Final Venture

'So what kind of people do you get to take these drugs?' I asked.

'People with Parkinson's disease, of course.'

'No, I mean during the clinical trials. Who would want to be the first human ever to take a drug?'

'Oh, I see what you mean. Volunteers. Medical students, mostly. They get paid for it.'

'They must be mad.'

'It's perfectly safe.'

'How can you know until it's been tried on people?'

'We do very thorough tests on animals. If there's a major problem it will show up.'

'So why do the tests on people at all, then?'

'There are often some side-effects,' Lisa said. 'Headaches, nausea, diarrhoea.'

'You'd never catch me doing it,' I said.

'Someone's got to. And these volunteers really are doing something for science.'

'Mad,' I said. 'Brave, but mad.'

Lisa glanced at the papers I was reading.

'What are all these?'

'Oh, it's a deal called Tetracom that Diane is working on. It looks quite promising.'

'Diane, huh?'

'Yes.' I tried to come out with the next bit casually. 'We're going to Cincinnati next week to visit them. I'll be out Thursday night.'

She pulled back. 'OK,' she said, picking up her book again.

I watched as she studied the page in front of her intently.

'Do you have a problem with that?' I said at last.

'No.' She didn't look up from her book.

'I mean, I have to go. It's my job to work with Diane.'

Then she looked up, a spark of anger in her face. 'To tell you the truth, I do mind, Simon.'

'You shouldn't,' I said. 'There's nothing to worry about. You should know that.'

'You say there's nothing to worry about,' Lisa snapped. 'I think perhaps there is. A business trip to Cincinnati. The two of you alone in some hotel. If she has got her eye on you, that's when she'll make her move, Simon.'

'Lisa! She's a partner in my firm. A colleague. A boss.'

'She's done it before!'

'Who told you that?'

'Dad,' she said quietly.

'Huh,' I snorted. 'He put all this into your mind, didn't he?'

'No. I just don't trust that woman.'

'You don't even know her.'

'OK,' said Lisa. 'You go then.' She reached over and turned out the light.

We lay in bed, backs to each other. I was angry. I really had no choice but to go. And Lisa really ought to be able to trust me to go on a business trip with a colleague, even a beautiful one.

I was still fuming, when I felt a finger brush gently up my spine.

'Simon?' she whispered.

'Yes?'

'I have an idea.'

'What is it?' I turned to face her.

She pulled herself close to me, her hands moving over my body. 'I'm going to wear you out so completely that Diane will have to dump you for someone her own age.'

She gave me a long kiss.

'Sounds like a good plan to me,' I said.

5

The scull cut through the river and the slight head wind towards the Boston University Bridge, where the Charles River narrowed. A mile behind me was the Union Boathouse from where I set off three mornings a week. I was into a good rhythm now. Legs, arms, shoulders, back, breathing all combined to produce the regular splash of wood in water on either side of me.

I had learned to row at school and had rowed again at Cambridge. In the army they had other ways of keeping you fit, but when I had arrived at Harvard it had not taken me long to find the river again.

On my left rose the Dome and Senate House of MIT, and beyond them the mysterious tall brown buildings of Kendall Square, housing the biochemical secrets of companies such as Genzyme, Biogen, and our very own BioOne. On my right was the long strip of green that was the Esplanade, then the noisy Storrow Drive, and overlooking that, the sedate apartment buildings of the Back Bay. The air was crisp, the water blue, and the sky clear. Out here, scudding through the middle of this broad river, I felt alone. I could think.

My conversation with Helen had depressed me. I knew she was near the end of her rope, and I wanted so badly to help her, but I just couldn't do it. If I could find the cash, and we did win the appeal, then her life would still be difficult but it would be bearable. I was the lucky one, with a wife I loved and a job I enjoyed. It wasn't fair. I wanted to share some of that luck with her.

Although the job wasn't going that brilliantly at the moment. My anger with Frank and the other partners was hardening.

I remembered the discussions Frank and I had had with Craig when we were putting the deal together. All three of us assumed that the extra three million dollars would be available. Sure, we had inserted the right to refuse to provide the funds in the legals, but my implicit assumption was that that was to protect us from Craig failing to get a team up and running.

From what I could see, he had done a great job. He was certainly volatile, but we'd known that when we'd invested. Frank was correct that in the last six months a number of companies large and small had begun work on the next generation of switches for the Internet. But none had the determination and sense of purpose of Craig. He lived and breathed Net Cop: it had become his whole life. He would get there first, I was sure. If only we would give him the funds to do it.

But the partners had made up their minds. There was nothing I could do to change it. I could disappear in a huff, my honour intact, my resume a shambles, and try to find another job somewhere else. But I'd be throwing away a promising career at a place I liked, working with people I liked.

Or I could do as Lisa suggested. Try to sort the mess out myself.

As usual, Lisa was right. I would stay and help Craig. I wouldn't let Net Cop die.

I reached the Harvard boathouses and turned round.

Frank's opposition bothered me a lot. And so did Lisa's reaction to my going to Cincinnati with Diane. I supposed I could have said no when Diane had suggested dinner the previous Thursday night. But nothing had happened, no matter what Frank thought. And Frank had overreacted to what he had seen, or what he thought he had seen.

Lisa didn't have anything to be jealous about. Did she?

Diane was attractive. I liked her. We got on well together, we had had a great time at dinner the other night. But I loved Lisa. I loved her so much, so much more than I could ever imagine loving someone like Diane. And I didn't want to do anything that would jeopardize that. I didn't want to end up like my father.

Sir Gordon Ayot (Bart) had never known his own father, my grandfather, who had died on the road to Arnhem. He had inherited a small estate in Devon, a baronetcy, and a desire to join the family regiment, the Life Guards, which he duly did. He did everything that a dashing cavalry officer was supposed to do. He gambled, entertained lavishly, womanized, found a beautiful wife, and learned to drive armoured cars round godforsaken parts of the world. Women loved him, and he loved women. This was clear to me from when I was quite a young boy. My parents did their best to keep the state of their marriage from Helen and me, sending us first of all to bed, and then to boarding school, but of course they didn't succeed. My father's expenditure easily exceeded his income, and the estate shrank until only a small cottage was left. My father felt let down, too. My mother was supposed to be rich, but her father had carelessly gone bust in the property crash of 1974. She tried hard to ignore her husband's recreations, and their expense, but when I was ten, they divorced.

I hated my father for hurting my mother. But I also admired him. Throughout my teenage years he used to take me off on a series of unplanned trips: scuba-diving in Belize, rock-climbing in Canada, and later when I was at university to nightclubs in London and Paris. Where the money came from for all this, I had no idea, and my mother could never find out. Then one morning at Cambridge I was called to my tutor's rooms. He told me that my father had died peacefully in the night, of a heart attack. He was only forty-five. I subsequently discovered that he had been drinking heavily the evening before, and there were two women half his age there to witness it.