Bite (2 page)

Don Quiggan and Bob Mazzio were sitting in the restaurant of the Krasnapolsky Hotel in Amsterdam's Dam Square watching pretty girls on bicycles and the lunchtime drug dealers approaching tourists.

Mazzio yawned extravagantly. ‘I always get lagged going west to east, whatever I do. In
here
it's the middle of the night,' he tapped his swarthy head with a hirsute finger. Then he looked at his watch and groaned. ‘Aw shit. Is that the date?'

‘Jet lag's pretty bad when you don't even know what day it is,' Quiggan smirked, sipping his coffee. ‘Take some exercise, soak up a little natural light.'

‘Nah. I forgot it's my son's birthday.' Mazzio pulled out a notebook computer and plugged in his mobile phone. ‘I better e-mail him.'

‘I thought he was only six or seven.'

‘Six years old today. He's pretty sharp on a PC though.'

‘Let's hire him then, Bob. Smart young guy like that.'

Mazzio grimaced as he tapped at the keyboard. The last thing he wanted was for Kyle to sell his soul to Pharmstar. One in the family was enough. Three months ago, his first day at Pharmstar, Mazzio had sat in when Iron Jack briefed newly-hired business school graduates on strategy.

‘I want the next Prozac or Valium, the next Lipitor or Zantac,' Jack had said, striding up and down, his big voice booming across the hall. ‘I want you to scour the world for billion dollar a year blockbusters. Between you and me you can screw the cure for cancer as a financial proposition. What we need are treatments, not cures. Treatments that patients take every day, year in, year out. The clinical areas are obvious: depression, migraine, backpain, arthritis, cholesterol control, weight control. And the target market is only one: first world and affluent.'

Mazzio had been astounded by the facts and figures Jack produced, straight out of memory. It cost eight hundred million bucks and up to twelve years to bring a drug from test tube to market. A typical drug submission to the Food and Drugs Administration needs two trucks to carry the paperwork. So when a drug passes all the regulatory hurdles it has to reap huge rewards for the remaining eight years of its patent life, not just to repay its own development costs but to cover the other ninety-nine per cent of drugs that don't make it. A candidate molecule can fail for all kinds of reasons. Maybe it works in the test tube, but not on a test animal, or works on a test animal but not a human, or fixes the ailment but gives the patient a different ailment, or - the most frustrating of all - the molecule works perfectly but some college smartass writes a doctoral thesis showing a dime-a-day aspirin treatment works just as well.

‘You know something?' Jack had told the assembled executives. ‘I want to shoot those two college sons of bitches who decimated the ulcer market by discovering that cheap antibiotics work just as well.'

Mazzio had felt a little alienated by the laughter. But he needed the money, and no-one in the industry paid as well as Pharmstar.

Quiggan coughed.

Mazzio pushed the notebook computer aside. Jack Erskine was approaching the table. The CEO didn't sit down, he just leaned over, resting his huge tanned hands between them.

‘Bob,' Erskine said quietly, dark eyebrows squeezed low over hooded eyelids. ‘Why didn't you tell me Henry Waterson had been sniffing around Utrecht Laboratories?'

‘I didn't know, Jack. What's he doing there?'

‘It's your job to know these things. You did the groundwork here, right? Didn't you know his consultancy has a contract there?'

Mazzio shook his head. His wide brown eyes were soft like a chastised dog. ‘It must be small potatoes Jack, they would have told me otherwise.'

‘There's $3.4 billion of our stock being offered in this acquisition. Nothing that affects it is small potatoes. I want his nose outta there. Get me copies of his contract from Utrecht Labs. I'll need them later today for the lawyers to pick holes in.'

And then Erskine was gone.

Mazzio blew a sigh while Quiggan chuckled, the left hand side of his pale, austere face hoisted experimentally, revealing long, narrow, yellowed teeth, wet with saliva.

‘What is it with him and Waterson?' Mazzio asked.

‘You know that it was Henry that built Pharmstar up, right?'

‘Sure. Started as Vitaledge Vitamins, in 1965 I recall.'

