When You Can't Stop (Harper McDaniel Book 2)

by James W. Hall

  “We forget,” Adrian said, “terrorists didn’t pop up out of nowhere on 9/11. They’ve been killing good guys and innocents since forever.”

  “Is this relevant to anything in particular?”

  “Jeez, does every damned thing have to be relevant?”

  “I guess not.”

  The university was housed in a dignified three-story building of limestone and granite on the far edge of a grand plaza that featured a fountain so large it would have taken ten minutes to swim across.

  They found Dr. Mugnozza in a sunny corner office on the second floor in the food science–and-agriculture wing. She was sitting behind her messy desk, making marginal notations on a page full of numbers and formulas. A few feet away a lab table held an array of chemical testing trays and half a dozen electronic devices Harper couldn’t identify.

  Adrian tapped on her open door and introduced himself, and she waved them in.

  “This is Harper McDaniel, the woman I mentioned.”

  Mugnozza rose and shook their hands and directed them to comfortable leather chairs. She was a tall, broad-shouldered woman in her late forties with long, dark hair and bangs that brushed her eyebrows. Her earrings were bulky and bejeweled and matched the delicate pink of her lacy blouse. A professor who dressed with style and attention to detail.

  “Thank you for giving us a few minutes,” Adrian said.

  “It is my pleasure. You had a question about the olive trees. First, I must warn you my specialization is in research on the microchemistry of plant structure, but I know a few general things about the olive groves and trees. What is your question?”

  Adrian nodded to Harper. She drew the withered branch from her purse and set it on the desk before the professor, and alongside it she placed the dead insect.

  Dr. Mugnozza stiffened.

  “Is this a spittlebug?” Harper said.

  “These two items were together?” the professor asked.

  “Bug and branch, yes. Together.”

  The professor came to her feet and opened a desk drawer and withdrew a yellow pencil. She used the pencil’s point to slide the branch closer to her. She bent forward, examined it, then looked up and eyed them more cautiously than before. Her graciousness was gone, brisk and businesslike now.

  “Where did you find this?”

  “The branch?” Harper said.

  “The branch, yes. Where?”

  “In a grove an hour outside Bari.”

  “What grove?”

  “Why?”

  Mugnozza walked over to her laboratory and returned with a pair of stainless steel forceps. She pinched up the stem with the forceps and carried it over to her laboratory workstation. She snipped off a piece of withered leaf.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m afraid you wouldn’t understand,” the professor said.

  “Try us,” Adrian said.

  “I’ll be making a real-time isothermal DNA amplification assay that utilizes recombinase polymerase amplification technology. That will facilitate rapid nucleic acid—either DNA or RNA—amplification at an operating temperature of thirty-nine degrees centigrade using a single crude sample extract.”

  “You win,” Adrian said. “We don’t understand.”

  “I wouldn’t think so.”

  “And this will tell you what?” Harper said.

  “I hope it will determine whether this is an innocuous sample of one of the region’s common ills or something more serious.”

  “How long will this take?” Harper said.

  “We should know something in thirty minutes. But if it turns out to be what it appears to be, more extensive testing will be required.”

  Adrian’s cell phone chirped. He got up, went to the door, and stood just outside in the hallway to answer it. He listened for several moments, then said, “Wait a minute, wait a minute.”

  He came back into the room and motioned for Harper to join him.

  “How’s your Portuguese?”

  “Lousy,” she said.

  “That makes it twice as good as mine.” He handed her the phone. “This is Inês Campos, Lucia Campos’s mother. She’s upset.”

  Harper took the phone. “Olá. Meu português é muito ruim.” Letting Inês know upfront that Harper wasn’t fluent.

  When Inês responded, something in her manner immediately reminded Harper of Nick’s lover, Daniela Aguilar. She had the same patrician intonation, a woman rarely ruffled, dignified, and polite to a fault.

  But despite Inês’s precise delivery, Harper’s meager Portuguese couldn’t keep up.

  After the first few sentences, Harper said, “Por favor, vá mais devagar.” Asking her to slow down.

  “I try,” Inês said.

  Minutes later, in spite of Inês’s awkward English and Harper’s faulty Portuguese, the horror of Inês’s tale became all too clear. In closing, Harper said she was very, very sorry and that she would let Adrian know and perhaps he could find out more about the situation soon.

  “It’s not good,” Adrian said as she handed the phone back. “I can tell that much.”

  His brown eyes were dulled over, a stoic clench in his jaw.

  Harper told him what Inês had said. Lucia Campos was dead. Her body had been found in a condo in Milan that once belonged to her father but had been left to Lucia. It appeared she’d hanged herself, but evidence at the scene suggested otherwise. The Italian police were treating it as a suspicious incident. Also, just yesterday, Inês had received a folder of documents in the mail that Lucia sent from Milan with instructions that they be passed on to Naff.

  “Those fucking bastards,” he said. “Bixel, Albion, they did this. They snoop on the employees day and night. They must’ve known exactly what she was up to.”

  “I’m sorry. You obviously cared about her.”

  “I did,” he said. “We were close once.”

  Standing nearby, Dr. Mugnozza cleared her throat.

