The Constant Gardener

"Mind you switch the phones over so's they don't get disturbed. Amy's the technical one round here, Justin. I'm the old fart. Anything you want, have Lara fix it for you. Knows the house better than we do, which is a waste, seeing as we're gonna be thrown out of it in a couple of months."

He went back to his victorious Canucks.

* * *

She no longer sees him, though she has put on heavy spectacles that should have been a man's. The Russian in her has brought a "perhaps" bag and it lies mouth open at her feet, stuffed with papers that she knows by heart: lawyers' letters threatening her, faculty letters dismissing her, a copy of her unpublishable article, and finally her own lawyer's letters, but not too many of them because, as she explains, she has no money and besides, her lawyer is more comfortable defending the rights of the Sioux than doing battle with the limitless legal resources of Messrs. Karel Vita Hudson of Vancouver. They sit like chess players without a board, square to each other, knees almost touching. A memory of Oriental postings tells Justin not to point his feet at her, so he sits askew, at some discomfort to his battered body. For a while now she has talked into the shadows past his shoulder and he has barely interrupted her. Her self-absorption is absolute, her voice by turn despondent and didactic. She lives only with the monstrosity of her case and its hopeless insolubility. Everything is a reference to it. Sometimes — quite often, he suspects — she forgets him entirely. Or he is something else for her — a hesitant faculty meeting, a timid convocation of university colleagues, a vacillating professor, an inadequate lawyer. It is only when he speaks Lorbeer's name that she wakes to him and frowns — then offers some mystical generality that is a palpable evasion: Markus is too romantic, he is so weak, all men do bad things, women also. And no, she does not know where to find him:

"He is hiding somewhere. He is erratic, each morning a different direction," she explains with unrelenting melancholy.

"If he says the desert, is it a real desert?"

"It will be a place of great inconvenience. That also is typical."

To plead her cause she has absorbed phrases that he would not have credited her with: "I will fast-forward here… KVH are taking no prisoners." She even speaks of "my patients on death row." And when she presses a lawyer's letter on him, she quotes from it while he reads it, lest he miss the most offensive parts:

You are again reminded that under the confidentiality clause in your contract you are expressly forbidden to impart this misinformation to your patients… You are formally warned against any further dissemination, verbally or by any other means, of these inaccurate and malicious opinions based on the false interpretation of data obtained while you were under contract to Messrs. Karel Vita Hudson…

This is followed by the superbly arrogant non sequitur that "our clients deny absolutely that at any time did they attempt in any way to suppress or influence legitimate scientific debate…"

"But why did you sign the wretched contract in the first place?" Justin cuts in roughly.

Pleased by his animus she gives a mirthless laugh. "Because I trusted them. I was a fool."

"You're anything but a fool, Lara! You're a highly intelligent woman, for God's sake," Justin exclaims.

Insulted, she lapses into a brooding silence.

* * *

The first couple of years after Karel Vita acquired the Emrich-Kovacs molecule through the agency of Markus Lorbeer, she tells him, were a golden age. Initial short-term tests were excellent, the statistics made them better, the Emrich-Kovacs partnership was the talk of the scientific community. KVH provided dedicated research laboratories, a team of technicians, clinical trials all over the Third World, first-class travel, glamorous hotels, respect and money galore.

"For frivolous Kovacs, it was her dream come true. She will drive Rolls-Royces, she will win Nobel Prizes, she will be famous and rich, she will have many, many lovers. And for serious Lara, the clinical trials will be scientific, they will be responsible. They will test the drug in a wide range of ethnic and social communities that are vulnerable to the disease. Many lives will be improved, others will be saved. That will be very satisfactory."

"And for Lorbeer?"

An irritable glance, a grimace of disapproval.

"Markus wishes to be a rich saint. He is for Rolls-Royces, also for saved lives."

"For God and Profit, then," Justin suggests lightly, but her only response is another scowl.

"After two years I was making an unfortunate discovery. The KVH trials were bullshit. They had not been scientifically written. They were designed only to get the drug onto the market as soon as possible. Certain side effects were deliberately excluded. If side effects were identified, the trial was immediately rewritten so that they did not reappear."

"What were the side effects?"