Spy Thriller: An Involuntary Spy: An espionage thriller (Involuntary Spy Espionage Thriller Series Book 1) (7 page)

     “We fed these rats 500 times the amount of Bt that the corn produces, and there’s no damage to their tissues.  But this group ate the Bt corn and I’ve already had eight out of 40 die, and organ and tissue damage on the others, and that’s with the clean seeds,” Seth said to George.

     “But tests prove the Bt toxin is destroyed by the stomach, before it gets to the intestines,” retorted George.

     “I looked at those tests.  They’re test tube tests, using hydrochloric acid and pepsin to simulate digestive fluids.  But the rats are showing erratic cell growth in the lower part of the small intestine.  That’s the last point to getting into the colon.”

     That meant that either the testing was flawed, and the Bt was surviving the digestive process, or, even worse, that the unpredictable DNA sequence that was created in the process of genetic engineering was creating a toxic protein that had damaged the cells in the rats that ate the corn.  Seth’s rats had lesions on their stomachs, and abnormal and accelerated cell growth in the lower part of their small intestines.

     “I definitely need to talk to Bill about this,” said Seth.  “Where did George go?” he asked Robin.

     “I don’t know,” said Robin, “Maybe he went to the bathroom.”

     George had disappeared again, as he tended to do whenever he was needed.  It seemed that, after every frustrating event in the testing process, George was nowhere to be found.  It was like he was running out to tattle tale on Seth and Robin.

     “He must have a weak bladder,” said Seth.  “He’s too young to have a prostate problem.”

***

     When Seth and Robin got back to the lab after dinner, the door was ajar.  Seth looked closer and saw that it had been broken open.

     “Robin, call security, and stay back,” said Seth, nervously.

     “What’s wrong?”

     “Someone has broken into the lab.”

     Seth ventured into the lab itself.  It was a mess.  Equipment was smashed.  Chemicals were spilled all over the floors and tables.  Their colors mixed together like a first grade class had been finger painting on the floor.  Lab beakers and flasks were smashed, laid out in pieces like some crude mosaic.  File cabinets had been ripped open and their contents spilled out.  Seth quickly sat down at his computer and logged in.  It had been hacked.  The hard drive had been taken. 

     Seth turned to yell for Robin, and, just as he did, he saw a man in a ski mask, raising his arm above his head.  Less than a second later, he felt a thump, the lights went out, and Seth fell to the floor like a lifeless bag of potatoes.

     When he came to on the ambulance gurney, Seth was looking through a tunnel with an assortment of blurry, upside down faces at the end of it.  Two EMTs began to roll him out of the lab, and he noticed that, not only were Jess and Tim, the night guards, there, but so were two members of the local police, writing reports, asking questions.

     “He’s awake,” said Jess, walking along with the gurney.  “Seth, hold on buddy, they’re taking you to the hospital.”

     “Wait.  I don’t need an ambulance.  I’m fine.”  The EMTs stopped rolling him for a second.

     Bill Penner was also there.  “Seth, when you’re done with the doctors and the police, and if you’re up to it, we need to talk,” he said.

     “Bill.  What the hell happened here?”

     “Someone trashed the lab,” said Bill.  “Probably vandals.”

     “We’ve had these a couple of times.  They’re usually looking for drugs or stuff to make meth with,” said Jess.

     “Yeah, we always catch ‘em,” said Tim.  “But these guys were good.”

     “How so?” said Bill.

     “They don’t show up on the security tape.  At all.”

     The company had one of the most sophisticated security systems in the world.  Whoever did it was able to bypass that system and enter the building undetected.

     “I don’t see how they could have snuck in without us seeing them,” said Jess.  “Unless…”

  “Unless what?” said Seth.

  “Unless they were already in the building.”

     “That’s just not possible,” said Bill.

     “Not only that,” said Seth.  They took the hard drives.  And the slides.  Everything.”

     “The lab animals are all dead,” said Jess.

     “Don’t let anyone touch them.  They need to be autopsied,” said Seth.  “Put them in the refrigerator, now,” said Seth.

     “Can’t do that,” said Jess.

     “Why not?”

     “They’re all hacked up.  Can’t tell which is which.  Looks like the floor of a sausage factory.”

     “Looks like vandalism,” said the police detective.  “We’re just about done here.  Should be okay to clean up in the morning.”

     Seth’s eyes fluttered, the hammer still pounding against his head.  He felt dizzy and sick.  He sat up in the hospital bed, his head spinning, then swung his legs over the side of the bed.  He had to get out of the hospital and get back to the lab, which was in pieces.   Luckily, he had kept a copy of not only his own, but also Robin’s reports on a duplicate hard drive, and he had duplicate copies of all their slides and physical data at home.  Something had told him in the very beginning of this project that it was going to be the most unusual one he had ever undertaken, and for that different precautions had to be taken.

