Dead End Deal (8 page)

He forced himself to calm down by swiveling around and admiring the view from the window and sucking down a deep breath. “All right, I have an idea. Since we’ve already been reviewed and funded, why can’t we just delay the actual awarding of the money until next quarter, after things have a chance to settle down and blow over? Then give us the green light.”

“You’re joking, right? No, Jon, we can’t try to fake this. Not with every politician in the beltway looking over our shoulders. We’re pulling the study. Forever and ever, amen. End of discussion.”

“But—” No sense arguing, he realized. “Okay, if you pull it now can we submit the same grant in three months and get funded?”

“Sure, you can always submit. But I have to tell you, it’ll be starting over, so there’s no guarantee it’ll get funded.”

“In other words, we’re totally screwed. That’s what you’re saying,” with a distinct tinge of resignation.

“Yep.”

9

“J
ON?”

The familiar voice snapped Ritter out of a deep blue reverie. Wayne Dobbs stood in the doorway, a white Starbucks cup in each hand.

“May I come in?” Without waiting for a response, he stepped into the office and set one of the cups on the desk next Jon’s other cup. “Oh, sorry, didn’t know you already had one.”

“No, that’s fine. Finished it an hour ago.” Jon dropped the cold, barely touched latte in the wastebasket. It hit the bottom with a thump too hard for an empty, exposing his white lie.

Wayne cocked his head and eyed him. “What’s wrong, did someone die?” He quickly slapped a hand over his mouth. “Oh dear . . . I’m sorry . . . I didn’t mean . . .”

Jon waved it away. “I know you didn’t. When things go bad, they really go bad. Sorenson just called.”

Wayne frowned, “And?” while carefully setting his latte on the desk.

Jon told him the bad news, that their project was dead. Wayne just sat there inspecting his thumb nail, turning it this way and that, ears bright red. When mildly perturbed, Wayne became sarcastic. When outraged, he usually settled into eerie silence. But his ears were the best mood barometer. Jon broke the silence with, “I’ve been thinking.”

Wayne shot him a tight-lipped questioning look. “About?”

“Maybe I could talk to Richard Stillman, see if I can persuade him into funding the work. Do the trial with Trophozyme. What do you think?”

Wayne studied him a moment to gauge his degree of seriousness. Then, with a laugh, “Even if I thought you were serious—which I don’t—I’m not sure you could handle it. Given your history with him, and all.”

“As far as I see, it’s our only option.”

Wayne picked at his thumb a moment. “Maybe, but do you seriously believe that arrogant prick would be gracious enough to do something like that? By that I mean, help us out without gloating or rubbing our noses in it?”

“Yes. If he thought it might help him and Trophozyme. Besides, we’re big boys. We can take some gloating if it gets the work done.”

Wayne shook his head and crossed his arms. “I don’t know . . . the bad blood between you two . . . ”

“There’s something I didn’t mention.”

“I don’t like the sound of that,” Wayne said.

“Don’t worry, it’s nothing that affects you, but it is relevant. About five months ago he invited me to have lunch. I told him if he wanted to talk, it had to be here in my office. Surprisingly, he agreed. He came over, we talked, he offered me the job of Chief Medical Officer.”

Wayne’s eyes grew wide. “At Trophozyme? And you didn’t tell me?”

“I figured I’d never work for him, regardless of how big the salary or what signing bonuses he put out there to entice me. So I didn’t even ask any particulars.” Actually, he told Stillman he’d worked too hard at becoming a surgeon to now leave clinical practice for a life of 100 percent lab rat, that the present university position allowed him to practice neurosurgery in addition to running a lab. Yet he hadn’t been completely truthful with Stillman. Putting aside the personal animosity between them, Jon’s real reason for rejecting the offer was the strong prejudice Gabe instilled in him years ago, that corporate biomedical researchers were not real scientists, they were nothing more than businessmen in disguise. That their ardent claims of wanting “to improve people’s lives” basically served as just a smokescreen for their real motivation: to make money. And lots of it. Nothing more, nothing less. Capitalism at its finest. He agreed with Gabe and wanted no part of Stillman’s world. Early on, when Jon made his first presentation at a national meeting, Stillman stood up and embarrassed him, Gabe’s prodigy, in front of the audience, making public their mutual disrespect.

