“He’s on assignment,” said Rorke quickly. “He couldn’t have come anyway.”
“Let him know,” said Buddy. “I’m sure he’ll find it fascinating.”
“I’m sure he will. We’ll take care of that,” said Rorke.
“Do they think cancer could happen in people who might be exposed to this protein?” Franco blurted out.
Buddy said excitedly, “Yeah, the FDA sure does. Shelly said the toxicology boys in his company have over two hundred years of combined experience in looking at these sorts of studies, and they have never seen anything like this. They said that if you smoke, it would likely even be worse.”
“That’s very interesting, Buddy, and that’s too bad,” said Rorke, before Franco could speak again.
Buddy continued, “Now if y’all hadn’t come along and busted me for jumping the gun on this, I’d have spent millions more on growing and processing this protein out of rice and after all that money was spent, that damned Shelly would have the last laugh when he told me they scrubbed the project. Well, you saved me a lot of serious cash by taking my plants out of circulation. The only good news in all this—besides meeting you, Sam—was that I didn’t have to tell Shelly what we were doing. I didn’t have to give that sorry New York bastard the last laugh.”
“You didn’t say anything to Shelly?” asked Rorke.
“Certainly not. Not a word. It would have been too damned embarrassing. The joke was on me, again,” said Buddy. “Anyway, you take all the plants. We don’t want them now. My lawyers will be giving you full permission to dispose of them however you want to do it. I’m officially going to forget the whole thing. I’ll figure out another way to get to Shelly.”
Franco tried to process what he had just heard. Buddy grinned at Rorke. “Honey, that’s why I want you to have this little necklace. Just me, Mike, and you know about it, and I’m damned sure none of us will tell anyone. Right, Mike?”
Franco said nothing.
“This is all for saving you a little money?” Rorke asked.
“No, Sam, it’s all for saving me a lot of money.” He had a silly grin on his face as he watched her play with the necklace. “Nice, huh?”
“Yes, very nice, Buddy. However, we have another issue,” said Rorke firmly.
“What’s that?”
“If your rice protein is so powerfully carcinogenic, we may need site inspectors to interview and evaluate our employees’ practices with the plants and possibly we’ll have to do testing on them. I don’t know. You might be endangering USDA staff.”
“Let’s be clear, Sam. I didn’t exactly force this rice on you. You took it.”
“Sorry, Buddy. You do have a role in this.”
“Okay. Well, the ball’s in your court, and you can damn sure keep the ball. You do what you have to do. I don’t want that rice back. I don’t even want to think about it.”
“It may not be that easy. I want to check around to see if there are any workman’s comp claims coming or, I hate to say it, to determine the potential for lawsuits in the future.”
Buddy looked at her closely. “Lawsuits for what?”
“I don’t know. There may be process violations that I don’t know about. Possibly, there’s negligence for putting federal employees at risk. I don’t know. Things can turn ugly when the Inspector General’s reports are picked up by the plaintiff’s bar. You know that. You have deep pockets. That attracts the sharks.”
“I’ll have my legal boys take a look at it.”
“No. Before you do that, let me investigate this a little myself. I think there’s probably a very good chance of making this just go away, and burying this material the way we do with most of the quarantined items,” she said.
“Okay, I’ll keep quiet until I hear from you.”
“Good, and it’s critical that you don’t tell anyone about this. And I mean no one. I don’t want employees lawyering up, or going to the press, or getting anxious over nothing. I don’t want your legal staff putting any of this on paper anywhere That means don’t tell them anything for now. Do you agree?”
“I do. I won’t tell anyone.”
“Who knows about Shelly’s cancer-causing protein and your rice?”
“If you mean who knows about both, the way they’re connected? It’s just the folks in this room.”
“We need to keep it that way,” said Rorke.
“I promise,” said Buddy. “I feel pretty dumb about this whole thing and I sure don’t want it coming out, and particularly, I do not want it to ever reach Shelly’s ears. You’ll never hear another word of this from me.”
“I hope not,” said Rorke, as she fondled her new necklace.
Franco just watched them. He was aware that his breathing had changed and that his breaths were shallow, coming more frequently. He said nothing. He had no words to form his questions or to express his feelings.
CHAPTER 26
The three men watched the old car creep down the dirt driveway of Happy Stream Farm and return to the main road. The car had arrived about five minutes earlier and the driver only had time to make his delivery and to say a quick hello to the farm’s elderly resident. At the end of the driveway, the driver stopped, left the car running, and pulled the gate closed behind him before proceeding onto the road. The three men were stooped low in the foliage, and no one saw them watching the car on this secluded portion of Lantau Island.
As the car disappeared around the curve in the road, the first of the men left their hiding place and started walking up the edge of the driveway, well into the shadowed cover from the early morning sun. He didn’t look back, and the other two followed in his steps without direction. They walked quickly, just below a jog, choosing their foot placements carefully. They covered the distance rapidly. The lead man paused near the top of the drive in the marginal scrub. When the other two joined him, they moved forward as one body.