     The fact that the computer hard drives had been taken was proof that these were not thieves looking for drugs.  Was it industrial espionage from a competitor?  They were out to either steal or destroy their data.  But why?  That was something he had to find out, as well as put together the broken pieces of their experiments and finish the job.

     Seth walked into Bill’s office about 10:00 a.m. the next day, his head still pounding like a pile driver.

     “Seth, what are you doing here, man?  You should be at the hospital or home or...”

     “It’s okay Bill, I’m fine.  I need to finish this job.”

     “Seth, forget about it.  This job is fucked.  I already put Audrey Stevens and her team on an independent study.”

     “No, Bill, I’ve got everything.”

     Bill flashed a look like a patient who was getting a rectal examination.

     “What?”

     “I saved copies of everything.  All our data, every slide.  All we need is to clean up the lab and we can take up where we left off.  Of course, we’ve lost our control groups – that sets us back time-wise.”

     It was like Bill was choking on something.  But then he quickly recovered.

     “Smart man.  That’s great.”

     He patted Seth on the back and Seth winced.

     “Uh, sorry.  We’ll get you back to work right away.”

     “Great Bill, I just need Robin.”

     “Seth, Robin asked to be reassigned.”

     “What?” said Seth, in consternation.

     “She was very specific.  Also said that she didn’t want you to try to contact her.  I think this break-in really scared her.”

     That was a surprise for Seth.  Now he was the deer in the headlights.  Seth and Robin had worked together, played together, eaten together and slept together the past four months, and now she wanted out?  Why so suddenly?  And why did she want out of everything, including the experiments?  This was not right.  There had to be more.  Then again, when emotions were involved a woman didn’t really need a reason for anything, at least no reason that any man could understand.

     “Alright Bill.  I’ll pick a new team member.  I’ll get this job done.”

     “Atta boy,” said Bill, and dove for his phone.

     Seth got back to his wrecked lab and office and immediately dialed up Robin.

     “Yes, Seth?”

     “What’s going on?”

     “I don’t know what you mean.”

     “I mean, Bill said you were out of the project.”

     “That’s right.”

     “Why?”

     There was a pause, so silent that the only thing that could be heard was the static on the phone and footsteps in the corridor.

     “Robin?”

     “Seth, it’s over.  Please don’t call me anymore.”

     “Robin, we’re not in the tenth grade.”

    “I mean it Seth, don’t call me, and don’t try to see me.  If you do, I’ll consider it harassment.”

    Then Seth heard the click of the phone being hung up.  In that one click, Robin was no longer a part of his life and he had no idea why.  Seth knew it wasn’t a serious relationship, yet there was a sadness in the realization that it was over, and so suddenly.  It was as if every memory of every breakup suddenly melded into one.  By now, times should have changed, his shell should be thicker, and a wealth of experience should make this more bearable, but he felt teenage rejection overcoming him like a childhood virus that lies dormant, then attacks the unsuspecting adult.  It would never be something he would get used to.

     Long days go quickly, but take their toll.  Seth was exhausted after putting the lab back together.  At the risk of breaking in an entirely new team, he let George and Shirley both go back to their regular jobs and set about the task of going over the resumes of Robin’s replacement candidates.

     Seth had rebuilt the lab, and the extra security surveillance video equipment he had ordered had been delivered and installed.  Everything was ready, except that he needed to select a new assistant.  Seth pored over the stack of resumes on his desk.  The person had to be qualified, but not too much of a company person, like Robin.  And it had to be a man this time.

     After a while, he found himself reading the same sentence in the same resume, over and over again.  His brain was unable to process any more information.  That was his cue to go home.

     Seth’s memory took over on autopilot, guiding him to his parking space while he went over all of the latest events in his mind.  He could not assume that vandals broke into and destroyed the lab.  He had taken precautions to guard the data.  He had made multiple copies of the data on disc, multiple copies of all the reports, and had split up the duplicate copies of the slides.  Instead of leaving his working copy at the lab, he would take it with him wherever he went.  The only thing left to do was to think of a place to hide the duplicate copies.

     Seth arrived home, parked his car, and shuffled into his apartment.  His mom had given him a beautiful briefcase when he graduated from Stanford, but he never used it because nobody used briefcases anymore.  Everyone carried laptop cases now.  He took the briefcase from its special place in the closet, dusted it off, and put all of the duplicate data and hard drives in it.

     The next day Seth went in late to work, so he could stop by the bank.  He withdrew $30,000 in cash from his savings account and put that in the briefcase as well as his passport, just in case.  He had unknowingly created a go-bag.  He rented a private safety deposit box at a different bank, and put the go-bag into it.  Hopefully, he would never have to use it.

