Final Venture

'Kelly. Patients will die.'

There was silence. 'OK. But it's kind of embarrassing.'

'Tell me.'

'All right. Leonardodicaprio. One word.'

'Ah. I see what you mean.' Craig passed a note in front of me. 'Oh, and try to use the system as little as possible over the next twenty-four hours.'

'How am I going to do that?'

'Please, Kelly.'

She sighed. 'OK.'

'All right!' said Craig. 'Now what I'm going to do is try to log in to BioOne's connection from here, pretending to be Boston Peptides' machine.'

'Can't the BioOne machine tell the difference?'

'Normally, yes. But using one of my programs I can guess the packet number from the Boston Peptides system. BioOne will identify my message as coming from Boston Peptides and send an acknowledgement back to them. So what I'll need to do is flood the Boston Peptides system with fake messages, so that it doesn't receive the BioOne acknowledgement and realize something's wrong.'

'How long will all that take?'

'With the program I have, about a minute,' Craig smiled. 'Watch.'

He typed furiously, and then with a flourish, pressed enter. Numbers were dialled, modems screeched, lines of meaningless letters and ungrammatical word combinations scrolled down his screen. After about a minute, it all came to a stop.

'We're in!' exclaimed Craig.

'I'm impressed.'

'There's a ways to go yet, but we're getting there. Let's start with this guy Enever's e-mail.'

It took a while, but eventually the screen was filled with Enever's e-mails. We opened a few at random. Enever was not one of the great e-mail diplomats. His missives were terse, rude and managed to phrase the most simple message as an order rather than a request.

'OK, which ones do you want?'

There were hundreds of them. 'I can't tell without reading each one,' I said, shaking my head.

'OK. We'll download the lot, then.'

Craig began the process of stealthily downloading Enever's e-mails from the BioOne server in Cambridge on to the Net Cop machine in Wellesley, all from the rickety kitchen table in Marsh House.

When he'd finished, he rubbed his hands. 'Now for the Clinical Trials Unit.'

I'd asked him to look for data on the Phase Two clinical trial for neuroxil-5, and any early results for the Phase Three trial. It proved to be difficult. After a couple of hours, he took a break.

'This is going to be much harder,' he said, pouring himself a cup of coffee. 'It's much better protected than Enever's e-mail.'

'I really need that clinical trial data,' I said.

'I'll get it.'

Four hours later, he still hadn't. It was nearly midnight. I was exhausted, but I felt morally bound to stay awake and be supportive.

'Shit!' shouted Craig. 'I don't believe this!'

'Still no luck?'

Craig rubbed his eyes. 'These bastards know what they're doin'.'

I yawned. 'Look, Craig. You've tried hard, I really appreciate it. But let's just give up.'

'No way,' said Craig. 'I'm not quittin' till I get you that data.'

'But you'll be up all night!'

'Probably,' said Craig. He smiled. 'I've done it before. Many times. But you get some sleep.'

'No, I'll stay up with you.'

'Simon. You yawning your head off a couple of feet from my ear does not constitute help. Trust me. Go to bed.'

He was right. I was exhausted and useless. At least if I got some sleep, I might not be quite so useless in the morning.

'Thanks, Craig. Good night. But wake me if you get anywhere.'

I went to sleep disappointed. I had pinned so much faith in Craig being able to get hold of hard data, data that would prove neuroxil-5 was dangerous, that would prove there was a major problem that someone had tried to cover up.

I had hoped to be woken in the middle of the night by a triumphant Craig, but it was the alarm clock that jolted me out of my sleep at six thirty. I pulled on some clothes, and went downstairs to the clatter of Craig's fingers on the keyboard.

'No luck?'

Craig turned to me. 'No,' he snapped. He didn't look tired, but he looked angry.

'Have you been at it all night?'

'I went for a walk about three. Didn't help.'

'Here, let me make you some breakfast,' I said. 'Toast, OK?'

'Yeah,' said Craig, getting up from his computer and stretching.

'Thanks for trying,' I said.

We cleared a space at the table, sat down, ate toast and drank coffee. Craig munched noisily, his eyes glazed, his mind still on the problem. I felt refreshed by my sleep and the coffee. The blackness outside was turning slowly to grey as dawn crept over the marsh.

'Don't worry about it, Craig,' I said. 'You never know, there might be some stuff in Enever's e-mails. Someone might have sent him some of the clinical trial.'

Craig stopped in mid slurp, spilling drops of coffee over his chin. 'That's it!' He exclaimed. He pushed the breakfast out of the way, and leaped back to his keyboard, fingers flying.

'What are you doing?'

'Composing a message from Enever, asking the Clinical Trials Unit for the data. They send it. We read it.'

The message was sent. It was still early. We had to wait for the people in the Clinical Trials Unit to get in to work, read their mail, and do something about it.

We stared at the screen, waiting.

At last, at 8. 33 a. m., a response came. We looked at it.

Dr Enever

Here is the summary of the data you requested. Can I give you the rest in hard copy, or do you need it in spreadsheet form?

Jed

A large spreadsheet of figures was attached. It looked quite comprehensive.

'Well I think we need the rest in spreadsheet form, don't you?' said Craig with a smile as he composed a response.

We sent it and watched for a response from the Clinical Trials Unit.

It didn't come. Instead, Message Sent flashed on the screen.

'What message?' I looked at Craig.

He checked the 'Copy of Sent Messages' file. It was from Enever, the real Enever this time, to Jed in the Clinical Trials Unit.

Jed

What's all this data? I didn't ask for the data. Who told you to send it to me?

Enever

'Oh, oh,' said Craig. 'Time to go.'

He quickly downloaded Jed's first e-mail and its spreadsheet attachment, and left BioOne's system. 'Will they know we were there?' I asked.

'I hope not,' Craig said. 'But I don't want to risk going back in.'

'That's OK. I'm sure we've got a lot of good stuff already.'

Craig stretched and began packing up his computer and the scraps of paper he had been scribbling on.

'Are you going home now?' I asked.

'Oh, no. If I can't pull an all-night hacking run any more, I'm not fit to run the company.'

'Thanks again for all your help.'

'No problem.' He paused at the door. 'Stay alive,' he said, and was gone.

I started on the BioOne files right away, using my own laptop. Craig had given me a password so that I could access them in the Net Cop system any time I wanted from anywhere I wanted.

There was a mass of information. Many of Enever's e-mails had meaty attachments to them. And then there was the Clinical Trial Unit's data, columns of dense figures and statistics. If this was the summary, I wondered what the complete data was like. It was good stuff, but I couldn't understand most of it. I had to stop and think about what every document referred to. Someone else would have to look through this. Someone who would instantly be able to sort the interesting from the irrelevant, and who could analyse whatever they found there.

The time had come to see Lisa.

I had held off physically tracking her down until I had something concrete to give her, evidence that I hadn't changed, that I was still the man she had married, that I hadn't killed her father. I was now pretty close to having that evidence. And I needed her help if I was to make sure that more Alzheimer's sufferers like Aunt Zoe didn't die.