Blood Brothers (40 page)

“
I
was being reckless with the drug?” Gunnar shot back. “Well, I hope I was the only one in this room. We’re about to find out.” He nodded to Ben, who got up and left the room. “During the trial, Ben Corbin and I both noticed how quick you were on the stand. Amazingly quick. Quicker than I’ve ever seen you in all the years I’ve known you.”

“Thank you,” Karl replied coldly, “but I’d appreciate it if you stopped changing the subject. We have a very serious situation with the FDA, and”—he paused for just an instant as Ben walked back in, accompanied by a woman carrying a medical bag—“and you just told me it’s worse than I thought. Now if you’ll all excuse me, I have to get back to the office. It looks like we’re not as ready for our meeting with the FDA as I thought a few minutes ago.”

He turned to go, and Siwell put away his notepad and stood.

“Just a minute,” called Gunnar. “I called this meeting, and I haven’t adjourned it yet. Sit down.”

Karl remained standing. “Fine!” he snapped. “Take your vote so we can put an end to this farce.”

“Before we vote, please let this young lady draw a sample of your blood,” Gunnar replied calmly.

Karl looked at his brother incredulously. “What? Why?”

“To find out whether you’re taking Neurostim. I think you are, and I think the directors are entitled to know one way or the other before they vote.”

There was a murmur around the table, and the directors looked uncertainly between the two brothers. Karl’s face reddened with anger and the veins on his bull neck stood out, but he managed to keep his voice calm. “Gunnar, I don’t have time for your desperate games. The company doesn’t have time. You’re not even making sense. The blood work won’t come back for days. You want us to sit here and wait until then to vote?”

“I just want to see you give a blood sample before we vote. If it comes back positive, we can have another vote.” Gunnar unbuttoned his sleeve as he spoke and began to roll it up. “If it makes you feel better, I’ll have a sample drawn too.”

“This is outrageous!” said Karl loudly, his face darkening further. “I’m not going to stand for this . . . this completely unjustified invasion of my privacy!”

“Of course not,” replied Gunnar coolly. “If you did, you would be out as president in two days.”

“Enough!” shouted Karl, slamming his fist down on the table. The protective glass sheet covering the wood cracked from end to end. “This meeting is over!” He grabbed his jacket and stormed out, leaving stunned silence in his wake.

For several seconds, no one in the room moved. The only sound was Karl’s footsteps fading down the corridor. Then everyone began to talk at once.

“Have you ever seen him act like that?” asked one director.

“When did we begin drug testing our executives?”

“Maybe we should start.”

“Order!” called Gunnar in a booming voice. “Order! This meeting has not been adjourned!”

The chatter died down, and the directors looked expectantly to Gunnar. “We still have a vote to take,” he began.

“Hold on,” interrupted Bert Siwell, standing as he spoke. “As the company’s outside counsel, I can’t permit this vote to go forward under these circumstances. I—”

“Don’t you have a conflict?” asked Ben. “You’re not just the company’s lawyer; you’re Karl Bjornsen’s lawyer too. That’s fine as long as his interests and the company’s interests are completely aligned—but they aren’t anymore, are they?”

Siwell froze for a moment. “Yes, they are, Ben. It’s in Karl’s interest to be president, and it’s in the company’s interest to keep Karl as president.”

“The directors are about to have a vote to decide that,” observed Ben.

“Let me give you a little lesson in corporate law, Ben. Decisions about what are and are not appropriate matters for the board to vote on are made by the company’s attorney, not some random lawyer who happens to have wandered into a board meeting.”

Ben leaned forward and put his elbows on the table. “Bert, if you try to interfere with this vote, I will call the Disciplinary Commission first thing tomorrow morning and you’ll be explaining yourself to an ethics panel by the end of the month.”

“Don’t you threaten me!” shot back Siwell. But he sat down and said nothing more for the rest of the meeting.

The remaining directors voted six to two to remove Karl as chairman and president and replace him with Gunnar. Ben noted with satisfaction that the only two who voted against Gunnar were the ones Noelle had identified as bribe recipients.

Gunnar’s first act as president was to fire Bert Siwell.

Karl sat in his car in the hotel parking lot and brooded. He chewed over the evening’s events again and again—or, rather, they chewed over him. The injustice of what had happened gnawed at him. Gunnar couldn’t beat him in a fair fight in court, so he sucker punched him during an “emergency” board meeting. And what was that “emergency”? That Gunnar wanted to ambush his brother, of course.

And he had played right along like an idiot. He had let Gunnar provoke him into a rage, and then that cheap hotel tabletop had broken at the slightest impact. That was a nice dramatic touch.
Gunnar probably planned it,
Karl thought, his anger building.
He’s seen me talk often enough to know I sometimes hit the table or podium to make a point. He planted a piece of weakened glass in that conference room to make me look out of control.

