Operation stealth seed, p.24
Operation Stealth Seed, page 24
Malone grinned. “I’m stayin’ right where I am till you call off your doggie.”
O’Meara called back over his shoulder, “They’re okay, Collins, you can stand down.”
Both doors of the other vehicle opened and all three officers came across to join O’Meara, who seemed to be the senior member of the group. They stood behind him, hands on their weapons while he asked, “What the hell happened here?”
“We ran into an ambush. Had one hell of a firefight. Three of my team are down and one of them’s in serious condition.”
O’Meara turned to Collins. “Radio for a rescue team and an ambulance.”
Price and Trojas, who had watched the proceedings, got to their feet and limped over to where Nick was talking with O’Meara.
“There are three stiffs in the trees on the other side of that spur from the river. You’re gonna need some body bags and a whole lot of paper on this one.”
“Who are these guys anyway, they look…official.”
“They’re private security contractors. Blackwater, or Xe as they called themselves after their horrific behaviour in Iraq and Afghanistan caused such an uproar they had to change their name.”
“So, they’re at war with the NYPD?”
Nick grinned. “Looks that way, don’t it. But no, they’re freelancing. And they’ve got heavy backup. CIA, DIA, DHS, you name it.”
O’Meara whistled. “I see what you mean about the paper.”
“Wish you’d got here a lot sooner. We sure could have used the help. How did you find us, anyway?”
“That was Valorie, Valorie Wright. She’s a Guardian Angel. Heard an explosion. Said she was going to investigate and would let us know what she found. She never called in. We wouldn’t have thought much about it, but we got a 911 from a woman who was out walking her dog. She heard these unusual sounds, like moans, and thrashing. When we got there, we found Valorie, cuffed and gagged, inside a dumpster. We came as soon as she told us where to go.”
At the Sound Shore Medical Center, Nick had his shoulder flushed, packed, wrapped and his arm put in a sling. He waited with Malone while the doctors worked on Eddy, Corbie and Hector. Chaz was leafing through old magazines and fingering the bandage that patched the lacerations behind his right ear. He didn’t seem in the mood for conversation, and it was only then that Nick remembered to check his cellphone for messages.
There was a call from his daughter, Terry. All she said was, “Wow, Pops, Claire is a keeper. We’re having a blast here in Whatever, Pennsylvania. Hope you’re okay. Call us.”
Then there was the usual telemarketing bullshit, and Vanessa Lang’s husky contralto. She sounded really excited. “If you’re free tonight, meet me at The Cherokee, 517 East 77th. Look for Tamas Berenyi, that’s B-e-r-e-n-y-i, on the mailbox and try to get there around eight. Doherty found a locked file on the Lang & Baine main frame and I’m sure Tamas can hack into it.”
Who the hell is Doherty, Nick wondered, and what’s in that file?
67
The Cherokee was a century-old, six-storey walk-up. Sponsored by Mrs. William K. Vanderbilt and designed by Dr. Henry Atterbury Smith, it was built as low-cost housing for recovering tuberculosis patients and their families in 1911. On July 9, 1985, the New York City Landmark Preservation Commission designated it as an official landmark and in 1986 it was renamed the Cherokee Apartments and converted to a cooperative.
There were four buildings, each with its own central courtyard, open-air spiral stairs with double green handrails and wire glass louvres over the opening at each level to keep out rain and snow. Other distinctive features were cast-iron balconies supported by curved brackets and a green tile roof. There were no lobbies or front doors. Instead, the entries were Piranesi-like barrel-vaulted arcades with intricately patterned Guastavino terracotta tiles that ran from the courtyards to the street. Their large, squared openings were framed by heavy foliate mouldings divided into small sections and finished in a pineapple motif. Flanking each entranceway were large bronze lamps shaped to resemble torches and topped by a white globe. Every apartment had nine-foot, floor-to-ceiling, triple-sash windows that opened out onto the balcony and maple hardwood floors.
