“It must have occurred to you that limiting the effects that way might make it more tempting for the government to use the weapons,” said Lee.
“What occurred to me is that my government…your government…had asked for my help,” said Sendaki. “Besides, they had secretly stockpiled a witches’ brew of biological weapons so destructive they could have sent the world back to the Dark Ages. Every time we replaced a weapon like that with something safer, with a built-in flaw, we removed a threat to the world.”
Sendaki was silent for a minute. His eyes returned to the stove top and he extended his palms toward its warmth again. Lee walked over to the bottle of Scotch sitting on the floor. He poured a couple of fingers worth in each of the glasses and passed them around. He took a swallow and felt it burn on the way down. He immediately felt tired. The tention of the long stakeout while waiting to meet Sendaki was taking its toll.
“And how did this government work affect AgriGenics’ bottom line?” asked Sarah. She had remained seated during Sendaki’s entire discourse and she was eyeing him carefully, unsure whether to regard him as a friend, an enemy or something between the two.
Sendaki looked at her and shrugged. “I admit we were under financial stress,” he said. “They offered a source of money for pure research. We were still years away from marketing products we were developing and the regulatory issues were, and are, many. It subsidized many techniques we were developing for private industry so that was a bonus, too, not just for AgriGenics but for our ultimate mission.”
“How long did this government work continue?” asked Lee.
“At least until I lost control of the company,” said Sendaki. “After that, I don’t know. Toward the end, they asked us to work on human diseases.”
“And you agreed?” said Sarah.
“Yes. But, only under the same terms. We created nothing new but we modifed what already existed to limit it, make it less destructive.
“Once I was…uh…fired as CEO, they walled me off from the company,” Sendaki continued, “I only receive information as a shareholder now. Needless to say, the government work is hidden in the company’s financial reports at the government’s request.”
“So, there’s no telling what has happened since then, how deeply involved AgriGenics has become at this point,” said Lee.
“No,” said Sendaki. “I’ve gotten the impression that the work has continued, even increased. But I purposely haven’t sought out the details of AgriGenics’ operations since I was…uh…replaced.”
“And, how did you come to be at Hastings,” said Sarah.
“Ahh, yes. The infamous moot court problem. Even before I started AgriGenics, I had completed two years of law school. When, suddenly, I had a great deal of time on my hands, I decided to finish the third year at Hastings. I had always wondered about the liability of dealing with these incredibly destructive organisms, what would happen if an accident occurred. So, I wrote a scenario for the moot court program, just to see what arguments the students would use.”
“And you judged the oral arguments,” said Sarah. “That’s why I remember you.”
“Yes. Along with your aunt, I believe,” said Sendaki. “I don’t think we spoke at the time. I did spend considerable time afterward talking to another student, Brent Donsen. He was very interested in the work going on at AgriGenics.”
“So, that’s why he connected the report on biological weapons to AgriGenics,” said Sarah. “He knew who you were and he knew about the company.
“I don’t know what kindled Mister Donsen’s interest,” said Sendaki. “But, I’m not surprised that he remembered AgriGenics and our conversation. He knew a great deal about genetics.”
“You know, of course, that Brent Donsen is dead,” said Lee.
“Yes. I only learned of it after you told Ben Nussbaum. That was when I decided to meet you. Listen. Do you know who Brian Graylock is?”
“Yes,” said Lee. “He’s running AgriGenics now. I heard him speak recently at the opening of the new headquarters. He’s very impressive.”
Sendaki went on to describe how he had discovered Brian Graylock more than a decade earlier when he was the chief financial officer of a small, failing company that designed video game software. As AgriGenics grew, Graylock’s ambition and ruthlessness grew with it. Sendaki said he failed to see Graylock’s pattern of destroying his competitors and those above him in order to move ahead until it was too late.
“By the time I saw what he was doing, I couldn’t stop it,” said Sendaki. “He had assembled the investors, the bankers…the real power in the boardroom. I became another of Brian’s victims.”
“Killed by a monster of your own making,” said Lee.
“Quite,” said Sendaki. “Not unlike Dr. Frankenstein. I like that. Anyway, since then, AgriGenics has become a different place. My friends are afraid to call me. They believe their calls are monitored, even at their homes. The level of paranoia is quite high. I don’t try to contact them because I don’t want them to suffer.
“Three weeks ago Brian Graylock called me for the first time in three years,” said Sendaki. “He was almost hysterical and demanded to know why I had authored the moot court problem and what I knew about the students who had participated in it. I answered his questions as best I could.”
“Did you mention Miriam Gilbert?” asked Lee.
“Yes,” said Sendaki. “He asked me who judged the moot court session and I told him I was one and Judge Gilbert was the other.”
“Soon after that, I suspected that someone was monitoring my telephone calls and, perhaps, intercepting them,” Sendaki continued. “Phone calls I was expecting were not getting through. I heard strange noises on the line. I relied primarily on electronic mail to communicate with people, but that might have been monitored as well.
“Several days ago, just before I received your inquiry through Ben, a squad of AgriGenics security men…thugs really…descended on my home,” Sendaki went on. “They supposedly were there to protect me from nosy people, like you, I suppose. But, it became clear they were not going to let me leave without a physical altercation.”
