Bitter Harvest (Harvest Trilogy, Book 2) (6 page)

He moved his lips, but no sound came out. After clearing his throat, he said in a shaking voice, “Naresh, has that plot been harvested?”

“I don’t know. I took the samples last week, but didn’t have time to analyze them until now. But if it hasn’t, it will be soon. It is early in the year, so it is the Rabi harvest, of course. AnGrow claims the plot was planted in mid-October, if one can trust anything they tell us, and the plants were clearly nearing harvest time when I took the samples. And the bastards will probably sell the harvest to the locals to make a few more rupees.”

“Where are you now?” Vijay logged out of his computer and headed out the door. “I will be gone for the rest of the day,” he barked at his assistant, startling the boy, as he strode quickly out of the office. While the fear was still with him, he knew he had to act. He had to
know
.

“I am at the lab, of course.” Naresh worked at one of the state agriculture ministry’s two seed testing laboratories in Hyderabad. “Did you want to come by and we can get dinner?”

“Forget dinner. I’ll pick you up in twenty minutes.”

* * *

The two hours it took them to drive from Hyderabad to Koratikal were the longest in Vijay’s life. When he arrived at the lab to pick up Naresh, he had taken a look at the suspect maize kernels and the slides Naresh had made. Vijay’s specialty was the study of creatures such as worms, bees, and butterflies that assisted plant growth and reproduction. But he knew enough from his experience with the EDS to recognize the encapsulated delivery system that New Horizons had created, largely with the unwitting help of Naomi Perrault. He also knew that the technology involved in creating that system wasn’t something another company could have easily reproduced, especially since all the records of how it had been created had been destroyed.

Over Naresh’s protestations, they had skipped dinner, and Vijay had driven like a madman, speeding east on National Highway 202 in his Maruti Swift as if he were in the last few kilometers of the Monaco Grand Prix. Just past the village of Raigiri, he left the highway and headed toward Mothkur Road, and turned north when he reached the town of Atmakur, about four kilometers south of Koratikal.
 

Following Naresh’s directions, he made his way along a series of back roads to where the AnGrow plot was located. The sun had set, and they had to backtrack twice to find the right plot in the growing darkness.

“Damn.” Bringing the car to a stop next to the small AnGrow sign marking the plot, he stared at the empty field. The corn had been harvested, and even the stalks were gone, no doubt to be used as food for livestock or to burn for cooking. “We’re too late.”

“We should file a complaint with the GEAC. What AnGrow is doing is outrageous.”

“More than you know, my friend,” Vijay told him, sick to his stomach. “More than you know. Let’s see if we can find someone who might know about this.”
 

“The workers are from a village right down the road.” Naresh pointed in the direction the car was facing. “I spoke to them when I took the samples.”

* * *

As they drove toward the village, they caught up with a group of men trudging along in the same direction.
 

Vijay pulled just ahead of them and stopped the car. He and Naresh got out and faced the approaching villagers. “Excuse me,” he said.
 

The men came to a stop, looking at him, then at the car, then back at him.
 

“We’re from the State Ministry of Agriculture,” he went on. “Can you tell me when the AnGrow field back there,” Vijay pointed in the direction of the plot, “was harvested?”

“Just today,” one of the men said quietly, wiping sweat from his brow with his arm. “We harvested that plot this morning.”

“Do you know what happened to the maize?”

All of the men smiled. “Some was taken by the AnGrow people,” the same man said. “The rest they let us take in exchange for harvesting it for them. They are very kind.”

Vijay leaned forward, a flare of hope in his chest that he wasn’t too late. “You haven’t eaten any of it yet, have you?”

In the dim light, the men exchanged uneasy glances, and he could tell what they were thinking. That corn was food on their table, and without it there very well might not be any. They were afraid he would try to take it away from them, and if he had the power and authority, he would.
 

Unfortunately, he had neither. In the uncomfortable silence that followed, the hope that had blossomed a moment earlier faded and died.

