The Third Twin by Ken Follett Read Free Book Online Page B

it. What was it with these men? “Excuse me, sir,” she said to the doctor.
    He glared at her impatiently. “Have you got a problem?”
    “Could you please try to be a little more polite?”
    He reddened. “This hospital is full of people with traumatic injuries and life-threatening illnesses,” he said. “Right now in the emergency room there are three children who have been in a car wreck, and they’re all going to die. And you’re complaining that I’m not being polite to a girl who got into bed with the wrong man?”
    Jeannie was flabbergasted. “Got into bed with the wrong man?” she repeated.
    Lisa sat upright. “I want to go home,” she said.
    “That sounds like a hell of a good idea,” Jeannie said. She unzipped her duffel and began to put the clothes out on the bed.
    The doctor was dumbstruck for a moment. Then he said angrily: “Do as you please.” He went out.
    Jeannie and Lisa looked at one another. “I can’t believe that happened,” Jeannie said.
    “Thank God they’ve gone,” Lisa said, and she got out of bed.
    Jeannie helped her take off the hospital gown. Lisa pulled on the fresh clothes quickly and stepped into the shoes. “I’ll drive you home,” Jeannie said.
    “Would you sleep over at my apartment?” Lisa said. “I don’t want to be alone tonight.”
    “Sure. I’ll be glad to.”
    McHenty was waiting outside. He seemed less confident. Perhaps he knew he had handled the interview badly. “I still have a few more questions,” he said.
    Jeannie spoke quietly and calmly. “We’re leaving,” she said. “Lisa is too upset to answer questions right now.”
    He was almost scared. “She has to,” he said. “She’s made a complaint.”
    Lisa said: “I wasn’t raped. It was all a mistake. I just want to go home now.”
    “You realize it’s an offense to make a false allegation?”
    Jeannie said angrily: “This woman is not a criminal—she’s the victim of a crime. If your boss asks why she’s withdrawing the complaint, say it’s because she was brutally harassed by Patrolman McHenty of the Baltimore Police Department. Now I’m taking her home. Excuse us, please.” She put her arm around Lisa’s shoulders and steered her past the cop toward the exit.
    As they left she heard him mutter: “What did I do?”

3
    B ERRINGTON J ONES LOOKED AT HIS TWO OLDEST FRIENDS . “I can’t believe the three of us,” he said. “We’re all close to sixty years old. None of us has ever made more than a couple of hundred thousand dollars a year. Now we’re being offered sixty million each —and we’re sitting here talking about turning the offer down!”
    Preston Barck said: “We were never in it for the money.”
    Senator Proust said: “I still don’t understand it. If I own one-third of a company that’s worth a hundred and eighty million dollars, how come I’m driving around in a three-year-old Crown Victoria?”
    The three men had a small private biotechnology company, Genetico Inc. Preston ran the day-to-day business; Jim was in politics, and Berrington was an academic. But the takeover was Berrington’s baby. On a plane to San Francisco he had met the CEO of Landsmann, a German pharmaceuticals conglomerate, and had got the man interested in making a bid. Now he had to persuade his partners to accept the offer. It was proving harder than he had expected.
    They were in the den of a house in Roland Park, an affluent suburb of Baltimore. The house was owned by Jones Falls University and loaned to visiting professors. Berrington, who had professorships at Berkeley in California and at Harvard as well as Jones Falls, used the house for the six weeks of the year he was in Baltimore. There was little of his in the room: a laptop computer, a photograph of his ex-wife and their son, and a pile of new copies of his latest book, To Inherit the Future: How Genetic Engineering Will Transform America. A TV set with the sound turned down was showing the Emmy ceremonies.
    Preston