Vaccine Nation (18 page)

D
ANI TURNED DOWN
34
^TH
S
TREET
toward the center of Georgetown. The night had fully set in, clouds obscuring the moon, and it had showered while she was inside Salisbury’s apartment. The breeze and the dampness in the air made it chilly, and she walked with her arms wrapped around herself, stepping over the puddles that had pooled in the edges of the uneven bluestone slabs of the sidewalk. The smell of flowers and wet earth reminded her of walking Gabe to school on Friday morning. A moment of familial happiness before the madness began. Now was possibly the beginning of the end of it.

She turned on her BlackBerry and cruised the browser for Internet cafés. She found one, went inside, ordered a tea and sat in front of one of the PCs, her fingers tingling. She plugged in Salisbury’s flash memory drive: some 20 Excel files and a few Word files. She opened each in turn. The first few Excel files looked like the file Maguire had given her, only the names of the children were entered in the left-hand column. About three quarters of the way down the Excel files she found Maguire’s file, and after it, Pharma International’s file with the first five years of identical data, which included the names of the children in the left-hand column. Salisbury had to be right. The last Excel files showed statistical equations she couldn’t fathom. She felt a growing sense of anxiety. She couldn’t understand any of the numbers,
and she couldn’t explain them to anyone without Salisbury. She opened the first word file.
Thank God.
Salisbury had typed a memo summarizing his conclusions from the statistical analyses, including the .83 correlation he’d mentioned and the conclusion that the vaccine group was 5.3 times more likely to develop Autism Spectrum Disorders than the non-vaccine group. The document included a description of the Project Epsilon study, including a timeline to the day the industry shut it down.

She closed out the files, ejected the flash memory drive and left the Internet café, her nerves alert. She called the Office of Special Counsel from the sidewalk.

A man answered the phone. “Office of Special Counsel. How can I help you?” His voice had a nasal quality. Dani wondered if they all had clothespins on their noses.

“This obviously isn’t Angela Stevens.”

“No, I only go by Angie on Friday nights when I’m out dancing. My name is Eugene Donegan. How can I help you?”

What a concept. A bureaucrat with a sense of humor. She felt herself relax. “Hi, Eugene. My name is Dani North. I had previously spoken to Angela and given her my background toward getting status as a federal whistleblower. Did she leave any notes?”

“We don’t usually work that way, but give me your thirtysecond summary and I’ll tell you if it rings a bell.”

“Okay.” Dani told him the series of events over her last two and a half days, starting with Maguire’s murder, up to Richard’s murder, then Salisbury interpreting the data to show a positive link between the National Immunization Program and the autism epidemic. “Any of that sound familiar?”

“Wow. And you explained all this to Angela?”

“The part that had happened up until then, although I’m not sure how much of it made a dent in her. She didn’t seem to think you folks could help me until I had the data interpreted.”

“I’m sure she briefed Ken Olsen on this. Don’t pay much attention to the fact that I’m out of the loop. I’m low man on the totem pole. Answering the phone on a Sunday night.”

“How do we proceed?” Dani asked. She was approaching the intersection of M Street, the noise from the restaurants and bars swelling again.

Eugene said, “Come in, we’ll talk. I’ll roust the troops.”

“Including Ken Olsen?”

“Including the boss.” Then he must’ve reconsidered, because after a moment, he said, “Maybe we should patch in Angela first, make sure we put more muscle behind it to get Ken into the office on a Sunday night. You want me to call you back when I get her? Your number’s in my caller ID.”

“Sure. I’ll wait.” Dani continued pacing up the sidewalk, then decided she needed to find a place to hang around for a while. She turned toward M Street and headed back toward the Greek restaurant where she’d had dinner.

Eugene wore a toothy smile with dimples and his eyes twinkled behind horn-rimmed glasses when he greeted her in the lobby at the Office of Special Counsel’s building. His frame was wiry and short, not much taller than Dani, and he greeted her with a firm clasp of her hand and an enthusiastic “Dani!” before he ushered her into the elevator like they were old pals.

Eugene, still smiling, brought her upstairs into a conference room ablaze with light. Nine people were seated around a conference table, including a dour-faced man sitting at the head, who had to be Ken Olsen. Eugene acted as host, walking Dani around the table and introducing her. Ken Olsen grunted a hello and sat
back down immediately. Angela Stevens was seated directly to Olsen’s right. She didn’t smile. Eugene seated Dani next to him. “Angela?”

