The report came as a shock to Seth. Once a deadly virus or toxin was inserted into the particular ecosystem where the drug producing plants were to be eradicated, the plants could contaminate other plants or animals, or even the entire ecosystem. Many of these drug producing areas, such as Colombia, were adjacent to or even hidden among rainforests. Rainforests cover only a small part of the earth, but produce most of the world’s oxygen. The Amazon rainforest, which included Colombia, is called the “Lungs of the Earth,” because it produces approximately 20% of the world’s oxygen. To allow the intrusion of a drug fighting GMO into this ecosystem could be devastating to the world’s environment. To allow the technology to be used for biological warfare would be disastrous to say the least.
Seth took another “once over” of all the folders in Bill’s computer, making a note to double check and make sure that he had not missed anything when he remotely accessed the computer from his office. He powered off the computer and monitor, stood up, and was about to leave when the door opened again, and once more he dove under the desk. It was Steve again, out to cure his reputation as the worst janitor on earth. Now he apparently had decided to pretend to dust the office furniture. Seth watched Steve’s feet from under the desk as he moved around the office, perfunctorily dusting with his feather duster to the music playing between his ears. Then the feet were right in front of him, as Steve dusted Bill’s desk and computer. Seth could see the Nike logos on Steve’s sneakers and his one floppy untied lace, they were so close to his view. So close, if Steve had moved his feet an inch closer, he would have kicked Seth. This time under the desk seemed even longer. Then, something happened that was even worse. Steve sat down in Bill’s chair and popped open a coke. He was taking a break. Seth curled up and waited for the laziest janitor in the world to finish his coffee break.
31
When Steve finally left the office, Seth had to pull his body out from under the desk one limb at a time, like a contortionist. His legs had gone to sleep and he had to rub the painful tingles out of them to make them function again. He carefully opened the door a pinch, and looked both ways down the corridor, before he slipped out and went in the direction of the restroom.
That night, while lying in bed looking at the ceiling, expecting another bout of insomnia, something wonderful happened. Seth realized that when he began to have incredibly ridiculous and illogical thoughts, his brain was finally putting him to sleep. Insomnia? Forget about Ambien, try burglary.
Seth awoke with the power of clear thought for the first time in weeks. Now that he had all this evidence, he had to analyze it and, more importantly, he had to decide what to do with it. He felt like Daniel Ellsberg must have felt when he had the Pentagon papers in his hands. But Seth worked for Germinat. His move would either be interpreted as whistle blowing, for which he would receive praise and possibly a reward, or since the government and the powerful people who ran it were implicated, he could be regarded as a “traitor.” Seth hoped that the general public would come to his support, but that hope was naïve since most people didn’t know what genetically engineered foods were, let alone the fact that they were all eating them.
Seth needed an escape plan in case he became a criminal instead of a hero. Someplace where the overreaching arms of the United States government could not get to him. Brazil? Nope. Brazil had an extradition treaty with the United States, and, according to the Internet, so did every major country. So, unless he wanted to go to a nice warm place like Afghanistan or Iran, he had some thinking to do. He needed to pick a place far away, but one that he could reach on a non-stop flight from the United States. The U.S. checks you into the country, but they don’t yet track your movements out of it, so he would be able to get out of the country, but he didn’t want to be stuck in a foreign country that allowed extradition if he became a hot potato.
It had to be a country where the people looked somewhat similar to Americans, so he could blend in, and that ruled out all of the African and Middle East countries. Strangely enough, Russia had a good ring to it. It was far away and an old enemy of the United States. The population was somewhat eclectic, but there were a lot of Caucasians like Seth living there and he may be able to blend in. However, there was the language barrier. Seth spoke no Russian at all. His chances for political asylum there seemed to be pretty good. There was a nonstop to Moscow on Aeroflot Russian airlines from Washington, DC. He just had to get to DC and then he was home free. Russia seemed to be the best choice.
When Seth headed for the office the next day, he was as paranoid as a coke addict. On the drive to work, he constantly checked the mirrors to see if someone was following him. When he got to work, he nervously panned the scene from side to side and looked over his shoulder. As he entered the lab, Dan Harkavy sensed his unease and asked, “Seth, are you alright?”
“Fine Dan, just fine, why would I not be alright?”
“You just look a little preoccupied, that’s all.”
Seth had to get himself together if he was going to pull this off. People might suspect he was on drugs, or even worse. He had to play it cool. Dan was continuing to work with Seth on the Miracle Rice program, which was good because a human robot like Dan was all the company Seth could stand right now.
“Seth, I still don’t know what makes this stuff better than carrots,” said Dan. “They can’t grow carrots in Africa and India?”
Dan had a point. This stuff produced hardly any beta-carotene, and it was yet to be seen if cooking would even destroy the little it did produce. How could it be better than growing carrots? But Seth already had taken on more than he could chew.
“The theory is that rice is the only thing they eat, so carrots, although a great idea, is not thought to be a solution. We just have to get the levels of beta carotene up and make sure the nutrients are there and get absorbed after cooking.”
