“We’re poisoning everything. We’re poisoning the very food we eat. All over the world, from the biggest agribusiness to the smallest sharecropper, they’re all doing business with the chemical companies, companies like CWC. In the richest countries and the poorest. And we’re eating the results-everything from daily bread to a nice juicy steak. All tainted. It’s like the sea; you can’t see the damage with the naked eye. That makes it easy to hide the problem, easy to cover it up and just deny, deny, deny.”

Slowly, methodically, Killin started to beat his forehead against the side window.

“Whoa,” Reeve said, pulling him away. “It’s not your fault.”

“Oh, but it is. It is!”

“Look, everything’s going to be all right. You’re going to forget all about this.”

“I can’t forget.”

“Well, maybe not, but trust me on this. What about Agrippa? What does it have to do with any of this?”

“Agrippa? Agrippa has everything to do with it, don’t you see? Agrippa has several patents pending on genetically engineered crop strains, with many more patents to come in the future. Do you realize what those will be worth? I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say billions. Genetics is the industry of the future, no doubt about it.”

Reeve nodded, understanding. “And if Kosigin’s dirty tricks came to light, the licensing authorities might take a pretty dim view?”

“CWC could lose existing patents and be banned from applying for others. That’s why the cover-up is imperative.”

“Because it’s good for the company,” Reeve muttered. He made to switch off the camera.

“Aren’t you going to ask me about Preece?”

“What?”

“Preece. That’s what the reporter wanted to talk about.”

Reeve stared at Killin, then put the viewfinder back to his eye and watched as the lens refocused itself on the old man. “Go on, Doctor. What about Preece?”

“Preece had a reputation to think of. You think he’d have worked for Kosigin, covered everything up, and signed his name to the lies if there had been an alternative?”

“There wasn’t an alternative?”

“Kosigin had information on Owen. He’d had people do some digging. They found out about Preece and his patients. The ones at the hospital in Canada.”

“What about them?”

“Preece had for a time advocated a kind of sexual shock treatment. Sex as a means to focus the mind, to pull it back to reality.”

Gordon Reeve swallowed. “Are you saying he raped patients?”

“He had sex with some of them. It was… it was experimental. He never published anything, naturally enough. Still it was never the best-kept of secrets. These patients were unpredictable. Preece had to have orderlies in the room to hold them down.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“The psychiatric community got to know about it, and the stories spread out until even people like me heard them.”

“And no one kicked up a stink?”

“These patients were incarcerated. They were fair game for experiments.”

“So Kosigin found out and used the information as a lever?”

“Yes. He had a private detective work on Preece’s history.”

“Alliance Investigative?”

“I don’t know…”

“A man called Jeffrey Allerdyce?”

“The name sounds familiar.”

Reeve thought for a moment. “My brother knew this?”

“Your brother?”

“The reporter.”

“Yes, he knew some of it.”

“How could he know?”

“I take it he’d talked to a few people. As I said, it was not the world’s best-kept secret. If the reporter had been looking into Owen’s past, he would have stumbled on it eventually. I mean, he would have known about Owen and his patients.”

And would have put two and two together, Reeve thought. Jim hadn’t only been trying to blow the pesticide story open, he’d made things more personal. He’d been homing in on Kosigin as manipulator and blackmailer. Kosigin wasn’t protecting CWC, he was protecting himself. Reeve turned the camera around so it was pointing at him, and waited for the autofocus to pick out his face. Then he spoke.

“This is being kept nice and safe, a long way from you,” he said. “I drugged the old man, that’s why he’s been talking. The drug’s called burundanga; it’s Colombian. You can check on it. You might even want your R & D people to do something with it. But listen to this; if you do anything to Dr. Killin I’ll know about it, and a copy of this tape goes straight to the police. And I don’t mean the San Diego PD. We know now how much of that outfit you own, Kosigin. Okay?”

Reeve sought the right button and turned the recorder off. He wound it back a little and pressed Play. Peering into the viewfinder again, he saw his own face, muddy but definable. His voice came from the small built-in speaker.

“You can check on it. You might even want your R & D people to-”

Satisfied, he switched off the camera and laid it on the passenger seat. “Dr. Killin,” he said, “I’m going to take you back now.”

They drove in silence, Killin nodding off in the backseat, his head sliding lower and lower down the backrest. Reeve stopped the car three streets away from Killin’s bungalow, opened the passenger door, and pulled the back of the passenger seat down. Then he shook Killin awake.

“Get out of the car, Doctor. You’ll know where you are. Just walk home and go to bed. Get some sleep.”

Killin staggered out of the car like he was drunk. He stood up straight, staggered a little more, and looked around him like he was on the moon.

“Look at all the stars,” he said. There were plenty of them up there. “So many,” he said, “you’d never think you could poison them all.” He bent down to peer into the car. “But give us a chance and we’ll do it. There are hundreds of tons of space junk flying around up there already. That’s an excellent start, wouldn’t you say?”

Reeve closed the passenger door and drove off.

Dulwater sat on his bed, watching the television. He’d boosted the brightness and adjusted the color and contrast. There was nothing wrong with the sound. Dr. Killin was on the screen, saying his piece. Dulwater was watching the performance for the third time, and saying “This is fucking unbelievable” for the seventh or eighth.

The tape that was playing was simultaneously being recorded onto the third blank tape of a box of five.

“Fucking unbelievable,” Dulwater said.

Reeve watched the tape counter. Dulwater’s room was three floors down from his own. He’d been nervous coming here, but none of the staff had recognized him. It was a big hotel after all, and he’d done nothing to make himself memorable.

“Of course,” Dulwater said, “you could never use this in a court of law. Killin’s obviously been drugged.”

“You already said we’d never get Kosigin into a courtroom anyway.”

“Well, that’s true, too.”

“I don’t particularly want him to stand trial. I just want him to know I have this on record.”

They’d come to the bit where Killin asked if Reeve didn’t want to hear about Preece.

“Anyway,” said Reeve, “what do you care? You’ve got what you wanted right there. Your boss compiled one of his famous dossiers on the dark side of Owen Preece’s history, and this opened Preece up to blackmail.”

“Yes.”

“You should be happy. You’ve got something on your boss.”

“I suppose so.” Dulwater swung off the bed and went to the table. He had a bottle of whiskey there, and helped himself to another glass. Reeve had already refused twice, and wasn’t going to be given a third chance. “What about you?” Dulwater asked between gulps. “What’re you going to do with the tapes?”

“One for me, and one for Kosigin.”

“What’s the point of sending him one?”

“So he knows I know.”

“So what? He’ll only send that buttfuck Jay after you.”

Reeve smiled. “Exactly.”

“Doesn’t that bastard have a surname?” Dulwater sounded three-fifths drunk.