Dead End Read online

  ‘We got a sudden problem here, Dwight?’ asked Grant.

  Newton’s stomach dipped again. ‘We need to consider the company and its global reputation, don’t we?’

  ‘Always,’ said Grant, at once.

  ‘That’s what I’m doing.’

  ‘Of course you are,’ said Grant, the smile as tight as the bitten-off words. ‘How about this? It’ll take a while to get French licensing approval. You finish off what you feel you have to do in the laboratory while Paris goes through the formalities. That way we’re on the block ready to take off the moment we get the go ahead.’

  He was a puppet in a responsibility-clearing performance, accepted the research vice president: the decision had already been made to go ahead with manufacture for Africa. ‘What happens if I don’t confirm Saby’s insistence on the preservative?’

  ‘I’ve already given you my word, Dwight. We scrap everything.’

  ‘That’s what I have, your word?’

  ‘That’s what you have: what you’ve always had.’

  ‘OK,’ agreed Newton, as he’d known he would agree from the beginning.

  ‘We’ve got other things to talk about,’ announced Grant, hand on the familiar, although expanded, file to the left of his desk.

  ‘Security put a trace on Rebecca Lang’s office phone,’ started Newton, knowing what Grant expected. ‘Got the full transcript of a conversation with the girl she talks to in Paris, Stephanie Paruch …’

  Grant pulled the extract from the file, flicking the edge of the paper with an irritated finger. ‘Your great mystery,’ he paraphrased. ‘I’m going to keep on until I find out … known here as a smoking gun … You know the trouble with guns, Dwight? They go off and hurt people. That’s when they smoke.’

  Newton hesitated, briefly unsure how to respond. He took his own copy of the transcript from his briefcase and, reading from it, quoted: ‘It’s the talk of the division here. Benn and Newton have locked themselves away: haven’t been seen for days. It’s got to be something big …’ He looked up. ‘I don’t like that, my name being on the record. I don’t like that at all.’

  ‘What about Parnell?’ Grant hurried on.

  ‘Caught Benn in the elevator a day or two back. Asked him outright what was going on.’

  ‘What did Russell say?’

  ‘That it was an experiment that wasn’t working out.’

  ‘Parnell accept that?’

  ‘Asked if pharmacogenomics were going to get a look at it. Russ said there wasn’t any point.’

  Grant sat silently for a long time, the only sound the increasingly rapid click of his irritated flicking against the paper edge. Finally he said: ‘Is it true, what she said? That it’s the talk of the division?’ There was an unquestionable benefit, repeating the questions he’d already put to Harry Johnson, the security director with whom he was talking, personally and only ever one-to-one, with increasing frequency …

  ‘It’s not my reading. Or Benn’s. Security – Harry, personally – are tapping all outgoing calls from the floor. I’ve told them we suspect a competitor informer. Rebecca Lang’s the only person who’s shown any interest in France – spoken to Paris, even.’

  ‘Not Parnell?’

  ‘No. But they’ve got to be talking, haven’t they? They can’t just screw all the time.’

  ‘She’s a goddamned nuisance!’ angrily declared the Dubette president, who’d had a contradictory conversation with Harry Johnson, whose professional experience and opinion he trusted more than an amateur like Newton.

  ‘You think I should officially warn her off?’

  ‘No!’ refused Grant, still angry. ‘That’ll just make her more curious.’ She certainly had to be stopped. It was not something to discuss with Newton. Not even, he thought, with Johnson. There were special people he employed for special things.

  ‘What then?’

  ‘Just finish off what you’ve got to …’ Grant brightened. ‘Looks like France came up with a good one. Had the figures calculated. We stop the piracy, reduce it even, in Africa and Asia, we could save as much as ten million dollars in a full year. And that could even translate into a matching loss to our opposition, if they become the alternative targets. That’s a damned good day’s work …’ There was an abrupt reflective darkening. ‘And why it isn’t going to be jeopardized …’

  ‘You want security to go on watching her?’

  ‘Keep the telephone taps on, throughout the department. Hers particularly. And obviously keep an eye on Parnell. Leave me to worry about everything else. And Dwight…?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You’re doing a hell of a good job.’

