The Delta Factor (11 page)

“Yes, I would have to agree that God has spared us much and granted us even more.” She smiled. “But you did not come here to have an old lady bend your ear, now, did you.”

“I was on my way back to Washington,” he replied. “And I just wanted to say goodbye to Blair.”

“I am sure she will be pleased to see you,” Miss Sadie said. “She has been walking around this morning with a most bemused expression. If I were you, young man, I would take that as a good sign.”

“That's more than enough, auntie,” Blair said sharply, appearing in the doorway. Then more calmly, “Hello, Cliff.”

He was instantly on his feet. “I hope I'm not disturbing you.”

“An attractive man with manners,” Miss Sadie said, her rocker creaking agreement. “I do believe I would hang on to this one, dear.”

“Let me walk you to your car,” Blair said, a bright flush painting her cheeks. When they were out of range, she said, “Look at me. I haven't blushed since I was sixteen.”

“You should do it more often, then,” he said, refusing to give in to the urge to walk a half-pace behind her. Blair wore a faded blue cotton workshirt bunched and knotted at midwaist, a pair of ancient cut-offs, and sneakers. There was a lot to watch.

She tossed her ponytail. “Auntie has always had the ability to get under my skin.”

“Maybe because she tells things the way they are,” Cliff offered.

When they arrived at his car, Blair stopped and turned to face him. “I would like to thank you for a nice evening, Mister Devon.”

“I'd like to do it again,” Cliff said.

“Well, if your big-city ways ever wind down again in the direction of our little town, do be sure to call.”

Cliff took in the cool gaze, the nonchalant voice, and felt a sudden surge of insight. The perception broke through her shell, granting him the ability to both see and understand how past pains had created Blair's cautious distance. “How about next weekend?”

A flicker of hope, of almost painful eagerness, and then all was locked up tight again. “You're planning another trip?”

“If you'll see me,” he said, his voice as steady as his gaze.

“I believe I might be free,” she said, giving nothing away.

“I'll call you,” he told her.

“I don't take kindly to people who make promises and don't keep them,” she warned.

“You can rest assured,” Cliff said solemnly, climbing into his car. “If I don't call you, I'm dead.”

Dana Browning entered the conference room last and slammed her notebooks down on the table. “If I see another application for an analogue I am going to tear my hair out by the roots.”

That earned sympathetic nods around the table. An analogue drug was one in which a minute change had been made to an already licensed medicine. In some few cases, the change of one molecule in a complex drug erased a whole host of bad side effects. But in the majority of applications, the analogue was a smokescreen.

Some pharmaceutical companies used analogues to renew aging patents; they would make minor alterations and then claim that a new drug had been discovered. Other companies used them to skirt around patent-protected medicines, claiming to have come out with something newer, better, stronger. Analogues were headaches from the onset, primarily because the drug companies did everything in their power to cloak their own hidden agendas behind a veil of data and gobbledygook.

“This one you'll like,” Cliff assured her, and began passing around copies of the information he had brought back with him.

“Pharmacon?” Ben Travers, the microbiologist, was a very small man. Cliff had privately decided his size helped him concentrate on the invisibly tiny. “They're not scheduled for another hearing for, how long is it?”

“Six months,” Cliff answered. “But I was down there visiting a friend this past weekend, and she passed this information on to me. It's the results for their first set of Phase Two trials.”

“Over how long a period?” Dana asked impatiently.

“Three weeks,” Cliff said, and held up his hand to hold off her outburst. “Just take a look, Dana. You know I don't make it a practice to waste your time.”

They read in silence for almost half an hour. Cliff watched as each went through the entire study, then returned to the segments of particular interest to their specialty. Marybeth Schuler, their statistician, checked the figures and the math. Martin Corelli, their chemist, studied the complex molecular formulas. Ben Travers flipped back to the summary of drug indications. And Dana Browning, still a physician at heart, concentrated on the individual case-study reports.

As usual, she was first to finish. “This isn't some figment of a hyperactive imagination?”