Seth was sounding like a company man again, but he knew in just a short while, all of that would be over. No more yacht parties in St. Tropez. No more company car. And getting fired would be the easiest part of it all.
Seth pretended to work as he pored over the files from Bill’s computer on the flash drive. His spyware program was working brilliantly, and he was able to pick up every key stroke that Bill made on his computer, including his emails. Would Bill be so stupid, or so bold, as to email the EPA directly, even though email could be easily hacked? Seth did find a dialogue with Roberts, going back at least two months. An ongoing and continuing contact about the “independent” Bt testing.
Most of the emails were pretty innocuous, but there was one from Bill to Roberts that Seth found most revealing. “Team 1’s tests with live rats were run simultaneously with Team 2’s test tube tests. The rat tests had positive results for toxicity, but were discredited due to abnormal lab conditions and breaches in containment.” Abnormal lab conditions? Breaches in containment? “Team 2’s tests were conducted with simulated digestive acids and were completely negative.”
With the EPA’s own scientists’ report on the Bt toxin, which had been scrapped by Bill and Roberts, and this email, Seth had enough evidence to take down the whole corrupt scheme. There remained only two things to be done: to figure out who to talk to and how to stay out of jail long enough to have the opportunity.
32
Pallazo was an elegant European style restaurant on the outskirts of town. It was there that they arranged to meet Dave Salisbury (or whatever his name was) and his wife, Julia. Seth and Natasha arrived together with Yuri and his date, Lena. Yuri’s choice was just as Seth had expected – a tall blonde model type with smoky turquoise eyes. The four of them had a seat in Pallazo’s dimly lit dining room, where they were proposed an aperitif. Seth and the girls sipped on a glass of champagne as Yuri matched what seemed like each sip of champagne they took with a full shot of vodka, while they waited for their guests to arrive.
After about fifteen minutes, in walked Dave and Julia. Dave Salisbury, on the surface, looked like a guy who could ne
ver be married. He was a playboy type in his late 30’s, and a sharp dresser, tonight being no exception. Dave wore a designer sports jacket and chic designer jeans; not at all what you would expect from an FBI agent’s undercover expense budget. His wife (or whoever she was) was a conservative dresser, with more of what you would expect an FBI agent to be wearing. She had mousy brown hair, spoke in nasal tones, and was somewhat frumpy; not much to look at. They went together about as well as Brad Pitt and a den mother from Davenport Iowa.
Once seated, the girls began chatting amongst themselves and the gentlemen began their mutual inquisitions.
“So, are you a Canucks fan, Dave?” asked Seth.
“Uh, yeah, yeah.”
“Me too. I never miss a game when I’m back home. Got season tickets at the Rogers.”
It was obvious that Dave didn’t know a Canuck from a schnook. After Seth showed he knew enough about Vancouver (from studying it on the Internet) to blow Dave’s cover if he gave the wrong answer to something, the talk turned, oddly enough, to something that Seth really did know something about.
“So, do we have to worry in this restaurant about being served genetically modified food?” asked Dave.
“They don’t have that shit in Russia,” said Yuri.
“Well, they have it in Canada, and I, for one, am no fan of it, how about you George?”
“Never really gave it a second thought,” said Seth.
“You don’t care if you could be eating poisonous food?”
“You only live once,” said Seth.
“Does it ever bother you – you know, the close knit relationship between the U.S. government and the biotech companies?” asked Dave.
“Why should it?” said Seth. “I’m Canadian.”
“But the biotech companies are U.S. based and it seems like they practically run the FDA, doesn’t it?”
Seth was getting very uncomfortable, but tried to keep eye contact with Dave, so as not to let on that he was nervous. Yuri changed the subject.
“Guys, this is boring. Why don’t we order dinner and maybe after dinner, we can go to night club. What do you think girls, you want to go to night club?”
The girls were all for it, the GMO discussion was tabled for its lack of excitement, and Yuri signaled for the waiter.
After dinner, the group went to Chic, the hottest night club in town. There the drinking continued and Seth was beginning to get a dizzy feeling from trying to match shots with Dave and Yuri. A cardinal rule for a foreigner living in Russia is to never try to drink like a Russian man, unless, of course, you happen to be one. A Russian man will drink you under the table every time. Yuri was sitting next to Lena, and, although she was a perfectly fine specimen to stare at, Yuri’s eyes followed every chick who walked into the club, with the proficiency of a bird’s rotating neck. That was to be expected of Yuri, but Dave was also doing the same thing, while he was sitting right next to his wife. Seth was saved from further inquisition by Dave because the music was so loud you would have to be a lip reader to have a conversation.
The girls were oblivious to the gentlemen’s sport of girl watching as they continued to babble with one another about shoes and purses and makeup, and then they got up together and disappeared into the smoke and lights onto the crowded dance floor together for a “girl dance.” With their new found freedom, Yuri and Dave also mingled onto the floor. Soon, Natasha returned alone.
“Where are the girls?” asked Seth.
“Lena went to the bathroom and Julia just disappeared.”
