The Delta Factor (7 page)

“They really tried to blend in with the area, didn't they?” Cliff said.

“This is what is known as making a statement,” Deborah replied.

The doors were heavy polarized glass, a full inch thick and operated by a pneumatic suspension. They slid smoothly open, then locked behind them with a well-oiled click. Inside the air sighed softly through an unseen vent; otherwise there was no sound. A reception guard inspected them from behind bulletproof glass. His voice came over the intercom, “Afternoon, Doctor.”

“Jim, this is Cliff Devon,” Deborah replied. “He'll be needing a pass. Labs and all.”

“Sure, I got him down on the list. How long?”

“Three days should do it.”

The guard said to Cliff, “Just put your right hand down on the stand, please.”

“Do I have to?”

“Yes.” Deborah pointed him to the waist-high metal column standing to one side of the reception booth. Cliff did as he was told. The column emitted a warm hum as his hand was scanned. The screen embedded in the wall at eye-level lit up to reveal a single sentence. The guard said, “Please read what it says, sir.”

“My name is Cliff Devon,” Cliff complied. “My voice is my passport.”

“Again, please.”

Cliff repeated the sentence. This time a chime sounded. The guard watched a monitor on his side of the glass, then took a plastic card that emerged from a slot on his desk and passed it through. “You'll show him the ropes, won't you, Doc?”

“Sure, Jim. Thanks.” Deborah handed over the featureless white plastic card and said in all seriousness, “Don't you dare lose this.”

“Right,” Cliff agreed, thoroughly cowed. He followed her through the second set of heavy glass doors and down a long, carpeted corridor. The hall was domed and soundless and so oppressive it felt hard to breathe. “Where are you taking me?”

“The Tombs.”

They took the elevator to the third floor, then walked down yet another hallway. The elevator bell sounded again behind them, and Cliff jumped involuntarily.

“It's gotten to you, has it?”

“I feel like I've been vetted for Fort Knox.”

Deborah shook her head as she led him into a wood-lined outer office. “Our security is much tighter.”

A vision.

That was all Cliff could think of as he stared down at the woman behind the desk. She was undoubtedly one of the most beautiful women he had ever seen.

Deborah grinned at his reaction, “Cliff, I'd like you to meet Blair Collins. Blair, this is the friend I've been telling you about.”

“Nice to meet you,” Blair said, her tone flat, her eyes neutral. Giving nothing away. Clearly used to being stared at.

“Likewise.” Cliff turned to Deborah's smirk and said, “It's great knowing I can entertain you.”

“Sorry,” Deborah said. “I guess maybe I should have given fair warning.”

“Yeah, maybe so.” Cliff turned back to Blair. “Do you get used to having guys stumble over their tongues?”

“Long, long ago,” she replied, a glint of something else appearing in her eyes. Humor? “How did you like the entrance routine?”

“If they had an X-ray machine and matched Dobermans, it might have been a little eerier. But that tunnel was perfect.”

“You should try having to walk it every morning,” Blair said. “Sometimes I feel like stripping off my clothes and running up and down screaming my head off.”

“If you ever decide to really do it,” Cliff replied, “be sure and let me know. I'll make a special trip down for that.”

Deborah interrupted with, “Are they ready for us?”

“I'm supposed to make this big production of calling ahead, you know, give them time to huddle. But I guess we can dispense with the nonsense for once. Besides, it's almost quitting time.”

“Fine with me,” Deborah agreed, and said to Cliff, “Come along, Junior. It's showtime.”

As they pushed through the double doors, Cliff muttered, “Is she for real?”

“That's for you to decide,” Deborah whispered back.

“Deborah, great to see you!” A silver fox in a gray suit rose from the conference table extending down from the massive desk. “And this must be Cliff Devon.”

“Must be,” Cliff agreed, and barely avoided Deborah's elbow.

“I'm James Whitehurst. So very, very glad to meet you. You of course already know Dr. Harvey Cofield, head of our R&D section and currently acting as our FDA representative.”

“Dr. Cofield,” Cliff said, accepting the hand.

“Cliff, great to see you,” he exuded with complete falseness.

