NH3

by Stanley Salmons

  Terry felt uneasy. “Where are we going, Headquarters?” he asked. He knew the J. Edgar Hoover Building wasn’t far away.

  “Nope,” came the reply.

  There was an uncomfortable silence, during which the man must have realized he was being less than cordial. He glanced round and elaborated.

  “I’ve been told all this is highly confidential and you two will be operating under cover. So just about the dumbest thing I could do right now would be to march you in full view in and out of FBI Headquarters. Okay?”

  “I see. And that explains the unmarked car.”

  “Yeah. That explains the car.”

  There was no further conversation for the duration of the short ride. Terry exchanged glances with Maggie. Evidently agent Sam Milner wasn’t too happy with his latest assignment. The car stopped and Milner turned off the ignition. He pointed out of the window.

  “We have an office in this building we can use.”

  They followed Milner through the lobby to a lift and rode it to the sixth floor, where he again led the way. Their footsteps were loud on the plastic tiled floor. He stopped at a door, to one side of which was a buzzer with a handwritten label: Palmerston Consulting Agency. He took out a bunch of keys, selected one and opened the door.

  They found themselves in a corridor with rooms opening off on either side. Milner pushed open one of the glass-panelled doors and ushered them in. The air was warm and stale and carried with it a vague hint of petrol. The room was sparsely furnished: plain walls, one of which carried a framed print of an abstract painting, a large pine table, injection-moulded chairs, a plastic Venetian blind on the window. The floor was covered in a tough but cheap cord, which looked new enough to be responsible for the oily smell. A computer and printer sat on a small desk in the corner.

  “You want some coffee? We got a machine here.”

  Terry looked at Maggie.

  “I’m all right at the moment,” she said.

  “Me too,” said Terry. “I’d like to get started.”

  “Okay, suit yourselves.”

  Milner threw a slim document case on the table and sat down heavily. He looked from one to the other. Then he said,

  “Can I speak frankly?”

  Terry said, “I’m sure you’re going to.”

  “Yeah. Well, the boss said something about a weird organism that’s doing a lot of damage so I’m dragged out of bed on a Sunday morning and told I’m supposed to find out who did it. Great. On top of which I’m less than thrilled to have two British boffins in tow. So now you know. I hope you aren’t going to make things worse by getting under my feet.”

  Maggie’s expression was stony. Terry feigned surprise.

  “It’s Sunday? Well, well, I’d quite lost track.”

  Milner grunted. “Okay. Suppose you start by telling me what you think is going on, and we’ll take it from there.”

  Terry thought for a moment. Detailed explanations had obviously been left to him and Maggie. That, or the message had got garbled on the way down the line. He took a deep breath and went for shock tactics.

  “All right. Here in the US you had a severe hurricane coming in from the Gulf of Mexico, outside of the normal season, doing billions of dollars’ worth of damage. You’ve also had poisonous smogs sweeping through Baltimore, Pittsburgh, and Cleveland. More than three thousand people have died already and the hospitals are full of people who may still die because they can’t breathe. We had a similar problem back in England and it almost paralyzed the capital. Toronto just had one; killed another two thousand people. None of this is a random quirk of nature. Someone has released a genetically modified organism which is filling the air with ammonia. Animal life can’t survive in an atmosphere of ammonia. Unless we do something about it, every human being and every animal on this planet is going to die.”

  “No shit.” Milner looked thoughtful. “So what am I supposed to do about it?”

  “Dr. Ferris and I are part of a research team, investigating the organism. We’re here to help you find out where it came from and nail the person or persons who made it. Once we know exactly what we’re up against we’ll be in a better position to design countermeasures.”

  “Suppose we can’t find them?”

  “We have to. If it spreads much more there’ll be nothing we, or anyone else, can do to stop it.”

  Milner nodded slowly. “When did all this start?”

  “About two-and-a-half years ago.”

  His eyebrows shot up. “Two-and-a-half years ago?! How come nobody picked it up earlier?”

  “The problem developed gradually. As far as we know the first fatalities occurred in April last year. There was a marine incident in Bermuda waters: a boat got stuck in weed and five people died. The local authorities didn’t know what to make of it. We do. We’ve been out there to collect samples and if we hadn’t taken respirators the ammonia would have gotten us, too. The organism’s there all right.”

  “So how does this get to be the FBI’s baby? Bermuda’s administered by the UK.”

  “We’ve gone back over satellite data from NASA. It shows the organism didn’t come from Bermuda, it originated somewhere on the Eastern seaboard. We can only guess how it got to Bermuda, but it was probably carried there by eels.”

  “Well where do the eels migrate from? You got that, you got the source.”

  Terry said casually, “The Eastern North American eel, Anguilla rostrata, migrates from the whole of the Eastern seaboard.”

  “What, Canada too?”

  “Yes, anywhere from the Gulf of Mexico to Labrador.”

  “Jesus. Do you guys have any idea how long that coastline is? We’re talking maybe two thousand miles here.”

  Maggie joined in.

  “Actually we shouldn’t be restricting ourselves to the coast. It could well have been released further inland, into a river. Most big towns grew up around rivers; it was the easiest way of getting around before roads were built. That’s a more likely source than something right on the coast.”