  “Sorry to disturb,” she said. “But I must call and report this immediately. Please stay where you are.”

  She started for the phone on her desk, but Harper stepped in front of her, blocking her way.

  “Report it to who?”

  The professor raised her hand as though to fend off a blow. “Who are you people? Why are you here?”

  “For information,” Adrian said. “So this is serious?”

  “Serious? Actually, I would call it dire,” the professor said, keeping a wary eye on Harper. “As I said, I will need to do additional testing on a more sophisticated diagnostic platform, but at this point, I can say with little doubt this olive branch is infected with the bacterium Xylella fastidiosa.”

  “How bad is that?” Adrian said.

  “Bad, no,” the professor said. “‘Bad’ is not an adequate description. Xylella fastidiosa has never been seen outside of the United States, where it is endemic. It would be quite alarming to find it in Europe. Such a disease could be particularly devastating in an area like Puglia that is essentially one large olive grove.”

  “Sit down, please,” Harper said. “Just tell us more about this, then you can go ahead and report it all you want.”

  Dr. Mugnozza took several seconds to search Harper’s eyes, as if weighing her potential for menace. Whatever she saw gave her no assurance to press forward.

  “Please,” Harper said. “We mean you no harm. We just want information, that’s all.”

  The professor lifted her head and drew in a long, calming breath, and a moment later the tension seeped from her face. Harper stepped out of her way, and Mugnozza returned to her desk chair.

  “I will need to cancel my labs for the rest of the day,” she said, motioning to her office phone. “Will that be acceptable?”

  “Parlo la tua lingua, quindi non fare niente di stupido,” Harper said, just to let the professor know that Harper spoke the language, so don’t try anything silly.

  When Mugnozza finished the call, she settled back into her chair.

/>   “All right,” she said. “You want information, then I will tell you a few things. Olive quick decline syndrome is a disease caused by the bacterium Xylella fastidiosa. The bacterium invades the plant and multiplies inside the plant’s xylem vessels. Those are the vessels that transport water and nutrients from the roots to the shoots and leaves. The bacteria block these vessels, which in turn causes the condition you see before you. Withering and desiccation of the terminal shoots, which in time expands to the rest of the canopy, all of which eventually causes the tree to collapse and die.”

  Adrian said, “Serious business.”

  “How long does the process take?” Harper said. “From initial infection to the death of the tree.”

  “As I said, it is called quick decline syndrome. It is quick.”

  “Days, weeks, months?”

  “The health of the tree determines that. But typically, the bacterium is established in the third or fourth month, which means the tree is dying, though it may show no signs. A while longer before the canopy begins to wither and turn brown, somewhere in the sixth or seventh month.”

  “Six, seven months,” Adrian said. “That doesn’t seem quick.”

  The professor clicked her tongue at Adrian.

  “For a tree that is hundreds of years old, six months is nothing.”

  “Timeline fits,” Harper said to Adrian. “Lets Bixel put her plan in play. Acquire the groves, hire Dickens to let loose the insects. Set up the dark pool, complete the sale of the groves to Manfred, then shortly after the sale’s complete, he discovers his trees are dying.”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t follow,” the professor said.

  “And the bug, what is it?” Adrian pointed to the black insect.

  “It appears you already know the answer. Philaenus spumarius. The meadow spittlebug. It is common in this area, where it thrives primarily on the olive. It is also a known vector of Xylella fastidiosa.”

  “Meaning these bugs transmit the disease?” Adrian asked.

  “Correct.”

  “What would happen if someone brought spittlebugs into Puglia, bugs that were already exposed to this bacteria, and released those bugs into the grove?”

  “That would be illegal, a serious crime.”

  “But say someone did it anyway.”

  “Why would anyone do such a thing?”

  “What would happen?”

  “All right. The invasive insects would mate with the local species and, in all likelihood, would spread the bacterium in all directions. The spittlebug does not fly long distances, but wind carries them easily.”

  “Is there a cure?” Harper asked.

  “Cut the infected tree down and incinerate the remains. Cut down every tree nearby and burn them to create a containment zone. Continue to cut and burn until the outbreak is contained.”

  “Does that work?” she asked.

  “It might,” the professor said. “But so far, to my knowledge, it never has.”

  THIRTY-SIX

  Bari, Italy

  While the professor phoned the authorities to notify them of the appearance of Xylella fastidiosa in a local grove, Harper and Adrian went into the hallway to talk.

  “If Knobel hears about this, he’ll back out of the deal, call off the closing,” Harper said. “Everything falls apart—Albion, Bixel, they won’t show up. Do we want that?”

  “Do we have a choice?”

  “We can walk out of here now, leave the professor with that branch. She has no idea where it came from.”

  “And let this wildfire burn out of control?”

  “At this point, what’s a few more days?”

  “I’m not a tree hugger, but this could be an every-minute-counts situation.”

  “We have different priorities, then.”

  “Jesus, you just can’t stop, can you? Not for a second.”

  “Not until Bixel and Albion are gone.”

  Adrian massaged his forehead, then raked his fingers through his black hair.

