“I’m sorry, it’s our policy to—”
“I’ll give you a phone number. Call it and explain your policy to the federal agents who will—”
He cuts her off by holding up a hand in surrender.
Yeah, she really was good.
He exhaustedly motions for us to move along. At the final checkpoint we’re handed visitors’ passes, and one of the sentries, a mountain of a man who must weigh at least three hundred pounds, tells us he will escort us to Dr. Colette’s office.
I jot something on the clipboard. A shopping list, actually, but taking notes is a way to mess with him, to show that Charlene and I will be the ones calling the shots and not him. “Yes. Please”—I gesture toward the hallway, indicating for him to lead us—“take us to Dr. Colette.”
Brandy
“Thank you for seeing me, Mr. Vice President.”
“Of course.”
Cyrus had been at the White House to meet with other high-level administration employees a dozen times, the vice president half a dozen. He wasn’t a lobbyist, but he’d been consulted about the ongoing health care legislation debate and the issue of counterfeit pharmaceuticals — a growing problem, especially the ones being smuggled in from southeast Asia.
And of course, anyone who’d donated as much to a presidential campaign as Cyrus had personally done, and as RixoTray had corporately done, was welcome at the White House. It was the way the system was set up, the way institutes of power have always operated. Money speaks. And the more of it there is, the more loudly it’s heard.
“Have a seat, Cyrus,” the vice president invited. “Would you like a drink?”
Of course, it was too early to begin drinking socially, but the vice president was not a coffee kind of guy. Not many people knew how early he typically got started on his brandy each day, but he had not kept it from Cyrus.
“Cognac. Thank you.”
“Good choice.”
Over the last couple years, they’d occasionally discussed the fact that the vice president hadn’t gotten his party’s nomination last time around, but it wasn’t a topic he liked to address, so Cyrus typically refrained from bringing it up. But with the election next year, and considering the nature of his visit here today, he decided to address it, at least tangentially.
As the vice president produced an elegant bottle of cognac from his desk and poured each of them a drink, Cyrus said, “So, Hoult is already in election mode?”
Vice President Pinder brought Cyrus his drink. “You know how these things go,” he said evasively. “Now, before we get down to business, how is Helen?”
“She’s good. Luci Ann?”
“As beautiful, supportive, and as much of a shopaholic as ever.”
Cyrus raised his glass. “To our wives.”
“To our wives.”
They clinked glasses. Drank.
The cognac was extraordinary, and Cyrus complimented the vice president on it.
“Camus Cognac Cuvee 3.128, rated by many connoisseurs as the best cognac in the world. We have only so many heartbeats, my friend. It’d be a shame to waste any of them on cheap brandy.”
They both drank for a moment. Cyrus knew they didn’t have a lot of time to talk, especially since this meeting had gotten started late, but he also knew that etiquette required that he not jump immediately into discussing business.
“So”—Pinder was the one to break the silence—“how is the telomerase research going? Have you come up with a cure for aging yet? A way to offer me a few more of those heartbeats?”
“Working on it. We’ve started clinical trials. Another year or so and we’re hoping to have FDA approval.”
“Well, I’d ask to be one of your human guinea pigs, but I think I’ll wait until you get the kinks out.”
“Probably a good idea.”
A small smile. “Hopefully, I’ll still be around to benefit from it.”
“Hopefully, we both will.”
They sipped their drinks, then the vice president moved things forward: “I’m guessing you’re here about the speech.”
Cyrus set down his glass. “You know the president’s new initiatives will not serve the American people: the proposals regarding the expedited release of generic pharmaceuticals.”
The vice president scratched at the back of his neck, then stood. “Let me play devil’s advocate here for a moment, Cyrus. Pharmaceutical companies are some of the most profitable companies in the world. Every year they post billions of dollars of profits while millions of working-class Americans struggle under the exorbitant price of prescription drugs. Making generics more readily available could save thousands of lives each year.”
Prolong, not save.
Rule #1: Everyone dies.
Rule #2: There’s nothing you can do to change Rule #1.
Cyrus had heard all this before. “Actually, pharmaceutical firms aren’t as profitable as most people think. Oil companies, tech firms, insurance companies, banks all have higher profit margins. Big business has always been an easy target for liberals to take potshots at. You know that.”
The vice president rolled his shot glass back and forth in his fingers reflectively.
Cyrus continued, “Also, the Food and Drug Administration has made it harder than ever to get new, life-saving drugs onto the market. Out of a thousand compounds studied in prediscovery and then put through a decade of preclinical and clinical trials, only one will ever become an FDA-approved drug. The R&D costs are—”
“Yes, yes, I know. Astronomical.”
“The FDA allows generics to be up to twenty times less effective in crossing the blood-brain barrier than trade-name pharmaceuticals. So when you’re talking about anticonvulsants, mood stabilizers, and antidepressants, the public ends up suffering the consequences. Not to mention that 10 percent of generics are inert.”
Vice President Pinder sighed. “Cyrus, I am on your side on all this, always have been. But the president isn’t going to change his mind. At this point there’s really nothing I can do.”
“But if you could?”
“If I could?”
“If you could make it easier for us to get our pharmaceutical products to the public without the added restrictions the president wants to put on the industry, would you? If you could keep producers of generic pharmaceuticals from taking advantage of our research and then undercutting us on the price, would you do it?”
“I’ve always done all I can to support scientific innovation and the advancement of pharmaceuticals for the betterment of the American people.”
“Yes.”
“So are you asking that I speak with the president about this? Because I assure you that he’s not going to back down. He is quite firm on what he intends to do.”
Cyrus knew the president wouldn’t back down. That wasn’t what he’d come here to talk about. “We could really use someone at the top who sees things more clearly than Hoult does. Who realizes that without our R&D, the life-saving drugs would never exist in the first place, that we need time to recoup our investment before we’re undercut by generics.”
“Once again we are on the same page.”
The vice president laid his hand on the desk and gently massaged the elegant wood as if it were the skin of his lover, who Cyrus knew was not Luci Ann, his beautiful, supportive, shopaholic wife.
Varied love interests.
Something else the two of them had in common.