Lethal Dose

“What are you saying?” Gordon asked.

“I’m not sure,” she said, setting her teacup on the table and listening to the rest of Andrews’s monologue. When he had finished, she took a couple sips of tea. “You have problems in Montana with beetles killing the Ponderosa pines, don’t you?”

“Sure. Pine beetles. It’s a huge problem.”

“Okay, then, here’s an analogy. Pine beetles attack your forest, threatening to destroy three million acres of healthy pines. The forestry service panics, calls every company that produces pesticides, and asks them to concentrate on developing a spray that will kill the beetle and not harm the trees. They’ve got one week to find the answer. And guess what? One of the companies comes through. They have the answer to a problem that has eluded every research team at every pesticide company for years. The pine beetle problem is solved overnight. What are the chances?”

“Zero,” Gordon said, nodding. “Good analogy.”

“There’s no way in hell Andrews came up with that drug in that short a time period. No way.” She stopped and stared at the television as Dr. Chiang Wai spoke in halting English. “I know that man,” she said. “But from where?”

“That’s probably not unusual,” Gordon said. “You and he work at the same company.”

“It’s a huge company, Gordon. And I’ve only seen him once or twice.” She racked her brain, trying to dredge up the memory. It wouldn’t come. “Damn it, I can’t remember.”

“Not a big deal,” Gordon said. “So what does all this mean, these totally unrealistic time frames?”

“I would say that Veritas already had the drug. In fact, that makes perfect sense. Andrews wouldn’t release the drug to the market without FDA approval, and that takes time. It takes years. Which means Veritas had a drug in the pipeline, already in for NDA.”

“What’s NDA?” Gordon asked.

“New Drug Application. It’s the big hurdle with the FDA. They demand positive Phase III trials and make you jump through a number of very difficult hoops before they issue their approval on an NDA.”

“So you’re saying Veritas already had this drug in its arsenal. ‘All dressed up and nowhere to go’ sort of thing.”

“Yeah,” Jennifer said slowly. Then she snapped her fingers and said, “I know where I saw that researcher. He was at the White Oak facility back in late August when I got called out to check over some erroneous results in the lab. It was at the entrance to the brain chip lab. He was arguing with one of the moving men.” The color drained from her face and she stared at Gordon, her mouth open.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

She tried to speak, but nothing came. She picked up a glass of water and drank almost half of it. “Gordon, when I was in the lab the night I saw Dr. Wai-or whatever his name is-there was a moving crew there.”

“Right. You said Wai was arguing with one of them.”

“I didn’t hear what he was saying, but I did see what they were moving.”

“What?” Gordon asked.

“High-efficiency HEPA filters.”

Gordon leaned back in his chair. “Like the ones they found this morning at the lab in Orlando?”

She nodded. “Probably. I can’t say for sure. But I can certainly tell you that something isn’t adding up here. Andrews has a drug ready for NDA approval that is capable of killing a virus that appears at just the right moment. And the task force locates the lab in the nick of time. How? How did they find the lab? It could have been anywhere on the planet, and they’ve only got a few days to sort through hundreds of thousands of tips from every person who thought they saw something unusual. Yet they key in on the right one and find the lab. What are the chances?”

“Pretty slim,” Gordon agreed.

“And then we’ve got extremely high-end HEPA filtration systems being moved out of White Oak while the clandestine lab was uncovered due to someone noticing high-efficiency HEPA filters in some obscure warehouse in Orlando. Christ, this is something out of a James Bond movie.”

“What are you suggesting?” Gordon asked, leaning forward.

Jennifer shook her head. “I don’t know what I’m suggesting, Gordon. Just that something is all wrong here. Things are too perfect.” She leaned forward and cupped her head in her hands, staring at the table.“I’ve got to think, put this all together.”

Gordon watched her as she sat unmoving, her eyes closed and her fingers gently rubbing her temples. What is going through that mind? he wondered. She was a brilliant woman in more than just the sciences, and he felt almost privileged at times to have become a part of her life. She was intimate in bed, very giving. And to him, that was not out of context. Her very being was dedicated not to Jennifer Pearce but to the betterment of the world she touched. And that touch was far-reaching. Her work in pharmaceuticals was an extension of her desire to make the planet a more livable place. He liked that side of her character.

The television was still focused on the virus scare, and with Jennifer deep in thought he reverted his attention back to the screen. A reporter was standing on the doorstep of an elegant home, interviewing a hysterical woman. The small printing at the bottom of the screen indicated that the woman was Ismail Zehaden’s widow. She was being supported by two other women as she alternated between sobbing and yelling.

“My husband was no terrorist,” she said. “He was a good American. A businessman who had done very well. He disliked some of the American foreign policy, but that was his right.”

“But the lab was discovered in a building your husband owns,” said the reporter, an attractive redhead in her late twenties.

“Ismail bought that warehouse as a storage facility. He was getting quotes from contractors on renovating it so he could move some of the raw materials he needed for his factory to another site. That warehouse was empty. It has been empty since he bought it.”

The reporter ignored any line of questioning that may have come from that statement and pressed ahead. “Your husband made frequent trips back to the Mideast,” she said. “Can you explain what those trips were for?”

“He had many friends and some family back in Iran. There are no laws saying my husband cannot visit his family and friends,” she snapped, obviously irritated with the direction the interview was going.

“Unless those friends are al-Qaeda,” the reporter said, sticking the microphone back in the widow’s face.

“You heartless bitch,” she said as she turned and retreated into the house. She slammed the door and the camera focused on the reporter.

“Ismail Zehaden’s widow, not denying that her husband was traveling back to Iran to connect with other al- Qaeda factions…”

Gordon shook his head and looked back to Jennifer. She was sitting upright, also watching the television. “Not a very good reporter,” he said.

“No, she treated that woman despicably. I hope the network gets sued.” She took a sip of cold tea and said, “I think the answer is at White Oak, Gordon. We have to get inside the lab where I saw Dr. Wai. We need to know what was in there.”

Gordon looked puzzled. “I thought you said it was the brain chip department. And that they were dismantling that part of the company. That would explain why the HEPA filters were being moved.”

“Perhaps,” she said. “But I have other suspicions. I want to get inside White Oak.”

“When?” he asked.

“Tonight.”

60

The first thing Bruce Andrews saw when he returned to his BioTech Five office after the press conference with J.D. Rothery was the Tuesday Richmond Times-Dispatch. After one look at the local headlines, he slammed the newspaper down on his desk and swore under his breath. How could this have