Calypso Directive (22 page)

Prague, Czech Republic

A
LBANE TWIRLED AN
ink pen around her forefinger like a tiny propeller with rhythmic flicks of her right thumb. With her left, she pressed icons on a touch screen tablet computer that she had propped on a small table in the hotel suite in Prague. For the third time, she cued up the recording of the brief with Meredith Morley from the Founder's Forum. The software even allowed her to insert “chapters” like a DVD movie, for ease of navigation and playback.

The first time through, she just listened.

During the second playback, she edited out all other speakers except for Meredith and made time-annotated notes.

She was the team's RS:Social—deciphering human behavior was her specialty—and she wanted as many data points as possible. So, for the third playback, she fetched AJ and asked him to listen. She wanted to watch his expressions, compare his untrained visceral reactions to her own conclusions, without having his judgments influenced by hers.

“Are you ready?”

“Yes,” he said.

She pressed “play” and watched AJ in silence. She had not told him why she wanted him to wear headphones, and he had not asked. As he listened, she took notes on a clean sheet of paper. If he twitched, nodded, sighed, changed his facial expression, or even blinked, she would jot down the time from the playback counter. When the recording finished, she retrieved the notes from her previous listening session and laid them next to the notes she had just taken. She scanned the time stamps for matches. She had made nineteen entries on her sheet, and seven on his. Between the two sheets, she identified two times that matched to the second.

“Interesting,” he commented as he watched her work.

She nodded and cued up the first matching time.

“Shall we listen to the two matching sections together?”

“Absolutely.”

“Okay, here is the first one we both reacted to.”

“
For the past ten years, Vyrogen and its subsidiaries have been working on developing vaccines and treatments for the diseases that can be used as biological weapons. We are also searching for treatments for other global killers such as malaria, AIDS, ALS, etcetera. You name it; we want to find a way to treat it.”

“When you were listening to this, you scratched your neck repeatedly with your index finger below your right ear,” she said, looking at her notes. “What bothered you about this segment?”

“I'm not really sure. Why does it matter that I scratched my neck?”

“Neck scratching is a common reaction by a listener indicating anxiety or disagreement to what a speaker is saying.”

“I didn't know that.”

She lifted her notes for him to see. “When I listened to this segment, the following thought came to mind.”

TREATMENT ≠ CURE

“Interesting,” he mumbled.

“I thought so, too. Why would Meredith say ‘you name it, we want to find a way to
treat
it' and not ‘you name it, we want to find a way to
cure
it'?”

He nodded. “If we take her words literally, then she doesn't want to find cures. She wants to find treatments.”

She smiled. “Exactly. Now replace the word ‘find' with the word ‘supply'. She doesn't want to
supply
cures; she wants to
supply
treatments. It seems like nuance, but it's actually paradigmatic.”

“Go on.”

“We should ask ourselves the following question: Is Big Pharma, like Vyrogen, in the business of selling cures or selling treatments? Consider this: if you cure a patient of disease, you make a sale, but ultimately you lose your customer. But when you treat a patient, you have an ongoing revenue stream. Keeping their customers for life, that's the strategic business model that benefits Vyrogen most. Why do you think drug companies like to label every ailment a disease or syndrome? Is acid reflux really a disease? What about obesity? Drug companies want us to think so. That way they can sell us a little purple pill that we have to take every day for the rest of our lives.”

“That's cynical.”

She sighed. “That's reality.”

“What about BioShield? How does that fit into this equation?”

“I'm not sure yet, but the web is growing more and more tangled, isn't it?”

“I'd say so. I guess it's our job to untangle it.”

“We wouldn't be paid like sultans if it were otherwise,” she replied. “Let's move on to the next match.”

She entered the time of the second match and pressed PLAY to hear the clip.

“To our surprise, Foster became ill during the trial period. Testing revealed that he was infected with a mutated strain of H1N1—but a different strain from the one we were targeting with the vaccine. This warranted placing him in quarantine and contacting the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
.
”

“What did she say here that's suspicious?” AJ asked.

