shysters?â
âOne, Daddy,â Monty said, through clenched teeth as she coaxed the clapped-out fax machine into accepting the letter she was trying to send to Washington. âWe should leave in half an hour.â
At least her father was wearing a suit; that was something. Charcoal grey, single breasted, the cut flattered his burly physique, made his shoulders look straight in spite of the years spent slouching over his experiments. But he was pacing around the office restlessly, like a schoolboy in his Sunday best waiting to be dragged to church.
Bannerman Genetics Research occupied a crumbling Victorian building that had originally been built as a laundry. It was on the fringe of the campus, tucked away beyond the main car park of Berkshire University and for the past three years had been subjected to a constant bombardment of noise and dust from a new science block under construction only yards away.
Monty shared the dingy first-floor office with her father. Every year she thought it was a miracle that their laboratory got its certificate from the Health and Safety Executive without a major review. That was definitely on the cards. All it needed was a new, vigilant inspector and theyâd be in for tens of thousands of pounds of expenditure.
She looked fondly through the dividing glass that revealed the main laboratory with its scientists, students and technicians at work. The older generation in their white coats, theyounger one in jeans and sweatshirts. Some of these people had been with her father all their working lives. Walter Hoggin, their chief technician, was one of them.
She watched him walking ponderously across the lab now, a gentle giant of a man. He must be nearing retirement, she thought sadly, not looking forward to the day when they would lose him. So long as Walter was there, applying his scrutiny to everything, she knew that in spite of their antiquated premises and equipment the safety of their staff would never be compromised.
âON LINE TRANSMIT,â appeared in the window of the fax machine. The letter began to feed in, then suddenly slipped sideways, and there followed a series of warning bleeps. Panicking, Monty grabbed the page and tried to retrieve it. It tore in half.
âDamn you!â She glared at the machine in fury and saw an error code number appear in the window. They had spent a hundred pounds having it serviced less than a week ago. The engineer had warned her that it was fit for the scrap heap, but Monty had hoped she might be able to eke another few months out of it.
She opened the cover and carefully retrieved the torn and crumpled remains of the other half of the letter, which she had just typed for her father, accepting an invitation to talk at Georgetown University next autumn. Then she sat down and reprinted it on her equally clapped-out word processor. Money, she thought. God, they needed it.
The forty-nine-storey windowless monolith that housed the headquarters of the Bendix Schere Foundation was situated on the Euston Road in London, dwarfing the building of one of its fellow giants and rivals in the pharmaceutical industry, Wellcome plc and the Wellcome Foundation.
Even in an industry not widely noted for its openness, the Bendix Schere Foundation had a unique mystique; it combined a wide range of public activities, including billions of pounds and dollars donated to medical research charities, with an obsessive secrecy about its ownership and an internal organization that had defeated the investigative attempts ofsome of the worldâs most persistent journalists.
From the turnover figures made public in order to satisfy the requirements of the American Food and Drugs Administration and the British Department of Health and Social Security, Medicines Division, Bendix Schere was currently ranked in sixth place among the worldâs pharmaceutical giants. The company was registered in Liechtenstein and its stock was entirely held in bearer
âOne, Daddy,â Monty said, through clenched teeth as she coaxed the clapped-out fax machine into accepting the letter she was trying to send to Washington. âWe should leave in half an hour.â
At least her father was wearing a suit; that was something. Charcoal grey, single breasted, the cut flattered his burly physique, made his shoulders look straight in spite of the years spent slouching over his experiments. But he was pacing around the office restlessly, like a schoolboy in his Sunday best waiting to be dragged to church.
Bannerman Genetics Research occupied a crumbling Victorian building that had originally been built as a laundry. It was on the fringe of the campus, tucked away beyond the main car park of Berkshire University and for the past three years had been subjected to a constant bombardment of noise and dust from a new science block under construction only yards away.
Monty shared the dingy first-floor office with her father. Every year she thought it was a miracle that their laboratory got its certificate from the Health and Safety Executive without a major review. That was definitely on the cards. All it needed was a new, vigilant inspector and theyâd be in for tens of thousands of pounds of expenditure.
She looked fondly through the dividing glass that revealed the main laboratory with its scientists, students and technicians at work. The older generation in their white coats, theyounger one in jeans and sweatshirts. Some of these people had been with her father all their working lives. Walter Hoggin, their chief technician, was one of them.
She watched him walking ponderously across the lab now, a gentle giant of a man. He must be nearing retirement, she thought sadly, not looking forward to the day when they would lose him. So long as Walter was there, applying his scrutiny to everything, she knew that in spite of their antiquated premises and equipment the safety of their staff would never be compromised.
âON LINE TRANSMIT,â appeared in the window of the fax machine. The letter began to feed in, then suddenly slipped sideways, and there followed a series of warning bleeps. Panicking, Monty grabbed the page and tried to retrieve it. It tore in half.
âDamn you!â She glared at the machine in fury and saw an error code number appear in the window. They had spent a hundred pounds having it serviced less than a week ago. The engineer had warned her that it was fit for the scrap heap, but Monty had hoped she might be able to eke another few months out of it.
She opened the cover and carefully retrieved the torn and crumpled remains of the other half of the letter, which she had just typed for her father, accepting an invitation to talk at Georgetown University next autumn. Then she sat down and reprinted it on her equally clapped-out word processor. Money, she thought. God, they needed it.
The forty-nine-storey windowless monolith that housed the headquarters of the Bendix Schere Foundation was situated on the Euston Road in London, dwarfing the building of one of its fellow giants and rivals in the pharmaceutical industry, Wellcome plc and the Wellcome Foundation.
Even in an industry not widely noted for its openness, the Bendix Schere Foundation had a unique mystique; it combined a wide range of public activities, including billions of pounds and dollars donated to medical research charities, with an obsessive secrecy about its ownership and an internal organization that had defeated the investigative attempts ofsome of the worldâs most persistent journalists.
From the turnover figures made public in order to satisfy the requirements of the American Food and Drugs Administration and the British Department of Health and Social Security, Medicines Division, Bendix Schere was currently ranked in sixth place among the worldâs pharmaceutical giants. The company was registered in Liechtenstein and its stock was entirely held in bearer
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