The Scientist and the Spy

by Mara Hvistendahl

  Because it was close to Chicago, Monee attracted a fair number of urbanites interested in living out their days golfing and organic gardening. But the house had been on the market for four years, and it needed serious work. City folk tended to reconsider when they got their first whiff of pig manure. “Take the money and run, honey,” Ann urged Bill. “Take the money and RUN.” They scrambled to sign the paperwork that the men faxed to the Luxor.

  Later, back in Illinois, the Rabs sat down at a table with Robert Mo and a lawyer. Robert wrote a check for the entire $600,000, and the property deed was transferred to Kings Nower North America Co., Inc.

  Learning of these developments at the Des Moines field office, Mark wondered whether DBN might own other farms. He had his team query land purchases in farm states across the Midwest. He soon discovered that Robert owned a plot of land on a forgotten gravel road forty minutes west of Des Moines, a short drive from the seed shop Crossroads Ag and from the storage space where he had been observed stashing corn.

  Mark consulted with prosecutors and seed breeding experts. He theorized that perhaps DBN planned to use the two farms to chase the self, or isolate the female inbred parent from the Monsanto and DuPont seed lines he had purchased from seed dealers. This was a fairly efficient way of reverse engineering seed. Instead of shipping whole bags of seed back to China, DBN’s scientists could simply plant them in the Midwest, wait a few months for harvest, and identify any rogue female inbreds by their shorter height, then send the seed from the plants to China. The Iowa farm lacked a house or outbuildings, so it made sense that Robert would need a storage locker nearby.

  But the harvest was a long way off, and Robert was still shipping corn seed to Asia. A week after the Chicago traffic stop, Robert, Ye Jian, and Lin Yong pulled into a suburban strip mall, parking near a store called Happiness Is Pets. They hauled five boxes into the FedEx next door and paid for their shipment. After they left, an FBI agent intercepted the packages.

  This time the FBI had a warrant to search the packages, which together weighed in at 250 pounds. An inspection revealed that the boxes contained a total of forty-two Ziploc bags of seed, each labeled with a unique four-digit code. The recipient address was a logistics company in Hong Kong.

  Mark didn’t want to let potentially stolen seed leave the country, so he devised a novel solution: replace it with outdated seed that looked identical. Seed companies’ products have distinctive shapes and colors. Pioneer seed is typically dull red and almost round. Other seeds might be purple or yellow and more flat. To make sure the switch was believable, the FBI had to get the replacement seed from Pioneer. After speaking with prosecutors in the U.S. attorney’s office and with company representatives, Mark settled on using a ten-year-old Pioneer product. He just had to figure out how to transport it from Pioneer’s headquarters in Iowa to the FedEx outside Chicago in time to make the shipment’s deadline.

  The FBI operates a fleet of low-flying, single-engine aircraft, registered under fake company names, and Mark enlisted one of the bureau pilots to help. As the pilot flew to the Des Moines airport, preparing to jet the seed to Chicago, Mark drove to Pioneer’s headquarters in Johnston to fetch the decoy seed. On his way back, as he headed toward the Des Moines airport, Mark got word that the pilot could spend only a few minutes on the ground because he was close to reaching his flight hours for the day. If the pilot lingered, he would be grounded and the replacement seed would have to fly the next day—which would mean delaying the arrival of the FedEx shipment in Hong Kong and possibly arousing suspicion among employees at DBN.

  Mark looked at the time and realized he had ten minutes to make a journey that normally takes around half an hour. Flicking on his lights and siren, he raced down Interstate 35, arriving at the airport just in time. He passed the seed to the pilot, who rushed the package to Chicago. On the other end, agents meticulously filled forty-two Ziploc bags with old Pioneer product and laid the bags in the FedEx boxes, taking care to arrange them exactly as they had been found. Soon the decoy seed was soaring over the Pacific on its way to Hong Kong. The shipment arrived on schedule.

