Alcorn was interrogated for nearly five hours. They had removed a small bottle of lavender oil that he declared he had stolen from Cooper’s for his wife’s unregistered massage business. The oil was not contaminated, so they had nothing against Hugo, though they did tell him that the IRS would be informed about his wife’s undeclared earnings.
“Might she go to prison?” enquired Alcorn.
“Yes, we’ll see to it that she does, after the performance she gave today,” stated Colosmo, before involuntarily adding a throwaway comment. “You’re a very lucky man.”
Alcorn looked up at his interrogator, a subtle smile betrayed by his eyes.
“Will she be away for very long?”
Was this a question, or a hopeful plea?
***
At the residence of Samuel O’Hagan, on Old Green Bay Road, Pleasant Prairie, the FBI officers just knocked on the door. O’Hagan was unemployed and at home all day. A bumptious, over-confident man, he wouldn’t stop quoting his rights, and when he stepped too close to SA Colosmo, he crossed the line. He was quickly handcuffed and escorted to one of the FBI vehicles whilst his home was searched. O’Hagan lived with his mother who was picked up from the Wendy’s burger bar where she worked. In this family O’Hagan held the power himself, Emily O’Hagan, the mother, was completely dominated by her son, who stayed at home drinking alcohol for most of the day while she went to work. Emily O’Hagan had two jobs, one at Wendy’s during the day and the second as a cleaner at Concordia University-Wisconsin just a mile up Green Bay Road. O’Hagan was a slob dressed in boxer shorts and a white cotton vest that sported stains from the Budweiser he had been drinking. He too stank of stale sweat, but with the addition of stale cigarettes, instantly Colosmo thought that Samuel O’Hagan and Alison Alcorn would make a great pair
The team went through his house with a fine-tooth comb but there was no suggestion of his involvement in the influenza attack. Samuel O’Hagan though had a penchant for little girls engaged in all kinds of sexual activities. He had over 10 000 images on his computer, and over 350 videos of this perversion. It was all nasty stuff that shocked even the most case-hardened of Colosmo’s team. His mother was a meek little woman in her late fifties, with snow white hair. Her hands were small and withered and hardened by years of hard labour. She had been a slave to the perverted bully that was her son. There was no emotion in her voice when she asked if Samuel would be imprisoned.
“Yes Mrs O’Hagan, it’s likely he will be away for a very long time.”
“It’s about time he paid his dues. His father was the same, a real pig. When Sam was six, I tried to escape from his father but he dragged me back home by my hair and thrashed me within an inch of my life. My son is just as bad, I hope you can keep him away from me for what time I have left on this earth.”
“Yes Madam, he will be gone.”
“Then you’ve saved my life, agent Colosmo.”
“I’m sad that we couldn’t have saved you any earlier.”
Emily O’Hagan smiled. “But you did come agent Colosmo, you did in the end. And that’s what counts.”
Special Agent James Colosmo tenderly hugged the sweet old lady. Yes, he had made it. Emily O’Hagan still had time to be happy with her daughter and grandchildren. He reflected that sometimes this job had its rewards.
***
The final house raided that day by the FBI team was the residence of Fredrick Powell. It stood alone in a large field off Interstate 94, just West of Kenosha. When the team of agents approached the building, they saw that there were lights on in most of the downstairs rooms, even though it was ten past eleven in the morning. There was no reply to his knocking, so one of the assault team broke the door open while other members of his team rushed in and secured the building. Jim Colosmo waited patiently till he heard the all clear. He was just about to enter the downstairs hallway when the assault team leader held up his hand and stopped him. His face was ashen.
“What’s the matter Lee?” enquired Colosmo.
“It’s a bad one Jim, real bad. The guy is dead in the cellar. It stinks,” he said, dry retching at the same time.
“OK Lee, I get the picture. Let me through.”
At the foot of the cellar steps were the crumpled remains of a man with much of the flesh of his exposed body was missing. His body pulsated with something that turned out to be maggots. Colosmo had no idea how this had come about, they would all have to wait till the medical examiner had removed the body before they could undertake their search.
When they did eventually search the premises, there was nothing that would connect Fredrick Powell with the bioterrorist attack. Fredrick Powell had fallen down the cellar steps when the bulb of the single cellar light blew out. He had suffered a broken neck and had died quickly. Rats in the cellar had eaten a great deal of his flesh and maggots were finishing off the rest.
31. The Enquiry Falters
“Excuse me Special Agent Colosmo, I am convinced that none of my employees are responsible for introducing this virus into the essential oils of the air freshener process. Our firm is still a family business and our employees are part of that family. None of them would do this. You have rampaged around our personnel for over a week now and have found nothing that would implicate any of us in this barbaric act. You have interviewed everyone and have upset the same number. We have lost a good many much loved colleagues to this virus. While we are in mourning for them, you are being offensive and bullish in your investigation.”
