Alchemist

  The interviewer flinched. ‘Do you have evidence of that?’

  ‘Those are figures published by the US Government,’ Bannerman said triumphantly.

  There was a ragged cheer from the rock band who were glued to the monitor. Monty groaned silently. But the interviewer, failing to grab a good story by the nose, rapidly changed the subject once more. Monty sighed her relief.

  ‘I would imagine, Dr Bannerman, that at this moment you must have every pharmaceutical company in the world beating a path to your doorstep to offer you funding.’

  ‘And they can turn round and go straight back home, the bastards. They ignored me for thirty years and now suddenly I’m everybody’s best friend. We share seventy per cent of our genes with slime mould – but I think in the pharmaceutical industry the percentage is even higher.’

  Monty closed her eyes and groaned again. The book, do the book, Daddy – we need the money!

  Sure, her father had a valid axe to grind, he had a right to be bitter against an industry – and a succession of governments – that held scientists in such low esteem that it forced them to emigrate, or to spend much of their working lives scrabbling around for funding instead of concentrating on their real work. But neither was Dick Bannerman an easy man to work with or to deal with. One of the true enfants terribles of science. In spite of his genius, over the years he had not helped himself as much as he might have done; he was nudging sixty now, and age had not mellowed him one bit.

  ‘How did I do?’ It was always the first question he asked Monty after any interview or speech, a sudden childlike innocence appearing in his brown eyes, as if knowing he had done wrong and not wanting to face up to it.

  She backed her MG carefully out of the bay, then drove slowly towards the exit booth of the underground car park. ‘How do you think you did?’ she replied with a smile.

  ‘Four out of ten?’

  ‘Maybe five,’ she said.

  ‘You’re being generous.’

  She paid £2.50 to the attendant at the barrier, then drove into the falling darkness of the South London rush hour.

  ‘The interviewer was a child,’ Dick Bannerman said, as if in his own defence.

  ‘At least she’d read the book, which is more than most.’

  ‘True,’ he said, sounding distant. ‘Very true.’

  Monty recognized the signs of her father lapsing into his own deep thoughts. ‘I think you should call Sir Neil Rorke back,’ she said, continuing a discussion they’d been having before the interview.

  ‘Think he’ll still want to speak to me?’ he said wryly.

  ‘If he wasn’t watching Sky News.’

  Sir Neil Rorke was Chairman of the Bendix Schere Foundation, the third largest pharmaceutical company in Britain and ranked high as a world player. In addition to its main business of manufacturing prescription and over-the-counter pharmaceuticals, it had a massive baby-food division, a worldwide chain of fertility clinics and a group of prestigious private hospitals. Bendix Schere had been one of the first pharmaceutical companies to invest heavily in genetics research and was the largest single provider of research funds for genetics in the country.

  For the past thirty years Dick Bannerman had refused to go to the pharmaceutical industry for funding, because he was passionately against the whole concept of patenting. Knowledge should be shared, he believed, and it was a principle he rigidly adhered to at Bannerman Genetics Research sited on the campus of Berkshire University. His funding came partly from the university, partly – and very sporadically – from the government, and even more sporadically from a handful of charitable organizations – in particular those supporting research into genetic-linked diseases, such as the Imperial Cancer Research Foundation, the Cystic Fibrosis Trust, and the Parkinson’s Foundation.

  But with the constant expense of keeping up to date in technology, combined with the increasing desire of funders to see a return on their investment beyond pure research results, the pressure in keeping the labs running, with their staff of twenty, was taking its toll. Whenever Monty thought about the breakthroughs her father had made despite all the handicaps, she wondered how much more he could achieve with better funding. Sir Neil Rorke might just be the answer. ‘I’ve never heard anything good about Bendix Schere,’ Dick Bannerman said.

  ‘What have you heard that’s bad?’

  He pushed a toothpick into the side of his mouth and bit on it. ‘Nothing specific. They’re obsessively secretive.’

