Bug Man Suspense 3-in-1 Bundle (108 page)

“Three-ring circus! Are you talking about my dogs?”

“What would you call them? That one is the size of a bear, and that one has only three legs, and that drug-sniffing Chihuahua has got to be the homeliest animal I've ever seen.”

“Ruckus isn't a Chihuahua! Don't you know anything about—”

“Would you look at that,” Nick said.

Both women stopped and looked at him. Nick was pointing to the edge of the fields, where Ruckus was lying quietly with his nose pointed at the base of the first tomato plant in a long row.

“Why's he doing that?” Kathryn asked.

“Why don't you ask him yourself?” Alena said. “In Spanish.”

The three of them converged on the little dog.

Nick knelt down at the base of the tomato plant and adjusted his glasses; he saw small piles of what looked like grass clippings scattered over the soil. He picked up some and sniffed. “Marijuana,” he said. “A lot of it—it's scattered all over the place.”

“Why would somebody dump marijuana in a tomato field?” Alena asked.

“Good question.” Nick went down on all fours to take a closer look. Mixed in with the marijuana cuttings he saw hundreds of little round dots. “That's strange.”

“What?”

“Insect eggs—quite a few of them.” He looked around; the eggs seemed to be in the marijuana but nowhere else. “This doesn't make sense.”

“What do you mean?”

“One of the things forensic entomologists do is help identify the source of a seized drug shipment. Marijuana is commonly contaminated by insects—you can almost always find a few insect parts mixed in with the cuttings. All you have to do is identify the insect and find out where the species originates. Bingo—you know where the shipment came from.”

“What doesn't make sense?”

“I've never seen insect
eggs
in a drug shipment before. Legs, mandibles, antennae—but never eggs. This stuff looks like it's loaded with eggs—hundreds of them.” He squinted hard for a moment, then rocked back onto his heels. “They're definitely not fly eggs—they're the wrong shape and size. But there's not enough daylight left to identify them. I need to collect some specimens and take them back to NC State. I'll get a sample of the marijuana too—I want to send it to the DEA to see what they can tell us about it.”

He got up and turned to Alena. “I'm going to need you to search the rest of these fields,” he said. “I need to know if there's any more of this stuff out there.”

Alena looked out over the fields that were already deep in shadow. “All of it? How big is this place?”

“A little over five acres,” Kathryn said.

“That'll take days. Where am I supposed to stay?” She looked hopefully at Nick.

Kathryn pointed to the cottage. “How about right here? I happen to have a vacancy.”

“That's a great idea,” Nick said. “That way you can get an early start in the morning.”

Alena frowned at the tiny cottage. “That place is a dump.”

“It looks better than my place,” Nick said.

Kathryn smiled. “Hear that? That's practically a five-star rating. I'll even help you clean the place up—and your dogs can sleep in the barn.”

“My dogs stay with me,” Alena replied.

“Then it's all settled,” Nick said. “I'll get my gear from the car and collect some specimens before it gets any darker, and you two can get Alena settled in.” He started back across the clearing toward the driveway.

Kathryn turned to Alena and smiled. “Well, what do you know? It looks like we're roommates.”

10

A
cheer went up from the stands. Pasha turned and looked at home plate and saw the batter staring into the sky above left field as he jogged leisurely to first base. Pasha followed his eyes just in time to see the tiny white ball clear the left-field fence and disappear into the parking lot.

Americans
, he thought.
So easily impressed.

He searched the stands for his two colleagues. They were easy enough to spot—their seats were in the highest level and no one sat around them for at least five rows. Why would they? The little Carolina Mudcats park was never filled to capacity, and there were always open seats closer to the field. But just to ensure that their conversation remained private, Pasha had taken the precaution of purchasing five rows of tickets; it cost him less than a private box at Luzhniki Stadium.

His colleagues sat side by side and stood out like two walruses on an ice floe. Pasha had to smile. An Arab and an African—not a common sight in this backwater American farming community. The African was easily distinguished from his American relatives in the stadium; his skin was as black as coal and his features clearly reflected his ancestral bloodlines. He was above average in height and lean in build, with high cheekbones and a slightly receding hairline that gave him a thoughtful brow. The whites of his eyes always seemed to be tinted slightly red, and as for his teeth—Pasha had no idea. In six months of acquaintance he had never seen the man smile.

Jengo Muluneh was from Ethiopia, the son of a maize and pulse farmer in the western region of Gambela near the Sudan border. Jengo grew up on a farm and had expected to become a farmer himself, but someone in the government thought Gambela might possess significant oil reserves. The farmers of Ethiopia do not own their land but lease it from the government, and in 2003 the Ethiopian government signed an agreement with Petronas of Malaysia to develop Gambela's oil reserves. It was the perfect excuse for the government to cancel the lease on Jengo's family farm, and Jengo soon found himself eking out an existence with his family in a crowded corner of Addis Ababa. He excelled as a student, especially in the sciences, and he would have gained easy acceptance to the university there—but his family had no money.

Dedushka provided a scholarship, and Pasha delivered it.

The Arab was shorter in stature and not as lean. He had olive skin and coarse black eyebrows that made his brown irises look almost as dark as his pupils. Unlike his clean-shaven colleague, the Arab sported a mustache and a chin beard that was just beginning to show gray. The Arab often smiled, but then he had reason to; his country had much better prospects than Jengo's did.

