Death Never Lies

by David Grace

  “Not a lot.”

  “Well, let me tell you, we humans are at war with the bugs. Not like in some horror movie with people fighting gigantic ants but at war just the same. The basic theme is the constant see-saw battle between human society and destructive pests. A bug, a beetle, a weevil, a fly, a what-have-you, attacks a commercial crop. We develop a poison that kills that insect. Then the bug mutates and becomes immune to our treatment. We develop a new poison. The bug develops a new mutation, and so on, but insects breed so much faster than we can develop new strains of crops or poisons that we’re always only one or two generations away from disaster. The risk is even higher now that factory agriculture has specialized in only a few strains of most crops. A bug that’s resistant to the standard pesticide protecting one of the major varieties of wheat or corn could bring the country close to famine in one season. Knowing all this it became clear to me that we needed to break that cycle, that we needed a better way.”

  As he spoke Bellingham’s cheeks lost their pallor and his face became animated.

  “What’s that ‘better way?’“ Kane said, voicing the question he knew the professor wanted him to ask.

  “You can’t just kill the bugs,” Bellingham said with utter conviction. “They breed too fast. You have to re-engineer them. You have to make it so that they kill themselves.”

  “You get them to commit suicide?” Kane asked, smiling, but Bellingham’s frown made it clear that he wasn’t amused.

  “We make them sterile so that they die out.”

  “Didn’t they try that with mosquitoes? They bred millions of sterile males and released them in the wild so that the females they mated with wouldn’t be able to reproduce?”

  “They irradiated them, the males,” Bellingham corrected Kane. “The radiation made them sterile, and yes, they had some success but that process is expensive and it’s only a stopgap measure, not a permanent solution. The key, Agent Kane is sterilizing the females rather than the males. Think about humans. You could sterilize half the males on the planet and the other half would just pick up the slack. But if you sterilized half the females the birth rate would be cut in half.

  “So you. . . ?”

  “From a purely biological point of view giving birth to a viable entity is a complex process involving many stages,” Bellingham answered, slipping into lecture mode. “Each stage depends on very specific proteins with very specific components being folded in very specific ways. These proteins are expressed and folded by dozens of different genes. It’s a chain Agent Kane, a very intricate chain, and if you disrupt just one link, assuming it’s the correct link, the chain breaks and the next generation doesn’t hatch.”

  “So, you make a chemical that destroys one of those–”

  “No,” the professor interrupted. “Chemicals don’t work, not the way you’re thinking. The key is in the gene, that is to say, the key is finding the right gene and removing it.”

  “So, you genetically engineer a new breed of insect?”

  “No, you’re thinking of gene manipulation, substituting a new gene for an old one or adding a new gene entirely. We don’t add. We subtract. We target a gene that makes a protein that’s vital for the subject insect to reproduce and then we remove or more accurately ‘deactivate’ that gene. We turn it off. Once it’s switched off it doesn’t make the protein. When the protein isn’t made the insect cannot create a fertilized egg or cannot lay a fertilized egg or the fertilized egg cannot hatch, depending on which protein in the chain we choose to target.”

  Bellingham interpreted Kane’s expression as confusion and continued in full lecture mode.

  “We deliver our product as an aerosol spray like any other crop material. It’s basically just water and a virus with a protein coat that’s tailored to attack the specific insect we’re after. Our method modifies a few sites in the virus DNA which avoids using recombinant DNA techniques. This is faster and similar to the way nature itself works and it’s completely harmless to any other form of life, human, animal or insect. When the target insect comes into contact with our spray the virus replicates in its system and turns off the target gene. That’s it. Nothing else. The insect eats the corn or leaf or whatever it normally feeds on and it destroys the farmer’s crop as if our product wasn’t even there. As far as the insect is concerned nothing has happened, until it mates and tries to reproduce. And then, again, nothing happens. There is no next generation. The modified parents eventually die and there are no offspring to take their place.”

