Redoubled

by Warren Esby

  The sick Sikh said sic ‘em and the shepherd lunged at me until he got halfway between us to a point where he reached the limit of the leash that the sick Sikh had allowed him. Muffy, however, did not know he was restrained and she gave the most guttural growl I had ever heard from her and sprang between us and snapped at him and lunged for his throat. He immediately rolled over on his back and acknowledged his submissiveness as the sick Sikh looked on with consternation. I was surprised and pleased.

  “I’m sorry,” I said to him. “She didn’t realize you were controlling him and thought I was in danger. But I do see your point. He really changed.”

  “Yes. But I didn’t know he was such a coward. I will get rid of him. But your dog is impressive. What kind is she?”

  Muffy was, of course, a mixed breed mutt of no determinable heritage, so I said, “She’s the very first of a brand new breed.”

  He didn’t get it. He didn’t realize I was kidding about her being a mutt so he asked, “And what breed is that?

  To amuse myself some more, I said to him, “She’s a Werhund and Vampirhund mix. She was bred in Transylvania to protect her owner from vampires and werewolves, and she’s very fierce. To date she’s ripped apart two German Shepherds, three Dobermans and five Chihuahuas. She really hates Chihuahuas.”

  Sick Sikh Singh then said, “But I didn’t think that vampires and werewolves really exist.”

  So I said, “Well I’m not too sure about that either. But haven’t you noticed all the documentaries about vampires and werewolves that have been in the movie theaters recently?”

  “I thought they were just ordinary movies.”

  “Why do you think there are so many of those movies if there wasn’t something to worry about? And a lot of movies are about real events, even if they are movies. Look, they recently did a movie about the killing of Bin Laden who some in this country say was the personification of evil. And he was a real person. And werewolves and vampires are also the personification of evil, so they may be real as well. A lot of people believe they are real, and I wouldn’t want to take a chance they’re not. That’s why I decided to get a dog to protect myself from any of the vampires and werewolves who may have infiltrated this country from Transylvania. And I had her bred as a golden-colored dog, because gold is the color of good. I’m sure you’ve heard the American expression ‘good as gold.’ I thought it would be important to have a bright gold dog to insure its victory over dark black evil.”

  Sick Sikh Singh actually took me seriously and looked suitably impressed at the fact that I had obtained the correctly bred dog for this purpose and also looked at his shepherd with disappointment.

  He asked, “Will you breed her? Are you willing to sell any of her puppies?”

  “If I do breed her and it’s successful, you’ll undoubtedly hear about it. You know that because protection from werewolves and vampires is all the rage now, any of her puppies that I decide to put up for sale will be highly sought after. If she produces any puppies, I will let you have one. I’ll let you know when that miraculous day comes.” I said that because Muffy had been spayed, of course.

  I could tell he still didn’t get it completely, so I continued to put him on even more and said, “I’m surprised you haven’t heard of her before. She has a reputation where we come from as being the Wicked Bitch of the West.”

  I know you think I should have said she was the wicked bitch of the north since she came from Cleveland and Cleveland is in the north, but Cleveland is in the Western Reserve. Did you forget that? I bet you did. And so she could be called the wicked bitch of the west so she can also be Ozically correct, and she couldn’t be if she were the wicked bitch of the north, Ozically speaking, because the north was the domain of one of the good witches.

  Anyway, I continued, “My name is Alex Astrov, by the way. I work at the Cancer Institute. You wouldn’t happen to be Dr. Singh, would you?”

  “Yes, I am. And now I know who you are. You are the new researcher. We haven’t met before, but I’m pleased to meet you now. I haven’t been around much lately because I’ve been sick. But I’ll be coming in to check on the results of one of my experiments and maybe we can have coffee. It’s nice to have someone in the department who likes to train dogs. No one else there seems to be interested.”

  “When will you be in next?”

  “Next Monday,” he said, “if I don’t get sick in the meantime.”