He had decided to sit in the car for a few minutes to cool off before driving home, but the longer he sat, the angrier he got. The rational part of his brain could plainly see what he should have done, how he could have managed the meeting so that he both avoided having a blood sample taken and won the vote. If he could have kept his temper, it would have been a simple matter to promise to have a blood test the next day if the board really wanted that. And then he could have handpicked the phlebotomist who did the test and taken steps to make sure the right results came back—or, better yet, flown off to DC first thing in the morning and promised to reschedule the test. By the time he got back from the FDA negotiations, events would have moved on and the whole blood-test issue would have been forgotten.

Knowing how he could have avoided Gunnar’s trap only made him madder for having fallen into it.
“Din idiot!”
he muttered.
“Jeg kan ikke fordra—”

He caught sight of Bert Siwell walking across the parking lot, followed by a minion who hurried to keep up with him. Neither one looked happy. Karl turned toward the hotel lobby door and saw three of the directors emerge. He couldn’t make out their faces well enough in the fading light to read their expressions, and their body language told him nothing.

Gunnar, Henrik, and Ben Corbin walked out next. They stood for a moment in the well-lit area immediately outside the doors, talking and laughing. Then they shook hands and walked toward their cars.

Karl’s jaw muscles bunched and his hands reflexively tightened into fists. He had known how the board would vote from the moment he walked out of the conference room, but seeing Gunnar and his team celebrate was still like a hard punch in the stomach. He felt an unreasoning urge to drive over and smash his car into that smug little group, but he resisted.

He watched as they started driving toward the parking-lot exit. He found himself starting his car and following them at a careful distance. They split up as they reached the highway. Corbin headed north, and Henrik’s rental car turned toward Gunnar’s home in Hinsdale. But Gunnar didn’t follow Henrik; he drove east, toward Chicago.
Toward the company,
Karl realized.

Karl’s knuckles whitened on the steering wheel as his anger flamed into rage. So Gunnar couldn’t wait to go visit his prize. He was going to show a copy of the board’s resolution to the security guard and maybe get a congratulatory handshake. Then he was going to take the elevator up to the executive office suite and go into the president’s office. He would sit in the president’s chair and lean back with a smile on his face. He might even find a box and start dumping Karl’s personal items into it—as Karl had done to Gunnar hours after he won the presidency.

The image was unbearable. Karl wouldn’t allow it. He couldn’t.

Gunnar turned into the company’s dark, empty parking lot. Karl pulled up to the edge of the driveway but idled there, far enough away to be out of earshot. He watched as Gunnar parked in the president’s space and got out of his car.

Gunnar stretched his legs and began to walk toward the building, but he stopped in surprise as Karl zipped in front of him and parked on the walkway to the building entrance.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Gunnar demanded as Karl stepped out of his car.

Karl leaned over the top of his car and pointed a thick, meaty finger at his brother. “Leave!” he ordered.

Gunnar pulled a piece of paper from his pocket and held it out. “Here’s a copy of the directors’ resolution. You’re not president or chairman anymore—I am. Now get out of my way and move that car before I have it towed!”

Karl did not move. “I don’t care what you tricked the directors into doing. Stay away from my company.”

Gunnar’s eyes flashed and he walked toward the entrance. Karl stepped in front of him, and Gunnar tried to push his way past. Karl’s fist shot out, almost of its own volition, and struck Gunnar on the jaw.

Gunnar’s head snapped to the side and he staggered back several steps. He regained his balance and stared at Karl with a mixture of shock and fury. A trickle of blood came from the corner of his mouth, and he spat out a broken tooth. He walked back to his car, took off the jacket of his expensive, tailored suit, and laid it carefully on the passenger’s seat. Then he came back, breathing heavily.
“Du skal angre dette, lille bror!
”

Gunnar balled his massive hands into fists and threw a quick jab with his right. Karl ducked easily away from the blow—and straight into a left uppercut, falling victim to a bar-fighting trick Gunnar had picked up in his younger and less-civilized days.

Karl felt almost no pain from the blow, but a red haze of rage filled his mind, and he was only dimly aware of what happened next. He fought with terrible strength and speed, intent not just on winning, but on destroying.

Less than a minute later, Karl landed three punches to his brother’s head in quick succession. Gunnar stumbled backward, twisted his leg awkwardly, fell, and hit his head on the asphalt of the parking lot. He lay unmoving, stretched out on the blacktop.

Karl stood panting for several seconds. “Get up!” he shouted, but Gunnar did not respond. “I said get up!” He kicked Gunnar in the ribs. Gunnar twitched and moaned weakly before lying still again.

Karl’s eyes moved back and forth between Gunnar’s bloodied face and his exposed, vulnerable neck. A hard blow to the throat would certainly kill him. Karl got down on his knees beside his brother’s head, his fists clenched and every muscle in his body tense. Sweat and blood dripped from his face, and his eyes were empty and dark. Twice he raised his hand for a killing blow, and twice he stopped. Then he lifted his fist a third time and, with an inarticulate roar, smashed it down into the asphalt a fraction of an inch from his brother’s head.

Karl rose to his feet and looked down on Gunnar’s unconscious body. The sudden agony from the torn skin and broken bones in his damaged hand hovered on the edge of his mind as he stared down into his brother’s face. Then he turned and walked into Bjornsen Pharmaceuticals for the last time.