Alchemist Read online

  Miss Hoity-toity still hadn’t looked at him, and he walked past her desk, inserted his smart-card into the door behind her, then punched in his code. The lock clicked and he pushed the door open.

  Each directorate was colour coded. Group Patents and Agreements (GP & Ags) came under Research and Development and therefore shared the same emerald-green carpeting and pale green walls as the laboratories. But in contrast to the futuristic feeling of the rest of the building, the Group Patents and Agreements Department looked as if it had been there for ever.

  It was a labyrinth of narrow corridors lined with cramped offices, and open-plan areas with desk cubicles squeezed too closely together. Despite being spread over three floors, the Department was urgently in need of more space. And although it had all the computerized equipment it needed, most patent work was still carried out on paper and there were filing cabinets wall-to-wall, many of which were decades old. Whole areas were shelved like libraries, and crammed with reference texts.

  Even some of Conor’s new colleagues looked refreshingly old-fashioned: serious, sedate men in various shades of grey suits with various shades of greying hair, and ties of the wrong colour and width. It seemed to him that any fashion sense in the Department was vested with the women, who looked smart and elegant. And like all patent offices, its studious atmosphere belied the fact that this was the hub around which global fortunes revolved.

  GP & Ags was presided over by a team of British and international patent lawyers and patent agents. No product that Bendix Schere invented, developed, bought or tried to sell was of any use to it unless it owned and controlled the patents worldwide, and the Department’s role was to get the most comprehensive patents it could – both to protect the company’s own products and to block the competitors’. This meant not only rigorously defending the patents, but also using every trick in the book to get their life extended. In extreme cases from time to time they obtained new patents on old products by carefully reformulating those products.

  In most countries the limit on patents ranged between seventeen to twenty years, but with annual profits of over £500,000,000 coming in from each of its most successful patented pharmaceuticals, every extra year that could be gained meant massive extra profits for Bendix Schere.

  Conor’s office was next door to Charley Rowley’s, and as he passed by he could see the open briefcase on the desk, indicating that his colleague had beaten him to it. He would apologize later for his time of arrival, he thought, as he stood outside his own office, punching in the code number. Virtually every single door in the Bendix Building had a security combination lock: to reach restricted access areas, such as the laboratories, and the Group Patents floors, a smart-card had to be inserted into a slot as well. From his experiences yesterday, Conor was already finding moving around the premises a real bore.

  His office was not much bigger than a cupboard. A gerbil would feel pretty claustrophobic in here, he thought; but at least it was better than open plan, which meant no privacy. He hung his coat and jacket on the rear of the door, squeezed past three steel filing cabinets and the paper shredder and eased himself behind his desk.

  For security purposes, wastepaper baskets were strictly forbidden. All unwanted paper had to be fed into the shredders. Bulkier items had to be put into black garbage bags and pushed into a chute, on each floor, down to the basement incinerator. It was a sackable offence to leave any paperwork whatsoever, other than incoming correspondence, on a desk in an unattended office.

  The only extraneous items on Conor’s desk this morning were a fresh Manila envelope addressed to him, and a crimson leather-bound book, which was embossed with a gold line-drawing of a small boy under a halo, kneeling in prayer. The accompanying wording read: ‘The Bendix Schere Creed’.

  Conor had looked through the book yesterday in disbelief. All new employees were meant to read it from cover to cover. It told the story of how the company’s founder, Joshua Bendix, had made his first fortune peddling invisible ink made from lemon juice. There was even an illustration of the original bottle.

  It went on to detail the deeply Christian ethos in the formative years of the company, back in the 1880s. Conor had read that there used to be regular morning prayer assembly for all employees. And Joshua Bendix had decreed that ten per cent of all profits should be donated to charity, a practice that was continued to this day.

  What the book did not reveal, Charley Rowley had told Conor quietly, when they had slipped out for a pub lunch, was that such funding was used exclusively to set up and control charities dealing with the specific chronic diseases and ailments for which Bendix Schere manufactured pharmaceuticals.

  He picked up the envelope, which had already been slit open. He had been informed of this practice, and he wondered if there were security teams employed to read everything that arrived. Somehow he doubted it. The envelopes were probably opened to discourage any correspondence of a personal nature being sent to staff, or between staff.

  He shook out a wodge of estate agents’ particulars, together with a note from the Relocation Officer who had visited him briefly yesterday – an awesomely efficient young woman called Sue Perkins, who’d discussed the kind of apartment he could afford on his salary. She had first identified on a map the areas that would best suit him. She had then pointed out, to his amazement, the shaded zones that marked the parts of London where Bendix Schere employees were encouraged, but not contractually bound, to live. She’d advised him, however, that it was likely to become mandatory to live in these areas at some point in the near future.

  Now, already awaiting him were twenty potential apartments from which he could draw a shortlist. He put the envelope into his briefcase to read at home that night, switched on his computer terminal and logged in.