  He did get sick, poor Sikh, and it was another two weeks before I had a chance to have coffee with him in the Cancer Institute.

  After meeting with Sick Sikh Singh, I had an idea about how to move forward. We seem to have got along all right at that first meeting, and I thought I might be able to cultivate him, and if he was the one responsible for the animal balloons, then I thought of a way to entice him into a closer relationship. I called Ben and asked him to send me some of the material we had taken from Dong and had shipped back. I asked for about 5 ml which I thought should be enough to inject into five rats. He later called me and told me that the CIA scientists had managed to duplicate the flu virus and retrovirus and would I like some of that as well. I told him to send me 5 ml of their stuff as well and I would test it side by side.

  When the material came, I injected two different groups of five rats each. There was a new animal caretaker who had replaced Gopang. Anya found out he had been recommended by Sick Sikh Singh. In due course, I had produced ten animal balloons duly noted by the new animal caretaker who I had asked to be on the lookout for any changes, and who reported to me that we had severe inflation. And I thought the Federal Reserve Chairman had promised that wouldn’t happen.

  The animals didn’t do so well, but my experiment proved to be a success for another reason. It caused a sudden cure in whatever sickness Sick Sikh Singh was suffering from, and he showed up for work the following day. We arranged to have coffee that afternoon, and the conversation went something like this.

  Sick Sikh Singh said, “I heard about a strange occurrence in some of your experiments. Did you expect that to happen?”

  “Not really. I think the experiment might have worked too well. Why do you ask or is only scientific curiosity?”

  “I ask because I had a similar experiment with the same results. What do you think caused yours?”

  “Well, I’m trying to induce programmed cell death in cancer cells, but I think it got out of hand and too much cell death was induced.”

  “I think that is what happened in mine. What are you using to induce cell death?”

  “An adenovirus combined with a retrovirus encoding an apoptosis-inducing factor. What about you?”

  “As is so often the case with science, several people seem to think alike. I’m using a similar strategy. Are you interested in collaborating or would you rather be in competition?”

  “Yes, great minds think alike and you must have a great mind, or at least as great as mine,” I said and laughed. “Seriously, though, I’ve always been in favor of pushing back the frontiers of science and have always been willing to collaborate with others if it makes sense. And because we are working in the same institute, it may make sense to work together.”

  I knew for a fact that none of these ideas had come from him. It was not within his area of expertise. Nor was it within mine for that matter. He was well funded by a private foundation, but Anya had learned from some of her friends in the institute that very little work was being done in his laboratory. He had only a few technicians and they never seemed to be busy and he seldom came in. I was sure the material that went into his studies had all been shipped to him for testing. Who was I to criticize? None of the material I used had been made by me, either. I was not trained as a molecular biologist and that was some of the expertise that had been needed to genetically engineer the retrovirus, but he didn’t appear to know that or care. And then I thought I would throw out some bait.

  “I think I know what went wrong, and if I’m right then I think what I’ve done can be very
valuable, but maybe it would be the most valuable to the wrong people.”

  When I said that, I could almost see the wheels turning as he tried to decide whether he should continue down this line of questioning. I still didn’t think he was the one we were looking for, but I did think he might report to the person who was in charge, so I decided to throw out some more bait.

  “I’m not that averse to making money off of what I do. You know being a scientist is not that lucrative. I have made some money in the past when the opportunity arose. I’m thinking about doing it again.”

  “Don’t you have to report your results to the government? I work off of a private foundation grant, but you have a government grant, and it’s with the Department of Defense, I understand. Aren’t you doing this for them?”

  “If it’s a cure for cancer, then the answer is yes. But the use for what I discovered is not for curing cancer, and I don’t think I owe them anything for that, but I’m sure they would be interested. But I don’t think they will pay me extra and I know someone else who will.”

  “Who is that?”