  ‘So’s the whole pharmaceutical industry.’

  ‘Rorke’s not going to offer any funding without wanting his pound of flesh.’

  ‘Patents aren’t that terrible, Daddy – and they don’t last for ever. Seventeen years in the UK – that’s not long.’

  He looked at her with his head slanted. ‘Seventeen years will see me out.’

  ‘I hope not.’

  ‘Well – you’ll be pushing me round in a wheelchair, and I’ll be gaga.’

  ‘And still scratching around for funding.’

  The remark silenced him, and she knew the barb had struck home.

  He was getting tired of the fight for money; and he knew that time was running out on him. They’d had a letter from Berkshire University telling them, with regret, that their funding was going to be halved for the next three years; it had added that with Dr Bannerman’s recent achievements in genetics there should be little difficulty finding funding from the commercial sector. The government had been making similar hints. He was going to have to go cap in hand to the pharmaceutical industry one day, and right now he was riding high. The timing had never been better.

  ‘You have nothing to lose by meeting Sir Neil,’ Monty said. ‘If you don’t like what he says, then fine.’

  ‘Yup, OK, fine, we’ll meet, see what’s what. Will you come too – help assess him? Maybe you can charm some loot out of him.’

  ‘Sure I’ll come. Whenever I’ve seen him on television he always looks very friendly.’

  Dick Bannerman removed the toothpick and twisted it in his fingers, examining the tip. ‘Cobras always smile before they strike.’

  4

  Berkshire, England. October, 1993

  On Tuesday nights Anna Sterling’s husband Mark went to rugger practice, followed by a drinking session then a curry with the guys. Monty Bannerman and Anna usually had supper together or went to a film.

  They had been meeting up like that, weekly, for as long as Monty could remember. Anna was her oldest friend, and she was also one of her few remaining pals who did not have children. Monty was aware that was probably the main reason nothing had changed between them.

  With her own thirtieth birthday looming up next April, and still single in spite of some past close relationships, to her irritation the thought of children often preyed on Monty’s mind. She liked to think she was stronger than other women, that she wasn’t simply a prisoner of her genes and sentenced, by the mere lack of a Y chromosome, to broody emotions about washing nappies and wiping bums.

  There were some days when she successfully convinced herself that she really did not like children, that they were loathsome little creatures, rating on her own list of desirability only marginally higher than being suspended upside down in boiling oil. But there were other times when her defences were blown away and she would find herself sucked into an emotional whirlpool of longing.

  Monty and Anna had been at school together and had gone on to the same art college. Anna was a genuinely gifted sculptress, and her talent was evident. She had already had successful exhibitions, and was getting many commissions. Monty considered herself to be a moderately proficient landscape painter, but no more. She had hoped for a career in the art world, either in restoration or valuation. But halfway through her second year at college her mother had died, and she had taken a few weeks off to help her father who had been devastated by his loss.

  Sarah Bannerman had died of breast cancer within a year of the disease being diagnosed, and her husband h
ad felt a deep sense of guilt and failure that, despite all his work, he had not come up with any kind of gene therapy in time to save her – feelings that had since been heightened by the announcement that scientists in America had found a way of detecting the cancer gene.

  Dick Bannerman, although a brilliant scientist, was a hopeless businessman and had depended on Monty’s mother, who had been his secretary, PA, and book-keeper. Monty had intended helping him out just until she could find a suitable assistant for him, and now, nine years on, she was still with him and had become his right hand.

  Although sometimes regretting that she had abandoned her art, her biggest love in life, Monty enjoyed the challenge of her work and was fiercely proud of her father. Largely as a result of his own enthusiasm, she had gone from being profoundly uninterested and ignorant about science, to having a fascination and deep respect for it.

  Anna and Mark Sterling lived in a tumble-down Georgian farmhouse on the edge of a Berkshire village, ten miles from Monty’s cottage, and Mark brought in an increasingly large salary as a lawyer in a London practice. Anna had always been a character who liked to be in control of every situation, and even tried to organize her friends’ lives, but recently Monty had begun to notice that in spite of her growing success she seemed to be losing some of her grip.