  The first thing that appeared on the screen, as it would do each morning, was a sinister form titled: ‘Colleague Data Sheet.’ In it were boxes on which everyone was supposed to enter the names of their immediate colleagues, and further boxes for them to tick – assessing those same colleagues on neatness, confidence, competence, how they handle themselves with other people, and company loyalty.

  He debated what to do for a moment, then entered Charley Rowley’s name and gave him a couple of points short of the maximum possible, not wanting to appear to be either sucking up or too indiscriminate. After this he clicked on the icon to open his internal eMail box. There was one message waiting: ‘9.15 meeting. 20th floor Boardroom. Pick you up a few minutes before. CR.’

  His mind returned to the blonde who had got out at the eighth floor, and he thought about her for a few minutes. He’d ask Charley Rowley who she was. Just moving in at the moment, she had said. Her father and herself. There shouldn’t be too much of a problem identifying her – Charley Rowley seemed to be a walking encyclopaedia on the place.

  Yes, she would definitely be worth tracking down.

  11

  Bill Gunn walked slowly around the forty-seventh floor ops room of the Bendix Building, completing his regular daily check on all the equipment. He had a team of thirty technicians beneath him, many of them university graduates, but the Director of Security still liked to inspect everything himself. Old habits died hard.

  This particular habit went back to his early days as a wireless operator in the Signals Corps of the Paras. Never trusting any piece of electrical equipment on which his life might depend, he would dismantle and reassemble it himself prior to any operation; that was the only way he could be certain it would give no trouble. And for the same reason, he always unpacked and repacked his own parachute.

  A thick-set forty-eight-year-old of below average height, he had an impassive face with military stamped all over it and brown hair cropped only marginally longer than a crew cut. Somehow he always looked out of place in a suit, despite having worn one for the past twenty years. Like many trained fighting men, he had tunnel-vision loyalty to his paymasters, but at Bendix Schere there was something else, quite different, bonding him to t
hem.

  He had been recruited into the SAS and then into GCHQ at Cheltenham, the eyes and ears of the British Government’s Intelligence Services. There he had been involved in anti-terrorism: setting up, operating and improving surveillance systems of the foreign embassies based in Britain, as well as of key buildings in potentially hostile countries like Russia, Iran and Iraq. It had been invaluable for his learning curve. When Bendix Schere had quietly head-hunted him nine years later, he was one of the most informed surveillance experts in the world.

  Both the forty-seventh floor and the one above looked like space stations, bristling with the most sophisticated eavesdropping and satellite tracking technology, most of which was used more for monitoring staff for internal security than it was for spying on the competition.

  Gunn halted next to the vehicle-data tracking system. In front of him was a vast panel of some five thousand tiny red lights, each with a number beneath. About two thirds of the lights were off, the others were winking brightly. Each light represented a company vehicle, and the winking ones indicated those actually being driven at that moment.

  By typing the number of the light into the computer screen beside the panel, Gunn could bring up full details on any company vehicle, anywhere in the world, and compass co-ordinates of its position accurate to within ten feet – together with a written description of its location and a road map to any desired scale. The computer also recorded a log of all the vehicle’s journeys for the preceding four weeks, and compared it against a log of the previous twelve months to show any significant change in pattern.

  Another system on this floor was Gunn’s own invention and he was particularly proud of it: ‘Retrace’. Every time an employee swiped their smart-card or inserted it to move through a door, a signal was transmitted to Gunn’s database. The computer would analyse each employee’s movements over the previous month and compare it to the pattern of the previous twelve months, and alert Gunn of any significant variations that should be checked out.

  Less sophisticated aspects of Gunn’s monitoring set-up included the ability, from his own office, to listen in on any telephone call made to or from any Bendix Schere building, and the ability to eavesdrop on any conversation taking place on company territory. Additionally, all laboratory activity could be observed through closed-circuit television.

  Satisfied that everything was running smoothly, he returned to his comfortable lair on the forty-eighth floor, closed the door, sat down in front of his battery of screens, and turned to the next item in his unvarying weekly routine: new employees. He tapped a key and brought up the list.

  The name ‘Conor Molloy’ was one of three on the list of twenty names that was highlighted. Gunn tapped in the command for Conor’s computer log and saw there had been very little activity. One eMail, from Charley Rowley, this morning, and one Colleague Data Sheet filled in. He activated ‘Retrace’ and checked Conor’s movements yesterday. It looked like a pretty thorough introductory tour. No worries. Then he called up the Colleague Data Sheet and looked at it carefully.

  Only two points short of the maximum. He frowned. Charley Rowley had been on his danger list for a long time as someone with an attitude problem. It was improbable that anyone of sound judgement would award him such a ludicrously high score. It indicated either that Conor Molloy’s character-assessment abilities might be suspect, or that he was trying to suck up, or that he had simply made up the score.

  It wasn’t uncommon for new employees to give high marks out of fear of retribution. They needn’t worry about that – the comments were kept completely confidential, but of course they had no way of knowing that. Conor Molloy had done nothing serious by his action, not lit a warning beacon or anything as dramatic as that, but it was, all the same, just one tiny mark against his name. Sometimes, Gunn had found, enough tiny marks would start, eventually, to point to something. And Gunn already felt a slight unease about the new American patent lawyer.

