Elixir - Softcover

1
 
OCTOBER 1986
APRICOT CAY, THE CARIBBEAN
 
 
Quentin took a sip of his champagne. "My best offer is three million dollars, take it or leave it."

"Leave it," said Antoine Ducharme, not missing a beat.

You son-of-a-bitch! Quentin thought. "Then we have a problem."

"No, my friend, you have a problem. The fee is five million per ton."

Quentin Cross, Chief Financial Officer at thirty-seven and future CEO of Darby Pharmaceuticals, sat in uneasy silence on the rear deck of Reef Madness, a long sleek cruiser that Antoine's girlfriend, Lisa, maneuvered around the coral heads. Working the mooring line from the bow was Marcel, one of Antoine's security guards, who wore a snub-nosed revolver and pair of handcuffs on his belt.

They were inside the barrier reef on the northern coast of Apricot Cay, a palm-fringed island fifteen miles southeast of Jamaica and owned by Antoine Ducharme, an elegant and highly educated yachtsman, entrepreneur, and drug trafficker. Antoine, who looked to be in his mid-forties, was a tall, solidly built man with short salt-and-pepper hair, and an open face that appeared scholarly behind his rimless eyeglasses. It was a face that was used to making substantial decisions and one that could turn to stone in an instant.

Dressed in a green lounging suit, Antoine had arranged for his ten associates a sunset dinner of lobster tail, sautéed breadfruit, and French cheeses topped off with a dessert of fresh apricots, of course.

Quentin knew very little about the other men except that they were all part of an international group of very wealthy power brokers given to secret capital ventures and extravagances. But their association with Antoine Ducharme suggested that they had no ethical qualms about getting dirty. There were no introductions. The men ate separately, speaking French and German, then moved into the inner cabin to watch a soccer game beamed from a satellite dish. To Quentin they were simply "the Consortium."

Sitting with Quentin and Antoine was an American of about thirty-five named Vince Lucas, Antoine's "financial security officer." He was lean and attractive in a feral kind of way. He had smooth fleshy lips, a tanned, V-shaped face, and shiny black hair combed straight back to expose a deep widow's peak. His eyebrows were perfect black slashes, and his eyes were so dark that they appeared to be all pupil. On his forearm was a tattoo of a bird of prey with a death-head skull. He looked like no financial officer Quentin had ever met.

"If you ask me, five million is a bargain," Vince Lucas said.

"Five million dollars is out of the question," Quentin repeated. But he knew that they had him by the proverbial throat.

Lisa cleared the dishes. She was clad in a scant black bikini, a yellow headband, and a rose tattoo on her shoulder. She was a stunningly exotic woman in her early twenties with cocoa skin and deep, uninhibited eyes--eyes which when they fell on Quentin made him self-conscious of his large pink face, thinning hair, and pot belly swelling over his shorts. When she was finished, she gave Antoine, who was twice her age, a long passionate kiss and went below, Marcel tailing her to leave the men to their business.

"Listen to me, my friend," Antoine said, "We have over two thousand acres of mountain rainforest, another thousand acres of orchards with mountain streams for irrigation, protected harbors, your own airstrip, storage buildings--'the works,' as you Americans say. And most important: total privacy."

Quentin had heard all this before. He had toured the island including the rainforest. But biological diversity was not what interested him. Nor the acres of cannabis hidden in the orchards. Nor the camouflaged sheds where imported cocoa leaves were processed into cocaine for easy shipment northward--an operation which made Apricot Cay the Delmonte of dope in the Western Hemisphere.

What Quentin Cross wanted was apricots-and a particular species, Prunus caribaeus, unique to Apricot Cay. And he was willing to pay $3 million a ton for them.

No, Darby Pharms was not diversifying into the produce market. What made the species unique was the pits: They contained cyanogentic compounds highly toxic to cancer cells. In fact, the apricot toxogen had an astounding 80 percent success rate in the treatment of Mexican patients with malignant tumors. The FDA had not yet approved clinical testing in the U.S., but for Quentin the compound--with the potential trade name Veratox--promised to become the world's first cancer wonder drug.

Darby Pharms had kept the toxogen secret for two key reasons. First, they had not yet secured FDA approval; but that was no problem since Ross Darby was an old college buddy of Ronald Reagan. The second reason was Antoine Ducharme. Nobody at Darby but Quentin knew that he was an international drug baron, including Ross Darby, Quentin's father-in-law and current CEO--a man of impeccable scruples. If word got out, Darby Pharmaceuticals would not only lose its license to manufacture drugs, but it could end up in a criminal investigation that could put Quentin Cross and Ross Darby behind bars for years.

Antoine knew that and, thus, was asking for blood. What gnawed at Quentin's mind was the entrepreneur's unpredictability. Should Veratox turn out to be the world's hottest pharmaceutical, Antoine might double the price of subsequent shipments. Or he might set up an auction for bidders with limitless resources, such as Eli Lilly or Merck. The only solution was a commercially viable synthesis. But in spite of months of all-out efforts by Christopher Bacon, Darby's chief medical chemist, the toxogen was proving difficult to reproduce. The process required so many steps that the yield was infinitesimal. So far, Prunus caribaeus was an apricot that only nature could build.

"Let me remind you that it grows only on Apricot Cay. And do you know why?" Antoine flashed another toothy smile. "Because a particular fungus that blights only Prunus caribaeus mysteriously wiped out all the apricot crops on the other islands."

Quentin was about to ask where the blight came from, but something in Antoine's eyes said he could guess the answer. The son-of-a bitch was even more cunning than he had guessed.

"What prevents the blight from being introduced here?"

"The fact that nobody is allowed to disembark here without my permission."
That was true. He had ringed its beaches with elaborate electronic security systems--cameras, motion detectors, barbed-wire fences--not to mention armed guards on constant surveillance in towers and jeeps. He had even pushed old cars into the shallows of the bay for coral to build upon, making boat passage perilous. Apricot Cay was a tropical fortress.

"You're asking too much."

"Not according to the Wall Street Journal," Vince Lucas said. From his briefcase he pulled out a copy of the paper. "Darby Pharms' profitability increased 30 percent over the last year--some 50 million dollars. Barron's cites you as a growth company of choice. Besides, your Mr. Darby is an old friend of Ronald Reagan. Once you get FDA approval, Darby will be on the Fortune 500, n'est-ce pas?"

Quentin wished he had never mentioned the White House connection. In a moment of bravado he once boasted how Ross Darby and Reagan played football together at Eureka College and that Darby had contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to Reagan's campaigns and raised millions more hosting Republican fund raisers. Ironically, Ross had even generously supported Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" anti-drug initiative. That boast had probably doubled the cost of the apricots.

Quentin walked to the gunwale. The sun had set on the unbroken horizon, enameling the...