“Why are you telling me this now?”

“Because he acted different than I’d ever seen him, at least to me he did. He seemed to sincerely want him and me to start over, maybe establish a good working relationship. The point is, if we can’t find a safe way to continue our work and move it over to real patients, ten years of effort is going straight down the drain. Can you really accept that? I know I can’t.”

Wayne made a fist and then opened his right hand, watching the movement, seemingly fascinated at all the little muscles involved in the action. Without looking up, he muttered, “No no, of course not. But if that snake agrees to do it, you know damn well there’s going to be a hidden agenda . . . some way to screw us that we haven’t even considered. It’s not like the guy’s a philanthropist. So, tell me this: what’s in it for him that would make him want to help us?” He sighed and waved off the question. “Forget Stillman. The question is: do you really think you could live with yourself if you went into industry? I, more than anyone, know your prejudice on this issue.”

Good question. Jon sipped his new latte and considered the answer. Hard as it would be to climb in bed with Stillman, he couldn’t see any other way to salvage the past ten years. “I don’t see that we have another option. Hey, if you got a suggestion, I’m willing to hear it.”

Wayne returned to studying his thumb nail. “Okay, but what about the Avengers angle? Sure, you can always say we complied with their ultimatum by shutting down
our
lab, but the note made it pretty clear; it said to stop work. It doesn’t give a lot of semantic leeway. I can’t see how moving to Trophozyme removes the danger.”

“Here’s the thing . . . What if we can do it without anyone knowing?”

Wayne gave a sarcastic grunt and shook his head. “Impossible.”

“No, no, listen. What if we shut down the lab and move the project to a place the Avengers wouldn’t know about?”

Wayne shot him a look of bemusement. “You’re joking, right? From everything I’ve read, and that’s a lot in the past twenty-four hours, they have sympathizers all over the world.”

“True, but what if we did it in Korea?”

Wayne’s face froze momentarily, eyes locked into Jon’s questioningly. Then he got it. “Jin-Woo?”

Jin-Woo Lee. A neurosurgeon who spent a six-month sabbatical in Jon’s lab learning tissue culture techniques. During that time the two men developed a friendship.

When Wayne didn’t answer, Jon became impatient and frustrated. He’d expected Wayne to jump at the idea, but instead . . . “We don’t have much time. Yes or no?”

Wayne blew through pursed lips. “You’re serious.”

“I take that as a yes.”

Wayne swallowed and looked at his nails, then back at Jon, gave a slight nod. “In for a pound or whatever that ridiculous expression is. But I want it on the record I’m not wild about the concept.”

“Good. I’ve already set up a meeting with Stillman for seven tomorrow morning. I called Jin-Woo and pitched the idea. He’s going to call me back in—” checking his watch “—about ten minutes. I booked a flight to Seoul for day after tomorrow.”

Wayne shook his head in amazement. “You really
are
serious. What about this,” sweeping his hand around the room, “your job? Setting up a trial over there will take time. Can you arrange to have that much time off?”

“With my injury, I’m good for a thirty-day leave of absence.” He smiled and absentmindedly fingered the wound again, rubbing along the healing suture line.

10

S
TILLMAN EXITED THE
elevator onto the lush carpet of the lobby of the building in which Trophozyme offices were located at precisely 7:00 a.m. He definitely would’ve preferred for Jon Ritter to come to his office during regular business hours, say, after nine o’clock, so he could make the self-righteous prick wait fifteen minutes in the outer office in full view of staff, just to drive home the point that he was the one in charge and Jon was now dependent on him. But Ritter had insisted on meeting early. Surgeon’s hours. The good news was, by accepting such an early hour he would be making a concession, which in turn would give the impression of flexibility. Truth be told, with his condo only a block away, most days found him in his office by now anyway. Being the first to arrive each day gave him an uninterrupted block of time to scan the latest news and prepare his schedule before the constant onslaught of unanticipated interruptions and meetings turned any semblance of an orderly schedule into havoc.

