Kitabı oku: «Sweet Talking Money», sayfa 2
4
Bryn had as much intention of spending the next day in his hotel room as he had of giving all his money away to charity, but there are times when things move beyond your control. By eleven p.m. his temperature had shot up to 105°F and hung there all night. Shivering underneath a mountain of duvets, he cancelled everything he’d had arranged and waited for the crisis to pass. By evening, his temperature had come down, his chest had cleared, and his appetite returned with a vengeance. Other than a little temporary weakness, he was as fit as a fiddle and ready for action.
Making a rapid check of flight times, he made a dash for the airport through rainswept streets, catching the last overnight flight into London. He slept well through the journey, woke sufficiently refreshed to manage a king-sized breakfast, and was first off the plane on arrival.
Strictly speaking he should have gone straight into work, but it was a grey and chilly morning at a grey and ugly Heathrow, and he found himself asking the cabbie to take him home instead. He’d shower, shave and have a second full-size breakfast, before going into the office.
And there was another motivation. For several years his marriage had been poor, possibly even collapsing. He and his wife, Cecily, had their fair share of relationship problems, of course, but on top of that, theirs was a banker’s marriage. It wasn’t that Bryn cared about his career and Cecily didn’t. On the contrary, she had been brought up to consider money to be more important than oxygen. But there was a cost: work came first, the marriage came second. Out of their last fifty-two weekends, only five had been completely free of work.
And so a stop for breakfast and a shower wouldn’t just be pleasant, it would be Bryn’s way of showing Cecily that she still mattered to him, a small step towards reconstructing their relationship. He’d been taking a lot of such steps recently, hopeful that they were clawing their way towards something better.
Outside his tall, white-fronted Chelsea home, he paid off the cabbie, climbed the steps, let himself in, called upstairs and downstairs, got no answer – and then saw it, a note, folded on the hall table. He opened the note and read it.
5
And read it again, in a mounting blur. ‘Dearest Bryn,’ – that was nice, wasn’t it? A good affectionate start. No problems there. ‘This is just to say that I’ve decided to leave you.’ Bryn gripped the banister and collapsed heavily down on the lower stair. What do you mean, ‘just to say’? What’s just about that? ‘Dearest, this is just to say I’ve burned the house down, murdered the kids, slaughtered the neighbours, eaten the cat.’ Bryn breathed deeply. Maybe he was missing a trick here. Maybe she’d meant to say something else altogether. ‘Dearest Bryn, I’ve decided to leave you … some breakfast in the oven, some gloves in your pocket, a photo, a love letter, a billet doux.’
No, it didn’t say that. Definitely not.
He rubbed his eyes roughly, and blinked to focus. Try though he might, he missed the next few sentences and only caught up with Cecily’s beautiful handwriting several lines later. ‘I’m sorry, darling, I could see you really trying to mend things, but I believe it wasn’t meant to be. I’ve realised that it’s important to me to begin again, and that’s what I intend to do. Please don’t be silly and try to pursue me – it won’t work. You know me well enough by now, to know that my decisions are for ever.’
He did, and they were.
6
For a long time, at the foot of the long staircase, Bryn sat stunned and stupid, yet in a way not even surprised. These last few months, he’d felt like a man trying to rebuild a house during the earthquake-volcano-hurricane season: heroic, maybe; a loser, for sure. He crumpled the letter and threw it away. The scrumpled ball hit Cecily’s bow-legged rosewood table and made one of her Meissen vases ping with amusement.
Work. There was always work. At least at Berger Scholes he could harness all his energy into bullying the world into submission. It didn’t compensate for a failed marriage, but, by God, it was a good distraction. He heaved himself up and stumbled off to work.
A mistake.
On his desk waiting for him was a corporate memo, sent from Head Office, addressed only to him.
TWO
1
‘What the hell is this?’
Bryn shook the memo furiously at his boss, a Dutchman, Pieter van Ween, head of the bank in Europe. Van Ween – blue eyes, fine silver hair swept back over a clear complexion – spoke calmly.
‘I’m sorry you found out this way. I tried to phone. I couldn’t reach you, so I thought it better to drop you a line –’
‘I don’t care how I found out! I do care about Rudy Saddler coming to piss on my patch.’ Bryn’s voice came across as unnecessarily gruff – the voice of a man two hours after getting off an overnight flight, forty minutes after finding his wife had left, three minutes after finding out his job was dissolving. He rubbed his chin, which was rough and unshaven.
