Alchemist

  She saw the BMW in the almost deserted Bendix lot as she drove in through the security gate. Keeping up her pace, she ran into the entrance lobby, noticing only that Winston Smith was still absent, and took the lift up to Conor’s floor.

  It was too early for any security guard to be in place on the floor itself and she emerged from the lift to find an empty desk and blank screens. Using her smart-card, she let herself through and ran towards Conor’s office. She stopped in her tracks. He was walking down the corridor towards her, still with his coat on, a coffee in his hand, a look of surprise on his face.

  ‘Hey!’ he said. ‘What’s up – what’s happened?’

  She stood for a moment, belief making her breathless. Then she glanced warily around, mindful of their agreement not to talk on the premises. ‘A – a couple of files, I thought you might need for your trip – I suddenly remembered where they were.’

  He frowned, not cottoning on for a moment, until he saw the urgent signalling in her eyes.

  Checking there was no security camera directly on her, she opened her diary, scrawled in large, shaky letters, ‘You were tailed from the flat’, and held it up briefly to him.

  He nodded for her to follow him, led her into the men’s washroom, checked the cubicles were empty, then turned on all the taps in sight. ‘We have to assume we’ve got company all the time right now,’ he said quietly. ‘But if they wanted to bump us off, they’d have done it last weekend down at the cottage. They’re watching us because they’re not sure what we know. Just keep calm; when you get to Washington it’s going to be OK, I promise.’

  ‘Have you got Clinton laying on the National Guard?’

  ‘Something far better. Trust me.’

  She saw the concern in his eyes, and regretted their parting even more acutely than before. ‘I do trust you,’ she said heavily. ‘I’m just scared as hell.’

  ‘Stay that way,’ he said. ‘Stay scared as hell but keep your head.’ Then he pointed at the door.

  She left the washroom and went down to her own floor, feeling a little foolish for having panicked, and tried to think clearly through her tiredness. Her head ached with a slight hangover from too much wine last night; and whisky, she remembered; and brandy. Christ. She pressed her fingers against her temples to ease the pain. To cap it all, the next two days without Conor stretched out in front of her like a chasm.

  When you get to Washington it’s going to be OK, I promise.

  Why? What was going to happen in Washington that was going to suddenly make everything hunky dory. It was like some global version of a treasure hunt – proceed to Washington and find the next clue. Except Conor wasn’t a man who played games.

  Was he?

  She got herself a coffee then knuckled down to work, rereading the schedule that had arrived from the symposium organizers and running through the checklist for her father. In addition to his main address on Friday evening, he was expected to chair a discussion panel the next day, and had been asked to submit notes for circulation to the other panellists by the beginning of this week. And there would be interviews about his book.

  Monty wondered if he had remembered; almost certainly not. She would remind him, but it was too early yet. She yawned and glanced at her watch. 6.20. It was going to be a long day, very long.

  Then, impulsively, she did something she had not done for years: slipping her hand inside her blouse, she pinched her tiny silver crucifix in her fingers, and closed her eyes. Please God, she prayed silently, let Conor be safe and let Daddy be safe.

  She had held off phoning Sir Neil Rorke yesterday, torn between her desire to do so and a feeling that it would be letting Conor down. But now she regretted her indecision. Washington was the mugging capital of America. Someone could easily get killed without too many questions being asked.

  At 8.30 Monty rang Sir Neil Rorke’s extension. She did not know what days of the week he came in, and kept her fingers crossed.

  His secretary answered. ‘I’m afraid Sir Neil’s in Malaya for the opening of our new plant in Kuala Lumpur. He should be back on Friday. Would you like to leave a message for him?’

  Monty hesitated, wondering whether to contact him in Malaya. But trying to communicate over a phone line, not knowing how secure it might be, was a non-starter. ‘No, thanks, it’s not important,’ she said.

