious that I had given him the information to dig himself out of that hole, when he had been unwilling to lift a finger to help me.

Who else could I talk to at Revere? Art was out of the question. So was Gil. He had made clear his displeasure at my attempts to find out what was wrong with BioOne. I would go to him when I had proof, not before. Ravi? I didn't know him well enough to count on his support; he would be much more likely to follow Gil's line. And the last thing I wanted to do was go to Diane for help.

I started the car, and drove north to Cambridge. I stopped opposite BioOne's gleaming building. The information was in there, somewhere, but how could I get at it? I had seen the security. There was no way past that.

I had an idea. I called Craig, and persuaded him to meet me at Marsh House that afternoon.

I drove out to Woodbridge, bought some groceries at the Star Market, and drove on to Marsh House. It would be foolish to go back to my apartment in Boston if I wanted to stay alive. This seemed like a good place to lie low. But even here I didn't feel completely safe.

It was a crisp clear day. The autumnal light reflected off the yellows and oranges of the marsh grass, so that the marsh itself seemed to shimmer. The creek twinkled at the end of the jetty. No one was about. Just the white egrets and me.

I used Lisa's key to unlock the door. The house had not been touched since I was last there. It was cold. I found some wood, fed the stove, and lit it. I made myself a sandwich for lunch, and waited for Craig. The peace of the place settled around me.

Craig came armed with a powerful laptop computer. He set it up on the kitchen table, and in no time he was up and running, and looking for BioOne's web site.

'How long will this take?' I asked him.

'No idea. Hours. Days, maybe. We'll see.'

'Will you be able to get in there?'

'Oh, yes. At Net Cop we monitor all the new tricks as soon as they're discovered. That's the only way we can keep our own switching systems secure. Something will work here.'

I watched him as he nosed around the BioOne web site, taking note of e-mail addresses, and so on.

'Can I help?' I asked him.

'Yeah. Let's do this properly. Pizza. Extra anchovies. And good coffee.'

So I drove into Woodbridge and got a pizza. There was a kind of deli which ground exotic coffees, so I bought a quarter pound of arabica and returned to the house with it. The kitchen was soon full of the smell of brewing coffee and extra anchovies.

'How are you doing?' I asked him.

'I think I can see a possible way in,' he said. 'There's a new link between BioOne's network and Boston Peptides', isn't there?'

'Yes. BioOne took them over very recently'

'Excellent. That means they probably haven't got a cast-iron connection. It would really help if I had the password of someone in the Boston Peptides network,' Craig said. 'You don't know Lisa's by any chance?'

'No. I could guess. But won't she have been kicked off the system by now?'

'Probably,' Craig agreed. 'Anyone else?'

'Hold on.'

I called Kelly. She didn't sound pleased to hear from me.

'You shouldn't call me at work,' she whispered urgently.

'Kelly, I need your password for the computer system.'

'You've got to be kidding!'

'I'm serious. I'm pretty sure now that Lisa was right about neuroxil-5. To be certain, I need to get into BioOne's computer. To do that I need your password.'

'But I don't have access to that data. That would be in the Clinical Trials Unit.'

'Don't worry about that. It'll give us somewhere to start.'

'No, Simon. Ill get fired.'