BLIND TRIAL by Brian Deer (best books to read for beginners TXT) 📗

is we need you in the ballroom at once. Dr. Honda has already commenced.”

“What do you mean, she’s already commenced? She’s commenced what exactly? More tomfoolery?”

“She is, I regret to say, BerneWerner’s guest speaker at Sanomo’s sponsored session.”

Trudy felt a surge of cortisol and epinephrine. “She’s speaking? That’s preposterous. She’s nobody.”

“Indeed. But it transpires that your friend Hiroshi Murayama personally invited her to address the gathering on our behalf. A most extraordinary breach of protocol, I must say. I have remonstrated. But to no avail.”

Trudy grappled with a pair of flat canvas shoes. “I’m coming right away. I’m coming.”

SANOMO’S SESSION was in progress in the Grand Ballroom, in the basement, through a long, narrow foyer and double doors. Trudy was greeted—“Ohayou gozaimasu”—by four Japanese women in sky-blue suits staffing tables loaded with soft toys and zip drives.

She turned right, through the doors, into a windowless gloom, and paused while her eyes became accustomed. The layout today was in schoolroom style: perhaps one hundred padded chairs at white-clothed tables facing a podium, screen, and banner. This was Saturday morning, so most chairs were empty. The banner:

VACCINES—STEP BY STEP

Now she spotted her nemesis, Hiroshi Murayama, seated by the doors through which she entered. He was ludicrously young to head Sanomo’s molecular biology division: late thirties, with the face of a boy. Now lit by an exit sign, he looked even younger, in a black suit, white shirt, and red tie.

At the front of the room, a speakers’ lectern was mounted: where a slim young woman lit by a low-power bulb resembled a kid playing ghost with a flashlight. Her neck, chin, and cheeks glowed bright in the darkened room, but her head appeared to have no top. A young Japanese woman with an American accent. That must be Dr. Honda.

That was her.

Trudy scurried to a chair—her flat shoes flapping on a jazzy mauve carpet—in a row behind Marcia’s entourage. A position had been reserved toward the front for the CEO, with company people strung to her left. Across an aisle sat Mr. Louviere, the young lawyer from marketing who’d reported Dr. Honda’s concerns.

A keyboard in the lectern punched an image to the screen—a trio of green-on-yellow bullet points.

* Partially effective vaccine soon may save more lives than superior product later

* Factors for impact include duration of immunity & potential adverse events

* Expectations of efficacy may increase risk-taking behavior

Trudy relaxed. This looked safe enough: from marketing’s The Road to a Vaccine. If the speaker followed the script, she would start the next segment with, “Volunteers may need reassurance.”

Dr. Honda raised an arm and shot a pointer at the screen, sending a red dot dancing across the bullets. Pencil-thin microphones attached to the lectern caught the jingle of bangles on her wrist.

Marcia twisted and whispered across the table to Trudy, “Now you have bumped into her, haven’t you?”

“Volunteers may need reassurance.”

“For goodness sake, I didn’t know she was speaking. Why’s she speaking? What on earth’s going on?”

The bangles jingled to herald the next slide. The microphones caught a click from the pointer. If Dr. Honda followed the script, the screen would turn blue with a survey of sexual behaviors.

The screen turned white. The ballroom lightened. The slide was a tabulation, with black lettering. This wasn’t from marketing, or anywhere in the company. The CEO’s row leaned forward as one.

“Maximizing volunteer retention can be a critical challenge for clinicians. As this slide illustrates here.”

The red dot danced over columns of trial data. “Our clinic at San Francisco randomized 1,603 subjects, which is the largest recruitment of any of the ninety-five participating centers. But our retention figures weren’t so impressive. Which shows how there can be a variation in response to messaging.”

Trudy’s mouth gaped. What right had this woman to say anything at all? She wasn’t even one of the authors.

“Overall, trial centers are to be congratulated for maintaining an excellent relationship with the real stars of this research, the volunteers.” The bangles jingled. “Which illustrates how different approaches by clinical staff can yield a variety of outcomes.”

From the end of Marcia’s row came a bang and a grunt. Frank Wilson pulled an arm off his wheelchair.

Seven

A SOUTHEAST wind blew up during the night, bringing a welcome freshness to the capital. Atop the summer-scorched hill on the National Mall, the fifty Stars and Stripes circling the Washington Monument crackled like Samurai banners. Steel cables rattled on aluminum flagstaffs. Tap-tap, zing-zing-zing.

Sumiko squatted and smoothed a red-and-yellow beach towel on a slope facing the Lincoln Memorial. She’d made up her mind: they would come to her—at a location of her choice, not theirs. She didn’t want to look like a snitch telling tales, or, worse, come over as obsessed.

Ben called after breakfast to say he’d fixed a meeting, and she’d tried to give the impression of not caring. But now, as she saw them approaching in the distance, she felt energized in more ways than one. She felt angry and hopeful; implacable and reasonable; suspicious and desiring. Conflicted.

She watched them climb from Constitution Avenue: Dr. Gertrude Mayr, leaning forward, arms trailing, as if battling a ferocious gale; Ben Louviere, glancing sideways, looking ready to leap and catch her if she stumbled on a patch of rough grass.

Sumiko dug her fingers into a Macy’s paper shopping bag and pulled out a tube of Factor 30. She shrugged-off a red-check halter neck blouse—revealing a purple animal print bikini underneath—tugged up a black leather belted miniskirt and massaged the fruity sunscreen into her skin. Then she lowered a pair of Ray Bans from a red silk headband and sank back to face a hazy sky.

“Dr. Honda, I presume.” The voice from the Montreal Room. He stood close enough to feel his shadow.

Her eyelids opened to a pair of hairy legs rising into baggy blue surf shorts. Trudy Mayr stood beside them in white bowling shoes, a crumpled beige dress, and straw hat.

“Good to meet you Dr. Honda.” The vaccine chief maneuvered herself onto hands and knees, then winced