Plum Island (7 page)

It stands to reason that pros who just copped a lethal bug are not going to draw attention to it by killing two Plum Island
people on their back deck. Still, it was supposed to look like the Gordons surprised a burglar. But whoever staged
that
wasn’t very convincing. This whole thing looked amateurish, or maybe it was done by foreigners who didn’t watch enough American
cop shows on TV. Or, something else.

And what about those five and a half hours between the time the Gordons left Plum Island at noon, and the time Mr. Murphy
said he heard the Gordons’ boat at 5:30? Where were they?

Max said, “That’s about all we have at the moment, John. We’ll have the lab reports tomorrow, and there are people we have
to speak to tomorrow. Can you suggest anyone we ought to see? Friends of the Gordons?”

“I don’t know who the Gordons were friends with, and to the best of my knowledge, they had no enemies.” I said to Mr. Nash,
“Meanwhile, I want to speak to the people on Plum Island.”

Mr. Nash replied, “It may be possible for you to speak to some people who work on Plum Island.” He added, “But in the interest
of national security, I must be present at all interviews.”

I replied in my best New York obnoxious tone, “This is a murder investigation, remember? Don’t pull that crap on me.”

It got a little frosty in the kitchen. I mean, I work with FBI and Drug Enforcement types now and then, and they’re okay people—they’re
cops. However, these spooks, like Nash, are real pains in the ass. The guy wasn’t even saying if he was CIA, Defense Intelligence,
Military Intelligence, or some other weird outfit. What I knew for sure was that he wasn’t from the Department of Agriculture.

Max, feeling I suppose like the host at this gathering of egos, said, “I don’t have any problem with Ted Nash being present
at any interviews or interrogations.” He looked at Penrose.

My buddy Beth gave me a curt glance and said to Nash, the eye-fucker, “I have no problem with that either.”

George Foster pointed out, “Any meeting, interview, interrogation, or working session at which Ted is present, the FBI will
also be present.”

I was really getting the crap kicked out of me, and I was wondering if Max was going to pull the plug on me.

The reasonable Mr. Foster went on, “My area of concern is domestic terrorism. Ted Nash is concerned with international espionage.”
He looked at me, Max, and Penrose, and said, “You are investigating a homicide under New York State law. If we all keep out
of one another’s way, we’ll be fine. I won’t play homicide detective if you won’t play defenders of the free world. Fair?
Logical? Workable? Absolutely.”

I looked at Nash and asked him bluntly, “Who do you work for?”

“I’m not at liberty to say at this time.” He added, “Not the Department of Agriculture.”

“Fooled me,” I said sarcastically. “You guys are sharp.”

Penrose suggested, “Detective Corey, can we have a word outside?”

I ignored her and pressed on with Mr. Nash. I needed to get seven points on the board, and I knew how to do it. I said to
Nash, “We’d like to go to Plum Island tonight.”

He looked surprised. “Tonight? There aren’t any ferries running—”

“I don’t need a government ferry. We’ll take Max’s police boat.”

“Out of the question,” said Nash.

“Why?”

“The island is off-limits,” he said.

“This is a murder investigation,” I reminded him. “Didn’t we just agree that Chief Maxwell, Detective Penrose, and I are investigating
a murder?”

“Not on Plum Island you’re not.”

“We sure are.” I love this stuff. I really do. I hoped Penrose was seeing what a putz this guy was.

Mr. Nash said, “There is no one on Plum now.”

I replied, “There are security people on Plum now, and I want to speak to them. Now.”

“In the morning and not on the island.”

“Now, and on the island, or I’ll get a judge out of bed and get a search warrant.”

Mr. Nash stared at me and said, “It is unlikely that a local judge would issue a search warrant for U.S. government property.
You would need to involve an assistant United States attorney and a federal judge. I assume you know that if you’re a homicide
detective, and what you may also know is that neither a U.S. attorney nor a federal judge will be enthusiastic about issuing
such a warrant if it involves national security.” He added, “So don’t bluff and bluster.”

“How about if I threaten?”

