Change Agent

by Daniel Suarez

  Belanger studied the faces of the two dozen members in her section. Satisfied she had their attention, Belanger continued. “We are joined today by Detective Inspector Aiyana Marcotte, head of Interpol’s Human Trafficking Task Force. She will bring you up to speed. Inspector Marcotte comes to Interpol from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation. She is an experienced field agent who, as you’ll soon learn, has unique expertise in global human trafficking networks. I expect your full attention to all she has to say—because it will change what we do.” Belanger nodded to someone in the audience. “Inspector Marcotte.”

  “Thank you, Inspector Belanger.” A statuesque African woman in her early thirties stood, her skin dark black, hair cropped short. She had a strong jawline and slender neck. Marcotte wore a dark blue business suit. Interpol identification hung around her neck on a lanyard, though Durand knew this was primarily for the convenience of staffers—the GCI’s security systems recognized all people within its walls.

  Belanger took a seat in the first row as Marcotte moved to the head of the room to stand before Interpol’s official seal. Marcotte gazed out at the expert agents and analysts.

  “In 2039, sixty million people attempted migrations northward and southward, away from regions stressed by drought, groundwater depletion, rising seas, corruption, war, or economic despair. By 2043, that number had swelled to seventy million. This year, the number is expected to increase yet again.

  “Trafficking human beings involves more than just transporting migrants over borders. When people leave behind everything they own and everything they know—language, culture, family—they become vulnerable to exploitation. And exploitation is primarily what human trafficking gangs engage in.”

  Marcotte gestured and a virtual map of the world’s continents appeared in midair. Opaque and vibrant, the image was beamed directly into the retinas of her audience by the room’s LFP—or light field projection—system. It closely tracked the eye movement of every person in the room, and was capable of beaming to a full audience.

  Marcotte gestured to the map of the world. Moving arrows illustrated paths of human migration away from equatorial climes.

  “You may be familiar with these migration routes. Prostitution, manual labor—or worse—awaits the unlucky at the end of these journeys. Stripped of their few possessions, many will have accrued massive ‘debts’ to the traffickers who smuggle them—debts that must be repaid wherever they arrive.”

  Marcotte waved and the map was replaced by a gallery of life-sized and extraordinarily lifelike 3D scenes of refugees from all around the world—Caucasians, Africans, Latinos, Arabs, Central and Southeast Asians—men, women, children. These life-sized, realistic forms brought the full emotional impact of poverty to the audience in a way mere photos could not. The victims, frozen in time, had seemingly been brought into the room, new scenes fading in as old ones faded out. A never-ending procession of hardship.

  Marcotte walked among the virtual migrants and stood. She gazed out at her audience.

  “I, too, was trafficked as a child. In Sudan, my mother sold me into slavery at the age of six—so that my brothers could attend school. I was sold to a wealthy family, consular officials, who later brought me with them to the United States as a domestic. And it was in their home in a gated suburb of Los Angeles that I worked seven days a week and was chained to a bed each night. It was only when neighbors became suspicious that the police were called and I was freed. The arresting female officer later adopted me. Raised me as her own. And it is her name that I took.”

  She met the eyes of her audience. “Slavery is not an abstraction to me. I have experienced it. I have firsthand knowledge of the despair it brings, and that it is not in our past. In fact, there are more slaves in existence now than at any point in human history. The question is: What are we going to do about it?”

  The entire room sat in stunned silence.

  “I’ve come to seek the assistance of the Genetic Crime Division. Your group is one of the few success stories in the fight against high-tech transnational crime. All of Interpol has much to learn from you.”

  She studied the faces in the room. “And today I’m going to show you evidence that the worlds of human trafficking and genetic crime are converging.”

  A brief susurration spread through her audience.

  She motioned and the images of refugees dissolved, soon replaced by a dozen full-body, hyperrealistic 3D booking scans of heavily tattooed criminals slowly rotating as if on a vertical rotisserie. Each virtual prisoner held a plaque displaying their name and booking number. The group was ethnically diverse—Caucasians, Africans, Asians, Latinos—hard-eyed men, plus a couple of women.

  “These are captured leaders of human trafficking gangs that my task force disrupted in the past year.” She pointed. “Asia; Africa; Russia; Europe; North, South, and Central America. These gangs all have one thing in common: they’ve been harvesting genetic material from the refugees they traffic—and selling that data to a single genediting cartel, a group known as the Huli jing. Does that name mean anything here in the GCD?”

  Durand nodded with others around him. “We’re familiar with the name, Inspector. They’re a black market, on-demand cloud computing service. Used by embryo mills for genetic modeling.”

  Yi added, “Their ties to human trafficking is news to us. You say they pay for DNA samples?”

  Marcotte nodded. “Digitized samples. The per-head bounty varies by country. We first learned of it from informants who were being required to extract DNA samples from refugees—saliva swabs mostly. Petabytes of genetic information were being sent from four continents to the Huli jing on a daily basis in exchange for cryptocurrency payments.”

  Durand took notes on a virtual surface. “It sounds like they’re building a global genetic database.”

