Next. Michael Crichton

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СКАЧАТЬ nitrogen that held the embryos. It wasn’t in the kid’s room. Vasco had already searched it. And five days had passed since Tolman left Cambridge. The coolant wouldn’t last forever. And if the embryos thawed, they would be worthless. So unless Tolman had a way to top up his LN2, by now he must be anxious to retrieve his container, and hand it over to his buyer.

      It had to happen soon.

      Within an hour, Vasco was sure of it.

      “Of course, people will try to obstruct progress,” Watson said, from the podium. “Even our best companies find themselves embroiled in pointless, unproductive litigation. One of my startups, BioGen, in Los Angeles, is in court right now because some guy named Burnet thinks he doesn’t need to honor the contracts he himself signed. Because now he’s changed his mind. Burnet is trying to block medical progress unless we pay him. An extortionist whose daughter is the lawyer handling the case for him. Keeping it in the family.” Watson smiled.

      “But we will win the Burnet case. Because progress cannot be stopped!”

      At that, Watson threw both hands up in the air, waving to the audience as applause filled the room. He almost acts like a candidate, Vasco thought. Is that what Watson was aiming for? The guy certainly had enough money to get elected. Being rich was essential in American politics these days. Pretty soon—

      He looked over, and saw that the Tolman kid was gone.

      The seat was empty.

      Shit!

      “Progress is our mission, our sacred calling,” Watson cried. “Progress to vanquish disease! Progress to halt aging, banish dementia, extend life! A life free of disease, decay, pain, and fear! The great dream of humanity—made real at last!”

      Vasco Borden wasn’t listening. He was heading down the row toward the side aisle, scanning the exit doors. A couple of people leaving, nobody looking like Tolman. The guy couldn’t have gotten away, there was—

      He looked back just in time to see Tolman moving slowly up the center aisle. The kid was looking at his cell phone again.

      “Sixty billion this year. Two hundred billion next year. Five hundred billion in five years! That is the future of our industry, and that is the prospect we bring to all mankind!”

      The crowd suddenly rose to its feet, giving Watson a standing ovation, and for a moment Vasco could no longer see Tolman at all.

      But only for a moment—now Tolman was making for the center exit. Vasco turned away, slipping through the side door and out into the lobby, just as Tolman came blinking into the bright lobby light.

      Tolman glanced at his watch and headed down the far corridor, past big glass windows that looked out on the red brick campanile of San Marco, re-created by the Venetian hotel and lit brilliantly at night. He was going toward the swimming pool area, or perhaps the courtyard. This time of night those spaces would be crowded.

      Vasco stayed close.

      This was it, he thought.

      In the ballroom, Jack Watson paced back and forth, smiling and waving to the cheering crowd. “Thank you, that’s very kind, thank you…” ducking his head a little each time he said it. Just the right amount of modesty.

      Rick Diehl snorted in disgust as he watched. Diehl was backstage, taking it all in on a little black-and-white monitor. Diehl was the thirty-four-year-old CEO of BioGen Research, a struggling startup in Los Angeles, and this performance by his most important outside investor filled him with unease. Because Diehl knew that despite the cheerleading, and the press releases with smiling black kids, at the end of the day, Jack Watson was a true bastard. As someone put it, “The best I can say about Watson is, he’s not a sadist. He’s just a first-class son of a bitch.”

      Diehl had accepted funding from Watson with the greatest reluctance. He wished he didn’t need it. Diehl’s wife was wealthy, and he had started BioGen with her money. His first venture as CEO had been to bid on a cell line being licensed by UCLA. It was the so-called Burnet cell line, developed from a man named Frank Burnet, whose body produced powerful cancer-fighting chemicals called cytokines.

      Diehl hadn’t really expected to land the license, but he did, and suddenly he faced the prospect of gearing up for FDA approval for clinical trials. The cost of clinical trials started at a million dollars, and went rapidly to ten million a pop, not counting downstream costs and after-marketing expenses. He could no longer rely solely on his wife’s money. He needed outside financing.

      That was when he discovered just how risky venture capitalists considered cytokines to be. Many cytokines, such as interleukins, had taken years to come to market. And many others were known to be dangerous, even deadly, to patients. And then Frank Burnet had brought a lawsuit, casting doubt on BioGen’s ownership of the cell line. Diehl had trouble getting investors to even meet with him. In the end, he had to accept smiling, suntanned Jack Watson.

      But Watson, Diehl knew, wanted nothing less than to take over BioGen and throw Rick Diehl out on his ass.

      “Jack! Fantastic speech! Fantastic!” Rick extended his hand, as Watson came backstage at last.

      “Yeah. Glad you liked it.” Watson didn’t shake his hand. Instead, he unclipped his wireless transmitter and dropped it in Diehl’s palm. “Take care of this, Rick.”

      “Sure, Jack.”

      “Your wife here?”

      “No, Karen couldn’t make it.” Diehl shrugged. “Thing with the kids.”

      “I’m sorry she missed this speech,” Watson said.

      “I’ll see she gets the DVD,” Diehl said.

      “But we got the bad news out there,” Watson said. “That’s the point. Everybody now knows there’s a lawsuit, they know Burnet is a bad guy, and they know we’re on top of it. That’s the important thing. The company’s now perfectly positioned.”

      Diehl said, “Is that why you agreed to give the speech?”

      Watson stared at him. “You think I want to come to Vegas? Christ.” He unclipped the microphone, handed it to Diehl. “Take care of this, too.”

      “Sure, Jack.”

      And Jack Watson turned and walked away from him without another word. Rick Diehl shivered. Thank God for Karen’s money, he thought. Because without it, he’d be doomed.

      Passing through the arches of the Doge’s Palace, Vasco Borden moved into the courtyard, following his fugitive, Eddie Tolman, through the nighttime crowd. He heard his earpiece crackle. That would be his assistant, Dolly, in another part of the hotel. He touched his ear. “Go,” he said.

      “Baldy boy Tolman has reserved some entertainment.”

      “Is that right?”

      “That’s right, he—”

      “Hold on,” Vasco said. “Just hold that thought.”

      Up ahead, he was seeing something he could not believe. From the right side of the courtyard, he saw Jack B. Watson, accompanied by a beautiful, slinky, dark-haired woman, СКАЧАТЬ