“Why didn’t you call the police?” asked Sarah.
“This may seem somewhat naive after all that I’ve told you. But, it was only a couple of days ago that I had any idea that someone may have been hurt - or worse – because of this. I still find it hard to believe. And, I still care deeply about AgriGenics. I believe it still is in a position to work the miracles I envisioned. I don’t want to do anything to damage it.
“When I received your message,” said Sendaki, “I thought it seemed like the time to use a special escape route I had built into my house – a hidden trapdoor to the roof in case of home invasion, fire, any emergency really. It was clear I needed to learn what Brian is doing and why there is such interest, now, in the work we did for the government.
“AgriGenics embodies my life’s work and all my dreams – both in terms of what I can accomplish personally and for the good of the entire world,” Sendaki continued. “I feel the same as if it were my child. If Brian Graylock has endangered it… well…something must be done. Something simply must be done.”
When Sendaki finished, Sarah looked over at Lee. He knew she was asking whether they should tell the AgriGenics founder what they knew, everything that had happened to bring them to this place deep in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Lee nodded his assent.
Sarah began to describe for Sendaki the events of the past two weeks, the deaths of Orson Adams, Miriam Gilbert and Bob Weiskauf, and their own narrow escapes. She showed Sendaki the contents of Donsen’s file.
As she spoke, Lee considered what Sendaki had said. He thought he understood now what had touched off the killing. Whoever was in charge at AgriGenics or in the government must have realized the story of the biological weapons and their use was leaking. That was bad enough. But, anyone involved in the moot court case could potentially have connected the weapons to AgriGenics. Sendak
i’s indiscretion was like a roadmap. All they had to know was that Arthur Sendaki had written the moot court problem and that he was the founder of AgriGenics.
It had been enough to arouse Donsen’s suspicions. Once the powers that be knew that Donsen had made the connection, they had to worry about everyone else. On top of that, they couldn’t know which of his former classmates Donsen had contacted to share his suspicions. Obviously someone thought that the government’s secret program and AgriGenics’ current activities were worth the price of murder to conceal.
It was late when Sarah finished her account and they all turned in. By then, it occurred to Lee that to the powers arrayed against them Sendaki’s disappearance would be a nightmare. Sendaki could confirm the suspicions. If they would kill just to eliminate the possibility that someone might link AgriGenics to the illicit biological weapons, what efforts would they devote to silence Sendaki? The AgriGenics founder had come at a high price.
Chapter 29
COLONEL RODNEY HOBART had just sawn open the skull of an African green monkey killed by Maalong, a rare and deadly virus found in nature only on an isolated island in the Philippines. The gloves of the space suit he wore were splashed with the monkey’s blood. A few small droplets had splattered on to the plexiglas helmet. He knew that each droplet of blood contained tens of thousands of particles of the deadly virus.
If just a few of the virus particles were somehow able to enter his body, say through a cut on his hand or through the inhalation of particles into his lungs, Hobart knew he would probably be dead within two weeks. First would come the headache, then the relentless fever. Then, the clots and hemorrhaging would start. His skin would turn pulpy and tear. His eyes, nose and mouth would leak blood. Probably the clots would cause a fatal stroke. If not, he would die of the hemorrhaging.
Hobart lifted out the monkey brain and placed it on a stainless steel tray. He rinsed his gloves in a pan filled with disinfectant, turning it pink. He had just grabbed a scalpel to begin working on the brain when Captain Jennings, working along side Hobart, nudged him with her elbow.
Hobart looked up at the window of the laboratory suite. A technician was holding up a piece of white paper that read “Spreckel. Says it’s urgent!”
“Dammit!” said Hobart to himself, since only the loudest scream could have escaped from his helmet and been heard by Captain Jennings. No one else was in the laboratory suite which was cut off by hermetically impermeable walls from the rest of the United States Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Disease (USAMRIID).
Hobart put down the scalpel and walked into the antechamber to the laboratory suite. The antechamber acted as a form of airlock for the lab. The lab was kept at a slightly negative air pressure so that any air carrying errant viruses would flow into the lab rather than contaminate Fort Detrick and the green, rolling hills of northern Maryland.
He pulled the chain which began a hot water shower cleaning his space suit. Then came a sterilizing mist of disinfectant. Finally, he stepped into a tub of disinfectant and scrubbed his gloves a final time. Then, he came out of the anteroom and began taking off the space suit.
Hobart was from a military family. He looked rugged, wore a crewcut and had a scar on the right side of his neck from a fencing accident at the Virginia Military Institute that had missed slicing open his jugular by the narrowest of margins.
Hobart was a pathologist and the chief of the Biological Defense Unit of USAMRIID, the branch charged with developing defenses to biological weapons that American soldiers might encounter on the battlefield. He also had been the director of Project Moses, a government program disbanded four years earlier that officially had never existed.