‘Yeah.' Quiggan drained his coffee. ‘Waterson's family was New England aristocracy, big money but nothing brash about the way they spent it. Waterson spotted Jack in the seventies when he was a twenty-two year old salesman, groomed him for the top. Trouble is Jack and Henry had different approaches. To Henry, business was a gentle sport, to Jack it's a feeding frenzy in the shark pool. Henry never discovered that until he moved over to become chairman and made way for Jack as chief executive.'

Mazzio looked puzzled. ‘Come on Don, Jack's had it all his own way. I can understand why Waterson hates him for closing down all the vitamin businesses, but why does Jack hate Henry?'

Quiggan looked down at his cup and stirred the cold dregs. ‘It's a kind of open secret, Bob, so what the hell.' He leaned closer. ‘Seven years ago, Waterson's youngest daughter, Trish, disappeared. Never seen alive again. She was only twenty and one heck of a beauty.'

‘Jesus Christ.'

‘A tragedy, but it gets worse.' Quiggan practised his sickly grin. ‘Jack's wife found Trish two days later. She had hung herself from a rafter in Jack's boathouse.'

‘I'm beginning to get the idea.' Mazzio shook his head. ‘Jack was having an affair with her?'

Quiggan nodded. ‘Henry finds this note in Trish's bedroom. That note was dynamite. It basically blamed Jack, the typical schoolgirl spite thing.'

‘That's a harsh judgement, Don. On a twenty year old.'

‘The note said she and Jack had been lovers for four years. He had promised to leave his wife and kids for her, but when Trish pressed him to make good on it, he dumped her instead. Next week, according to this poisonous note, Trish claims to discover Jack also has something going with a nineteen-year-old secretary at the office.'

‘So you don't think it's true?'

‘True? Yeah, maybe. This is the real world waltz, Bob.' Quiggan shuffled his narrow shoulders. ‘Married men play away, young women like to be a part of it, shit happens as a result. But to hang herself in the goddamn boathouse…'

‘Waterson must have been devastated,' Mazzio said.

‘He was crushed by the whole thing. Jack apologised, used that charm to play down the affair, and persuaded Waterson there was nothing to gain by letting anyone see the note, not even the cops. For a while it was a tense standoff, board meetings were excruciating, let me tell you. We knew about the suicide, but not the Jack angle. That came out only six months later. So Henry took his family on vacation to recuperate, and while he was away Jack sold Vitaledge Vitamins for a song to a bunch of low-life petfood makers from Milwaukee.'

‘Provocative.'

‘You bet. Waterson was spitting blood, for him it was the last straw. Next thing Jack knew, an excerpt from Trish's suicide note was published in the local newspaper, in an article detailing Jack's past. There was stuff in there that could only have come from Waterson, so then it was war. But when Waterson took the battle to the boardroom he could only lose. Pharmstar was producing the best top and bottom line growth the industry had ever seen, shareholders loved it, and they loved Jack. Wall Street doesn't care about executives' private lives. Jack Erskine was running a company, not the country. So the directors voted Waterson out.'

‘Was your vote amongst them?' Mazzio asked. ‘After Henry had given you the directorship?'

Quiggan narrowed his eyes. ‘Jack said it best: “Sure I'll bite the hand that feeds me, if it tastes good enough”.'

This is my first week as a trainee for Medics for Africa, and already the schedule has gone to pot, as everything in Zaire seems to. We are diverting to Zizunga in a big hurry after we got a radio message from there last night. An Austrian doctor at the monkey research centre is dangerously ill with a blood infection. Her husband is desperate to get her flown to Kinshasa from the airstrip at Ubulu which is two days' drive away.

There are five of us crammed into MFA's only working Land Rover, and we have all abandoned our various plans for now. Georg is a bear of a man, with a huge pepper and salt beard. He and his American wife Amy are MFA doctors, and normally work at the children's hospital at Lole. Tomas Hendriksen is a gorgeous lean Swede of twenty-six, a photo stringer for the Associated Press who is working his way across towards rebel areas and is paying for our fuel. His guide is a fifteen-year-old boy called Salvation Sisiwe. Salvation lost his right leg to an anti-personnel mine last year, but he sings beautifully and goes easier through the bush on his crutches than I do with both hands and a machete.

