"Where can I find him?"
"He's not a local." He consulted the piece of paper. "He comes from a village called Lesgets. It's about sixty kilometers from here."
Before Max left Chamonix, he stopped at the desk of the Kleine Scheidegg hotel and talked to the room clerk. "Were you on duty when Mr. Roffe was staying here?"
"Yes," the clerk said. "The accident was a terrible thing, terrible."
"Mr. Roffe was alone here?"
The clerk shook his head. "No. He had a friend with him."
Max stared. "A friend?"
"Yes. Mr. Roffe made the reservation for both of them."
"Could you give me the name of his friend?"
"Certainly," the clerk said. He pulled out a large ledger from beneath the desk and began to turn back the pages. He stopped, ran his fingers down a page and said, "Ah, here we are..."
It took almost three hours for Max to drive to Lesgets in a Volkswagen, the cheapest rental car he could find, and he almost passed through it It was not even a village. The place consisted of a few shops, a small Alpine lodge, and a general store with a single gas pump in front of it.
Max parked in front of the lodge and walked in. There were half a dozen men seated in front of an open fireplace, talking. The conversation trailed off as Max entered.
"Excuse me," he said, "I'm looking for Herr Hans Bergmann."
"Who?"
"Hans Bergmann. The guide. He comes from this village."
An eldely man with a face that was a weather map of his years spat into the fireplace and said, "Somebody's been kidding you, mister. I was born in Lesgets. I never heard of any Hans Bergmann."
Chapter 34
It was the first day that Elizabeth had gone to the office since the death of Kate Erling a week earlier. Elizabeth entered the downstairs lobby with trepidation, responding mechanically to the greetings of the doorman and guards. At the far end of the lobby she saw workmen replacing the smashed elevator car. She thought about Kate Erling, and Elizabeth could visualize the terror she must have felt as she plunged twelve interminable stories to her death. She knew that she could never ride in that elevator again.
When she walked into her office, her mail had already been opened by Henriette, the second secretary, and neatly placed on her desk. Elizabeth went through it quickly, initialing some memos, writing questions on others, or marking them for various department heads. At the bottom of the pile was a large sealed envelope marked "Elizabeth Roffe - Personal." Elizabeth took a letter opener and slit the envelope across the top. She reached in and took out an 8-by-10 photograph. It was a close-up of a mongoloid child, its bulging eyes staring out of its encephalic head. Attached to the picture was a note printed in crayon: "THIS IS MY BEAUTIFUL SON JOHN. YOUR DRUGS DID THIS TO HIM. I AM GOING TO KILL YOU."
Elizabeth dropped the note and the picture, and found that her hands were trembling. Henriette walked in with a handful of papers.
"These are ready to be signed, Miss - " She saw the look on Elizabeth's face. "Is something wrong?"
Elizabeth said, "Please - ask Mr. Williams to come in here." Her eyes went back to the picture on her desk.
Roffe and Sons could not be responsible for anything so dreadful.
"It was our fault," Rhys said. "A shipment of drugs was mislabeled. We managed to recall most of it, but - " He raised his hands expressively.
"How long ago did this happen?"
"Almost four years ago."
"How many people were affected?"
"About a hundred." He saw the expression on her face and added quickly, "They received compensation. They weren't all like this, Liz. Look, we're damned careful here. We take every safety precaution we can devise, but people are human. Mistakes are sometimes made."
Elizabeth sat staring at the picture of the child. "It's horrible."
"They shouldn't have shown you the letter." Rhys ran his fingers through his thick black hair and said, "This is a hell of a time to bring it up, but we have a few other problems more important than this."
She wondered what could be more important. "Yes?"
"The FDA just gave a decision against us on our aerosol sprays. There's going to be a complete ban on aerosols within two years."
"How will that affect us?"
"It's going to hurt us badly. It means we'll have to close down half a dozen factories around the world and lose one of our most profitable divisions."
Elizabeth thought about Emil Joeppli and the culture he was working on, but she said nothing. "What else?"
"Have you seen the morning papers?"
"No."
"A government minister's wife in Belgium, Mme. van den Logh, took some Benexan."
"That's one of our drugs?"
"Yes. It's an antihistamine. It's contraindicated for anyone with essential hypertension. Our label carries a clear warning. She ignored it."
Elizabeth felt her body beginning to tense. "What happened to her?"
Rhys said, "She's in a coma. She may not live. The newspaper stories mention that it's our product. Cancellations on orders are pouring in from all over the world. The FDA notified us that it's starting an investigation, but that will take at least a year. Until they finish, we can keep selling the drug."
Elizabeth said, "I want it taken off the market."
"There's no reason to do that. It's a damned effective drug for - "
"Have any other people been hurt by it?"
"Hundreds of thousands of people have been helped by it." Rhys tone was cool. "It's one of our most effective - "