Sweet Talking Money
In the bestselling tradition of Jeffrey Archer and Dick Francis comes a hot new commercial talent.A young scientist, Cameron, has an idea which could revolutionise medicine. She believes that, once published, her findings will change the world.A maverick financier, Bryn, sees the potential, but convinces her that truth alone is never what secures change: it’s money, nous and competitive savvy.He persuades her to go into business with him. Their aim: to build a stockmarket company worth a hundred million pounds – big enough to survive assault; strong enough to market Cameron’s technology to the entire world.Corinth, a corporation worth a hundred billion dollars, sees Cameron’s technology as a threat and aims to wipe out the fledgling enterprise.The story becomes a race to the stockmarket – and a battle to survive.
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SWEET TALKING MONEY
HARRY BINGHAM
This novel is a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Dedication quotation from Selected Poems, 1923–1958 by e.e. cummings, published by Faber and Faber
HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
This edition published in 2001
Copyright © Harry Bingham 2001
The Author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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Source ISBN: 9780006513551
Ebook Edition © JANUARY 2013 ISBN 9780007441006 Version: 2016-07-22
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For my beloved N.
lady through whose profound and fragile lips the sweet small clumsy feet of April came into the ragged meadow of my soul.
Books are books. But if books were films, then I was the writer and director, while the producer, editor and assistant director was my wife, Nuala. This is an acknowledgement in the most straightforward sense: a formal recognition of her part in the forming of this book. This book was written by one, but created by two.
CONTENTS
1
Sometimes you have to go crazy before you can come to your senses. Sometimes you have to lose everything to find the one thing that really matters. Sometimes – Hell, forget about sometimes. Here’s what happened.
2
It was eight thirty-five on a chilly Boston evening, and the scientists were beginning to ramble. Enough.
‘Let’s call a halt,’ said Bryn. ‘Who’s writing up?’
He knew the answer. A scraggy scientist, looking like something put together from rags and pipe-cleaners, raised his hand. ‘Dr Lewinson. Excellent.’ Bryn turned on his smile, maximum beam. His show of goodwill was brief and insincere. Of the eighteen people in the room, fourteen would be fired as soon as the deal concluded. Bryn knew that because he was the architect of the whole transaction. The others didn’t, because they weren’t.
The meeting broke up.
As Bryn began to pack away, a further racking cough rumbled painfully from his chest. It was his second trip across the Atlantic that week, so his jet lag, coming at him from both sides, was having an echo effect on his battered system.
‘Dammit, look, I wonder if you can help,’ he said, grabbing one of the departing scientists. ‘I really ought to see a doctor.’
‘A medical doctor? Hey Steve, you’re not a doctor, are you?’
‘No. Why don’t you try what’s-her-face, Dr Dynamite downstairs?’
‘You think that’s safe?’ The scientist laughed. ‘Only kidding, really. She’s great, just … No, really, she’s great.’
As he spoke, the scientist fussed around with pass keys and swipe cards, taking Bryn downstairs, past empty laboratories, silent storage rooms, the hum of computers. They emerged on to a corridor on the ground floor, dark except for the glow of streetlamps spilling in from outside. They raced along until they arrived at a lighted doorway, where a brass plate advertised its owner, Cameron Wilde, MD, PhD. ‘Here you go,’ said the scientist, shaking hands. ‘Good luck.’
Bryn raised his eyebrows in enquiry. ‘Dr Dynamite, huh?’
‘She’s kind of explosive. That’s part of the reason, I guess.’
‘And the other part?’
‘Nobel prizes. Built on the profits old Freddie Nobel made out of dynamite.’ He nodded at Wilde’s door. ‘She’s a future winner, if ever I’ve seen one. And I have, actually. Several.’
Through a frosted pane in the door, lights burned. There was a dark shape, which might or might not have belonged to a future Nobel Prize winner. Bryn put his hand to the door and knocked.
3
The room was a good size, thirty foot by twenty, lit by three or four anglepoise lamps. On the wall where Bryn entered was a small pool of tidiness, somebody’s workstation, a secretary’s, probably. Everywhere else was chaos. Stacks of paper on every surface. Sheaves of computer print-out. Journals, textbooks, e-mails, binders. Yellow Post-it notes tacked anywhere and everywhere. There was a workbench jammed with two PCs, a portable, a couple of printers, a scanner, and wiring arrangements designed by a five-year-old. There were two further work areas crowded with microscopes, two high-capacity clinical fridges, boxfuls of needles, blood collection tubes rolling around loose in cardboard trays, plus other equipment Bryn didn’t recognise. The room’s built-in shelving had long ago buckled beneath the deluge, and sheets of chipboard standing on concrete blocks acted as emergency reinforcements. There were four chairs in the room and on one of them sat Cameron Wilde, MD, PhD.