  Marcotte nodded. “That’s precisely what the Huli jing is doing, Mr. Durand. In fact, we have evidence they were involved in the recent compromise of the Chinese National Genetic Registry—the largest digital storehouse of human genetic information in the world.”

  More murmurs spread through the audience.

  Marcotte paced. “The Huli jing is well funded, disciplined, and extremely low-profile—with a data-gathering operation that gives them globe-spanning influence over both illicit editing labs and human trafficking rings. So far they’ve fallen between the cracks because they don’t directly participate in either activity. But it’s time we realized how pivotal they are to both and put our heads together to deal with them. So who are the Huli jing?”

  Her entire audience was tapping notes into virtual devices now.

  “The name Huli jing refers to a mythological nine-tailed fox spirit from Chinese lore, an entity able to assume any form—able to perpetrate mischief while remaining undetected.” With a gesture, an inset image of a stylized fox appeared:

  “The fox spirit has long been a popular tattoo throughout Asia and the West. But don’t look for it among the Huli jing; unlike most gangs they themselves bear no distinguishing marks. No tattoos or brands. Like the mythological fox spirit, they prefer to remain hidden. How do we know?”

  She waved her hand and the nine-tailed fox image faded away—replaced by 3D morgue scans of a dozen dead men of many different races—their faces in various stages of decomposition. Nude, the bodies had not one tattoo among them. “Because until recently these men were members of the Huli jing’s inner circle—referred to as the Nine Tails—and they bore no gang symbols whatsoever.”

  Yi grunted. “They’re dead.”

  “Good eye, Sergeant. Yes, they are dead.”

  And then another set of equally dead faces appeared. And then another.

  “And so are these. And these. This last batch from just a month ago. None of the Nine Tails live long. Many were already dead before they’d been identified by our informants. We only discovered their identities later.�
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  Durand frowned in confusion. “Murdered by rival gangs?”

  “No. Poisoned by the leader of the Huli jing—Marcus Demang Wyckes. Our best guess is that he murders his inner circle on a regular basis.”

  Looks of confusion spread throughout the audience.

  Yi frowned. “Then who on earth would want to become one of the Nine Tails?”

  “An excellent question.”

  Marcotte pointed at the rogues gallery. “These men were all refugees. Perhaps they admired Wyckes—because, like them, Wyckes grew up in refugee camps. And yet he rose to become a major arms smuggler to a dozen insurgencies and terrorist groups. Wyckes gave these men a life of unimagined luxury and power for a brief time. Let them send significant sums of money to their extended families back home. And when they were no longer useful, he eliminated them. Apparently there is no shortage of desperate people willing to make that deal. Only one man always survives among the leadership of the Huli jing—and that’s Marcus Wyckes.”

  Durand watched the procession of morgue scans continue. Each dead face both a victim and a willing participant. “I don’t see how men with little education or training could manage—”

  “Neither do we, Mr. Durand. That’s what I’m hoping your group will help us explain. The Huli jing is a highly technical criminal organization with complex logistical needs, and yet somehow it continues to operate even though its leadership is constantly dying off. It’s like no other cartel we’ve seen. There’s no way to place high-level informants. Or to make arrests. Anyone who knows anything important soon dies. All except Wyckes.”

  Marcotte dismissed the dead men with a wave of her hand. “And as ruthless as Wyckes is with his own people—he is even more terrible to his enemies . . .”

  She gestured, and several gruesome, hyperrealistic crime-scene scans appeared onstage—as real as if they were in the room. Each depicted victims dead of some hemorrhagic agent, blood streaming from eyes, nose, mouth. The victims clearly died screaming. “The preferred weapon of the Huli jing is poison—specifically custom-designed synbiotoxins that are difficult to detect and which maximize the victim’s agony.”

  The audience reacted with muted disgust.

  Molecular diagrams appeared alongside each image. “We suspect these biotoxins are developed in Huli jing labs—possibly customized to exploit genetic weaknesses of individual targets, meaning doses can be microscopic. Government officials, police, journalists are all fair game—anyone who tries to interfere with the Huli jing’s business, which is developing and selling new genetic edits.”

  The entire room was furiously tapping notes.

  “They have, in effect, created a franchise operation—one where they do not directly operate genetic labs, but provide the logistical, research, and even marketing support to gangs that do. Huli jing partner labs benefit from access to the most sophisticated technology. They’ve even branded their select franchisees with a premium label.” Marcotte waved her hand and a three-sided knot replaced the crime-scene images:

  It rotated, showing the depth of the knot in three-dimensional space.

  “Do any of you recognize this symbol?”

  Durand, Yi, and most people in the division nodded. “Yes. That’s the logo for Trefoil Labs.”

  Marcotte walked around the image. “Trefoil is the public face of the Huli jing.”

  Durand captured the logo and pasted it into his notes. “That’s a very useful piece of intelligence, Inspector.”

  Marcotte nodded. “Their impressive edit library is expanding because they use massive photonic computing clusters to comb through oceans of global genetic data, discovering novel, commercially valuable mutations.”

  Durand: “They’re expanding the edits available to parents.”

  “Correct—meaning your challenge here at the GCD is going to grow.”

  Another murmur swept through the crowd.