“It's not what she said, but what she did when she was saying it. Let me play the clip back again on mute.”

AJ watched intently as Albane played the video. “I don't notice anything unusual.”

“Watch again in two times fast forward.”

“Oh! It looks like she's swatting at her nose. She did it twice, in rapid succession.”

“You didn't notice it before at normal time lapse because our mind is accustomed to screening out familiar gestures as mundane. Changing the speed of the video opens the mind to a new perception.”

“What does it mean? The gesture, that is?”

“Nose touching is one of the most informative tells for lying.”

“Maybe she just has a cold or allergies. I have allergies and my nose and eyes bother me all the time,” AJ said. “I'm always rubbing my eyes and wiping my nose.”

“It's a question of context, of course. The cornerstone of reading body language is first understanding the context in which the subject is interacting. In this case, Meredith is speaking publicly, and she is the center of attention. I can say with confidence that the tell is legitimate, not allergy related.”

“Why is nose touching a tell for lying?”

“It's a well-documented and -studied phenomenon. Research has found that when a person is lying, a chemical called catecholamine is released in the body, causing tissue inside the nose to swell. The increased blood pressure inflates the nose. This in turn causes the nerve endings in the end of nose to tingle, resulting in an unmistakable itch. Without professional training to suppress the behavior, a liar will invariably rub his or her nose to alleviate the sensation.”

“You're kidding. Sounds like Pinocchio.”

“It's actually referred to as the Pinocchio Effect.”

“What is she lying about?”

“The tell isn't that specific. It only tells me Meredith is lying, but not what piece of information she's lying about.”

“We know for certain that Foster was infected with a mutated version H1N1, or they wouldn't have put him in quarantine,” AJ said.

“Not necessarily. You are failing into the trap of assuming that everything the client tells us is true. In my experience, we should question all assumptions. Nothing is fact until we corroborate the information ourselves.”

“How can we ever move forward if we have to fact-check every aspect of the case?”

“Sometimes it's better to jog in place, than to sprint down the wrong path and be forced to double back.”

AJ hesitated. “Chiarek Norse? We're not seriously going to . . .”

“What you are alluding to is something we refer to in the Tank as
sampling the client
,” she said.

AJ nodded, no further explanation was necessary. “Isn't that a bit, uh,—”

“Risky.”

“I was going to say illegal, but yeah, I guess risky sums it up.”

“Sampling the client is sometimes a necessary part of our job. Once you're in this business long enough, you come to realize that our clients are not always entirely forthcoming with us,” she explained. “Sometimes we need to take a peek inside the purse of the lady of the house, while she's in the other room. The decision to sample the client is not a decision that you or I have the authority to make.”

“Nicolora?”

“Yes. It's Nicolora's call, and his alone.”

AJ was about to ask the obvious question when they heard the door lock disengage, signaling that Kalen was back from his reconnaissance outing. Albane sent AJ to fetch VanCleave and Veronika, who were working in the adjoining suite.

“So?” Albane said once the team was gathered.

“The facility is located inside the city. Housed in a four-story stone building, built around the turn of the twentieth century. Access is through a main lobby and controlled by an attendant at a security desk and an armed uniformed guard. Elevator banks have RFID security tag readers. Standard external and internal ceiling mounted security camera system. A fire escape stairwell exit is located on the west side—blocked by a hollow steel door, wired, with no external handle or lock. The facility is a research hospital and laboratory owned and operated by a Czech company called Chiarek Norse, which according to our research is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Vyrogen Pharmaceuticals,” Kalen explained, crossing his legs casually.

“What is your accessibility rating of the facility?” Albane asked.

“On a scale of one to ten, where the Pentagon is a ten and and your grandma's house is a one, I'd rank it a solid six. How serious are we?”

“It's Nicolora's call, but I have reason to believe a sampling op is warranted,” she said.

AJ's stomach was in knots. Albane was convinced Meredith was hiding something, but breaking into the Vyrogen facility seemed extreme. What if they were wrong? Even worse, what if they were wrong and they got caught? They would probably end up in jail.