  Milner placed both hands flat on the table and sat back.

  “Well, that’s just dandy. They assign me to scour two thousand miles of coastline – not forgetting all the rivers draining into the Atlantic – on the off chance that I’m going to find some crazy outfit before they succeed in poisoning the entire world. And by the way they’d like a result some time tomorrow.”

  Terry met Maggie’s eyes. He said quietly:

  “That’s why we’re here. Maybe we can help.”

  Milner’s eyes narrowed. “How?”

  It was Maggie who responded.

  “First of all, we don’t think we’re looking for a university or a research institute. You can’t start working on genetic manipulation just like that. For one thing it’s expensive. You need personnel, equipment and consumables so you’d have to apply for a grant. The grant agencies will want to be assured that you’ve adhered to all the safety regulations and installed any necessary containment facilities. In the UK you need the approval of GMAG, the Genetic Manipulation Advisory Group. I don’t know how it works in the US but I’m sure there’ll be some sort of oversight, either within the establishment or from a governmental organization. Given all those layers of supervision, it’s pretty hard to believe that a genetically engineered organism could escape and no one would know anything about it – or do anything about it.”

  “That ain’t so convincing,” Milner commented sourly.

  “All right, but that’s just the beginning. An organism might escape into a lab but even if it did, it would still be relatively confined. We can’t see how it could have got out into the environment.”

  “Unless the whole building blew up.”

  “Exactly. And if that had happened you’d have heard about it, wouldn’t you?”

  “Point taken.”

  “So we don’t think this happened in a research establishment. It could have been some sort of production plant, maybe just on a pilot scale, but m
aking sufficient quantities that an escape would be significant.”

  “Okay, I buy that.”

  Terry took up the argument. “The point is, if this is a production facility, it must have been a company making the stuff, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Now genetic engineering is an extremely competitive industry. Any outfit that’s got as far as producing even pilot quantities of a new organism is going to be anxious to protect its intellectual property.”

  “By taking out a patent, you mean?”

  “Precisely. Which means that we should be checking for new patents and trademarks for inventions with the words ‘nitrogen’ or ‘ammonia’ in them, taken out by companies on the Eastern seaboard between about two-and-a-half and four years ago. We only need summaries at the moment. We can go into more detail if we find a few good candidates.”

  Milner’s expression had lightened a little. “I wonder, how many would a trawl like that pick up? You think of all the industry along the East coast, it’s still a long job.”

  “True. Fortunately we can narrow the search further. Let me show you.”

  Terry opened his brief case and took out the lap top. Milner waited in silence while Terry booted it up, inserted the NASA data disk and ran the program.

  “Right – this is NASA data from an Earth surveillance satellite. We’ll start with a conventional view in the visible spectrum: this coastline,” he pointed, “is the Eastern seaboard. Now I’ll switch to a different form of imaging. The colour is false; it just shows you the level of ammonia. Purple is the lowest, but that’s still a good deal higher than normal. Blue is higher, and green higher still. You see how this purple area spreads up and down the coast and out to the east? This was the distribution about two-and-a-half years ago. If I go back one month,” he tapped a key and the two purple branches shrank somewhat. He tapped again, and the branches retracted into an irregular purple patch, in the centre of which blue and green rings had developed, giving it a target-like appearance. “One more month,” he tapped again, “and there’s nothing. That’s how we know when the problem first arose, and roughly where.”

  Milner’s eyes were riveted to the screen. He switched his gaze to Terry. “Can you do that in smaller steps? Then we could get a real tight fix on where it started.”

  Terry nodded. “I had the same thought. This software’s been set up to provide snapshots at one-month intervals. If we’re trying to locate the source that’s too coarse; I need to set it up for time intervals less than one month. I think the data’s in there, but I need a little time to access it.”

  Milner nodded. “Look, see what you can do about that. Meantime we have a guy at HQ who specializes in company matters, patents, that kind of thing. I’m gonna to see if I can get him onto this.”

  “On a Sunday?” said Maggie.

  Milner smirked. “This guy’s always working.” He got up. “Don’t go walkies, it isn’t that safe round here. And on no account let anyone in. I’ll send a car or come back for you myself in a couple of hours. There’s coffee-making stuff in the kitchen next door, and if you look in the jar you might find some cookies, though I can’t promise they’ll be any good. Okay?”

  “Thanks, Mr. Milner.”

  “It’s Sam. See you later.”

  Maggie turned to Terry as soon as they heard the outside door close.

  “Do I detect a softening of attitude?”

  “He’s all right. I think he was just a bit overwhelmed by what his boss dumped on him. We’ve shown him it isn’t impossible.” He turned to his laptop. “Let’s see if I can access that data.”

  An hour later Maggie popped out and came back a with assorted biscuits and two cups of coffee.

  Terry was frowning and typing in quick bursts.

  “How are you getting on?”

  He crunched into a biscuit. “I think I’ve got it now. We’ll see in a moment.”

  His jaw froze in mid-chew and they looked at each other. Each of them had heard it: the rattle of a key in the front door. They sat motionless, listening to the sound of footsteps, then low voices in the corridor.