Nick scanned the rank of polished brass mailboxes till he found Berenyi. The studio was on the sixth floor, and by the time he reached it, he understood why there was an iron railing with a seat formed in it at the outside edge of each landing. Without them, tubercular patients who had difficulty breathing would never be able to make the climb. He was breathing hard himself when Vanessa greeted him at the door.
“Nicola! Glad you could make it. My god, what happened to your arm?”
Nick smiled. “That’s a long story, I’ll tell you later.”
“Okay, well, I guess you’re all right. Let me introduce you. This is Sean Doherty. He’s investigating the massive crop failure in Mawabi, and that’s Tamas Berenyi at the computer.”
Tamas raised a hand from the keyboard but did not get up or turn around. He was stocky, looked to be five-foot-eleven or so, in his mid-fifties, with curly grey hair and a full, well-trimmed beard. Vanessa had told Nick he’d emigrated from Hungary as a young man, worked his way to the West Coast and through several degrees in computer science at the University of California.
He’d been a promising analyst and designer at Microsoft, IBM, Apple and Cray, but quickly found the corporate ladder too slow and too stifling. For a while he ran his own company but disbanded it and went freelance when it became clear that he’d rather manage microchips than people. He was one of the few techs in the country who could build a supercomputer like the Cray X1E from the ground up and develop software programs for an impressive range of applications.
He sat at the desk, chain-smoking Sobranie Black Russians and tossing the butts into a large ashtray stand, filling the room with layers of blue haze. He’d only been at the laptop for twenty minutes, and he’d already hacked through to a Sarbitt encrypted folder with the intriguing label Operation Stealth Seed. He skimmed briefly through its contents, then stood and offered the chair to Doherty.
“I think, what you told me? This is it. If you need something, I’m over there.”
Doherty sat down and began reading, a look of utter astonishment on his face. When he’d scanned the entire folder, he began to tell the others what he’d learned.
“It started with a contamination test Sarbitt ran on Lang & Baine’s manure slurries. The sample revealed a strain of bacteria no one had ever seen before. It shouldn’t have been able to survive such a high concentration of nitrates, but the hostile environment had triggered a genetic adaptation, a positively charged molecule that could bond with a whole range of nitrates. This prevented the nitrates from reacting chemically and neutralized their lethal effect. Because the discovery was made in the Sarbitt lab complex near Johannesburg, the new strain was dubbed Acidophilus africanus.”
Doherty paused and waited for questions, but there were only intent looks and thoughtful frowns. He continued, “When CEO Dr. Yueng T. Kee saw the report, he realized that the new bacterial strain could be grown in vast quantities, and its genetic adaptation, called a sequester, could be used to meet even the most stringent cleanup requirements by neutralizing high density nitrates, and this would cut costs dramatically.
“But Kee had another idea that excited the Pentagon and the Department of Defense. He thought the sequester, NS2-7, could be modified and adapted to inhibit the release of nitrogen gas in the blood of deep-sea divers. If Kee were successful, Navy Seals could stay down for hours and rise quickly without suffering the symptoms of caisson disease. The Feds put up a lot of soft money and signed a contract with Sarbitt.”
Nick looked puzzled. “This may sound stupid, but I don’t see how this is relevant. What has it got to do with destroying a wheat crop in Africa?”
Doherty looked up from the screen, his face bathed in its eerie light. “Not stupid at all, but it’s a long and tangled tale. I’ll try to be as brief as possible but I’ll tell you right now, it’s bloody diabolical, ingenious, incredible.”
Nick nodded, “You seem to have the gist of it already. Please go on.”
“Okay. It was a promising idea, but there were problems. The chemical had to be catalyzed by water, and it had to be used quickly or it would deteriorate. It took a while but Kee developed a product he thought would work and when they tested it in the Gulf of Mexico, the diver came up from over 300 feet in less than a minute without any ill effects. Until they got him to sick bay for tests. Then he developed life-threatening symptoms, and remained in a light coma for hours. They revived him before he went into cardiac arrhythmia, but the NS2-7 Kee had adapted caused severe, allergenic, immune system reactions and was unusable on humans. Kee went back to the drawing board and that’s where the Stealth Seed Agenda was born.”
