Alchemist (7 page)

‘I'd like to see how you arrived at those figures,' Bannerman said sceptically.

Monty gave him a cautioning glance. It was all going so well, she want him blowing it now with a sudden display of temper.

‘Happily,' Crowe said. ‘We are so convinced by the figures that we are installing artificial daylight environments in our new hospitals, and we believe they'll cut a substantial percentage off recovery times.'

The innovative ethos of Bendix Schere excited Monty. She was experiencing, in this rather futuristic building, in the presence of these enormously powerful and influential men, the sensation of being a privileged insider at the very cutting edge of science.

Rorke led them into a vast lab that left Monty speechless with envy. She had simply never seen any laboratory, anywhere, so well equipped and so orderly: rows and rows of white work surfaces brimming with state-of-the-art lab technology. The staff, all wearing white coats, seemed to have a luxurious amount of space and through the air of concentrated
efficiency Monty could almost feel the progress that was being made.

Her father pointed to a television camera above the door. ‘What's that for?' he said suspiciously.

‘Safety,' Crowe replied. ‘If someone's working here on their own late at night or over a weekend, and they have an accident, they might need help. This way Security can keep an eye on all the labs in use and act swiftly.'

Rorke led them on through more labs, some even larger, some much smaller, all equally well equipped. Monty compared all this to their own dingy Victorian premises. They could have fitted Bannerman Research Laboratories into a single floor of this building a dozen times over, and as she thought of their hopeless struggle to survive she began to feel increasingly angry. Angry at governments which had ignored the importance of scientific research for decades, angry at all the organizations and foundations which had made her father beg like a dog for every scrap of money. She looked at him now, hoping against hope that some of the excitement of this place was rubbing off on him also.

‘Ah, Mr Seals!' Crowe said, raising his voice suddenly to hail a long-haired man in a white coat who had just emerged from one door and was about to go through another. When he realized it was Crowe and Rorke, he straightened his shoulders and immediately walked up to them.

‘Mr Seals is Chief Lab Technician for our genetics department. This is Dr Bannerman and his daughter, Miss Bannerman.'

Monty watched Seals' face as he gave her father a look of recognition and admiration, and then said politely: ‘Very pleased to meet you both.'

He was in his mid-thirties, with lank brown hair that tumbled across his forehead and rested on his shoulders. When he tossed it back with a practised motion a single stud was revealed in his left ear. He would have been very good-looking if it wasn't for the ravages of teenage acne that had left his skin slightly pockmarked.

‘You have quite a set-up here,' Dick Bannerman said.

‘Thank you. I'm afraid a lot of the techniques we're
employing are based on your own work in your published papers.'

‘Nothing to apologize for,' Bannerman said. ‘That's why I publish them – to share knowledge. Do
you
share it too?' he asked pointedly.

Seals reddened. ‘I'm afraid that's not my decision.'

‘I guess you have a lot of bricks and mortar to pay for here.'

‘Modern equipment
is
very expensive, Dr Bannerman, as I'm sure you appreciate.'

Monty admired the way the young man first held his ground, and then became increasingly animated as he explained the new generations of gene-sequencing machines they had just got up to speed. She saw in him a lot of youthful energy and a sense of purpose, of mission. Without realizing it, she found herself comparing him to their elderly plodder of a Chief Lab Technician, Walter Hoggin, for whom computers continued to remain a mystery, and anything hi-tech was something to be regarded with suspicion. And she knew that however fond of Walter she might be, it was people of the calibre of this Seals character that they really needed – but could not afford.

A squat gold frog, the size of a football, occupied centre stage of Sir Neil's massive desk. Monty wondered if it was a trophy and thought, irreverently, that it was not dissimilar to Rorke's own shape. She disliked frogs and this one had a reptilian smile that made her shudder when she glanced at it.

There were few other items on the desk: a leather blotter, a silver receptacle for pens, a dictating machine and telephone, and a computer terminal. There was not a single sheet of paper in sight anywhere in the office, and she suddenly realized that she couldn't remember seeing any paper in any of the labs either.

