Read Online Dead End by Brian Freemantle - Free Book Online Page A

one-victim massacre, if there is such a thing,’ sympathized Rebecca.
    â€˜It was,’ admitted Parnell. ‘God knows what Kathy imagined I’d done when I dictated the reply Newton insisted upon.’ Kathy Richardson was the greying, middle-aged divorcee whom he’d finally engaged as his secretary, the only position Dwight Newton hadn’t insisted be considered by the appointments committee.
    â€˜Hardly a day to celebrate,’ said Rebecca. They were eating in her uncle’s restaurant, accustomed now to the food and wine choice being made for them and to Ciro sometimes talking them through special dishes he’d created, always ‘just for you two’.
    â€˜I wanted a change from eating crow,’ said Parnell. ‘And it was a good day until the Newton episode. I think they’re all going to come together very well.’
    â€˜Shouldn’t you give it more than a first-day impression, like you should have given the website idea more thought?’ cautioned the woman.
    â€˜I am only talking first-day impression,’ said Parnell. ‘And I’ve already admitted to the other mistake. I still don’t believe it represented more than a one or two per cent danger. Five tops.’
    â€˜Darling! To a company like Dubette the one or two per cent possibility of a competitor getting into its research is a major drama. Five per cent registers ten on the Richter scale. You’re not involved in pure science any more. You’ve got to remember that.’
    â€˜I will, in future. Believe me!’ Parnell didn’t like losing, certainly not to someone like Newton, whom he judged to be a bully. But it had been an ill-considered mistake and he was determined not to make another.
    â€˜I asked outright,’ suddenly blurted Rebecca.
    â€˜What?’ frowned Parnell, totally confused.
    â€˜My section head, Burt Showcross. I asked him outright what all the secrecy was about between France and us.’
    â€˜What did he say?’ His mind blocked by the humiliating confrontation with Newton, Parnell had forgotten his earlier conversation with Rebecca about back-channelled secrecy from Dubette’s French division.
    â€˜That he didn’t know either but that it sometimes happened and that I wasn’t to concern myself with it – any of it – again.’
    Parnell was about to say that she should let it go at that but was halted by a sudden thought. Instead he said: ‘If Paris has come up with something they’re excited about – something to which they’re attaching such a degree of priority and secrecy – it could be something which has an application to pharma-cogenomics?’
    Rebecca shrugged. ‘Who knows? But guess what?’
    Parnell wished Rebecca didn’t so often conduct conversations like a quiz game. ‘What?’
    â€˜There was a mistyped report from Paris, a good enough excuse to telephone them direct. While I was chatting to the girl I normally deal with, I was told the chief executive had been recalled to New York … along with the research-division head who misdirected that one message that no one, not even Showcross, was supposed to see.’
    â€˜I think you should do what Showcross told you. Forget about it.’
    â€˜Maybe it’s been a bad day for both of us.’
    â€˜Forget about it,’ repeated Parnell. He wasn’t sure he would, though.
    Seven
    E dward C. Grant said: ‘I needed to speak to you like this, just the two of us. Discreetly.’
    â€˜Of course,’ agreed Dwight Newton, who had caught the first shuttle from Washington that morning, wanting to be at the Dubette corporate building before the president. He’d failed. He’d been careful to wear his seminar suit, which matched the dark grey of Grant’s. And to enter, as instructed in the summons, by the special penthouse-only elevator.
    â€˜We’re talking risk assessment,’