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

by Robert B. Lowe

  “Enzo, isn’t this enough?” asked Sarah. “Why can’t we just turn this file over to someone and let them investigate?”

  “It’s still circumstantial, Sarah,” he said. “I mean the important evidence is from an unreliable informant, newspaper clippings and a six-year-old moot court problem. This is a good tale but that’s about it.”

  “I wouldn’t believe it if someone dropped this on my desk,” Lee went on. “And, that doesn’t take into consideration that people in and out of the government will try to cover this up and discredit us. We’ve got to find more. If we’re lucky, maybe Sendaki will give us what we need.”

  What Lee didn’t say was that he feared the meeting with Sendaki that they were headed for was a setup. After all, Brent Donsen’s death had coincided with his attempts to reach the AgriGenics’ founder. Lee’s instinct was to take the chance, but to try not to imperil Sarah. The way he saw it was that Donsen had been killed because he was getting close to the truth. Since they were hunting for the same answers, they had no choice but to follow in Donsen’s footsteps.

  Lee was also counting on the bad blood between Sendaki and Graylock. One guy had screwed the other out of the control of his company. Lee was hoping that the desire for revenge was still alive. Besides, Donsen hadn’t known what he was up against until it was too late. If he and Sarah didn’t make any stupid mistakes, they could buy themselves some time. Lee just hoped it would be enough.

  Chapter 25

  DENNIS PEACHTRIE SMOOTHED his tie once again, checked his watch and smiled at the matronly receptionist.

  “He’s always late,” said Elizabeth Walters, smiling slyly. “But, I’m sure he’ll be here any minute now.”

  Peachtrie had spotted the AgriGenics ad posted in one of the laboratories at Stanford. He figured it was custom made for him. The listing was for a Ph.d in molecular biology who also had a background in botany. Peachtrie had a freshly minted doctorate degree. He also had studied botany as an undergraduate at Princeton. At 27, he was excited about the prospects of working outside the halls of academia for the first time in his life.

  The door behind Elizabeth Walters opened suddenly. The man who shot through it was wearing a white lab coat, brown corduroy pants and tennis shoes. He was of medium height and a bit on the heavy side. Peachtrie guessed he was in his early 40s. His brown hair was curly and uncombed. He had blue eyes and when he focused them on Peachtrie, they twinkled and stayed open without blinking.

  “Are you Peachtrie?” the man said, flashing a demonic grin. “I’m Fish.”

  “Hello, Mister Fish,” said Peachtrie. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

  “Call me G. W.,” said Fish. “Everybody does. C’mon through and I’ll show you the lab.”

  Peachtrie was impressed with the facilities. Compared to the laboratories he had become accustomed to as a graduate student, they were spacious. He noted the row of centrifuges, sitting along one wall like a bank of clothes washers. A couple of them were in use.

  They passed a machine that looked a bit like a fancy espresso maker with four brown bottles hanging down in front and a keypad on the right. Peachtrie recognized it as a DNA synthesizer. The bottles held Adenine, Thymine, Cytosine and Guanine, the four molecules that form the paired bases that hold together DNA’s double helix, like the steps of a ladder. One had only to punch in the desired order of molecules and the machine would do the rest.

  Everywhere there were computers, microscopes, rows of clean beakers and test tubes. They passed several researchers working at their benches. Most had long, syringe-like tools that they were using to transfer fluids from one test tube or vial into another. Every other bench seemed to have an agitator in use, a small machine with a metal tray moving relentlessly in a circular motion sloshing around the liquid contents of several beakers.

  Peachtrie saw two machines that looked like large metal boxes attached to a video tube. He knew these were sequencers. Provided with a piece of DNA, the sequencers could automatically determine its structure. A researcher could turn it on in the evening and come back in the morning to find a printout several pages long filled with the letter “A,” “T,” “C,” and “G” in whatever order the molecules appeared in the DNA.