‘No one’s going to be pissing anywhere.’ Van Ween was puritan enough to dislike foul language, banker enough to tolerate it. ‘The pharmaceutical industry is a big area. Plenty of transactions. What was it? Sixty billion dollars’ worth we did –’
‘I did –’
‘The bank did last year. Saddler’s going to co-operate, not steal your show. He’s already told me how much he welcomes your local knowledge. I know he respects your work.’
‘Respect, bullshit. I’ve built the best pharma team in Europe and he gets to put his name on the door. Are you trying to send me a message?’
Van Ween understood this game. He played it often. He played it well.
‘There’s no message. I didn’t ask for Saddler. He wanted to come. I have guys I wanted to send to New York. It was all part of the deal.’
‘You traded me.’
‘This is a bank, Bryn. I did what was best for the bank.’
‘I don’t know about that. I do know that I work my arse off and my reward is to be demoted –’
‘There’s no demotion –’
‘– demoted to second in command of the team I built. You may say there’s no message, but I’ve got to tell you, Pieter, I’m hearing one.’
‘Are you saying you will not accept the position which is being offered?’
The question shifted things into van Ween’s favour. Bryn could act the martyr, but unless he had something lined up elsewhere, he couldn’t afford to reject anything. Van Ween wanted to make him say it. Bryn sighed. He was devastated by his wife’s disappearance, shocked by the news about his job. ‘I’m not here to give you any ultimatums,’ he said wearily. ‘I just wanted to let you know I was unhappy.’
‘I understand. It had occurred to me you might not be altogether happy. There is something else I had in mind. It’s a critical area. Something we’re keen to expand. Begin to make some real money. And from your point of view, I think it’s a good career move. It’s the kind of position that gets noticed in New York.’
Bryn opened his hands to invite more information. He didn’t want to sound excited. In truth, he wasn’t excited. Pieter van Ween would have pitched the position the same way whether it was running the trading floor or counting paperclips. The Dutchman paused to register the fact that Bryn was making a request, then continued.
‘It’s emerging markets: Russia, former Soviet Union, all of Eastern Europe, Asia as far as India, Africa. You’d have the biggest territory of anyone in the bank and everything except trading would report to you. You’d report directly to me. I’d give you time to get to know the area, then we’ll sit down and talk. If you think the business flow will justify increased resources, you can have them.’
‘Do we have lending authority?’
‘We can lend money in Poland, the Czech Republic, Turkey. Maybe South Africa, I’d have to check.’
‘Not Russia? Not India?’ Van Ween stayed silent. He wouldn’t participate in Bryn’s effort to belittle the job. ‘How much did we make last year?’
‘In emerging markets? About fifteen, twenty million bucks. But focus on the future.’
‘That’s less than I made on the Claussen deal alone.’
‘The job’s about possibilities, Bryn. You’re giving reasons why we need to beef up our effort, why we need you.’
Bryn thought about it. Half the world under his command, but the wrong bloody half. If the bank wouldn’t risk its money – for fear of coups, collapse, or craziness – then there wasn’t much Bryn could do to earn it. There was always consultancy work, but in these Godforsaken markets the businesses were too small, too cheapskate to stump up real cash. He was being offered an empire, but it was an empire of sand, a dirt track into the desert.
Van Ween noticed the hesitation. It was a lousy deal, he understood that. But he needed to accommodate Saddler’s arrival and he needed somebody to do the emerging markets job. Hughes was a good guy, headstrong and cocky for sure, but most decent bankers were. Van Ween decided to offer some more inducement.
‘If it’s the travel that’s worrying you, then I understand that. It’s demanding. We’ve got some big energy projects in Kazakhstan right now. A privatisation in South Africa. We’ll need you to be there on the ground, of course, but I don’t want you to compromise your family life. Take time off when you need to. I know I can trust you to strike an appropriate balance.’
‘Jesus, the travel. I hadn’t even thought …’
Bryn trailed off. Nothing on earth could afford less pleasure than business travel to the places van Ween had outlined. He’d heard nightmare stories – true stories – about bankers stranded on an airfield someplace in Russia, minus fifteen outside and falling, the plane’s pilot pointing to an empty fuel gauge, telling the Westerners to buy fuel or stay grounded. Mobile phone two thousand kilometres from the nearest signal. Company Amex card a stupid joke. Dollops of cash, pushed across a table in a green-painted hut; men shouting in an alien language, arguing over maps and cash and vodka; and all the time the temperature outside falling.
‘I hadn’t even thought about the travel.’
‘As I say, I know you’ll want to talk it through with your wife …’
Those words – ‘your wife’ – almost sent an unaccustomed spurt of tears through Bryn’s rusted-up tear ducts. His wife. He’d had his problems with Cecily, no question, but she was his wife – or, rather, had been. He felt desolate and betrayed. ‘There’s nothing else?’
