‘That won’t be enough,’ he said firmly.
Driscoll looked surprised as well as cross at this lack of appreciation. ‘What do you mean, not enough?’
‘We need a firm statement, to reassure people.’
‘Ronald, Ronald.’ He gave a small pitying shake of the head and dabbed his mouth with the folded napkin. ‘What do you expect me to do? Stand over the scientists and tell them how to run their committee?’
‘I expect you to do whatever you have to do to save Morton-Kreiger from this totally undeserved and highly damaging attack – this victimization.’
Driscoll pulled himself upright, looking ruffled. He was just beginning to realize that Schenker might be calling in a number of long-standing favours. He didn’t reply but buttoned his jacket, ready for a quick getaway.
Schenker spelt it out. ‘I saved your bacon, Tony. Now I’m asking you to do the same for me.’
Driscoll looked at him uncomprehendingly and said tersely: ‘I’ve said I’ll do all I reasonably can. And I will.’ Then, casting an eye around him, itching for escape, he added dismissively: ‘What do you mean anyway – saved my bacon?’
Schenker made a show of reticence, as if wild horses wouldn’t drag such unnecessary details from his lips.
‘Saved my bacon!’ echoed the minister with a chortle. ‘Really, Ronald, that’s a little over the top, isn’t it?’
He has no idea, Schenker realized, not even an inkling.
He’d probably erased the girl from his memory. Looking suitably reluctant at having to mention it, Schenker helped his memory along a bit.
‘That unpleasant business.’
‘Unpleasant business?’ the minister retorted. ‘It’d help if I knew what the hell you were talking about.’ He was irritated, but also, Schenker sensed, curious.
Schenker pitched his voice just above a whisper. ‘The business with Miss Kershaw.’
Surprise flashed across his face, and he gave a slight twitch as if he’d been attacked by an insect. Recovering, he raised an admonitory finger. ‘Don’t talk to me about Miss Kershaw. She was one of your least clever ideas, Schenker.’
‘
My
idea?’ He shook his head very slowly. ‘I don’t think that’s quite accurate, Tony. Remember, I never even knew the girl until I met her with you.’ Gesturing to show that the matter was hardly worth arguing about, he went on rapidly: ‘But it was certainly my idea to settle her financially and make sure she kept out of your way.’
Driscoll was very still, his mouth sagging, the lower lip full and damp, revealing back teeth gleaming with fillings. When he finally managed to speak, his voice was thin and breathless. ‘Settle her?’
Schenker flicked a warning glance as the waiter approached. They ordered coffee.
Driscoll’s eyes were fixed blackly on his, waiting for an answer.
Schenker took his time. ‘She had – er, ideas. We thought that her ideas were the last thing you needed in your new job. We identified the problem and dealt with it. We also went to some lengths to ensure she would never trouble you again.’
Driscoll’s mouth moved. He spluttered: ‘You – ’ But he never went on. He closed his eyes as if a lot of half-realized pieces were suddenly falling into place. Then he shot Schenker an agitated glance. ‘
We
, you said?’
‘Sorry – I. Me.’
The coffee arrived. Schenker asked for the bill. Then he fixed his gaze on Driscoll. ‘I valued our friendship highly enough to go out on a limb for you, to save you unpleasantness which might have been highly inconvenient to your career. This Silveron business means a lot to
my
career, Tony. I’m asking you to go out on a limb for me.’
Driscoll was recovering fast, the fight bouncing back into his face. He protested: ‘I didn’t ask you to interfere. In fact, it was a bloody liberty.’
‘You would have preferred the business to’ – Schenker rotated his fingers, as if plucking the right word out of the air – ‘to, er,
progress
, would you?’
He got the meaning of that all right, and mashed his lips together. ‘It wouldn’t have got that far.’
‘No?’ Schenker was losing patience. ‘Well, whichever way it had turned out, it would have cost you a great deal of worry, not to mention cash. I would have thought you were only too pleased to have that little lot taken off your hands.’
The bill arrived. Schenker signed it without reading it.
‘It was rank interference,’ Driscoll repeated bitterly.
Schenker could see what the trouble was. It wasn’t that he had interfered – Driscoll could hardly be anything but grateful about that – it was injured pride, lost face, and the fact that the revelation had put Driscoll so completely in Schenker’s debt.
