The Constant Gardener

You didn't believe me when I told you KVH were bad. I've checked. They're bad. Two years ago they were charged with polluting half Florida, where they have a huge facility, and got off with a caution. Undisputed evidence presented by plaintiffs showed that KVH had exceeded their permitted quota of toxic effluents by nine hundred percent, poisoning conservation areas, wetlands, rivers and beaches and probably the milk. KVH performed a similar public service in India, where two hundred children in the region of Madras allegedly died of related causes. The Indian court case will be heard in about fifteen years, or longer if KVH continue to pay off the right people. They're also famous as frontrunners in the pharma industry's humanitarian campaign to prolong the life of their patents in the interest of suffering white billionaires. Good night, darling. Never again doubt a word I say. I'm immaculate. So are you. T.

Press cutting from the financial pages of the Guardian, London:

Happy Bees

The dramatic rise (40 per cent in twelve weeks) in the value of ThreeBees Nairobi reflects growing market confidence in the company's recently acquired all-African franchise in the cheap and innovative cure for multi-resistant TB, Dypraxa. Speaking from his home in Monaco, ThreeBees CEO Kenneth K. Curtiss said: "What's good for ThreeBees is good for Africa. And what's good for Africa is good for Europe and America and the rest of the world."

Separate folder marked HIPPO in Tessa's hand containing some forty exchanges, first by letter, then by printed-out e-mail, between Tessa and a woman named Birgit, who works for an independently funded pharma-watch outfit called Hippo based in a small town called Bielefeld in north Germany. The logo at the top of her letter paper explains that her organization owes its name to Greek physician Hippocrates, born can. 460 B.C., whose oath all doctors swear. The correspondence begins formally but once the e-mails take over it softens. Key players quickly acquire nicknames. KVH becomes Giant, Dypraxa becomes Pill, Lorbeer becomes Goldmaker. Birgit's source on the activities of Karel Vita Hudson becomes "Our Friend" and Our Friend must be protected at all times, since "what she is telling us is completely against Swiss law."

E-mail printout Birgit to Tessa:

… for his two doctors Emrich and Kovacs, Goldmaker opened a company on Isle of Man, maybe two companies, because this was still Communist times. Our Friend says L put the companies in his own name so that the women wouldn't get bad trouble with the authorities. Since then there has been bad argument between the women. It is scientific, also personal. Nobody in Giant is allowed to know details. Emrich emigrated to Canada one year ago. Kovacs stays in Europe, mostly Basel. The elephant mobile you sent Carl drives him completely crazy with happiness and now he trumpets like an elephant every morning to tell me he is awake.

E-mail printout Birgit to Tessa: