The Constant Gardener (34 page)

“And you told Tessa about this? She must have been thrilled.”

“Sure. I told her.”

“When?”

Birgit shrugged. “Maybe three weeks ago. Maybe two. Our correspondence has also disappeared.”

“You mean they crashed your computer?”

“It was stolen. In our burglary. I had not downloaded her letters and I had not printed them. S.”

So, Justin agreed silently. “Any idea who took it?”

“Nobody took it. With corporations it is always nobody. The big boss calls in the subboss, the sub-boss calls in his lieutenant, the lieutenant speaks to the chef of corporate security who speaks to the sub-chef who speaks to his friends who speak to their friends. And so it is done. Not by the boss or the sub-boss or the lieutenant or the sub-chef. Not by the corporation. Not by anybody at all, actually. But still it is done. There are no papers, no checks, no contracts. Nobody knows anything. Nobody was there. But it is done.”

“What about the police?”

“Oh, our police are most industrious. If we have lost a computer, tell the insurance company and buy a new one, don't come bothering the police. Did you meet Wanza?”

“Only in hospital. She was already very ill. Did Tessa write to you about Wanza?”

“That she was poisoned. That Lorbeer and Kovacs had come to visit her in the hospital and that Wanza's baby survived, but Wanza did not. That the drug killed her. Maybe a combination killed her. Maybe she was too thin, not enough body fat to handle the drug. Maybe if they had given her less, she would have lived. Maybe KVH will fix the pharmacokinetics before they sell it in America.”

“She said that? Tessa did?”

“Sure. ”Wanza was just another guinea pig. I loved her, they killed her. Tessa.“”

Justin was already protesting. For heaven's sake, Birgit, what about Emrich? If Emrich, as one of the discoverers of the drug, has declared it unsafe, then surely- Birgit cut him short. “Emrich exaggerates. Ask Kovacs. Ask KVH. The contribution of Lara Emrich to the discovery of the Dypraxa molecule was completely minimal. Kovacs was the genius, Emrich was her laboratory assistant, Lorbeer was their Svengali. Naturally because Emrich was also the lover of Lorbeer, her importance has been made bigger than the reality.”

“Where's Lorbeer now?”

“It is not known. Emrich doesn't know, KVH doesn't know—says it doesn't—for the last five months he has been completely invisible. Maybe they killed him also.”

“Where's Kovacs?”

“She is traveling. She is traveling so much that KVH can never tell us where she is or where she will be. Last week she was in Haiti, maybe, three weeks ago she was in Buenos Aires or Timbuktu. But where she will be tomorrow or next week is a mystery. Her home address is naturally confidential, her telephone also.”

Carl was hungry. One minute he was placidly trailing a piece of twig through a puddle, the next he was yelling blue murder for food. They sat on a bench while Birgit fed him from the bottle.

“If you were not here he would feed himself,” she said proudly. “He would walk along like a little drunkard with the bottle in his mouth. But now he has an uncle to watch him, so he requires your attention.” Something in what she said reminded her of Justin's grief. “I am so sorry, Justin,” she murmured. “How can I say it?” But so swiftly and softly that for once it was not necessary for him to say “thank you” or “yes, it's terrible” or “you're very kind” or any other of the meaningless phrases he had learned to mouth when people felt obliged to say the unsayable.

•      •      •

They were walking again and Birgit was reliving the burglary.

“I arrived at the office in the morning—my colleague Roland is at a conference in Rio—it is otherwise a normal day. The doors are locked, I must unlock them as usual. At first I notice nothing. That is the point. What burglar locks doors behind him when he leaves? The police asked us this question also. But our doors were locked without question. The place is not tidy, but that is normal. In Hippo we clean our own rooms. We cannot afford to pay a cleaner and sometimes we are too busy or too lazy to clean for ourselves.”

Three women on push-bikes rode solemnly by, circled the car park and returned, passing them on their way down the hill. Justin remembered the three women cyclists of this morning.

“I go to check the telephone. We have an answering machine at Hippo. A normal hundred-mark affair, but a hundred marks nevertheless, and nobody has taken it. We have correspondents all over the world, so we must have an answering machine. The tape is missing. Oh shit, I think, who took the stupid tape? I go to the other office to look for a new tape. The computer is missing. Oh shit, I think, who is the idiot who has moved the computer and where did they put it? It's a big computer on two stories but to move it is not impossible, it has wheels. We have a new girl, a trainee lawyer, a great girl actually but new. ”Beate, darling,“ I say, ”where the hell is our computer?“' Then we start to look. Computer. Tapes. Disks. Papers. Files. Missing and the doors locked. They take nothing else of value. Not the money in the money box, not the coffee machine or the radio or the television or the empty tape recorder. They are not drug addicts. They are not professional thieves. And to the police they are not criminals. Why should criminals lock doors? Maybe you know why.”