To the right of the desk was a tall, white machine that Monty at first thought might be connected with the air system. She had noticed similar machines in all the downstairs labs. Then she recalled seeing such a machine in a movie recently, and realized what it must be: a paper shredder.

The four of them were seated at a conference table, ready to drink the tea just poured by Rorke's secretary. Rorke picked up his spoon and began to stir his cup, then he spoke.

‘Dr Bannerman, let's be direct with each other. I know your views about patenting scientific discoveries, and in particular human genes, and I'm not unsympathetic. But in the real world, money has to come from somewhere, and our profits at Bendix Schere come from the manufacture of pharmaceuticals on which we hold patents.' He raised a hand. ‘The life of a patent in the UK is only twenty years. We have exclusivity for that period. But considering the resources we have to invest in developing our products, it's really a very short time.'

Monty wondered if her father was going to launch into one of his antipatenting polemics, but to her relief he sat impassively, staring back at Rorke. He had obviously been impressed by what they'd been shown that afternoon, and whilst he might have strong opinions, and contempt for the establishment, he was no fool. And what he had seen today was a display of the finest research tools that money could buy.

‘We could kick some funding into your laboratory in Berkshire,' Rorke went on. ‘But I don't think we'd get the best value for our investment that way, and frankly I don't think, even with proper funding, that you can reach anywhere near your true potential with your current set-up. Dr Crowe and I both believe you're the finest genetics scientist in this country, and probably the world. And you still have a great many highly productive years ahead of you, whether we do business together or not.'

Bannerman smiled, waiting for the crunch.

‘If you were given the right facilities, and the right funding, I think you could achieve very much more – and that's not to demean all you've done to date.'

‘What kind of facilities?'

‘The kind you've seen down on the sixth, seventh and eighth floors here; the kind we have at our UK plants in Reading, Birmingham and Edinburgh. Or overseas in Bern, Frankfurt and Charlottesville.' Rorke paused and picked up
his teacup. ‘Our proposal is very simple: we'd like you to join the Bendix Schere Foundation as head of our entire worldwide genetics research programme.'

Bannerman shook his head. ‘I'm very flattered, gentlemen, but I'm a scientist not a businessman. I want to do research – not run an organization.'

‘I think perhaps Sir Neil hasn't made it quite clear,' Crowe said. ‘Research is exactly what we
want
you to do, and nothing else. You would have the entire human resources and all the facilities in the Bendix Schere Foundation to utilize in any way you wanted.'

Dick Bannerman didn't miss a beat. ‘I couldn't abandon my own staff.'

‘I don't think that would be a problem,' Rorke said, looking expectantly at Crowe.

‘No,' Crowe said, a little hesitantly. ‘I'm sure we could keep your key people.'

‘
All
my staff are key people,' Bannerman said. ‘It's damned hard getting work of the kind they're specialized in. I'd want an assurance from you that there wouldn't be one single redundancy before I even considered any proposal. And I'd want your assurance that my daughter could continue to work as my right hand.'

‘I'm sure we could give such an undertaking,' Rorke said genially, ignoring the warning signal Crowe was trying to communicate with his eyes.

There would have to be some give and take over staff, Monty knew, but she was thrilled by the proposal, and encouraged that at least her father had not rejected it out of hand.

‘Could you tell us exactly what budget would be available, and what remuneration we'd receive?' she asked, eager to have the details made concrete.

Crowe smiled and produced, seemingly from thin air, two identical documents, one of which he handed to Monty, the other to her father. They were the first actual pieces of paper Monty had seen in the building.

The bold wording at the top said:
RESTRICTED CIRCULATION:
MAIN BOARD DIRECTORS ONLY. FROM THE CHAIRMAN'S OFFICE
.
Beneath was the heading: ‘Proposals for the Acquisition of Bannerman Genetics Research Laboratories.'

‘They are buggers, these people, aren't they?' Dick Banner-man said as the lift sank rapidly down towards the ground floor.

Monty raised a finger to her lips, looking warily at the lens above the door. ‘They might be listening,' she whispered.

