The cold gin calmed Berrington. His anger at Jim gradually evaporated, and he focused his mind on Jeannie Ferrami.
Fear had caused him to make a rash promise. He had recklessly told Jim and Preston that he would deal with Jeannie. Now he had to fulfill that imprudent undertaking. He had to stop her asking questions about Steve Logan and Dennis Pinker.
It was maddeningly difficult. Although he had hired her and arranged her grant, he could not simply give her orders; as he had told Jim, the university was not the army. She was employed by JFU, and Genetico had already handed over a year's funding. In the long term, of course, he could easily pull the plug on her; but that was not good enough. She had to be stopped immediately, today or tomorrow, before she learned enough to ruin them all.
Calm down, he thought, calm down.
Her weak point was her use of medical databases without the permission of the patients. It was the kind of thing the newspapers could make into a scandal, regardless of whether anyone's privacy was genuinely invaded. And universities were terrified of scandal; it played havoc with their fundraising.
It was tragic to wreck such a promising scientific project. It went against everything Berrington stood for. He had encouraged Jeannie, and now he had to undermine her. She would be heartbroken, and with reason. He told himself that she had bad genes and would have got into trouble sooner or later; but all the same he wished he did not have to be the cause of her downfall.
He tried not to think about her body. Women had always been his weakness. No other vice tempted him: he drank in moderation, never gambled, and could not understand why people took drugs. He had loved his wife, Vivvie, but even then he had not been able to resist the temptation of other women, and Vivvie had eventually left him because of his fooling around. Now when he thought of Jeannie he imagined her running her fingers through his hair and saying, "You've been so good to me, I owe you so much, how can I ever thank you?"
Such thoughts made him feel ashamed. He was supposed to be her patron and mentor, not her seducer.
As well as desire he felt burning resentment. She was just a girl, for God's sake; how could she be such a threat? How could a kid with a ring in her nose possibly jeopardize him and Preston and Jim when they were on the brink of achieving their lifetime ambitions? It was unthinkable they should be thwarted now; the idea made him dizzy with panic. When he was not imagining himself making love to Jeannie, he had fantasies of strangling her.
All the same he was reluctant to start a public outcry against her. It was hard to control the press. There was a chance they would begin by investigating Jeannie and finish up investigating him. This would be a dangerous strategy. But he could think of no other, short of Jim's wild talk of murder.
He drained his glass. The bartender offered him another martini, but he declined. He looked around the bar and spotted a pay phone next to the men's room. He swiped his American Express card through the card reader and called Jim's office. One of Jim's brash young men answered: "Senator Proust's office."
"This is Berrington Jones - "
"I'm afraid the senator is in a meeting right now."
He really should train his acolytes to be a little more charming, Berrington thought. "Then let's see if we can avoid interrupting him," he said. "Does he have any media appointments this afternoon?"
"I'm not sure. May I ask why you need to know, sir?"
"No, young man, you may not," Berrington said with exasperation. Self-important assistants were the curse of Capitol Hill. "You may answer my question, or you may put Jim Proust on the phone, or you may lose your goddamn job, now which is it to be?"
"Please hold."
There was a long pause. Berrington reflected that wishing Jim would teach his aides to be charming was like hoping a chimpanzee would teach its young table manners. The boss's style spread to the staff: an ill-mannered person always had rude employees.
A new voice came on the phone. "Professor Jones, in fifteen minutes the senator is due to attend a press conference to launch Congressman Dinkey's book New Hope for America."