‘We’d like you to work with Rudy Saddler as his number two, if you could see your way to sorting things out with him. But either way … it’s your call. Let me know when you’ve talked to your wife. Cecily, isn’t it?’
‘Yes. Cecily.’ Bryn was stuck in his seat for a moment, cloddish and uncertain. He was a skilled negotiator, but van Ween was no pushover and van Ween held all the aces. Bryn could give up half his empire and more than half his glory to a newcomer he didn’t get on with, or travel the world’s least glamorous corners slogging his guts out for a penny here, a nickel there. ‘Thanks, Pieter. I’ll think about it. Get back to you.’
There was a third option which neither of them mentioned but both were aware of. Bryn could call a headhunter. Clear out. See what he could get somewhere else. It didn’t feel great, but it was an option.
‘OK.’ It was a dismissal, but friendly. ‘And believe me, Bryn. You have a good career here. Think long-term. Don’t make the mistake of moving on because of – because of a hiccup.’
‘Yeah. OK.’ He stood up to go.
Van Ween watched him carefully, appraising his man, knowing that Bryn’s ‘yeah, OK’ was as good as meaningless.
‘And Bryn, I understand your frustration, but we’ve put a real offer on the table. We won’t be sympathetic if … if you choose to head elsewhere.’
Bryn understood van Ween’s meaning. As with any senior banker, much of Bryn’s wealth was tied up in deferred bonuses, a hostage kept to encourage loyalty. The money was Bryn’s as long as he stayed with the bank, but it became the bank’s money if he chose to quit. Sometimes, if the bank nudged people out, it was generous, it decided not to add to the misery by hanging on to the precious cash. But van Ween was telling Bryn not to hope. If Bryn called a headhunter and quit, he’d wave goodbye to three quarters of a million pounds.
2
‘There’s one more here. The last of our hepatitis controls.’
‘Oh no, really?’ exclaimed Cameron. ‘That’s too bad.’
She went over to the cage – hardly a cage, even, more like a rat playground, full of fluffy white sawdust, plastic toys, feeding trays and hidey holes. The last of its inhabitants lay stretched out, nose just poking out of the darkened night area. Cameron snapped off her latex gloves, opened the cage door and reached in, picking out the little white corpse and stroking it, smoothing its whiskers. ‘Dammit,’ she said. ‘It’s Freddie. We didn’t need that. I was hoping that at least Freddie would survive.’
Cameron’s lab assistant, a delightful graduate student called Kati Larousse, rubbed Cameron’s shoulder and said gently, ‘At least it improves the stats, Cameron. And the experiment’s over now. This is the one hundred and eightieth day.’
‘We didn’t need the stats to look any better. They’re good enough already. Hell. I wish I’d stopped all this at a hundred and twenty days. Even ninety. We were way into statistical significance already by then.’
Larousse gave her boss a hug. ‘You’re the only researcher in the world who’d react like this. You carry out the most successful animal experiment ever undertaken in this field, and all you do is worry about your controls dying on you.’
‘How are the others?’
Cameron reached for the door to the neighbouring cage. A sign above it read ‘Herpes’, along with warnings about animal handling.
‘Gloves, Cameron. Careful.’
‘Damn my gloves.’
Cameron reached into the cage. This group of rats had been deliberately infected with the herpes virus one hundred and eighty days ago, and all but four were now dead. The ones that were still alive were lethargic and glassy-eyed, about to follow the twenty-six rats that had preceded them to the pearly gates. Cameron stroked the rats regretfully, apologetically even.
‘How about the others?’ she asked after a while.
‘HIV, you know. All dead. Hantavirus and Ebola virus, we’ve got eight and six left respectively.’
‘And the treated rats? No problems there?’
Larousse moved to the cages on the opposite wall. The cages were identical, except for one thing. The rats weren’t dead, they weren’t even dying. One hundred and eighty days before, they had all been injected with the exact same deadly viruses that the control groups had received, but nothing had happened. The rats bounced around their cages, coats glossy, eyes sparkling, squabbling over toys and fighting their way through tunnels and up ladders, like so many healthy puppies. They didn’t know it, but they owed their lives to Cameron’s Immune Reprogramming. Larousse used her hands to check inside the sleeping area, but they came away empty.
‘Nothing. No problems at all. Oh, except that this one has lost part of its tail.’
Cameron inspected the rat. It was thinner than the others, a constant target of playground bullying. ‘Benito. Shame. He had such a nice tail.’
Larousse let her boss linger round the cages a little longer before interrupting. The end of an experiment is the busiest part, collecting all the data which records the precise success or failure of the work. ‘I guess I should start taking blood samples from all the survivors?’