  * * *

  • • •

  AS THE INVESTIGATION EXPANDED, Mark’s team began relying on FBI aircraft for another purpose: surveilling Robert and others from the air. The FBI’s planes are equipped with high-tech cameras and in select instances with cell phone tracking technology, and they sometimes circle locations for hours, keeping a suspect in view. The aircraft took the pressure off Mark and other agents on the ground as they tried to evade detection in corn country. Whenever a pilot was involved, Mark knew he could drop back and watch Robert from afar. But the increased surveillance also jacked up the cost of the investigation—and raised the stakes for Mark if the government failed to apprehend the targets.

  The FBI also began collecting evidence using a secret warrant authorized by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. FISA warrants were designed for targeting terrorists and foreign government spies, and they permit broad electronic and physical surveillance, including covert “sneak and peek” searches—meaning agents could search Robert’s house or property without his knowledge and intercept entire cell phone calls. This is likely how the FBI went from tracking the location of Robert’s cell phone and the numbers that he called to capturing entire phone conversations.

  One day in May 2012, the FBI intercepted a phone conversation between Robert and Lily Cheng. Mark had continued to track the insiders whom Robert was believed to be cultivating at seed companies. The relationship between Robert and Cheng was often ambiguous.

  In this particular conversation, Robert told her about the arrival of Ye Jian and Lin Yong in America. “They came, uh, to map the roads in the U.S., so to speak,” Robert said in the FBI’s translation, clearing his throat. He complained about the time he had to spend training the men, without elaborating on exactly what he was training them to do.

  Then he explained that Chinese leaders had placed a lot of emphasis on developing the seed industry, mentioning that the vice minister of agriculture had recently visited DBN’s facilities. “I told Dr. Li, when I had a discussion with him—I said, ‘The leader didn’t come without a purpose. He wasn’t here to have fun. He was here to point out the direction for you.’” That direction included the development of genetically modified seeds, he added.

  “Oh,” Cheng said.

  “‘He was there to point out the direction for you,’” Robert repeated. “Don’t think that he was there to waste time—to just chitchat with you.”

  “Right. Right.”

  “All the leaders have their purpose.”

  “Mm.” As Robert went on about the company’s government connections, Cheng mostly just listened. Their talk eventually turned to DBN’s legal partnership with Stine, and about how lucrative the swine industry could be.

  A thousand grains of sand framework would suggest that Cheng was a tentacle of the Chinese state and that because of her ethnicity she should be looked at with more suspicion. And yet if Cheng was deeply involved in a plot to steal corn, the conversation didn’t prove it. Robert may have simply been making the case that DBN had influence in China, which was not an unusual thing to argue to a business partner. Mark didn’t speak Chinese, and while the FBI had Chinese-speaking analysts on the case, there were quirks in the bureau’s translations.

  Then one day at the Monee farm, FBI agents noticed a white man—a man in a Cubs hat and jeans, with a pen tucked neatly into his breast pocket.

  SEVENTEEN

  SUMMER 2012

  Kevin trudged from the cornfield to his farmhouse, dripping with sweat. Behind him the horizon stretched emptily, fields of soy and corn extending as far as the eye could see. He had spent the morning slipping paper bags over ear shoots on his corn, preparing the plants for pollination. These were basically corn condoms, designed to protect the females from being fertilized by unwanted pollen. He wore a plaid
shirt with the sleeves ripped off, a mesh apron heavy with tools, and cutoff shorts. The job brought the risk of leaf scratches, so to protect his cheeks Kevin had let his stubble grow, taking as his inspiration Don Johnson’s white-suited, slick-haired character on Miami Vice.

  The day was on track to be the hottest of the year, and already at 10:00 A.M. the temperature soared. Kevin was parched. He walked into the house, letting the screen door thud behind him, and opened the fridge to pour a glass of lemonade. He drank it standing in the kitchen in his dirty clothes. He debated whether to go back to the fields to start in on weed control or take a nap. The nap was tempting.

  “Kevin!” his wife, Kathy, called from the adjoining great room. “Are you expecting visitors?”

  “No.”

  “There’s a black SUV coming up the driveway.”