  Fish had dashed through the lab areas at a fast pace, gesturing left and right and talking over his shoulder so that Peachtrie only caught half of what he said. It didn’t matter. Peachtrie had spent the last three years in laboratories doing genetic research. He didn’t need a guided tour.

  Finally, Fish stopped at a glass door that looked like the entrance to a walk-in refrigerator. He gestured for Peachtrie to go in first.

  There was some type of sticky paper on the floor just inside the entrance. The room was actually warm, almost humid. Peachtrie saw that it was quite large, easily a hundred feet long by twenty feet wide. It was filled with metal racks and fluorescent lights. Petri dishes were everywhere. Some looked empty. Others had little spots on the bottom. Still others were filled with growth, either moldy looking or the beginnings of an identifiable plant.

  Fish walked to the wall away from the door. There were two long plexiglass boxes with small plants growing out of square containers like you’d find at a nursery. The plexiglass boxes had filtered air holes.

  “You probably know more about these plants than I do,” said Fish. “I’ve learned all the botany I know in the last two years. On the job training. Do you know what Puccinia graminis is?”

  “Sure,” said Peachtrie. “It’s one of the basidiomycetes fungi. Isn’t that the one that causes stem rust on wheat and some of the other grains?”

  Fish was nodding vigorously. “Very good. Yes. Graminis and the related rusts probably knock out ten percent of the world’s grain production every year. In bad years, the loss in the United States runs to hundreds of millions of tons of wheat.”

  “See this box?” said Fish, putting his hand on a plexiglass box at knee level. “There are eight cultivars, or varieties, of wheat in here. Each strain is supposedly resistant to graminis formae specialis, the form of graminis that typically attacks wheat. You understand that even specialis comes in different strains that are evolving all the time?”

  “Of course,” said Peachtrie. “That’s why farmers use multiple cultivars and change them from year to year. A disease might evolve and overcome one variety, but probably not the others. You avoid an epidemic, not to mention the financial loss of having your crop wiped out.”

  “Correct,” said Fish. “It’s a game of science trying to outguess nature. A resistant variety is only good for a few years before the disease naturally mutates and overcomes the resistance. So, new varieties are always being developed. It takes several years to do the cross breeding and testing to get a new strain ready.

  “Each of the plants in this box has been exposed to the garden variety of specialis,” Fish continued, tapping on the box.

  Peachtrie looked at the plants inside the box. Most of them looked completely normal. He saw some small brown spots on the stems of two plants, evidence that the fungus had penetrated the plant tissue. But, the spots were small and isolated. Even the infected plants seemed to have contained the fungus by encircling the sites of entry with dead cells to cut the flow of nutrients that would nourish the parasitic growth.

  “Now,” said Fish, moving his hand up to the upper box. “Look at the other box.”

  Peachtrie inspected the upper box. Every plant inside showed the signs of severe infection, long elliptical blisters on the stem and leaves. Some of the blisters had little pockets of a reddish powdery substance. Most of the stems looked so weakened that they would never reach maturity.

  Peachtrie knew that the red powder was actually the reproductive spores of the fungus. Eventually, they would spread the disease. He knew that under the right windy conditions, the spores could travel hundreds of miles until rain washed them out of the air to infect what lay beneath them. He recalled from his botany studies that one particular tobacco fungus originated
under certain conditions in Virginia and the Carolinas and then routinely made its way to Canada in less than a month.

  “Amazing,” said Peachtrie. “They’re completely blown away. Completely. What happened?”

  Fish was beaming.

  “It was actually a very simple procedure,” Fish explained. “We grew the basic specialis fungus and subjected it to radiation. Then we applied it to one of the resistant strains. Obviously, we were exposing the plant to millions of mutations of the fungus caused by the radiation. Some of the mutations took hold. Then we took the successful mutations, the ones that infected the plant and grew, and applied them to the next resistant strain. We just kept doing that. At the end, we had the one in a ten million mutations that knocked out all the resistant varieties of wheat.”

  “So, you basically sped up nature,” said Peachtrie.