  Bellingham smiled as if he had just explained the secret to a particularly difficult magic trick.

  “But you can’t be sure you’ll get them all,” Kane said. “Some of them may not be infected or new bugs might come in on the wind or whatever, which means that you’ll have to spray every year and eventually enough of the bugs that survive will develop an immunity to your virus.”

  “No, no,” Bellingham snapped. “That’s the real genius of our product. It breeds true.”

  “What?”

  “If by some fluke an infected female manages to lay a viable egg, let’s say the virus arrived too late in the breeding cycle for example, or something else went wrong, the offspring will inherit the turned-off gene and also the virus itself. That means that any male that mates with that offspring will be a carrier and will himself deliver the virus to any other female he may mate with and all of the new female’s offspring will themselves be sterile. The males will spread the virus to any uninfected females and all of them will become sterile. The few individuals that fall through the cracks will be destroyed by normal means. The percentage of insects that survive to breed is tiny. Millions of them are eaten by birds and bats and other predators. They freeze or fry; they drown. If you can cut the effective birth rate of, for example, a species of beetle to five percent of the normal population level natural predators will essentially wipe out the insect without any further human interference.

  “You see, Agent Kane, this is the perfect solution. No poisons. Perfectly tuned to the target pest and nothing else. No effect on the crops themselves nor on the birds or other creatures that eat the target organisms. Pesticides are a nuclear bomb. EcoSafe is a laser scalpel. We only get rid of what we want to get rid of. I promise you, EcoSafe will change the world.”

  Bellingham searched Kane’s face for some sign of, if not admiration, at least approval.

  “Amazing stuff,” Greg said at last. “A bit over my head,” he added at the look of disappointment that washed over Bellingham’s face. “How does your research tie into the proposed HHS regulations?”

  During his lecture the professor had gotten to his feet and begun to pace. Wearily, he now slipped back into his chair.

  “We’re too small to build our own manufacturing operation. That would take hundreds of millions of dollars and, given the permitting process, several years. Once we perfected the formula in the lab we looked for a production facility that could manufacture the basic compounds to our specifications. We found one in India and then these regulations came out. I understand the government’s concern. Yes, these chemicals could be used to deactivate vital genes. I understand why HHS classified them as something that might be used in the manufacture of a bio-weapon but the truth is that almost anything can be a weapon in the wrong hands. Gasoline, propane, castor beans, well, you see where I’m going. That’s why we filed our protest.”

  Bellingham nervously drummed his fingers on his thigh.

  “Couldn’t you get an exemption or a permit or something?”

  “The problem is the quantity. The manufacturer gave us a price based on a minimum purchase of at least two thousand pounds of material. It’s just not economically feasible for them to set up their equipment for an order smaller than that, not at a price that would be acceptable to our customers. If we were only importing a few pounds for research purposes we could probably get a waiver but with such a large volume of material the government is worried that some of it might get diverted or
stolen or misused.”

  “So, if that regulation goes through, you’re out of business?”

  “Five years down the drain unless and until an American manufacturer would agree to supply us at a cost our customers could afford to pay. I don’t see that happening anytime soon.” Bellingham frowned then seemed to brighten up. “Tell me, Agent Kane, has the HHS given you any indication if or when the new regulations will go into effect?”

  “I have no idea. Months, at least, would be my guess.”

  Bellingham’s mood brightened and he held up his hand. “I’ll keep my fingers crossed.”

  “I imagine that when the regulations were announced you gave HHS’s list a pretty thorough examination?”

  “I don’t know if I would say ‘thorough.’ We were mostly interested in how it would affect us, but we looked at it, certainly. Why?”

  “If you had to guess, who do you think would want to import something on that list badly enough to kill for it?”

  “If you’re suggesting that we–”

  “If I thought that EcoSafe would commit murder in order to bring a new kind of bug killer to the market I wouldn’t be talking to you right now. I’d have fifteen agents in here with a search warrant hauling away all of your files.”