  That morning Newton didn’t make the mistake of trying to leave through the wrong door.

  ‘Sorry I haven’t got back to you before now,’ apologized Newton.

  ‘Not a lot for us to discuss so far,’ accepted Parnell.

  ‘Enough,’ said the vice president. ‘You seem to have everything parcelled up pretty efficiently.’ Newton hadn’t set out intending this meeting. His mind hadn’t gone beyond the New York encounter and what there was to discuss with Edward C. Grant. It was only afterwards, on the return Washington shuttle, when he was still very much thinking of that discussion and Grant’s numbing cynicism during it – and of his openly being named on the security eavesdrop – that the idea came of personally speaking to Parnell. And trying to assess what suspicion or curiosity the Englishman might disclose.

  ‘Still a long way to go.’ Why the sudden summons, after playing the invisible man?

  ‘Looks to me like you’re working to an agenda.’

  ‘Trying to create one that’s practical,’ qualified Parnell. ‘I thought the best initial contribution we might try was on some of the most current research, to complete an entire package.’

  Was that a veiled reference to Paris? ‘Sounds a sensible approach. How many have you got in mind?’

  Parnell was sure he prevented the frown. ‘Those that I’ve already memoed you about.’

  ‘Sure,’ said Newton, awkwardly, gesturing to a disordered pile of paper on his desk. ‘You think there’s anything likely?’

  ‘Nothing that’s leapt out of the petrie dish at us, but then we neither of us expect Archimedes-style discoveries, do we?’

  Newton forced the smile, sure the other man was mocking him. ‘Still be nice.’

  ‘The exchange system appears to be working well, between Russell’s section and mine.’

  That had to be a reference to France. ‘Sure you won’t be overwhelmed?’

  ‘No,’ answered Parnell, honestly. ‘That’s why we’re working to an agenda, trying to keep up to speed with what’s ongoing, allowing space to go back to earlier stuff when we’re able.’

  He had to force it along, Newton decided. ‘I’m afraid Russ has been a little preoccupied lately. Me, too.’

  ‘He told me.’ The quick halt was intentional, to lure Newton into saying more.

  ‘Turned out to be a waste of time. It’s all being scrapped,’ insisted Newton.

  Parnell didn’t believe Newton any more than he’d believed Russell Benn. ‘Gastrointestinal is where pharmacogenomics might have a real place.’

  The son of a bitch was trying to trick him! ‘It was respiratory. A decongestant.’

  ‘Of course! Russell told me. My mistake.’

  ‘You think of any way things could be improved for you?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Parnell. ‘Might suggest closer contact between Russell and myself in the future. But not yet. The backlog’s too big. You sure there’s no purpose in my having a different look at the respiratory experiments?’

  ‘None,’ said Newton, positively. ‘That’s a principle I work from here, Dick. We don’t waste time with failed ideas. It doesn’t work, we scrap it, move on.’

  ‘I’ll remember that,’ said Parnell. What was the point of all this?

  ‘Maybe we should have lunch together again soon.’

  �
�Good idea now that you can raise your head from the microscope. I look forward to it.’

  Another reference, isolated Newton. ‘We’ll do it real soon.’ There very definitely had to be another early-morning trip to New York – arranged from a public kiosk, he reminded himself. Every phone on the research floor was being security monitored.

  From the way the Toyota was parked, Parnell saw the damage when he was still some yards away, despite the twilight. The damage began at the passenger door but was worse on the nearside wing, the dents deep enough to have broken a lot of paint. He looked for a culprit’s note under the windscreen wipers. There wasn’t one.

  ‘Shit,’ he said. He yanked at the nearside wheel, which felt secure enough. He drove slowly through the near-empty car park, satisfying himself there was no wheel damage before he reached the highway.

  In the apartment, he made the single evening drink he allowed himself, a strong gin and tonic, briefly undecided but finally ringing Rebecca.

  ‘You coming to the house?’ she asked at once.

  ‘Just wanted to talk.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Some bastard drove into my car, in the car park.’

  ‘Did they leave a note?’

  ‘No such luck.’

  ‘How bad?’

  ‘Passenger door and wing. The damage kind of goes around to the front, which is slightly buckled.’

  ‘You told security?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘You should,’ she insisted.

