Spy Thriller: An Involuntary Spy: An espionage thriller (Involuntary Spy Espionage Thriller Series Book 1) (9 page)

     The curtailment of Seth’s social life felt like a big step backward, and Natasha didn’t understand why Seth was turning down her invitations.  After two weeks of isolation, Seth came to the realization that something had to be done or she would interpret the restrictions as rejection.

     Seth decided to venture out of the apartment a little bit at a time.  It was the Camel’s Nose principle. If Seth snuck out a little bit longer every time, he would soon have his freedom back, or at least, that was the theory.  A “double date” with Dave and his wife was the perfect excuse to slip his nose under the tent.

     “No way, it’s too early,” said Yuri.

     “Look, this guy is from Vancouver, supposedly so am I, and there’s nothing between us but a sea of Russians.  If I don’t accept his invitation he’s going to think something is up.”

     “You’re right, he probably will.”

     “So?”

     “Go ahead and accept.  I am going to check this guy out.”

***

     The double date was for Friday night, at a nice Armenian restaurant.  Seth was actually looking forward to it until Yuri rang the bell Thursday night.

     “He’s FBI,” said Yuri.

     “Who?”

     “The guy from Vancouver, and you don’t have to worry, he’s not really from Vancouver or Canadian either.  His real name is Brian Jenkins.”

     “What does he want?  He has no authority over me, does he?”

     “They obviously suspect who you may be, and it’s probably from that fucking police stop, but no, he has nothing over you.  Except of course…”

     “What?”

     “If he wanted to shoot you, but that would more likely be CIA.”

     “That’s reassuring.”

     “Well, if they knew where you were, they would just shoot you and you would never suspect it.”

     “Oh, thanks Yuri, I feel much more comfortable now.”

     “Don’t mention it.  Next time listen to what I tell you.  Now we have to listen to this guy and figure out what the hell he’s doing here.”

     “How do we do that?”

     “I’m coming with you.”

     “Bringing a hooker to our double date?”

     “Who said anything about hooker?  I bring my own girl.”

     “You have one?”

     “No, but this is Russia.  I get one, it’s easy.  You study about Vancouver and think of some questions this guy won’t be able to answer.  It will be fun.”

     Yeah, great fun.  The party was expanding.  First Seth, the spy by no choice of his own, then Yuri, the FSB agent, and now the FBI.  It was becoming a real alphabet soup of international espionage.

     The Bt toxin that was produced by the bacteria and the one produced by the corn plant were completely different in toxicity.  Seth could not explain why, but the rats who ingested the regular Bt had no effects at all.  However, the ones who ingested the Bt corn had multiple effects, such as infertility, shrunken testicles, organ damage, and Seth and Daniel found evidence of the Bt toxin breaching the digestive system and in the blood of the subjects.  They also found elevated antibodies, and an increase in cytokines.  There was no way this corn was fit for human consumption.  Tissue samples from the ileum, the lower part of the small intestine, showed a significant increase in cell growth.  This meant possible precancerous activity.

     “Dan, if this corn hits the market, there’s going to be risk of allergic reactions, autoimmune diseases, birth defects and infertility, not to mention cancer.”

     “I’ve checked and rechecked the data.  They definitely have to go back to the drawing board on this one,” said Dan.

     “What about the pollen?” asked Seth.

     “Tests conclusively deadly to butterflies and possible endangerment to bees.”

     “That means anywhere within a one to two mile radius of where this stuff is planted, pollinators are going to die.  That could affect the whole ecosystem.”

     “We’re also showing nutritional content is less in the Bt corn than comparable conventional corn.” 

     Seth knew that these problems may be irreversible and that it may be many, many years before the full negative effects were revealed.  It was difficult to postulate what effects resulted from the neonicotinoids, if any, and what effects were from the Bt toxin, but Seth theorized that, since the toxin was found in high levels in the areas with abnormal cell growth, it was the primary culprit.

     Seth’s tenure at the company had been preceded by a report he had done on the effects of glyphosate.  The levels of glyphosate in non-organic vegetables and animal feed had skyrocketed since the advent of Cleanup Ready crops.  Since glyphosate was the active ingredient in the world’s most popular herbicide, and its patent had run out in the year 2000, the company had genetically engineered corn, soybeans and cotton to be resistant to its glyphosate based product, Cleanup.  Seth became an expert on the poison and its effects on mammals for the study, and he now surmised that the company may have hired him just to shut him up.

     Glyphosate had even far more devastating effects than the neonicotinoids alone, as it was an anti-microbial agent, which essentially killed off the good bacteria in your digestive system, leaving the bad bacteria like E. coli to wreak havoc, contributing to diseases like “leaky gut.”  Seth’s recruiter at the company had promised Seth would work on a team that would make improvements in the products to avoid glyphosate exposure.  Of course, this never happened, but Seth was equally sold on the Miracle Rice project and really believed in it.

