Then there were his lawyers. He knew he didn’t stand a chance at trial with a public defender, so colleagues at DBN helped direct him to Mark Beck, a former federal prosecutor in Los Angeles whose firm had done some work for the company. Beck brought a second Mark onto the team: Mark Weinhardt, a Des Moines attorney who wore bow ties and shirts monogrammed with his initials, MEW, and who worked out of an office decorated with cover images from 1950s dime-store thrillers.
The defense had the right to review all of the evidence the federal government had collected against Robert, and Beck and Weinhardt soon amassed thousands of pages of documents, including intercepted emails, transcripts of bugged conversations, and legal briefs. They brought on attorneys in Beijing to help.
The fees for all of this cost Robert—or rather his family—a small fortune. He had gotten involved with DBN in the first place because of his financial troubles. The job had brought him a few years of reprieve after he’d failed to secure a steady academic job, but now he was more beholden to his rich family members than ever. Jason Griess and other prosecutors working the case looked at his high-powered legal team and saw seemingly unlimited reserves of wealth, but Robert remained painfully aware of the debt he was accumulating. The way the Chinese favor wheel worked, he might not have to pay it all back, but he would carry around the emotional burden of owing his relatives for years. And if his family ever cut him off and he fell behind on the bills for his house arrest, he knew, he’d be thrown back in jail. Robert’s inborn flair for drama became more pronounced. He started telling people that the doctors and lawyers were vampires perched on his shoulders.
As a condition of his release, Robert was permitted to resume his work for DBN, provided he stuck to tasks that everyone agreed were legal. And although it had been his job that got him into this mess, he needed the money. Going online in his private prison, he sourced ingredients for animal feed and brokered purchasing contracts. The guards mainly left him alone while he worked, though he figured his internet connection was monitored. There was a saying in China: Use a long line to catch a big fish. Now that he had a modicum of freedom, he suspected that it would be used against him.
While online, he frequently drifted to news articles on his case. In many articles, as in the court system itself, the order of his name was reversed. First name Mo, last name Hailong. It would be an easy task to establish the surname in his case—Chinese surnames are almost always one syllable—but no one seemed to care enough to do so. When Carolyn testified at his bail hearing, her Chinese name was misspelled in the court record as well.
Then there was the notion that Wang Lei had been found in the Monsanto field outside Bondurant wearing a suit, the corn towering high above his head, when in fact he had worn more casual garb, and the field had been mostly cleared. An error in a police log had metastasized and been enshrined as truth. Other press coverage explained, pulling the detail directly from the indictment, that Robert had been found on his hands and knees digging in the Tama County field. Robert maintained that he was in the car at the time, and that Wang Lei was the one doing the digging.
It was unlikely, of course, that jurors would care whether Robert should be addressed as Mr. Hailong or Mr. Mo, or whether Wang Lei had been wearing a polo shirt and trousers or a suit when he sneaked onto a Monsanto field, or whether Robert dug for corn or merely drove the getaway vehicle. But to Robert, who had a taste for conspiracy, the inconsistencies were threads in a grand tapestry of deception. He had been duplicitous in his work for DBN, but now he was outraged at what he saw as the U.S. government’s duplicity in its treatment of him.
Back in China, Robert’s parents were ill. His father had throat cancer, and his mother suffered from high blood pressure. They lived in Beijing with his sister Mo Yun, who had more time to devote to family now that she no longer worked for DBN. But she had two school-age children, and even with hired domestic help it was a lot for her to handle. Most nights Shao Genhuo didn’t return home until eight, and he often worked weekends. And here was Robert, under house arrest in America, in a situation that would make any parent’s blood pressure soar.
When Mo Yun told Robert that she was planning a trip to California, he tried to warn her. Mo Yun was normally sympathetic to his requests, and she had stood by him after his arrest. But this time she didn’t listen. She had promised the kids she would take them to Disneyland. She wasn’t going to let her brother’s arrest stand in the way of their vacation.
THIRTY-ONE
SUMMER 2014
In the basement of Los Angeles International Airport’s Terminal 2, Mark Betten gathered law enforcement officers to explain the arrest they were about to carry out. Mark and his team had a dilemma: They had to figure out what to do with the kids.
The week before, Mo Yun had arrived in Los Angeles with her two children. Because she had overseen a division at DBN and was married to the company’s CEO, Mark had designated her as a person of interest in the case. When she passed through customs on her way into the country, her name triggered an alert. CBP officers notified Mark of Mo Yun’s arrival, and he had digital forensics specialists search images of Robert’s devices for evidence that might implicate her. On a hard drive seized from DBN’s Boca Raton office, the FBI found copies of MSN chat conversations between Robert and DBN staff in Beijing extending all the way back to 2007, to the inception of the seed operation. Someone—presumably Robert—had cut and pasted the conversations into Word and text documents. Several of the chats were with Mo Yun.
In one chat, Robert and Mo Yun discussed the purchase of farmland in the Midwest. In another, Mo Yun asked if Robert had managed to get any corn yet. In a third, Dr. Li told Robert that Mo Yun “is in charge of the specifics from the home country side” and that he would speak with her about getting additional people to help Robert with seed collection.
