that. We left that to Sistel.'
'Without really spelling out the problem ahead of time.'
'Right.'
'Sonny and Al made you rewrite the promotional literature and revamp the research to hide that problem.'
'Well… no, not exactly. We just omitted the species cerastes from the genus
Crotalus.
Sistel never thought to get down to that level of taxonomy.'
'Until a couple of months ago.'
'I guess.'
'Why did you do what SunCo asked? You knew it was at least misleading, possibly illegal.'
'Exactly.'
'Then why? The tongue thing again?'
'They were more subtle back then. They said it had to do with hundreds of millions of dollars.'
'And they were right about that, weren't they?'
Moss nodded. 'The thing is, I really believed that our harvesters would come through on a breeding program. We tried collecting enough sidewinders. We tried breeding them. We tried buying them. We tried every viper venom we could get our hands on to equal the cerastes reactions. We bought two hundred hand-collected eyelash vipers from Costa Rica to see how their serum would work. Too weak in terms of anaerobic capacity. We tried water moccasins from a snake farm in Florida. But the neurotoxins were high. I went out to the desert with our harvesters myself, to see if I'd have any luck finding the sidewinders. I stepped on a cholla cactus and had a minor heatstroke. What I'm saying is, the harder SunCo pushed us to adjust the test results the faster I tried to find a solution. I always thought I'd find that solution.'
'But you agreed to keep quiet about the problem.'
He sighed and nodded. 'I can still make a legitimate case for the research, the way it was presented. I mean, it's kind of complicated but you can organize trials to emphasize or minimize-even exclude-certain variables. It's like… if you change the angles a little, you get the same amount of square footage, but in a different shape. I also think I could make a case for SunCo coercion. They threatened to report us for defrauding them unless we downplayed the serum problem enough to bring in the big, big money. They made physical threat, too.'
'Such as?'
'Al dropped a tooth in one of my beakers in the lab one day. Rolled it out of a handkerchief. A silver amalgam filling. Meat and blood o: the root.'
'What did he say?'
'Nothing.'
Moss looked down at the backs of his hands.
'Then came CEIDNA, Trident, Brown Brothers,' said Zamorra. 'Around fifty-six million in venture capital.'
'Yes.'
'Bringing OrganiVen to the auction block at a cool four hundred million.'
'Four ten, actually.'
'What was your take?'
He looked at the table. 'Twenty-eight.'
'Twenty-eight at twenty-eight,' said Zamorra. 'Set for life.'
'Exactly.'
Zamorra, leaning forward: 'Gwen didn't like the research redrafts, or the changes in the promo lit. She loved the idea of curing cancer. And she loved the idea of making some money at it. But she was wise to what Sonny and Al were doing.'
'Yes,' Moss said quietly.
'Dr. Moss,' said Merci, 'listen very carefully to this: we've got her e-mails to you. We've got your e-mails back to her. To us, she sounded ready to talk. She sounded capable of blowing the whistle on SunCo. To your knowledge, did she do that, or threaten to do that?'
Moss looked at her, then at Zamorra, then back at Rayborn. 'I don't know.'
'You must have seen that she was thinking about it.'
'Yes. We became good friends.'
'What did you tell her about SunCo? Did you encourage her, discourage her, what?'
'I told her that Charles and Apin were definitely not to be messed with. That we'd work out the problem. That she should be happy with the thousand percent return she made for herself and her husband and their friends and family. And pray the FTC doesn't open a probe. And if it did, to just say she didn't know there was any problem at all. Let them come to the founders. We were the ones who brought in SunCo. We were the ones who… fuckin' haired out when they got tough on us.'
'I don't understand,' said Rayborn. 'Gwen knew early last that there was a supply problem. She e-mailed you about it in April. She knew SunCo was pushing for the cover-up. But she didn’t do anything. She played along, collected her money. Bought a nice house. A couple of nice new cars. Then, months after the deal, Sistel finds the problem, Sonny and Al hit the campaign trail. They threat you on Monday and kill Gwen on Tuesday. What did she do, Sean?
What did Gwen do?'
'Sonny and Al were afraid of an investigation. I don't know what their information was, or how they got it. But what did Gwen do?
I can't answer that. I don't know.'
'When was the last time you talked to her?'
'Monday evening. I called to tell her about the visit.'
'What did she say?'
'They'd talked to her that day, too. Told her to forget any irregularities she might have seen if anyone asked her about the cerastes problem. She laughed and badmouthed them.'
'After they threatened you with a tongue-dick transplant, laughed?'
'I didn't tell her they said that.'
And Rayborn began to understand. It came over her just fleetingly at first, like a cool draft in an old room. Then she understood it all at once as the truth broke over her in a cold wave.
'You didn't tell her much of anything, did you?'
'She never took them seriously. Not seriously enough, anyway. Funny Sonny and Al the Apeman, she called them. I… the total worst thing I've done in my life is I didn't impress upon her how dangerous those men were. I… believed that if Gwen knew that OrganiVen being eaten alive by Russian gangsters she'd head straight for the cops. She'd probably start with her own husband. So I… never came right out with what I thought of SunCo. I actually, maybe sort of covered for them a little. Told her they came from a different culture, to different way of doing things.'
'So you let her discover it just a little at a time, figuring she'd in too deep financially to back out.'
Moss was nodding again. 'That's how they got me. It wasn't they came in and announced they were animals. They were actually quite knowledgeable and occasionally funny and charming. They put up more money than we'd ever seen. And I knew Gwen was going to get rich. I wanted the best for her.'
'And you wanted her to see you as an honorable research scientist on the verge of a cancer treatment.'
Dr. Sean Moss looked at Merci. She saw a look of painful nostalgia in his eyes. 'I actually was that, once. I can almost remember it. I was relatively poor and honest and proud of myself and what I was doing.'
He reached an accommodation with himself. 'Yeah,' he said. 'In the beginning, that's what I was. Proud to be me, and in the same room as Gwen. I loved her. I don't mind admitting it. Never told her. Never told anyone. Never did anything about it, that way. I just loved her.'
'But not enough to tell her she was working with gangsters.'
'I couldn't admit I'd become a greedy coward.'
'Oh, man,' said Rayborn.
'Exactly,' said Sean Moss.
Zamorra tapped the tabletop with his fingers and sat back. Moss looked at him then away, shaking his
