35
| Subj: | RE: Lunch? |
| Date: | 8/04/05 11:33 a.m. Eastern Standard Time |
| From: | mstern@washingtonpost.com |
| To: | gmaulder@yahoo.com |
Meet me tomorrow at 517 E Street for lunch. 12:30 p.m.
Looking forward to it.
~Mark
How, Gwen wondered,
did Mark get her private e-mail address? Getting her FDA e-mail
address off the Internet would have been relatively simple, but
he’d chosen to make contact through her personal Yahoo account. She
smiled, though, when she recalled how Mark had once gained
admittance to a formal White House dinner by forging an invitation
and pretending to be the ambassador from Argentina, complete with
bogus accent. He was one of the premier reporters in the country
and probably had ways of obtaining information that went far beyond
consulting online e-mail directories or the phonebook.
She wrote back that
she would see him at the designated time, adding, “It’s a
date.”
No. Bad move. She
hit the backspace button and deleted the sentence, replacing it
with “See you there.” It certainly wasn’t a date.
Of course she
thought of Mark from time to time. Everyone entertained occasional
daydreams of running into an old boyfriend or girlfriend, right?
And she’d continued to read his columns, though she learned quickly
that she couldn’t discuss them with Jack. Jack and Mark saw the
world differently and Mark’s writing irritated Jack to the extreme.
Gwen wondered if Jack would be anywhere near as irritated by Mark’s
writing if she wasn’t the journalist’s ex-girlfriend.
No, Jack wouldn’t
approve of Gwen’s call to Mark, but she needed someone other than
her husband and his federal law enforcement pals to help her. The
government obviously had some thick mud caked on its shoes. Since
reading McMurphy’s memo to Snyder, she’d become convinced that any
satisfactory resolution of the investigation would have to come in
the form of a journalistic exposé. She just hoped Mark hadn’t
thrown his lot in with the yuppies. His piece on Pequod’s had been
awfully soft and bore no resemblance to his usual satiric style.
Mark Stern, on the side of a corporate giant? Highly unusual. What
she needed was Mark Stern, the quintessential doubting Thomas who
would go to any lengths to show how “the man” routinely stuck it to
the little guy.
She hoped he still
existed.
She’d find out soon
enough.
Jack Maulder sat at
his PC, surfing the web to find out what kind of information people
were posting about tobacco litigation. Sure enough, he found
details of endless numbers of pending suits despite industry
payoffs to millions, as well as company pledges to educate the
public about smoking. Big Tobacco had reached a landmark settlement
thanks to the tenacious state attorney general of Mississippi, who
had put several companies on the ropes in the nineties, forcing the
industry to make unparalleled concessions after the discovery that
the industry suppressed damning research on nicotine for almost
thirty years. Many citizens had opted out of the class action suit,
and the settlement had therefore not deterred smokers from
continuing to sue the tobacco giants.
Nothing unusual
there. Still, two entries on antismoking message boards caught his
attention:
My wife was young and had only smoked for a year before she died. What kind of poison are the tobacco companies using now?I’ve been smoking for four years and my whole body started shaking like crazy yesterday. What’s going on?
Jack stepped into
the backyard and lit a Marlboro Light. In the absence of concrete
answers, his brain was becoming quite vocal, and rationalization
was its loudest song: Give me what I need. If you can’t find the
necessary information, then give me something else. Nicotine, to be
exact.
Jack gave in to his
body’s cravings more and more with each passing day, though he knew
it was crazy, especially given his current subject of
investigation. Where was all that self-control he’d prided himself
on? He knew his problem was stress and that little by little he was
reestablishing an addiction that had taken him forever to kick. But
that was his rational self speaking. His other half lit a new smoke
with the glowing butt of the last one.
As he exhaled a
plume of blue smoke into the summer air, Jack thought of the last
message he’d read. Had the person who posted it actually been on
the verge of going into a seizure? Was this another Marci? Jack
decided it was time to call up a few friends at the Federal Bureau
of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. He’d have them analyze a few
different brands of cigarettes, starting with Compson’s, and see
exactly what was rolled inside the thin white paper.
