I left the hotel and told Anna I’d call her later.
Before I went, I even admitted to using different names for business reasons. I showed her my Mark Dobson passport and even shared the joke that Colin and I had repeated so often it had lost all its original humour. “Matthew, Mark, and Luke. All I need is John, and I’ll have the full set.” Anna didn’t get my joke, so I told her to call me Mark from now on.
Less than an hour later, I checked into a much plusher hotel overlooking the Chaoprya River and found myself a quiet corner seat in the hotel lobby. It was ten thirty and I was on schedule.
I knew that Amos Gazit was on an American Airlines flight, and that it had landed on schedule. Then, at ten forty-five, a minibus pulled up outside and I quickly pinpointed the one I thought was Gazit amongst a crowd of fellow Americans.
Just like his boss, Charles Brady, he was a stout middle-aged man with a pair of glasses hanging on a cord around his neck. I watched him hand a case to a porter and then walk away from his compatriots.
I’d told him I’d be there waiting somewhere around.
For the research director of Virex International, Amos Gazit looked every part the scientist, but he clearly had some business acumen, or Brady would not have tasked him with this meeting. As the rest of his
group dispersed, he wandered across to a forest of potted ferns and stood with a small white bag between his feet. I went over. “Dr Gazit, I presume,” I said as if I was Sir Henry Morton Stanley greeting Dr Livingstone in the jungle.
He lifted his spectacles onto his nose and squinted. Yes, sir. Pleased to make your acquaintance.”
I pointed towards the corner where I had been waiting. “Seat?”
Gazit followed, breathing heavily, and we sat looking at one another.
“Good trip?” I asked to break the deadlock.
“Sure. Too long. I understand you met Charles Brady. So, what’s the plan?”
I liked his apparent willingness to get straight to the point but, “The remit is too vague,” I said. “I didn’t get long enough with Mr Brady.
Why don’t you get settled into your room, have a short rest, and meet me later?”
The Bangkok heat was clearly getting to him and he seemed grateful.
“Sure thing.”
“Seven thirty. Take a taxi to Centre Point. It’s an Asian food centre, five minutes from here. A taxi or tuk tuk driver will know where it is.”
He nodded. “You want me to bring the other stuff?”
“Yes, of course. I’ll see you later.”
Gazit then delved into a shirt pocket, pulled out a business card, and handed it over. It was more than I’d got from Charles Brady.
At seven thirty, on schedule as always, I was seated on a plastic chair at a metal table at Centre Point with a glass of iced lime juice in my hand when the portly Gazit came into view. He’d changed into grey pants and a short-sleeved white shirt but still looked hot and disoriented. He was carrying a large brown envelope.
With preliminaries over, I ordered two more fresh lime juices and he handed me the envelope. I didn’t open it. because inside were my tickets for the conference. “Tell me more about Virex,” I said. “I
didn’t get much from Mr Brady.” He looked at me as if that was exactly what he’d expected.
“We’re very concerned,” he said. “The loss of a hundred grams has been confirmed. Early tests on the treatment looked good. Eight years of research, you know?”
I stopped him right there. “Treatment? Brady said you’d lost some frozen virus.”
“Yeh, that as well. We lost that six months ago.”
I was shocked. This was not what I’d been led to believe. On the other hand, I already detected some strange behaviour from Charles Brady, as if there was far more that he’d not told me. “So what you’ve lost is a treatment for use against viruses?”
“Sure. Didn’t Charles tell you?”
I shook my head, and seeing my reaction, Gazit shook his own. “Yeh.
Charles gets embarrassed,” he said, as if that was a good enough excuse for a professional businessman.
I raised my eyebrows and he shrugged in reply, as if it was also OK
for a company’s president to feel uncomfortable giving away too many company secrets. I’d never forget it, but let it go for the time being. Right then I encouraged Gazit to continue.
“Yeh,” he said. “Some freeze-dried virus stocks disappeared about six months ago. OK, no problem. We grew some more. It was the antiviral drug that was the big deal.”
“What sort of drug?”
“An oral one,” he said. “Code name VIDD-2095. Test tube experiments with human lung and airway cells looked promising in blocking SARS-CoV-2 and a few other strains of coronavirus.”
“Go on.”
“We’d spent a few million dollars already but were some ways from clinical trials. It was going to take a lot more time and money, but things were looking positive.”
“You had to start again?”
“Yeh. Pretty much from scratch.”
“So where did the virus and the drug go?” Having met Charles Brady, I thought I already knew the answer, but it was worth asking once again.
“We don’t know for sure,” Gazit said. “We suspect an internal problem, but there are over twenty skilled staff who could have had access, and there’s no evidence. This is cutting-edge genetic engineering and biotechnology, Mr Dobson. It boils down to big money, big investors, and big profits.”
