Spy Thriller: An Involuntary Spy: An espionage thriller (Involuntary Spy Espionage Thriller Series Book 1) (13 page)

     Seth was making love to Natasha in his bed and all was very pleasant until he heard a faint knocking. 
Was that the front door?
He continued making love to her, but the knocking gained in intensity until it turned to pounding and Seth opened his pasty, sleepy eyes, rubbing them and looking around the room to discover he was alone in the bed.

     “I’m coming,” he yelled to the pounder.

     Seth stumbled into the living room and corridor of his apartment, putting on his pants while shuffling to the front door and peering into the peep hole, only to be startled by the vision of a large fist continuing to pound.

     “Hold on, who is it?”

     As the fist drew back and stopped pounding, he saw Yuri’s distorted face in the peep hole.

     “Great,” said Seth and opened the door.

     “You look like shit,” said Yuri.  “Where you were all last night?”

     “Out with Natasha,” said Seth, figuring that this lie would be easier than modifying a version of the truth.

     “That’s breaking rules.  Did you fuck her at least?”

     “No, only in my dream, and, unfortunately, you messed up the best part of that for me.”

     “Where did you go, night club?”

     “Yes.”

     “Next time don’t go anywhere without telling me, okay?”

     Seth was purposely unhospitable to Yuri.  All he wanted was to go back to bed, catch up on his sleep, and then to work on making his impression key.

     “Okay, what time is it?”

     “Ten o’clock.”

     “I’m going back to bed, could you?”  Seth made a sweeping motion toward the door.

     “Oh… sure, but next time you have to let me know or there will be more restrictions.”

     “Yes, father.”

     “And next time – fuck her.  If you don’t fuck her you will always just be friends.”

     Seth shut the door after Yuri and his simple but retarded advice.  He was perfectly happy with the way things were going with Natasha and felt no need to push things artificially, nor did he have any desire to be with anyone but her.  He dragged himself back to the bed, falling into it like a piece of cut timber, and was out in less than five minutes.

     Later, Seth awoke to Natasha’s call.  “Where were you last night?” she asked.

     “I went out with Dave – he was trying to ‘bond’ with me.”

     “Boy’s night out, huh?”

     “Yeah.  Why don’t you come over later?  We can watch a movie or something.”

     “Actually, I’m invited to my Aunt’s house tonight for dinner.  Tomorrow?”

     Seth was saved.  He could spend the whole day scheming.

    Once Seth got going, he put the clay mold together, prepared the metallic casting material, and, when it was ready, poured it into the mold.  When the casting material had set, he pulled apart the clay mold and had a perfectly molded copy of the Abloy key.  He filed the rough spots softly with a round file.  Now the only question was when he could use it.

     Day after day spent watching Dave’s apartment from the coffee shop was tedious.  This spy work definitely had no glamor in it.  Seth kept a log of all of Julia’s comings and goings.

    One thing that he noticed from all of this surveillance was that, even though she was an average looking girl, Julia was obsessed about her hair and makeup.  The multi-billion dollar cosmetics industry suddenly made sense to him.  Narcissus should have been a girl.

     Julia did not have a set time for her beautification activities, but she was religious about getting manicures and pedicures, having her hair done at least once a week, and, of course, shopping.

     It was a puzzle for men how women never got tired of shopping, even if there was nothing to buy.  In Khabarovsk, the quality of shopping was limited, yet Julia engaged in it regularly as if it were part of her work instead of a pastime.  If he had doubts before about whether or not she and Dave were married, the time she spent on shopping dispelled them all.  The problem with her shopping habits is that they were less predictable than her trips to the beauty salon.  The time she spent in the malls was erratic – one hour here, sometimes two hours there.  Sometimes she went to the malls every day, and sometimes she spent days without visiting them at all.  But one thing was for certain – his window of opportunity to get into Dave’s apartment would have to come during one of Julia’s shopping sprees.

    
Seth finished up looking through all Bill’s files and emails.  He had discovered official internal memos from the FDA during the early 90’s that had been hidden from the public, warning of the dangers of genetically modified foods, during the time the FDA was formulating their policy of, “if it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it must be a duck, even though it may be a duck with the genes of a turtle.”  How would they account for the fact that humans differ genetically from chimpanzees by only a little over 1%?

    Seth pored over the warnings of the FDA’s own scientists, in over a dozen memos.  There was Dr. Edward J. Matthews memo warning of the dangers of production of high levels of toxicants by genetically modified plants, requiring further testing; Dr. Shibko’s recommendation of toxicological studies and in vitro digestion studies, both of which were never performed; the Division of Food Chemistry’s memo concerning safety issues of marker genes; and Dr. Guest’s memo to Dr. James Maryanski, raising toxicological and environmental concerns; the need to demonstrate that the genetically engineered foods were safe to humans; the effect of one genetically engineered organism in a mono-diet as animal feeds and its effect on animal health; the need to evaluate the toxicology of genetically engineered plant byproducts; and the need to evaluate the use of antibiotic resistant marker genes.  None of these tests were ever performed.  In fact, no testing was ever performed by the FDA on GMOs.