His attention
pivoted. He walked through the side yard and looked at the street.
He was sure he’d heard that same vehicle, that same engine,
before.
He looked up and
down the block. Nothing.
Back at the PC, he
cut and pasted the two messages that had caught his attention into
a separate file. He then decided to surf a bit more before going
outside for what he promised himself would be his last cigarette of
the day.
Her Public Health
Service uniform with gold epaulettes would have stuck out like a
sore thumb. Likewise, her own automobile would have been easy to
follow if she were under surveillance. So Gwen changed clothes at
the office and called a taxi before heading out to her luncheon
engagement with Mark.
Finding the address
proved difficult. After paying the taxi driver and stepping onto a
Georgetown sidewalk, Gwen had no clue where to go. She was on E
Street, but there was no #517 in sight. Gwen entered a nearby watch
repair shop and asked for directions. The gruff clerk behind the
counter, unfiltered cigarette dangling from his lips, gestured to a
space between two brick buildings across the street as if he’d been
asked the question a thousand times before. “The address is
unmarked. Go down the alley and turn left. You’ll find
it.”
Wearing sunglasses,
a scarf over her head, and bleached Levis, Gwen felt she might have
gone too far with the cloak-and-dagger. She was also more than a
little nervous about seeing her old beau after so many years. She
walked timidly into the shadowy alley, the heels of her shoes
tapping the flagstones with each step. At the end of the narrow
pathway, she found herself in a small courtyard with an oversized
potted plant as its centerpiece. On her left she saw a restaurant
called The Insider.
Opening the door and
stepping in, she removed her sunglasses, expecting to see a room
filled with faces staring at her suspiciously. Instead, a hostess
in a black dress and high heels approached, smiled, and said, “Good
afternoon. How many?”
“Two,” said Mark
Stern, appearing from a waiting booth on the left as if from a
parallel universe. “I’ve reserved one of the private
rooms.”
“Certainly. Follow
me, please.”
The hostess led Mark
and Gwen through the main dining room into a narrow hallway where
the payphone and restrooms were situated, turning at last into a
corridor with several small cubicles attached, each containing a
table covered with a linen cloth, silver-ware, and a slender vase
with a single rose.
“Thank you,” Mark
said to the hostess as he and Gwen slid into chairs and faced each
other for the first time in eight years.
“Gwen Maulder,” he
said with a boyish grin.
“Mark Stern,” Gwen
said, unsure how her voice sounded.
They stared at each
other for a long moment before laughing nervously. Gwen hadn’t
expected to feel this awkward. Remember, you
have something hugely important to discuss with him. This isn’t
about anything other than that.
“How did you get my
cell number?” Mark asked, breaking her reverie.
“You’re not the only
one with investigative skills, you know.”
Mark grinned again.
“Obviously not.”
They both chuckled,
but then another awkward silence ensued.
Gwen was rarely
unsure of herself, but she was having trouble figuring out how to
proceed here. Did she just dive into her story? “I can see why they
call this place The Insider,” she remarked at last. “You have to be
one to find it.”
“It’s where people
in this town come to discuss things that aren’t meant for public
consumption. That’s what I’ve heard from my colleagues. Speaking of
which, tell me what’s going on.”
Gwen was so glad
Mark decided to cut to the chase. She told him about Marci’s death
and about how she had begun a personal investigation based
primarily on instinct. She then filled him in on BioNet, the
seizure stats, her reassignment to the AE files, and Jan’s
disappearance. As she started talking about McMurphy, Iceland, and
the Panamanian address, Mark interrupted her.
“What cities are we
talking about as far as the seizure stats?” asked
Mark.
“Chicago, Trenton,
New York, Boston, D.C., Milwaukee, Kansas City, St. Louis, to name
just a few.”