‘I acted as a friend,’ Schenker said lightly. ‘If I did wrong then I did it with the best intentions.’
That took the wind out of his sails, as Schenker had known it would. Driscoll, his eyes darting rapidly round the room, ran a smoothing hand down the front of his jacket and pulled his shoulders back, soldier fashion. ‘I must go,’ he said sharply, and got to his feet. Schenker rose and they nodded formally to each other.
‘I’ll be in touch,’ Driscoll murmured, and marched off. This time he forgot to nod to his acquaintances.
Anne Dublensky gave a long shuddering sigh of exasperation. ‘What do you mean, let’s be positive?’
‘I mean, let’s be positive,’ Dublensky replied with a short laugh.
‘Sometimes you talk so much baloney, I think your head needs attention.’ She stalked out into the yard, letting the screen bang behind her. Standing up wearily, knowing what was to come as surely as if they were reading a script, he followed her outside and found her raking the leaves with ferocious energy.
‘What do you want, Anne?’ he asked, genuinely puzzled. ‘I mean, I have this job, don’t I? We have a new start. It may not be much, but what am I meant to do – throw it all away?’
‘I hate this place,’ she hissed under her breath.
Automatically, he turned to look at the house. Okay, it wasn’t perfect – truth be told, it was rather a dump – but it wasn’t as if they were buying the place. They were just renting it while they waited for the house in Allentown to sell.
‘When the agreement runs out we could try another place,’ he suggested.
‘
What?
’ She looked at him as if he were a fool. ‘I meant
this
place.’ She made an impatient all-encompassing sweep of her arm.
Ah,
this
place. This small town in New Jersey. It wasn’t such a bad neighbourhood, at least Dublensky didn’t think so. A little too satisfied with itself perhaps, not so friendly as other places they had been, a little too thick with country clubs that had mysteriously few Poles, Italians or Jews among their members, but not to be condemned for all that. There were always good unaffected people everywhere; you just had to go out and look for them. For some reason Anne hadn’t shown much interest in meeting people. Nor, for that matter, in applying to join any projects, although in the past she had always complained bitterly when she had been denied the opportunity to work.
Each day seemed to be a burden to her, each conversation a source of profound irritation. Whatever he suggested by way of a diversion – an evening out, a weekend drive – she dismissed with now familiar contempt. And her displeasure, rarely far beneath the surface, was never more intense than when he tried to pacify her. Then, eyes glittering dangerously, she reacted with sharp-edged lunges of scorn.
‘I never know what’s wrong,’ he said plaintively. ‘You act like I’ve done something terrible but you never tell me what it is I’m supposed to have done. I mean, is it the job? Okay, so it’s not great, I know it’s not great – but I like it, I really do. I know you don’t believe me, but it’s true.’
‘Oh, I believe you,’ she said, picking up a sack and stuffing leaves in aggressively. ‘Whatever else, you’ve always had the ability to adapt.’
Was there a touch of sarcasm in her tone? Even after all these years it was never possible to be sure with Anne. Observations, even compliments, were delivered conditionally, with overlays of meaning; she was incapable of seeing the simplest thing without sighting endless complications beyond. His job – as a toxicologist at a new contract research company called Dalton Research International – was an irony in itself, as the fast-growing Dalton had aspirations to become another TroChem, and was even now hungering after a contract with Morton-Kreiger. The position was a step down in responsibility, status and salary, but it was solid employment. Anne, despite her past optimism, her remorseless encouragement, had shown only a glancing interest in this success, her enthusiasm as guarded as it was short-lived.
She stared at him, grasping the rake to her chest with both hands. ‘I’ve lost respect for you,’ she declared suddenly. ‘Yes,’ she repeated more deliberately, ‘I have lost respect for you. I need to tell you that. You have a right to know. That that’s the way I feel about you now.’
‘Anne …’ He sighed. ‘We’ve been over this so often.’
‘Not often enough for me.’
‘I can’t take the world’s burdens on my shoulders. I’ve got you and Tad to look after. That’s my first responsibility – ’
‘We can look after ourselves, thanks. In fact’ – her face hardened – ‘I don’t know if I wouldn’t prefer it that way.’
Their arguments normally followed such well-worn paths, such predictable channels of self-torture and mutual frustration, that this new departure took him by surprise, like a sudden blow.
