"Oh, God!" Brad said, visibly trembling. "You mean this could be it? In four weeks we come up empty? Dragovic will kill us!"
"Yes," Luc said softly. "He probably will. Or at least try."
But he'll have to find me first, Luc thought.
He could get lost in Provence where no one, especially a Serb swine, would find him. But Kent and Brad…
Kent made a noise that sounded like a sob. "We have to tell him, prepare him, convince him that it's not our fault!"
"Do you really think you can do that?" Luc said. "The man is an animal. But despite all his threats we've had nothing to fear from him because we are the world's only source of Loki. But once we stop supplying him he'll think we're either holding out for a higher price or we've found another buyer—that's the way they do things in his world. And if he can't have it, he'll finish us. Our only hope is to stabilize the Loki molecule. If we—"
"But you can't!" Brad cried, his voice rising toward a wall. "You've been trying to stabilize the molecule since you discovered it and you've failed every time. We spent a fortune on that lab of yours. For what? Nothing! And then that Macintosh fellow couldn't do it either. So let's face facts—the Loki molecule can't be stabilized!"
"It can. The problem simply needs a new approach. The new researcher I've hired is quite brilliant and—"
"And what?" Garrison said, his face as red as his hair. "If she's so smart she'll learn too much and then try to blackmail us like Macintosh."
"Nadia is not the type."
When their salesman, Gleason, had mentioned Nadia Radzminsky as a replacement for Macintosh, Luc had been instantly interested. He remembered her for more than that one wild afternoon back in his professor days; she had been a standout student with an intuitive feel for molecular biology. He'd seen her name—second or third in the queue, to be sure—on a number of groundbreaking papers over the last few years. And after her first interview, during which she'd discoursed on his own recent papers so perceptively, he'd known she was their only hope.
"And besides, I've added extra encryption to my personal files. She'll know only what I tell her." He looked around the table. "And we're all onboard about her bonus?"
The other two nodded, Brad a bit reluctantly. "Helluva bonus," he said.
Kent leaned back and ran both hands through his damp red hair. "Worth every cent if she does it." He cast a sharp look at Luc. "And doesn't try to screw us."
Luc wasn't worried about Nadia. Her reverence for him was touching. He'd use that and the bonus—and throw in some warmth and intimacy, just for the delicious hell of it, perhaps—to keep her on track.
"Christ,',' Brad said. "We only have four weeks. When does she start?"
"I'm introducing her to the Loki molecule today. She'll start work on the new template molecule tomorrow."
"Four weeks," Brad whispered. "It can't be done!"
"It can," Luc said.
It must, he thought.
The walls of the small room suddenly seemed to close in on him. Brad had had it built as soon as they'd started dealing with Dragovic. A good idea, too, since all too frequently they had to meet to discuss delicate matters—felonious matters—and an electronically shielded, soundproof room fit the bill. But the lack of windows gave Luc a caged feeling, and now the air seemed to be going sour.
He rose and headed for the door. "As a matter of fact, I'm supposed to meet her now in the dry lab."
He unlocked the door and pushed it open slowly in case someone was hurrying down the hall. They'd had to reverse its swing in order to assure a soundproof seal when it was closed. He stepped into the hall and breathed the cooler air. At least it seemed cooler. But still he felt weak.
He leaned against the wall and wondered how it had all gone so wrong.
When Kent and Brad had approached him to be part of a new venture, to lend his name and reputation to the company they were starting up, the future had looked so bright. All things seemed possible. Now it was all turning to shit. He wanted to scream.
To think that an innocent investigation into a strange-looking creature's blood had brought him to this nadir point in his life—a drug trafficker, a murderer. How much lower could he sink?
It was up to Nadia now. He'd tried every way he could imagine to stabilize the molecule but had run up against a wall. Maybe he was too old; maybe his creative juices had dried up; maybe it was the stress dealing with Dragovic and the constant sense of impending doom, the realization that his whole world could implode at any second. Whatever the cause, he'd found himself incapable of breaching that wall.