  “More worrisome, the Huli jing is performing unethical research to confirm the viability of the edits their computer models predict . . .” With a wave of her hand, grainy two-dimensional photos appeared, depicting hideously deformed infants. Horrifying mutations.

  The audience reacted with gasps.

  “These images were taken by hidden camera. This is what Marcus Wyckes is capable of. The Huli jing is mapping not just the human genome, but epigenetics—gene expression—turning genes on and off. And they’re doing it with no regard for human suffering. They’ve also been paying human traffickers to steal the eggs of young women unfortunate enough to fall under their control. To provide raw material for their research.”

  Durand noticed smoldering rage in Belanger’s eyes as she looked up at the images.

  “They’re developing new edits and searching for commercially valuable mutations present in the population at large. And as you know, mutation laundering can revise the provenance of genetic IP—potentially turning single mutations into multibillion-dollar commercial products. Providing a strong economic incentive for governments to turn a blind eye to their activity.”

  Durand felt a burden lift from him as he exchanged looks with Yi. The sergeant had been right after all—their work was indeed critically important. More important than he’d ever guessed. He felt a renewed sense of purpose.

  Marcotte swept the images all away. “One individual lies at the center of all of this: Marcus Demang Wyckes. He is the single unchanging fact of the Huli jing—its founder and its reclusive leader. If we can locate him, I think we can break their organization—and remove its support of both illicit baby labs and human trafficking cartels.”

  Marcotte studied the faces in the room. “Here is the last known photograph of Marcus Wyckes . . .” Marcotte waved her hand and a two-dimensional, old-time police booking photo appeared. It showed a dark-haired, burly Eurasian teenager with tan skin. Still young, Wyckes was nonetheless physically intimidating, with broad shoulders, a square jaw, and menacing eyes. “This is from a 2029 arrest in Vietnam on weapon smuggling charges.”

  Yi piped in, “That picture is fifteen years old.”

  “Which is why DNA samples taken from Vietnamese and Australian authorities were so useful. We were able to extract his complete genetic sequence and model his physical appearance at his current age of thirty-eight. We’ve predicted his height within five centimeters precision, his BMI within eight kilograms of precision, his eye color, skin color, and his facial structure.” She looked out at her audience. “This is Marcus Wyckes now.”

  A virtual, photographically real computer model of Marcus Wyckes appeared bald-headed and nude, rotating before them, hands held at his side—a modesty filter blurring out his genitals. His facial expression neutral. One could clearly see the Malay-Australian ethnic mix with his tan skin. He looked physically powerful. Average height, but muscular, with a thick neck and slim waist even in his late thirties. Wyckes’s physical stats appeared in text alongside—height, weight, age, eye color, and more.

  “Yesterday my group issued a Red Notice for Wyckes’s capture in every Interpol member country. I’m hoping I can count on your assistance in that effort.”

  A strong chorus of assent spread throughout the room.

  Belanger stood. “Inspector, I speak for everyone here when I say we will do all within our power to assist you.”

  “Thank you, Inspector Belanger.” She turned to the other agents and analysts. “I thank you for your time.”

  Belanger turned to her division staff. “You will find the dossier for Marcus Wyckes, the Huli jing, and all relevant intelligence relating to their activities on the GCD Commons. Within the next forty-eight hours I expect to see action plans from group leaders on how to pursue the Huli jing—with an eye in particular on locating Marcus Wyckes. That is all.”

  As the briefing broke up, Marcotte approached Durand and Yi, extending her hand to Durand. “Mr. Durand.”

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p; Surprised, Durand met her eyes and shook firmly. “Great detective work, Inspector Marcotte. I hope you know you can count on us.”

  Marcotte nodded. “I have it on good authority that your data mining is the root of the GCD’s success against embryo labs.”

  Durand cast a glance at Belanger, who just now joined them.

  Belanger nodded the okay to Durand.

  He turned back to Marcotte. “I prefer the term geospatial analysis.”

  “Call it what you like, it means culling through oceans of data—not unlike the Huli jing.”

  “I think it’s very different. My work doesn’t involve genetic data at all. Just data on human activity.”

  “Where do you get it?”

  “We purchase it just like any marketing company—but instead of targeting customers, we’re looking for criminal enterprises.”

  Marcotte studied Durand for a moment. “I was told that early in your career you helped locate serial killers by modeling honey bees.”

  Durand was surprised she knew of his master’s thesis. Apparently Marcotte had done her homework. “I just found a useful behavior pattern shared by both.”

  “And what behavior do honey bees and serial killers have in common?”

  “Bee brains are fairly simple, so it’s easier to model how bees are recruited to flowers than it is to understand how serial killers are drawn toward victims. However, both follow certain elemental behaviors. Bees, for example, maintain a buffer zone around their hive—a zone where they do not forage—in order to avoid bringing unwanted attention to the location of their home. Likewise, the data indicates most serial killers kill in the region of their home, but not in the immediate vicinity of it, where they’re more likely to run into someone who recognizes them. Therefore, mapping the geographic spread of a killer’s victims helps to further pinpoint the home base of a killer—narrowing the search area with every murder. The mathematical model closely correlates with bee-foraging algorithms.”