Colosmo waited until the old man had finished before saying indignantly. “Stop right there Mr Cooper. My team are trying their best to find out how this tragedy occurred and who is responsible. I’m sorry if we are treading a little heavily as we try to get to the truth, but thousands have died from this virus and offending a few of your workers is acceptable collateral damage.”
“A few? Dam it, you’ve practically accused everyone. Your methods are crude and smack of desperation. Surely logic would tell you that this plot is a little more sophisticated than simple product-tampering.”
Completely unrepentant Colosmo answered, “I think you need to wake up Mr Cooper, and join the rest of us in the real world.”
Charles Cooper was so frustrated he wanted to pound his fist on the desk. SA Colosmo was immune to the feelings of others, just one more Policeman Plod, single-mindedly pursuing the most obvious line of enquiry to the detriment of everything else. He was not going to divert the FBI agent in his determination to implicate one of the C & W Cooper employees. Convinced he was wasting his time, and with monumental effort he silently rose from his chair and left the room.
“He’s right you know. I also doubt that this is the work of a disgruntled employee,” remarked Captain Phillip James.
“OK Sherlock, so who do you think is responsible?”
“Jim, I’m not your enemy here, I understand that you have to eliminate the obvious first. I’m not criticising your investigative methods or those of your team…”
“Come on then,” interrupted SA Colosmo angrily, “where should we focus our enquiry?”
“The H5N1 virus was engineered and some very sophisticated techniques have been used to accomplish that. Somewhere there is a group of very clever virologists who have not only developed the technology to clone the virus, but have no scruples about releasing it either. Until this attack, the bird flu strain did not have the ability to spread from human to human via airborne methods. Whoever developed this monster was able to increase its virulence by manipulating its genes to include the factors necessary for aerosol contagion.”
“Let me stop you there Captain James. Just who would have the skills necessary to accomplish this?”
“Well, that’s the 64-million-dollar question isn’t it. I could draw up a list of hundreds of labs that could, but not a list of who would.”
“Where are the labs?”
“Give me the name of a country and I’ll tell you the labs that could. Clandestine virological research is no
t something I’ve studied, so I couldn’t pinpoint any particular laboratory. However, one line of enquiry might be to focus on who would have the funding for such a project. Bioengineering two viruses such as these two would take a lot of money. So, the question should be; who could afford to develop these viruses?”
“That’s true Phil and it’s something that we are addressing,” added Lieutenant Colonel Mike Morrison, via the teleconference system that had been established between the investigative teams and the co-ordinating committee.
“As you said, the list of who could is long, but I disagree about the list of who would. The list of who has the intent to kill thousands of innocent people would contain just about every terrorist organisation we know about, and, perhaps as many organisations we don’t know about.”
“In my opinion,” interjected Dr Ellen Augustein from the CDC, “we have three parallel investigations progressing simultaneously:
Number one must be; who planned this attack, who funded it, what was their motive and do they pose a clear and present danger to our security, now and in the future? Now that this attack has faltered, what will they do next? What is their country of origin and do we have the ability to strike back at them? This must be priority number one.
Number two must be identifying the virology laboratory that engineered these viruses. We have to determine if this was a clandestine operation to produce a bioterrorist weapon or was it the result of theft from a legitimate research organisation? As no organisation, from any country, has reported such a theft or notified us that they are currently researching the two virus subtypes, then it would appear that this was a weapon from the ‘get go’.
Number three would be a domestic investigation to identify the person or persons that tampered with the essential oils at the Silver Ridge plant. Having found them, we should then be able to ascertain the identity of number one, and then perhaps number two.”
“Yes, Ellen I agree,” said Mike Morrison, “you’ve summarised succinctly what we have already established, though up till now somewhat informally. However, in the light of what you have said, I suggest we do need to refocus our investigations and delineate tasks to the appropriate investigative agencies, so that we are not all doing the same thing. I think you will all agree that until today we have all been a little too parochial, trying to preserve our agencies’ own niche in the investigative process. I propose that we clearly define the tasks at hand and draw the lines of demarcation between each team.”
There were nods of approval from all members of the investigative committee.
“Excellent. Special Agent Colosmo, if your team could establish where in the aerosol production process the essential oil was tampered with, then hopefully you could identify the culprit responsible for the atrocity. Phil, if you could liaise with SA Colosmo, I think we need your bioengineering input. Then if you, Phil, could report your progress to me, I will then keep the committee informed. My team at USAMRIID, with help from Ellen Augustein and her CDC team together with Julian Adams and the Walter Reid team, will pursue Ellen’s second objective, identifying the virology lab responsible for the initial development of the two viruses. The first thing we must do is talk to Ann Reid and Jeffery Taubenberger, they are world leaders in the research of the Spanish Flu sub-type, perhaps they may have some idea as to which lab could have engineered the virus.”