“To tell us,” Justin replied after a long pause.

“Please? To tell us what? I don't understand.”

“They locked the doors on Tessa too.”

“Explain, please. What doors?”

“Of the jeep. When they killed her. They locked the jeep doors so that the hyenas wouldn't take away the bodies.”

“Why?”

“They were telling us to be afraid. That's the message they put on Tessa's laptop. To her or to me. ”Be warned. Don't go on with what you're doing.“ They sent her a death threat too. I only found out about it a few days ago. She never told me.”

“Then she was brave,” said Birgit.

She remembered the baguettes. They sat on another bench and ate them while Carl munched a rusk and sang, and the two old sentries marched sightlessly past them down the hill.

“Was there a pattern to what they took? Or was it wholesale?”

“It was wholesale, but there was also a pattern. Roland says there was no pattern, but Roland is relaxed. He is always relaxed. He is like an athlete whose heart beats at half the normal speed so that he can run faster than anyone else. But only when he wishes. When it is useful to go fast he goes fast. When nothing can be done he stays in bed.”

“What was the pattern?” he asked.

She has Tessa's frown, he noticed. It is the frown of professional discretion. As with Tessa, he made no effort to break through her silence.

“How did you translate waghalsig?” she demanded at length.

“Reckless, I think. Daredevilish, perhaps. Why?”

“Then I too was waghalsig,” said Birgit.

Carl wanted to be carried, which she said was unheard of. Justin could safely insist on shouldering the burden. There was business while she unbuckled her backpack and extended the straps for him and—only when she was satisfied with the fit-lifted Carl into it and exhorted him to be well behaved with his new uncle.

“I was worse than waghalsig. I was a full idiot.” She bit her lip, hating herself for what she had to tell. “We had a letter brought to us. Last week. Thursday. It came by courier from Nairobi. Not a letter, a document. Seventy pages. About Dypraxa. Its history and its aspects and its side effects. Positive and negative, but mostly negative in view of the fatalities and side effects. It was not signed. It was in all scientific respects objective, but in other respects a little bit crazy. Addressed to Hippo, not to anyone by name. Just Hippo. To the Lords and Ladies of Hippo.”

“In English?”

“English but not written by an Englishman, I think. Typed, so we do not know the handwriting. It contained many references to God. You are religious?”

“No.”

“But Lorbeer is religious.”

•      •      •

The drizzle had turned to occasional fat spots of rain. Birgit was sitting on a bench. They had come upon a scaffold of children's swings fitted with crossbars across the seats to keep them safe. Carl needed to be lifted into one and pushed. He was fighting sleep. A catlike softness had descended over him. His eyes were half closed and he was smiling while Justin pushed him with obsessive caution. A white Mercedes with Hamburg registration plates came slowly up the hill, passed them, made a circle in the flooded car park and came slowly back. One male driver, one male passenger beside him. Justin remembered the two women in the parked Audi this morning as he stepped into the street. The Mercedes drove back down the hill.

“Tessa said you speak all languages,” Birgit said.

“That doesn't mean I have anything to say in them. Why were you waghalsig?”

“You will please call it stupid.”

“Why were you stupid?”

“I was stupid because when the courier delivered the document from Nairobi, I was excited and I telephoned to Lara Emrich in Saskatchewan and I told her, ”Lara darling, listen, we have received a long, anonymous, very mystical, very crazy, very authentic history of Dypraxa, no address, no date, from somebody who I think is Markus Lorbeer. It tells about the fatalities of the drug combination and it will greatly help your case.“ I was so happy because the document is actually called after her name. It is titled ”Dr. Lara Emrich is right.“ ”It is crazy,“ I told her, ”but it is fierce like a political statement. Also very polemical, very religious, and very destructive of Lorbeer.“ ”Then it is by Lorbeer,“ she says. ”Markus is whipping himself. It is normal.“”

“Have you met Emrich? Do you know her?”

“As I knew Tessa. By e-mail. So we are e-friends. In the paper it said Lorbeer was six years in Russia, two years under old Communism, four years under the new chaos. I tell this to Lara who knows it already. According to the paper, Lorbeer was the agent for certain Western pharmas, lobbying Russian health officials, selling them Western drugs, I tell her. According to the paper, in six years he had dealings with eight different health ministers. The paper provides a saying regarding this period and I am about to tell it to Lara when she interrupts me and tells me what the saying is, exactly as it stands in the document. ”The Russian health ministers arrived in a Lada and left in a Mercedes.“ It is a favorite joke of Lorbeer's, she tells me. This confirms for both of us that Lorbeer is the writer of the document. It is his masochistic confession. Also from Lara I learn that Lorbeer's father was a German Lutheran, very Calvinistic, very strict, which accounts for his son's morbid religious conceptions and his desire to confess. Do you know medicine? Chemistry? A little biology perhaps?”