  The car thundering over the drive had tinted windows. Kevin puzzled this over. People in the area didn’t go out in heat like this unless they had to. And the farmhouse was on an isolated road some distance from town. He typically directed people there by giving them the GPS coordinates and parking his blue Buick LeSabre to indicate where to turn.

  The SUV slowed to a stop, and two men wearing dark sunglasses and navy blue sport coats got out. Kevin opened the screen door.

  “Are you Kevin T. Montgomery?” one of the men asked.

  “Yes—?” Kevin said. He marveled at the inclusion of his middle initial.

  “We’re from the FBI.” The man flashed his badge. “We understand that you went to China in October 2011. We want to know everywhere you went, everyone you talked to, and what you talked about.”

  The men were white and in their early thirties, clean-shaven and physically fit. They looked like something straight out of the movies. In the movies, though, the FBI was out to catch bad guys. In the real-life version playing out on his farmhouse deck, he had done nothing wrong. He had his qualms about DBN, but he hardly suspected that anyone there had committed a crime meriting investigation by the FBI.

  “OK,” Kevin said, confused. He considered whether to call his cousin, who was a lawyer. He concluded that involving him would be interpreted as a sign that he was guilty. Whatever the visit was about, he figured, cooperating could only work to his advantage.

  The house was a mess, and there was no air-conditioning, so he led the men to a table on the deck. They sat in the meager shade provided by a hackberry tree—Kevin in his cutoff shorts, his face smudged with dirt, and the men from the FBI in their stiff jackets.

  China, Kevin thought, as a farm cat rubbed up against his bare sweaty legs. “What do you want to know?”

  The men gave him little direction, so Kevin started by talking about the friend who had introduced him to researchers at the agricultural institute in Changchun that was his principal host. Then, in excruciating detail, he went through the details of his China trip, beginning with his departure from O’Hare Airport. By the time he got to his arrival in Changchun, he was thirsty again.

  “Can I offer you a cold drink?” Kevin asked the agents. “Water or lemonade?”

  The lead agent said they could only accept drinks if the container was unopened, so Kevin walked to the kitchen and poured a glass of lemonade for himself.

  He returned to the deck and resumed his story. He talked about the salted duck eggs that were served for breakfast his first morning in Changchun, about the people he met there and the laboratories he toured. He explained that a friend from Iowa State had joined him for the trip. He recounted how on that first afternoon, as they fought off jet lag, their hosts took the two men to a museum devoted to the Japanese occupation of Manchuria. While browsing the exhibits, the visitors figured out that their fathers had served in similar divisions during World War II.

  The agents appeared uninterested until Kevin got to the next day and explained that he had given a presentation on seed breeding in Changchun. They asked to see it.

  Kevin retrieved his laptop and set it up on the table. The outline alone took up three slides. In China, his inborn thoroughness was amplified by the need to translate everything into Mandarin. Presenting the file had taken him three and a half hours.

  The presentation was highly technical, and the agents soon looked lost. Kevin was used to seeing people’s eyes glaze over when he talked about plant science. But, he thought, if they were investigating anything connected to corn breeding, the men were remarkably uninformed. Among the terms he had to explain was “inbred seed.”

  He recounted the rest of his schedule in Changchun, detailing discussions about weed control he had with other breeders, the trip he took with his hosts to a hot springs resort, and the boozy dinner that followed. Kevin treated conversations about details like an endurance sport. For an FBI agent looking for a friendly source with the patience to explain scientific concepts, he was ideal. For an agent hoping for a slip or an omission, he was a nightmare.

  After an hour or two, the agents took off their jackets, but still they would not accept anything to drink. As he knocked back two more glasses of lemonade, Kevin could see that they were fading. Finally he got to the end of his China trip, to his visit to Beijing to see DBN’s headquarters. When he talked about arriving at the airport and meeting Mao Li, DBN’s assistant, the agents perked up.

  “Tell us about Mao Li and the company she works for,” said the lead agent.

  Kevin had not told the agents that Mao Li worked for a company, or that she was a woman.

  Now the lead agent asked for a host of minor details. How much did the hotel cost? Who paid for the room? As he took notes, the other agent watched Kevin intently, searching, the agronomist later reflected, for a shift in facial expression or body language. It was only when Kevin said the name Robert Mo that the agents leaned in and began scribbling intensely.

