Whiteout(32)
It thrilled and dismayed her. She could, if she allowed herself, entertain a fantasy about being part of it, sitting beside Stanley as his wife, loving him and his children, basking in the comfort of their togetherness. But she repressed that dream. It was impossible, and she should not torture herself. The very strength of the family bonds kept her out.
When at last they noticed her, she got a hard look from both daughters, Olga and Miranda. It was a careful scrutiny: detailed, unapologetic, hostile. She had got a similar look from Lori, the cook, though more discreet.
She understood the daughters' reaction. For thirty years Marta had ruled that kitchen. They would have felt disloyal to her had they not been hostile. Any woman Stanley liked could turn into a threat. She could disrupt the family. She might change their father's attitudes, turn his affections in new directions. She might bear him children, half-brothers and half-sisters who would care nothing about the history of the original family, would not be bound to them with the unbreakable chains of a shared childhood. She would take some of their inheritance, perhaps all of it. Was Stanley sensing these undercurrents? As she followed him into his study, she felt again the maddening frustration of not knowing what was in his mind.
It was a masculine room, with a Victorian pedestal desk, a bookcase full of weighty microbiology texts, and a worn leather couch in front of a log fire. The dog followed them in and stretched out by the fire like a curly black rug. On the mantelpiece was a framed photograph of a dark-haired teenage girl in tennis whites—the same girl as the bride in the picture on his office wall. Her brief shorts showed long, athletic legs. The heavy eye makeup and the hair band told Toni that the picture had been taken in the sixties. "Was Marta a scientist, too?" Toni asked.
"No. Her degree was in English. When I met her, she was teaching A-level Italian at a high school in Cambridge."
Toni was surprised. She had imagined that Marta must have shared Stanley's passion for his work. So, she thought, you don't need a doctorate in biology to be married to him. "She was pretty."
"Devastating," Stanley replied. "Beautiful, tall, sexy, foreign, a demon on the court, a heartbreaker off it. I was struck by lightning. Five minutes after I met her, I was in love."
"And she with you?"
"That took longer. She was surrounded by admirers. Men fell like flies. I could never understand why she picked me in the end. She used to say she couldn't resist an egghead."
No mystery there, Toni thought. Marta had liked what Toni liked: Stanley's strength. You knew right away that here was a man who would do what he said and be what he seemed to be, a man you could rely on. He had other attractions, too: he was warm and clever and even well dressed.
She wanted to say But how do you feel now? Are you still married to her memory? But Stanley was her boss. She had no right to ask him about his deepest feelings. And there was Marta, on the mantelpiece, wielding her tennis racket like a cudgel.
Sitting on the couch beside Stanley, she tried to put her emotions aside and concentrate on the crisis at hand. "Did you call the U.S. embassy?" she asked him.
"Yes. I got Mahoney calmed down, for the moment, but he'll be watching the news like us."
A lot hung on the next few minutes, Toni thought. The company could be destroyed or saved, Stanley could be bankrupted, she could lose her job, and the world could lose the services of a great scientist. Don't panic, she told herself; be practical. She took a notebook from her shoulder bag. Cynthia Creighton was videotaping the news, back at the office, so Toni would be able to watch it again later, but she would now jot down any immediate thoughts.
The Scottish news came on before the UK bulletin.
The death of Michael Ross was still the top story, but the report was introduced by a newsreader, not Carl Osborne. That was a good sign, Toni thought hopefully. There was no more of Carl's laughably inaccurate science. The virus was correctly named as Madoba-2. The anchor was careful to point out that Michael's death would be investigated by the sheriff at an inquest.
"So far, so good," Stanley murmured.
Toni said, "It looks to me as if a senior news executive watched Carl Osborne's sloppy report over breakfast and came in to the office determined to sharpen up the coverage."
The picture switched to the gates of the Kremlin. "Animal-rights campaigners took advantage of the tragedy to stage a protest outside Oxenford Medical," the anchor said. Toni was pleasantly surprised. That sentence was more favorable than she would have hoped. It implied the demonstrators were cynical media manipulators.
After a brief shot of the demo, the report cut to the Great Hall. Toni heard her own voice, sounding more Scots than she expected, outlining the security system at the laboratory. This was not very effective, she realized: just a voice droning on about alarms and guards. It might have been better to let the cameras film the air-lock entrance to BSL4, with its fingerprint recognition system and submarine doors. Pictures were always better than words.
Then there was a shot of Carl Osborne asking, "Exactly what danger did this rabbit pose to the general public?"
Toni leaned forward on the couch. This was the crunch.
They played the interchange between Carl and Stanley, with Carl posing disaster scenarios and Stanley saying how unlikely they were. This was bad, Toni knew. The audience would remember the idea of wildlife becoming infected, even though Stanley had said firmly that it was not possible.