Project Moses - A Mystery Thriller (Enzo Lee Mystery-Thriller Series)

by Robert B. Lowe

  “Arthur,” Lee said. “I have some rice plants coming from Texas that are being flown in to Ben Nussbaum. They are infected with some new disease that is starting to run wild down there. I also have a sample of the fungus solution that AgriGenics is testing on a new strain of rice. Is it possible to prove that the fungus is what is causing the disease, that the two are the same? I mean exactly the same?”

  “Certainly,” said Sendaki. “First you analyze them using some different methods. You can compare them under the electron microscope to see whether their basic structure is similar. You can also subject them to a battery of tests. See how they react to various chemicals and how they grow in different media. If they react identically, the next step is sequencing the small piece of DNA that varies among the different types of fungi. That’s the final test, to see if the genetic structure is the same.”

  “Okay, that sounds like a plan. Now, does Professor Nussbaum have the necessary equipment?”

  “If he doesn’t, he should have access to it,” said Sendaki.

  “How long should it take to do this?”

  “Well, if we’re reasonably sure both samples are the same, we could begin sequencing the DNA while we are performing the more traditional analysis,” said Sendaki. “It would require a few days of intensive work.”

  “Now, is it also possible to prove that the fungus was genetically engineered?” asked Lee.

  “That is a much more difficult task,” said Sendaki. “There will be nothing obvious in the DNA, say the genetic equivalent of staples or glue, for one can detect. It involves a process of deduction, really, examining the DNA to determine whether it matches anything that is known. The structure may suggest how it was created. The real problem is that even when you are 99 percent sure that genetic manipulation has occurred, there is always the very remote possibility that what you are seeing has occurred naturally as a freak mutation.”

  “Okay,” said Lee. “Let’s forget that part for now. Let’s stick with matching the two samples from Arizona and Texas. Will you call Professor Nussbaum and arrange for that to happen as soon as possible?”

  “I will.”

  “Now, Sarah?”

  “Yes, Master.”

  “Very funny. I need you to prepare some affidavits for some farmboys I met in Arizona. I’ve sketched out what I want them to say, but I need the legalese.”

  “It will be my pleasure,” said Sarah.

  “Now, is there anything we can do to flesh out the information you got out of AgriGenics?” said Lee.

  “Well, we should try to track down the companies that supposedly bought chemicals or whatever AgriGenics shipped overseas,” said Sarah. “And, I suppose it would be helpful to know exactly what export restrictions apply to determine whether any legal violations occurred.”

  “Right,” said Lee. “We also need to nail down what restrictions apply to growing and testing genetically engineered plants and diseases.”

  “I have a good friend from Hastings in New York,” said Sarah. “I’m sure he’ll let me use the law library at his firm. I can check all of that.”

  “Great,” said Lee. “We’ll need memos or something that a newspaper reporter can understand.”

  For his part, Lee called the international editor at the New York Times. From him, he got the names of the reporters in the Times’ Washington bureau covering the Washington end of the Bosnian civil war as well as United States-Iraqi relations. Lee then called the two reporters in Washington and got the names and addresses of the chief representatives in the United States of the Kurdish rebels fighting the Iraqi government and the Bosnian Muslims.

  Then, Lee walked down to the hotel’s front desk and had several copies made of the original investigative report that had been in Brent Donsen’s file. It contained the information from the confidential informant that had caused Donsen to open his investigation into possible export law violations. He also had copies made of the news clippings recounting the plant diseases and illnesses that had been in Donsen’s file as well as Donsen’s memo identifying AgriGenics as the suspected source of the biological weapons.

  Back in the hotel room, Lee used a typewriter provided by the hotel to type a cover note that read:

  This investigative report and these news articles were found in a United States government file belonging to an attorney of the U.S. Justice Department named Brent Donsen. He was investigating violations of American export laws by AgriGenics, Inc. These documents indicate the recent troubles affecting your people have been caused intentionally by your enemies with the help of a United States corporation.

