Bitter Harvest (Harvest Trilogy, Book 2) Page 5

  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.

&nb
sp; “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.”

  “I’m the one who made a mistake.” Her heels clicked over the polished marble floor of the lobby, and she glanced up at the enormous atrium that rose seven stories above. Two glass elevators moved rapidly up and down, taking people between floors. A third was at the ground floor, with a young woman standing by.

  “Nonsense!” Morgan flashed his badge at the guards who manned the inside checkpoint. They called his name in greeting as he led the way through the security scanner. “For double the pay and the opportunity to work with Rachel Kempf, hard-nosed as she might have been, you would have been a fool not to take the job.”

  The scanner went off as Naomi passed through. She stopped, turning to the guards by reflex. “It must be my phone.”

  “You’re with me, Naomi. And I doubt you’re carrying anything more dangerous than that genius mind of yours. You’re a hero now, not a terrorist. Remember?”

  He said it with a smile and winked, but his comment made her feel stark naked. After a year of living the life of someone else, of having her true name leading the list of hated terrorists, even ahead of Osama Bin Laden, it was unnerving to hear someone call her by her given name.

  She felt her pulse quicken, and sweat broke out on her palms. The same thing had happened when she’d gone to the airport to return to San Antonio from Washington. She and Jack had been provided with new documents reflecting their true names, along with letters from the head of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration to help them through the security screens at the airport. Even though everything had gone smoothly, it had been a surreal experience, as if she were falling down the rabbit hole.

  “I’m sorry, Naomi.” Morgan touched her arm. “That was thoughtless of me. I can’t imagine what a time you’ve had. I hope you’ll let me make it up to you.”

  Shaking her head, she forced a smile in return. “Don’t apologize, Dr. Morgan. I’m just not used to being me again, I suppose.”

  “Please,” he said as the two of them joined the young woman in the executive express elevator, “call me Howard.”

  When the door opened and they stepped out of the elevator into Morgan’s penthouse office, he waved his assistant away, and the young woman disappeared when the elevator doors closed.

  Naomi stood and stared at what lay before her. “Wow.”

  The walls were entirely of glass, with stainless steel columns spread evenly around the circumference to provide structural support. Aside from three nearby buildings which were taller, the office offered an unobstructed view of the entire Los Angeles metro area. Off in the distance, she could make out the famous Hollywood sign. She also saw that there was a large patio with high end deck furniture, and that a number of the glass panels that formed the wall could be opened to let in fresh air.

  Well, as fresh as any air could be in downtown LA, she reminded herself.

  A treadmill occupied one corner, a wet bar with a wine cooler was next to the elevator, and several comfortable looking chairs and two sofas were arrayed around a central fireplace. A desk with a glass frame and topped with what looked like black granite was set off in one corner, almost as an afterthought. There were no paintings or photos.

  With a view like this, she thought, anything else would be superfluous. She couldn’t imagine what it must be like at night.

  “Come on in and make yourself comfortable, Naomi. Something to drink? Are you hungry at all?”

  She sat down on one of the sofas.“I wouldn’t mind a glass of wine, but it’s a bit early for that.” She could have used something to soothe her worry over the strange call from Vijay.

  Morgan cocked an eyebrow at her. “Well, it’s past noon somewhere in the world, you know. What would you like?”

  “White Zinfandel if you’ve got it.”

  He smiled. It was a warm smile, genuine, and Naomi decided that she couldn’t help but like this man. “My dear doctor, there is very little in this world that I either don’t have or can’t get. Especially for you.” He took a bottle from the wine cooler and poured her a glass. Then he went to the liquor cabinet poured himself a scotch. With a conspiratorial grin, he said, “I’ll confess that this isn’t the first time I’ve imbibed a little earlier than is customary.”

  Handing her the wine glass, he settled himself on the opposite end of the sofa before holding up his glass. “Cheers.”

  “Cheers.” Naomi took a sip, savoring the flavor of the chilled wine..

  After a moment of comfortable silence as they both enjoyed the drinks and the view, Morgan said, “Naomi, I have a vision of changing the world. Of leaving a true legacy, something I can be proud of.” He gestured toward the panorama of Los Angeles. “I’ve made my fortune. And I could just keep making that mountain of money bigger. But I want something more than that. I know this must sound like a lot of hogwash coming from a rich corporate suit like me, but I want to do something good.”

  “Making vaccines and the other work your company has done in developing pharmaceuticals certainly qualifies as good, Dr. Morgan…Howard.”


  He shook his head. “That’s not what I mean, Naomi. Those are the profit engines for the company. Yes, they go toward serving the public health, as it were, but we’re not doing anything that someone else isn’t already doing. In many cases we do it better, but it’s all old hat, and it’s all simply for profit. I’m tired of taking incremental steps. I want to make a quantum leap forward in the human condition, something for the history books.”

  He set down his drink and leaned forward. “I know something about what you were working on before you left New Horizons.” At the change in her expression, a mixture of disbelief, horror, and outrage, he added, “Please, let me finish.”

  Setting the wine glass down on a side table before her shaking hands could spill it, Naomi said, “Go on.” She felt as if the fabric of her dress had suddenly turned into shards of glass, gouging into her skin.

  “I don’t know all the details, of course. But I know enough. I know that you perfected a food-based delivery system for RNA payloads that could be used to combat disease, or even correct genetic defects.” He leaned closer. “That’s my dream, Naomi. To take the revolutionary work you began and bring it to fruition for the good of the world.”

  He picked up his drink and sat back, taking a sip. “I also know that something went very badly, terribly wrong at New Horizons, and I’m not interested in the whole business with the Earth Defense Society. I don’t much care about the past, except for whatever lessons we can learn from it. I’m interested in the future, and I want — I need — you to be part of it.”

  It took Naomi a moment to gather her thoughts. She had never actually considered carrying on the work she’d done at New Horizons. Upon reflection, the role she had played, what she had created in her time there, had been groundbreaking by any standard. And it could have, should have, been used for good. Even though she had been driven by greed at the time, she believed that what she was doing would help people, and potentially end the suffering of millions.

  And it would have. She knew that in her heart. While her main work had been focused on developing the delivery system, she had also learned a great deal from Rachel Kempf about the payload. Kempf had been a harvester, but the knowledge she had shared, and that Naomi had built upon, had opened Naomi’s eyes to unguessed vistas of genetic possibilities. She had the knowledge to recreate not only the delivery system itself, but to guide specialist researchers in designing payloads that could be tailored to destroy specific diseases. While Kempf had lied about the true contents of the payload New Horizons had designed, the truth was that the system worked. In the right hands, the delivery system could have saved untold lives. Naomi had spent more than one sleepless night wondering at how things might have been, had her work not been corrupted and twisted by the harvesters.