Free Dogs of War by Frederick Forsyth Page B

curled his lip in a bitter sneer, but he bought both papers.
The stories backed up the headline in greater detail, though they were not long. They recorded that after another marathon round of talks between representatives of the parents of the four-hundred-odd children in Britain who had been born deformed because of the tha lidomide drug ten years earlier, and the company that had marketed the drug, a further impasse had been reached. So talks would be resumed "at a later date."
Gordon Chalmers' thoughts went back to the house
outside Watford that he had left earlier that same morning, to Peggy, his wife, just turned thirty and looking forty, and to Margaret, legless, one-armed Margaret, coming up to nine years, who needed a special pair of legs and a specially built house, which they now lived in at long last, the mortgage on which was costing him a fortune.
"At a later date," he snapped to no one in particular and stuffed the newspapers into a trash basket. He seldom read the evening papers anyway. He preferred the Guardian, Private Eye, and the left-wing Tribune. After nearly ten years of watching a group of almost unmoneyed parents try to face down the giant distillers for their compensation, Gordon Chalmers harbored bitter thoughts about big-time capitalists. Ten minutes later he was facing one of the biggest.
Sir James Manson could not put Chalmers off his guard as he had Bryant and Mulrooney. The scientist clutched his glass of beer firmly and stared right back. Manson grasped the situation quickly and, when Miss Cooke had handed him his whisky and retired, he came to the point.
"I suppose you can guess what I asked you to come and see me about, Dr. Chalmers."
"I can guess, Sir James. The report on Crystal Mountain."
"That's it. Incidentally, you were quite right to send it to me personally in a sealed envelope. Quite right."
Chalmers shrugged. He had done it because he realized that all important analysis results had to go direct to the Chairman, according to company policy. It was routine, as soon as he had realized what the samples contained.
"Let me ask you two things, and I need specific answers," said Sir James. "Are you absolutely certain of these results? There could be no other possible explanation of the tests of the samples?"
Chalmers was neither shocked nor affronted. He knew the work of scientists was seldom accepted by laymen as being far removed from black magic, and that they therefore considered it imprecise. He had long since ceased trying to explain the precision of his craft.
"Absolutely certain. For one thing, there are a variety of tests to establish the presence of platinum, and these samples passed them all with unvarying regularity. For another, I not only did all the known tests on every one of the samples, I did the whole thing twice. Theoretically it is possible someone could have interfered with the alluvial samples, but not with the internal structures of the rocks themselves. The summary of my report is accurate beyond scientific dispute."
Sir James Manson listened to the lecture with head-bowed respect, and nodded in admiration. "And the second thing is, how many other people in your laboratory know of the results of the analysis of the Crystal Mountain samples?"
"No one," said Chalmers with finality.
"No one?" echoed Manson. "Come now, surely one of your assistants ..."
Chalmers downed a swig of his beer and shook his head. "Sir James, when the samples came in they were crated as usual and put in store. Mulrooney's accompanying report predicated the presence of tin in unknown quantities. As it was a very minor survey, I put a junior assistant onto it. Being inexperienced, he assumed tin or nothing and did the appropriate tests. When they failed to show up positive, he called me over and pointed this out: I offered to show him how, and again the tests were negative. So I gave him a lecture on not being mesmerized by the prospector's opinion and showed him some more tests. These too were