  Lee signed the note “A friend of your people” and had the front desk make copies. He made three packages, each consisting of the investigative report, the news clippings, Donsen’s memo and the cover note and put them into three plain manilla envelopes. He had them in hand when he left the hotel.

  Lee had two of the envelopes sent to the addresses given him by the Times reporters by overnight mail. Then he took a cab to the United Nations headquarters on the east side of Manhattan. There, Lee personally handed the third envelope to the special assistant to Cuba’s chief envoy to the United Nations.

  When he returned to the hotel, Sendaki told him that Nussbaum at Columbia had agreed to find the necessary equipment and personnel to conduct the genetic research. Sendaki was going to call him the next morning to work out the logistics of the research and the timetable.

  Meanwhile, Sarah had called the AgriGenics rice farmers in Arizona and explained to them what would be in the affidavits that would arrive the next day. As Lee had suggested, she promised that the farmboys’ identity would only be revealed with their approval. They had promised to sign the affidavits and return them as soon as possible.

  • • •

  FOR DINNER, LEE took Sarah to the Jade Garden, one of the best restaurants in New York’s Chinatown that he had gotten to know well during the time that he lived in the city. The restaurant was a huge open room with round tables in the middle that could easily seat a dozen and smaller tables on the sides. The room was elegantly decorated with painted screens and ornately carved chairs.

  They were seated toward the back of the restaurant which had been partly sealed off with sliding partitions into two rooms for private banquets. Openings had been left for the waiters to deliver the food and Lee could see inside both rooms.

  “What’s going on in there?” asked Sarah, noticing Lee’s interested gaze.

  “Do you see that old man?” said Lee. “The one with the roast pig in front of him that everyone is taking pictures of?”

  “Yes.”

  “The banquet is in his honor,” said Lee. “The roast pig symbolizes prosperity. The plate with the peaches symbolizes long life. It may be an important birthday. But, some of the people seem very emotional. He may be ill. Perhaps they know this is the last time they will see him.”

  “And what’s going on in the other room?” asked Sarah.

  “Do you see the little baby at the head table in the other room?” said Lee. “She’s dressed like a princess. It’s her moon yit.”

  “Her moon what?” said Sendaki.

  “Moon yit,” repeated Lee. “It’s a traditional celebration held one month, one cycle of the moon, after a child is born. It gives the mother and baby a chance to recuperate before the relatives come calling.”

  Two banquets, both celebrating life, thought Lee. It was premature but perhaps he and Sarah would have cause to hold their own celebration soon. At least getting their lives back. Maybe more. He was starting to hope so.

  They ate well. Lee thought it might be their last dinner out for a while. Their pursuers might already know they were in New York. If not, they would surely know by the next day. It would not take them long to deploy their people. He knew they would be out in force.

  While they ate, Lee had told Sarah about his mother and how lonely he had felt at times without a father or close relatives nearby. He had asked Sarah about her own
family.

  “It is so different here than where I grew up in Nebraska,” she said. “Sometimes I try to explain it to people in San Francisco, and I know they don’t have a clue what I’m talking about.

  “Picture perfectly flat, open fields, as far as you can see,” Sarah continued. “All you can see around you, aside from fields and a road or two, is, oh…say five houses. And they are really separated. Two or three miles between them. I grew up in one of those houses. My parents weren’t farmers but everyone depended on the farms. No one was rich. We just had enough to get by. We all worried about the weather. We were always one bad year away from going under.

  “Anyway, my folks were pretty religious,” she went on. “They wanted me to go to the local Bible college. If I had settled down with a minister, or at least a God-fearing farmer, they would have been very happy. When I told them I was going to the University of Kansas, they asked our church congregation to pray for me, like I had a disease.”

  “And when you told them about going to San Francisco for law school?” Lee asked.