“When did the spikes
occur in New York and Washington?”
“May and July,
respectively.”
“What about Kansas
City?”
“Um … I think the
spike occurred in April. Why?”
“Just
curious.”
“Personally, I think
tobacco is somehow involved in all of this. Almost all of the
seizure fatalities were smokers. There’s a definite
correlation.”
“What about the
nonfatalities?”
“They’re harder to
gauge since we can’t rely on autopsy reports. I’m still betting
tobacco.”
“How sure are you
that it’s not just your do-gooder’s hatred of tobacco companies
that’s driving you?” Mark paused. “With Marci being such a close
friend, I can see why you’d go all out with this.”
“My best friend,”
Gwen replied, more than a little miffed. “You’re sounding like
Jack,” she said sharply, realizing immediately that Mark wouldn’t
know what that meant and that he might even misinterpret
it.
“I’ve given you info
from the AE files, and I don’t have to remind you that reporters
often proceed on evidence that’s a lot less
substantial.”
Elbows on the table,
Mark brought his face down against clasped hands. “Tobacco
companies have had the feds all over their asses for years now.
It’s hard to believe they would try anything new.”
Undeterred, Gwen
laid out her conspiracy theories, from modified tobacco plants that
might be legal and beyond FDA control to a cover-up of terrorist
activity that had once again killed citizens on American soil,
albeit in a more surreptitious manner.
“Anything’s
possible,” said Mark, “but if it were terrorism, somebody would
have claimed responsibility. Terrorism has no effect unless someone
takes credit. It’s how terrorists perpetuate a climate of fear,
which is even more powerful than bombs and body
counts.”
“Maybe they’re
waiting for the trend to overtake the country before stepping
forward. Tampering with tobacco would be a more insidious
infiltration of the homeland. They could effectively shut down the
economy if Americans found out that an everyday product had been
tainted.”
“Maybe.”
Gwen studied the
reporter carefully. How was it that he didn’t seem to have aged at
all? He was still handsome; his brown beard was very close-cut and
trimmed in a perfectly straight line under his jaw. His brown eyes
were still very clear, still warm, and his wavy hair had no trace
of gray. Was he still a crusader as well? Other than conspiracy
buffs, Gwen figured Mark was the only person willing to entertain
the possibility that both the FDA and the CDC were capable of
working in tandem to cover up statistically anomalous
deaths.
“So what do we do,
Mark?”
Mark rubbed his chin
and hesitated, trying to find the right words.
“I’m not sure, Gwen.
I can ask some questions, poke around, make some calls. Stuff like
that. But I’ve got to be careful. If there’s a conspiracy that cuts
across several government agencies, it’s going to make Watergate
look like a misdemeanor in comparison. Let me turn it around on
you. How solid is this AE thing?”
“Doesn’t sound like
you’re too optimistic.”
“You didn’t answer
my question.”
“BioNet stats and AE
reports are hard evidence.”
Mark smiled weakly.
“You’ve given me a tall order, Dr. Maulder. Ordinarily, I’d be
calling you if I had the kind of info that BioNet reported, but
I’ll do what I can.”
Gwen wrote down her
iPrive address on a napkin. “E-mail if you come up with anything,
but use this address.”
“I’ll let you know
one way or another,” Mark said, folding the napkin and putting it
in his shirt pocket.
“Is there any way I
can get in touch with you if I discover something
else?”
“Go to the
Post’s website and e-mail me at the
column. I get hundreds of comments and questions every week.
Nothing’s completely safe in the cyber world, but it’s better than
e-mailing me directly.”
Gwen followed Mark’s
logic completely, but she still felt as if he were putting her off.
They ate in relative silence, reverting to small talk and catch-up.
When it was time to leave, there was an awkward moment—it seemed
like an eternity to Gwen—when the two started to lean forward as if
to give one another a friendly hug. They backed away quickly
instead, settling on a handshake.
Gwen walked back
through the hallway and wondered if she’d wasted her
time.