Vijay reached into his pocket and pulled out a business card, handing it to the closest man. “The maize AnGrow gave you was not given a safety approval by the government,” Vijay told the men. “It was experimental, and might make you and your families very, very sick. It might even kill you. If someone falls ill any time in the next day or two, please call me immediately.”

The man looked at the card, and Vijay wondered if he could read what it said. Even if he could, these men were terribly poor, and making a telephone call was not simply a matter of reaching into a pocket for a cell phone. They would have to walk to the nearest village where they could use a communal telephone. “This is very important,” Vijay told them, his voice laced with urgency. “You
must
destroy any of the maize you took from this plot. Do not eat any, and do not give it or the stalks to your livestock. Think of it as being poisonous. You must burn it. All of it. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir,” the man said, bobbing his head. The others did, too.

Vijay’s heart sank as he saw their expressions in the dim light. He could see the facade of obedience overlaying the duplicity born of desperation. They had no intention of destroying the corn based merely on his say-so. He would have offered to buy the corn back from them and any other families that had taken it, but they probably would only have given him some in exchange for the money, and kept the rest to eat. After all, he had no way of knowing exactly how much the AnGrow people had left behind. And who was he in the eyes of these poor people? It was not that they were determined to be dishonest, but that they were stricken with poverty.
 

And soon, he felt sure, they might be stricken with something far, far worse.
 

“Please,” Vijay begged. “Call me right away if anyone falls ill.”

Then he turned and walked slowly back to the car, a confused Naresh beside him.

* * *

“So,” Naresh said when they reached the car. “Do you want to tell me what that was all about? I know I get irate over the abuses of AnGrow and their ilk, but wasn’t that a bit extreme, trying to frighten those men like that?”

“They should be frightened. If that maize is what I think it is, they should be terrified and burn every kernel and stalk.” He started up the car and began the long drive back to Hyderabad.

“Just what is it, Vijay? It might help if you would tell me what’s going on.” He gave his friend and colleague a speculative look. “You’ve never been quite the same since you came back from America, you know. You even brought back a cat.” He shook his head in disbelief.

“Yes, I did. And I’ll never be without one again.” Unlike in America and some other countries, cats were hardly popular in India. They were often shunned as bad omens. Vijay himself had been raised to believe that, but his time with the EDS had changed his views. He was not sure he could ever accept a cat as a loving pet, but he could certainly welcome one as a living alarm system. He only wished he could have it with him at the office, but that was out of the question. “Naresh, you remember the
Revolutions
product line New Horizons was bringing out right before their production facility was blown up by terrorists, yes?”

“Of course! The terrorists that the American President nuked?”

Vijay nodded, cringing inwardly. No one outside of the EDS and a few American government officials knew that he had been a member of the EDS and had been in the facility when it was bombed. “Yes. Well, the
Revolutions
maize, the corn, was designed to deliver an encapsulated RNA payload to the host that consumed it. It was ingenious, really: even if you cooked the maize, so long as the temperatures were not too extreme, the delivery system and payload would remain intact.”

Naresh whistled. “That’s amazing! And that’s what AnGrow planted here?”

“I believe so, based on what you told me.” He glanced over at Naresh. “But the payload was not a miracle cure, as New Horizons claimed. It was a delivery system for what I can only characterize as a transgenic weapon that would infect the host.”

“And do what?” Naresh was staring at him.

“It would transform the host’s DNA, and the host itself, into another form.”

“Vijay, that’s impossible.”

“No, it is not, my friend.” Vijay shook his head slowly. “I know that I must sound to you like a lunatic, but I witnessed this myself. If the maize those poor fools took into their homes is what I believe it must be, our country, perhaps the world, is in terrible danger.”

“And just what are we supposed to do? Call in the Army?” Naresh laughed as Vijay turned onto Mothkur Road, heading west toward Hyderabad. “Vijay, you have just been working too hard. You need to get some sleep, my friend.”

“I think it may be a long time before I sleep again. And we can’t call in the Army, but I know who is the next best thing. Someone who understands.” He pulled his cell phone from his pocket and hit the button to fast-dial Naomi’s number. He hadn’t spoken to her in quite some time, but he made sure that her and Jack’s numbers were programmed into his phone.