  “Did Mr. Mo ever give you any seed?” the lead agent asked.

  “No.”

  “Did you ever give Mr. Mo any seed?”

  “No.” Kevin explained that the hybrids he sourced for DBN had all been planted at the Monee farm.

  “Were you ever asked to obtain or acquire seed or technology which you were not authorized to have on Mr. Mo’s behalf?”

  A wave of nausea swept over Kevin as he realized that the FBI was investigating his primary contact at DBN. He managed not to vomit, but only because he had not consumed anything except lemonade since breakfast.

  The questioning lasted for more than five hours. After a while, the lead agent’s questions lost their edge, and Kevin intuited that the men actually believed that he had no knowledge of illegal activity. But Robert, it seemed, was in deep trouble. It was only toward the end of the interview that Kevin got a hint of what Robert had done.

  “Mr. Mo,” the agent who talked said, “has an unhealthy interest in Pioneer seeds and technology.”

  Then he made a pitch. He asked Kevin to keep working for DBN—but to report back to the FBI with details. “We’re not asking you to spy,” the agent told him. “Just go about your business.”

  It was precisely the sort of appeal that is made when one is, in fact, asking someone to spy.

  EIGHTEEN

  SUMMER 2012

  Ye Jian gazed out the window of the Chevy Tahoe. It was just before Labor Day in 2012, and the fields were mature and just a few weeks away from harvest. The air that reached his flared nostrils smelled faintly of manure.

  The view had been like this for miles, with only the texture of the road, the occasional switch from asphalt to gravel or back to asphalt, to break the punishing monotony. To go this long without seeing other people in China, you had to venture far from the congested cities of the east, to Inner Mongolia or the Himalayas. And yet here were he and Lin Yong, his DBN colleague, just a few hours from Chicago. Finally a group of cyclists sped into view. “Oh, my,” Ye Jian said in Mandarin. “These people are keen on sports. Look at their cool bikes.”
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  Lin Yong seemed grateful for the small talk. “The bikes even have flashing lights at the tail,” he mused. His buzzed hair came to a peak in the center of his forehead, just above his teardrop-shaped birthmark.

  “Those are required,” Ye Jian said, with unjustified authority. “First, you have to wear a helmet. Second, your bike has to have such a taillight.” Ye Jian was the bigger presence, with a chubby build and an outsized personality. Although he was younger than Lin Yong, most of the time—and the men did not lack for time—he played teacher to his colleague’s willing student.

  In Chicago they had done some sightseeing, but in rural Illinois the diversions that existed were reminders of unfinished business. Hoopeston, home of a sixteen-foot-tall corn stalk sculpture, was giving away fifty tons of corn in its annual town festival that very weekend. Dr. Li wanted only the cutting-edge varieties found in research fields, though, so slowly, driving at the bare minimum speed, Ye Jian and Lin Yong traced a squiggly path across Illinois, making a dozen or so pit stops to collect ears of corn outside obscure towns: Arrowsmith, Foosland, Rantoul.

  Along the way, their banter spanned a wide range of topics. They gossiped about their co-workers, talked about corruption in the Chinese government, and established what to do if stopped by police while in a field (claim that they were students working on surveys). Eventually, they plunged into that conversational hole that anyone who has ever been on a road trip has experienced. They talked to fill the silence. They quoted liberally from Jackie Chan movies, discussed why Walmart opens when it does, and speculated about why Americans drive such large vehicles. “Americans buy big cars because they often need to carry stuff,” Lin Yong ventured, momentarily forgetting that he and Ye Jian were carrying a load of corn in the trunk.

  * * *

  • • •

  A FEW DAYS LATER, Ye Jian and Lin Yong pulled up alongside a field in Earlville, a town of 1,600 people in north central Illinois. The sky was overcast, with intermittent rain. Meticulously they collected whole ears of corn, tagging them so that they wouldn’t get mixed up with the other samples sitting in the back of the Tahoe.