Angela said, “Dani, thank you for coming in. We’ve been worried about you since the last conversation you and I had. We’re delighted you’re here. Suppose you summarize your story for Ken’s benefit. And then we can get into the details of it.”

Dani licked her lips. This was it. Or at least the start of it. Or maybe the end of it. Dani gave the thirty second background she had given Eugene on the telephone. Then she said, “I guess I should start with Maguire. I was introduced to him by a man named John McCloskey, who I’d interviewed for an article in the
Crusador
after he became a whistleblower on Myriad.”

Olsen and Angela looked at each other.

Dani went on. “We had corresponded for weeks. I tried to convince him to let me interview him for my new documentary about autism. Finally, he agreed to see me, but insisted on coming in to talk before he would do the interview. That was last Friday, the morning he came to my office and was murdered in front of me. Just before he was killed, he gave me a USB flash memory drive.” Dani looked. She saw Olsen and Angela exchange another glance.

Angela said, “Did Maguire say anything?”

“Yes. He said something about it being on the ‘right side.’ At first I had no idea what it meant, but now I do. He was talking about the data in a spreadsheet on the flash memory drive he handed me just before he was shot. It only had the right side of the data he wanted to give me. He was telling me the left side must have been someplace else.”

Olsen frowned.

Angela said, “Go on.”

“I just left a man who interpreted the data on Maguire’s flash drive for me. It shows statistical evidence developed over a ten year period of a concrete link between the National Immunization Program and the autism epidemic in this country. That’s what whoever killed Maguire didn’t want made public. And that’s why the same people are after me: to get it back and shut me up for good.”

Olsen and Angela glanced at each other yet again.
What the hell’s that about?

“Is that it?” Angela said.

“No. After Maguire’s murder, the killer came to my apartment dressed as a cop and tried to kill me. Shortly afterward, a young cop was murdered in my apartment. If I had to guess, I would say the blue-eyed killer shot him.”

Olsen spoke for the first time. “That police officer was killed with a knife. His throat was slit and he was stabbed in the heart. The only prints on the knife were yours.”

Dani felt a blast of shock.
What’s this?
She’d never heard that before. “How do you know that?” she demanded.

Angela said, “We’re in touch with the police. We had to check out your story after you and I spoke.”

Dani felt like her hair was standing on end, as if she’d been electrified. She sneered at Angela, “Should I keep going, or do you guys know more the about the rest of my story than I do?”

Angela didn’t answer.

“What’s the hell’s going on here?” Dani spat at Angela, then glared at Olsen.

Olsen said, “You know McCloskey was a federal whistleblower. You apparently don’t know that Maguire was ours, too.” Dani saw Angela and Olsen exchange another glance. “Well, almost,” Olsen said. “He contacted us and we were negotiating with him
about his entering our program. He never explained the data to us before he was killed. He obviously thought you could help him publicize it in addition to the exposure we could give him.”

Dani said, “So you’ve been aware of my situation all along?” She stared at Olsen in disbelief.

“Yes,” Olsen said.

“Including the people chasing me?”

“Yes.”

Bastards! Ruthless bastards!
She thrust her chair back, stood and shouted, “You set me up! Used me as bait for some bust you had going after Maguire was murdered!”

“Calm down! We had nothing else to go on, no proof.”

“Don’t tell me to calm down! After three days of running, getting shot at, my friend killed and now being told I’ve been strung along like a piece of meat to catch your prey, don’t you dare tell me to calm down!”

“We needed the data, and to have its significance confirmed. Maguire never gave it to us. We think he was intending to bring it to us when he realized they were onto him, and changed his plans to give it to you.”

“You mean you guys don’t have subpoena power to get access to Pharma International’s internal records? You say you’re talking to the police, but you can’t talk to a judge to get a subpoena?”

Olsen said, “Dani, this all hinges on the data. Give it to us, and deliver the man who can interpret it appropriately, and we’ll blow this thing wide open. It will be the culmination of the quest you’ve been on. Your documentaries exposing the pharmaceutical companies will seem like cartoons compared to what you can accomplish.”