The phones of all the Tank team members in the room began to chime in unison. It was Parish signaling that new information was available for discussion.

VYROGEN CASE—ROUND TABLE SESSION—PRAGUE

R. Parish—
RS:Coordinator
: “The purpose of this conference is to report the findings of the tasking I was assigned during our last Round Table. Continued background investigation on Foster reveals that his life before Vyrogen was quite unremarkable. He has no criminal record, no legal action pending against him, and no discernible enemies.”

A. Mesnil—
RS:Social
: “What about insight into Foster's professional life and personal life? What did Ms. Knight learn from her interviews with Foster's work colleagues?”

R. Parish—
RS:Coordinator
: “Ms. Knight identified and interviewed one of Foster's closest friends. She learned that he was laid off from his job nine months ago. His girlfriend at the time did not adjust well to his strained financial state and also let him go. From what Ms. Knight uncovered, we can conclude Foster was struggling, both financially and emotionally, around the time he became involved with Vyrogen.”

A. Mesnil—
RS:Social
: “How dire was his financial status?”

R. Parish—
RS:Coordinator
: “Foster had been living paycheck to paycheck. He carried a credit card balance and was still paying off his college tuition loan. His corporate 401(k) showed an early withdrawal, with penalty, a few weeks before he signed on as a test subject in the Leighton-Harris vaccine trial. He had also enrolled in another paid drug trial with Pfizer, but he did not participate because of the quarantine.”

K. Immel—
RS:Physical
: “Looks like we can add money to the list of possible motives.”

A. Mesnil—
RS:Social
: “Did you uncover any connections or relationships Foster may have had with other pharmaceutical companies?”

R. Parish—
RS:Coordinator
: “None, but we're still looking.”

K. Immel—
RS:Physical
: “What about government contacts?”

R. Parish—
RS:Coordinator
: “Nothing.”

A. Archer—
RS:Bio
: “What accounts did Foster manage for his firm?”

R. Parish—
RS:Coordinator
: “Primarily, the Cluckers Fried Chicken account.”

A. Archer—
RS:Bio
: “Does Foster's firm handle any pharmaceutical accounts at all?”

R. Parish—
RS:Coordinator
: “Yes. They manage the cholesterolbusting drug Plaxzer's ad campaign, and were behind Synthgen's infamous Stimulex erectile dysfunction drug ads.”

A. Archer—
RS:Bio
: “So, we can't rule out contacts at Synthgen.”

R. Parish—
RS:Coordinator
: “No. I have a resource looking into it.”

K. Immel—
RS:Physical
: “Another detail has been nagging me. Why do you suppose Foster was transferred to Vyrogen's Chiarek Norse facility in Prague instead of staying at the New Jersey campus? What's so special about the Chiarek Norse facility that Vyrogen wanted Foster out of the country? In my opinion, Chiarek Norse is the white elephant in the room. If Meredith Morley is keeping something from us, we'll find it in Chiarek Norse.”

E. VanCleave—
RS:Technical
: “What makes you so you sure that the information we need is inside Chiarek Norse?”

K. Immel—
RS:Physical
: “It's obvious to me, but if you need a reason, then call it instinct.”

E. VanCleave—
RS:Technical
: “Instinct is not sufficient. Without an explanation of your decision-making processes, I am forced to conclude it is your testosterone talking, and not your intellect.”

K. Immel—
RS:Physical
: “You sound exactly like Briggs.”

E. VanCleave—
RS:Technical
: “I'll take that as a compliment.”

A. Mesnil—
RS:Social
: “Enough with the schoolyard banter. I realize that everyone is tired and stressed, but we all need to take a deep breath and focus on the task at hand. Let's shift gears. I reviewed the entire recording of Meredith Morley's briefing in the Founder's Forum, and I have ascertained that on at least three occasions Ms. Morley either withheld or misrepresented information about the case. Couple this with the fact that we have no hard evidence linking Will Foster to any external entity trying to steal Vyrogen's formula, and the suspicious transfer of Foster to the Chiarek Norse in Prague, leads me to conclude that we have compelling reason to engage in a sampling operation. Opinions?”