We had only been going an hour when we found the dirt road blocked by a fallen tree. Georg took one look at it and said it was too big to winch from the vehicle, so we spent two hours in the pouring rain clearing a path round it by machete.

At this rate I'm never going to meet Professor Friederikson. He's only staying in Kisangani for a week, and I'm sure he won't delay his trip just because a research student like me is late for an appointment.

(Erica's Diary 1992)

Max and Erica were halfway down the Pouilly Fuisse and had almost finished the salmon and asparagus when their romantic dinner at De Vijf Vliegen was interrupted.

‘Don't look behind you,' said Erica. ‘But Jürgen Friederikson just walked in.'

‘Who?'

‘A living legend in parasitology, that's all. With two of his friends.'

Max looked over his shoulder. ‘Which is he? The beanpole with the bowtie, grumpy the dwarf or the cripple?'

‘Ssshh, Max! For God's sake keep your voice down. They're coming over.' Erica stood up. ‘Professor Friederikson, how are you?'

‘I've got a twinge in my metal leg, but I'm still alive.' Friederikson was as lean and weathered as a ranch hand from decades at the malarial front line. The hooked nose and deep-set grey-green eyes gave a hawk-like intensity to his gaze, which his cropped grey hair and neat white beard did not soften. He walked with a metal cane, and his body tilted at each step.

Max stood up as Erica introduced the others. Henry Waterson was a tall, tanned and fit-looking man in his sixties with silky silver hair, a pale linen suit and a yellow bow tie. The short impatient-looking man was Professor Cornelis van Diemen, who Friederikson described as
the
Dutch authority on tropical diseases.

‘I've heard a lot about you, Erica,' Waterson said. ‘We're looking forward to hearing this breakthrough paper of yours on Sunday.'

‘I don't know about breakthrough exactly,' Erica said. ‘I've got some new data to assess.'

‘But we heard you sent the paper up to Nature,' said Professor van Diemen, squinting through his purple-tinted spectacles.

‘Yes. They agreed to put the academic review panel on ice until I can submit the new data. I'm not going to call it a breakthrough until they do,' Erica said.

‘But your paper is going to be ready, isn't it?' Friederikson said, his eyes sharp as needles.

‘I wouldn't miss Sunday for the world,' Erica said.

‘Good. An old friend of yours will be there. He's flown in specially to hear your paper. He's very excited about it,' Friederikson said.

‘Who?' Erica asked.

‘It'll be a surprise. You'll just have to wait and see.' Friederikson turned to Max. ‘Do look after her, Mr Carver. This beautiful woman is going to turn the world of parasitic research upside down, and prove us all wrong.'

‘Prove
you
wrong, Jürgen,' laughed Waterson, adjusting his bow tie. ‘I never said an effective malaria vaccine was impossible.'

‘So this actually
is
a malaria vaccine you are working on,' Max said to Erica.

‘No it isn't, as they well know. Everyone jumps to conclusions. I'm just trying to isolate and understand a handful of enzymes which are important for the growth and development of
one
particular type of malarial parasite at
one
particular point in its life in a handful of mosquito species.'

‘Don't let her blind you with science, Max.' Van Diemen said, cleaning his glasses. ‘The rumour is your girlfriend has found a revolutionary way to tackle the disease.'

‘What's the new data?' Waterson asked.

‘You'll have to wait and see.' Erica took a sip of wine as if trying to wash the sharp tone from her voice.

‘Still,' said Friederikson, ‘while you apply a final lick of paint to your theory maybe you should check the foundations again.' His artificial leg wheezed as if it appreciated his joke. ‘Just in case it turns out to be sand under there.'

‘Now, now, Jürgen.' Waterson intervened. ‘Perhaps we should leave these two young people to enjoy their meal.' He smiled at Erica as he led his colleagues back to their table.

