Project Moses - A Mystery Thriller (Enzo Lee Mystery-Thriller Series)

by Robert B. Lowe

  “I know they talked about AgriGenics. I don’t remember the other name. I know Brent was really excited about it at first. I think it had to do with a technology transfer or something.”

  “Probably,” said Sarah. “We think it’s related to research involving genetics.”

  “I don’t know the specifics. I don’t think Brent ever mentioned any of the details to me.”

  “You said he was excited at first,” said Lee. “Did that change later on?”

  “Well, the last couple of times he and Bob talked, Brent seemed upset about something. I think he was mad at the Department. I’m not sure why.”

  “He never discussed it with you?” said Lee.

  Pamela shook her head.

  “I didn’t really want to talk about work when we got home. I like to leave it behind. Brent knew that and he tried to leave work at the office, too. I guess I should have…” Pamela voice broke and then stopped. Her eyes filled with tears.

  “Pamela,” said Sarah, putting her hand on the smaller woman’s arm. “You had no way of knowing if it was important. Maybe Brent had no way of knowing the significance of this, either. We’re just trying to get to the bottom of it and knowing whatever Brent knew will help us.”

  Pamela stood up, walked over a box of Kleenex on the counter and blew her nose.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I told you I didn’t think the diagnosis was right. I mean Brent was only 29 years old. No one in his family had had a stroke. I just couldn’t believe it. And the way they handled it.” She shook her head.

  “So,” said Lee. “How can we figure out what Brent was so mad about and what he had found out? Is there anyone else who could, or would, tell us?”

  Pamela thought about it for a minute. She had finished crying. A look of determination replaced the tears.

  “We can look in the files,” she said. “That might tell you something.”

  Pamela explained that she had been planning to go into work the following day anyway in order to fill out some insurance forms.

  “They have a computerized filing system,” she said. “I can punch the names in and see what turns up. If the file is recent, the file room will get it for me in a matter of minutes.”

  • • •

  WHEN THEY CALLED Pamela at home at noon the next day she said that AgriGenics was in the file index but the entire file was classified. Only persons having both the appropriate level of security clearance and the approval of the departmental supervisor were permitted to view it.

  She had thought of one other possibility, though. Brent had kept a couple of file drawers of working files in his office. There was a slim chance they might contain some material about AgriGenics. The files had been boxed and were sitting by his secretary’s desk. An attorney was supposed to review the files and pull anything worth saving. Everything else would be destroyed. The attorney assigned to perform the review had been too busy to do it so far.

  Pamela had arranged with Brent’s secretary to examine the boxed files herself in the afternoon just in case some of Brent Donsen’s personal files had inadvertently made their way into the boxes. She wouldn’t be allowed to remove or copy any files, however. Whatever Pamela wanted would be set aside and given to her later assuming nothing sensitive was found in the attorney review.

  • • •

  SARAH STOOD NERVOUSLY at the sign-in desk of the Manhattan headquarters of the Justice Department. Pamela pulled her identification card out from her soft leather briefcase and showed it to a federal agent stationed there. Then she wrote down Sarah’s name as her guest. As Sarah showed her driver’s license to the agent and signed her name as well, it occurred to her that her name might eventually make its way to Agent Spreckel’s attention. She just hoped she would be long gone by the time that happened.

  They were given identification badges and took the elevator to the eighth floor where Brent Donsen had worked. They walked down a long corridor until they reached a door on the right with a big, square pane of green, translucent glass with the number 835 painted in black.

  Inside the door was a good-sized room that held six large desks. Each one had a secretary sitting at it. Attorneys’ offices sat off the main room. Most of them were occupied as well. All around the walls of the large inner room, between the doorways to the attorneys’ offices, sat tall metal filing cabinets.

  Janet Roden was a large woman with orange hair and a wide, friendly face. She sat at a desk toward the opposite end of the room, away from the hallway. She watched Sarah and Pamela as they crossed the room to her desk. Behind her sat three file cabinets.