“My education was a little too expensive for that, I'm afraid.”

“Lorbeer claims in his confession that while acting for KVH he obtained the validation of Dypraxa by means of flattery and bribery. He describes buying health officials, fasttracking clinical trials, purchasing drug registrations and import licenses and feeding every bureaucratic hand in the food chain. In Moscow, a validation by top medical opinion leaders could be bought for twenty-five thousand dollars. So he writes. The problem is that when you bribe one you must also bribe those you do not select, otherwise they will denigrate the molecule out of envy or resentment. In Poland it was not so different, but less expensive. In Germany, influence was more subtle but not very subtle. Lorbeer writes of a famous occasion when he chartered a jumbo jet for KVH and flew eighty eminent German physicians to Thailand for an educational trip.” She was smiling as she related this. “Their education was provided on the journey out, in the form of films and lectures, also Beluga caviar and extremely ancient brandies and whiskies. Everything must be of the finest quality, he writes, because the good doctors of Germany have been spoiled early. Champagne is no longer interesting to them. In Thailand, the physicians were free to do as they wished, but recreation was provided for those who wanted it, also attractive partners. Lorbeer personally organized a helicopter to drop orchids on a certain beach where the physicians and their partners were relaxing. On the flight home, no further education was needed. The physicians were educated out. All they had to remember was how to write their prescriptions and learned articles.”

But although she was laughing she was uneasy with this story, and needed to correct its impact.

“This does not signify that Dypraxa is a bad drug, Justin. Dypraxa is a very good drug that has not completed its trials. Not all doctors can be seduced, not all pharmaceutical companies are careless and greedy.”

She paused, aware that she was speaking too much, but Justin made no attempt to deflect her.

“The modern pharmaceutical industry is only sixty-five years old. It has good men and women, it has achieved human and social miracles, but its collective conscience is not developed. Lorbeer writes that the pharmas turned their backs on God. He has many biblical references I do not understand. Perhaps that is because I do not understand God.”

Carl had gone to sleep on the swing, so Justin lifted him out and, with his hand on his hot back, walked him softly up and down the tarmac.

“You were telling me how you telephoned Lara Emrich,” Justin reminded her.

“Yes, but I distracted myself deliberately because I am embarrassed that I was stupid. Are you comfortable or shall I take him?”

“I'm fine.”

The white Mercedes had stopped at the bottom of the hill. The two men were still sitting inside it.

“In Hippo we have assumed for years that our telephones are listened to, we have a certain pride about this. From time to time our mail is censored. We send ourselves letters and watch them come to us late and in a different condition. We have often fantasized about planting misleading information on the Organy.”

“The what?”

“It is Lara's word. It is a Russian word from Soviet times. It means the organs of state.”

“I shall adopt it immediately.”

“So maybe the Organy listened to us laughing and rejoicing on the telephone when I promised Lara I would send her a copy of the document to Canada immediately. Lara said unfortunately she does not possess a fax machine because she has spent her money on lawyers and is not permitted to enter the hospital precincts. If she had possessed a fax machine, maybe there would be no problem today. She would have a copy of Lorbeer's confession, even if we did not. Everything would be saved. Maybe. Everything is maybe. Nothing has a proof.”

“What about e-mail?”

“She has no e-mail anymore. Her computer had a cardiac arrest on the day after she attempted to publish her article, and it has not recovered.”

She sat pink and stoical in her vexation.

“And therefore?” Justin prompted her.

“Therefore we have no document. They stole it when they stole the computer and the files and the tapes. I telephoned to Lara in the evening, five o'clock German time. Our conversation finished at maybe five-forty. She was emotional, very happy. I also. ”Wait till Kovacs hears about this,“ she kept saying. So we talked a long time and laughed and I did not think to make a copy of Lorbeer's confession until tomorrow. I put the document in our safe and locked it. It's not an enormous safe but it is considerable. The burglars had a key. As they locked our doors when they left, so they locked our safe after they had stolen our document. When one considers these things they are obvious. Until then they do not exist. What does a giant do when he wants a key? He tells his little people to find out what safe we have, then he phones the giant who made the safe and asks him to have his little people make a key. In the world of giants, this is normal.”

The white Mercedes hadn't moved. Perhaps that too was normal.

•      •      •

They have found a tin shelter. Rows of folded deck chairs stand chained like prisoners to either side of them. The rain rattles and pings on the tin roof and runs in rivulets at their feet. Carl has returned to his mother. He lies sleeping on her breast with his head tucked into her shoulder. She has unfolded a parasol and is holding it over him. Justin sits apart from them on the bench, hands linked between his knees in prayer and his head bowed over his hands. This is what I resented about Garth's death, he remembers. Garth deprived me of my further education.

“Lorbeer was writing a roman,” she says.

“Novel.”