But a new mind, brilliant, unfettered by such oppressive concerns, might succeed where he'd foundered.
Four weeks… Luc squeezed his eyes shut, You must not fail me, Nadia. Everything depends on you.
7
Nadia sat alone in the darkened room, a bulbous shape floating in the air before her: a molecule of lovastatin, the cholesterol-lowering drug that had gone off-patent; Merck originally had an exclusive on it as Mevacor, but GEM now sold its generic equivalent at a much lower price.
Without taking her eyes off the molecule, Nadia tapped her keyboard, rolled her trackball, and an extra methyl group appeared and attached itself to one end of the larger mass. She rotated the 3-D image 360 degrees in two planes to make sure the new group had the proper orientation, then: voila—lovastatin had become simvastatin, Merck's other lipid-lowering agent, Zocor. But Zocor was still patent-protected, so that one was off-limits to the production department. For now, at least.
Nadia loved the dry lab and all its state-of-the-art equipment. No jars of reagents, no pipettes, no ovens or incubators—every experiment and chemical reaction in this small spare room was virtual, thanks to the holographic molecular imager. Nadia knew it had to cost a fortune, far more than any other pharmaceutical company GEM's size would spend. But Dr. Monnet had told her that GEM had made a commitment to original research. They weren't going to be a me-too company forever. The dry lab was ample proof of that.
Nadia sighed. She was restless. She felt she'd had enough practice now. She had the imager down cold. She was more than ready for her first real challenge.
"Hey," said a familiar voice behind her. "Can we play DNA Wars on that?"
Nadia gasped and spun in her chair. Her words came in a rush when she saw who it was.
"Doug! My God, what are you doing here! How'd you get in? You'll be fired if anyone sees you!"
Strong arms pulled her from the chair and enfolded her. She wrapped her arms around Doug and breathed in his cologne—Woods, she knew, because she'd given it to him for his birthday. Nadia held him close, loving the solid feel of him.
Douglas Gleason, a fair-haired six-footer with an easy smile and merry blue eyes. A natural charmer whose easygoing manner hid a tenacious, razor-sharp mind. He was dressed for work in his gray suit—the same suit he'd been wearing the day they met.
That had been last year at the annual state medical society convention. Doug had been working the GEM Pharma booth in the exhibit area. Nadia had wandered by with her shoulder bag and her laptop, interested because she knew Dr. Monnet had left his teaching position to co-found the company. She remembered the bolt of electricity that had shot through her when Doug glanced up and smiled. She hadn't meant to stop, but now she had no choice—those eyes, that thick sandy hair… A pheromonal cloud enveloped her, drawing her in…
She lingered and listened, barely comprehending a word, as he extolled the virtues of TriCef, GEM's brand-new third-generation cephalosporin antibiotic. When he finished his pitch she accepted a glossy index card and promised to give TriCef a try. But the pheromones wouldn't release her, so she asked about GEM's generic line. When he finally exhausted that subject and nothing was left to say, at least about pharmaceuticals, she thanked him and forced herself to turn away.
"Say, isn't that a 486?" Doug had said, pointing to her laptop. "I haven't seen one of those in a dog's age."
He wasn't letting her go!
Nadia remembered feeling giddy with relief.
Playing it cool, she'd told him that at the moment it was an overpriced paperweight. She hadn't been able to get it to boot up this morning. Doug took a break, sat down with her, and within minutes had it up and running, booting faster than she could ever remember. He explained something about her system.ini and winini files being "junked up," which meant nothing to Nadia. Computers were like cars to her: she knew how to operate them, could make them do what she needed, but had no idea what was going on under the hood.
They got to talking and she learned that Douglas Gleason thought of himself not as a pharmaceutical sales rep but as a software designer. He even had his own start-up company: GleaSoft; it didn't have a product line yet, but that was why he was working as a sales rep: research. Well, research and a way to pay the rent while he was learning the ins and outs of the pharmaceutical trade in order to program a new tracking software package that would revolutionize how drugs were marketed to physicians.
