Limitless

‘Apparently, he has them all on a programme of vitamins and special diet supplements, so I guess he slips it in there somehow. And that’s obviously the source of his power over these people, and of his supposed charisma.’ He paused. I heard him stamping his foot, or banging his fist on something. Then he said, ‘Damn! I really can’t believe this shit. I’ve never worked on such an interesting case before.’

I didn’t have time for this now – Kenny Sanchez having a career crisis down the phone at me. I felt a slight queasiness all of a sudden. I took a deep breath, and then asked him if he had come up with anything on United Labtech.

He sighed again.

‘Yeah, I did,’ he said, ‘one thing anyway. It’s owned by the pharmaceutical company, Eiben-Chemcorp.’

Soon after that, I told him I had to go, that I was at work. I thanked him, wished him luck, and got off the phone as quickly as I could.

I put the phone down on the table and stood up.

I walked across the room, slowly, and stood at the windows. It was a clear, sunny day in Manhattan and from up here on the sixty-second floor everything was visible, there to be seen, and picked out, every landmark, every architectural feature – including some less obvious ones, such as the Celestial Building over to my right, or the old Port Authority Terminal further down, on Eighth Avenue, where Kerr & Dexter had their offices. Standing at this window, in fact, I saw that my whole life was laid out in front of me, like a sequence of tiny incisions in the vast microchip of the city – street corners, apartments, delis, liquor stores, movie-theaters. But now, instead of a deeper and more permanent line being cut into the surface, these minute nicks were in danger of being smoothed over and levelled off.

I turned around and stared at the plain white walls on the other side of the room, and at the grey carpet and at the anonymous company furniture. I hadn’t given in to panic yet – though it surely wouldn’t be long in coming. The press conference was scheduled for the afternoon, and already the thought of it filled me with a sense of dread.

But then something else occurred to me, and with the single-mindedness of a condemned man, I latched on to it – and wouldn’t let go.

Sanchez had mentioned Eiben-Chemcorp. I knew I’d heard that name somewhere quite recently, and after a couple of minutes I remembered where. I’d seen it at Vernon’s that day – in the Boston Globe. Vernon had apparently been reading about an upcoming product liability trial in Massachusetts. As far as I could recall, a teenage girl who’d been taking Triburbazine had murdered her best friend and then killed herself.

I walked back over to the table and sat in front of the laptop. I went online and searched the Globe archives for more detail on the story.

The girl’s family had filed a lawsuit looking for punitive damages against Eiben-Chemcorp. In the trial, the company would be defending charges that its anti-depressant drug had caused ‘loss of impulse control’ and ‘suicidal ideation’ in the girl. Dave Morgenthaler, a personal injury lawyer, was to be the lead counsel representing the plaintiffs, and according to one article I read, he had spent the last six months collecting depositions from expert witnesses — among them scientists who’d been involved in the development and production of Triburbazine, and psychiatrists who would be willing to testify that Triburbazine was potentially harmful.

My mind was racing now. I picked up a pen and started doodling on a piece of paper, trying to link all of this together.

Eiben-Chemcorp owned Labtech, which was where MDT seemed to have come from. That meant, in effect, that MDT had been developed and produced by an international pharmaceutical corporation. This corporation, in turn, was facing high profile – and potentially very damaging – litigation.

In fact – I turned back to the computer and went into one of the financial websites, and there it was – due to adverse publicity surrounding the case, Eiben-Chemcorp’s stock had already suffered quite a lot, having apparently dropped to 69 from a high earlier in the year of 87¼. This growing public interest in the case would probably continue as the trial date approached. I found numerous articles that had already touched on what would surely be a key point in the trial: if human behaviour was all about synapses and serotonin, then where did free will fit into the picture? Where did personal responsibility end and brain chemistry begin?

Eiben-Chemcorp, in short, was in a very vulnerable position.

I was too, of course — but what I then wondered was how I could use my knowledge of MDT to leverage some advantage out of Eiben-Chemcorp. A supply of MDT in return for not talking to Dave Morgenthaler, perhaps?

I stood up and wandered around the room.