  The door opened, and Terry breathed out. It was Milner, back much sooner than they’d expected. With him was another man, of similar height but younger and more slightly built. His eyes were bright and alert behind steel-rimmed glasses. Milner made the introductions.

  “This here is Clive Waxman, our companies expert. We started to talk it over and he thought it’d be best if the three of you could interact on this right away. Clive, these are the operatives from England, Maggie Ferris and Terry McKinley.”

  Waxman gave each of them a light but firm handshake.

  “Well,” Terry said. “You’ve come at a good time. I think I can access that data now.”

  Milner said, “No kidding. Let’s take a look.”

  They all gathered around the small screen and Terry explained the display again for Clive’s benefit.

  “This was the distribution two-and-a-half years ago. Now, if I’ve got this right we can go back one day at a time.”

  He tapped a key and the two purple branches began to contract, then coalesced, forming the purple, blue, and green patch they’d seen before. He continued to tap. The green disappeared, then the blue. All the time the coloured patch was shrinking, until it was reduced to a single purple spot, which moved slightly inland then disappeared. He brought it back and alternated between conventional and ammonia views again.

  “There’s a large inlet there. Anyone recognize it?”

  Milner said, “Can you make it any bigger?”

  “Sure. There you are. Enough?”

  “Chesapeake Bay, isn’t it, Clive?”

  “Yup.”

  Milner straightened up. “Is that smart, or what?” He pinched his bottom lip. “But we got rivers going off every which way from the Bay, and shitloads of industry. What do you think, Clive? Can you run a patent search on companies in that area?”

  “I can try. I’ll need to access a couple of databases. You stay here; I can use one of the other machines.”

  As Waxman left the room, Milner turned to Terry.

  “Clive’s real laid back, but show him a company that’s not behaving itself and he sinks his teeth into it like a bulldog. Any chance you could make those intervals smaller still?”

  Terry shook his head. “No, with this type of satellite you’d only get a scan at that wavelength once a day.”

  “Blow it up a bit more.”

  “I can try, but I think we’re going to lose resolution, especially on the ammonia view.”

  They were staring at the pixelated images as Waxman reappeared.

  They all looked at him expectantly.

  Waxman shook his head. “Nothing.”

  Milner’s face fell. “What, nothing at all?”

  “Nope, not a thing.”

  CHAPTER 37

  Terry rubbed the back of his neck. “I don’t get it. Where did we go wrong?”

  “Let me think about this,” Clive replied. He walked over to the corner of the room and stood there with his hands in his pockets and his head bowed. The others waited in silence, anxious not to disturb his concentration. After two or three minutes he turned back to them.

  “Suppose this production facility, or whatever, was a subsidiary of a larger company. The patent would be registered to the parent company’s headquarters. That wouldn’t necessarily be in the Chesapeake area.”

  Terry closed his eyes. “Of course, I hadn’t thought of that. I suppose that makes a complete nonsense of my approach.”

  “I wouldn’t say that. In a way it gives us another clue. It means we’re looking for a company with reasonable market capitalization, so I can operate a cut-off to exclude smaller outfits. Then we can eliminate a lot more companies by product line. A factory that makes metal boxes isn’t going to be engaged in genetic engineering. What sort of companies are we looking for? Biologicals, obviously. Chemicals?”

  “Yes,” Terry sai
d.

  “Pharmaceuticals?”

  “It’s a possibility.”

  “Any others?”

  “I can’t think of any,” Terry said. “Maggie?”

  “Well, the production facility could be a company spin-off from a university. In that case the university may hold the patent.”

  Clive nodded. “Okay, we’ll include local universities. The people who staff these spin-offs usually remain on the faculty of the parent university, so we don’t need to consider anything outside the immediate area.” He looked from one to the other. “Now, is there anything else we should be considering that would narrow the focus?”

  Maggie said, “It has to be close to the sea or a river.”

  Milner cut in. “I don’t see why. Someone could just pick up a flask of this stuff, drive to a river, and tip it in.”

  Waxman said, “I can’t search on proximity to water anyway, so that doesn’t matter. All right, then. We’re looking for one of two things. On the one hand it could be a company of reasonable size that makes biologicals, chemicals, or pharmaceuticals, and has a subsidiary in the Chesapeake Bay area. On the other hand it could be a university with a spin-off company in the same area. In either case the organization holds a patent, key words ‘nitrogen’ or ‘ammonia’, taken out in the last four years, but not the last two. I’ll go and run it.”

  When he’d left the room Terry said:

  “He’s good.”

  “You better believe it. I don’t know why he works for the FBI. He could probably make a ton playing the stock market.”

  “Maybe he just wants to defend liberty, freedom, and the American way of life,” Terry said lightly.

  “Oh yeah. We’re all in it for that.”

  Milner pointed to the desk top computer. “I’m going to use that for a moment. Sorry, but I’ll have to ask you to stand over there. This is a highly classified site.”

  Terry moved where he couldn’t see the screen, and Milner busied himself at the computer for a few minutes. Then he hit a key with an air of finality and looked up at them.