  Next she dialled her father’s office on the intercom; after two rings the call was routed through to his message box. She hung up, and went to see if there was any sign of him on the floor.

  The neat and tidy appearance of his office told her he had definitely not yet come in. For good measure she checked out the labs but no one had seen him. He was most likely down in Berkshire working on the Maternox tests, and she debated whether it would be safe to phone him. But when she did call their old number, it rang five times then she heard her own voice informing callers that the number had been changed.

  It was quite possible her father was there and just not answering, but all the same she felt anxious. She redialled, got the machine again, and announced herself then waited. She was hoping he would hear her voice and pick the phone up, but there was no joy. And it was the same story when she rang his house.

  She worked on, then tried phoning again. It was half past ten. Conor would already be at the airport now, she thought, feeling a deepening sense of isolation. With it, her concern for her father increased. If he’d had an accident in the lab, there was no one to help him. And she needed to get some discussion notes faxed or eMailed to Washington today. She would give it another hour.

  The campus parking lot was almost full, and it was not until Monty was almost outside the laboratory that she saw her father’s rusting grey Toyota in its usual bay. She relaxed a fraction, but as she climbed out of the MG she looked round carefully. It was hard to tell whether she had been followed or not; all the way down she’d been accompanied by heavy traffic and she had no way of sussing whether any particular vehicle had been tailing her or simply going in the same direction.

  She let herself in, surprised to find the front door left unlocked, and hurried upstairs to the main laboratory, into the familiar chemical smells.

  Dick Bannerman, in white lab coat, was leaning over a Petri dish and dictating into his tiny voice-activated recorder. A rack of test tubes rattled in an agitator beside him. Monty took the scene in, watching, not wanting to break his deep concentration.

  Eventually, choosing her moment, she kissed him lightly on the cheek, but it still took some moments for him to register her presence. He murmured something into the recorder, switched it off and turned to her:

  ‘Lost a whole day’s work – the cultures died,’ he said ruefully.

  ‘Why? What happened?’

  ‘My fault.’ He grimaced like a guilty child. ‘Just stupidity. Put in the wrong nutrients. I’m not used to doing everything on my own.’

  ‘You look tired, Daddy. Want to take a break and come over to the refectory? It’s one o’clock.’

  He shook his head. ‘Can’t leave this until it stabilizes. I’m going to have a problem with Washington now that I’ve lost a day. I might not be through until Thursday.’

  ‘Daddy, you have to be there for Thursday evening – you’ve only got dinner with Bill Clinton, and he’s only President of the United States.’

  ‘Bugger Clinton.’ He squinted at the tubes in the agitator. ‘I can’t just stop this in the middle; I’d have to scrap it all and start from scratch again – so we’d lose the best part of a fortnight. Do you want to take that risk with Anna?’

  ‘There’s nothing I could do to keep things going? If you gave me instructions?’

  He smiled away the suggestion. ‘I’m afraid not. I think what we should do is bow out of the symposium altogether. We could apologize, say I’m ill. It’s not that important.’

  She twisted her fingers together, gathering her thoughts, then said, ‘If you think you can get the tests finished by late Thursday, then I’ll fly out as scheduled
that morning, go to the Clinton bash … and make your apologies. You can come over on the Friday: they’ve sold out for your talk – six hundred seats.’

  ‘OK,’ he said. ‘We’ll do that.’

  Monty looked down at the Petri dish. ‘Apart from your disaster with the cultures, have you been making headway?’

  ‘Yes, but I won’t have a clue what might be in the capsules until Thursday night.’

  ‘Remember not to talk about it over the phone,’ she said. ‘Whatever the news is, tell me when you get to Washington.’

  He zipped his lips with his fingers.

  Monty smiled. ‘Now, I’m going to get us both a sandwich.’

  As she stepped out of the building she stood still, nervously scanning the car park. Strains of music, ‘God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen’, drifted through the air. Three weeks to Christmas, she thought. Christmas fever was everywhere, in the shop windows, on advertising hoardings, in the fairy lights strung across the streets.