Ritter was already waiting in the lobby, white Starbucks cup in hand, studying the building directory. At the sound of the elevator door, he turned with a hopeful look on his face. Yet in spite of this newfound hope, he appeared haggard: sagging facial muscles and dark circles under the eyes. Stillman couldn’t suppress a hint of satisfied smile. Jon Ritter, the holier-than-thou academician, didn’t look so goddamn smug now. Not the same sanctimonious prick who, a year ago, stood up at the North American Stem Cell Symposium to challenge Stillman in debate. He remembered all too well the embarrassing sting of not being able to answer Ritter’s hyper-technical, nit-picking questions. Questions only a lab tech might reasonably discuss. Running a company didn’t give him the luxury of wandering the halls to visit labs and learn about every employee’s job. That style of management was, in his opinion, micromanagement, and he had more productive ways to spend the precious minutes of his already heavily scheduled days. So, yes, Ritter might be an expert on growing cells in petri dishes and flasks, but the prick didn’t have a clue about the skills needed to grow a fledgling company from nothing into a red hot Wall Street IPO.

Well, time to eat crow, Ritter
. Stillman smiled. “Right on time. Promptness. I like that.”

Ritter offered his hand. “Thanks for meeting with me.”

Stillman graciously motioned him onto the elevator, punched five. “Trophozyme has three through five. My office is on five.” The elevator door rattled shut.

Stillman eyed Ritter’s clothes, a professor cliché if ever there was one: gray slacks, navy blazer, white shirt, rep tie. Ninety percent of the neurosurgeons he’d ever set eyes on lived in those preppy blazers with the gold buttons as if it were some uniform. Today Stillman wore understated corporate casual: a black Ermenegildo Zegna long-sleeve, form-fitting crew-neck sweater, chosen to emphasize his well-developed pecs, lightweight black wool slacks, black, well-buffed black Ferragamo loafers, a black-faced stainless steel Movado Museum Dial on his wrist. If you knew what you were looking at—which Ritter obviously didn’t—his selection made a statement of superior taste and class. Casual elegance, he believed, blended him into the start-up company culture while simultaneously elevating him above common employees.

Both men faced the door as the cage moved upward, Stillman thinking,
My my, how things change
. Five months ago, when offered a generous salary, fat signing bonus, and stock options, Ritter turned up his nose. It hadn’t been the refusal per se that pissed him off. It was the
way
Ritter did it. Without a moment of hesitation. As if he’d been offered an intravenous dose of Ebola virus instead of a well-paying, once in a lifetime career opportunity. Even more grating was Ritter’s unspoken attitude. As if he, Stillman, was some kind of leper instead of the leader of a biotech company. Well, look at you now Mr. Arrogant Holier-Than-Thou academician. The temptation to utter those exact words was almost too much to resist. Instead, Stillman simply savored the delicious irony unfolding before him.

Off the elevator, down a hall, Stillman led Ritter single file, past a series of work cubicles and an empty conference room. Stillman turned left through a doorway and motioned for Jon to follow.

The moment Jon walked into Stillman’s office and his eyes registered the interior, he stopped, amazed at the elegance. The size wasn’t impressive. On second glance the square footage seemed rather modest. But a wall of floor to ceiling windows provided a stunning view of Lake Union and Capitol Hill, a dramatic backdrop to a sleek, stainless steel–framed, glass-top desk, probably a limited edition from a rarefied German industrial designer. To the left of the desk, a round conference table with four chairs. Rap music—a total disconnect from the office’s otherwise sophisticated image—pulsed softly from a sleek black stereo. Compared to the university, or offices in incubator companies, Stillman’s was in another universe. The wall opposite the windows held framed newspaper articles and a massive shelf filled with trophies, some apparently crystal, glass, or clear acrylic, one shaped like a seven-inch Washington Monument. Jon took a closer look.

“Tombstones,” Stillman said.

“Tombstones?”

“That’s what some people call them. Go ahead, pick one up.”

Jon took the one shaped like the Washington Monument. Lighter than expected, making him think acrylic instead of crystal. He peered through flawless material at lettering etched on the back surface in stylishly clean font—Maximum Velocity, 2010.

“It’s an industry tradition to award trophies to team members as a way of celebrating a significant milestone. A financing perhaps. Maybe an important patent. That particular one commemorates a very difficult genetic sequencing one of my companies commercialized.”

Jon replaced it on the shelf. “How many companies have you been with?”

“Since when? Graduate school?”

That surprised Jon. “I didn’t realize you went to graduate school.” Stillman made a point of making certain people heard his pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps black ghetto survivor success story.