That might be enough on which to hang an indictment, Mark believed. He hightailed it to Los Angeles, arriving in time for Mo Yun’s return flight to Beijing.
Mark had a warrant for Mo Yun’s arrest, but he wanted to first see if she might offer some useful or incriminating information in a casual encounter. FBI agents could freely question people as long as the people agreed. If suspects declined or seemed unwilling to talk, agents were required to read them their Miranda rights. Reciting those rights tended to make people close off. You have the right to remain silent. And often, they would. So Mark again planned to work through the CBP. Border patrol agents not only had significant leeway with searches; they could also question foreign nationals at will.
Around noon, Mo Yun and her kids arrived at the airport, checked their three suitcases, and cleared security. They walked to the gate area, bags of souvenirs dangling from their arms. When they arrived, almost every chair was occupied. People lounged on the floor with their phones plugged into outlets, charging them before the long haul. The terminal was under renovation, and its cheap carpeting and low ceilings gave it the feel of a developing-world airport, plopped into America’s second-largest city. Mo Yun stopped at a bland Hudson News to buy snacks, and the line snaked around the register. Agents watched as she paid and returned to the gate with her kids. Then, as she moved toward a pair of open seats, CBP agent Gerome Esguerra approached her.
“We need to ask you some questions about your visa application,” he said. He was in full uniform. His colleague Edward Becerril stood next to him, in plainclothes chinos and a button-down shirt, untucked to conceal the gun in his waistband. Mark watched discreetly from a short distance away, wearing a suit. If not for his military haircut, he could have been any other American businessman on his way to Beijing.
At forty, Mo Yun was slim, with long side-parted hair framing a narrow face. When she reached the seats, she plopped down her bags and retrieved her passport, handing it to the agents. She sat down, and her daughter, who was five, crawled onto her lap. Her twelve-year-old son took the seat next to them and started playing video
games.
“We just have some questions we need to ask you, OK?”
“OK.”
“For your visa. When you applied for your visa.” This wasn’t such a farfetched premise for an encounter. At airports along the U.S.-Mexico border, agents often pick out people for questioning as they wait for their flights.
“Oh, my visa,” Mo Yun said.
“Yes, remember?”
“You speak English—a little bit?” Becerril interjected. He and the other agents knew from her entry interview, and from the transcripts of her online chats with Robert, that her English was passable, but they had an interpreter on hand in case she feigned incomprehension.
“Uh-huh.” She nodded.
“Do you still work for DBN?” Esguerra asked. And with that, he signaled that the agents were interested not just in her visa, but in her brother—and her husband.
* * *
• • •
IN THE INTERVIEW THAT FOLLOWED, the border patrol agents played nice. Esguerra asked Mo Yun about her PhD, joking, “I should call you Dr. Mo.” Softening to the comment, Mo Yun laughed and thanked him. Then she stood up. Before she could move away, Mark joined the group and told her that he was working on her brother’s case. He did not mention that he was with the FBI.
“While you were here during this visit, did you meet with your brother at all?” he asked, as a discreetly placed audio recorder picked up the conversation.
“No, no, no, no. Just for vacation.”
“Disneyland? How was it, by the way? Did the kids like it?”
“It was good, yeah.”
“First time there?”
“Uh, we are the first time.”
They talked about Universal Studios, and the challenges of navigating around Los Angeles, and then Mark cut off the small talk. He knew other passengers could hear what he was saying, and even after nearly eighteen years in the FBI, he still felt awkward questioning someone in public. But finally he got it out. As part of his work on her brother’s case, he told Mo Yun, “If there’s any kind of information or evidence that is helpful to him, we have an obligation to determine that and tell him about it and give it to his defense lawyers. So one of the things I wanted to talk with you about is some information that could potentially be helpful to him.”
It was technically true that the FBI was legally obligated to turn over evidence or testimony that might help an individual under investigation. But investigators hardly went out of their way to do so. Instead, he was trying to get a statement from Mo Yun before officially putting her under arrest. Suggesting that he was on her brother’s side might make her let down her guard.
He started by asking about Dr. Li. “One of the things that we’ve discovered looking at your brother’s case is that it looks like he was put under some pressure by Dr. Li to go out and—”
“I don’t know,” Mo Yun said quickly. “I’m very surprised for this.”
Mark brought up the chat logs that had been found pasted into Word documents on Robert’s computer. He produced an excerpt from a 2007 conversation and pointed to the characters for her name, 莫云 .
“Do you remember writing these chats with your brother, and having these conversations?” Mark asked.
In the chat, Robert had told Mo Yun about his marital problems, and about how he was struggling to make ends meet financially. Mo Yun encouraged him to support his family no matter what. Mark had chosen the conversation carefully. There was no suggestion of illegal behavior here, just sisterly concern for Robert’s troubles. Admitting her involvement would not seem, on its face, to imply any guilt. But if Mo Yun confirmed here, outside an official interrogation, that she recognized the conversation, it would be hard for a lawyer to later claim in court that the Word documents containing other chats had been manufactured.
“Maybe,” Mo Yun said.