  The realization gave her a sudden flash of anger. This is England, for God’s sake, she thought. Democratic, civilized England. Not some Orwellian nightmare of a Third-World dictatorship or junta. If Bendix Schere was operating outside the law, experimenting, snooping, killing, they needed to be stopped in their tracks.

  A name came irresistibly into her mind: Detective Superintendent Levine, who had come to see her in hospital after Jake Seals’ death.

  She went into one of the phone booths outside the refectory, got the number for New Scotland Yard from Enquiries, then called it and asked if they could tell her where she might be able to locate Levine.

  To Monty’s surprise, without a moment’s hesitation the receptionist said: ‘Putting you through.’

  There was a click, then Monty heard another woman’s voice, pert, efficient. ‘Detective Superintendent Levine’s office.’ And within a minute of introducing herself she’d been put through to the man himself.

  ‘Marcus Levine. Miss Bannerman, very nice to hear from you. Are you fully recovered?’

  ‘Yes, I hope so,’ she said. ‘I just have to keep my fingers crossed there are no long-term effects.’

  ‘Perilous industry, pharmaceuticals,’ he said good-humouredly.

  ‘I’m beginning to think that myself.’ There was an expectant silence which she took as signalling the end of the pleasantries. ‘There’s something I think you ought to know,’ she said. ‘It may have a bearing on your investigations into Jake Seals’ death.’

  There was another silence and for a moment she wondered if she’d been cut off. Then the detective’s voice calmly said: ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘Is it possible to have an off-the-record conversation with you? What I want to say is still speculative.’

  ‘Of course, Miss Bannerman. ‘Would you prefer to meet?’

  ‘Could we? Today, if possible?’

  ‘Would you like to come here? Or would you be happier with somewhere more neutral?’

  The quiet efficiency in his voice reassured her, and she began feeling safer and more comfortable. She was doing the right thing, she now knew it for sure.

  ‘In case I’m being followed, I’d rather not come to Scotland Yard – could we meet in a pub or a café?’

  ‘Are you familiar with the Strand Palace Hotel?’

  She thought for a moment. ‘Yes – in the Strand, on the opposite side to the Savoy?’

  ‘There’s a large lounge tucked away behind the foyer that’s pretty anonymous. I’m going to be tied up for a while this afternoon. Would a quarter to five suit you?’

  ‘Yes, thank you,’ she said. ‘Thank you very much.’

  88

  When Conor first began studying patent law at Harvard University, his tutor had explained to the class what exactly being granted a patent meant: it was, simply, he said, the government purchasing an invention.

  The inventor sold their invention, whether a design, product or process, to the government, for which the payment was a grant of seventeen years’ exclusivity – twenty years in some countries – during which no one else could use the invention in competition without the inventor’s permission.

  Governments granted patents in order to encourage research, to safeguard inventions in their own country, and to secure the revenue from them. But if the applicant had already made their invention public domain, either by lecturing about it or by publishing papers on it, before patents had been applied for, then a patent office would take the logical view that what was being offered was no longer unique, therefore not patentable.

  This was the problem facing Conor as he sat in his Club Class window seat in the United Airlines Boeing 757, his computer on his lap, a stack of documents rising out of his open briefcase on the empty seat beside him.

  He knew about Bendix Schere’s security paranoia: to the effect that it was a sackable offence to work on any form of public transportation, whether train, bus or aeroplane. But this aircraft was half empty and there was no one in the vicinity who looked remotely like an industrial spy. And, besides, he still had a lot of preparation to complete before his meeting with Dave Schwab at the Patent Office in the morning.

  Most of his work consisted, at Crowe’s bidding, of organizing the documents in such a way as to pull the wool over Schwab’s eyes. It was easy for Crowe, because if it did backfire it was Conor’s reputation – possibly even his licence to practise – his number – as it was known, that was on the line; not the Chief Exec’s.

