Thuy’s thoughts were interrupted by the vibration of his phone.
“Thuy Piseth,” he answered. He had developed the habit of answering his phone with his name from his years as a chemical engineer. Callers with legitimate business with him already knew his name. Random callers did not understand these words were actually the name of the person on the other end of the phone, and either hung up immediately, or stupidly asked, “What?” to which Thuy hung up on them.
“Mr. Piseth, this is Commander Phillips, United States Coast Guard. It is my understanding you are an authority on algae blooms in the Gulf of Mexico. Is that correct, sir?”
“Yes, yes, this is correct. Why is the Coast Guard interested in algae blooms?
“We have reports of a rather large reddish bloom in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Mexico’s Yucatan and moving north. We would like your assistance identifying its cause, origin, and how it may be addressed.” The Commander replied. Thuy’s radar immediately went into overdrive.
“Addressed? What do you mean, addressed? You said it was reddish, and off Mexican Yucatan, correct? “
“Correct.” the Commander responded.
“That not possible. Karenia brevis is found off the western coast of Florida. Yucatan is on opposite side of the Gulf, thousand miles southwest. This is not possible. Also, you said large. How large.”
“I cannot speak to this over the phone, Mr. Piseth, but I can tell you we are measuring it by square miles.” The Commander replied.
Thuy Piseth, retired chemical engineer, amateur marine biologist, single with no children, a private citizen and a private man trying to keep his beloved Gulf a paradise swallowed hard, his thoughts betraying his hopes. “It is happening.”
Chapter Six
University Medical Center, Mobile, Alabama
Things were starting to break for Kate O’Neal. Two of the three crew of the Helena still lived, and appeared to have a good chance of surviving thanks to massive dosing with antibiotics. One was dead. The deceased fisherman had been in his mid-fifties, a heavy smoker, with a history of respiratory issues prior to this event. The Helena and the Magnolia were thoroughly examined and tested, and found to contain nothing that could have caused the fishermen’s respiratory infections. Three dead, three still topside, one talking, two about to start. Kate was batting 500 at the top of the second inning of a contest shaping up to be a tough fight.
Blood tests of the victims and survivors revealed a microbial infection of unknown origin. It was assumed to be airborne, and apparently at sea far from land. That didn’t add up. Seawater, no matter how foul, contaminated or polluted does not produce airborne infections, especially in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico. It was possible to contract the infection by contact from sea spray that entered your system through ingestion or mucus membranes. She just didn’t know. Yet.
Kate’s thoughts were interrupted by Dr. Billings bouncy approach.
“Good morning Dr. O’Neal.” Cecil was especially chipper this morning.
“Good morning Dr. Cecil.” Kate sarcastically replied in the same chipper tone.
“Dr. O’Neal, please refer to me as Dr. Billings, not my first name. I am Senior CDC on this investigation, and require being addressed respectfully.
“Sure thing, Ceese.” Kate further abbreviated Cecil’s name and pronounced it with a lisp in the hopes he would indeed cease talking to her. No such luck.
Cecil exhaled in exasperation. This woman was maddening. She completely ignored administrative protocol and authority. She was headstrong, opinionated, disrespectful, unmanageable, and brilliant. Kate was everything he was not. Let’s see how she reacted to his next comments.
“Well, I have good news, Dr. O’Neal. I have reviewed all the data. Patient Zero is responding well, and is due to be released tomorrow. The two gentlemen from the Helena are also responding well, and will be released soon. There appears to be no contamination on either fishing vessel, and no more cases have been reported in four days. It seems this was an isolated incident that has been successfully contained. I have reported to Director Simpson in Atlanta, and he concurs.”
“Concurs with what?” Kate did not like the direction of this conversation.
“That our investigation has been successful, and should be concluded. You may return to your regular duties at your earliest convenience.” Cecil smiled broadly, both inside and out. “Oh, I forgot to add, you’re being assigned to the San Diego office post haste.” Director Simpson had wanted this investigation over and done with before Kate’s name hit the papers, and that’s what he had delivered.
“Are you and that pharmaceutical pimp out of your freaking minds?” Kate exploded. “We have six cases and three dead people, not to mention the retired couple smashed when that boat struck the pier. That’s a mortality rate of 50% We still have no idea where or how they contracted their infection. We suspect it was airborne, and the last time I looked, the wind is still blowing outside. This investigation is just getting started!”
“Director Simpson does not see it that way, and neither do I. The event apparently took place in International waters. Whatever it was, it’s long gone.”
Cecil turned and began walking away. He was not about to engage this woman in a loud debate in front of the ICU nurses station of University Medical Center. Over his shoulder as he rounded the corner, Cecil added in a sing song voice, “The CDC investigation of this incident is officially concluded. Have a nice day.”
Kate was dumbstruck. This was possibly the most irresponsible decision Director Simpson had ever made, if you didn’t count accepting Big Pharma money to build his personal Villa in Costa Rica. In her heart, Kate knew exactly what that bastard’s motive was in prematurely closing this investigation. Retaliation. That sleaze-ball would rather risk another outbreak than allow Kate to do any meaningful work that might garner attention, regardless of the consequences. Even shipping her halfway across a continent to ensure her isolation.
