Sweet Talking Money. Harry Bingham

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      They were standing inside, but their coats were on and their breath built castles in the freezing air. From a hole in the roof water dripped, joining the pools of water covering the floor.

      ‘It’s not all bad,’ said Bryn. ‘It’s cheap. We can fix it up. And it’s big. We wouldn’t have got this much space, if –’

      ‘If you’d actually bought, like, a building. You know, those things with walls, a roof, lighting, heating –’

      ‘No water on the floor,’ said Kati. ‘No concrete slipway heading into a river.’

      ‘No boats. No smell of muck that’s been allowed –’

      Oh my God,’ said Kati, as a fat black rat ambled out of a stack of rotting timber and lolloped across the floor to a hole in the wall before disappearing. ‘No rats, for heaven’s sake. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I like rats, but there are limits.’

      They had a point. Cameron and Kati had obediently done what Bryn had begged them to do. They’d gone home to their parents, in Chicago and Vancouver respectively, and spun some yarn about looking to start the next phase of their work with a new research institution, possibly in Europe. They’d sent out letters to a handful of American colleges and research companies, deliberately weak applications that would be quite likely rejected even if Corinth wasn’t quick enough to stamp on them.

      And then they’d disappeared. They took holiday flights down to Mexico City, went by bus north to Tijuana, then via a couple of further flights moved on into Latin America before catching a mainline British Airways flight direct from Rio to London. As Bryn had said, ‘Not even Corinth is going to keep up with your movements. They’ll probably catch at least some of your application letters, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they snoop around your parents’ neighbourhoods, trying to pick up your trail. All they’ll see is a story of failure. Most likely, they’ll assume you got some research post in Europe. As far as your folks are concerned, you should let them think the same thing. Corinth will keep an ear to the ground, but they’ll never find you. Not here.’

      Cameron poked an oil-spattered tarpaulin with her foot. Water sloshed around in the folds, but at least any wildlife under the surface stayed put. ‘You can hardly blame them,’ she said. ‘This isn’t exactly where you’d expect to find us.’

      Bryn sighed. The Fulham Boathouses had certainly been cheap, and yet, in Bryn’s half-inebriated state, the estate agent’s photo had been deeply misleading. In the foreground of the picture there had been an old Victorian wharf reconfigured as modern offices, and it was this Bryn thought he’d been buying. Dominating the rear, the boathouses had stood untouched since the Fulham Boating Association had gone bankrupt in 1973. The wooden walls were wet to the touch, and large areas of timber were so rotted away that Bryn could easily enough have put his fist through the side of the building. Inside, apart from the rats, there was little enough: rowing-boat hulls covered with tarpaulins or left to rot along with everything else. The only object of any grace was a lofty barge-style houseboat, of the sort that the Oxford colleges used to keep.

      And yet, there were compensations. The boathouses were located amidst a cluster of wharves, where the Thames sweeps south from Hammersmith. They were only a brisk walk from Fulham Broadway and the King’s Road, and not more than a stone’s throw from the heart of London. At the end of the main boathouse, wide double doors twenty feet high opened out on to the river. Thrown open, and assuming a warm summer’s day instead of the miserable February weather that actually surrounded them, the view would be spectacular, the far side of the Thames a mass of elderflower and rosebay willowherb, tumbling down the cobbled bank into the water.

      ‘You know, it’s not so bad. My brother’s a builder and he’ll help sort this out. He won’t charge much, and besides, buildings are easy. We’ve got a much more immediate problem.’

      ‘We have?’ said Cameron. ‘Do I want to know?’

      ‘You certainly do,’ said Bryn, and told her.

      3

      ‘Pick a disease, pick any disease.’

      It was certainly an excellent selection that the young man had to choose from. A small cupboard tinkled with glass-stoppered ampoules, each one labelled with an acronym denoting the killer disease inside.

      ‘We’ve got a good range of retro-viruses in at the moment,’ continued Cameron. ‘Our spuma viruses are a little short, but we’ve got all the herpetic viruses, filoviruses, a very nice O’nyong-nyong fever … How about the arbovirus? You get some really interesting brain diseases, you know, generally fatal. I can offer you a wonderful Venezuelan equine encephalitis, some Russian spring-summer encephalitis, a pretty fair Japanese –’

      The young man began to look pale as Cameron rambled on. He was a venture capitalist called Malcolm Milne and Bryn was hoping that Milne, or one of his competitors, would be able to solve the young company’s most immediate need – funding. But while there was every reason to impress Milne, there was no need to terrify him.

      ‘Why don’t you choose, Cameron? This one, for example.’ Bryn grabbed an ampoule at random.

      ‘Kuru virus!’ she exclaimed in delight. ‘New Guinea laughing sickness. Ex-cellent choice. Slow-acting. Fatal. Virtually wiped out the poor old Foré tribe. Not something we see so much now. Transmitted exclusively via cannibalism, you know. All those raw brains lying around. Mm-mmm. Very tempting.’

      Jiggling the ampoule in pleasure, she bounded off to the temporary microscopy bench set up in Bryn’s living room. Cameron’s scientific clutter looked incongruous amidst Cecily’s carefully chosen furniture and costly paintings. On the whole, Bryn knew which he preferred, and he watched contentedly as Cameron drew blood from Milne, and added it to the virus solution. When she was done, Kati took the tube and slid it into the white dome of the Schoolroom, checking the connections into her PC. They were short of tables, so the Schoolroom just sat on the Persian carpet, like a mosque in miniature. ‘OK to start,’ she said.

      ‘OK,’ said Cameron, ‘get this. Inside the Schoolroom now, in that tube of blood, there are good cells and bad cells. The good cells are going to munch up the kuru virus, the bad cells are going to sit on their butts.’ She moved to the PC monitor, where a crowded data panel was being continually updated. ‘Look here. The Schoolroom is calculating your percentage of successful cells. This number here shows your score.’

      Milne looked. ‘Two per cent?’ he said, obviously gutted. ‘Isn’t that awful?’

      ‘Against a real nasty kuru virus? No, no, I’d say that wasn’t bad at all. But, OK, you need to do better. Now, tell me, what would you do about it?’

      ‘What would I do?’

      ‘Sure. Think of your immune cells as soldiers, as a miniature army. What would you do?’

      Milne thought about it. ‘I guess an army needs guns and ammunition. It needs equipment. Food, obviously …’ He shrugged. What do armies need? ‘Boots?’

      Cameron was nodding vigorously, as though Milne was expounding some brilliantly technical scientific theory. ‘Pre-cise-ly,’ she enthused. ‘That’s it. Guns, ammo, food, boots. And that’s what your immune system needs. Vitamins, minerals, amino acids, antioxidants, catalysts, enzymes, co-factors. You name it. The right amounts, in the right mixtures.’

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