Wildcard

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Paul Grossart, Managing Director of Lehman Genomics UK, was nervous. The head of the American parent company was coming to see him, rather than have him fly out to Boston, and this made him uneasy. His section leaders were ready to make presentations, outlining their groups’ research efforts with well-prepared slides and diagrams. Technical staff had made sure that the labs were free of clutter and would appear hives of industry should the visiting party care to call, and secretarial staff were making the company office smell like the cosmetics counter at Boots. Upstairs in the accounts department, the books were open and ready for inspection; their authors ready with optimistic and glowing projections for the future. The order of the day for everyone was to smile at anything that moved.

Despite all this, Grossart found that his palms were sweating as he stood at the window of his office, hands behind his back, waiting for his visitors to arrive. On the face of it, he had nothing to worry about. All UK biotech companies had been going through a hard time in the face of a business community which believed that they had been promising more than they had delivered, but Lehman had weathered the storm of disappearing venture capital better than most. They had done so because of their success in marketing several new diagnostic kits in the past two years, and their field trials of two new chemotherapeutic agents had been going well. Target dates for licences were beginning to look realistic to those in the know. But, in spite of this, Grossart still suspected that something was wrong; he felt it in his bones. The American visit had been advertised as routine but he just knew that there was more to it.

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