‘Fine,’ said Parnell. ‘The waybill number attached to it?’ The box number, which he still didn’t know, should show on it.
‘I signed, in your name,’ said Johnson.
‘That’s irregular, isn’t it?’
‘Thought it was easier – more convenient.’
‘I’m a foreigner here, working by permission. I’m sure as hell not going to contravene postal regulations. Give it to me to countersign.’
Johnson hesitated before taking the folded document from his uniform breast pocket. The box number was 322 at McLean’s main post office. ‘Your signature’s not on the top copy. That’s the record of delivery.’
‘I’ll keep this one, as proof that it was delivered to me.’
Johnson shook his head in immediate, bureaucratic refusal. ‘It’s got to go in with all the other proper records. It’s regulations.’
At that moment Parnell saw Kathy Richardson returning to her office and gestured before she had time to sit down. When she entered he asked: ‘Make me a copy of that, will you?’ To Johnson he said: ‘There! That’ll satisfy everyone, won’t it?’
‘I guess,’ said the security head, tightly.
The man was red-faced from what Parnell guessed he saw as – and Parnell himself regarded as – the stupidity of the exchange, but the delay allowed the idea to form. The French parcel was heavily bound in protective adhesive tape, every open edge covered. Parnell said: ‘All we’ve got to do now is get into it. You got a knife, Harry?’
‘Sure,’ said the security man, taking the switchblade familiarly from his right rear pocket and snapping it open in the same movement.
Parnell’s first impulse was immediately to call Jackson with the disclosure of the security head’s further lie to the FBI investigators about never carrying a knife, but he held back, cautioned by his earlier conversation about proof and assumptions. Instead he personally unpacked the cut-open box, sorted the French samples and assembled the new and old formulae on his personal work space. It put his back to the doors and he was unaware of Beverley Jackson’s arrival until she spoke, startling him.
‘I’d like to talk to you, alone,’ she declared.
He ushered her back into his office, following, concerned the approach had something to do with the atmosphere in the department. ‘What’s the problem?’
‘I’ve been told I have to take a psychological test. I consider it an intrusion into my civil rights – that it even contravenes the constitution. Barry says it’s an argument that could be made. I’m going to refuse but I wanted you to know first. I don’t want to upset anything here. Do you object to my refusing?’
‘Of course I don’t.’
‘Why are you smiling?’
‘You talked to Barry today?’
‘I just told you I had.’
‘I had lunch with him. He obviously thought it was about this. When he realized it wasn’t he talked of client confidentiality. I thought you’d told him about the couple of times we’d been together and was worried you might be at risk, by association.’
Beverley smiled back. ‘I did tell him about it. He said he hoped I’d enjoyed it and to be careful, and I told him I would be. And I don’t give a damn about any risk by association.’
Twenty-Six
The hoped-against but expected HPRT mutations had begun in the newly delivered French products within the predicted two-hour timeframe in which it had registered in all Parnell’s earlier experiments, and by the following early morning, when Parnell arrived back at McLean, had become as overwhelming as before. He isolated all the cultures to be doubly verified by Dwight Newton and Russell Benn, and because Kathy Richardson wasn’t due for another two hours, he once more wrote his own emailed memoranda to both, inviting their comparison. He sent a separate email warning the vice president of the impending writs upon the two arresting Metro DC policemen, although saying nothing about involving Harry Johnson in the suit as a material witness.
Parnell worked knowing in a put-aside part of his mind that he was filling the time – as he’d tried to occupy the previous evening by going, long overdue, to Giorgio’s trattoria in Georgetown – to avoid trying to acknowledge the all-too-obvious inference from Beverley Jackson’s remark. She’d immediately retreated, discomfited, after saying it, and he’d tried to help by ignoring it, but it had hung between them like a reflecting, two-sided mirror, and for the first time since the creation of the unit, she’d left early, long before five. The one telephone call the previous night had been from his mother – providing the opportunity to warn her of the inevitable and renewed publicity of the civil writs – but not from Beverley, which he’d expected. Throughout the entire evening, even at Giorgio’s on what, he supposed, was a guilt-inspired visit, he’d mentally wrestled with the idea of calling Beverley, but hadn’t, not knowing what to say. Which he still didn’t.
There were already too many mazes and cul-de-sacs and dead ends to contemplate this further complication. More – altogether too much more – than a complication. It had only been weeks, recollectable days, since Rebecca had been murdered. It was inconceivable that he respond – which, most guiltily of all, he wanted to do – to Beverley’s clear innuendo, if not open invitation.
With the time difference between the United States and Europe to his advantage – and still wanting to fill that time – Parnell called Henri Saby before eight a.m. American time to tell the French chief executive of the complete and conclusive findings, which were initially received in silence.
At last the Frenchman said: ‘Are you going to experiment to isolate the rogue drug in the cocktail?’
‘No,’ said Parnell, at once. ‘If I’m asked, which I haven’t yet been, I am going to recommend the abandonment of the entire idea. It’s too unstable to be safe…’ He paused. ‘In fact I’m not going to wait to be asked. I am going to recommend it anyway.’
‘A lot of thought and effort was put into this… thought and effort that the president and parent board appreciated.’
‘Until it turned out as it did,’ rejected Parnell. ‘I’ve told you what my recommendation is going to be. Whether it’s accepted or not isn’t up to me.’ He’d make sure to find out if it was, though.
‘No,’ agreed Saby, heavily. ‘It’s not up to you.’
‘What about the recall?’ demanded Parnell. ‘Has every single thing been traced and recovered?’
‘Yes,’ said the Frenchman.
Too quick, decided Parnelclass="underline" the man had been waiting, tensed, for the question. ‘Every single thing?’
‘I just told you it has been.’
‘People – children – will die if it hasn’t been.’
‘I’ve just told you it has,’ insisted Saby.
‘Then Dubette – and your subsidiary – has nothing to worry about,’ said Parnell. ‘You must be relieved?’
‘Thank you, for what you’ve done,’ said Saby.
‘Let’s hope it’s enough,’ said Parnell, unconvinced. ‘I’d appreciate our keeping in touch, in case anything comes up.’
‘If anything comes up – and I must admit I don’t quite understand what that phrase means, precisely – I’ll keep in touch through Mr Newton, your superior,’ said the other man, officiously.
‘You do that,’ encouraged Parnell, refusing the condescension. ‘I’ll memo him today that you’ve positively guaranteed that everything has successfully been recovered, that there is no danger whatsoever to Dubette, but to expect immediately to hear from you if there are any further problems you haven’t anticipated. That should cover it, shouldn’t it?’
‘Your success has made you extremely confident, Mr Parnell.’
‘On the contrary, Monsieur Saby, what I discovered made me extremely concerned. As I imagine it did you and your research staff.’
Parnell sent his third email of the morning to Newton, setting out the conversation with Henri Saby and his recommendation that the proposal be abandoned and not pursued to eliminate the mutation-causing element in the cocktail. Parnell paused, in mid-composition, unsure whether to include his suspicion that Paris hadn’t recovered everything, but decided against what amounted to calling the French chief executive a liar.