“Right,” Cliff responded, deciding to give the circus ten minutes max.

“Here, take this seat right here beside me,” Whitehurst said. “Deborah has told us so much about the young man who is responsible for the echin drug approval study.”

“This trip is purely for pleasure,” Cliff replied.

“Of course, of course.” Whitehurst beamed at all and sundry. “Still, we are just delighted to have the FDA coordinator down for a visit, official or not.”

“I've prepared a complete dossier of our latest clinical trials,” Cofield informed him, hefting a massive notebook and extending it his way. “I thought you might like to take a look at it this weekend.”

“Absolutely,” Cliff agreed. Four years in federal government had given him a lot of practice at keeping his face blank.

“We were intending to put you up in the company cottage, give you the red-carpet treatment,” Whitehurst said around his smile. “But no, our Debs said that just wasn't on.”

“The department has a pretty strict policy on such things,” Cliff said.

“Sure they do. But if there's anything you need, anything at all, you won't hesitate to call, now, will you?”

“Not for an instant,” Cliff agreed.

“We're expecting a pretty strong reaction to the press conference we called today,” Dr. Cofield said.

“You held a press conference today?” Cliff looked from him to Debs and back again. “About what?”

“Remember the storm I was telling you about?” Deborah replied.

“Rumors were getting out about the echin compound,” Cofield asserted. “We decided to go public with what we know.”

“What you
think
,” Cliff said, struggling to keep a grip on his temper. “The clinical trials have just gotten started.”

“Yes, but what we've seen so far has been incredible,” Cofield ground on. “Incredible enough for us to decide we'll probably need to report the findings to our friends in Washington next week.”

“My director will be delighted to hear this,” Cliff said, knowing Ralph Summers had about as much time for political pressure as he did. Cliff leaned forward and said with all the force he could muster, “And I expect your application for product approval to proceed exactly according to proper schedule.”

“We'll see about that,” Cofield snapped.

“We certainly shall,” Cliff agreed, and decided he had just about had enough. He rose to his feet. “Anything else?”

“Well, it certainly has been delightful to meet you, Mr. Devon,” Whitehurst said, rising with the others. “Now don't you forget—anything you need, anything at all. Debs knows where to reach me night or day.”

Cliff allowed Deborah to usher him out. When the doors were shut behind them, he stood and fumed, “You know those lower life forms you use in the labs? I think some of them escaped.”

To his surprise, it was Blair Collins who responded. “He'll do,” she announced to Deborah. “Okay for tomorrow night at seven?”

“Perfect,” Deborah replied, and took his arm. “Come along, dear. You're steaming up the windows.”

Daylight was just beginning to wane when Horace Tweedie showed up in front of the U.S. Patent Office headquarters in Washington. The air still smelled of its city imprisonment, hot and muggy and acrid. Ted Kelley was outside waiting for him, nervous as a new recruit arriving at boot camp. As soon as Horace's car pulled up, Ted raced over and tried to crawl in through the side window. “What took you so long?” he hissed, dancing in place. “You're almost half an hour late.”

“Friday rush-hour traffic,” Horace replied, rolling toward a curbside parking place. He climbed from the car, clapped a hand on Ted's shoulder, grinned broadly, and said in a quiet voice, “Calm down. You don't want anybody to get suspicious, do you?”

“I don't know if I want to do this at all.”

“That's okay,” Horace said amiably, knowing the guy had to be nursed. His poker buddy was a gambler, mostly small stakes, but a lot of them. And he lost. Almost always. Like many gamblers, Ted gambled to reinforce his own self-hatred, something best accomplished by placing bets that had almost no chance of succeeding.

Horace hated playing poker with Kelley. He didn't like watching him gradually melt into a sweaty little puddle as he overbet and lost hand after hand, trying time and time again to fill inside straights and flushes missing two cards. The guy rarely lost more than a couple hundred, but for him it was almost a nightly ritual. Not to mention the football pools and the basketball and the golf and the hockey and anything else he could find to bet on.

Needless to say, Kelley was perpetually in debt. And to the wrong sort of creditors. Ones who insisted on being paid. Insisted in the strongest possible terms.