  “Exactly,” said Fish, sounding like a teacher pleased with his clever student. “We created in minutes the number of mutations that would occur over a period of years. Then, we used the resistant host plants themselves to select out the successful mutations. The unsuccessful ones never took hold and didn’t reproduce. We used natural selection in all its glory.”

  Peachtrie was impressed. It was an incredibly simple and ingenious procedure, one that didn’t really require sophisticated genetic engineering techniques. He was wondering why it had never occurred to him to try it. Then, the full implications of Fish’s accomplishment hit him.

  “So…umm…why, exactly, did you do this?” said Peachtrie. “I mean, if this ever got out of the laboratory, it would be disastrous.”

  “Oh, we work under P-3 conditions. Air and water is controlled. Access is limited. Nothing gets out,” said Fish. “You know, of course, what the Manhattan Project was?”

  “Do you mean in World War II? The atomic bomb?”

  “Right,” said Fish, he gave Peachtrie a conspiratorial wink. “I can’t tell you exactly what this is for because I don’t know. All I can tell you is what my boss tells me. This is very hush hush because the government wants it that way. But, in my view, this is the same as the Manhattan Project. I can’t tell you everything that’s going on here. But, believe me, it’s very heavy stuff.”

  Peachtrie pondered the situation. He didn’t particularly mind working for the government, or even the defense department. What really worried him was that he didn’t see exactly why Fish needed a molecular biologist.

  “So…uh…tell me, G.W.,” said Peachtrie. “What exactly do you want me to do here?”

  “Oh, this was the easy part,” said Fish, gesturing to the dying plants in the upper box. “Now, we need to develop some strains of wheat that this stuff won’t kill. And we only have a few months to do it.”

  “Are you thinking of transgenetic resistance?” asked Peachtrie, referring to the genetic engineering technique in which a gene from one species of plant or animal is transferred to another. It vastly increases the genetic reservoir available to find disease resistance.

  “Possibly,” said Fish. “We know that certain wild oats are resistant to almost all forms of graminis. That might be one place to look for a resistant gene that would work. Use your imagination. That’s why we’re hiring you.”

  Chapter 26

  LEE AND SARAH touched down at San Francisco International Airport in the early morning. After retrieving their luggage, they rented a blue Thunderbird. Lee used a credit card and showed the rental agent his driver’s license to get the car. He told the rental agent he would drop the car at the airport in a week and mentally made a note to leave the car at some other location in case anyone was tracking his credit card purchases.

  They stopped at the first motel they found on El Camino Real, the six-lane highway that links the cities along the San Francisco Peninsula in an endless succession of strip shopping centers, filling stations, motels and fast food restaurants.

  It was the Milbrae Parkway Motel. It had the American Automobile Association seal of approval and carried on its bright sign the encouraging motto: “Luxury at Affordable Prices.” Their room had two queen-sized beds, turquoise carpeting, a combination television-radio-alarm clock and an instant coffee maker in the bathroom.

  Lee and Sarah didn’t even bother to unpack before falling into bed, exhausted from their flight.

  At first light, Lee awoke to the sound of Sarah’s panicked breathing followed by moaning. She was on her side facing away from him. He put his hand on her arm and squeezed gently.

  “Hey. Hey. Bad dream, Sarah. Bad dream,” he said. Sarah shook herself half awake, groaned, snuggled back into him and fell asleep again. Lee closed his eyes and let her sleep for another hour before getting up and taking a shower.

  They made it to the motel office just before the free continental breakfast disappeared and took a meal of instant coffee, Safeway croissants and apples to their room.

  They informed the motel clerk that Mr. and Mrs. John Benson would be staying in their room for at least one more night. By 10 a.m. they were in the T-bird on 101, heading toward San Francisco. It was a warm spring day so they rode with the windows down.

