She nodded. “And what salary would you be offering?”
“I had initially asked the board to clear an offer of two-fifty a year plus bonuses, but I revamped that yesterday, partly because we’ve had such a good first quarter.”
She waited a few seconds. “And what would the other part be?”
He looked confused for a second. “How’s that?”
“You said partly because of your earnings. That would indicate there’s another aspect.”
He smiled. “Yes, there is, Jennifer. The other part is simple. I want you at Veritas. I’m no fool. You are going to have a stack of offers to choose from once you’ve made your rounds of available employers, and I want you to pick us. That’s why I had the board okay an initial offer of three hundred and sixty thousand a year, plus bonuses.”
“What are the bonuses based on?” she asked, her mouth suddenly very dry.
“Timely Phase I and Phase II trials. We can sell a new drug in the pipeline to Wall Street once we have good Phase II results, and that buoys investor confidence. Even if we’re still five years from putting a new Alzheimer’s drug on the shelves, you’ll have earned every cent we’re paying you and your team in increased stock prices.”
“You sound confident I can deliver,” she said.
He shifted slightly in his chair, leaned his elbows on his desk, and steepled his fingers. “I have a lot of respect for anyone coming over from Marcon. Especially a team leader with eight years under her belt. Who knows what insights you’ve managed to garner over that eight years.”
Jennifer leaned back in her chair. This was the one constant in every interview she had had in the last two weeks. What was she bringing with her from Marcon? Did she have something that could translate to a fast-track Phase II trial? To date, her interviewer’s tactics in broaching the subject had varied from aggressive to mouselike. She liked Andrews’s approach-subtle, but on the table.
“I have some ideas that may seem a little out of the box,” she responded. “Would it bother you if my team were to investigate a new approach to the beta amyloid buildup?”
Andrews didn’t give anything away with his body language. “Not if the approach was well grounded. That’s how new drugs are discovered, Jennifer. By researchers thinking outside the box.”
She was thoughtful for a moment. “Should I assume that you’re offering me a position, Bruce?”
He nodded. “Yes. The salary I mentioned and six weeks holidays. Plus you’ll need to relocate to Richmond. We’ll cover all costs of your move, including the sale of your house.”
“All right,” she said. “I’ll give your offer serious consideration. I’d like to take about a week to make my decision. By, say, May twentieth. Does that work for you?”
“Absolutely,” Andrews said, rising from behind his desk and extending his hand. They shook, and he gave her a business card. “My direct line is on the card if you need to speak further.”
“Thanks,” she said.
Jennifer left BioTech Five feeling upbeat. She liked the building, the company, and she liked Bruce Andrews. And what he was offering was exactly what she was looking for: her own team, autonomy to move her research the direction she wanted, and excellent money. She knew Richmond a bit, having visited a few times, and she liked the city. It was vibrant and progressive, with a thriving theater scene. She would be leaving New Jersey and a lot of very good friends, but with six weeks holidays, she could visit home whenever she felt the urge. And with three-sixty plus bonuses, money wouldn’t be an issue.
She reached her rental car at the same time she reached a decision.
She was moving to Richmond.
12
BioTech Five was in its nightly hibernation, the tardiest lab techs gone for the weekend for over an hour. Hallways were dimly lit with emergency lighting and faint night-lights cast eerie shadows through the laboratories. Armed security guards sat chatting at the front doors, making their rounds on the top of each hour. A lone light burned in Bruce Andrews’s corner office.
Andrews’s exterior door opened quietly, then closed. A solitary figure, dressed entirely in black, crossed the carpet with stealth. The CEO felt another presence and turned away from his laptop. His visitor sat on the edge of the desk, a silenced pistol in hand.
“What the hell?” Andrews said, leaping from his chair.
“Sit down,” the man said, leaning forward into the glow from the computer monitor.
“Evan Ziegler,” Andrews said, an audible sigh escaping as he recognized his hired killer.“What’s with the theatrics? And what the hell are you doing here?”
“I’ve got a couple of questions, Bruce,” Evan said, the gun horizontal and unwavering.
“Evan, it’s incredibly dangerous for you to come here.”
“Dangerous for whom?” Evan asked. “I don’t see how coming here could be dangerous for me. Maybe for breaking and entering, but who’s going to press charges?”
Andrews sat and folded his arms on his chest. “What do you want, Evan?”
“I want some answers, Bruce. Like why do you have me killing people in your statin department? Perhaps you can explain to me how cholesterol drugs are tied in with brain chips.”
“You’re talking about Albert Rousseau,” Andrews said, his mind racing through his options. Trying to take Evan Ziegler by force was totally out of the question. The man was a killing machine, with or without the gun. Lying to him would only infuriate the man, and he already looked extremely pissed off. But telling him the truth wasn’t a good idea either. “Rousseau was getting ready to release information to the press unless we paid him off.”
“What sort of information?”
“Highly classified, Evan,” Andrews said, piecing together his train of thought as he went. “Rousseau was a researcher working on one of our cholesterol drugs, but he also had access to confidential computer systems outside his department. Someone was hacking into the highly secure files in our brain chip lab, and we traced it back to Rousseau’s computer. Once we suspected it was Rousseau, we attached a sniffer pack to his office and home computers and monitored both of them for over a month. There was no doubt in our minds that Albert Rousseau was preparing to either blackmail us or go to the press.”
“With what, Bruce? What are you hiding?”
Good question, Andrews thought. He didn’t have a clue. He was ad-libbing his way through this mess. Ziegler had caught him flat-footed. “Evan, we are moving through the exploratory stages of the brain chip development at an extreme pace. We are bypassing federal guidelines that insist we spend a certain amount of time on each of the Phase I tests. If we were to comply with the government regulations, it would add months, maybe years, to the development of a brain chip that will give your son upper-body movement. I’m pushing the envelope, Evan. And I’m sticking my neck out for Ben.”
The gun barrel angled down toward the carpet. “How did Rousseau get this information? I mean, if the systems are so secure.”
Andrews was relaxing now, knowing that he had disarmed the situation. “Come on, Evan, the guy was a computer programmer and a research scientist with master’s degrees in computers and microbiology. He was no dummy. Once he saw how we were circumventing the federal laws, he saw an opportunity. Whether he was going to go to the police or blackmail us, I have no idea. But we saw it coming and brought you in to stop him.”