The only anomaly in their profile was that one of the men carried a large dark bag that looked like a laundry bag. The bag was black and although it was not empty, it was neither full nor obviously bulging. The bag was made of Kevlar and its interior was lined with a fine woven chain mail. The man with the bag moved fluidly, like his colleagues, and maneuvered the sack with its ten-pound weight as if it were nothing at all.
The old farmer was making it easy for them. The men could see him through the modest wooden columns of the covered porch. The bag of groceries still rested on the porch floor near the front door. The old man tended his vegetable garden planted near the flowerbeds on the side of his house. He was kneeling and his back was to them as they approached. He wore a straw hat to battle the rising sun that would come later in the morning. He also wore his usual thick rubber boots for his daily trip to the rice paddy beyond the house. The man sang to himself, meticulously collecting and stacking the weeds he carefully removed from between his prized vegetable plants. The farm beyond matched his mood. It was serene, uncluttered, and undisturbed, nestled in a flat hollow, flanked between sets of rolling hills on all sides. The small farm was totally quiet except for the old man’s muffled singing and the chirping birds singing in the woods beyond. Uncle Quan seemed utterly at peace.
When they pounced, the three men were on him in an instant. After turning him slightly, to spare the plants, one pushed him forward from his knees to prone and pulled back his arms. The first attacker also pinned the old man’s legs by sitting on them. Another pulled the old man’s head to one side and covered his mouth with the rag in his gloved hand. The third readied the bag, its contents now wriggling. The old man could not see the bag, but still he tried to cry out. It was impossible with the gag in place.
The man carrying the bag wore a fine chain mail glove with a Kevlar covering, similar in composition to the bag. His dexterity was slightly reduced. It didn’t matter since this was a crude job he could do easily, even with t
he hand protection. He worked the end of the wriggling contents up to the surface and grasped it just below the apex. With his free hand, he loosened the drawstring of the bag and peeled back the opening. The cobra’s head was now exposed and the rest of its body thrashed below in a vain attempt to be freed.
The animal was not yet fully grown and, as such, was more nervous than a full adult would have been, not that it mattered, given the circumstances. However, the cobra was old enough to produce sufficient venom to achieve the end result the men were there to accomplish. The snake handler shook the head of the viper to make the animal even more nervous and aggressive. The snake’s body flailed wildly in the bag. Beneath the gloved hand, she worked to flare her triangular hood, and the lighter, greyish markings of the hood stood out more starkly on the snake’s black skin as she struggled.
The bagman turned the snake’s head toward the helpless old man. The attacker holding Quan’s arms used one hand to pull down the old man’s simple peasant shirt, exposing his neck.
The man holding back the old man’s shirt looked at the snake handler and said quietly, “It’s time.”
He looked down at the terrified old man and said in English, “Sorry, Uncle Quan. This is not fair—however, it is necessary.”
The handler dropped the snake’s head to the old peasant’s neck. It struck immediately and, when the handler shook the snake, it struck again. Its fangs entered the old man near the large vessels in his neck. The old man tried to scream. He could not.
The serpent was given a small rest until its handler again brought her close to the old man and allowed her to strike. The snake did not hesitate. She struck when pushed close to the exposed neck. The snake handler pulled her away, shook her again, and held her against the old man’s flesh. The snake obliged.
Small dots of bleeding marked the bites and faint red halos were already growing around the first of the puncture marks. Uncle Quan’s breathing became fast and shallow, and he began to struggle less. The three men continued to hold him. The old man continued to breathe, but it was progressively more labored until the fight was fully gone from his frail, fettered arms and legs.
“I’ll move his arm now,” one of the men said to the snake handler. He adjusted his position to allow one of Uncle Quan’s arms out.
“Let her do it again,” said the attacker.
The snake handler allowed the serpent to strike again through the light fabric of the old man’s sleeve. The dying man did not seem to feel it at all. The assassins repeated this on the other arm, both on the forearm and the upper arm.
They continued to restrain him for several more minutes until the venom had its full effect. The old man was gasping for air. His arms were flaccid and he offered no resistance at all. His end was close at hand. One of the men felt for a pulse. It was thready, fast, barely palpable.
The snake handler pulled his lethal charge fully back into her bag. The other two men hoisted the nearly dead old man and carried him down a small path into the underbrush off his rice paddy. The snake tender placed his bag down and carefully brushed the dirt to hide any sign of them. He scattered the small pile of weeds into the brush as well. He joined the other two men who arranged the brush to make it appear that the old man had stumbled and fallen, and had been an unwelcome visitor to the dangerous viper lying there. The effect was that the peasant fought with the serpent when he fell and lost both the battle and the war. As they laid him out, the necrotic margins of the snakebites were visible on his neck, and in a few days, when the body was found, they would be even more pronounced and open because of the usual insect scavengers in the brush.
Quan was flaccid and had stopped breathing. There was no pulse. One of the attackers dropped his ear to the old man’s chest and listened. He heard no heart sounds. They were satisfied with the result. Before leaving the site, they surveyed their work and the appearance of how they left the victim and the brush.
The snake handler asked in Cantonese, “Hal, what shall we do with Delilah?”