    There were memos from Dr. Maryanski on labeling GMOs (which is not required) and from Dr. Maryanski and Dr. Sheldon on the potential dangers of the use of antibiotic resistant marker genes; memos on the presence of stomach lesions on rats tested for tolerance to genetically engineered tomatoes; and comments from the USDA recommending generations of safety testing; as well as memos from the Dept. of Human Health and Safety recommending the same.

     Finally, Dr. Pribyl’s memo summed up the essence of FDA policy that there were no differences between traditional breeding and transgenic manipulation, no unintended effects without scientific testing, and no danger of transference of genes into unintended species; all of which should have been required.  Dr. Pribyl criticized that policy, saying that it read like a biotech “Redbook” instead of a scientific document.

    All of these concerns were secretly pushed under the rug by the FDA when it formulated its policy, under the direction of Bill Penner, of course, that GMO foods were generally recognized as safe and did not need any safety testing.  The proponent of each GMO food merely had to submit reports to the FDA saying that their food was generally recognized as safe.  And now Bill was trying to do the same with foods engineered with Bt toxins, even though internal reports of the EPA had concluded that the Bt foods were dangerous.

     Not only were these concerns swept under the rug, but the President’s office specifically instructed the FDA to state that “The method by which food is produced or developed may in some cases help to understand the safety or characteristics of finished food.  However, the key factors in reviewing safety concerns should be the characteristics of the food product, not the fact that new methods are used.” It also stated that, “The policy statement needs to stress the role of decentralized safety reviews by producers; with informal FDA consultation only if significant safety or nutritional concerns arise.”  In other words, official FDA policy was being written for the biotech companies to alert the FDA as to whether a GMO food was safe.  If the biotech companies said it was safe, then not even any consultation with the FDA was required.

     If Seth was caught with any of these memos, he may be able to talk himself out of it.  After all, they were supposedly available in response to a request for documents under the Freedom of Information Act.  However, if he was caught with the memo to Bill that was marked “Classified,” he could be sought for treason under the Espionage Act.  Seth had to be careful who he disclosed the information to, and he had to have his escape route planned out in advance.  Staying in the United States was out of the question.  It was too dangerous.

     Seth deleted the spyware from his computer, and transferred all the new information to the flash drive and made a duplicate to hide in his jacket. If he was going to try to go to Russia, he would need, at the minimum, a visa.  It was time to meet with someone at the Russian consulate.  There was a Russian consulate in Houston, as well as the main embassy in Washington, DC.  Seth decided to go for DC, but he did not dare call them from his office. After work, he purchased a telephone encryption device.  He would make the call from home.  It was ironic to turn to the old enemy of the U.S. for help, but it seemed like the only good option available.

    
Before Seth took his one week of vacation time to visit the nation’s capital, he decided to go back to the office and make sure his computer was completely clean.  He also had to break back in to Bill’s office and remove the spyware program.  The next day at work, Seth found some remnants of Bill’s emails he had copied on his computer, transferred them to the flash drive, then erased them from his hard drive. He also erased his Internet browsing history.

    He replaced the hard drive with a duplicate hard drive he had created for a backup and slipped the original hard drive into his case, so no data erased from the original hard drive could be recovered.

     Just as he was on the final key strokes, Dan said, “Seth, did you hear?” Someone hacked into Bill’s desk top and there’s a big investigation.”

     “Shit,” thought Seth, “great timing.”  His plans to go to Washington had to be temporarily delayed to deal with this crisis.

     Two gentlemen who looked like FBI agents were assigned to check all the computers in the building under the guise of being computer consultants.  Seth was in the clear, so when the two arrived to his office, and asked if they could perform “routine maintenance” on his and Daniel’s desktop, they both complied.  Not only did the two men have Germinat visitors’ badges, they also showed orders, signed by the company, to perform the routine maintenance.

     “Be my guest,” said Seth, standing back from his computer, and one of the suits took a seat at his desk.

     “This won’t take long,” said the suit.

     As Seth went down the corridor to get a cup of coffee, he had an uneasy feeling that he had forgotten something.  What was it?  He poured himself a cup of coffee and sat down in the break room.  Then he realized what he had forgotten – the flash drive!  Suddenly that uneasy feeling graduated to anxiety, and Seth could hardly hold his coffee cup as he made his way back to the office.   