  “Hi, Janet,” said Pamela.

  “Hello, Pamela.”

  “Janet. This is my cousin, Ruth. We’re going to dinner when we’re finished here.”

  “Hello, Ruth,” said the secretary.

  “Hi,” replied Sarah. She intended to say very little to reduce the likelihood that Janet Roden would recognize her voice from their brief telephone conversations.

  “Well, here they are. They’re all yours.” Janet Roden stood up and motioned at four cardboard boxes full of files. Two of them sat underneath the pedestals on either side of her desk. Two others sat on top of the file cabinets behind her.

  Janet Roden slid the boxes under her desk out and to the side. Sarah helped Pamela lift the other two boxes down from the file cabinets and set them on the floor beside the others.

  Pamela stooped down and began flipping through the files while the secretary returned to her computer. She appeared to be typing a letter. Sarah found a spare chair against the file cabinets to sit on.

  “Janet, I’m going to pull the ones that I might want. Then I’m going to look through them to see what’s inside,” said Pamela. The secretary continued typing and nodded her head.

  It took Pamela ten minutes to get through the boxes. She had pulled out six files and had them leaning against one of the boxes. She opened the first one and slowly leafed through the papers inside.

  At that moment, the door to the corridor swung open. Agent Spreckel walked in. Sarah had seen him in profile through the picture window at Howard’s on the Park and was sure it was him. She tried not to stare, but he was walking straight toward her. He must have somehow learned she was in the building.

  Sarah thought fleetingly about running, but there was nowhere to go. The only way out was straight through Spreckel and she wouldn’t have a chance. All she could do was wait.

  Spreckel stopped at the desk and ran his eyes up and down Sarah. Then he turned toward Janet Roden.

  “Janet,” he said angrily. “Why didn’t you tell me that Jennings hadn’t gone through Donsen’s files yet? Tell that sonofabitch…”

  The secretary put her finger up to her lips, and interrupted Spreckel.

  “Agent Spreckel, I’d like you to meet Pamela Donsen, Brent Donsen’s wife,” she said.

  “Oh…oh, I’m sorry,” he mumbled, clearly embarrassed. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m sorry about your husband.”

  Spreckel stepped forward and extended his hand toward Sarah. She looked at it paralyzed, not sure what to do. Then Pamela stood up and cleared her throat.

  “I’m Pamela Donsen,” she said, irritation in her voice.

  “Oh.” said Spreckel, looking flustered. He swiveled so his hand was pointing at Pamela. She shook it perfunctorily.

  “I’m just checking to make sure I’m not missing anything that’s mine,” said Pamela.

  “Oh…yes. Uhh…Janet mentioned, I’m sure, that…”

  “That I’m not to take anything until you have a chance to check it,” said Pamela. “Yes, she made it quite clear, thank you.”

  “Okay, well…yes. Like I said, I’m very, very sorry.” Spreckel left as abruptly as he had entered. Janet Roden gave him a disapproving harummpf on his way out.

  “Oh, Janet,” said Pamela when Spreckel had departed. “On second thought, I don’t think I need any of these files. But, there was something in Brent’s office I want
ed to ask you about. Ruth, would you mind refiling these for me? They’re in alphabetical order.”

  While Pamela and Janet Roden went into a nearby office to talk about the ownership of two bookends and a desk lamp, Sarah put five of the files back into the boxes. The sixth she slipped into Pamela’s briefcase.

  Chapter 24

  THEY WERE SOMEWHERE over Pennsylvania when Sarah and Lee opened the file for the fifth time. The name “AgriGenics” was written by hand on the outside. The documents inside were fastened by a two-hole clasp at the top.

  The item in the back of Donsen’s file, presumably filed first, was a photocopy of an investigative report from an FBI agent, dated a year earlier. The report read:

  On the night of June 16, I met with a confidential informant known to the Bureau as SAILOR. SAILOR has been providing information to the Bureau for the past two years. His contacts with several terrorist organizations and his knowledge of the international arms market make SAILOR a valuable source.