He'd offered to take her out to dinner—strictly business on his GEM sales account—and she'd accepted. They wound up at Vong, a French Vietnamese place she never could have afforded on her resident's pay. The meal had been fabulous, and their hours together magic. Doug was bright and funny, with wide-ranging interests, but it was his entrepreneurial spirit that captured her. Here was a man with a dream, a need to take control of his life, to call his own shots, and the drive and tenacity to pursue it until he'd achieved it. If he had to be a sales rep for a few years to get started, he'd do it. But he wouldn't—couldn't—do it halfway. He threw himself wholeheartedly into everything he did, and as a result he'd achieved GEM's top sales record.
One dinner led to another, and another, and soon they were sharing breakfast. Lately they'd been talking about marriage.
But right now Nadia was worried for him. She pushed herself back to arm's length.
"Doug, this is a secure area. How did you get in?"
He held up a MasterCard. "With this."
"A credit card? How?"
"It's an old one. I hacked your swipe card and copied the code from its magnetic strip onto this one."
"But that's illegal!"
She'd been worried about him getting fired. Now she was worried about him being arrested.
He shrugged. "Maybe. I just wanted to see if I could do it. And I wanted to get a look at this machine you've been telling me about." He stepped past her and stood before the imager, staring at the 3-D hologram floating above it, a look of sublime wonder on his face. "Oh,
Nadj, this is amazing. I'd love to see the code that makes it go."
"Maybe I never should have mentioned it."
Knowing Doug was the compleat computerphile, she'd told him about the molecular imager. She'd noticed him mentally salivating when she described it. She never dreamed he'd go this far just to see it.
He was slipping around the rear of the workbench, peering at the electronics. "Oh, Nadj, Nadj, Nadj," he was murmuring, sounding a little like he did during sex, "you've got a Silicon Graphics Origin 2000 running this thing! I'd give anything to play with it."
"Don't even think about it. If this thing crashes—"
"Don't worry," he said, returning to her side. "I won't touch it. Wouldn't dare. I just wanted to see it. And see you."
"Me? Why?"
"Well, this is the big day, right? Your first real project? I just came by to wish you good luck, and to give you"—he reached inside his breast pocket and produced a single yellow bud rose—"this."
"Oh, Doug," she taking it and sniffing the tightly coiled petals. She felt lightheaded. Only a rose. How could a single simple flower touch her so deeply? She kissed him. "How sweet of you."
"Let's just hope your project's not the same one Macintosh was working on."
"Why not?"
"Because he said it was—and I quote—'a real bitch.'"
"You knew him?"
"We had a few beers now and again. Tom wasn't the cheeriest guy, and I don't think he had many friends. Wouldn't discuss any details, just kept saying the same thing over and over: 'Real bitch of a problem.' Got so fed up, he just walked out one day and never came back."
My lucky day, Nadia thought. Doug had approached Dr. Monnet and mentioned that one of his own former students was finishing up a residency and might be available to replace Macintosh.
Of course if she'd known what Doug was up to she would have stopped him. And when she did learn he'd been talking to Dr. Monnet about her… she'd felt sick. Their fling had lasted one day, one afternoon, really, much too brief to be called an affair…
She remembered entering his office at the end of the term, after she'd earned an A—she hadn't wanted him to think she had an ulterior motive—and undressing. He'd watched her with this shocked look on his face, and she couldn't quite believe what she was doing herself, but she'd been wearing only four articles of clothing so there wasn't much time for a change of heart. In thirty seconds she was standing before him in her birthday suit, her nipples so hard they ached, and he'd hesitated maybe two heartbeats…
They'd spent the rest of the afternoon making love against the walls, against the door, and on every horizontal surface in the room. Later he took her out to dinner and told her how wonderful it had been but it couldn't go on. He was married and he'd been swept away, but he hoped she understood that it had to end here.
She'd amazed him and shocked herself by saying she understood perfectly, that a long-term relationship had been the furthest thing from her mind. She'd simply wanted to fuck the most brilliant man she'd ever met.