  “Regarding hate,” he said. “Seems to me if Bixel is willing to release this apocalyptic bug in the middle of all these orchards, risk wiping out every goddamn olive tree in Italy just to ruin Knobel’s business, I’d say the motive here is something worse than hate.”

  “Malevolence,” Harper said. “Evil.”

  “Going biblical on me? I think evil might be too broad to count as motive.”

  “You familiar with the seven deadly sins, Naff?”

  “The nuns had their way with me for years. So yeah. Gluttony, lust, greed, pride, wrath. How many’s that?”

  “You’re three short,” Harper said. “But pick any of those if you’re looking for motive. Or maybe all of them mixed together. As if there could be some reasonable explanation for something like this. And what difference does it make if we give the right name to what’s driving Bixel or Albion? Whatever it is, it’s about as rational as what’s driving that bacteria. It’s written in their genes. Simple as that.”

  “Listen,” Adrian said. “Motive might not matter to you, but—call me old-fashioned—I like to know how things work, cause and effect. Why people act how they do. It keeps me sane. If I give up trying to figure out how things fit together, the cogs and gears, the machinery of things, I don’t know if I could get out of bed in the morning.”

  Harper was searching for a snappy reply to bring the lofty exchange back to earth when her phone screeched with a video-cam alert.

  “Action in the hotel room,” she said as she drew out the phone.

  Adrian leaned close.

  Dressed in a bright top and dark leggings with a scarf hanging loose around her neck, Gerda entered the room, walked a few feet, then stopped. Behind her, another person came into the frame, a man in a dark hoodie and jeans, carrying a bundle tied up with string. His face was turned to the side, the hoodie concealing his features.

  “Well, well,” Adrian said. “Special delivery. I’d recognize that posture anywhere.”

  “You know him?”

  “Tell you for sure in a minute.”

  The guy in the hoodie took the package to the desk near the doorway and set it down. Gerda said something to him and pointed at a spot across the room, and the guy picked up the package and walked out of view of the camera.

  A minute later the guy came back and stood looking into the room, his face to the camera.

  “My loyal assistant,” Adrian said. “Derek Müller.”

  “Let’s go,” Harper said. “This could be our shot.”

  She broke into a trot down the hallway and Adrian followed. Behind them, Dr. Mugnozza called out for them to wait. They couldn’t just run off. She needed to know where the infected branch came from. Harper could still hear her shouting as they hustled down the far stairway.

  In minutes, they were back at the hotel’s front entrance, Adrian panting, Harper drawing smooth, easy breaths. In the lobby, Adrian said, “Split up? You take the elevator, I’ll use the stairs.”

  “Go,” Harper said.

  The elevator was empty and waiting. When the doors closed, she checked the video app, but her phone had lost its signal.

  As she rode to the fourth floor, Harper stared at her reflection in the mirrored panel beside the buttons. There was a hollow, haunted look in her eyes, and the color had leached from her face as if she’d been trapped in an underground cavern for months, starved of human contact, caught in a swoon of make-believe.

  Was it the murky lighting and the distortion of tinted glass, or had Harper truly become the soulless body double looking back at her? Had she so completely remade herself into a bitter, avenging angel consumed by her need for retribution that her old self had dwindled to nothing but this bloodless silhouette?

  The doors opened and she stumbled forward, got her balance, then turned right and rounded the corner to the long corridor. Her room and the adjoining one were halfway down. She tried to erase the image of herself in the elevator glass, but it dogged her as she jogged the last few yar
ds to the door of the room.

  At the far end of the hallway, Adrian appeared and called out to her.

  “We just missed them.”

  He trotted down the hall and joined her at the door. He bent forward, put his hands on his knees, and took a minute to catch his breath.

  She waited, eyes closed, head bowed, still recovering from the ghastly reflection.

  “I was on my way to the stairwell and saw them through the side doors getting into a black Volkswagen and driving off.”

  “Did they see you?”

  “No way.”

  “Let’s have a look.”

  She entered her own room, unbolted the adjoining door, and swung the second interior door open. The package was prominently displayed on the back of the couch in the suite’s sitting room. They’d watched Gerda nix the first place Müller had chosen. Apparently, she’d picked a better spot for dramatic effect.

  “Doesn’t look like a bomb,” he said.

  “Just to be sure, stand in the other room. Okay?”

  As Adrian moved back to the doorway, Harper looked around the room, then selected the copper ice bucket. She moved to within ten feet of the package, slung the bucket at it, then ducked behind a chair. The bucket crashed into the package, knocked it off its perch, and both bucket and package tumbled to the floor.

  From the way the parcel rolled and bounced, she could tell it was lightweight and soft sided.

  Harper picked up the bundle and examined it. The white wrapping paper was several layers thick, disguising the contents. But it felt spongy and weighed less than a pound.

  “It’s not a bomb,” she said. “And it’s not documents.”

  She handed it over to Adrian. “It’s for you,” she said. “Your name.”

  Adrian ripped off the string and tore away the layers of paper.

  When he reached the item inside, his face blanched. He clamped down hard on nothing.

  “What the hell, Adrian?”

  He held it out, a brown-and-white stuffed animal with floppy ears.