  With the old freeway ramp that led straight to Chinatown demolished in the aftermath of the 1989 earthquake, Lee got off at the 4th Street exit and worked his way through the financial district. He passed the cafe where he had once covered a benefit catfish fry for a group determined to make Northern California the 51st state: (“If at first you don’t secede, fry, fry again…”). He took Kearny Street as if headed for his flat, but turned a few blocks before into the underground parking garage underneath Portsmouth Square on the edge of Chinatown.

  They walked to Waverly Place and continued up the street for several blocks. Then, Lee turned into the doorway of an old, multilevel structure with four railed balconies overlooking the street. The wood stairs were steep and narrow. They went up three long flights without stopping. Sarah was winded by the time they reached the top floor. They went through an unlocked metal grill.

  As soon as they went in, Sarah could smell sandalwood incense burning. At the front of the room hung the painted portraits of three men in ancient Chinese dress. The paintings were partially obscured by scores of red and gold paper lanterns hanging from the ceiling. Below the paintings sat a long table with three large bronze bowls filled with sand and sticks of burning incense.

  It took Sarah a minute to realize someone else was in the room with them. It was a middle aged woman wearing a dark green knitted dress with a vest made of red and gold material. She knelt on a cushion off to the side and carried a bunch of incense sticks tied up in a string.

  The woman walked over to an oil flame and lit the incense. When all of the sticks were burning, she went to the large bowls and inserted three burning incense sticks in each one. Small trays of fruit sat around the bowls.

  Then, the woman walked around the room, putting a single incense stick into several smaller sand-filled bowls. Some bowls sat before small altars, simple boxes holding old wooden statues on small stands. Piles of coins and pieces of fruit surrounded the statues.

  “She’s offering something to each of the deities represented here,” whispered Lee. “The three major gods and the lesser ones.”

  When the woman had finished placing incense in every bowl, she walked up to one side of the altar. There were cans filled with small sticks. She picked up one can and then knelt before the portraits. She shook the can, producing a rhythm that increased in speed. Her eyes were closed and she bowed repeatedly. Finally, one stick fell onto the floor. When she picked it up, Sarah could see a number on it.

  The woman went to an alcove where there were rows of small strips of pink paper with Chinese characters. She went to the number that matched the number on her stick, and pulled out a slip. She read it slowly and chuckled.

  “She’s reading her fortune,” Lee explained, speaking again in a whisper.

  Finally, the woman pulled a handful of oranges out of a bag and placed them on a long narrow table along a s
ide wall. Above the table were white plastic panels with Chinese characters. Some of the panels had pictures of people, some appeared to have been taken decades ago. She put her hands together and bowed slightly several times while she murmured.

  “She’s leaving an offering for her ancestors or someone who has died,” said Lee.

  The woman gathered up her things and began her long descent to the street. As she left the temple, an old man passed her on the stairs. He wore a long-sleeve flannel shirt, brown polyester pants and running shoes. One side of his face drooped.

  Lee walked up to him.

  “Master Chu,” he said. “How are you?”

  Master Chu smiled and nodded at them.

  “This is my friend, Sarah,” said Lee. Master Chu offered Sarah his hand. He seemed very frail and she was surprised at the firmness of his grip.

  “Thank you for going to see my grandmother,” said Lee. “She told me on the telephone that you have been twice.”

  Master Chu nodded his head in agreement.

  “I teaching your grandma tai chi,” he said. “She needs it very much. She very stiff. She also very smart lady, your grandma. You listen to her.

  “She say you in trouble,” continued Master Chu, looking at Lee up and down as if inspecting him for defects. “She say you always follow your own mind. Everything be okay.”

  “Please tell her that I am fine,” said Lee. “I can’t see her for awhile but I will come again as soon as I can.”

  Lee reached into his back pocket and extracted his wallet.

  “I’d like to give you some money, for the vegetables,” he said.

  Master Chu put up his hand and shook his head.

  “Your grandma say no place to cook,” he said, now looking at Lee with an expression of dismay. “She say, ‘Why you always bring food when no place to cook?’“

  “I thought she liked it,” said Lee.

  Master Chu shrugged.

  “You bring gift. What she say?” he asked.