“To protect my career, for one thing. I discovered early in my professional life that I was a coward, a moral coward. I might seethe inside, but I’d do nothing to upset the status quo. Later, after I’d retired, I could have done something, but that would have meant admitting my silence, too. You see, I’m just as culpable as anyone. Preece was a psychiatrist, not a scientist; it was easy for him to believe that the cause of certain diseases might lie in the mind itself. Even today there are people who refuse to acknowledge the existence of ME as a valid disease. They say it’s psychosomatic. But Preece’s group, the scientists-we had
“You had proof?”
“And we let them cover it up.”
“Who’s them?”
“CWC.” He paused, gathering himself. “Kosigin primarily. I’ve never been sure whether those above him knew about it at the time, or are any wiser now. He operates within his own sphere. Those above him allow him this leeway… Perhaps they have an inkling of what he’s like, and want to distance themselves from him.”
“What is he like, Doctor?”
“He’s not evil, that’s not what I’m suggesting. I don’t even think he’s power-mad. I believe he thinks everything he does is in the genuine interests of the company. He is a corporation man, that’s all. He’ll do all he can-anything it takes-to stop damage being done to CWC.”
“Did you tell him about the journalist, James Reeve?”
“Yes, I did. I was frightened.”
“And he sent men to guard you?”
“Yes, and then he told me to take a short vacation.”
“There’s still a man guarding your house, isn’t there?”
“Not for much longer. The threat has disappeared.”
“Kosigin told you that?”
“Yes, he told me to put my mind at rest.”
“Do the guards work for CWC?”
“Oh, no, they’re policemen.”
“Policemen?”
“Yes. Kosigin has a friend in the police department.”
“Do you know his name?”
“McCluskey. If there’s any trouble, any problem, I can always phone this man McCluskey. You know something? I live about a half a mile from the ocean, but I’ve never heard it sound so angry.”
“They’re just waves, Dr. Killin.”
“You do them an injustice.” He sipped undoped water. “We all do.”
“So let me get this straight in my head, Dr. Killin. You’re saying you were part of a cover-up instigated by Kosigin?”
“That’s right.”
“And you’re not sure whether anyone higher up in CWC knew about it at the time, or knows about it now?”
The old man nodded, staring out of the window. Reeve recorded his face in profile, the face of a sad old man who had little to be proud of in his life.
“We’re poisoning everything. We’re poisoning the very food we eat. All over the world, from the biggest agribusiness to the smallest sharecropper, they’re all doing business with the chemical companies, companies like CWC. In the richest countries and the poorest. And we’re eating the results-everything from daily bread to a nice juicy steak. All tainted. It’s like the sea; you can’t see the damage with the naked eye. That makes it easy to hide the problem, easy to cover it up and just deny, deny, deny.”
Slowly, methodically, Killin started to beat his forehead against the side window.
“Whoa,” Reeve said, pulling him away. “It’s not your fault.”
“Oh, but it is. It is!”
“Look, everything’s going to be all right. You’re going to forget all about this.”
“I can’t forget.”
“Well, maybe not, but trust me on this. What about Agrippa? What does it have to do with any of this?”
“Agrippa? Agrippa has everything to do with it, don’t you see? Agrippa has several patents pending on genetically engineered crop strains, with many more patents to come in the future. Do you realize what those will be worth? I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say billions. Genetics is the industry of the future, no doubt about it.”
Reeve nodded, understanding. “And if Kosigin’s dirty tricks came to light, the licensing authorities might take a pretty dim view?”
“CWC could lose existing patents
“Because it’s good for the company,” Reeve muttered. He made to switch off the camera.
“Aren’t you going to ask me about Preece?”
“What?”
“Preece. That’s what the reporter wanted to talk about.”
Reeve stared at Killin, then put the viewfinder back to his eye and watched as the lens refocused itself on the old man. “Go on, Doctor. What about Preece?”
“Preece had a reputation to think of. You think he’d have worked for Kosigin, covered everything up, and signed his name to the lies if there had been an alternative?”
“There wasn’t an alternative?”
“Kosigin had information on Owen. He’d had people do some digging. They found out about Preece and his patients. The ones at the hospital in Canada.”
“What about them?”
“Preece had for a time advocated a kind of sexual shock treatment. Sex as a means to focus the mind, to pull it back to reality.”
Gordon Reeve swallowed. “Are you saying he raped patients?”
“He had sex with some of them. It was… it was experimental. He never published anything, naturally enough. Still it was never the best-kept of secrets. These patients were unpredictable. Preece had to have orderlies in the room to hold them down.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“The psychiatric community got to know about it, and the stories spread out until even people like me heard them.”
“And no one kicked up a stink?”
“These patients were incarcerated. They were fair game for experiments.”
“So Kosigin found out and used the information as a lever?”
“Yes. He had a private detective work on Preece’s history.”
“Alliance Investigative?”
“I don’t know…”
“A man called Jeffrey Allerdyce?”
“The name sounds familiar.”
Reeve thought for a moment. “My brother knew this?”
“Your brother?”
“The reporter.”
“Yes, he knew some of it.”
“How could he know?”
“I take it he’d talked to a few people. As I said, it was not the world’s best-kept secret. If the reporter had been looking into Owen’s past, he would have stumbled on it eventually. I mean, he would have known about Owen and his patients.”
And would have put two and two together, Reeve thought. Jim hadn’t only been trying to blow the pesticide story open, he’d made things more personal. He’d been homing in on Kosigin as manipulator