  Bellingham’s face paled at the mention of “agents” and “search warrants.”

  “Well, good,” the professor said at last.

  “But given what was on the list who do you think might want the regulations stopped badly enough to kill?”

  Bellingham paused, then stood and pulled a binder from the shelf. He opened it to one of the tabs and ran his finger down the page, making a few short notes as he went. Finally he returned to his seat and placed the binder on the coffee table in front of Kane.

  “I can’t tell you ‘who,’ of course, but those three items can be used to manufacture, respectively, stimulants, pain killers and hallucinogens. If you’re looking for people who would be willing to commit murder I would think that drug dealers would fit the bill and a drug dealer with a top-flight lab and a skilled chemist would definitely be interested in any of those three compounds. If I were you, that’s where I’d start.”

  Kane stared at the page and struggled to pronounce the names of the chemicals. The DEA ought to have a list of the likely players who would have the resources needed to manufacture drugs on that level.

  “Can you make me a copy of this?” Kane asked.

  Bellingham pressed a couple of buttons on his phone.

  “Darlene, I need something copied for Agent Kane.”

  “Thanks for your help, professor,” Kane said a minute later.

  Bellingham smiled and shook Kane’s hand. “My pleasure. Drug addicts are a plague on this nation. If I can do anything to help you stop them, just call me.”

  Kane left with the page containing the three circled compounds folded snugly in the shirt pocket over his heart.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Mr. Justice Hopper lived in a two-story red-brick house whose number had been removed. Like most Georgetown homes the front door opened directly onto the sidewalk making security especially difficult. To make matters worse only a seven-foot high red-brick wall separated the public sidewalk from the home’s small, tree-shaded backyard. If the Secret Service could have had its way it would have moved Hopper to some fortified estate in Virginia surrounded by a barbed-wire topped wall with motion sensors installed every ten feet. But it couldn’t so it had to make-do. Over Hopper’s objections they built a twelve foot tall electrified fence around the inside of the patio guaranteeing, at least, that no one was going to crash into the house from the back yard.

  A uniformed Secret Service guard was stationed next to the front door with a two-person team across the street in a windowless van. TV cameras fed the monitors inside with views up and down both sides of the narrow, tree-lined block. People were supposed to see the guard out front. They weren’t supposed to know about the two armed agents in the van across the street. The neighbors figured it out pretty fast, of course, but the Service wasn’t worried about the neighbors. They had all been vetted years ago when Hopper first bought the house and any new faces were checked out before they moved in.

  On this particular evening, while Kane was home pounding on his electric keyboard and Danny was watching a new cable cop show called Blue Heat, SS Agent Craig Spangler was scanning the monitor fed by the north-facing camera and thinking about turning up the temperature on his electric socks. February nights in Washington were chilly and the agents couldn’t use the van’s engine to keep warm. “Get yourself some hunter’s socks,” his supervisor had warned him when he was assigned to the Justice’s protection detail.

  Already the shift had settled into a familiar pattern. By now Spangler and his partner, Agent Carol Hallstead, had learned the neighborhood’s routine – the DOJ lawyer up the street who jogged obsessively, the young couple on bloated incomes from some tech company who practically lived in the brasserie at the south end of the block, and all the rest of the people who had a reason for being near Hopper’s home. A plate reader at each end of the street identified all cars before they got close to the Justice’s front door. Any vehicles that were stolen or had no business being in the neighborhood were immediately flagged.

  “Pizza Boy at twelve o’clock,” Carol called out. Twice a week an FCC Bureau Chief who lived around the corner had a pizza delivered and the kid from Sal’s Sicilian Pies always followed a route that took him past Hopper’s home. Carol switched to night-vision and confirmed the driver’s identity. “It’s Myron,” she called out a moment later.

  Something flickered on Craig’s screen and he turned up the zoom.