     The after effects of glyphosate had already begun to affect the general population.  More and more people were becoming sensitive to certain components of foods and developing allergies that were never seen before.  Gluten intolerance had become so prevalent that gluten free items were being advertised.  The rBGH hormone, genetically engineered by the company to make cows produce more milk, had also sprouted conditions like intolerance to lactose.

     The pieces were adding up.  So many chemicals were being introduced into the food supply that approximately 70% of all processed foods were made with either high fructose corn syrup, cottonseed oil, canola oil, or beet sugar, all of which were genetically engineered company products.  Seth was finally in a position where he could try to convince the company not to put another hazardous product on the market, so he was meticulous in his analysis of the data and the preparation of his report.

    “Bill is not going to like our report,” said Dan.

     “It is what it is.”

     Seth spent the better part of the next day preparing the report, complete with all the backup and details of each test result.  The finished product was a fine example of his best work ever.  It was finally ready for Bill.

     Bill’s face as he read the report looked like he was enduring the smell of a lingering fart.  Finally, he looked up from the report in seething disgust.

     “Seth, I thought I was clear about this.”

     “You were.  You told me to do an ‘independent study’ and that’s what I did.  I can’t help it that the corn is poisonous.  It is what it is.”

     “No, Seth, it is not what it is.  Your data is faulty.”

     “Faulty?  No, my data is solid.”

     “Your experiments were interrupted by the break-in.  They’re not conclusive.”

     “Bill, I have all the data, and all the findings.  It’s all there.”

     “Still I have to go with Team 2’s report.  They conclusively have proven that the Bt toxin does not survive digestion.”

     “In test tubes, with simulated stomach acid.”

     “Yes.”

     “Well, then how do you explain these tissue samples, and the Bt toxin in the blood of the rats, breaching the placenta to the young and ending up in the brains of the offspring?”

     “Seth, we’re tabling this research.  It’s inconclusive.  I’m going with Team 2.  Thanks for your help, but the decision has been made.”

     “Bill, this corn cannot go to market.  It’s too dangerous.”

     “God damn it Seth, don’t you remember what I fucking told you the first day?  This is an independent study.  The corn is already approved.  It’s already in everything you eat, every day.  Every can of soda, every cookie, every cracker, everything.  You have as much chance of stopping this train as you would finding balls on a Brahma Bull.”

     The corn was already on the market.  How could the company have let that happen?  Seth’s stomach turned.  He felt a lump in his throat.  Kids were eating this stuff, all over America.  It would only be a matter of time before there were increased allergies, birth defects, cancers, infertility, and nobody would know where the blame really lies.

     “Bill, we have to do something.  I know we can make a safer corn, I know we can.”

     “Bt corn, soy, cotton, it’s all approved.  That train has left the station, Seth.  Our reports show that it’s safe.  That’s how it got approved.  Team 2 says it’s safe.  The only one who says it’s not safe is you.  They mostly feed this shit to cows and pigs anyway, and make ethanol out of it.”

     “Bill, you have to…”

     “I don’t have to do anything.  That’s it, Seth.  I wish I could thank you for this report, but I can’t.  It’s being tabled as non-conclusive.  That’ll be all Seth.”

     Seth began walking out of Bill’s office as Bill called to him.

     “Do I have all the data, in every format?”

     “Yes.”  Seth was lying.

     “No copies were made, all the slides and results have been turned in?”

    “Yes.”

     Another lie.  Seth had always prided himself on his integrity.  Telling the truth had been the hallmark of that pride.  Now, lies were becoming an everyday occurrence in his life and that tugged at his self-esteem.  But, he thought to himself, “Sometimes lies can get you into trouble, but if you really want to get screwed, try telling the truth all the time.” He was now in the possession of something so dangerous he didn’t know what to do with it.  Dangerous to his job, dangerous to himself, dangerous to the company, and potentially dangerous to the government.  At this point in time, Seth wished he could be someone else.  He wished he could close his eyes, tap his heels together, say “there’s no place like home,” and vanish.

     As Seth was leaving Bill’s office, Richard Roberts, the wiry Assistant Administrator for the Office of Chemical Safety of the EPA was walking in.  Seth wondered why the EPA would be making a house call.  Bill could provide him with Team 2’s report, an independent study on the safety of Bt corn, at the same time he was shredding evidence that the corn was a deadly toxin.

     As Seth went to bed that night, he couldn’t sleep.  Every time he tried to close his eyes and drift off to sleep he imagined deformed babies and hairless kids on chemotherapy.  Bt corn may be a killer, but this job was going to kill Seth before the box of cheerios and rBGH milk did.

