Читать книгу Sweet Talking Money - Harry Bingham - Страница 19

To begin with, the only sign of the craziness which had come over him was a very rapid beating of his hand on the table, accompanied elsewhere by the focused stillness of concentrated thought. For three whole minutes, he stood there, oblivious of Cameron, unconscious of the world.

Then: ‘I’m a bloody fool!’

‘Excuse me?’

‘Fool,’ said Bryn, thumping his chest. ‘Moron. Cretin. Idiot. You mentioned an ethics committee. Tell me about it.’

‘I don’t know. Where bad scientists go to be interrogated, I guess.’

Bryn shook his head and stared wildly at her. ‘Kati. Your co-worker, Kati. Can we go and see her?’

‘It’s gone midnight.’

‘Is it? Damn. Well, come on then. There’s no time to lose.’

Cameron had no car, so they took a taxi over to her offices. The night was freezing, and frost sparkled on the grass. Above them, the sky was bright with stars, but a dark band in the north spoke of a weather front moving in.

‘Do you mind letting me know what’s going on?’ Cameron hurried along in Bryn’s turbulent wake, frightened by his bulldozer energy but also reassured.

‘Due diligence,’ said Bryn, storming up the steps leading to Larousse’s apartment. ‘That’s banker-speak for look before you buy.’

‘Honestly, she’ll be asleep,’ said Cameron. ‘Can’t we wait?’

‘Uh-uh,’ Bryn disagreed, pressing the doorbell solid for fifteen seconds. ‘She’s awake.’

A bleary Larousse came to the door in tartan flannel pyjamas, and stumbled through to her small living room, blinking to get the sleep from her eyes. She was one of those enviable souls, pretty even when caught in the worst possible moment. Clear-skinned and petite beneath a mass of dark-rosewood curls, she twisted her hair into a tie at the back so that it hung in a Pre-Raphaelite halo around her face. Cameron’s looks worsened in contrast. It wasn’t that there was so much wrong with her – apart from maybe her limp, mousy hair drooping down in front of her eyes – but she seemed to want invisibility, to avoid being looked at or admired. Bryn obeyed the silent instruction and concentrated his gaze on Larousse.

Cameron talked her through the events of the past few hours, ending with the broken-hearted admission: ‘They don’t believe us. They think we cheated. We’re under investigation, Kati … Oh, Kati!’

Bryn studied her carefully as Cameron recounted the story, but it was absolutely plain that Larousse was totally shocked, stunned by the very suggestion that they might have twisted their facts. Larousse and Cameron huddled up on the sofa together, cuddling and tearful. Bryn was almost totally sure of what he was about to do, but there was one last check he wanted to make.

‘Cameron, would you mind getting me some coffee, please?’

Larousse looked hard at her visitor. Cameron had barely introduced him and here he was, like some bear out of the Maine forest, bursting into her apartment at one in the morning, ordering her boss to make him coffee. ‘I’ll go,’ she said, starting to get up.

‘No. Please. I want a word alone. I have three – no four – questions to ask you privately. Cameron, would you mind …’

Cameron left to go into the kitchen, and Bryn turned to stare directly at Larousse.

‘OK. First question. Did you and Cameron cheat on that experiment? In any way at all? At any time?’

Colour rose in the young scientist’s face. ‘No. Absolutely not. Never. No way.’

‘OK. Good. I believe you, but I needed to ask. Second question. Your Immune Reprogramming worked on rats. Are you sure you can get it to work on humans? I mean, assuming you’ve got time and money.’

Larousse wetted her lips. It was unnerving, this giant man, his unwavering stare, his barely controlled intensity. ‘Not certain, no. Nothing in science is certain until you’ve done it. And one critical difference is that the peptide chains we rely on are species- and disease-specific.’

Bryn looked blank.

‘What I mean is, our Reprogramming works by using little bits of chemical code, which literally floats around the body instructing it how to fight disease. Trouble is, every species has got its own way of coding these things. That means all the work we’ve done on rats has to be done over with humans.’

‘So the answer is?’ prompted Bryn.

Larousse shrugged. ‘It’ll be a lot of work. The experimental protocols will be way more complex, for one thing. You can’t just give hepatitis to humans and see how they do. But I don’t want to be too cautious. I’d say we had every chance of success. Every chance in the world.’

Bryn nodded. It seemed like he hadn’t blinked since sending Cameron from the room. ‘Good. Third question. The way Cameron talks, you and she are on the cutting edge of research in this area. How do you know? Maybe there are scientists in, I don’t know, California, Germany, Japan who are ahead of you.’

‘Possible. That’s always possible. All I can say is, we’ve never heard anything of the sort. There are others in the field, of course, but no one even approaching our level of success. And then, of course …’

‘Of course?’

‘There’s Cameron. She’s not just good, you know. She’s extraordinary. Passed out in the top two per cent of every exam she’s ever taken. She got bored during her Harvard medical training – would you believe that? She got bored – and did a PhD in biochemistry at the same time. The same time. Without even telling them. It’s unbelievable. She’s not just good, she’s the best.’

Bryn breathed out and sat back. The glare left his eyes, and Larousse began to relax. Cameron, peering round the corner from the kitchen, re-entered the room.

‘A fourth question,’ said Larousse. ‘You said you had four questions.’

‘Right, you’re quite right. Kati, do you know anywhere round here we can get some pizza?’