‘Right. Get it centrifuged and refrigerated. We can begin the lab analysis tomorrow.’
‘OK, sure. And … the controls, Cameron. These little guys are dying. You want me to …?’
‘Oh, sure, yes, of course. I mean, right away.’
‘How do you want me to do it?’ Larousse was gentle. Most experimenters didn’t care what happened to their animals at the end of an experiment, but Cameron Wilde wasn’t like that. There were different injections you could give to put a rat to sleep, and Cameron was bound to have views on the kindest method.
‘You know,’ said Cameron, ‘exactly like we did the others.’
‘I don’t understand. We didn’t do the others. They just died.’
Cameron stared at her assistant, slowly understanding what she had meant. ‘Oh, no. We’re not putting them down, Kati. I’d never … No way. We’re going to try and get the little guys well. Build them up again. We’re going to do the full Immune Reprogramming on all of them.’
‘Do the whole thing?’ Larousse was astonished. After a long and complex development period, Cameron’s Immune Reprogramming technique had been put to the test in this one amazing experiment. Nothing in scientific history had ever worked better – not on rats, anyway – but it was still time-consuming, laborious and expensive. ‘Do we have the funds, even?’
Cameron’s eyes flashed with anger. ‘I don’t care if we’ve got the funding. I’m not going to let these little guys die just because we can’t be bothered to cure them. Christ, if we don’t owe it to them by now … We’re going to get them better, and then they’re all going to go off to PEACH. If I can’t afford that, I’ll keep the little guys myself.’ PEACH was the Post-Experiment Animal Care Hostel – a pricey but deluxe outfit run by a couple of dedicated Boston animal-lovers.
‘Yeah, sure, Cameron. That’s fine. Actually, I’m delighted. That’s great news. God, I love working with you.’
Cameron stared around the room. Since the discovery of penicillin, medical history has all been about the search for the magic bullet: pills which wipe out a bug, leaving everything else intact. With bacteria, the search was successful. One by one, killer diseases like tuberculosis, scarlet fever, whooping cough and diphtheria began to fade out of existence – slain by the magic bullets of antibiotics. There was a time when scientists were optimistic that all diseases would follow suit, that infectious disease would literally be eliminated.
But then the failures began. Viruses began to shrug off vaccinations. Bacteria grew resistant to antibiotics. New diseases sprang up out of nowhere. Scientists don’t say so out loud, but they’re worried. The drugs companies won’t admit it, but their bullets are failing.
Cameron wasn’t surprised. The way she figured it, drugs can never defeat infectious disease. Bacteria reproduce every twenty minutes, five hundred generations in a week. In the time it takes a new drug to be developed, approved and marketed, the bacteria it was designed to kill have evolved far, far away from the original specimens.
Cameron’s alternative was simple. What’s the only known way of killing all viruses and all bacteria, no matter how weird and wonderful, no matter how foreign or strange? Answer: the human body. Most of the time, our bodies deal with everything: viruses and bacteria, prions and moulds, insect bites and toxins. You can put fifty people in a room packed full of influenza virus, but only five of them will come down with flu – the five who are stressed, or unhappy, or malnourished, or sleep-deprived, or recovering from some other illness. The other forty-five just deal with it.
And that was Cameron’s answer. To reprogram the human immune system to deal with its failures. To teach the immune system to do what it does best. This had been her mission in life ever since entering Harvard Medical School as an exceptionally gifted sixteen-year-old. Now aged just twenty-nine, she had carried out the most ambitious experiment in the history of viral disease, and come away with the most brilliant results ever achieved. But that was rats. The next step was to repeat the trick with humans.
Cameron looked at the rat cages once again: the empty ones where the controls had been, the others where the treated rats hurtled round in skidding clouds of sawdust.
‘Let’s make this the last animal experiment we ever do, OK, Kati?’
Larousse grinned approval as she busied herself with needles and collection bottles. ‘Have you thought more about publication?’ she asked.
‘Uh-huh,’ said Cameron. ‘The Journal of the American Academy of Medicine are quite keen, I think.’
‘Keen? They’ll bite your hand off.’
‘I hope so. The next phase of this is going to be pricey. We’ll need a decent write-up to secure our funding.’
Larousse put down her rats, needles and bottles.
‘Listen,’ she said. ‘There are a hundred and fifty rats in this room who ought to be dead or dying, and just look at them. Not a trace of disease. None of them. Not in half a year. Your problem isn’t going to be getting money. It’ll be how to fight it off.’
Larousse was wrong, of course. Dead wrong. As wrong as wrong could be. But don’t blame her. Larousse was a scientist, and what do they know about money?
