The Third Twin - Ken Follett [66]
19
AFTER LUNCH BERRINGTON WENT TO A QUIET NEIGHBORHOOD bar and ordered a martini.
Jim Proust’s casual suggestion of murder had shaken him. Berrington knew he had made a fool of himself by grabbing Jim’s lapel and yelling. But he did not regret the fuss. At least he could be sure Jim knew exactly how he felt.
It was nothing new for them to fight. He remembered their first great crisis, in the early seventies, when the Watergate scandal broke. It had been a terrible time: conservatism was discredited, the law-and-order politicians turned out to be crooked, and any clandestine activity, no matter how well intentioned, was suddenly viewed as an unconstitutional conspiracy. Preston Barck had been terrified and wanted to give up the whole mission. Jim Proust had called him a coward, argued angrily that there was no danger, and proposed to carry it on as a joint CIA-army project, perhaps with tighter security. No doubt he would have been ready to assassinate any investigative journalist who pried into what they were doing. It had been Berrington who suggested setting up a private company and distancing themselves from the government. Now once again it was up to him to find a way out of their difficulties.
The place was gloomy and cool. A TV set over the bar showed a soap opera, but the sound was turned down. The cold gin calmed Berrington. His anger at Jim gradually evaporated, and he focused his mind on Jeannie Ferrami.
Fear had caused him to make a rash promise. He had recklessly told Jim and Preston that he would deal with Jeannie. Now he had to fulfill that imprudent undertaking. He had to stop her asking questions about Steve Logan and Dennis Pinker.
It was maddeningly difficult. Although he had hired her and arranged her grant, he could not simply give her orders; as he had told Jim, the university was not the army. She was employed by JFU, and Genetico had already handed over a year’s funding. In the long term, of course, he could easily pull the plug on her; but that was not good enough. She had to be stopped immediately, today or tomorrow, before she learned enough to ruin them all.
Calm down, he thought, calm down.
Her weak point was her use of medical databases without the permission of the patients. It was the kind of thing the newspapers could make into a scandal, regardless of whether anyone’s privacy was genuinely invaded. And universities were terrified of scandal; it played havoc with their fundraising.
It was tragic to wreck such a promising scientific project. It went against everything Berrington stood for. He had encouraged Jeannie, and now he had to undermine her. She would be heartbroken, and with reason. He told himself that she had bad genes and would have got into trouble sooner or later; but all the same he wished he did not have to be the cause of her downfall.
He tried not to think about her body. Women had always been his weakness. No other vice tempted him: he drank in moderation, never gambled, and could not understand why people took drugs. He had loved his wife, Vivvie, but even then he had not been able to resist the temptation of other women, and Vivvie had eventually left him because of his fooling around. Now when he thought of Jeannie he imagined her running her fingers through his hair and saying, “You’ve been so good to me, I owe you so much, how can I ever thank you?”
Such thoughts made him feel ashamed. He was supposed to be her patron and mentor, not her seducer.
As well as desire he felt burning resentment. She was just a girl, for God’s sake; how could she be such a threat? How could a kid with a ring in her nose possibly jeopardize him and Preston and Jim when they were on the brink of achieving their lifetime ambitions? It was unthinkable they should be thwarted now; the idea made him dizzy with panic. When he was not imagining himself making love to Jeannie, he had fantasies of strangling her.
All the same he was reluctant to start a public outcry against her. It was hard to control the press. There was a