  There was nothing specific, no colours he could nail to a mast, but from his years of surveillance he had developed an instinct for people who were up to something, and that instinct was telling him to watch Molloy.

  He called up Conor’s original application details and read through them carefully. The American had an impeccable background, that was for sure. Biochemistry degree cum summa from Harvard. Masters at Stanford in Organic Chemistry. Two years in Molecular Biology at Carnegie Mellon. Three years back at Harvard at law school, taking his bar and then Patent Office exams. Finishing Harvard, he had been head-hunted and grabbed by Merck, where he had spent two years in the patent department.

  Merck was the fourth largest pharmaceutical company in the world. They were good employers and good payers. So why had Molloy switched horses? The reason was right there on the application form: Molloy believed that Bendix Schere had a more progressive genetics programme. Fine, that was true, Gunn had no quarrel with that. Bendix Schere offered the best genetics opportunities in the world. Also, Merck had wanted to send Molloy to California, and he didn’t want to live on the West Coast. A perfectly acceptable explanation. Bendix Schere offered him the chance of a couple of years working in England. Conor Molloy had liked the idea of that. No problem there either. The man was single, heterosexual, wanted to see a bit of the world before settling down. All the reasons Conor Molloy had given were solid.

  So what the hell was it about him that just did not quite add up?

  12

  Monty Bannerman’s anger boiled over into fury as she held the letter in her hand and read it through yet again.

  What bastard had done this? And on whose authority? She glanced at her watch. 10.30. Her appointment with Sir Neil Rorke was for eleven. Well, he would have to sort this out, good and proper! She drew in a deep breath, trying to calm herself; she’d been in a rage ever since the letter had arrived at their old laboratory yesterday morning, even waking several times during the night and fretting about it.

  Thank God she had been there and had opened her father’s post. If he’d seen this, he would’ve gone berserk. As it was he had wondered where Walter Hoggin, their Chief Lab Technician, had been all day, and she’d had to lie, telling him he was off sick.

  The takeover by Bendix Schere of Bannerman Genetics Research had finally been agreed and signed eight months ago, but the transition was not proving easy. Numerous experiments in situ were too delicate to be moved, making the relocation from Berkshire University to the Bendix Building in London a laborious process that would go on for several months yet.

  Mountains of paperwork needed to be gone through for Bendix Schere’s Group Patents and Agreements Department, currently the bane of her life. And all because the patent agents and lawyers needed to see and read, in some semblance of order, virtually every scrap of paper relating to every experiment that had ever been carried out at Bannerman Genetics. So almost everything that had been filed at her father’s lab now needed entering on to the Bendix Schere computer system. There was a clerical pool available to do this tedious work, but so much required untangling and deciphering that Monty was ending up finding it easier to do much of it herself.

  Since late February Monty and her father had been dividing their time between their old lab and their sumptuous new premises on the eighth floor of the Bendix Building. Monty had found it to be a very strenuous period, in which she’d had to draw constantly on all her resources of courtesy and diplomacy, not least because she found the Bendix Schere team less helpful than she’d expected. Rather than welcoming the arrival of someone of Dick Bannerman’s calibre, many of the staff gave the impression that they resented the intrusion of outsiders.

  And her father had been continually testing the nerve of the Board of Directors, to see how far he could push them. So far, every request for the purchase of equipment sent to Accounts for authorization had come back approved – even if the £300,000 for Cray gene-sequencing computer hardware had taken a month and several tricky meetings. Bendix Schere was not into wanton spending bing
es, but it was prepared to throw money at anything that had a real chance of producing results and beating the opposition.

  Up until now, the company had not put a foot wrong in its dealings with Dr Bannerman. Tetchy as he had been at the start, and filled with misgivings about their bureaucracy, he’d had to admit that Bendix Schere had behaved honourably.

  He even confessed to Monty that it was a relief to have a regular pay cheque instead of continually scrabbling to find the money every time a bill arrived at home. In fact they were both on reasonable salaries now – with the added bonus for Dick Bannerman of a percentage share in any profits resulting from his work. And Monty was earning more than double the subsistence wage she had previously been eking out of Bannerman Genetics.

  So what was behind the letter? Was it simply a mistake? Some goof-up of internal communications? Or was this where the glib promises of Sir Neil Rorke and Dr Vincent Crowe all terminated? The end of the line.

  In half an hour she would find out.

  She put the letter in her handbag, then turned her attention to the stack of CVs on her desk. Her father was busy hiring, increasing the size of his team during the next twelve months from thirty-five to two hundred. He had made up a hit list of graduates, postgraduates, postdocs, and research fellows to head-hunt. And he was obviously enjoying himself; it made a big change from turning people down or, worse, letting staff go because he couldn’t afford them. For the first time since her mother’s death Monty considered him happy, and she wanted it to stay that way.