Habib Almasi was a citizen of Qatar, a hundred-mile-long sliver of sand jutting into the Persian Gulf from the Arabian Peninsula. He had been a young executive in the Qatar Financial Centre, offering financial services to the foreign energy companies that flocked to Qatar like sand fleas—because Qatar, an otherwise unimpressive stretch of sand and limestone, happens to be situated atop fifteen billion barrels of oil. Qatar's economy was exploding and its people prospered; the country now possessed the largest GDP per capita on earth. Habib had enjoyed the good life in Qatar, but he was wary of the fickle affections of Western investors. He believed that his nation's good fortune could be quickly reversed, and he wrote articles for financial journals recommending aggressive action to protect the Qatari economy.

Dedushka read those articles, and Pasha contacted him.

Both men were dressed in trousers and crisp button-down shirts, probably because both had come directly from their labs at NC State—or perhaps because they owned no casual American clothes. Both men were PhD candidates from their respective countries, part of an exclusive academic elite, and they had not been in America long enough to take their appearance for granted as their American counterparts did.

Pasha held the refreshment tray in front of him and sidestepped his way down the empty aisle toward the two men. “Did you see? They call it a ‘home run.'”

“Why does the man run so slowly?” Jengo asked.

“He has no need to hurry. He hit the ball off the field.”

“Then why does he run at all?”

Pasha smiled. “It's complicated, my friend. Americans have some very strange sports.” He passed the cardboard tray. “Here, help yourselves—my treat.”

Habib frowned at the food. “What is this?”

Pasha held up a tubular object by a stick protruding from its end. “This is what Americans call a ‘corn dog.'”

Jengo winced. “Is it dog?”

“No. It's a kind of sausage coated in meal and fried in oil.”

Habib was still frowning. “Is everything fried in oil here? What I would not give for a simple lamb
shawarma
.”

“In Moscow we call it
shaurma
,” Pasha said. “A few strips of meat and some vegetables wrapped in
lavash
—is that so difficult? But no, Americans want their food very quickly.”

“And very poor,” Habib said.

Pasha shrugged. “That is why Americans are so fat.”

Jengo shook his head in disgust. “In my country only the rich and corrupt are fat.”

“I hope to be fat one day,” Habib said.

“That would be a sin.”

“In my country fatness is a sign of prosperity.”

“You talk like an American.”

“There is no need to insult me, Jengo.”

Jengo turned to Pasha. “Why must we meet here, so far from the university? The hour is late—I have a wife and child.”

“We must not be seen together on campus—you know that, Jengo. Tell your wife you had business. Don't worry, she'll keep the bed warm for you.”

“I wish I had a wife,” Habib said.

“You can buy yourself one when you get home—a nice fat one.” Pasha set down the tray and wiped his hands. “Now, to business.”

“Do we know the results of the test yet?”

“Yes. It was a failure.”

“The specimens did not survive?”

“We cannot be certain. Two of the shipments were intercepted by the Americans' Drug Enforcement Administration—they never arrived. The local shipment arrived successfully, but I could not recover the specimens to examine them.”

“Why not?”

“The ‘buyer' discarded the shipment just as we planned, but I was unable to find it and recover our specimens. I do not know if they survived.”

“The buyer would not tell you where he discarded it?”

“The man was mentally unstable. I could not convince him.”

“This is exactly what we predicted,” Jengo said angrily. “Men who deal in drugs are violent and impulsive—who knows what they will do? This method is too unpredictable. Why would our patron not listen to us?”

“Because our patron is a stubborn old man,” Pasha said. “I warned him that a drug shipment would involve too many unnecessary risks, but he is from a generation that thinks drugs can solve everything. It was his plan and his money—what could we do?”

“An entire summer wasted,” Habib groaned.

“Nothing has been wasted,” Pasha assured him.

“Have you ever been to Bogotá in the summer? The heat is like Qatar, but the humidity—insufferable! They have cockroaches the size of dates.”

“You were at a university. Was it so different from this one?”

“I was at the university for less than two weeks! Three men came to my door in the middle of the night with uniforms and guns. They told me to gather my things and come with them. Ten minutes, they said—I barely had time to collect my specimens and equipment. They blindfolded me; we drove most of the night. When they took off my blindfold I was in the middle of a jungle. That's where I spent my summer, Pasha—living in a filthy shack. It looked like one of the godforsaken worker camps in Dubai.”

“Were you not provided with adequate facilities?”

“Are you listening to me? It was a
jungle
. Jengo was here working in an air-conditioned laboratory.
My
‘laboratory' was a shed, and I had to share my equipment with ‘chemists' who knew nothing about chemistry except how to test the tetrahydrocannabinol content of marijuana. The conditions were deplorable. I had to research that ridiculous fungus
and
breed those insects in the same tiny room—and all of it was for nothing.”

“You are too critical,” Pasha said. “Your summer was successful—you should be proud of what you accomplished. You learned how to combine the insect eggs with marijuana, didn't you?”

“How can we know that for certain? You weren't able to recover the specimens to see if they survived shipment.”

“But that was not your fault—the method itself was flawed.”

“I was able to isolate the fungus,” Habib said. “It wasn't easy—I had to test hundreds of species before I found one that matched.”

“There, you see? Another success. Because of your work we would have been ready for the second phase of our test—if the first phase had not failed.”

“I'm not going back there,” Habib said. “Send Jengo next time.”

“That is not my field of study,” Jengo said. “I am a plant pathologist—we agreed that I would focus on the toxin.”