“It looked like it was probably Yahoo chat that you were using for these chat sessions,” Mark offered.
“Maybe, maybe.”
“Did you usually write in English, too?” he pressed.
“Um, yeah. Maybe.” Mo Yun said as her daughter squeezed her mother’s nostrils.
Mark moved on to other topics, trying to get on tape as much detail as possible while the element of surprise was still fresh. He started to bring up another chat in which Mo Yun appeared to discuss with her brother a plan for chasing the self of a seed line but was interrupted by a flight attendant announcing over the loudspeaker that the plane to Beijing was about to board.
“Can we talk to you away from your kids, just real briefly?” Mark asked. “You’ll be right here. She’ll be able to see you,” he added, indicating her daughter.
“She always want to sleep. Sorry. My brother has a lawyer. Maybe we—you—can talk with them.”
Mark lowered his voice. By now the other passengers had grown curious about the commotion. “What we want to tell you, though, is we do have a warrant for your arrest.” He explained that she would have to be separated from her kids. “I can assure you we’re going to take good care of your two children.”
“No. No. No.”
Agent Becerril piped up to reiterate what Mark had just told her. “There’s no choice,” he said, and then, when Mo Yun shook her head, “Yes.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No!”
The agents explained that she had two options: Put her children on a plane back to China alone to be met by a friend or relative, or keep them in Los Angeles, where they would be given to child protective services.
Mo Yun burst out crying. “No,” she said. “Such a fun vacation! A holiday vacation. No!”
“You’re going to need to make a decision, OK?” Becerril said. “Or we can make the decision. It’s up to you.”
“We would rather not put you in handcuffs in front of your kids,” Esguerra said. “If you could just walk with us, no handcuffs. But if we have to, we will put you in handcuffs.” The girl started to cry.
Finally, Mo Yun chose to put her children on the flight to Beijing, alone. An FBI agent who had been standing back from the operation surfaced to help her fill out the necessary forms. Her daughter screamed.
Eventually Mo Yun said a tearful good-bye to her kids, and airplane personnel pulled the girl from her and escorted both children onto the plane. The CBP agents led her to a processing facility in the basement of the airport, Mark following close behind. Only then did he hand Mo Yun a document laying out her Miranda rights in Chinese. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney.
The FBI finally had someone close to DBN’s leadership in custody. Mark’s plan had worked. Or so it seemed at the time.
THIRTY-TWO
FALL 2014
For a few months following her arrest, Mo Yun lived with Robert in the secured house in Des Moines, but she chafed under the restrictions imposed on her, and her lawyers managed to get her let out in Iowa on supervised release. Before long Robert was alone with his problems.
A few months after his sister’s arrest, as his guards waited outside a hospital operating room in Des Moines, Robert lay on a table, slipping out of consciousness. After he went under, the surgeon took a scalpel and made an incision straight down his inner thigh. He disconnected the lump from the blood vessel it was attached to and removed it. With that, the tumor that Robert had been told was a benign lipoma was gone. Except that in the process of removing it, the doctor started to suspect that maybe it wasn’t what he had thought. Lipoma is yellow and slimy, like chicken fat. Robert’s growth was a mess of dark blood clots.
The biopsy results came back three weeks later. The tumor turned out to be an aggressive cancer called synovial sarcoma. An oncologist explained that the disease was far along, and that the procedure had made the cancer worse. Wh
en the surgeon cut it open, some of the tumor had escaped and lingered in his body. Robert needed to start chemotherapy immediately. Even then, the chance of recurrence was high.
In most cases, cancer means carcinoma. The most common cancers—those of the lung, breast, and colon—are almost always carcinomas. Every year more than a million such cases are diagnosed in the United States. But there is also a second, much rarer category of cancer called sarcoma. While carcinomas form in the skin or tissue cells that line our organs, sarcomas thrive in connective tissue cells, like muscles, bones, and nerves. Often they do not respond to chemotherapy. Synovial sarcoma, Robert’s specific kind, can be lethal, but many patients, curiously, experience little pain. The number of cases diagnosed annually in the United States is fewer than one thousand.
The ignorance of Robert’s doctor was not particularly unusual; most oncologists have never encountered the condition. But that didn’t make the news any easier to handle. Robert’s lawyers persuaded a judge to let him move from Des Moines to Houston to receive treatment at MD Anderson Cancer Center, which has the top sarcoma experts in the world. He found a new place to rent and a new security team and soon settled in to the extent that he could. With the restrictions governing his house arrest, it mattered little whether he was in Iowa or Texas. Either way, he was far from Carolyn and the kids.
The sarcoma center at MD Anderson exuded a soft, gentle vibe, like the headquarters for a gardening club. The walls were lavender, and the halls that held patient rooms were distinguished by flower names: Freesia and Hibiscus and Jasmine. In a waiting area lined with plush chairs, magazines were arranged just so. But design could not cancel the fact that everywhere people were battling death. Patients roamed the halls wearing face masks, their hair lost to chemo. Toddlers trudged the grounds with oxygen tubes clipped to their shirts. In this bastion of grief, Robert was finally surrounded by people who could match his mood.
The Scientist and the Spy Page 17