Eating is what people do in Bangkok. They eat all day long.
I could still feel my breakfast, but Anna insisted on lunch. So, we left the hotel and found a table on the street nearby, but I really wasn’t hungry. It was noticed.
“Mr No-Name, I can see you are not enjoying your food. You are very quiet. What is wrong? You make me feel I say something wrong or maybe I not say something right. Maybe I upset you. If something wrong, you must sort it.”
I admitted I had something on my mind. “I need to phone America,” I said.
“Then go ahead. Why you wait?”
With Anna sitting opposite me eating noodles, I called Virex’s president, Charles Brady, on the number Amos Gazit had given me. It was answered surprisingly quickly, so I told him I was still in Bangkok. “Can you talk?” I asked.
“I’m at the airport. The plane is delayed.”
Yes, I thought. Never book a flight that Charles Brady is already booked on.
“I’m getting nowhere,” I said. “I hate the feeling I’m not earning my fee. I need more from you. I’ve got this growing feeling that there is more going on here than I was told. I understand you’ve now lost a researcher, a Dutch guy.”
“Yes,” he said as if that was all he wanted to say.
I stood up from our table and walked a few metres away
“For Christ’s sake, Charles,” I said. “Give me a break. What is it about Virex and Biox? I thought you were competitors, but from where I’m sitting, it looks like one business with the same problem.
And you’re both in Boston - a mile away from each other. Don’t you talk? Don’t you share anything with Josh Ornstein?”
I waited for a response, but he was giving me the silent treatment like a sulking teenager.
“Then, if you don’t mind, Charles, I’m going to ditch this very unsatisfactory arrangement with Virex and pursue other things that have come to light. To start with, I’m going to talk to Biox, and when I’m finished there, I’m going to find out a bit more about another company I suspect you are familiar with, namely Livingstone Pharmaceuticals.”
I was on shaky ground here. Clients have been known to threaten to sue for less but his reaction was like a bear with a sore head prodded with a stick. “What have you found?”
I gave the bear another prod. “It’s got nothing to do with Virex, Charles. I can’t say. Breaches of confidence and all that.”
Brady probably wanted to growl at me but I didn’t give him a chance.
“Why send me to the conference, Charles? I’m not that keen on becoming an epidemiologist or a virologist at this stage of my life.”
“I thought you might find some leads,” he said.
“Charles,” I said, “stop messing me about. If you know something, tell me. I’m not inexperienced in this business, you know. I can
usually tell if I’m being bluffed. I’ve had clients who left it right to the end to tell me something they should have told me right at the start and made it far easier for everyone. I think you’re one of them.”
Suddenly, I heard a sound, as if he may have stood up from where I imagined him slumped surrounded by an aura of lonely self-pity. “It’s Livingstone Pharmaceuticals,” he said. “I’m damned sure of it. That’s also what Josh Ornstein thinks.”
“So, do you and Josh Ornstein talk, Charles? I wish I’d known that earlier. How much do you share?”
“It’s commercially sensitive.”
“You mean you talk about things like technical cooperation, mergers, acquisitions, takeovers?”
The bear with the sore head returned. “Remember, Mark, you’re subject to a confidentiality agreement.”
“No need to remind me. So, spill the beans, Charles. Tell me something useful because I am very tempted to go off on a tangent unfettered by confidentiality agreements or other red tape. I’m damned sure there’s something going on out here, which I suspect is far bigger than Virex losing a scientist and few grams of something pink in a test tube.”
“It’s Livingstone,” he said again, now sounding more like baby bear from Goldilocks.
“What about Livingstone?”
“The guy who owns them has been the subject of FBI investigations.”
“You mean Gregory O’Brian?”
“You know him?”
“We’ve met. I still I want you to tell me something I don’t know, Charles.”
“He’s developing a new research facility somewhere.”
“Yes, I know.”
“You know that too?”
“It’s what you’re paying us for, Charles. It’s called background research. Anything else?”
“I think he’s behind the poaching of David Solomon, Guy Williams, and now our guy, Jan de Jonge.”
“I thought so. Anything else?”
“They all share similar views on the environment.”
“Surely, you’re not suggesting O’Brian is an environmentalist with a deep and enduring love of nature are you, Charles?”
“No, no, but the others are biologists, virologists, and experts on infection control and epidemiology. They all belonged to the same club. “
“What club is that?” I asked.
“The Boston University Malthus Club.”
I didn’t want to upset Brady further by telling him I’d just been reading a few posts of theirs on the Malthus Society website so I pleaded ignorance and let him continue. “It’s a society that discusses the environment and international issues - that type of thing,” he said.
That was it, I thought. Almost certain proof that Solomon, if not all the others, were still around somewhere and sticking messages on the Malthus Society website. The question was where they were and what exactly they were doing. Trouble was Brady was driving me into a dead end if I didn’t change direction.
“So, what could Livingstone Pharmaceuticals, a company whose owner is hardly known for high principles, possibly offer a few scientists with interests in the environment?”
“Money?”
“Yes,” I said, thinking I needed to agree with at least something he’d said. But I didn’t think money was the full explanation, and Brady hadn’t said anything at all about GOB’s link with Al Zafar and Mohamed Kader. Did he even know about it?
What did it matter though? I’d just threatened to ditch Virex as a client on the grounds of inadequate briefing. I wouldn’t put it in writing, though. Not yet. It had been said more as a threat, a way to stir him into coming clean. Neither did I want to hit him with another stick by telling him that a bunch of other scientists and technicians had also disappeared from around the Middle East. I needed to keep a few other thoughts up my sleeve, and one of those was Colin’s intuitive thoughts about GOB.
“I reckon GOB wants to make one big splash on a global scale before it’s too late. It won’t matter what it is as long as he’s seen to be behind it.”