Nadia still couldn't believe she'd said that—or done it. The whole episode, the wildest day of her life, had been so out of character. She'd never done anything even remotely like that before or since. And maybe that had been it: the urge to let go and do something outrageous. The fact that she'd completed her didactic courses and would never come in contact with Dr. Monnet again must have lent her a sense of security.
Some security. When Doug had said he'd set up a meeting for her with Dr. Monnet, he'd been so excited and proud she just couldn't say no. She'd dreaded seeing him, but Dr. Monnet had been the perfect professional. He'd acknowledged their past together as teacher and student but nothing else. He'd seemed far more interested in her later training than in their brief interlude, quizzing her closely on her contributions to the papers on the effects of anabolic steroids on serotonin levels she'd published with Dr. Petrillo.
As much as Nadia had admired him before, she'd left with boundless new respect for Dr. Luc Monnet.
But when he'd called two days later, he did mention their tryst: He told her he hadn't forgotten their "intimate afternoon," as he termed it, but that was to be buried. He needed someone for a crucial project, and he could allow nothing from the past to interfere. If she could assure him that she would approach her work with a purely professional attitude, the position was hers.
Nadia had been speechless. The man was a prince.
Dr. Monnet had expedited her hiring through personnel and she'd found herself in the GEM dry lab within days.
And even better: Doug insisted on downplaying their relationship. "I told him we were old friends, nothing more," he'd said. "So better keep it that way. They might not like it if they know we're an item. Might think it would get in the way of our work."
That had been fine with Nadia, although she didn't see how Doug could interfere with her work.
"A real bitch of a problem," her predecessor had said before quitting? She knew she'd never walk out on Dr. Monnet, no matter how difficult the project. It was too much of a thrill and an honor to be working with him.
The only one who wasn't thrilled was her mother, who didn't think a "real doctor" should do research. She wanted to know when Nadia was going to start seeing sick people, like a "real doctor."
Be patient, Mom, she thought. I'm going to do my damnedest to make a landmark contribution; then I'll go into practice—promise.
"Has Macintosh been in touch with you since he left?" Nadia asked.
Doug shook his head. "Not a word. As I said, not a real gregarious sort."
"Let's just hope he solved that 'bitch of a problem' before he left."
"Even if he didn't," Doug said with that lopsided smile she loved, "you'll just breeze right through it."
"Thanks for the vote of confidence." She held up the rose. "And thanks for this. But now you've got to breeze out of here."
"Hey, Nadj, you're talking to their top salesman. They don't want to lose me. Besides, they've gone a bit overboard with the security thing, don't you think?"
"Not a bit," Nadia said. "We're going to be working with human hormones."
"So's everybody else."
"Right. But let's say you find a way to alter estrogen so it doesn't increase the risk of blood clots and breast and uterine cancer but still prevents osteoporosis, hot flashes, and keeps cholesterol down. Or better yet, say we take an anabolic steroid and block all its undesirable side effects but enhance its ability to burn fat. How much would a product like that be worth?"
Doug gave a low whistle. "You could fire the entire sales force. People would be knocking down the doors."
"Right. And that's why Dr. Monnet wants whatever we discover here to stay behind these doors until it's registered with the U.S. Patent Office."
Doug held up his hands. "All right. You win. I'm convinced." He stuck his head out the dry lab door and looked around. "Elaborate as this is, I'd have thought there'd be more to it."
"How so?"
"I don't know how much you know about GEM. It started off selling generic antibiotics but went public a couple of years ago to raise capital to buy the rights to TriCef from Nagata in Japan. GEM would have gone under if TriCef flopped, but luckily the profits are pouring in. And according to the Pharmaceutical Forum, it's a top seller. Everybody's using TriCef. I should know—my commission checks show I'm earning big bucks just on that one product. But GEM's not paying dividends. Plus, it's been cutting its sales force. My territory is now so big I can barely keep up with it."