“When I met Charles Brady in London, he mentioned something about Virex and other competitors of yours losing senior staff. You know about that?”
“Yeh. We’ve had one or two who move on. It’s normal. One guy in particular, though, was Dave Solomon, a British guy who worked for Biox Research International, also based in Boston. There was a lot of talk in the industry when Dave who was Biox’s director of research, disappeared a year ago. No one has seen him since. He was a bit political. A leftie who’d rail against multinationals, even Big Pharma.
With opinions like his, most of us wondered how the hell he’d risen to such a senior position but he was internationally respected for his research. He was business a leading expert.”
“You knew Solomon?”
“Sure. Not well but we’d met.”
“What was his subject?”
“Virology.”
“Anyone else you can think of who disappeared?” I asked.
Gazit nodded as if it was common knowledge that scientists would just disappear into thin air, leaving nothing behind but a few scientific papers. “There was a senior lecturer at Cambridge – Guy Williams -
who disappeared last fall,” he said. “He’d also worked for Biox and knew Dave Solomon. Guy was an expert on viral chemistry. There
have been others as well, but we generally know where those guys went, and we try not to get paranoid.”
I sat back. Suspicions and a few leads were starting to rise through the uncertainties Brady had left in his wake. Best of all, I felt I could work with Amos Gazit. I picked up the envelope he’d brought. “The Conference tickets?” I asked.
“I registered you as a delegate and in the false name you asked for,”
Gazit said. “Is this how you guys’ work? False IDs?”
“It’s useful,” I said. “I understand there’s a trade exhibition running at the same time?”
“Yeh. Virex pulled out because we’re tightening budgets. But Biox should be there, which may explain why Charles suggested that you attend.”
He drained his glass of lime juice and sighed, and I waited, anticipating a deluge of passion about something to do with his work.
I could see it building, and I wasn’t disappointed.
“I can tell you now, Mr Dobson, you sure will hear a lot about new viruses cropping up. It’s partly the technology that enables us to identify them, but by coincidence, Thailand itself has had a few cases of something very recently. Nothing is being made too public at present. But, from what I heard, I reckon by the end of this week there is going to be one hell of a stink - a stink on an international scale.
Mark my words.
“Just like we need new antibiotics for bacterial infections, we also need new antiviral drugs and a way to respond to new variants as soon as they appear. That was a key part of Virex’s work. But it doesn’t come cheap. Years and years of investment and expertise go in, and just as we get close along comes this.”
He was on a theme, so I just sat back and let him roll. It was interesting anyway, and I learned a lot. He ended by saying, “Did they tell you it was me who was credited with developing the enzyme that
upsets coronavirus replication? It took six years to get this far and then . . .”
I thought he was going to cry.
“Goddam it,” he finally said. “I’m a scientist, Mr Dobson. I’m not used to this sort of crap. It’s wrong. It’s immoral, and I’m shocked to think there’s someone out there who could do this. Sleepless nights?
I’ve had a lot this last year. But I’ve no idea what’s going on.”
I looked at the American with a growing touch of affection for him.
He was obviously deeply concerned about the company he worked for and personally very hurt. He was also, probably, far more at home in a laboratory than in the hot, stuffy confines of an Asian food centre in Bangkok. It was enough for now. I beckoned the waiter for the bill and said, “Do you think anyone, a person or a company, who you suspect of involvement in this will be at the conference?”
“I’m not sure,” he said. “I think whoever is behind it must be big enough to be in a position to do something with what they’ve taken from us, but it can’t possibly be a giant pharmacy multinational.
They’d not dare work like this, would they? If they want know-how or people, they just go in and buy. Money no object. They wouldn’t poach someone and ask them to steal product in development, would they? Surely.”
His doubts were now showing. Amos Gazit no longer trusted anyone.
He shrugged, as if he’d thought about the subject many times, so I prompted him to go further. “Got any genuine theories, Mr Gazit?”
“Yes,” he said. “I reckon there’s an organisation out there operating illegally and below the radar, trying to capitalise on the gold mine that everyone sees is there.” He looked at his watch. “I promised to join a drinking session with some guys back at the hotel. I’m not sure I’ve got the energy, but feel I need to show my face.”
“Before you go,” I said, “Charles Brady wants investigations, but do you know what he wants done if we get somewhere?”
I thought I already knew the answer. I’d been here before. They wanted to know as much as possible, but then they’d keep it quiet.
Gazit confirmed it.
“Yeh. Whatever you find out, keep it quiet. We don’t want the media jumping up and down. We still need financing, and backers can get cold feet if they know investments are at risk. Keep it quiet, Mr Dobson. We just want to know what the hell’s going on, then we’ll decide.”