Chapter 18
Sally Goldberg, the assistant of Charles Daniels, announced the arrival of Dinesh Kheradpir. He had arrived perfectly on time, so she invited him to enter the executive office of Charles on the top floor of the Manhattan skyscraper of the Pfizer headquarters.
Despite a glorious July day and the gorgeous view of Midtown, Charles was discouraged. Just the day before the FDA, the Food and Drug Administration, had made clear they would not test the South Korean antitumoral drug before another round of trials that would last months. In addition the South Koreans were threatening to sell all the research to Novartis, the European competitor of Pfizer.
He hoped that Dinesh, the chief researcher for advanced cancer products based in Cambridge, Massachusetts would make his day better. Strangely enough, Dinesh, a holder of multiple PhDs from the Indian Institute of Technology of Mumbai and Harvard, had refused to use the videoconference and insisted to meet Charles personally on the status of the analysis of the pills.
“Hi, Dinesh,” yawned Charles, as soon as the guest entered the room, not bothering to raise the eyes from the screen of his Macbook. “Please sit down, I am just sending this email and I am with you.”
Dinesh paid no mind to him and went straight to the meeting table, connecting his tablet to the projector.
When Charles eventually paid attention, he found Dinesh was standing next to the table, pointing to the slide on the wall that read:
“Are you one-hundred-percent sure that no one is listening to us here? I would not appreciate to be sent back to India with charges of espionage. Just nod if it is the case, otherwise we can take a walk at the zoo in Central Park.”
Half an hour later they were walking in front of the monkey cage, where it was loud enough that they could barely hear themselves speaking. Dinesh started.
“Alright, so you must know how difficult it has been to find out something about this drug. We broke the samples into four pieces and lost the first with the standard deformulation process.
Then we tried non-destructive techniques on the second one just to find out that the main active element has something to do with the telomerase enzyme, which is quite strange, as no one is working on this right now. We tried to break down the crown of composites around the core, and we lost the second sample.
With the third sample, I changed approach and tried to see what happens when I send it down a tube that simulates a person’s esophagus and stomach. If I am not able to figure out the function of the pill with static breakdown, I have a better chance of doing so by observing how it works as it goes through the body.
I had only one sample left, and no idea on how to dissect it. So I decided to call Bill Bradley, who does my very same work at Merck. He is also puzzled, so your government contact effectively put us all in competition.
Anyway, at Merck they are stuck as well although they have a lot of connections with Europeans, I doubt that this stuff is coming out of Europe. Bill would have found out. Sure, he could have lied to me, but considering the fact that you get tested regularly for progress by your government guy, we came to the conclusion that no one is getting a hold of it. At least in Europe and in America.”
“Alright, Dinesh, this I have known for weeks, why are you repeating it in front of the baboons?”, yelled Charles. He was exasperated.
“Just to recap and make sure we are on the same page. Now onto the big news. Out of desperation, I call Anatoly Vatutin, who is working in Moscow at the Biochemistry and Pharmacology Insitute of the Russian Academy of Science and whom I have known for a while since he used to visit India..”
Charles paled, but before he could speak Dinesh waved his hands to calm him down and continued,
“....do not worry, I did not send him anything. The fact is, Anatoly is working a lot with the Chinese, so he is the only one that can lead us on the right track. It turns out that he knows something but cannot speak about it on the phone.”
“So what?” Charles’ anxiety was growing.
“There are congresses, luckily! Back in the days of the Cold War, the KGB had good reasons to spy on all the Soviet scientists that went abroad.
Now, with more freedom to go abroad and less funds, for the FSB control is far less strict so one month ago I met him at the annual Pharmacovigilance conference in London. We drove a good two hours to make sure no one followed us and then we went in a small pub almost forty miles outside of London, in the middle of the British countryside.”
“There, he showed me a full bag of the pills. They were exactly like ours, also with the T stamped on top.
I gaped in astonishment and before I could say a word he said he could not give me any of it, because they were counted and under the control of the secret service. He was already risking a lot in taking them with him to London, but we had something he was very interested in.”
“And what was it?”, snapped Charles immediately.
“Oh, relatively minor stuff. He was interested in the molecular structure of our new anti-leukemia drug, of which we published some research after having secured the patents. With all the nuclear dumps they have in Russia, tumors are a big issue so this can help them a lot. And for us it is not a big risk, even if they develop an imitation similar to ours. No one will ever buy the Russian brand here in America. I said I had to check back with you, but he demanded an immediate decision. So I connected to our server, downloaded the files, and handed them over to him. I hope you won’t fire me, but I guess that you would have done the same.”
“What did you get in exchange?”, Charles bluntly asked. “As for your discharge”, he thought to himself, “it depends on your answer”.
“Well, three key hints. First, the Russians also failed in the deformulation process and it is not a Chinese product. Second, the pill works together with cocaine to amplify the effects of dopamine and clean up the particles of cocaine at the same time. In retrospect, this explains some of the molecules present in the casing of the main active element. Third, Anatoly seemed to have access to an endless supply of pills, but it was fully controlled by the FSB and he had no idea where they come from.”
“Did he tell you anything about the life-extending properties the drug is supposed to have?”
“Nope. If I look back at what we learned so far, this might be linked to the similarity of the main molecular structure with the telomerase enzyme. However, I kept these ideas to myself, obviously,” Dinesh lied, with his most serious face.
Charles looked at the cup of coke he was holding in his hand. He had not been drinking this whole time, just listening carefully to Dinesh and thinking. The drink was now unpleasantly warm. He threw it in the trash bin, turned to Dinesh.
“Alright, it looks like this walk was well worth all the sweat and smells that it costed us. I think you made the right decision in passing on the leukemia drug to your friend. Poor Russian radioactive children won’t have to wait the patent expiration day to have a chance of survival,” Charles ended with a grin.
Dinesh did not comment. He thought he had done the right thing in lying. It was not fair to leave the knowledge about this drug in the hands of people like Charles.