  Sarah grinned. “Their response was about the same as if I had called to tell them I had murdered three people with an ax.”

  Lee laughed. “You were off the meter.”

  “Exactly. Aunt Miriam was my savior. She had escaped before me so there was a precedent. Plus, she had married a Jew. I couldn’t top that. She encouraged me to pursue my academic interests. It sounds crazy here. But, before I left for college I looked forward to her visits, just so she could remind me that women can have professional careers.”

  “So, what have you told your parents?” asked Lee.

  “What do you mean?”

  “About this,” he said. “About where you are and what has been happening for the past two weeks.”

  Lee could sense the sudden mood change. Sarah didn’t say anything for a minute. She took a long drink of water while she considered her reply.

  “I haven’t talked to my parents for five years,” she finally said. “Let’s see. How can I explain this? You remember Bill? The architect?”

  Lee nodded.

  “Well, you can imagine how that went over back home.” Sarah smiled wistfully to herself and shook her head at the memory. “It took a few months. I never said anything. I didn’t feel I had to explain. I know they wondered why Bill was answering the telephone all the time. I waited for them to bring it up.

  “Finally, my father calls at 4 a.m.,” she went on. “It was when my grandmother died. Of course, Bill answers the phone, half asleep.

  “There were things my father said that I can never forgive,” said Sarah, speaking matter of factly, as if she were telling a story about someone else. “Here was a man who never raised his voice, and he was using words and calling me names that would make a longshoreman blush.

  “He ended the conversation by telling me not to come for my grandmother’s funeral. I think the words he actually used were, ‘Don’t disgrace her memory.’ Aunt Miriam told me later that they never asked about me, not then or any time since then.”

  When Sarah finished, she stared at her water glass. Then, she resumed eating. Lee had the feeling she had told few others, perhaps no one else, what she had just described to him. He wanted to take Sarah in his arms and protect her forever from anything that might harm her. But, he could tell that she wanted none of it at that moment and he wasn’t about to presume to console her.

  Lee understood from his own experience how pain and pride can divide families for a lifetime. He also realized that the scars that grow and enable the wounded to go on can be as fragile as they are necessary. Sometimes they are simply too thin to endure questions, opinions or the acknowledgment that the hurt has cut clean to the core.

  Walking back to the hotel, he put his arm around Sarah. She turned until she could bury her face in his chest. They clung together for several minutes, ignoring the passersby, before they continued their walk.

  When they returned to the hotel, it was after 10 p.m. Lee picked up the telephone and called the home telephone number that Bobbie Connors had given him. She had given it to him only a few days earlier but to Lee it felt like half a lifetime.

  “Hello.”

  “Hello, Bobbie?”

  “Yes. Who’s this?”

  “Enzo Lee.”

  “Hey, Enzo,” said Connors. “You still at large, as they say? I guess so or I would have heard something.”

  “Yep. Staying one step ahead of the law so far. So, what’s going on?”

  “Well, I guess I never explained what happened in the first place,” said Connors. “About the time you blew town, the feds parachuted on this big time. Took all my files, all my notes, everything. Said it had to do with National Security, capital “N” and capital “S”. They couldn’t talk about it.”

  “Did you meet a guy, looks sort of like a full-sized Mickey Rooney, named Spreckel?” asked Lee.

  “Agent Spreckel,” said Connors. “Oh yes. We did have occasion to meet. We did not like each other, Agent Spreckel and myself. Let’s see. He is not on record as an agent of the FBI. He is not an agent of the CIA, or for that matter, treasury, the postal service, customs or the internal revenue service. You might ask, ‘Who does he work for?’ That is the question that I want to ask the next time we meet.”

  “Is there anything new on my…uh…status? You know that whole drug thing is trumped up, don’t you?”

  “Oh, I’m sure that it is,” said Connors. “I could tell by the way Spreckel smirked when he told me about it. Well, the latest is that you are now officially considered armed and dangerous. This just went out a couple of days ago.”