Hal looked down at the dead peasant and back to the handler. “I think she’s earned her freedom. Let her go.”
The handler shook out the bag over the old man. Upon landing on his chest, the snake’s hood flared again as she stared at the downed farmer, looking long into his face. When the cobra sensed there was no threat, she relaxed, turned away from the dead man and gazed into the scrub. After a quick acclimation, the cobra slithered into the undergrowth while the men retreated, double-checking to be sure there was no trace of them as they left.
CHAPTER 27
Franco said nothing to her after they left Buddy’s. He was quiet all the way to the airport. In part, he was deep in thought. In part, he was in shock. He wanted to call Pauling, but not with Rorke around.
The large business jet had a different crew, and it was a different plane than their arrival ship. With a few nods to the crew, Franco and Rorke each took a seat and almost immediately the big plane’s cabin was sealed, and it started to roll toward the taxiway. In a few minutes, they were on the active runway, then airborne and headed west to Asia.
In the climb, Franco was still tormented and tangled in the swirling thoughts in his head. Consciously inflicting a potent carcinogen on a billion and a half people was such a monstrous idea, he could not believe his government could do it. But it had.
At cruising altitude, Rorke looked to him. “Can I bring you something from the galley, a snack or a drink?” she asked.
“No,” said Franco.
“Suit, yourself,” she said, and walked to the galley bar and poured herself a glass of wine.
When she returned, she sat on the chair closest to his. “Are you giving me the silent treatment for the whole flight?” she asked.
He looked at her and quietly said, “How could you do it?”
She waited before answering, “We didn’t do anything, Mike. We just watched what happened after bad people stole something they should not have taken.”
“You made it easy for them to steal it,” said Franco.
“No, not particularly. This wasn’t entrapment. This was no purse sitting on a park bench with a fifty creeping out. These are professional thieves who previously had stolen billions of dollars’ worth of U.S. technology and sold it to our, let’s call them, ‘competitors.’”
“You knew exactly what was going on, didn’t you?”
“You know I don’t like too many questions,” she said.
“Okay, I won’t ask questions. I’ll tell you a story. I don’t have any questions about this part of the story. First, you’ve been setting up the older brother for a year and a half as his financial advisor, which is, oh, just about the time Buddy’s pal, Shelly, found out he was dealing with a potent cancer-causing chemical. That’s an interesting coincidence. As I remember it, it was just about that time that the HDOA and the USDA quarantined Buddy’s rice. You found out what Buddy was trying to accomplish with his invention, only he didn’t know anything about Shelly’s safety study results at the time, yet, you did. Of course, had Buddy seen him, he would have pumped his friend Shelly about the special protein and he would have learned about the failed safety study of the protein. He would have shut down the rice project a year ago and washed his hands of it. That would have been inconvenient, since the government would then be responsible for any further activity with the rice. It was cleaner all the way around to still have Buddy involved, even though the rice was in government custody. The Chinese government would be far more likely to start a war with the U.S. if they felt the CIA was behind this rather than believing the problem started with their own people stealing from an American company.”
Franco looked at Rorke intently and continued. “Now, unfortunately, Buddy’s pal, Shelly, couldn’t make their annual golf match last year—before the theft—because he had a broken leg after someone crashed into his car just a few days before their annual golf ga
me. I don’t know why I think this, but I’d bet it was a hit and run accident and the driver abandoned the car at the scene. I’d bet the car was recently stolen and that the case was never solved. This is wild speculation on my part, that’s just how my mind works. Anyway, the fact that Shelly was out of commission and had to keep his story quiet for a year was another remarkable co-incidence. This allowed everyone at the USDA to consider the quarantine as business as usual, perhaps proceeding a little slower, probably a lot slower, than most quarantines, although still within reasonable limits.”
Franco paused again to examine her face, although Rorke showed no emotion.
“All anyone might remember officially at the USDA was that they had this super rice that could be a remarkable food source. I imagine there is no record of this anywhere and that all the people who had been associated with this project were either transferred or furloughed. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s been decided to shut down the facility completely after you confirm the rice is growing in China. If it hasn’t been done already, it probably will be soon. Also, when the rice was in quarantine, it was kept behind cream puff security that any middle school kid with half a brain could figure a way around. Therefore, all that was left to do was to tell the thieves that this super rice was theirs for the taking.”
Franco stopped talking and stood. “That’s my story. I’m going to have that drink now; can I refill yours?”
Rorke lifted her glass to him, and he walked to the galley and returned with two drinks. Franco returned the now full glass to her. “Now I have a few questions.”
She took her drink from him. “Okay.”
“Are you going to answer?”
“Maybe, …. or maybe not.”
Franco was not expecting much more than that. “How did you find out that Shelly’s protein caused cancer?”
“That one I can answer. I work for the ‘Company.’ Remember, all that drug safety information goes to the FDA. Obviously, we’re both part of the same U.S. government ‘Corporation.’ Even though the FDA doesn’t know it, we’ve always kept an eye on these safety issues for defense reasons. We don’t want anyone coming over our fences and throwing nasty stuff around in the homeland.”
The Rice Thieves Page 20