  “Someone I’ve worked for before. I think I’ve talked too much. I don’t want to tell you anything else until I know you better. Now you can tell me something about your experiments and we can decide if we can collaborate.”

  “I think our experiments are very similar, but I don’t have the problem of having a government grant, so I don’t have to worry about who I collaborate with or who benefits from what I do in the end. Why don’t we both think about this conversation and talk again. But out of curiosity, you and your wife have Russian names and use the Russian convention of having your wife using the female version of your surname. Are you Russian? You seem to be Americans, but I was curious.” He was remarking on the fact that while my name is Alex Astrov, Anya retained her maiden name, which just happened to be Anya Astrova by coincidence. Astrova would have been her married name if we had been Russian because Astrova is the feminine version of Astrov and can mean either the wife of or daughter of a man with the name of Astrov.

  “Well we are of Russian descent. That’s not hard to figure out. And Anya’s step-parents still live in Russia, and she is very close to them. We are Americans, but we still have ties to the old country. How about you?”

  “I have a Green Card, but I’m not an American citizen. I go back and forth to Pakistan. But opportunities are so much better over here, aren’t they?”

  “Usually, but sometimes you can make even more money outside this country,” I said as I threw out even more bait. I had no idea if I was going too far or not far enough. I decided to end the conversation for now and think about it and give the Sick Sikh Singh a chance to do the same.

  “I need to get back to something I was doing. Why don’t we talk again later? I’ll ask your secretary for a good time to follow up next week, if you think you’ll be in.”

  “I definitely will be in. I’m feeling a lot better now than I have been feeling in a while. See you next week.”

  I suspected that the reason he wasn’t feeling that well was not because he wanted to be with his shepherds. It was because he was under suspicion by Al Qaeda because so many of their operatives had disappeared starting with Gopang at the Cancer Institute at MUSC, and he was about the only one left.

  Chapter 31

  As I thought about our meeting and what had transpired since we had begun working with Ben and Edy, I realized that we were no closer to finding out who was heading Al Qaeda’s efforts and where they were operating from. We had eliminated one American scientist, one Russian, one Chinese scientist, and the one remaining was a Sikh and not a Muslim. I figured that the head guy must be a Pakistani Muslim who was operating covertly and having other people out in the open, people who wouldn’t necessarily be suspected of working for Al Qaeda. They all seemed to be working for Al Qaeda for an old-fashioned motive, greed, and not for ideology.

  We had been eliminating people, but were no closer to shutting down the whole operation, just like in Afghanistan where the leaders of Al Qaeda and the Taliban had gone underground when our forces invaded that country after 9/11. I came to the conclusion that the only way to destroy the whole operation was to get inside the organization. I thought that might be possible to do since we had eliminated a lot of those responsible for developing the effort in the United States, and Al Qaeda had to find replacements. We knew they collaborated with a whole bunch of different entities to achieve their ends, so why shouldn’t I become one of those entities.

  They would need someone who knew how to produce and deliver their new weapon of mass liquefaction to replace the ones they had lost, and I thought I could convince them to hire me to do it and use that to get inside the main place where the development was taking place. But I knew it would be risky. The one problem was that I hadn’t really had too much genetic engineering experience, only the fundamentals in graduate school and none since then since it was not needed for the area of research in which I had been engaged. I needed additional training, and it was within my capability to learn if I was instructed properly, so I called Ben and Edy and told them what I had in mind and asked them if they could arrange to get me the proper training. They talked to the higher ups about my suggestion, received approval and told me to come up to a CIA facility near Washington, D.C. for training. They thought it would take about a month or two to bring me up to speed.