  The primary purpose of our meeting was to debrief SAILOR regarding the Red Dagger, a group of radical extremists. That organization is the subject of report No. 93-489. In the course of our conversation, however, SAILOR provided information on another topic. Although this new information is not confirmed at this time, the potential implications may warrant notifying relevant law enforcement agencies of the possibility that the following may be true, at least in part.

  SAILOR said that rumors have begun to circulate at the highest level of the arms dealing community relating to the availability of biological weapons. He believes that some select participants in several of the world’s “hot spots” may have been offered these weapons. SAILOR mentioned the Sudan, Cuba, Tibet, Bosnia-Herzegovenia and Kurdistan as regions where these weapons might be used.

  Assuming they exist, the precise nature of these weapons is unclear. However, it is SAILOR’s belief that they target the agricultural base of a region rather than the human population. SAILOR is unsure about the source of these weapons but believes that a Libyan diplomat at the United Nations in New York may be serving as a middleman. He suggests that we put this individual under surveillance.

  SAILOR speculates that because of the rumored sophistication of these weapons and the fact that the Libyan has lived in the United States for many years, the source could be in this country. If so, there may be violations of the federal export control laws as well as of the Neutrality Act and the appropriate agencies should be notified.

  The next items in the file were photocopies of three newspaper articles that had appeared in the previous three months. The first article was a Reuter’s dispatch about the Kurdish rebels movement in the Kurdistan region of Iraq. One paragraph was underlined:

  An expected spring offensive by the Kurdish rebels never materialized. Just as the rebels were gearing up for more attacks on Iraqi positions, a mysterious disease destroyed most of the summer wheat crop in Kurdistan, a staple of the local population. In addition, an ailment resembling hoof-and-mouth disease afflicted the sheep population, wiping out entire herds that the Kurds depend upon for food.

  The second article was from the New York Times and concerned the civil war among the various factions in Bosnia. A single paragraph had been underlined:

  The misery of the Muslim population has been compounded by the near total failure of the potato crop. A blight that destroys the potato plant before harvest seems to have hit the Muslim-controlled areas particularly hard while leaving many Serbian and Croatian regions untouched.

  The third article had appeared a month earlier in the Wall Street Journal about the difficult economic times in Cuba. Three paragraphs in the article had been underlined:

  Cuba also is expecting the worst sugar harvest since 1962 because of drought and a blight of unknown origin that has decimated the sugar cane crop in the southern half of the island.

  Also compounding Cuba’s woes is a mysterious ailment that has afflicted an estimate 120,000 people. Its symptoms are low fever, nausea and energy-sapping lassitude that last for several weeks. The disease has a short incubation period which has compounded the effect of the epidemic.

  Castro has described the blight and the disease as ‘deliberate acts of war’ by the United States but offered no evidence for his claims.

  The next document in the file was one that Sarah recognized as the factual summary of her first-year moot court hypothetical. It was a photocopy. Across the top of the page was Robert Weiskauf’s name written by hand. At the bottom were the names of the other three former Hastings students who had argued the case: Brent Donsen, Orson Adams and Sarah Armstrong. It read:

  Moot Court Problem #15

  Technology, Inc., located in the state of Ames, specializes in genetic engineering techniques as applied to farming and livestock to achieve greater productivity in the agriculture industry. Although most of its research is for private industry, Genetics has a program in progress that is funded by the federal government.

  Accidents at a Technology facility used exclusively for the government work have released two organisms. A fungus has destroyed the entire cotton crop in the state of Ames. In the second accident, a mistake in wind calculation during a field test of a virus resulted in the infection of the local sheep ranches in the area with a highly contagious disease similar to the hoof-and-mouth disease that afflicts cattle. Tens of thousands of sheep have died or been destroyed because of the disease.