After blowing the whistle on Simpson last year, Kate knew her number was up at the CDC. Simpson had way too many powerful connections, in government and Pharma. All you had to do was follow the money. When Kate first learned CDC Foundation gifts from major pharmaceutical companies were being exploited by Simpson, she had attempted to go through channels. She took her findings to the CDC’s Board of Directors. Simpson was on the board, so she chose a board meeting when he was traveling abroad by requesting five minutes of their time under the guise of sharing promising research she had recently discovered. Kate was still the darling of the CDC, so the board eagerly agreed. What a joke.
As Kate presented her suspicions and evidence regarding Simpson’s Villa in Costa Rica, seven faces turned to stone. It was like watching a curtain come down in the middle of a Broadway show, drawn by the audience, not the actors. Silence. Finally, she was assured an internal investigation would be initiated, and thanked profusely for her due diligence. The only thing missing was a pat on the head as she was shown the door. Still, Kate had faith.
Months passed with no additional communication from the CDC Board. She had no day-to-day contact with Simpson, rarely even passing him in a corridor or sharing an elevator. Her position as a research scientist from a dedicated grant provided autonomy within the CDC: she didn’t report to anyone, and was protected should Simpson attempt to use his position to retaliate. She could not have been more mistaken. She had poked the bear.
By year’s end, the CDC published their Code of Ethics assuring the world that their dedication to safeguard and improve the health of the nation, combined with their deep ethical principles would ensure they would police themselves against any lapse in ethics…because they said so. The closing words summed it up:
“Public-private partnerships allow the CDC to do more, faster. The agency’s core values of accountability, respect, and integrity guide the way the CDC spends the funds entrusted to it.” This statement was publically delivered by none other than Director Sherrod Simpson.
> That same day, Kate’s grant was pulled by some obscure House subcommittee without explanation. Without the grant money to continue her research, Kate became a CDC employee without a job description or assignment.
A normal person would resign and seek employment elsewhere. Not Kate. She still had her credentials, her stellar reputation, and her published and highly regarded research as her armor. As long as she remained an employee of the CDC, she had access to information that would become unavailable to her on the outside. Kate’s colleagues knew things.
Fellow employees knew Kate had blown the whistle on Simpson. All suspected that Big Pharma donations to the CDC Foundation were accompanied by cash gifts to Simpson. Accounting knew when proper donations were made, the amount and donor, and how donations were to be utilized. Operations knew what projects or research that money was earmarked to support. Specific research requested by Big Pharma, and agreed to by the Board was assigned to fellow scientists and project managers. All donations were closely scrutinized, and the money accounted for to the penny. This was a legitimate use of CDC resources in collaboration with private pharmaceutical and biomedical firms.
What was critically missing in the public/private partnership equation was any system of checks and balances within the CDC and the Foundation to ensure individuals involved in these transactions did not stray. Vast sums of money had been exchanged for decades with no hint of misconduct within the CDC. There was no indication this would not continue well into the future.
What was not considered was the motivation of private drug companies to accelerate their research within the CDC. Billions of dollars in revenue and profits per year were in play. Having your research moved to the front of the line ahead of competitor research could result in shaving years off the time required to go to market. All that was required to undermine the system was one unscrupulous individual to casually approach the right person well placed within a large drug company with the promise to expedite their interests. That person turned out to be Sherrod Simpson.
Kate was very popular with her peers for her maverick personality and brilliant mind. Simpson and his cronies were arrogant, and left a bread trail a mile wide. Kate just needed a hunting dog with a good nose. She found Jimmy Falcone.
One thing about cockroaches, they scatter when the lights turn on. Kate was determined to hit the light switch. With Simpson shutting down this investigation prematurely, Kate needed some help. Kate called Jimmy Falcone for the second time.
Jimmy perched on the bar stool at Peaches Café, just inside the lobby of Atlanta’s Georgian Terrace Hotel. He was halfway through drinking his usual lunch, when his cell chimed like a doorbell.
“Jimmy Falcone. It’s your dime.” Jimmy was quite fond of old fashioned newspaper reporter-speak, even though the jargon, as well as dime telephone booths hadn’t been used in 50 years.
“Jimmy, It’s Kate O’Neal. Are you busy?”
Kate’s voice on the phone electrified Jimmy.
“Kate! How’s things at Disease Central these days. I thought you were blacklisted after my Pharmagate story broke.”
Jimmy skipped the part about his story that included Kate providing every fact and detail, including emails and documents. She even provided the GPS coordinates of Simpson’s Costa Rican Villa. Jimmy had rented a drone to video-tape the compound, and had captured Simpson and a briefcase full of cash looking up from the pool deck with a brace of topless cuties decorating the furniture. Simpson’s wife loved his ambush interview. Good times, good times.
