‘It’s what I want,’ insisted Newton.
‘If it causes problems, I’ll need to talk to you about it,’ said Benn, anxious to pretend he was not as intimidated as everyone else enmeshed in the Spider’s Web.
‘Do that!’ urged the director, sincerely. ‘The moment there’s a problem, a conflict, I want to know about it.’ That afternoon the legal opinion had been that professional disruption affecting major research nullified Parnell’s breach-of-contract claim and provided Dubette with a matching pressure to keep him in line: an outer, not an inner line.
Two
Richard Parnell’s reassigned research area was directly in line with the vice president’s office, which Parnell supposed was intended to be intimidating but wasn’t. He was far more interested in the newly arrived equipment, everything he’d requested without a single budgetary challenge. Which was what he told Russell Benn at their first meeting after his transfer.
‘Glad you’re satisfied,’ said the other man, the voice seeming to come from deep within him.
Parnell at once discerned the resentment. ‘I’d like to think we’re going to get on together.’
‘So would I.’
‘Why don’t we establish our parameters right now?’
‘Why don’t we?’ echoed Benn.
He was pushing against a closed door, thought Parnell. ‘I’m here to head up a new pharmacogenomics division, right?’
The black scientist nodded.
‘That involves me – or the people who are going to join me – employing what was discovered during the genome project to drug development. Which is your division, so we’re going to have to work pretty closely together, wouldn’t you agree?’
‘You really think you can make a contribution genetically to what we do here?’ demanded Benn.