The goal of Project Moses had been to develop new biological weapons to be used against enemies of the United States and the crops and farm animals essential to those enemies. A man of intellect as well as action, Hobart had referred back to the biblical plagues visited on Ancient Egypt that led to the Jewish exodus when he named the secret program. Project Moses had been eliminated with the thaw in the Cold War and the resulting cuts in defense spending.
The reason why Project Moses officially never existed was that it was in clear violation of the Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention signed by the United States, the Soviet Union and 15 other nations in 1972 which banned the development of new chemical or biological weapons.
Project Moses had never actually deployed any of its arsenal of biological weapons before it was shut down. Hobart had largely forgotten about AgriGenics until Brian Graylock called in a panic about the Justice Department investigation. Reading between the lines, Hobart guessed that the AgriGenics CEO had begun freelancing, developing and selling biological weapons on his own like a black-market arms dealer.
Hobart wasn’t happy about Graylock’s activities but his real fear was blowback. Any investigation into AgriGenics’ current activities could reveal the existence of Project Moses and his personal role in it. Hobart, in turn, could connect Project Moses to the highest levels of the nation’s intelligence community. He had no illusions about what would happen if the men running America’s spy agencies came to view him as the key link to their possible disgrace and downfall.
Since Graylock’s call, Hobart had watched the situation closely. He had even come up with the idea of using the punk Lloyd Warrington and his burglary trial as a distraction to anyone looking into the deaths of Miriam Gilbert and Orson Adams. It had worked brilliantly until Warrington figured out who was paying his legal bill and threatened to tell the whole story unless he was paid off.
As usual, Hobart hadn’t gotten involved in the details of Warrington’s elimination. He left that to others. Hobart’s policy was to provide high-level direction and support, but maintain deniability when it came to the details of murder.
It was 10 minutes after he had received word of Spreckel’s call that Hobart finally reached his office, punched the blinking yellow light on this telephone console and picked up the receiver.
“Hobart,” he said.
“It took you long enough,” said Spreckel.
“Are you on a secure line?”
“Yeah. Listen. They’ve got Sendaki,” said Spreckel.
“Shit. How did that happen?”
“Yeah. I thought you’d love that,” said Spreckel. “He just walked away. Those punks watching him didn’t know he could reach his roof through the attic. He got up there, used a ladder to reach the hillside above the house and took off. Lee and the girl are in the area. It’s not too hard to put two and two together.”
“Brilliant. Just brilliant,” said Hobart. “This wouldn’t have happened if you’d stopped them in New York.”
“Yeah. Well, they’re more slippery than we thought. Besides, Graylock said he had Sendaki under control. He took care of the other …”
“Hold it!” interrupted Hobart. “I don’t want to know about anybody else. Sendaki is the key. I don’t care about the other two. You handle them. I’ll get whatever resources you need. Just take Sendaki out, all the way out, understand?”
“Yeah,” said Spreckel.
“Good. Call me back when you’ve got some good news.”
Hobart’s hands-off policy when it came to killing did not apply when his own ass was on the line. The only time that Hobart had seen Sendaki was in 1986 in a Chicago hotel. Outside of the intelligence community, only Sendaki and Graylock could connect Hobart to Project Moses. The night before he had dreamt that he woke up to find Sendaki spilling his guts on Good Morning, America.
• • •
SARAH WAS PUTTING away the glasses after breakfast when she heard Arthur Sendaki’s name on the radio.
“Wait a minute! Wait a minute! Listen,” she ordered.
Lee and Sendaki abruptly stopped their conversation and watched Sarah who was staring at the radio on the counter next to the refrigerator as the announcer continued the news story:
“…the AgriGenics chief executive officer said Sendaki had been d
espondent and was being treated for episodes of psychotic hallucinations. He said that in recent weeks Sendaki had threatened many of his coworkers, including Graylock himself. Police said that Sendaki poses a danger to others as well as himself.”
“My god. What is the meaning of that?” said Sendaki. “Do they just put anything on the air?”
“I would say it means AgriGenics is protecting itself against a couple of things that might happen,” said Lee. “One is that you’re found dead. The story is that you’ve either committed suicide or you went berserk and someone, say an AgriGenics security guard, had to blow you away.
“The second possibility,” continued Lee, “is that you call a press conference to announce that AgriGenics has been helping to build biological weapons. How many television stations are going to run that after being warned that you’re under treatment for hallucinations?”
“But, won’t the truth eventually come out?” said Sarah. “We can get our own psychiatrists to match theirs. The proof will be in the pudding once we get someone to investigate who has some clout.”
“And I have influential friends who will attest to my mental capacity,” said Sendaki.
“That’s assuming we’re free and alive long enough to make that happen,” said Lee. “Remember. I’m a federal fugitive. God knows what they’ve got cooked up for you, Sarah. Felony gun moll? You’re probably considered at least an accessory. And Arthur…any ideas about what will happen to you? My guess is that the feds whisk you away, too. Agent Spreckel will personally look after your safety.”
“So we never get a chance to present our case,” said Sarah.
“Right. Arthur could spend a long time in a hospital surrounded by FBI-approved experts who will say he’s getting more insane by the hour.”
Project Moses - A Mystery Thriller (Enzo Lee Mystery-Thriller Series) Page 18