  ‘I will,’ emptily promised Parnell.

  ‘Don’t put it off.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  ‘I’m looking forward to the weekend.’

  ‘So am I.’

  ‘You really mean that?’ she asked.

  ‘I really mean it.’

  ‘I love you.’

  ‘I love you too,’ said Parnell, once again wishing he didn’t have so much difficulty saying the words.

  Ten

  Rebecca insisted it was her decision how they spent the weekend, although it was limited to Sunday. She arrived early at Washington Circle and told Parnell to dress in jeans and a work shirt. She refused coffee, which she’d already delayed herself by making in Bethesda. As usual she refused to start the engine until he fastened his seat belt.

  ‘Now I’m strapped in, tell me where we’re going.’

  ‘Out into the great big country that you’ve never seen,’ said Rebecca.

  ‘What if I don’t like it?’

  ‘Too bad. You’re being kidnapped.’

  She drove him, in fact, to Chesapeake Bay to eat the in-season, bite-sized soft-shelled crabs with a pitcher of beer. Despite the jeans and work shirt, Parnell got glued and dirty from the shakers of glutinous salt and herb flavourings and couldn’t properly clean himself up, even in the washroom.

  Rebecca said: ‘You think any clean-living, respectable girl would get into bed with someone looking like you do?’

  ‘No,’ said Parnell. ‘But the food would be worth the abstinence. And you’ve got grunge all around your face, too. I’ll try to develop a treatment for it.’

  ‘I’ve beaten you!’ Rebecca declared, triumphantly.

  ‘I’m getting accustomed to it,’ acknowledged Parnell, in weak protest. ‘Beaten me to what, exactly?’

  ‘The guided tour. You know your way from Washington DC to McLean, North Virginia, and from Washington Circle to Georgetown, and that’s it. Until today. Congratulations! You pushed the covered wagon out beyond the stockade, and hostile Indians aren’t firing arrows.’

  ‘They didn’t three hundred years ago. Our settlers fired on them first.’

  ‘Book learning!’ she refused. ‘This is your first great step for mankind.’

  Parnell scrubbed his face with a gritty, crumpled paper towel, but didn’t feel any improvement. ‘So, I’m not much fun, eh?’

  ‘Severely limited.’

  ‘Why’d you stay?’ He felt safe with the question because the conversation was light, unendangering, although embarrassingly he recognized that Rebecca was making a deserved complaint.

  ‘We crossed the boundary. Made the commitment we always held back from. Which we still seem to be holding back from.’

  ‘I could blame work. But I won’t.’

  ‘Good. You changed your mind?’

  ‘No. I wasn’t sure if you might have done.’ That wasn’t entirely true, he admitted to himself.

  ‘You could have asked.’

  ‘You keep nagging and I will blame work.’

  ‘You do that and I’ll know you’ve changed your mind.’

  ‘You ever think of studying law rather than science? You’d have made a great prosecuting attorney.’

  ‘That how it sounds to you, a prosecution?’

  The lightness was going, as he’d feared it would. ‘No, that’s not how it sounds at all. I’m sorry and I’m wrong and I have put work before anything else, before you, and that’s badly wrong, too.’ It was at Rebecca’s urging that he’d imposed a permanent Sunday-off edict and a seven-at-night finish, despite which people still often remained later at their benches, Parnell the latest stayer of all.

  Silence encompassed them in a restaurant that was no more than a bare, trestle-tabled shack with a pier that thrust out into the bay and in which they sat with hands and faces tightening with the glue of the flavouring salt. They laughed, unprompted but simultaneously, reached out sticky fingers and Parnell said: ‘How the hell did that build up!’

  Rebecca said: ‘I planned it. Angry at me?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’ve got to go on now. I don’t have any words.’

  Parnell wasn’t sure he had, either. ‘Are we talking marriage …?’

  ‘No!’ The quickness – and vehemence – of the rejection visibly startled him and Rebecca said: ‘This really isn’t the place to have this sort of conversation.’

  Parnell wasn’t sure what sort of conversation they were having. ‘Your choice. You take it.’

  Rebecca slid her hand away from his, holding both of hers tightly before her, staring down at them as if they held some message. ‘Yes. It is my choice.’