Erica broke her glassy, fixed smile only to take a big gulp from her wine. She tore a bread roll in half and stuffed a piece in her mouth, then looked out of the window. Max watched her flexing jaw muscles and the tightness of her neck. ‘Speak to me,' he said.

Her head barely twitched in rejection, her earrings trembling as she stared out into the street. Max took one of his new business cards and folded it into a tiny bird. He walked it slowly across the table and pecked it gently at her wrist. ‘Sing little birdie.'

Erica turned back, eyes flashing. ‘I don't
want
to talk about it, okay?'

‘Hey. I'm on your side. Don't bite my head off. Jesus, talk about bitchy scientists.'

‘You don't know the half of it.' Erica ferociously buttered the other half of her roll. ‘The narrower the scientific field, the more obscure the research, the less well-paid the researchers, the worse the rivalry gets.'

‘But if it's malaria, you guys should all be working together.'

‘Don't be an innocent, Max.' Erica pointed her butter knife over her shoulder towards the table where Friederikson sat. ‘He spent twenty years trying to find a malaria vaccine in the seventies and eighties. He failed. So of course he doesn't want anyone else to find one now.'

‘That's plain crazy,' Max said. ‘But at least you don't have to listen.'

‘I don't. But I'm nobody. Friederikson is the senior consultant to the World Health Organization, Friederikson stood side by side with the President of the United States at the One World Forum on Health, Friederikson gets red carpet treatment in two dozen African capitals. There may not be much cash in malaria, but what there is follows him.'

‘What about the Bill Gates cash?' Max asked as she warmed to her attack.

‘That could make a huge difference, but there is so much that still needs doing and it really should be western governments getting involved. It took me two years to raise the cash for my project at Columbia before I even picked up the first test tube. I finally got the U.S. Army and the government of Ghana to share the expected costs of $350,000. Then in March last year the Ghanaian health ministry withdrew its half of the funding and its offer to provide clinical trials facilities.'

‘Why?'

‘They said they were switching to funding trials of a new herbal drug developed in China. That decision cost me my only research assistant, access to top class equipment and added months to the length of the study. And guess who advises Ghana?'

‘Friederikson?' Max finished his glass of wine and called for the bill.

‘Right. So when Friederikson predicts there will never be a reliable vaccine against malaria it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.'

‘But you don't have to think about him any more. You are here now. On Sunday you are gonna show them, right? All that work, all that effort. Finally it's paydirt.'

Erica softened in the silence. ‘Max.' She reached out and picked up the little card bird. ‘Thank you so much for believing in me. And I'm sorry. Sorry about snapping at you.'

‘I've always believed in you. And nothing can stop you now.'

It was a prediction he would wish he had never made.

‘We're running late Jack.' Penny Ryan stood in the doorway of Erskine's hotel room, watching the chief executive, who had a raincoat over one arm, a briefcase in the other, and was talking on his cell phone. He nodded contritely and wound up the call. ‘Sorry Penny, how's the schedule?'

‘Not good, Jack. The car's outside. We're heading straight to The Hague and I'm squeezing the legal team in after that at three for ten minutes. Here's your lunch.' She handed him a croissant. ‘I've had coffee brought for the journey.'

‘You're an angel, Penny.'

‘And you're a devil, screwing with the schedule.' She held up her personal organiser. No-one else dared talk to Iron Jack Erskine like that, but he knew better than to argue with her. Erskine worked eighteen-hour days and Penny Ryan organised every one of those thousand and eighty minutes. She spoke Russian, French and Spanish, never forgot a name and knew how to fix his PC printer. He particularly appreciated her dirty and infectious laugh, her fund of blue jokes, and her fabulous legs.

‘Hey Penny, got any anti-inflammatory or anti-histamine cream with you?' He scratched the back of his hand.

‘Bite?'

‘Yeah.' He held up his hand to her and she took it, prodding a swelling on his knuckle.

‘Hm. Quite a swelling, Jack.'

‘Been itching like crazy for a couple days, I tell ya. Got another on my neck.'