Finally, Max had had enough of Mr. Nash, whose sheep’s clothing was slipping. Max said to Nash, “Plum Island may be federal
land, but it’s part of the Township of Southold, the County of Suffolk, and the State of New York. I want you to get us authorization
to go to the island tomorrow, or we’ll get a court order.”

Mr. Nash now tried to sound pleasant. “There’s really no need to go to the island, Chief.”

Detective Penrose found herself on my side, of course, and said to her new friend, “We have to insist, Ted.”

Ted?
Wow, I really missed some stuff in the lousy hour I was late.

Ted and Beth looked at each other, tortured souls, torn between rivalry and ribaldry. Finally, Mr. Ted Nash, of the Bug Security
Agency or whatever, said, “Well… I’ll make a call about that.”

“Tomorrow,
A.M.
, ” I said. “No later.”

Mr. Foster didn’t let the opportunity pass to tweak Mr. Nash and said, “I think we’re all in agreement that we’re going out
there tomorrow morning, Ted.”

Mr. Nash nodded. By now he’d stopped batting his eyelids at Beth Penrose and was concentrating his passions on me. He looked
at me and said, “At some point, Detective Corey, if we determine that a federal crime has taken place, we probably won’t need
your services any longer.”

I had reduced Teddy-boy to pettiness, and I knew when to leave well enough alone. I’d come back from a verbal drubbing, slain
the slick Ted, and reclaimed the love of Lady Penrose. I’m terrific. I was really feeling better, feeling like my old unpleasant
self again. Also, these characters needed a little fire under their asses. Rivalry is good. Competition is American. What
if Dallas and New York were pals?

The other four characters were now making small talk, rummaging around the cardboard box and doing coffee stuff, trying to
re-establish the amity and equilibrium that they’d established before Corey showed up. I got another beer from the fridge,
then addressed Mr. Nash in a professional tone. I asked him, “What kind of bugs do they play around with on Plum? I mean,
why would anyone, any foreign power, want bugs that cause hoof-and-mouth disease or Mad Cow Disease? Tell me, Mr. Nash, what
I’m supposed to worry about so when I can’t get to sleep tonight, I have a name for it.”

Mr. Nash didn’t reply for a good while, then cleared his throat and said, “I suppose you should know how high the stakes are
here….” He looked at me, Max, and Penrose, then said, “Regardless of your security clearance, or lack of, you
are
sworn police officers, so—”

I said amiably, “Nothing you say will leave this room.” Unless it suits me to blab it to someone else.

Nash and Foster looked at each other, and Foster nodded. Nash said to us, “You all know, or may have read, that the United
States no longer engages in biological warfare research or development. We’ve signed a treaty to that effect.”

“That’s why I love this country, Mr. Nash. No bug bombs here.”

“Right. However … there are certain diseases that make the transition between legitimate biological study and potential biological
weapons. Anthrax is one such disease. As you know”—he looked at Max, Penrose, and me—“there have always been rumors that Plum
Island is not only an animal disease research facility, but something else.”

No one responded to that.

He continued, “In fact, it is not a biological warfare center. There is no such thing in the United States. However, I’d be
less than truthful if I didn’t say that biological warfare specialists sometimes visit the island to be briefed and to read
reports on some of these experiments. In other words, there is a crossover between animal and human disease, between offensive
biological warfare and defensive biological warfare.”

Convenient crossovers, I thought.

Mr. Nash sipped his java, considered, then continued, “African swine fever, for instance, has been associated with HIV. We
study African swine fever on Plum, and the news media makes up this junk about … whatever. Same with Rift Valley fever, the
Hanta virus, and other retroviruses, and the filoviruses such as Ebola Zaire and Ebola Marburg….”

The kitchen was really quiet, like everyone knew this was the scariest topic in the universe. I mean, when it was nuclear
weapons, people were either fatalistic or never believed it was going to happen. With biological warfare or biological terrorism,
it was imaginable. And if the right plague got loose, it was lights out world, and not in a quick incandescent flash, but
slowly, as it spread from the sick to the healthy, and the dead lay rotting where they fell, a Grade B movie coming to your
neighborhood soon.