“I've known Debs since my sophomore year at college,” Cliff replied. “She's as solid as they come.”

“If the study continues as it's started,” Ben proclaimed, “we've got a major development on our hands. And I do mean major.”

Dana leaned back, stripped off her glasses, and rubbed the bruise marks on either side of her nose. “That explains it, then.”

“Explains what?”

“The pressure I've been getting. Crazy. Yesterday I was called by one of our friends over on Capitol Hill.”

“Larson?” Martin asked. Congressman Larson of Utah was a perpetual nuisance.

“No, it was another of the members of Larson's committee. A congressman from New York.”

“Pharmacon's headquarters is in the Big Apple,” Cliff pointed out.

“Yes, it's making a lot more sense now. The guy couldn't even pronounce the drug's name. And I had no idea what he was talking about, which made him certain I was stalling. We got into a shouting match you could have heard in Manhattan.”

“It's a little early to start having the political thumbscrews applied,” the chemist said.

Ben snapped his fingers. “Now I remember. Something's been jiggling in my memory since I started reading. There was an article in the Post Saturday morning about a new possible miracle drug. You know, stuck on page sixteen instead of the story about a six-headed dog born in upper Mongolia. I paid it about as much attention as I would have the dog. The only reason I remember it at all was because the claim was supposedly made at a Pharmacon press conference.”

“The press conference was last Friday,” Cliff said. “I heard about it when I got down there. No advance word from Cofield, which was a surprise.”

“You'd have thought he would have used it for a three-day trip up here,” Dana agreed. “Drop an expense account bundle on a suite and some nice meals. Camp out in our offices, pass on another thousand pages of data.”

“Cofield apparently had less than a week's notice,” Cliff replied. “Debs told me there had been a spate of rumors circulating, and the execs decided to get their own version out. Have any of you heard about these rumors?”

A chorus of head shakes rounded the table.

“Sounds like it's time to batten down the hatches,” Dana said.

“You'll need to pass this by the director,” Cliff pointed out. “Sandra won't let me within a mile of Summers's office.”

“I hate these pressure tactics,” Dana muttered. “Can anybody tell me why I took this job in the first place?”

“You wanted to serve the public,” Martin Corelli replied. “Didn't I read that somewhere?”

“Okay,” Dana said, flapping her study closed. “We better stay on top of this. Next week, same time, same place.”

“I'm going back down there this weekend,” Cliff said, and a sudden thought of Blair sent his heart rate up a notch. He hoped it didn't show.

“Maybe you better point out to the suits that the FDA does not appreciate being railroaded,” Dana said. “Not by the press, and not by Capitol Hill.”

“Nix on that one,” Cliff replied. “I've already traded broadsides with Cofield and their new executive VP, a guy by the name of James Whitehurst.”

“From the look on your face,” Ben said, “it appears that we do not have an ally in either.”

“Harvey Cofield looks like a hungry vulture. And Whitehurst's heart wouldn't power a snake.”

“But he's probably very nice to his mother,” Ben said, rising to his feet along with Dana.

“Doubtful,” Cliff said, following them from the room. “Extremely doubtful.”

Dana stopped him in the hall. “On the level, Cliff. Does this stuff really do what they say?”

“My friend Debs says it's the real thing,” Cliff said. “She also says this study was checked from every possible angle, given the time available. I've always found that I can take Debs' word as solid gold.”

Dana sighed. “You know what that means, don't you?”

“We're in for a storm, aren't we?”

“What was the name of the typhoon that just gave Japan a close shave?” She replaced her glasses and peered at him through the thick lenses. “This is going to make their storm look like a cloudburst on a pretty summer day.”

Horace Tweedie approached the car lathered in sweat. So close. Closer than he had ever come in his entire life. Too close for everything to be going so smoothly.

He had spent the past three sleepless nights terrified there might be a double-cross. He had tossed and turned and sweated through visions of being tricked, hoodwinked, kidnapped, disappeared. But every time he turned on the light and stared at the suitcase already packed and waiting, he stopped, held by the thought of the money he had been promised. The money he might get. No,
would
get.