     It was lonelier at the lab without Robin.  Seth’s new partner, Daniel Harkavy, had the charm of a dry piece of toast, and he wasn’t much fun to look at either.  But he was both intelligent and diligent, and seemed to have the same scientific sense of duty that Seth had.

     “Dan, did you go over the tests on our ratty friends?”

     “Yes, no signs of mis-folded proteins; what we are seeing though is Bt toxin in the blood cells, intestinal walls, spleen, liver and even feces.”

     “Lemme see that, what levels?”

     “270 ppm.”  270 was considered toxic.

     Seth knew that this meant that the Bt made by the GM plant was transferring to bacteria in the digestive system.  This was not good.  The control group, fed higher levels of the naturally occurring Bt, had no such symptoms – at all.  This had to be a different kind of bacteria.  Something in the genetic engineering process had turned it into a deadlier toxin.

     Seth went into his office, recorded the findings, and sent them by secure email to a duplicate web mail address under an assumed name.  Then he made two flash drive copies, one for the experiment and one for the go-bag, which he put in a hidden compartment in his jacket.  Seth was beginning to feel like James Bond.  Too bad there was no Q at the company to set him up with a cool car and weapons to defend himself from the bad guys.

     At 11:00 p.m., Seth left the office.  He would go by the bank the next morning on the way to work and stock up the go-bag.  He headed straight home.  Gliding into his parking space, Seth looked up at his apartment and noticed the light was on.  He didn’t think he had left it on, but he had done it several times before, so it wasn’t really unusual, but he was overly nervous from the break-in.

     Seth observed for a while.  He must have left the light on this morning.  He was being paranoid.  Take a deep breath and go, he said to himself, as he remembered a line from an insurance claim that Johnny Carson had once shared on “The Tonight Show” – “I glanced at my mother-in-law and headed over the embankment.”

     When Seth came to the top of the stairs, everything looked in order.  The door to his apartment was closed.  He tried to open it quietly.  It was locked.  That was a good sign.  He unlocked the door and slowly inched his way into the apartment, like he had seen in detective movies.  The only difference was that detectives always had a gun.

     Slightly slinking half of his body into the apartment, he was suddenly pulled in like a fly into a vacuum cleaner, and struck on the head.  The curtain was down on Act II.

***

     When Seth came to he was face down on the floor, eating dust.  He sat up, and a shiver went up his spine in his panic as he frisked himself, finding the secret compartment in his jacket.  The flash drive was still there.  He straightened out his stiff body to stand up, and, as he did, his head throbbed.  His right arm felt heavy and weak, like his hand had been super glued to a shot put.  His knee ached from hitting the floor.  The apartment looked even worse than he did.  The living room floor was a collage of papers.  The refrigerator had been purged of its contents, which had been strewn out all over his kitchen floor, like fish out of water on top of a goopy paste that looked like some kind of GMO Pepto Bismol.  Seth picked up some ice from the floor to put on his head.  Then he dialed 911.  When the operator answered, “911 emergency,” Seth thought, “Wait a minute.  If this was the company, I can’t let on about anything being missing,” he thought.

     “I made a mistake,” Seth responded, and hung up.

     He would go back to the lab tomorrow, like nothing had happened, and continue with the testing, using the duplicate data.  Seth went to his home computer, but, of course, the hard drive was missing.  What a surprise.

     Carefully checking every hiding place was a must, not only to make sure the predators had left, but also to see if they had, in fact, found everything.  Finding the aspirin was easy, because the contents of his entire medicine cabinet had been emptied into the sink.  His bed had been torn apart and the contents of his drawers, as well as the drawers themselves, carpeted the floor of his bedroom.  His clothes had been ripped out of the closet and were in a jumbled pile on the floor.  Where the bed should have been was just the frame.  The mattress was against the wall and looked like Lizzy Borden had taken turns with Lorena Bobbitt on it.

     At least there was no need to move the bed.  Seth pushed aside the clutter, exposing the rug, and shoved that to the side.  The floorboards looked intact.  He went into the kitchen to fetch a knife from the kitchen floor and limped back to the bedroom.  Prying open the secret compartment in the floorboard, he found that it was all there – his spare Mac book with the duplicate data on it, and his father’s 357 Magnum.  He remembered when his father had given it to him.

     “Son, they called the Colt 45 the Peacemaker.  I like to call this little gem the Insurance Adjuster.  If you use it right, you will make your life insurance company proud.  I hope you never have to use it.”

     Seth slipped the Magnum into his belt, and went to the remnants of his living room to power up the Mac Book and to make a copy of the flash drive.  He was smart, but he had to be smarter.  No points for second place.