  Aware of her tension, he said: ‘I don’t want to go on with this, not here, not now. Not if you don’t want to.’

  She said: ‘This was supposed to be a day out! How the fuck did it get to this?’

  ‘Let’s stop,’ he said.

  ‘No!’ Rebecca refused again, still vehement, but just as abruptly stopped.

  Parnell waited.

  ‘You want to go on: us, I mean?’ she said finally.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You can’t decide that yet.’

  Parnell saw that Rebecca’s knuckles were whitening, so hard was she gripping one hand against the other, and there were shudders rippling through her. ‘Don’t, darling. Whatever it is, don’t.’

  Rebecca’s words came out in spurts. ‘I have to. Everything has to be clear, out in the open. I had a relationship. Two years ago. Got pregnant. He wasn’t sure, so I had a termination. That’s why I have to be sure now. I’ve done all the pushing and I wish I hadn’t now and today is a total fucking mess and I’m sorry I ever started it and I …’

  ‘… wish you’d shut up,’ interrupted Parnell.

  Rebecca did.

  He stretched across the table and took her clenched hands once more, prising them open, stroking them. ‘Don’t be frightened.’

  ‘I wanted you to know.’

  ‘Now I do.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And nothing.’ Now he was talking child-talk.

  ‘Say something! Anything!’

  ‘I’ve been selfish about us. I’m sorry. There’s life beyond – far beyond – Dubette. I’m angry at myself for getting ensnared in their system.’

  ‘It’s insidious.’

  ‘I was the guy determined not to get caught up in the spider’s web, remember?’

  ‘So you forgot for a moment.’

  �
��Do I get out of the stockade every weekend?’

  ‘You haven’t said anything about …?’ she started but trailed off, unable to finish.

  ‘I’m sorry to say it if you loved him, but I think he was an idiot. But I’m glad because I met you.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘I’m sure.’

  Parnell did his best to fill the silences on the drive back to Washington, falling back upon exaggerated anecdotes from Cambridge and England, intentionally avoiding any references to Dubette but recognizing as he did so how blinkered he had become in his total absorption with work. They finally washed away the salt residue at his apartment and decided they didn’t want to eat again. Parnell suggested a movie but Rebecca said she didn’t feel like it, and when Parnell asked if she was staying, looked down at her stained shirt and said she hadn’t brought a change of clothes for the morning.

  ‘As it seems to have been a day for decisions, perhaps another one should be where we’re going to live,’ he declared.

  She remained looking at him unspeaking for what seemed a long time. Then, almost in a whisper, she said: ‘You asking me to move in?’

  Parnell supposed he was, although he hadn’t intended the words to come out quite as they had. ‘They say you don’t properly get to know a person until you live with them.’

  ‘Bethesda’s bigger than here. And there’s the garden. The commute’s about the same.’

  Parnell wasn’t sure he wanted to move away from the convenience of the city. ‘Why don’t we try both places, see which we prefer?’

  ‘Starting when?’

  ‘Whenever.’

  ‘OK,’ she agreed. ‘Here first? Maybe Bethesda at the weekends, to keep the place lived in.’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Help me move my stuff in tomorrow, right after work? With two cars we could probably manage it in one trip.’

  He really had made a commitment, Parnell realized. ‘Let’s do that.’

  Rebecca left Washington Circle promising to start packing that night, and Parnell was glad to be alone, wanting to think, although he didn’t exactly know about what. At last he told himself to stop being stupid, because he knew exactly what it was. It was being permanently with, living with, sharing with, Rebecca. Which came down, quite simply and logically, to loving her. So, did he? He didn’t know. Or wasn’t sure. That was better. He wasn’t sure. He enjoyed being with her and wasn’t attracted to anyone else, and he actually liked the idea of their living together. But did that amount to being in love: was it sufficient for them to be together? It was a commitment. But it wasn’t irrevocable. In fact, what they were doing was probably the best thing, the sensible thing. It would give them both the time and the opportunity properly to decide if there was enough between them to make it permanent. To marry. Perhaps he should change the way he was thinking, selfishly rather than objectively. What about how Rebecca felt? Or would feel? Among a lot of other things today, there had been some long overdue self-awareness.