The pain must have shown in his face because she clutched a hand to her forehead with a groan of self-disgust and said quickly: ‘Forget that. I didn’t mean it. I really didn’t mean it.’ She turned back to her work, then paused again and said grudgingly: ‘You know I wouldn’t mind so much if you’d kept in contact with Burt, if you knew what the hell was happening.’
She didn’t always take this line. Sometimes she berated him for not having stood up to the Allentown management and sued for wrongful dismissal, other times she harped on his stupidity in leaving the Aurora documents lying around, waiting to be stolen. Most usually – and this was the nub of her displeasure – she’d rebuke him for hiding the existence of the second file from her, for not telling her about it until long after it was stolen, and worst of all, for having done nothing about it, for not being prepared to get up and tell the whole world what it contained. This was the real crime, the one that could never, it seemed, be forgiven.
‘It’s not in Burt’s hands, I’ve told you,’ Dublensky said sharply, still catching his breath from her unexpected salvo. ‘It’s EarthForce,’ he said. ‘EarthForce are the only people who can take the thing forward.’
‘Well, they tried, didn’t they? They had the publicity campaign, and where did that get them?’
‘I don’t know, how can I know?’ He heard his voice rising; he felt a sudden heat at the back of his eyes.
‘You could ask them, couldn’t you? Why don’t you call them?’ she pleaded, her voice swooping low with entreaty. ‘Why not? How long would it take – five minutes? Less? Speak to Paul Erlinger. Find out. Oh, this time
do
it, John. For me.’
His shoulders slumped, he gave a gesture of defeat. She’d made this request before and, though he’d genuinely intended to call, he’d never managed to get as far as the phone. At first he’d told himself it was a sensible move against the possibility of bad security at EarthForce, that he was merely protecting himself against a rerun of the burglary and other hostilities, but he knew this wasn’t quite the whole story. He clung to the belief that Silveron would never get final EPA approval, that the product would come unstuck long before it got to the marketplace, that someone somewhere would denounce it; that, even on the slenderest of evidence, EarthForce would somehow persuade the EPA to demand a completely new set of toxicology trials.
In the meantime he had managed to salvage a large chunk of his life. His message of non-cooperation with EarthForce had obviously been received loud and clear by the powers that be, because it was soon after his meeting with Paul Erlinger that he had landed this job. And now Anne was berating him for having made the best of things, for picking up the pieces of their lives.
‘Okay, okay,’ he said, hovering close to the edge of his self-control, ‘I’ll call, I’ll call. But I would like to know if I’m going to be allowed some peace afterwards. Am I going to be forgiven for whatever this crime is that I’m meant to have committed?’
She sighed impatiently. ‘There’s no crime.’
‘Well, you could have fooled me.’
She eyed him. ‘If there’s a crime it’s that you don’t seem to care any more. That’s what I find hard to take.’
‘Don’t care! How much am I meant to care? I mean, am I meant to stand up and make these claims and get torn apart in public and go onto welfare, all to achieve absolutely nothing, and then feel good with myself because I’ve done it for some great principle?’
Shaking her head, she rolled her eyes skyward in an expression of hopelessness, and, rake in hand, stalked off across the grass. Even her back broadcast disappointment.
Two days later he got away from work earlier than usual and, remembering that Anne had gone to collect Tad from swimming practice, finally goaded himself into sitting in front of the phone and calling Paul Erlinger.
In Washington the name of Alan Breck brought Erlinger panting breathlessly to the phone. He betrayed his hopes straight away. ‘Your friend – are there developments?’
Dublensky felt a squeeze of shame. ‘No.’ As he said it, the disappointment at the far end of the line was almost palpable. ‘No, I’m sorry. Nothing. No, I was hoping you might be able to tell me about developments. How you’re progressing with the medical opinions and that sort of thing.’
‘Oh, well – you know. It’s slow, like these things are always slow.’ His voice had lost its edge of excitement. ‘At the moment I’d say it was one step forward, one back. Some of the Aurora workers – four in fact – have gone and gotten themselves rediagnosed with good old-fashioned ailments, non-chemical diseases that make it a lot easier to obtain welfare and insurance payouts. Can’t blame them, but it’s lowered our data base.’
‘You think you still have a case?’