Vanessa had a question. “Was this before Lang & Baine acquired Sarbitt?”
“Yes.”
“And after the merger, was my husband involved in the project?”
Doherty scrolled forward, opened another subfolder, scanned it and looked up. “He was able to renegotiate the Pentagon and Department of Defense contracts for NS2-7, then turned it over to Jeremy Baine.”
“But Baine took the project in a whole new direction.”
“Yes. Detective Cortese is right. The original NS2-7 deep-sea project didn’t lead anywhere on its own, much less to Mawabi and wheat. But the research team at Sarbitt continued to test the slurries and they found that when all available nitrates had been neutralized, their unavailability threatened the survival of the bacterium, so Acidophilus africanus developed a reverse sequester that freed enough nitrates to build and maintain its colonies. When Kee told Baine about this new discovery, he organized a team of transgenic engineers who isolated the gene that produced the reverse sequester, RNS2-7. They spliced it into the DNA chains of a hard, red wheat L&B had developed by selective breeding from Canadian Triticale. They called the new strain Proto-Triticum, and because it was genetically enhanced, they were able to patent it.”
Vanessa asked, “I’m not sure I see how this could destroy a crop, but the original sequester could.”
“Exactly. By adding the sequester NS2-7 to the Accel 3 fertilizer they supplied to Curtiss James, they neutralized nitrogen in the soil and starved Mawabi’s wheat crop to death. We tested the fertilizer, but it tested out fine because, as a dry compound, NS2-7 is entirely inert. It was produced by Acidophilus africanus to operate in a slurry, a very wet environment, and needs to be catalyzed by water, so it never neutralized the nitrogen in the soil until it was irrigated or rained on. After that, the wheat couldn’t use the neutralized nitrogen, even though it was there. That’s what we couldn’t figure out. Spectroscopic analysis showed there was plenty of nitrogen in the soil, and yet plant tests showed that nitrogen deficiency was the cause of the brown-out.”
Nick shook his head. “It’s diabolical all right. But there’s more, isn’t there?”
“Yes. The first day I was in Mawabi I discovered a twenty-hectare crop of healthy wheat. It came from the genetically altered seed that had the reverse sequester spliced into its DNA. It freed up the nitrogen the doctored fertilizer had neutralized.”
Doherty scrolled forward through the next few pages, then nodded and continued with his narrative.
“Baine took his proposal to Claude Rydell who runs the African desk at the CIA. They’d been watching Baku and had concluded that his regime posed a threat to U.S. interests. He had been democratically elected and had massive popular support, but had alienated the country’s power elite, and the U.S. corporations that operated in Mawabi. He was supportive of the Palestinians, and friendly with leftist governments in Cuba and South America. When uranium was discovered it put U.S. Intelligence on red alert. They worried that he might sell yellowcake to Iran, and they wanted things back the way they were under Pierre Loyuba who had ruled the country with an iron fist for nearly twenty years before his brutal policies provoked a revolution. Operatives were put in place. They planted, then ‘discovered’ forged documents and other evidence that would prove the brown-out was the direct result of government corruption and collusion with Curtiss James. Once the wheat crop failed there would be famine, riots, widespread chaos and desperation. That’s when Loyuba was supposed to return from Chad and save the country by restoring order. He would then hire Lang & Baine to replant the cash crop with patented seed that could reactivate the neutralized nitrates in the soil.”
Doherty looked up. “Any questions so far?”
Nick asked, “It’s ingenious all right, but isn’t it a little like overkill, all that work, that investment, all those disrupted lives, maybe a civil war, just so Baine could take back a contract he’d lost to Curtiss-James?”
“If that’s all it was, it wouldn’t have been worth the trouble, but Mawabi was just the test Proto-Triticum. L&B’s fertilizer doctored with NS2-7 has been shipped to every major wheat-growing area on earth. In a matter of months Baine will control the world’s wheat market, or ninety percent of it. Almost all the wheat growing on earth will die and be replanted with L&B’s patented Proto-Triticum. No one else will be able to grow wheat, and no one will have figured out why. With help from Rydell at the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency and Homeland Security, skewed statistics and fake reports will be disseminated for each wheat-growing area of the world. This will persuade almost everyone that the gene pool the world’s wheat draws on for new strains, local adaptations and other necessary developments has been seriously and irreversibly degenerated. L&B will offer their genetically engineered seed as a benign solution, when in fact, the dominance of a single strain would destroy, forever, an ancient seed resource from which new strains could be developed.”
