23

The Central Administration Building, otherwise known as the Presidential Palace, was an imposing ten-story structure with a gleaming granite and glass facade; marble floors; and a striking, all-white interior. I arrived ten minutes late, a gesture intended to express my resentment at the peremptory summons that brought me here. On the other hand, I wore my one and only suit, purchased two years ago for my son’s wedding. I wasn’t sure what kind of mixed message I was trying to send. Maybe that I was some sort of independent conformist.

The receptionist on the top floor seemed unfazed by either my tardiness or my attire. She said the president would be with me shortly and directed me to a waiting area next to a floor-to-ceiling window with a breathtaking view of the Charles River. I took a seat on an overstuffed couch and started leafing through one of the copies of the BTI alumni magazine that were spread out on a side table. Several copies of President Emerson’s recently published memoir, The Academic Life, were also there, waiting to be perused.

They kept me waiting ten minutes, just long enough to establish that my time was less valuable than Emerson’s, before the receptionist took me into his office. It was big enough to house at least two laboratories. Two of the walls were dark wood paneling, covered with oil paintings in gold frames. Fine art wasn’t my area of expertise, but they looked like they belonged in a museum. The other two walls were glass, one with the view of the Charles River I’d had in the waiting area and the other with a cityscape of downtown Boston. Several conference tables and seating areas of different sizes were scattered around the room, and the floor was covered with two oversize Chinese rugs.

Emerson got up from his desk to greet me, and we met halfway across the office.

“Thank you for coming to see me,” he said. “I’m a great admirer of the work you’ve done with our Integrated Life Sciences Department. It’s become a real center of excellence in the institute. The rape and murder of your poor student sullied things, of course, but I understand you even handled that as well as anyone could have.”

He sounded like I was here for a friendly chat. Not like I’d been dragged in for a command performance. I thanked him and waited for what was to come next.

“Would you care for some tea? I always find it helps me relax, and I’ve had a hard morning already,” he said. “An eight o’clock fundraiser with members of the board of directors.”

“I’m fine, thank you,” I said.

“No, please join me.” He walked over to a granite counter near his desk. “Do you like Earl Grey? Or I can offer green tea, if you prefer.”

“Whatever you’re having, thank you.”

“Good, Earl Grey it is, then.” He poured bottled water into an electric tea kettle and spooned the tea into tea balls. When the water was ready, he served the tea in mugs with gold BTI insignias. I declined milk or lemon, and he led us to a seating area with leather armchairs and a marble coffee table. I had the view of downtown and was pretty sure I could see the roof of my condo building.

He took a sip of his tea and smiled. “So good of you to come talk with me. I seldom have a chance to meet with real scientists anymore. Most of my time seems to be spent raising money, protecting the institution from damaging legislation, things like that. And of course, dealing with all manner of problems that threaten to derail our mission. That’s why I so admire the good work you’ve done in your department. Wonderful to see.”

“Thank you. I appreciate the kind words.”

“Doing the administrative work is hard, isn’t it? I mean, you’re an accomplished scientist, and now you’ve also had to deal with some of the same kind of administrative problems I face in this office.”

“Only on a much smaller and simpler scale,” I said. Where was this going?

“Not always so simple, is it? We always have to be careful to make sure we’re supporting our most productive faculty, don’t we? That’s where the real strength of either a department or the entire institution lies.”

I drank some tea. “Most definitely. Although I think it’s also important to be fair with everyone and to give our young faculty every opportunity to develop their careers. After all, that’s where the future lies.”

“Yes,” he said, “but it’s the top senior faculty who determine a department’s standing. Who would you say is your best faculty member?”

I hesitated. This wasn’t a game I wanted to play with the president of the institute. “Well, we have several outstanding people. I don’t think I could name just one.”

He put down his mug and frowned at me. “Come now, that’s ridiculous. Surely you know who your top faculty member is. Michael Singer.”

“Well, he’s certainly up there.”