     If Seth went to the press with what he had now and tried to blow the whistle on Germinat, the best he could do is lose his job and insure that he would never work again in any capacity in his profession.  He needed something more.  To fight his insomnia, Seth tried taking walks to clear his head, but it only stimulated him to think of ideas on how to get his hands on more evidence, which kept him awake.  There was only one way to find it, if there was any.  He had to break into Bill’s office and hack into his computer.

     Seth was used to keeping long hours, so it would be easy to have access to Bill’s office.  He knew he would be able to hack into Bill’s PC once he got in.  All he needed to do was figure out a way to break in.

   At home, Seth used the extra key from his office to make a bump key.  All the locks at Germinat were the same model.  Seth’s bump key would go into the lock on the door of Bill’s office and, after a few taps of a screwdriver, Seth would be in.  The next question was when to do it.

    Seth lay in bed, night after night, unable to sleep.    Once he blew the whistle on Germinat, what next?  Would he be hailed as a hero?  Take to the talk show circuit?  Write a book?  One thing was for certain. The company was going to fight back.  Seth would be discredited, blacklisted in the scientific community.  If blowing the whistle had no immediate economic reward for Seth, he would be lucky to get a job flipping GMO hamburgers and pumping GMO cola at McDonalds.  He definitely had to weigh the pros and cons on this one.  There were many cons.  No company car, no more trips to St. Tropez, no cushy perks, no more conferences with hot and cold running blondes.  The pros, only one, if someone would actually listen, he may be able to save lives, human and animal, and, the bigger picture – the environment; something the EPA was supposed to do instead of helping the company poison the world.

     Germinat was buying up seed companies.  It also bought Beescience, the research company that was trying to solve the problem of poisoning of the pollinators.  Germinat’s herbicide, Cleanup, was the most popular brand in the world and, thanks to Cleanup Ready GMO corn, soy and cotton, the three most common components of processed food and animal feed could be sprayed with even more Cleanup, as it would kill everything but the crop itself.  Too bad for the Monarch butterfly, who depended on the milkweed, once flourishing in the wild, and which now grew in between the crops.  Cleanup was so good at killing that it killed every form of plant life, except, of course, the Cleanup Ready crops.

     The company would own every seed company, and every seed would be genetically engineered and the patent owned by the company.  It would become the master of the U.S. and then the world’s food supply.  An essential part of monopoly is the elimination of democracy.  To do this, the company stuffed the coffers of Congressmen and Senators’ campaign funds.  The ignorance of the voting public was an advantage for the company, who sewed its political crops as much as its genetically engineered ones.  Germinat and other huge companies and banks, which were really just a collection of greedy people feeding ultimately on the public, had succeeded in forming a government around their interests.

     Seth went back to work on Miracle Rice, the company’s biggest hype project, and one that he had once believed in.  Funny thing about a belief – no matter what seemed to point in the other direction, there was nothing that could talk you out of it.  The brain carefully selected facts to rationalize and reinforce your belief, and ignored everything else, no matter how logical.  The Bt corn testing gave Seth pause to look at what the company was doing with Miracle Rice and all of its products.

     Besides Miracle Rice, the company’s paradigm shift in the world’s food supply by replacing natural foods with GMOs was making a product that allowed it to sell more of its Cleanup herbicide, and making a product that produced its own pesticide.  How that fit into the company’s plan to increase yields, feed the hungry, and reduce pesticide use was anyone’s guess.

    The business of agriculture was a big business.  The company sought to control the food supply.  As long as it could genetically engineer a food with any type of nutrient, it didn’t matter that the world diet would only consist of rice, corn and soybean fed pork and beef.  Land would continue to be cleared of native plants, the overuse of pesticides and monoculture crops would strip the soil of its nutrients and poison it for generations to come, but it wouldn’t kill the company’s crops.

     If the company could make rice with beta carotene, who would need carrots?  The world could be fed by the giant industry of processed foods, being pushed by cartoon characters on children, who would pester their parents to buy Sponge Bob happy meals and Dora chips.  As the pollinators died out, if you wanted fruits or nuts, all you had to do was pay more for the imports. 

     Besides, who needed fruits and nuts, unless, of course it was M&M chocolate covered peanuts, with artificial chocolate flavoring of course because without the pollinators, there could be no chocolate either.  There was a chemical solution to all of America’s food needs, which had been whittled away for years and years and honed down with precision to train the public that everything they needed to put on the table for their family came in a box, bottle or can.

     Genetically modified foods were a grab bag of pesticides, allergens, toxins, dormant viruses and antibiotic resistant molecules that were being consumed by humans for the first time.  It was only a matter of time before their immune systems become unable to recognize what to protect against.  In this experiment, the entire American public were the test rats and the chemical companies the only winners.