He shrugged, but said nothing more until they were outside the building and walking towards the car.

‘Why did you say they are
buggers
, Daddy?'

‘Laying on that fancy lunch – thinking I'm going to be impressed by something like that.'

‘
I
was impressed,' she said. ‘I was very impressed with the company and with them.'

‘They've got some decent kit,' he said. ‘A few gizmos we could do with.'

‘A
few
?'

‘I can see the plus points,' he said. ‘But I can also see one hell of a lot of minuses.'

‘I can't see any minuses,' she said. ‘None at all.'

London. Saturday 22 October, 1994

DR BRUCE KATZ. MR DUNSTAN OGWAN. INTERNATIONAL FACTORS. MRS V. ALASSIO. MR JOHNSON – FORD MOTOR COMPANY. R. PATEL. A. COHN. CROSSGATES TRAVEL. MR OBERTELLI. MISS REDMAYNE
.

Conor Molloy surveyed the battery of signs that greeted the passengers exiting from the customs channels into the arrivals concourse at Heathrow, then stopped when he couldn't see his own name amongst them. He leaned on the brake bar of his baggage cart, scanned the sea of faces and handwritten placards more carefully.

In his early thirties, at a shade over six feet tall, with his short black hair fashionably gelled and shovelled haphazardly backwards, even red-eyed with jet-lag he cut a striking figure, and several of the people waiting to greet passengers looked at him, wondering if he was a movie star they ought to recognize.

Both his outfit and his face shouted
Entertainment Industry:
he was dressed in an open-necked denim shirt over a white t-shirt, washed-out cotton chinos with rugged boots, and a suede bomber jacket. His face had elements of both Tom Cruise and Tim Robbins but was an improvement on each. Conor Molloy possessed, by almost any criteria, drop-dead good looks. Much of his charm came from the fact that he was unaware of this. In fact, in his chosen profession, looks did not matter at all; he would have made exactly the same progress if he had been born the Elephant Man.

His eye was eventually caught by a man pushing his way through the jostling crowd, and he realized that this was his driver.

‘Conor Molloy? Charley Rowley! We're going to be working together. Fucking awful traffic this morning – thought I was going to miss you!'

‘The flight came in a little early, I guess. Pilot said we had a strong tailwind,' Conor replied, taking an instant liking to the man's cheery nature.

They shook hands. Although Charley Rowley was also only in his thirties, from the way he was puffing and perspiring he seemed badly out of shape. Ignoring Conor's protest, he wrestled the baggage cart away from him and began pushing it across the concourse.

The American hurried along in pursuit, holding his shoulder bag, containing his laptop computer, which he had not let out of his sight on the journey. ‘It was good of you to come – you needn't have worried – I could have taken a cab.'

‘The Directors wouldn't hear of it! BS is very big on the personal touch. You've heard the slogan “The World's Most Caring Company”? Well, that applies to its staff as well as its customers.'

Conor detected the note of cynicism. ‘Yeah, well, it's still good of you to give up a Saturday morning.'

Rowley sniffed and said with a grin, ‘Yah, I think so too!'

As he accompanied Rowley through the exit and into the car park, Conor was careful not to say too much. No one was to be trusted.
No one
. He had waited twenty-five years for this opportunity, had worked himself into the ground to get the qualifications, and finally pulled off what he had once thought to be an impossible goal. He was aware that his mother's fears for his safety were wholly justifiable, and he did not underestimate the intelligence, the resources and the sheer power of what he was up against. He knew that with just one slip he could lose his chance for ever – and very probably his life.

‘Shit!' Conor looked around his apartment with a broad grin. ‘This is all mine?'

Charley Rowley nodded.

Conor walked across the living-room floor and stared out of the window. He could see right across Hyde Park to the hazy silhouettes of South Kensington beyond. The morning sun glinted like foil on the dewy grass; he saw a jogger, and a woman walking a string of assorted dogs. Traffic poured down the Bayswater Road beneath him. It made a different sound from the traffic in Washington; there it was the tramp of rolling tyres, here it was the grinding roar of trucks, and the diesel rattle of idling taxis.