  Normally strict with her pets, Anna allowed her new puppy, a boxer named Buster, to run around unchecked. As they sat in the untidy kitchen, Monty watched as the dog emptied the contents of the wastebin on to the floor without a word of admonishment from Anna, who simply refilled their glasses with white wine and ignored it.

  Monty studied her, a little alarmed at the changes she was noticing. Anna was an attractive girl, but she put on weight easily and she was definitely doing so at the moment; although parcelled as she was in a sloppy joe and shapeless trousers, it was hard for Monty to tell quite how much.

  ‘Anna, you don’t look happy,’ Monty said. ‘What’s wrong?’

  Her friend shoved the bottle of Australian Chardonnay along the pine table as if moving a chess piece. She stared morosely at the table. ‘I’m infertile. I can’t bloody conceive.’

  ‘I – I didn’t know you wanted to,’ Monty said, taken aback.

  ‘We’ve been trying for two years. My period started this morning – three weeks late. I really thought that this time was it.’ She pursed her lips tightly.

  ‘Have you been to see anyone?’

  ‘I’ve had a checkup – they’ve looked at my tubes, everything seems to be working fine. Mark’s had his sperm count done –he’s producing enough to impregnate the entire population of China.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me about this?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She slopped some more wine into her glass. ‘It just makes me feel so bloody inadequate. I was hoping to surprise you with the really good news that you were going to be a godmother.’ She shrugged. ‘We have to take my temperature every day, fill out a chart, pick the right days of the month to make love.’ She looked at Monty forlornly. ‘I’m worried I might never have children.’

  ‘I don’t think you should start worrying yet,’ Monty said. ‘There’s tons of things you can do – infertility treatments are very sophisticated now.’

  Anna nodded. ‘The doctor wants to put me on a drug called Maternox.’

  ‘Maternox?’ Monty repeated. ‘Yes – that’s the one everyone takes these days. It’s meant to be the best. That’s probably all you need.’

  Anna stood up and opened the door of the oven. The tantalizing aroma of lasagne filled the room. She closed the door and sat back down. ‘Another ten minutes. Anyway, how’s you?’

  ‘I’m OK.’

  ‘Listen, there’s a friend of Mark’s I want to try to get you together with – his wife has just left him – and he’s really nice, I mean seriously nice. Very dishy.’

  ‘So why did his wife leave him?’

  ‘She’s a bloody fool. I’ll arrange a dinner party some time in the next month – I think you’d like him.’

  ‘What does he do?’

  ‘He’s a laywer – one of the big City firms.’

  The prospect did not immediately appeal. Although Monty was hugely fond of Anna and liked her arty friends, she invariably found Mark’s friends dull and only interested in themselves. ‘Sure,’ she said flatly.

  ‘He’s fun, you’ll be impressed. You will!’

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Martin Meads.’

  Martin Meads. Monty repeated the name silently in her head. It did not do much for her. Mrs Martin Meads. That did even less. Mrs Monty Meads. No better. ‘Sure,’ she said. ‘Why not?’

  ‘Hey, by the way,’ Anna changed the subject abruptly, ‘I saw your father on television on Tuesday – switched on Sky News and there he was. He seemed on pretty good form, slagging off the pharmaceutical industry. Actually, the book sounded quite interesting, I might give it a try. Is it as impenetrable as A Brief History of Time?’

  ‘Only in parts. There are some good chapters – you’d get through it.’

  ‘How is he?’

  ‘Not easy; he’s very stressed at the moment. Things are really tight. All the staff at the lab have agreed to take a ten per cent pay cut to avoid redundancies.’

  ‘I find that incredible with all the acclaim he gets for his work. I don’t understand why you have such a hard time getting funding.’

  ‘If he’d agree to let the pharmaceutical industry fund us, we’d have no problem.’