“OK people, let’s get to it,” said Colonel Charles Fox, the commander of USAMRIID, “we’ll meet again on Thursday morning, at 10.00am. I hope by then we’ll have a clearer picture of the who, how and why questions we are all seeking the answers to. Thank you all.”
***
“Good morning Captain, on your own this time, that’s good news. Do you want to speak to me again?” asked Jonathan Wallace, the aerosol plant manager at C & W Cooper.
“Yes, how did you guess?” smiled Phillip James.
“I thought you might be back, after I was told that you had had no luck with our past employees and poor Fredrick Powell. How can I help you Captain?”
“Tell me some more about the barrels of essential oil.”
“Well, the batch numbers you gave me all point to a single source of lavender oil, which we purchased from Tasmania. My theory is that the barrels of oil were tampered with off-shore.”
“Why do you say that? Surely the barrels could have been tampered with in the storeroom.”
“That’s true, but only the store manager and two of his staff have been in the store between the times that the Tasmanian batch arrived in the store and beginning the production of the contaminated batches. I assume you’ve interviewed those guys?”
“Well, I didn’t, but Special Agent Colosmo did.”
“Strikes me that that bloke couldn’t find his arse with a magnifying glass. Excuse my language, but he was very pushy, wasn’t he?”
“I don’t think he realises that this is not a simple case of product tampering, it’s far more sophisticated than that. Anyway, I digress. Please tell me, why couldn’t the barrels be contaminated here in the factory?”
“Well, the store manager, Bill van Hooten, checks that the security seals, or in this case the customs seals, because they came from abroad, are intact. Then they are placed in the secure store. When they were removed from the store, at the beginning of that particular production run, the seals were checked a second time. Now the first check is to ensure that thieves haven’t opened them. This stuff is worth a small fortune, the Tasmanian oil alone was worth 1¼ million dollars. I understand that in the case of these drums, the customs seals were intact. Believe me, there would have been hell to pay if they weren’t. The Tasmanian producers put the seals in place, which would be the Tasman Estate Lavender Farm in this particular case. If someone wanted to tamper with the drums on this side of the Pacific then they would a) have to have copies of the seals and the special tool to affix them to the drum, and b) they would have to have access to our secure store.”
“That’s not beyond the realm of possibility, surely?”
Jonathan paused while gathering his thoughts. “You’re correct, it could have happened here. But there are only three suspects, Bill van Hooten and his two assistants, and they’ve all been with this company for longer than I have. I know them all personally, and I can tell you they are as American as apple pie. They could never be involved; I’d stake my life on that.”
“Well thankfully you won’t have to, I can see now that it would be much easier to tamper with the drums somewhere else. So how many hands does a shipment like this one pass through?”
“You’d have to talk to someone in purchasing for that information. Lisa Gerrard is probably your best bet.”
“Thanks Mr Wallace, I’ll get over there straight away.”
***
“Phil, what have you got?” asked Colonel Charles Fox at the Thursday briefing.
“Well, we have re-interviewed a few people at the factory and I’m fairly sure that the barrels of lavender oil were not tampered with by anyone from Coopers.”
“Back up the wagon a minute,” interrupted James Colosmo. “What kind of statement is “fairly sure”? That’s not sufficient in my book.”
“Calm down Jim,” said Mike Morrison disarmingly, “let Phil tell us why he is fairly sure.”
As Colosmo began to reply, Morrison held up his hand to stop him. “Phil, you were saying.”
“The key points are these: First, the security seals were intact from the time the drums arrived in the essential oil store until they were removed and the oil fed into the production line. Second, the seals were customs seals put in place by the producer in Tasmania. Third, the seal numbers were recorded by the oil store manager, when they were put in the store, and again when they were broken prior to production. Fourth, the same seal numbers were recorded by the US Customs service when the drums arrived on the dock. However, what about removing the seals and replacing it with others with the same number I hear you cry? Well, the seals have to be approved by US Customs,
they’re produced under licence and the serial numbers are closely guarded. The drums pass through five stages, first the producer, second the export agent, third when they are placed on board the ship destined for the US, then onto the import agent, before lastly turning up here in the Silver Ridge plant. The paper trail that follows the goods all have the same serial numbers recorded. It would be very difficult to reproduce these seals, especially with the unique serial numbers. The easiest way to tamper with this stuff would be to do it in Tasmania, before the drums are sealed.”
“That’s excellent Phil, but if reproducing an antique virus isn’t beyond their means, then a few customs security seals wouldn’t be difficult.” Interrupted SA Colosmo.
Crystal Ice Page 36