Mr. Nash continued in that sort of half-reluctant, half-hey-look-what-I-know-that-you-don’t kind of voice. He said, “So …
these diseases can and do infect animals, and therefore their legitimate study would fall under the jurisdiction of the Department
of Agriculture … The department is trying to find a cure for these diseases, to protect American livestock and by extension
to protect the American public, because even though there is usually a species barrier in regard to animal diseases infecting
humans, we’re discovering that some of these diseases can jump species…. With the recent Mad Cow Disease in Britain, for instance,
there is some evidence that people were infected by this disease….”

Maybe my ex-wife was right about meat. I tried to picture a life of soybean cheeseburgers, chile no carne, and hot dogs made
out of seaweed. I’d rather die. All of a sudden I felt love and warmth for the Department of Agriculture.

I realized, too, that what Mr. Nash was putting out was the official crap—stuff about animal diseases crossing species barriers
and all that. In fact, if the rumors were correct, Plum Island was also a place where human infectious diseases were specifically
and purposely studied as part of a biological warfare program that no longer officially existed. On the other hand, maybe
it was rumor, and maybe, too, what they were doing on Plum Island was defensive and not offensive.

It struck me that there was a very thin line between all of this stuff. Bugs are bugs. They don’t know cows from pigs from
people. They don’t know defensive research from offensive research. They don’t know preventive vaccines from air-burst bombs.
Hell, they don’t even know if they’re good or bad. And if I listened to Nash’s crap long enough, I would start to believe
that Plum Island was developing exciting new yogurt cultures.

Mr. Nash was staring into his Styrofoam coffee cup as if realizing that the coffee and the water could have already been infected
with Mad Cow Disease. Mr. Nash continued, “The problem is, of course, that these bacteria and virus cultures can be … I mean,
if someone got his hands on these micro-organisms, and has the knowledge to propagate more from the samples, then, well, you’d
have a great deal of it reproducing, and if it got into the population somehow … then you may have a potential public health
problem.”

I asked, “You mean like an end-of-the-world plague with the dead piling up in the streets?”

“Yes, that kind of public health problem.”

Silence.

“So,” Mr. Nash said in a grave tone, “while we are all anxious to discover the identity of the murderer or murderers of Mr.
and Mrs. Gordon, we’re more anxious to discover if the Gordons took something off that island and transferred it to an unauthorized
person or persons.”

No one spoke for a time, then Beth asked, “Can you … can anyone on the island determine if anything is actually missing from
the laboratories?”

Ted Nash looked at Beth Penrose the way a professor looks at a favorite student who has asked a brilliant question. Actually,
it wasn’t
that
good a question—but anything to get those panties off, right, Ted?

Mr. Cool replied to his new protégée, “As you probably suspect, Beth, it may not be possible to discover if anything is missing.
The problem is, the micro-organisms can be propagated secretly in some part of the Plum Island laboratory or in other places
on the island, then taken off the island, and no one would ever know. It’s not like chemical or nuclear agents, where every
gram is accounted for. Bacteria and virus like to reproduce.”

Scary, if you think about it … microbugs are low-tech compared to nuclear fission or manufacturing nerve gas. This is home
lab stuff, cheap to produce, and it replicates itself in—what did we use in bio lab? Beef bouillon? No more cheeseburgers
for me.

Ms. Penrose, proud of her last question, asked Mr.-Know-It-All, “Can we assume the organisms studied on Plum Island are particularly
deadly? What I mean is, do they genetically engineer these organisms to make them more lethal than they are in their natural
state?”

Mr. Nash did not like that question and replied, “No.” Then added, “Well, the laboratory at Plum Island does have genetic
engineering capabilities, but what they do is take viruses and genetically alter them so they can’t cause disease, but
can
stimulate the immune system to produce antibodies in the event the real virus ever infects the organism. This is sort of
a vaccine, made not by weakening the infectious organism and injecting it, which can be dangerous, but by genetically changing
the organism. To answer your question in short, any genetic engineering done on Plum Island is to weaken a virus or bacteria,
not to increase its power to cause disease.”

I said, “Of course not. But that’s also possible with genetic engineering.”

“Possible. But not on Plum Island.”

It occurred to me that Nash was genetically altering information—taking the germ of the truth, if you will, and weakening
it so we got a mild dose of the bad news. Clever fellow.