  ‘And he still won’t because of his views on patenting?’

  ‘I think he’s coming round a little. We’re meeting the Chairman of Bendix Schere on Monday. Hey, I just realized – they’re the company that makes Maternox!’

  ‘Maybe you can get me a discount …’

  ‘I’ll ask!’ Monty grinned and clinked her glass against her friend’s. ‘Cheer up. I want to come to a christening in a year’s time.’

  5

  London. October, 1993

  ‘What time are we meeting these shysters?’

  ‘One, Daddy,’ Monty said, through clenched teeth as she coaxed the clapped-out fax machine into accepting the letter she was trying to send to Washington. ‘We should leave in half an hour.’

  At least her father was wearing a suit; that was something. Charcoal grey, single breasted, the cut flattered his burly physique, made his shoulders look straight in spite of the years spent slouching over his experiments. But he was pacing around the office restlessly, like a schoolboy in his Sunday best waiting to be dragged to church.

  Bannerman Genetics Research occupied a crumbling Victorian building that had originally been built as a laundry. It was on the fringe of the campus, tucked away beyond the main car park of Berkshire University and for the past three years had been subjected to a constant bombardment of noise and dust from a new science block under construction only yards away.

  Monty shared the dingy first-floor office with her father. Every year she thought it was a miracle that their laboratory got its certificate from the Health and Safety Executive without a major review. That was definitely on the cards. All it needed was a new, vigilant inspector and they’d be in for tens of thousands of pounds of expenditure.

  She looked fondly through the dividing glass that revealed the main laboratory with its scientists, students and technicians at work. The older generation in their white coats, the younger one in jeans and sweatshirts. Some of these people had been with her father all their working lives. Walter Hoggin, their chief technician, was one of them.

  She watched him walking ponderously across the lab now, a gentle giant of a man. He must be nearing retirement, she thought sadly, not looking forward to the day when they would lose him. So long as Walter was there, applying his scrutiny to everything, she knew that in spite of their antiquated premises and equipment the safety of their staff would never be compromised.

  ‘ON LINE TRANSMIT,’ appeared in the window of the fax machine. The letter began to fe
ed in, then suddenly slipped sideways, and there followed a series of warning bleeps. Panicking, Monty grabbed the page and tried to retrieve it. It tore in half.

  ‘Damn you!’ She glared at the machine in fury and saw an error code number appear in the window. They had spent a hundred pounds having it serviced less than a week ago. The engineer had warned her that it was fit for the scrap heap, but Monty had hoped she might be able to eke another few months out of it.

  She opened the cover and carefully retrieved the torn and crumpled remains of the other half of the letter, which she had just typed for her father, accepting an invitation to talk at Georgetown University next autumn. Then she sat down and reprinted it on her equally clapped-out word processor. Money, she thought. God, they needed it.

  The forty-nine-storey windowless monolith that housed the headquarters of the Bendix Schere Foundation was situated on the Euston Road in London, dwarfing the building of one of its fellow giants and rivals in the pharmaceutical industry, Wellcome plc and the Wellcome Foundation.

  Even in an industry not widely noted for its openness, the Bendix Schere Foundation had a unique mystique; it combined a wide range of public activities, including billions of pounds and dollars donated to medical research charities, with an obsessive secrecy about its ownership and an internal organization that had defeated the investigative attempts of some of the world’s most persistent journalists.

  From the turnover figures made public in order to satisfy the requirements of the American Food and Drugs Administration and the British Department of Health and Social Security, Medicines Division, Bendix Schere was currently ranked in sixth place among the world’s pharmaceutical giants. The company was registered in Liechtenstein and its stock was entirely held in bearer bonds rather than registered share certificates, making the identification of its stockholders as impenetrable to outsiders as access to its buildings.

  The engine of Monty’s MG rumbled as a security guard inside a mini fortress checked for authorization, then handed her two green lapel clips and opened the high steel gate in front of them.