  “I’ve got a female with a large dog heading for us, east side of the street.” Spangler played with the controls. “Black jacket, black pants, dark running shoes. Caucasian, about five-six, black baseball cap. No gloves. She’s about fifty yards out.” Spangler clicked his mike. “Voss, female and a large dog coming your way from the south. I don’t recognize her. Stay sharp.”

  The uniformed guard bent forward and peered into the darkness. The woman was just a gray shape. The dog was clearer. Tim Voss loved dogs, not the little ones, rat dogs he called them. No, he liked big dogs, shepherds, labs, retrievers, but what the heck was that? Voss watched the pair approach. The animal had a rusty brown coat, short hair, and big, meaty shoulders. Voss squinted when they passed beneath the street lamp. What the hell was some strange woman doing walking a dog like that past Hopper’s house? Voss clicked his mike.

  “Craig, this doesn’t feel right. That’s a Rhodesian Ridgeback. Back in Africa they’ve been known to take on lions.”

  Spangler turned up the gain on the camera and zoomed in. He definitely had never seen that woman before and something about her coat seemed wrong.

  “Carol, what’s the temperature outside right now?”

  Hallstead checked the readout on her panel. “Forty-six.”

  “That coat she’s wearing looks thick enough for the arctic. . . . Voss, she could be wearing a vest.”

  The woman was now about forty feet away. Carol softly unlocked the van’s sliding door and Tim Voss removed his Glock and held it out of sight against his side. As she neared his post the woman turned as if surprised, then gave Voss a friendly wave.

  “Hello,” she said smiling then dropped her leash. “Angriff!” she shouted and pulled an automatic from her pocket. The dog raced toward Voss who jumped back against the front door and started firing. The first two shots ricocheted off the sidewalk but the third one caught the dog in mid-leap. The woman was firing too and a bullet splintered the door a foot from Voss’s head just before the dog’s body crashed into him and he went down.

  The woman ran forward and Voss struggled to raise his weapon but his hand was trapped beneath the dog’s body. With a look of determined anger the woman aimed down at him but before she could pull the trigger Voss heard three quick shots and her head exploded. He looked past he
r to see Hallstead and Spangler running toward him. Voss pulled himself free of the eighty-five pound dead animal and scrambled to his feet. Hallstead kicked the woman’s gun away even though one look was enough to confirm that she was irretrievably dead. Spangler unzipped her nylon coat.

  “She was wearing a vest,” he called out, then, “Oh, shit! – I’ve got grenades!” He pointed to two hand grenades clipped to her belt. “We’ll have to get bomb disposal down here.”

  “I’ll call the boss,” Carol offered. “You OK, Tim?”

  Voss stared down at the crumpled body and the hand grenades and muttered to no one in particular, “This is some really crazy shit.”

  * * *

  It took two hours for news of the attack to reach Senator Arthur Denning. He had sponsored five different automatic-weapons bills, none of which had made it to a vote, and he had contributed $25,000 of his own money to the “Yes On Lyla’s Law” initiative campaign. It was no secret where Denning’s sympathies lay and friends in the law-enforcement community kept him up to date on any developments related to the “Gun Case.”

  Denning put down the phone and stared blankly at the wall. An armed woman with hand grenades had made it to Hopper’s front door? This was insanity. This had to stop. Denning opened his cell’s address book and selected a number.

  “Roger, it’s Arthur Denning,” he said when the phone was picked up.

  “Senator, what can I do for you?”

  “Have you heard about the attack on Justice Hopper?”

  “What? Was he hurt?”

  “The Secret Service stopped it, but just barely. The woman got to his front door, Roger, with hand grenades, hand grenades! We cannot have these kinds of things in this country!”

  “Absolutely not. What would you like me to do?”

  “I need to be sure that Hopper is safe, that he’s getting all the protection he needs.”

  “I’ll set up a meeting with the Secret Service agent in charge of his security. He can give you–”