Natasha sat down and had to speak right into Seth’s ear to be heard over the music, giving him another taste of that pleasant “ear tickle.” Seth reached for his glass and, as he did, he saw a mousy haired girl rubbing up against a young guy on the dance floor.
“Isn’t that her there?” he said to Natasha.
“No, it couldn’t be.”
“Yeah, yeah, that’s her. I’ll be damned!”
If Julia had not had all her clothes on it would have been a strip tease. She was writhing about, pulling up her shirt and wrapping herself around the guy’s body like he was her dance pole.
“I wonder what Dave would think if he saw that?” asked Seth.
“I think he’s in solidarity with her,” said Natasha, pointing to a far corner of the room, where dapper Dave was pushing up against a beautiful Russian blonde girl against the wall, making out with her like a teenage kid.
Yuri returned to the table with Lena. As he did, Julia and her dance partner disappeared into the smoke, and Dave led his new found toy off into the corridor.
“What you guys are looking at?” asked Yuri.
“Oh, nothing,” said Seth.
After a while, an openly drunk Julia staggered back to the table, but she didn’t even ask where Dave was. When Dave finally returned, he looked like all he needed was a cigarette to celebrate the climax of his orgasmic festivities.
“Isn’t this place great?” asked Dave.
“Yeah, but it’s about 4 a.m. and we should be getting back home,” said Seth.
“You guys go ahead. I stay,” said Yuri. So much for Seth’s protection from the FBI.
As the four of them were exiting the club, two young drunk idiots came out of the shadows, one of them screaming in Russian what was very clear to Seth to be a stream of obscenities.
“What are they saying?” Seth asked Natasha.
“He says to Dave to stay away from his girlfriend if he wants to live.”
Now it was clear that Dave was the cause of the problem, and he was not showing any sign of backing down to them. In fact, he went right up to them and got in their faces, surprisingly yelling his own stream of Russian expletives.
“Dave tells the punks to go away or they will be sorry.”
In the next split second, one of the punks grabbed Dave, slipping his arm underneath Dave’s in a half Nelson hold, while the other punk pulled out a knife and made slashing movements with it, advancing toward Dave. No sooner could Seth even think of coming to his aid, Dave clamped down on the holding punk’s arm, pushed it away from him, lifted his waist in the air and kicked the oncoming attacker in the chest, sending the holder flying and the attacker falling, and the knife clattered to the ground. Dave then stood up, in a martial arts ready stance, and faced both of his opponents, who scrambled to reset their balance and run away. Then, Dave picked up and pocketed the knife, and turned around, just like James Bond, smiled, and brushed off his expensive designer jacket.
“Now that the excitement’s over, can I walk you guys home?”
Seth didn’t know whether to feel safe or terrified by that offer.
33
Dave and Julia were either swingers, or they were not married at all, and Dave was obviously trained in martial arts and had no fear.
“Did you check him out?” Seth asked Yuri.
“He is FBI agent, assigned to public corruption division.”
That sounded like a far cry from tracking down fugitives, but it could have been just a layer of cover so nobody from the outside could find out his real assignment.
“So what are we going to do?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Look, we don’t know for sure if this guy is after you, or even suspects who you are. We observe him for now. I don’t think he poses any danger for you.”
“You’re the expert.”
Seth played along with Yuri, but he didn’t think that waiting and observing was good enough. He had to be proactive. To be on guard, it was better to know what you were guarding against. That meant more spying, and it was going to be a lot more difficult to spy on a trained FBI agent than it was to spy on Bill Penner. He was going to need a bigger bag of tricks.
Seth began pondering his moves in his daily thoughts. He had to figure out a way to get invited to Dave’s apartment. That way he could see what kind of a lock he had in order to figure out how to pick it. Getting into his apartment and searching it and h
is computer was the only way to find out what Dave was really up to.
At work, Seth gave 1,000 rubles to the records administrator to obtain access to Dave’s file. In the file was a copy of his false passport, a copy of his degrees and academic record (also false) and a host of bogus testimonials about his teaching abilities. But Seth was more interested in the inside cover. That contained his address and telephone number, as well as some medical information. Seth jotted down the address and phone numbers, as well as emergency contact information.
Seth located Dave’s apartment on the map, and took off from work early to scope out the neighborhood. It was not very far from his own. There was a small coffee shop right across the street from his building that would make for a good vantage point for the surveillance. Seth took a seat in the coffee shop, ordered a cup of coffee and contemplated his next move.
Every Russian apartment had several main entrance doors, or podyezd, each with a staircase to service several apartments on each floor. Seth left the coffee shop, walking by the building to identify which door belonged to apartment 2, which was Dave’s apartment.
Getting past the security of the building would be easy. It was a simple intercom buzzer which any occupant of an apartment could “buzz-in” visitors and open the door. He would just randomly ring several of Dave’s neighbors and tell them he was from the water company and needed to get into the building. Somebody who was too lazy to check or too irritated to stand another ring of the doorbell would buzz him in. Next, he would have to pick the lock on the door of the apartment and then he would be in. It would have to happen at a time when Dave was at work. Seth would call in sick, break in to the apartment, and there would be no chance of getting caught by Dave.