"My first day in the office will be November fourth, but until then, I will be getting my messages, so please leave a message."
Leafing through the resume papers and the business plan, he discovered that Davis was a civil litigator specializing in the defense of class actions. The man was from Boston and had been with the Arthur amp; Taylor firm. The business plan made the point that he would be bringing some large clients. On the first page of the resume was a picture of Davis. He had a full head of hair, some graying, was clean shaven, and slightly paunchy. Unfortunately, Sam couldn't judge the man's height.
Sam took a deep breath, knowing what he was about to try was very risky. Quickly he found a restroom and re moved his entire disguise. After wetting his hair down com pletely, he combed as near as he could to Scott Davis. He went back to the woman's office. Next to the door was a plaque with the name Martha McConnell.
"Hi, Martha, I'm Scott Davis. You probably don't even remember me-"
"Oh yes," she said. "Of course. I was in the group of partners at Grady's Bar a month ago. Actually, I stopped by for just a minute and never got to shake your hand. You've done something to your hair. It looks great."
"Thanks. Probably the Grecian Formula." He gave her a toothy smile.
"What can I do for you?"
"Oh, I was just helping out Stewart on some stuff and needed to get into the fireproof cabinet."
"Oh sure. Gosh, it's really a cabinet in a big safe and they've locked it… I'm sure… but on a good day I can do the combination of… Just a minute…" She fished around in her top drawer. "We're not supposed to keep this, but everybody does, otherwise you have to go to Mary Weiss's desk and she always has it locked, so it's just one thing after another. They never give anybody a thing they need until a month after they've been here."
She got a key and her piece of paper and another smaller key and went back to the locked door. When she opened the door and turned on the lights, they encountered a huge file room.
"What is your kind of lawyer doing with patents?"
"I'm just a little weary of defending drug companies and car manufacturers. The big class actions require a lot of travel. Some of the patent claim litigation isn't all that technical that a guy can't learn it. Especially with Arthur Stewart around. Anyway, he thought I might be interested in this. It's about a plant from the Amazon, of all things."
"Never heard of it. But anything to do with the Amazon sounds interesting."
"I thought so."
He noticed that she was appraising him and that she wore no wedding ring. Recalling the resume and the profile materials pertaining to Scott Davis, he recalled that he had seen nothing about a wife.
"It's normal I suppose for you to work into the evening."
"You can tell I'm relatively young and I'm a junior part ner."
"What kind of work do you do?"
"Environmental litigation mainly. That's our end of the hall. The other is the estate planners. They're in another world."
"Aren't they, though."
"I guess you must be busy moving," she said as she walked toward a massive safe.
"Oh yeah."
"This is interim filing for stuff closing or just closed in the last six months. But when somebody has the family jewels or some national secret, they put it in the cabinets inside the safe here. I think nobody ever put anything in here worth knowing, but it's fun to think about. Okay. Now for 'Big Bertha.' " She walked over to the steel door and began on the dial. It required two tries and probably three minutes, but at last she grunted and pulled open the nearly foot-thick door.
"Impressive," Sam said.
"Now we sign in. At one time this part of this floor be longed to a prominent wholesale jeweler and that's why the big walk-in safe. We would never have spent the money."
Sam wrote the name Scott Davis, the date, and the time on the sign-in sheet.
They went inside the big vault to a row of locked fireproof filing cabinets. Files were arranged by number so they located the file whose number corresponded with the one that Sam had carried upstairs.
"You will just be using the file in the office?"
"Oh yes."
"Will you be here long?"
"Just a few minutes."
"Because without Mr. Arthur Stewart okaying it, I would feel extremely strange."
"Oh, of course. I'll just be a minute with these docu ments."
Sam had already spied a large copier in the filing room.
"Call me when you want to lock up."
"Sure will. And thanks so much for your help. And say, I was wondering, you know, I don't want to be forward, but I was wondering if we might go out for a cup of coffee."
"Oh. That's actually a kind invitation. And I definitely would if I weren't having to get a motion out tomorrow. But maybe a rain check."
He looked in her eyes and could see that she really meant it. He felt guilty for trying to use her. Walking and talking with her as he left the building would naturally cause people not to notice him like they would a lone late-night stranger.
Sam could not recall when he had been this interested in a discovery. The locked file was voluminous and had various parts. He went to what looked like the guts of the matter. Attorney memos designed to explain in straightforward language what the hell was going on.
There were typed notes of a telephone interview, probably recorded. On the file earpiece it said: trustee: grace technologies. On the memo header: Admiral Francois Larive and Mademoiselle Benoit Moreau, representatives of the Government of France, acting as trustee for Grace Technologies.
We have various representations in this matter and a number of confidential relationships. See conflicts file.
Then there was the following:
Moreau: Freshwater sponge material was provided by Michael J. Bowden to Northern Lights Pharma ceutical in the fall of 1998… I believe it was No vember. Jacques Boudreaux of Grace Technologies, a French Corporation, obtained a sample of a molecule isolated from certain organic material because it was said to be a powerful immune system suppressant. Bou dreaux gave the material to Georges Raval, a skilled young researcher. Quite by accident Raval traveled down a path of research that led to the development of what he called a Chaperone. To understand Chaperone it is necessary to understand the underlying technology for which it was developed.
The memo went on to give a detailed and a somewhat technical description of the use of vector technology to alter the DNA in animal cells, particularly human cells-effectively, genetic engineering on live humans. In particular, it was genetic re-engineering of human brain cells. Sam skipped down, since he was already familiar with the concept. In among the technical stuff there was a lawyer's explanation of the Chaperone technology that was more or less understand able.
Moreau: Chaperone gets its name from the common concept of an escort. For purposes of this explanation we will call the recipient of Chaperone "the patient." Say the patient receives a vector that alters the patients brain cells. Once altered, they are foreign and will be rejected by the patient's body. Each cell in the body makes protein. It is the protein that the immune system either recognizes or rejects. If each new brain cell type is paired with Chaperone and introduced into the bloodstream, then those new cells will be accepted by the patient's body because his immune system will be reset by Chaperone to accept the particular proteins that they manufacture. The process of binding Chaperone to a foreign protein molecule is complex and is contained in papers of the inventor Georges Raval, former employee of Grace Technologies, to be deposited into escrow (see appendix for escrow details). There are many applications for Chaperone. Suppose a patient is to receive a heart transplant from a donor. The donor's DNA will never match the patient's and hence, except in the case of an identical twin, there is never a perfect match of the new organ from the donor with the patient. The patient's body will reject the donor's organ and the only known method of medically dealing with the rejection is to administer immunosuppressants for the life of the patient and these drugs have undesirable side effects. If we were to isolate a particular protein molecule from the donor and bind it to Chaperone, and inject the combination into the patient, the patient would soon accept the donor's molecule as if it were native to the patient. Chaperone can be bound to multiple molecules so that all of the proteins associated with a donor's organ, such as a heart, are accepted as native by the patient.