BLIND TRIAL Brian Deer (best novels for beginners TXT) 📖

company.” Hiroshi fell backward on the settee and pumped his legs. “Ja no michi wa hebi.”

“If you say so.”

“Snakes will follow the paths of a snake.”

“Yes, well, the whole place is a shambles. Wilson’s a disgrace. Grahacharya’s a research cheat. Probably they both are.”

“This is good.” Hiroshi leaped up and danced round the ottoman. “Doctorjee forge papers. Most excellent.”

“And think, this is the Clinical Evaluation Center. We’ve got more than sixteen hundred volunteers. That’s six percent of the entire enrollment. It’s the lead center for the whole trial. I think we should do something. Report it.”

Hiroshi quit dancing. “Do something? Report it?” He stepped toward her and stroked her hair. “Report what?”

“All of it. Everything.”

“I don’t understand. Report everything to who?”

“Well, there’s FDA, or Health and Human Services, the Inspector General’s office, the Office of Research Integrity at NIH, because a lot of it is government money.”

Hiroshi slumped on the settee and slapped his knees. “No. I don’t think so. We have no time. Mr. McKechnie says we have much to do. We serve the hotel with papers, and find last room guests, and get names of floor staff. We’re still holding the room for a private detective and forensic specialists from New York. Sanomo chairman personally insists.”

“Later then. I’m not going to let this rest.”

He rose from the settee and circled the room. “Yes, we have good sport with this. Tell this joke to many people. Wilson screws up phase III and Doctorjee forges papers. Excellent. Very good. Very funny.”

“But it’s more than a joke. It’s a scandal.”

“Oh, my darling, I really do love you.” He stroked her cheeks and kissed her nose. “But this is not so strange. We must look to the big picture. The strategic picture. A dog does not eat a dog.”

Fifty-one

KNOLL REFF Profiles, which furnished the BerneWerner Building, stopped at the door to the chief executive’s suite. After that, every element was unique. The focus of her office was a bird’s-eye maple desk, with a swivel-and-tilt armchair in scarlet leather, and a three-seat scarlet leather couch. Between a bathroom and a rack of, mostly empty, chrome shelves squatted a chrome-legged conference table.

Marcia Gelding turned away from a wall of plate glass where for the last five minutes she’d stood in bare feet on a silver carpet watching Saturday evening traffic on the freeway. The sun hung low behind the Downtown Connector, glowing orange in the table legs and shelves.

She tiptoed to the desk, slumped in the chair, and buried her face in her arms. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken us?” Her British accent resonated in the maple. “My God, my God, it’s ruination.”

Mr. Hoffman looked up from the scarlet couch, where he was licking the backs of his hands. “Will you make the call? Or you want me to do it? Or you want to wait for Trudy and talk?”

“My god, I’m sure she’s told them already. My God. The FBI’s probably on the way now.”

“Hold on, Marcia. I’m not so sure. There’d be a cruiser outside already.”

She raised her face, took a string of deep breaths, tugged a Kleenex from a box, and blew her nose. “I’ll need to phone Richard in London as soon as possible. If I’m moving back to the UK, I don’t want him selling the house.”

Her general counsel fingered his knuckles as she tapped a PC screen. She’d already Googled California’s laws of homicide, and the meaning of “obstruction of justice.” Now she searched for the company’s duty to report adverse events to FDA.

“So, let’s at least get this right. Exactly when did Doctorjee first know about this syndrome thing?”

“Not too sure. Maybe eight, nine, months ago. Something like that. I’m guessing.”

“My God.”

She scrolled through a chapter on new drug applications in the Code of Federal Regulations. “In that case, we’re done for. God almighty. Title 21, section 312. And I quote.

“The sponsor must also notify FDA of any unexpected fatal or life-threatening suspected adverse reaction as soon as possible but in no case later than seven calendar days after the sponsor’s initial receipt of the information.”

Mr. Hoffman half nodded and half shook his head. “Okay, I’m following you there. But he never told us. Him and Wilson did this thing without us knowing one thing about any of it. Data was coming over clean to the Athens trials unit.”

“That makes no difference. You know the position. Dr. Grahacharya is a director and principal officer of BerneWerner Biomed. What he knows, the company knows.”

“Okay, strictly you have a point. Sure. But I’ve had one of my people look into this and been assured there’s nothing in writing. No emails on the servers. Nothing. And even if the company does take some heat and those two assholes go to jail, that doesn’t have to mean you and me.”

“Listen, if we get hit under Title 21, that’s it. It’s curtains for all of us. The company’s down the loo. I’m out of work. You’re out of work. Just imagine the scandal.”

“Hasn’t gotta be that way, necessarily.”

“No? One news report—one Tweet—about the vaccine making people sick, and our share price will drop like a brick down a well. And when it hits the value of the Columbian zloty, Sanomo, or the Chinese, will take us over, sack the staff, shut the labs, and leave nothing but a drawer of brand names, trademarks, and copyrights to show we ever existed.”

“Sure, this isn’t looking too good from where we are now. I agree. But I think you might be overreacting. We can play this thing smarter than that.”

“Overreacting?” She stabbed the screen on her desk. “You realize even failing to notify FDA about that woman getting sick can mean three years in prison? And that’s before we get to the murder part of it.”

“Government will settle. Always do.”

“And it was you, I might remind you, who brought him to us in the first place. You recommended him personally. Not only to me but, after I expressed reservations,