Dani sat back down, breathing hard. She pressed her hands on the edge of the table, her arms tense, forcing herself into
the back of the chair.
Something doesn’t add up here.
Now she said through clenched teeth, “I know when I’m being pitched. I thought about my Dad when I was walking in here. He always had great bullshit radar. Used to talk about when sports agents would schmooze him. When they do, watch out. Because they know something you don’t know. Like when the Giants were interested in picking him up from the last place Falcons early in his career.”

“Dani,” Olsen said. “We need you.”

“No shit. So how about you level with me and we can figure out what’s really going on here?”

Again, Olsen looked at Angela then back at it Dani. “Give us a minute, will you?”

“No. I’ve wasted enough time, because you guys obviously have been aware of my situation all along.” Dani fired her words like missiles. “Using me at the risk of my life because you assumed I had Maguire’s data and I’d do exactly what I’ve done. Find somebody to interpret it. So you tell me what you what you’ll do for me if I agree to give you the data and tell you what it means.”

“All right,” Olsen said. “If your data checks out the way you say it will, we’ll give you protection under the federal whistleblower program.”

Dani waited for him to go on. He didn’t. She threw up her hands. “That’s it?”

Angela shifted in her seat. Olsen held up a hand to wave her off. “Okay. We can arrange for you to testify at the vaccine hearings and expose the data and what it means.”

“Now you’re talking!”

“That will give you national exposure for what we now also believe it is a conspiracy by the pharmaceutical industry.” He leaned forward. His tone became self-righteous, almost smarmy.
“A conspiracy to cover up the fact that the products they’ve been pushing into the National Immunization Program have damaged a generation of our children.”

Dani’s bullshit radar pinged. Something else was coming.

Olsen said, “And we’ll make certain that all the powers of my office will combine with the Justice Department to prosecute anyone who has been involved in the cover-up, including anyone who has put your life in danger.”

Dani nodded, starting to hear what she wanted.

“But you’ll have to enter the witness protection program afterward. You’ll have a new identity after you testify, with no contact allowed with friends or family, except immediate family that would obtain new identities with you. A new life.”

Dani felt his words like a blast of cold air. “You can’t be serious.”

“It’s the only way it works,” Olsen said. “You saw what happened to McCloskey, who was already protected under the federal whistleblower statute. And what happened to Maguire, who was halfway there. I can’t expose our program to another embarrassing and costly exercise that results in the death of another whistleblower. At least not on my watch.”

Dani looked him in the eye. So that’s what it was: his reputation as Special Counsel was his primary concern.
What bullshit.
These people were pathetic.

“I’m testifying, however I can arrange it. If I have to go to the press with the data first, so be it. But I’m not accepting those terms. I’m not burying myself in some hole away from my family and friends.” Dani stood.

Olsen said, “I urge you to reconsider. I’m not happy to reiterate our failures, but remember what happened to McCloskey.”

“That happened because of this data, not McCloskey’s actions as whistleblower on the Myriad painkiller. Once I make this public, what’s done is done. At that point what incentive does anyone have to harm me?”

“Retribution. And you’ll be just as dead whether it’s before or after you disclose the data.”

Dani felt his words like a kick in the gut.

“Dani,” she heard Olsen say as she left the conference room.

She heard footsteps behind her. She turned. Eugene handed her a piece of paper. “An aide on McKean’s staff. The guy we’ve been talking to about getting you onto the agenda for the hearings. I can’t promise anything, but I’ll call him and put in a good word for you. Good luck.” Dani heard other footsteps on the marble floor. Angela Stevens approached her.

“I’ve got this, Eugene,” she said and punched the elevator button. “We need to talk. I’ll ride down with you.”

Dani’s spine went cold. She wasn’t looking forward to going anywhere with this bitch, even to the lobby. When the elevator doors opened, they both got on. Angela hit the button for the 2
^nd
floor. “We don’t have much time. Let me tell you that most of what all of us have said to you is bullshit. Except for Eugene, that is, who’s the best thing that’s come into this office in the ten years I’ve worked here. Olsen’s had an all-hands-on-deck alert in our office since Friday when Maguire was murdered. We’ve been tracking you, following you as well as we could since then. My compliments. You’ve made yourself invisible when you’ve wanted to. By the way, you should continue to keep your BlackBerry turned off and keep switching prepaid cell phones. We have the first two identified. And tell your mom to stay off her phone. Our cell tower triangulations say she’s on the road
toward Washington. She keeps calling you, but your phone must be turned off.”