  The scam he was pulling on Schwab was the most basic one in the book: because of their workload, US Patent Office examiners were given a strict time limit to spend on each application. Dave Schwab had ten hours in which to read the two hundred pages of documents of the application itself, plus five thick packs of prior art – all the papers and articles that had been published by Dick Bannerman – which might relate to it. In his suitcase in the baggage hold, Conor had another enormous bundle of prior art to dump on Schwab’s desk tomorrow, knowing full well the guy would not have time for it.

  Almost all the published material in the bundle was innocuous; most of it talked in very generalized terms about the research Dick Bannerman had been doing on isolating the genes responsible for the psoriasis group of diseases. But buried in amongst it all was one single-page leaflet that Bannerman had handed out to a select group of some thirty genetics scientists at a talk last year. That leaflet contained enough of the specific formula of the Psoriatak product to prevent the patent being granted if the examiner wanted to take a tough line. And Dave Schwab always took a tough line.

  Conor had positioned the leaflet in the middle of the bundle, confident that Schwab would have to rely on his word as to what was there and would not check everything. Because of the paper load involved, much patent work was done on such trust.

  The captain’s voice broke through his concentration, requesting passengers to prepare for landing. Conor glanced out of the window and thought about Monty, missing her, and wondering what she was doing now. It was half past three in the afternoon. Half past eight in the evening, London time.

  He hoped to God she was all right.

  The plane came in low over Chesapeake Bay. It was a clear, sunny afternoon, and even in late November the Maryland countryside looked green and lush, the Potomac twisting through it with a glistening reptilian sheen. The pitch of the engines changed and the aircraft bumped through a string of air pockets. Then the captain’s voice came on again.

  ‘We know you have a choice of airlines and we’re grateful to you for choosing United. We hope you have a pleasant evening in Washington and that we’ll see you again real soon.’

  The traffic on the freeway was heavy, and it was half an hour before the long, low grey-brown wall of the Pentagon came into Conor’s sight through the trees. The cab drove under a short tunnel, then made a right turn into a familiar wide, grassy avenue that was lined on either side by the modern high-rise buildings of Crystal City.

  The people who lived in these high-rises oft
en worked in offices in the same area; if they wanted, they could spend their whole lives indoors, moving like moles through a web of underground corridors that interlinked the massive complex of shops and restaurants.

  It was not a district Conor cared for much, but because it housed the Patent Office it was where the company expected him to stay. And right now he wanted to be seen to be doing exactly what the company expected and nothing else.

  The eighth-floor room at the Marriott was a good size, furnished in dark wood and plush carpeting, with a view of the open scrubland stretching away into the distance beyond the high-rises.

  Conor removed his coat, jacket and shoes, poured a whisky and ice from the mini bar, plonked himself down in an armchair and lit a cigarette. He pondered whether it would be wiser to make his calls from a pay phone down in the lobby, but decided that the precautions he had taken would be sufficient to escape the Bendix Schere eyes and ears. On arriving at the hotel, he had checked in and requested a different room from the one allocated to him. He had then slipped out of a side entrance of the hotel, re-entered and checked in for a second time, selecting a different receptionist, to a room he had previously booked in the name of Mr C. Donoghue. His original room on the sixteenth floor, booked for Mr C. Molloy, now lay empty, with a DO NOT DISTURB card prominently displayed.

  He took a slug of the whisky, then lifted the receiver and called the number he knew by heart.

  His mother answered after a couple of rings with a gravelly, ‘Hello?’

  ‘I’m here,’ he said.

  ‘She with you?’

  ‘She’ll be arriving Thursday.’

  There was a short pause. ‘What the hell mess have you gotten yourself into, Conor?’

  ‘I don’t know. I thought I could handle it, but you were right.’

  ‘Call me when she’s here, OK?’

  ‘I will.’