So Horace played it cool like he was still at the poker table with this guy. “It was just an idea. They really don't need the information right now, and I'll have it on file myself in a month or so.”

Then he started back toward the car, his heart tripping a frantic beat.

“No, wait.” Ted's hand was on his elbow.

Horace breathed a silent sigh and allowed himself to be turned back. “Yeah?”

“I guess it's okay.” The furtive glance up and down the street, then, “You got the money?”

“Of course.”

Shoulders hunched even further. “Can't you ask for more? You know it's worth a lot.”

Horace made a worried pout. “They're not the type you can ask for much of anything.”

“But a lousy thousand bucks. That's—”

“A thousand more than you have now,” Horace pointed out.

Kelley slumped in defeat. Probably thinking about the goons breathing down his neck. “Yeah, okay. Come on, let's get it over with,” he muttered as he led the way toward the entrance.

As soon as pharmaceutical companies began work on a new compound, and long before any positive or negative effect could be identified, a patent was applied for. The patent office did not require information as to what effect the product would have. That was the job of the FDA, and as many as five years might pass before final FDA approval was granted. But the only requirement for filing a patent was demonstrating that the product or the process was new.

With new compounds being designed almost continually by pharmaceutical companies and independent laboratories, a U.S. patent was granted on the basis of two different types of information. The first was the molecular formula of the compound itself. The second was the
process of how the compound was produced
.

For all molecular patents, this second type of information was essential because the compound itself was too small to be seen—and in some cases, when the application was made, only a microscopic amount might have been produced. So the production methods had to be spelled out in careful detail. The rule of thumb used by the patent office was, make the explanations so complete that a nonexpert would understand.

Kelley pasted on a totally false smile as he approached the night-duty guard, an overweight black man engrossed in his crossword puzzle. “Can you believe it? Of all the luck, the boss has got me working Friday night.”

“Tough,” the bored guard said, not even glancing up.

Horace signed a false name in the book and felt only disgust for the guy and his nervous chatter. Small-time losers, he thought. I'm surrounded by small-time losers. When Ted wouldn't shut up, Horace turned and started for the elevators on his own.

In the elevator, Kelley wiped off the grin with the sweat beading his face. Silently they waited while the floors pinged away, then walked together down the hallway to Ted's office. The hallway was completely silent. That was why Horace had taken the risk of going ahead and arranging this meeting before talking with the foreigner earlier that day. On Friday afternoons, downtown Washington was a ghost town.

Kelley had to use both hands to get his key in the door, his hands were shaking so bad. Horace rolled his eyes as the guy did a final up-and-down-the-hall search before waving him inside. Talk about telegraphing the message to the world.

“Okay,” Ted whispered, sweating so hard his shirt was matting to his back. He pointed a trembling hand at the top file on his desk and said, “I gotta go do something down the hall. I'll be back in a couple of minutes.”

“No problem,” Horace said, surprised at how calm he felt. Maybe Kelley's nerves didn't leave any room for his own. “I'll leave the envelope in the file,” he said in a low voice.

“The what?”

“Envelope,” Horace said, drawing out the word.

“Oh. Yeah. Right. Well, I'm off.”

“See ya.” When the door was shut once more, Horace slipped the miniature camera from his pocket. The camera had cost almost as much as the bribe. Small time, Horace thought as he opened the file, arranged the desk lamp for maximum lighting, and began shooting pictures of each page. He would soon be leaving these small-time losers behind for good.

4

On Saturday morning, Deborah drove at a slow, steady pace through peaceful Edenton streets. She did not speak much, but allowed Cliff to take in the town bit by bit. Occasionally she would draw his attention to special sights: a pre-Revolutionary home with double balconies large enough to accommodate the entire family on hot nights. A blooming magnolia more than two hundred years old, its branches encompassing almost a quarter of an acre. An entire street of crepe myrtle trees frothing with pink blossoms. A Victorian house whose ground floor boasted seven great windows, each framed in a stained-glass pattern of flowering vines. An old stone house so overgrown with creeping wisteria vines that it looked from a distance to be painted green. Earlier in the spring, Deborah informed him, the whole house bloomed lavender.