     The suits were still going over his computer when he got back to the office.  They had already finished with Daniel’s which, of course, could not have had anything on it.  Seth wondered if he had inadvertently left anything damaging on the duplicate hard drive, but, most of all, he wondered if they had found the flash drive he had stupidly left plugged in to the computer.  The next few minutes that passed were more like hours, as Seth worried.  He felt his heart beating faster and his palms sweating.

     “Sir, is this your computer?” asked the suit.

     “Yes,” said Seth.

     “Could you tell me please, what is your password for the hard drive?”

     Seth had locked his hard drive with a special password.  He gave it, and the suit started to pore over Seth’s hard drive for what seemed to be like hours.  Finally, when it was over, the suit gave a suspicious look to Seth, and left the room.  Seth scrambled to his seat and felt the CPU for his flash drive.  It was still plugged in to the USB portal.  He had dodged a bullet one more time.

     Seth’s plan to seek refuge in Russia was not perfect.  He could not disclose the particulars of the classified report, because of its potential for use in biological warfare.  Clearly, he could not allow that report to fall into the wrong hands.  There had to be a way to conceal it so nobody would know the details until he figured out what to do with it.  However, that was something that he had to put on the back burner.  Now that Bill had discovered the bug on his computer, the heat was getting too close for comfort.  Seth had to make his escape route the number one priority.

     Seth took a week of vacation time, and flew to DC.  He made sure to hit the regular tourist spots, and visited all the monuments and museums he could before his appointment with representatives at the Russian Embassy. He revealed just enough information to make himself valuable to them.  They provided him with a one year visa and suggested he apply for political asylum, which he did.  The visa would get him into the country for at least one year, while he worked on his asylum application and tried to figure out the best and most public way to disclose the information he was holding.

     Germinat’ value to the government apparently went far beyond their mutual management via the revolving door, into the development of biological and, no doubt, chemical weapons as well. The release of this information would have dire consequences, not only for Germinat, but for the U.S. government.  On the plane on the way home from Washington, Seth pondered the problem of how to conceal the classified report and what was its highest and best use, which he finally decided was the equivalent of an insurance policy on his life.  The flight attendant walked down the aisle and stopped at his seat.

     “Sir, there’s an empty seat available near your friends,” said the flight attendant.”

     “My friends?”

     “Yes, they were asking the gate agent about getting a seat near you, but it seems a confirmed passenger did not make the flight and there is one open.  You can take it if you like.”

     “Where is it?”

     “17D, it’s an aisle seat, only one row in back of your friends.”

     “Thank you.  Uh, what seats are they in?”

     “They’re in 16E and F.”

     Seth looked through the rows, but he could not see who was sitting in 16E and F.  Obviously someone was following him.  He had to assume that they had seen him going either into or out of the Russian Embassy.  If they were from the company, he still had time to make his escape because it was Friday and, if they, most likely, would make their report on Monday.  If they were from the government, his escape route may not be so easy.

     Seth must be suspected of the break-in.  If that was the case, it would not be long before Bill told his buddies in the government that one of his employees had their hands on classified files that could cause an international debacle.  The U.S. was already famous for dropping tons of bombs on any country that it thought was using “weapons of mass destruction.”  To be implicated in the development of genetically engineered biological weapons could not be very diplomatically pleasant for the country or the current administration, which was already acquiring a reputation of “Ready, fire, aim.”  Seth had to find out who was following him.

     He could either approach those two clowns while they were boxed into their airplane seats, or wait until later when they were free to do whatever they wanted with him.  He decided not to wait, mustered up his courage, and went up the aisle.  He sat in the unoccupied 17D and confronted them.

     “Excuse me, gentlemen, yes, you two, can you tell me who you work for?”

     Both were dressed as tourists and did not look like FBI agents.

     “Well, I don’t see as that’s any of your business,” said 16E.

     “On the contrary, since you both are following me, it is very much my business.  Now, give it up or I’ll tell the captain about the terrorist threat I heard you make when you boarded the plane and the local police in St Louis can sort it out.”

     “We work for Germinat,” said 16F, at the same time his partner said, “Shut up.”

     “Look, we don’t want any trouble,” said 16F.  “The company is doing a routine security screening to consider you for a possible promotion.”

     “That’s right,” said 16E.

     “And that’s why you followed me while I was on my vacation?” asked Seth.

     Theirs was a lame story, but Seth knew it was all he was going to get out of them.  After this, he knew he could not afford to stay a minute longer in St. Louis.

       Once these two made their report to Bill, the heat would be on and he would never be allowed to leave the country.  He had to make his move now.  Nobody would expect Seth to turn around and go back to Washington right away and these two clowns would most likely not make their report until Monday morning. It was Friday, and the bank had already closed, but it was open Saturday from 9 to 12.  Tomorrow would be Seth’s last day in St. Louis.