“Roman is a novel?”

“Yes.”

“Then this novel has the happy end at the beginning. Once upon a time there are two beautiful young woman doctors called Emrich and Kovacs. They are interns at Leipzig University in East Germany. The university has a big hospital. They are researching under the guidance of wise professors and they dream one day they will make a great discovery that will save the world. Nobody speaks of the god Profit, unless it is profit to mankind. At Leipzig Hospital there are arriving many returning Russian Germans from Siberia and they have TB. In the Soviet prison camps the prevalence of TB was very high. All the patients are poor, all are sick and without defenses, most have multiresistant strains, many are dying. They will sign anything, they will try anything, they will not make trouble. So it is natural that the two young doctors have been isolating bacteria and experimenting with embryonic remedies for TB. They have tested with animals, maybe they tested also with medical students and other interns. Medical students have no money. They will be doctors one day, they are interested in the process. And in charge of their researches we have an Oberarzt—”

“Senior doctor.”

“The team is led by an Oberarzt who is enthusiastic for the experiments. All the team wants his admiration so all take part in the experiments. Nobody is evil, nobody is criminal. They are young dreamers, they have a sexy subject to analyze and the patients are desperate. Why not?”

“Why not?” Justin murmurs.

“And Kovacs has a boyfriend. Kovacs has always a boyfriend. Many boyfriends. This boyfriend is a Pole, a good fellow. Married, but never mind. And he has a laboratory. A small, efficient, intelligent laboratory in Gdansk. For love of Kovacs, the Pole tells her she can come and play in his laboratory whenever she has free time. She can bring whom she wants, so she brings her beautiful friend and colleague Emrich. Kovacs and Emrich research, Kovacs and the Pole make love, everyone is happy, nobody talks about the god Profit. These young people are looking only for honor and glory and maybe a bit promotion. And their studies produce positive results. Patients still die but they were dying anyway. And some live who would have died. Kovacs and Emrich are proud. They write articles for medical magazines. Their professor writes articles supporting them. Other professors support the professor, everyone is happy, everyone congratulates his neighbor, there are no enemies, or not yet.”

Carl shuffles on her shoulder. She pats his back and blows softly on his ear. He smiles and goes back to sleep.

“Emrich also has a lover. She has a husband whose name is Emrich but he is not satisfactory, this is Eastern Europe, everyone has been married to everyone. Her lover's name is Markus Lorbeer. He has a South African birth certificate, a German father and a Dutch mother and he is living in Moscow as a pharma agent, self-employed, but also as—as an entrepreneur who identifies interesting possibilities in the field of biotechnology and exploits them.”

“Talent spotter.”

“He is older than Lara by maybe fifteen years, he has swum in all the oceans, as we say, he is a dreamer as she is. He loves science, but never became a scientist. He loves medicine but is not a doctor. He loves God and the whole world, but he also loves hard currency and the god Profit. So he writes: ”The young Lorbeer is a believer, he worships the Christian God, he worships women, but he worships also very much the god Profit.“ That is his downfall. He believes in God but ignores Him. Personally I reject this attitude but never mind. For a humanist, God is an excuse for not being humanistic. We shall be humanistic in the afterlife, meanwhile we make Profit. Never mind. ”Lorbeer took God's gift of wisdom“—I guess he means by this the molecule—”and sold it to the devil.“ I guess he means KVH. Then he writes that when Tessa came to see him in the desert, he told her the full extent of his sin.”

Justin sits up sharply.

“He says that? He told Tessa? When? In the hospital? Where did she come to see him? What desert? What on earth is he saying?”

“Like I told you, the document is a little crazy. He calls her the Abbott. ”When the Abbott came to visit Lorbeer in the desert, Lorbeer wept.“ Maybe it is a dream, a fable. Lorbeer has become a penitent in the desert now. He is Elijah or Christ, I don't know. It's disgusting actually. ”The Abbott called Lorbeer to account before God. Therefore at this meeting in the desert, Lorbeer explained to the Abbott the inmost nature of his sins.“ This is what he writes. His sins were evidently many. I don't remember them all. There was the sin of self-delusion and the sin of false argument. Then comes the sin of pride, I think. Followed by the sin of cowardice. For this he does not excuse himself at all, which makes me happy actually. But probably he is happy too. Lara says he is only happy when he is confessing or making love.”

“He wrote all this in English?”

She nodded. “One paragraph he wrote like the English Bible, the next paragraph he was giving extremely technical data about the deliberately specious design of the clinical trials, the disputes between Kovacs and Emrich and the problems of Dypraxa when combined with other drugs. Only a very informed person could know such details. This Lorbeer I greatly prefer to the Lorbeer of heaven and hell, I will admit to you.”

“Abbott with a small A?”

“Large. ”The Abbott recorded everything I told her.“ But there was another sin. He killed her.”