Amanda Lester and the Pink Sugar Conspiracy
Page 66
Professor Kindseth helped them repeat the process they’d used to examine the pink sugar. As expected there was no virus in the white sugar.
“Well, then,” said Amanda, carefully rebagging the samples, “maybe the white sugar is the before sugar and the pink is the after sugar.”
“Or vice versa,” said Simon. “Sugar senior and sugar junior. Sugar the elder and sugar the younger. Do you think there’s a sugar the third?”
“I don’t know, and this isn’t making any sense,” she cried, stomping her foot and burying her face in her hands.
“Hang on. Maybe it is.”
“What do you mean?” she said, removing her hands from her face and pushing her hair out of her eyes.
“Maybe it’s making sense,” said Simon. “We were just talking about cartels and organized crime, right?”
Professor Kindseth seemed to take quite an interest in this idea. Amanda could tell he was listening even more carefully, but he didn’t say a word.
“Yes,” said Amanda. “Don’t tell me you’re going to name these two sugar capo and sugar made man or something.”
“Ha! That’s a good one. Wish I’d thought of it. No. But what if,” he started pacing like a detective with a hunch, “this hypothetical sugar cartel is contaminating the sugar on purpose?”
“You mean to kill people?” said Amanda, horrified.
“Not necessarily,” he said waving a finger. “Mass murder wouldn’t get the cartel anywhere. They’d target specific people if they wanted to kill someone.”
“Okay, then—oh! I see what you mean. They’re contaminating the sugar in order to control the supply. They taint a lot of sugar and buy up the rest. Then they sell it at high prices.”
“Exactly. Ipso facto.” He was really getting into that logic class.
“Boy, that seems like a lot of work,” she said.
“Yes, but look at how much money they could make. Say they can double the price of sugar, maybe even triple it. Hang on. Let me look up how much the sugar industry is worth. Oh, look here. This site says that 160 million metric tonnes of sugar are produced every year. That’s for the whole world. So if the price of sugar is $.18 per pound, as it has been at some times, and it doubles, then the price will be $.36 per pound. A metric tonne is 2204 pounds, mmm mmm, then the price of a tonne goes from $396.72 to $793.44, times 160 million means . . .”
“More than a hundred and twenty billion dollars!” said Amanda. “That’s a profit of sixty billion smackeroos. Give or take a little.”
“Wow! That’s a lotta moolah,” said Simon. “Of course, we’re assuming the cartel will control the whole world’s sugar supply, which is impossible.” He took off his glasses and wiped them with his fingers, then replaced them. They were still dirty, maybe more so.
“Even so, that’s a lot of incentive,” she said.
“I’ll say.”
“So let’s say they introduce this virus into the white sugar and manage to double the price. And let’s say they then control just one percent of the world’s supply. That’s still 1.2 billion dollars,” she said.
“Yes. Plenty of incentive. Want to go with this theory?” said Simon.
“Sounds good to me. Now what do we do?”
“Test it.”
“How do we do that?” she said.
“We have to find your father.”
Professor Kindseth grinned at the two students. “You two get an A plus!”