  “Christ.”

  “That’s right, Enzo. So, when you do see the Man, you better watch out because he will have his gun drawn. Oh, the other thing is that I’ve got something on the Warrington killing.”

  “Oh, yeah. What’s that?”

  “Well, mind you, this is all very confidential,” she said. “I mean I have been in the wrong jurisdiction, on my own time, working a case that the feds have told us to stay far away from.”

  “Look, Bobbie, who am I going to tell?”

  “Well, anyway, I found one of the ladies of the evenings near where the hit took place. You won’t believe this, but this is the one whore in California who has a photographic memory.”

  “Boy, I hope her johns don’t find out,” said Lee.

  “Right. It would tend to chill things a bit, wouldn’t it? Anyway, Miss Lorelei happened to recall seeing a car drive by that night before the shooting. She thought it was a potential client, but then she realized it was casing Warrington’s house and not checking her out at all.”

  “And she got the license number?” asked Lee.

  “Like I said, she doesn’t miss a trick.” Connors laughed at her own bad pun. “Sorry, but I had to say it. Anyway, she remembered the whole thing. Everything matches, the make and model, the license number, even the ID on the owner.”

  “Who is?”

  “A guy named Hans Dietrich,” she said. “A big German. He works for a company called AgriGenics. However, I also have found out that this guy is wanted in Germany in a very big way. Apparently, he has done away with numerous industrial-capitalist types in the name of the revolution, or some bullshit like that.”

  “Great. A real pro, then,” said Lee. “It sounds like a real good suspect.”

  “Yeah. I’ve got some more information coming from Germany. I should get it in the next few days. Then, I’ll have to figure out what to do about the feds, not to mention my own brass. But I thought you would be interested.”

  “You’re so right, Bobbie. Believe me. It’s music to my ears. Listen. If anything else comes up, call the reporter you talked to before. She’ll know where I am. I’ve got loads to tell you but let’s see how the Warrington thing goes first.”

  “Okay, Enzo. Listen, you be careful. If you do decide to turn yourself in, I’ll make sure you don’t get shot on the way to jail. I can’
t guarantee what happens after that.”

  “Thanks, Bobbie. I may have to take you up on that.”

  When she had hung up the phone, Bobbie Connors refilled her glass with the Clos Du Pegases chardonnay sitting on the coffee table and sat next to her partner Susan on the living room sofa. They watched the end of the local news.

  A half block away, in a blue Econoline van that hadn’t been moved for the past two days, a voice-activated tape recorder receiving transmissions from the small transmitter in Bobbie Conner’s telephone automatically clicked off.

  Chapter 35

  LEE WOKE UP with his mind already racing. He knew it would be useless to try to sleep again even though it was still dark. Sarah was still asleep beside him. She did not stir when Lee climbed out and put on a sweatshirt, his running shoes and a pair of gym shorts. He let himself out of the suite and took the elevator down to the street that was quiet for midtown Manhattan. Only the delivery trucks and the odd taxi were moving.

  As dawn broke and the streetlights began to switch off, Lee jogged along the dirty sidewalk up Eighth Avenue toward Central Park. He entered the park through the Columbus Circle entrance. Usually, the circle was a whirlwind of traffic, but at this hour Lee ignored the traffic signals, dodged a couple of taxis and was into the park.

  It had been three days since they had returned to New York. After dispatching the envelopes containing copies of the documents from Brent Donsen’s file, there was not much left for Lee to do but wait. He had tried unsuccessfully to ignore his sense of urgency, the feeling that time was running out. He took Sarah out to one of the musicals playing on Broadway. They went with Sendaki to see an afternoon movie. For meals, they had mostly brought in pizzas and takeout they could pick up in the neighborhood of the hotel.

  Lee could sense Sarah’s preoccupation, too, even when they made love which brought them only a passing, if wonderful, distraction from the strain of waiting.