“Still working at the Giant Petri Dish, though they posted me to Mobile as kinda’ an exile. It was working, too, until a week ago.” Kate informed Jimmy.
Jimmy’s mind seized on the town. Mobile! Mobile! What about Mobile had momentarily grabbed his attention recently? Ha! Fishing boats ramming piers at high speed. Grainy video coverage from an eyewitness of the moment of impact. Disaster footage always makes the top story on the evening news. Three days of network coverage. Death and destruction. Something about injured sailors, but expected to pull through. Probably more drunk than sick.
“Kate, this have anything to do with that fishing boat ramming a pier a few days ago?” Jimmy was quick to put the connections together. “Tell me why the CDC is involved in a boating accident.”
“Not on the phone, Jimmy. Get your traveling boots on. Call when you get here.”
Siri told Jimmy the drive from Atlanta to Mobile was 5 hours and 4 minutes. Not today. He left Peaches Café, throwing a twenty on the bar, headed for the parking garage next to the Atlanta Herald, and struck out immediately. That was around noonish. He was now entering the outskirts of Mobile just past 4:00PM. The traffic angels had smiled on him today, avoiding rush hour at both ends of his trip, and speed traps along the interstate.
Jimmy dialed. She answered on the first ring. “Kate, I’m here. Where and when.”
Jimmy knew Kate had learned from her Pharmagate experience there were eyes and ears everywhere, along with surveillance and security cameras that could literally reconstruct his journey to Mobile, and cell conversations. The Patriot Act had permitted government access to cell phone and email communication of average Americans. Two successive administrations made assurances the monitoring would only be used to protect good Americans from dastardly terrorists. No one with a brain believed that.
Investigative journalists knew this better than anyone. Big Brother was watching and listening for anything and everything government deemed a threat. Threats could be best defined as anything the government didn’t want widely known, discussed, or questioned. What the sheeple of America chose to believe about their government only made the monitoring task that much easier. Orwell was off by only 30 years.
Kate and Jimmy had developed a simple code for communications during the Pharmagate investigation. Access to surveillance technology could be had by anyone with the right connections, wealth and influence, including private industry. Follow the money.
First, get burner phones to set meetings. No talk about anything even using a burner, because signals could be snatched out of the air. Satellites and drones made that possible. Email was out of the question. Government had agreements with all Internet Service Providers granting them access to private email accounts and search histories. Constitutional guarantees of privacy and protection from invasive electronic search are illusions. Besides, it really doesn’t concern people who believe posting every moment of their lives on social media is a good idea.
Finally, use the burner phone to set a meeting time and place to exchange information, documents or thumb drives. Choose a location with no surveillance cameras in line of sight, including banks and ATM’s, even gas stations and convenience stores. Disable your private cell phone’s GPS feature, or leave it at home. Arrive and depart from different directions. One party should arrive hours before the scheduled meeting to observe who drops by that may seem out of place. Bring new burners to the meeting, exchange the new numbers for the next communication, then dump the old burner. Simple, safe, secure.
Kate informed Jimmy she was already at the chosen location, and gave the address. She awaited him there. It was Rickey’s BBQ Pit just outside Mobile proper. Rickey’s was selected for its poor Yelp reviews and out-of-the-way location. Even most of the locals avoided it.
If substandard BBQ at an average price is what you're looking for then look no further. One star.
Open air dining was offered at picnic tables sitting on a gravel floored, shed roofed, screened in attachment from the Pit sticking out into the parking lot. It was hot, fly infested, and mostly deserted during the day. Fishermen would show up after dark to sit at the tables and drink cold beer under yellow light bulbs. Drink enough beer, and the BBQ wasn’t that bad. Anyone showing up dressed in anything better than a stained T-shirt, bib overalls and work boots would stand out like a sore thumb. That was the idea.
Kate was seated at a sticky topped picnic table drinking sweet tea when Jimmy swung the holed screen do
or open and stepped inside, exciting the flies.
“Jesus, Kate. This is a shithole even for our standards. My kinda’ place!”
Kate had first found Jimmy when she happened upon a published apology from the Atlanta Herald referencing some inaccurate reporting. Jimmy was mentioned by name.
James “Jimmy” Falcone, Investigative Reporter at the Atlanta Herald. 44 years old, and a 20-year veteran of the dying newspaper business. A former star reporter, at twenty something, Jimmy was instrumental in breaking political scandal stories in the late 90’s and early 2000’s, including Mayor of DC Marion Berry’s cocaine use in office, and New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevy’s homosexual affair with an Israeli man he appointed as National Security Advisor for the State of New Jersey in 2004. As if a State needs a National Security Advisor.
Since then his career has followed the same downward spiral of the once vaunted newspaper industry. Stripped of his research staff by layoffs, hamstrung with no budgets to support investigative reporting, he had been reduced to reporting local muggings and drive by-s at the behest of a less than sympathetic editor. That is until Kate called about some improprieties at the CDC. That put Jimmy back on the map with another Pulitzer nomination. His twenty something editor was now his acolyte.
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