There was a stunned silence. Vanessa said, “That’s insane, Sean. It’s madness.”
Doherty nodded. “Yes, it is.”
Vanessa asked, “Is there anything in those files about the nerve gas shipment to Chad?”
Doherty scrolled through to another folder that contained Sarbitt’s contractual arrangements with the Pentagon, the CIA and the Department of Defense.
He scanned them quickly and nodded. “Looks like Sarbitt developed the gas with federal money. The shipment that was sent to Chad was bought from Sarbitt and paid for by the CIA.” He paused, read a little further and a distraught look crossed his intent features. It was almost a minute before he spoke. “I’m sorry to have to say this, but the invoices and bills of lading for the Complianex-3 nerve gas shipment were signed by Kenneth Lang.”
Instead of being shocked, Vanessa looked thoughtful. “That couldn’t be right. You say the CIA was using forged documents to build a case against Baku?”
“Yes, and Baine was going to use them too, to set up a disinformation campaign that would spin his takeover of the wheat market as a move to save the world from starvation.”
“Kenneth would never have signed those documents. There’s got to be some way to prove that.”
“Well, the documents in this file are just computer scans. You can probably track down the originals and have them checked out. I’ll help all I can, but right now we need to save that wheat crop or there will be total disaster for the people of Mawabi and we’ll have another dictator sending out death squads and sucking up foreign aid tax dollars.”
Tamas had been standing by the window, smoking his Sobranies. He’d been unobtrusive but was listening intently as Doherty unraveled the complex details of Operation Stealth Seed.
At this last somewhat impassioned speech, Berenyi clapped his hands in approval and came forward. “Well done. Well said. I couldn’t agree more. You’re going to need copies of these materials, yes?”
Vanessa and Doherty both nodded. She was smiling. “Thanks, Tamas, you’ve been brilliant. You’ve averted a major international catastrophe. I’ll do all I can to see that you receive an appropriate reward.”
Tamas smiled back. “I’ve not been much for rewards, Vanessa, but I come from a country that knows a lot about tyranny, and understands the value, also the fragility, of human freedom. The Stealth Seed Agenda is too large a file for DVD, it will have to be on a flash drive. I can make many as you need. I will also save to my external HD for safekeeping. And if you and your companions have time, may I propose a brief celebration?”
They looked at each other, then Doherty said, “That would be super, but may I use your modem to access the Curtiss-James mainframe at our research division in London? If I send them the research materials, they should be able to synthesize enough of the reverse sequester to spray the entire area by the end of the week. That will release the nitrogen in the soil and get the wheat growing again.”
“Of course. But that’s a too big file for the email. Let me set up so you can send it by the cloud.”
Tamas tapped the keys and explained the procedure to Doherty, then he got up and disappeared into the small kitchen.
Nick turned to Vanessa who had withdrawn into her private thoughts. He touched her lightly on the arm.
“I know this is hard. But I need to ask you something. We’re going to need help with this. Baine’s got heavy, high-level support. Do you know anyone with political clout you can tell our story to, maybe get the justice department to investigate?”
“Let me talk to someone I know in Washington, an old friend of Ken’s. It may seem hard to believe sometimes, but they’re not all corrupt or self-deluded. Some of them can actually think straight and act like human beings.”
Tamas came in from the kitchen carrying four glasses and an open bottle of wine. He was smiling.
“In Kentucky, you have the front porch, and the sipping whisky after dinner, no? In Hungary we have this, Pauleczki-Vin Tokaji Aszúeszencia 2000, very rare, from the Muscat Lunel grape.”
Tamas handed around the glasses, filled each one carefully, then raised his own. “Let fortune smile on Kamoro Baku and the peoples of Mawabi.”
