Limitless

‘Anyway,’ he went on, ‘there had been some serious adverse reactions to the drug as well. People had apparently become aggressive and irrational, some had even suffered periods of memory loss. One person intimated to me that there had been fatalities and that this had been covered up. The trials were discontinued and the drug – MDT-48 — was dropped. Fursten retired and apparently drank himself to death in the space of a year. None of the people I spoke to can prove any of this, no one will confirm anything. It has the status of hearsay – which of course, in terms of what I’m trying to do, is of absolutely no use.

‘Nevertheless, I talked to some other people in the weird, wonderful world of neuropsychopharmacology — try saying that when you’ve had a couple of drinks – people who shall remain nameless, and it turns out that there were rumours floating around in the mid-Eighties that research into MDT had been taken up again. These were only rumours, mind …’ — he turned and looked at me – ‘ … but now, what, you’re telling me this stuff is practically on the fucking streets?’

I nodded, thinking of Vernon and Deke Tauber and Gennady. Having been quite evasive about my sources, I hadn’t mentioned anything to Morgenthaler about Todd Ellis, either, and the unofficial trials he’d been conducting out of United Labtech.

I shook my head.

‘You said the mid-Eighties?’

‘Yeah.’

‘And these trials would be … unofficial?’

‘Clearly.’

‘Who’s in charge of research now at Eiben-Chemcorp?’

‘Jerome Hale,’ he said, ‘but I can’t believe he’d have anything to do with it. He’s too respectable.’

‘Hale?’ I said. ‘Any relation?’

‘Oh yeah,’ he said, and laughed, ‘they’re brothers.’

I closed my eyes.

‘He worked with Raoul Fursten in the early days,’ Morgenthaler went on. ‘He took over from him, in fact. But it’s got to be someone working under him, because Hale’s more of a front-office guy now. Anyway, it doesn’t matter, it’s Eiben-Chemcorp – it’s a pharmaceutical company withholding selective information in the interests of profit. That’s the case we’re making. They manipulated information in the Triburbazine trials, and if I can prove they did the same with MDT and show a pattern … then we’re home free.’

Morgenthaler was allowing himself get excited about the possibility of winning his case, but I couldn’t believe that in his excitement he had so easily passed over the fact that Jerome Hale and Caleb Hale were brothers. The implications of that seemed enormous to me. Caleb Hale had started his career in the CIA in the mid-1960s. In my own work for Turning On, I had read all about the CIA’s Office of Research and Development, and of how its MK-Ultra projects had secretly funded the research programmes of various American drug companies.

The whole thing suddenly took on an unwieldy, headachy scale. I also saw just how far out of my depth I was.

‘So, Mr Spinola, I need your help. What do you need?’

I sighed.

‘Time. I need some time.’

‘For what?’

‘To think.’

‘What’s there to think? These bastards are—’

‘I understand that, but it’s not really the point.’

‘So what is the point, money?’

‘No,’ I said emphatically, and shook my head.

He hadn’t been expecting this, obviously assuming all along that I had wanted money. I sensed a growing nervousness in him now, as if he had suddenly realized that he might be in danger of losing me.

‘How long are you staying in town?’ I asked.

‘I have to get back this evening, but—’

‘Let me call you in a day or two.’

He hesitated, unsure of how to answer.

‘Look, why don’t—’

I decided to head him off. I didn’t like doing it, but I had no choice. I did need to get away and think.

‘I’ll come up to Boston if necessary. With everything. Just … let me call you in a day or two, OK?’

‘OK.’

I stood up, and then he did as well. We started walking back towards East Fifty-ninth Street.

This time I was the one stage-managing the silence, but after a few moments something occurred to me and I wanted to ask him about it.

‘That case you’re working on,’ I said, ‘the girl who was taking Triburbazine?’

‘Yeah?’

‘Did she … I mean, was she really a killer?’

‘That’s what Eiben-Chemcorp is going to be arguing. They’re going to be looking for dysfunction in her family, abuse, any kind of background shit they can find and dress up as motivation. But the fact is, anyone who knew her – and we’re talking about a nineteen-year-old girl here, a college student – anyone who knew her says she was the sweetest, smartest kid you could meet.’

My stomach started churning.

‘So, basically, you say it was the Triburbazine, they say she did it.’

‘That’s what it comes down to, yeah – chemical determinism versus moral agency.’

It was only the middle of the day, and yet because the sky was so overcast there was a weird, almost bilious quality to the light.

‘Do you believe that’s possible?’ I said. ‘That a drug can override who we are … and can cause us to do things that we wouldn’t otherwise do?’