  Once again Anya and I loaded up the Ford Expedition, put Muffy in the back and headed north. We actually traveled from I-26 all the way up I-95 to D.C. without being stopped this time. Ben and Edy had arranged an apartment for us that allowed dogs and that was right across the street from the parking garage at the back of Union Station. The apartment complex had its own parking garage under the building so we would have a place to park in the busy city. Because Union Station had several ice cream stores, Ben and Edy could meet with us and have a variety of flavors to savor while we talked. I spent most days in the laboratory and learned how to replicate the work that had already been done to produce the virus with the integrated information to express the apoptosis-inducing factors. At night we had a wide variety of restaurants to explore and we had other options to drink besides iced tea. And the food was every bit as good, if not better, than that we had found in Charleston, even at restaurants that had never been written up in the New York Times.

  I was very happy to be in Washington. I had never been there before, nor had Anya. In addition to honing up on my skills in molecular biology, I thought I would have a chance to learn more about politics and how the Federal Government works. I had never bothered to pay attention to either, or to what went on in Washington before we went there, although I did learn a lot about how the government worked when I was first recruited by Ben and Jerry to work for the CIA. They had told me what to expect and the benefits of working for the government, and most of what they told me was the truth.

  It was kind of in keeping with what I remember about what John F. Kennedy, the last president from my home state of Massachusetts, was supposed to have said in one of his speeches about how people should think about the government. Although he was president before I was born, I think what he said then is relevant today. He was supposed to have said, “Ask not what you can do for your country; ask what your country can do for you.” Anya seems to think he said the reverse, but the way I remember it makes the most sense. It was kind of what Ben and Jerry told me was the way most government workers thought, and that I should think the same way. Now that I was in Washington, I intended to increase my knowledge of the government and politics in addition to biological weapons of mass destruction, although they may all be the same thing.

  So here we were living in Washington, D.C., the center of the Federal Government responsible for the wellbeing of over 300 million people. And our apartment was near Capitol Hill, where all the Republicans and Democrats come to bicker and snap at each other like kids on a playground. And all you hear, just like on a playground, are the shouts o
f “Are not,” “Am too,” “Is so,” “Is not.” At least that is my impression of them. I know these are the people who pass the laws, and I’m glad they don’t have to actually do anything else. That’s the job of the bureaucrats.

  Well I say thank God for the bureaucrats who actually run the country, like the unknown bureaucrats in the CIA responsible for paying me because they haven’t missed a paycheck yet, either theirs or mine. I really don’t care how they get the money to pay me, although I was told that they never have to worry about running out since they can just print more or borrow more from China, although that didn’t make sense unless China is where the printing presses are located, and it is cheaper for the Chinese to print the money. I don’t know if that is really the case since I have never seen the words “Made in China” on any of our currency like I’ve seen on a lot of the other things I buy.

  Because I didn’t know too much about how the government works before I moved to Washington or the ins and outs of politics either, I tried to learn while I was there as I mentioned above. But I don’t think I’m any further ahead than I was before, maybe because I didn’t or couldn’t listen as carefully as I should have. I tend to only half listen when something doesn’t affect me that much or it’s a subject in which I’m not that interested. And the political party in power and what they stand for doesn’t really affect me because I’ll continue to get my money no matter which party is in power.

  But I did learn that there were many more political parties than I realized. I thought the only two parties allowed were Democrats and Republicans. I never joined either of those because I don’t really think it matters, and they didn’t make me join one when I started working for the CIA. But when I came to Washington, I found out about a lot of other parties, although some of them may be subsets of the two main ones. From what I could understand from what I heard on the news, there are Liberals, and Liberal Progressives, and Libertarians, and Conservatives, and Moderates, and Centrists, and Center Rightists, and Left Wingers and Right Wingers, and the Tea Party, and the color parties like the Green Party, and the Red State Party and the Blue State Party, and the Tupperware Party (which I believe my mother belonged to) and the Party of the First Part. Now I don’t know whether they are all subsets within parties or whether some are actually separate parties. It’s all rather confusing. I mean, how do you keep them all straight and how do you know where you fit in? But I did decide that if I have to join one, the Party of the First Part appeals to me the most since I like to be first. But for now I don’t belong to any party.