The Infiniti's darkened window lowered at his approach. A sudden mental picture of a long-barreled silencer sliding out left Horace so weak-kneed he could barely stand. His bow tie felt tight as a noose. Horace stood half a dozen paces away and died a dozen deaths until the stranger poked his head through the window and impatiently motioned Horace closer.

The stranger wore what he had always worn, from the first time Horace had met him in the Circular File, a local bar frequented by FDA employees—cream-colored suit, white-on-white shirt, muted pastel tie. Horace could not see, but he assumed the man still wore those strange pale shoes. The shoes had fascinated Horace at their several meetings in the bar. They had looked thin and supple enough to be rolled up like socks. The man had worn them with ultra-thin yellow silk socks like Horace's grandfather used to wear.

Everything about the man, from the shoes up, had seemed slightly effeminate to Horace. He had very slender, almost delicate features and dark eyes so large they would have been better suited to a woman. But the way he looked at the cocktail waitresses, and the way they looked back, had left no doubt in Horace's mind where the stranger's interests lay.

“Well?” the stranger demanded.

“I have it,” Horace squeaked. He swallowed and tried again. “The money?”

The stranger slipped a thick manila envelope out through the window.

This time the man would just have to wait. This time Horace had to be sure. He tore at the envelope with fingers that trembled so badly he could scarcely work the paper. When the stacks of hundred-dollar bills came into view, Horace knew a surge of adrenaline so strong he wanted to shout, laugh, dance, run screaming down the street.

Instead he found himself calming.
Free
. The word was there so big in his mind there was no longer room for nerves.
Free
.

Horace slid a hand inside his pocket and handed over the three rolls of film. “It's all there. I photographed each page twice to be sure.”
Free
.

Silently the man accepted the rolls. He turned his head away from the window as he stashed the film, then searched for something.

A gun. Horace felt the world drop away with his stomach. The man was going for a gun. Horace wanted to run, flee, hustle for cover, but his legs wouldn't have carried him to the other side of the street.

But when the stranger turned back to the window, he held only another envelope. It was twice as big as the one he had just handed over. Which was twice as big as the one Horace had received the week before. The stranger asked, “How would you like to earn this?”

Horace's heart could not possibly have beat faster without exploding. A roller-coaster ride was swooping him along, out of control. Nights of terror, a moment of freedom, panic-horror again, and now this. More money.

His mind screamed
run!
His gut, though, his gut saw the envelope and hungered.

Horace reached.

The envelope was withdrawn. “I need more information.”

Horace licked dry lips. “I don't have—”

“The review team,” the man said in his strange fluid accent. “I want information on them. What is the status of the study? How far are they from approval?”

“Information,” Horace repeated weakly. His mind screamed the constant frantic cadence,
run
. But his eyes were glued to the envelope in the stranger's hand. It was as fat as a square balloon.

“Weaknesses,” the stranger told him. “I want to slow things down. Find me a lever.”

The stranger hefted the envelope. “Do so, and this is yours.”

7

Cliff was less preoccupied on the second trip south to Edenton and more aware of his surroundings. This time he took pleasurable note as his way carried him through gradual stages of countrification.

The Washington metropolitan area barely gasped its last shopping-mall breath before the interstate broadened to enter Richmond. From there it was two traffic-clogged hours across Virginia to Portsmouth and Norfolk. Once the North Carolina line had been passed, however, the road and the surrounding life took a soft and gentle curve to bygone days. The way straightened, the landscape flattened, and suddenly the breeze was laden with the perfumes of a country summer.

Untouched pine forests sent out fragrant invitations to slow down, sit back, forget the city hassles, and just rest a spell. Well-kept farmhouses sported cool-looking front porches and a host of hickory rockers. Butterflies and dragonflies coasted in lazy circles alongside the road. Cars kept to the speed limit not because they had to, but because fifty-five was simply fast enough.