‘It's the canals. I guess they breed like crazy here. Stay here.' She returned to her room and returned with a tube in her hand. ‘Here. Try this.' She squeezed a blob on the back of his hand and rubbed it in.

Erskine squinted at the tube. ‘Merck! Ms Ryan, can I ask you why you are carrying enemy products in your bag?'

‘We don't make anti-histamines, do we?' she laughed. ‘Low margin, no growth is what I recall you said.'

‘Right. Damn, but that feels better. Maybe I'll buy some Merck stock some day.' He laughed, and pulled his cuffs down.

‘Two more things, Jack. Remember it is your wedding anniversary a week Wednesday. Don't you think Holland would be a good place to get Eleanor a present?'

Erskine sighed. ‘Hell. What's Holland got? I can't think of anything except cheese and triple X videos.'

‘I have a list of Delft china stockists. Remember, you bought her a soup tureen last time we were here.'

‘I did?'

‘Well, you paid at least. Shall I get the dishes to go with it?'

‘Would you mind? And a card, something not too slushy.'

‘Sure. You do know it's your ten years' anniversary, don't you?'

‘Shit, yeah. So I better get her something special, I guess.'

‘I could go to a department store and get her a dress this afternoon. Is she still an eight, Jack?'

‘I think so. And we'll need perfume.'

‘How did the Elizabeth Arden go down for her birthday?'

‘She loved it, Penny, yeah. Get some more of that.'

Penny noted it down in her organiser. Lower on the same page she had noted the cellphone numbers of reliable, discreet Amsterdam call girls. She would check their availability in case Erskine dropped the hint.

In two years as PA there was hardly anything she hadn't done for Erskine. She had listened to endless talk about leveraged finance, and drink-induced intimacies about Eleanor's waning libido. She had searched in his eye for a lost contact lens in Lisbon. In Moscow she had put him to bed after an attack of food poisoning, having first had to almost drag him up eight flights of stairs because the lift wasn't working. In Washington she had sewn back a button which fell from his jacket five minutes before a meeting with the head of the Food and Drug Administration.

But one thing she would not do. Penny Ryan would not sleep with him. He had only tried once, a few months ago, in San Francisco, after clinching a fifteen billion dollar takeover deal. She had defused the situation gracefully, larding the rejection with the flattery necessary to get Erskine to swallow it. His behaviour towards her ever since had been impeccable. She wouldn't ever jeopardise that by letting on who she
had
been sleeping with.

‘There's one more thing,' Penny said as she led Erskine to the elevator. The Parasitology Forum wants final confirmation of whether you are giving a speech on Tuesday.'

‘I don't recall this,' he said irritably. ‘Why invite us, Penny?'

The elevator doors slid open.

‘I imagine it is because Henry used to address them every year, and they want you to follow in his footsteps.'

Erskine grimaced. ‘If they knew me they'd know the last reason I would do anything is because Henry Waterson did it. We don't even have products in that area any more, thank God. Who else is going to be there?'

‘The head of the World Health Organization…'

Erskine pretended to yawn.

‘The health ministers from India, Brazil and more than a dozen African countries…'

‘Jewellery, Jesus, and jungle drums. My idea of hell. One thought, Penny. Get me a meeting with the Brazilian guy. They've got a huge cosmetic surgery market. We've got something they will love. Anyone else?'

‘Pfizer and Glaxo-SmithKline will be there.'

‘Kindler and Garnier?'

‘No. VP level only, I would think.'

‘Forget it.'

‘What about journalists?'

‘They have forty accredited so far.'

‘That's peanuts. There was over a thousand at last year's AIDs conference. Anyone from the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, the Economist, Reuters, the Associated Press? Come on, they have to do something to sell it to me.'

Penny flicked through the list, shaking her head.

‘And this speech, Penny. I suppose they want to hear what we are going to do to improve health among the poor in the third world?'

‘Something like that.'

‘So I'll give them a one-word speech: Nothing.' Erskine laughed, and pressed the button for the ground floor.