“Up there indeed! He’s by far your best in terms of grants, papers, awards—however you want to measure it. And if you’re going to lead your department effectively, that’s not something you should ignore.” The old boys’ friendliness was gone now, replaced by the demeanor of an annoyed senior executive talking to a subordinate who doesn’t quite get it.

“Of course not,” I said.

“Then perhaps you can explain why you’ve been poking around Yale, asking questions about Mike’s ancient history?”

I drank some more tea to stall for time. So this was why we were here. Maybe he was embarrassed by his signature on Singer’s nondisclosure agreement. But how did he know about my visits to New Haven?

“The accounting office was investigating some irregularities involving consulting payments to a Yale faculty member from Singer’s grants. I made a trip down there to talk to her about it, hoping I could clear things up.”

“Sally Lipton. Yes, she complained about your visits. Apparently, you barged into her office twice, the last time accompanied by one of our institute detectives.” He leaned forward and furrowed his brow. “That is totally inappropriate. It’s not your business to act as an investigator and certainly not to involve the institute police in your inquiries. Your job is to support your faculty.”

“As I said, I was hoping that Dr. Lipton could clear things up.”

“Then it seems particularly odd for you to have made your second visit after the auditors concluded that the consulting payments were appropriate and terminated the inquiry. And I understand you were also asking about a former student, Martha Daniels. What does she have to do with it?”

Lipton’s complaints weren’t a big surprise—but to the president of BTI? What the hell was going on?

Emerson got up and raised his voice an octave. “Never mind. Don’t bother trying to answer. But listen carefully. I want you to stop screwing around with this. Just back off and treat Singer like the outstanding scientist that he is. If I hear of any more inquiries, I’ll have your job.”

I stood up too. Something was really weird for him to get involved like this. “You can have my resignation as department chair anytime you want. I’ll happily go back to being an ordinary faculty member. I’d love to be able to focus on my research.”

“You think being a tenured professor will protect you? You’re a fool. It’d take a bit of effort, but I can easily enough get a revocation of your tenure too. Just keep looking into Singer if you want to see me do it.”

I headed over to the river when I left the Presidential Palace. The meeting had been bizarre, and I needed to try to make some sense of it. Whatever Emerson was afraid that I might find out had to be big. Big enough to make him cross the ultimate academic line of threatening to fire a tenured faculty member. And despite the nonchalance of his threat, he wouldn’t be able to pull that off without a formal academic proceeding that would take months of work by several faculty committees. Getting rid of tenured faculty members was a big deal that would generate a ton of publicity and probably result in intervention by organizations that were dedicated to protecting academic freedom. The American Association of University Professors and the like. It just wasn’t something that a university president would want to do.

So what was this about? He clearly hoped and expected that his combination of cajoling and bullying would make me drop the matter. Perhaps he’d offered Singer such a sweet retention deal at Yale that he didn’t want word to get out. Maybe there was some kind of relationship between them that would be a substantial embarrassment for the current president of BTI. That would explain the nondisclosure agreement as well as his going so far as to threaten me.

Possible, but if that was it, Sally Lipton and Martha Daniels would presumably have to know what it was all about for them to have signed the agreement. And they were both awfully far down the totem pole of academic life to be included in details of a senior faculty retention.

So that left the possibility that Singer had been forced to leave Yale because of some type of misconduct—something nasty that was covered by the agreement and that Emerson didn’t want to become public. Like the illicit use of research funds, which was why I’d started looking into this in the first place. Some kind of sustained scam with Sally Lipton that had started in New Haven and continued to the present day. A fraud that Emerson would most certainly want to cover up if he’d offered Singer an easy way out at Yale and then continued to support his career at BTI.

I didn’t like being bullied, and Emerson’s involvement had the opposite effect from what he wanted. Somehow or other, I was going to find out what had happened at Yale ten years ago that was so important.

I checked my watch. Not quite eleven. Plenty of time to catch an early afternoon flight to Madison.

Maybe Linda Chen was the key.