“Hello,” he heard her voice answer after the first ring. “Vijay?”

He was about to answer when he saw the glare of lights in his peripheral vision. Turning his head, he looked up in time to see the grill of a big Mazda cargo truck that had just pulled out from a side road, looking like a freight train as it loomed over his car.

The boom and burning stench and smoke as the airbags deployed.

Shattered glass, the horizon tumbling as the car rolled.

The roar of crushed metal and plastic.
 

Tires screeching.

Screams.
 

Darkness.

CHAPTER FIVE

“Hello? Vijay?” Naomi hadn’t spoken to Vijay since he’d returned to India. She had felt terrible about how the government had treated him, but both she and Jack had been powerless to help him through the flaming hoop of his security clearance. While the two of them had the support of President Curtis on almost everything, he had been resolute on the issue of security clearances for the employees of SEAL. And after learning how many officials in the government with clearances had been subverted by the harvesters, he had ordered even more stringent checks made for anyone remotely affiliated with SEAL’s research. Even though all the harvesters were believed to be dead, Curtis wasn’t willing to take any chances.
 

Dr. Vijay Chidambaram, along with eight others from the survivors of the EDS who had wanted to join SEAL, had been respectfully but firmly turned away.

From the rental car’s speakerphone, she heard a tremendous crash and what sounded like the start of a scream.
 

“Vijay? Vijay!”

There was no answer. The line was dead.

“Damn.” She hit the button on the car’s steering wheel to bring up her phone’s address book. “Call Vijay.”

After a moment, she was rewarded with the ringing tone, followed by Vijay’s voice. “Hello, this is Vijay. Please leave a message.” Then he said something in Hindi before the beep signaling the start of the recording.

“Vijay, this is Naomi, returning your call. Please give me a call back.” She paused. “I hope everything’s all right.”

She pressed the button to end the call as a chill of foreboding, tinged with guilt, swept through her. She had intended to call Vijay to see how he was doing, but had never gotten around to it.
 

Her attention was momentarily diverted by the car’s navigation system, which told her to turn left at the next light off West Olympic Boulevard. As she did, the headquarters of Morgan Pharmaceuticals, a slab-sided monolith of shimmering glass and steel, came into view.

Pulling into the parking lot and lowering her window, she stopped at the guard post, which was occupied by two armed men in black uniforms.

“I’m Dr. Perrault,” she told the guard who moved to the side of the car and leaned down toward her. “I have an appointment to see Dr. Morgan.”

The guard studied her face carefully before his mouth offered a warm smile. “Of course, Dr. Perrault. Dr. Morgan’s expecting you.” He produced a badge bearing the company’s logo and handed it to her. “Please make sure you wear this at all times while in the building.” He pointed toward the entrance. “Just park in the reserved spot right there, the one closest to the door. Dr. Morgan will be out to meet you.”

Naomi looked where the guard was pointing and caught sight of a familiar figure who had just emerged from the ten foot tall glass doors leading to the lobby. Howard Morgan stood in the morning sun reflected from the buildings around them, hands in his pockets and a smile on his face. He nodded to her, and she smiled back.

“Thank you,” she told the guard, who nodded and stepped back.

She pulled forward and parked.
 

Howard Morgan somehow covered the distance to the car without her seeing him do it, and he opened the door for her.

“Dr. Perrault! What a pleasure to see you again.”

“Thank you, Dr. Morgan.” She took his hand and shook it. His grip was firm, hinting at restrained strength, and his gaze remained fixed on hers. He had a deep, resonant voice that she could have listened to all day. “I really appreciate this. Your call couldn’t have come at a better time.”

With a final shake, he released her hand and gestured toward the entrance. “Believe me, Dr. Perrault — may I call you Naomi? — I’m the one who should be appreciative. One of the very few times in my career that I kicked the garbage can clear across my office was the day you accepted the position with New Horizons. My only regret was that you hadn’t tried to squeeze more money out of me.” He held the door open for her. “I would have been more than happy to beat their offer.”