  The fungus that destroyed the cotton was released because of a faulty valve on a storage tank built by Technology according to strict government specifications. The accident that infected the sheep was caused a sudden shift in wind during an experiment on a remote government artillery range. The government had approved the field test and assisted in aspects of it as more fully described in the supplemental materials.

  The Ames cotton farmers and sheep ranchers have sued the federal government and Technology on tort claims related to the destruction of their property. Both the federal government and Technology have claimed sovereign immunity contending that both the government and private contractors working for the government are immune to lawsuits. Technology’s sovereign immunity claims are the issues before the court.

  Citing national security concerns, Technology and the government will not reveal the precise nature and purpose of the research performed by Genetics for the government. The plaintiffs and defendants have stipulated that such information will not be introduced at trial aside from the government’s representation that the work is ‘vital to the national interest.’

  --submitted by Arthur Sendaki

  The final document in the file was a one-paragraph memo to the file from Donsen dated a month earlier. It said simply that he suspected AgriGenics, Inc. was supplying the biological weapons. Scrawled across the memo was a handwritten note. Pamela Donsen had identified the writing as her husband’s. The note read:

  Ordered to turn file over to Spreckel and cease further work. National security.

  “What do you think?” asked Lee after they had finished reading through the documents yet another time.

  “It’s frightening, isn’t it?” said Sarah.

  “Well, it looks pretty chilling,” said Lee. “But, I’m not sure what it all means. At least it tells us something about Donsen’s thinking. We have to assume all of these documents are in the official file, too.”

  “Do you think the official file reached AgriGenics and that started this entire nightmare?” asked Sarah.

  “Maybe,” said Lee. “Or, it could have just been the nature of Donsen’s investigation, the questions he was asking that made someone panic.”

  “Let’s start at the beginning and think about how all this unfolded,” he said.

  “Okay,” said Sarah. “Donsen gets the initial investigative report. It’s almost too much to believe, particularly coming from a source who is unreliable. He is intrigued but probably mentally puts it into his ‘unconfirmed rumor’ file.”

  “The next thing tha
t happens is that Donsen starts seeing the news articles about strange diseases affecting the places identified by the informant,” said Lee. “Maybe the first one or two he chalks up to coincidence. But, when it becomes three, the red flag goes up. And then he remembers the moot court hypo.”

  “Deja vu,” said Sarah.

  “Exactly,” said Lee. “It makes everything he’s finding seem familiar, like he’s seen it before, particularly the sheep infected with hoof-and-mouth disease. It’s right out of the moot court problem. It must have seemed eerie.”

  “So Donsen calls his friend, Bob Weiskauf, to discuss all this,” said Sarah. “And Weiskauf has saved the original moot court hypo and sends it to Donsen who puts it in the file.”

  “With your names plastered all over it,” said Lee. “Anyone seeing it might assume you all are talking, particularly if they know Donsen and Weiskauf are exchanging phone calls.”

  “Then, Donsen, and perhaps Weiskauf, begin making inquiries of their own,” said Sarah. “Somehow, they established a connection with AgriGenics. They start trying to reach people like Arthur Sendaki.”

  “Donsen is doing things that are getting back to AgriGenics,” Lee said. “And then, suddenly the big kibosh is put on it. Orders come from somewhere to stop everything. It’s a matter of national security.”

  “And then people begin to die.”

  “Yeah,” agreed Lee. “And then people begin to die, starting with Donsen, at least as far as we know at this point. And if the hypo is real, it suggests that it isn’t just AgriGenics with something to hide. If the government is involved in a secret program involving germ warfare, or whatever, they don’t want our enemies to find out. Plus, the Cold War is over. This kind of thing probably isn’t legal.”

  “So, is this it?” said Sarah. “Is this why this is happening?”

  “Well, there are still some big holes,” said Lee. “Why was your aunt killed when her name doesn’t appear in these documents? We also don’t know how Donsen made the connection with AgriGenics. We just have to assume there is one.”