Dead of Night (16 page)

Salt water, but he wouldn’t have understood the difference.

“Any idea who’s buying the stuff?”

“No. We prioritize here. Have to, there’s so much going on. The bioterror operation moved up to about twentieth on the list this afternoon.”

“Then let me give you some places to start.”

I told him about Jobe Applebee. Told him to have his people check out the man’s business connections, any groups he was associated with. “The Albedo Society may be one,” I told him. “There may be room for fringe activism there. Tropicane Sugar’s another. Big money can rationalize just about anything. Also, do a search for the conspiracy theory types. People who hate the sugar industry. Or Disney.”

“There are people who hate Disney?”

Harrington was being facetious. On this nation’s paranoiac periphery, there are groups who believe Disney is at the core of global conspiracies that range from controlling the World Bank to building radio towers that communicate with sex-starved aliens.

Studies have been done on people who believe in conspiracies. Clinical paranoia, plus nonspecific rage, are two common components. Crazy
and
angry: a dangerous combination.

I said, “Someone else who might’ve been connected with Applebee is Desmond Stokes, founder of EPOC, an environmental group that contracted Applebee. Stokes is the phobic type, got rich making vitamins, but also lost his medical license, and had to move to the Bahamas. So maybe he still has a grudge.

“I’m thinking out loud here, putting together names and subjects that seem to intersect in an unlikely way: Applebee, an employer, germs, disease, an exotic parasite, water.”

“The ever-logical Dr. Ford.”

“I try, Hal.”

“Stokes. I’ve heard the name. I’ll have someone ship the data to you as we collect it. Doc? Let’s get something clear first ”

I waited.

“You’re accepting the assignments?”

“This one. Yes.”

“What about Abu Sayyaf, the bomber—”

“Depends on the timing. Someone needs to take care of him. We agree about that.”

He seemed satisfied. “Then you’re our lead tracker on this one. Work it from your end, too. When you do find Nguyen—or anyone else upper level who’s involved in this kind of tradecraft—”

I said, “I know, I know. Etemalize. Your euphemism.”

“Or assassinate. We can use the word. Privately. We now have four ways to officially get around Executive Order 12333. So it’s legal again. I’ll have the papers made out.”

Harrington said that I’d be referred to as an unspecified contractor, name classified.

“Just so you know.”

Early the next morning, I called Dewey. She was sleepy but civil. Sounded more like her old acerbic self.

“You keep forgetting the time difference, bonehead,” she yawned. “When it’s this damn cold, the roosters wait until they smell coffee before they crow. And it’s gonna be another hour before I start coffee.”

She had an appointment with her obstetrician that afternoon, she told me. So she was going to make the best of it while in town, and have some fun. “We’re going shopping.”

I nearly asked who her shopping partner was but decided not to risk this new civility.

For half an hour or so, I messed with my telescope, then walked to the marina, where I chatted with Mack as he loaded racks of fish into the smoker. When it was nearly 8 A.M., I clumped up the steps to Jeth’s apartment, where I awoke my sleepy-eyed son with a smothering grizzly bear hug.

Time for our morning workout. Five days a week, we jogged Tarpon Bay Road to the beach, swam to the NO WAKE ZONE buoys a quarter mile out and back, then jogged home to the pull-up bar that I’d rigged between braces beneath the house.

Let go of the bar, you get dropped into the water. It’s motivating.

We did descending sets. Ladders, they’re sometimes called: fifteen pull-ups, then fourteen, then thirteen, twelve, and on down to one. A little over a hundred in all for him. I did more because I’ve been working at it hard the last six months, beating the body into shape. Watching the food intake. Alcohol, too, especially alcohol. Running, swimming, and I’d bought a cross-trainer bike. During our pull-up marathons, I started at twenty, finished the descending repetitions, then did as many as I could on the ascending ladder.

It was brutal, but it was paying off. I much prefer administering my pain incrementally to the sad, sustained pain of a sedentary, undisciplined life.

On our runs, the kid had had trouble keeping up during the first week or so, but that didn’t last. Now I was the one who couldn’t keep pace. Not when he stretched those legs of his, and pushed it. He was going to be an athlete.

Sometimes we felt like talking, so we did. Other times we concentrated on the run, comfortable in silence.

On this Tuesday morning, Lake and I ran easy eight-minute miles. I wasn’t breathing too hard as we made small talk, traded marina gossip. Turning northwest along the beach, though, I risked a more serious topic. It’d been on my mind awhile.

“Last week, I was going through the garbage looking for a check I’d misplaced. No luck; still haven’t found it. But I did find a receipt, U.S. Mail, for something sent overnight to a DNA lab in Texas. A paternity test place. Your name was on it.”

The boy didn’t turn to look at me. “Were you searching or snooping?”

I said, “I’d just dumped that turtle embryo procedure I screwed up, all those bad eggs. If the missing check had been for less than five hundred dollars, I wouldn’t’ve bothered.”

That got a slight smile. “I told you the other night I’m aware there’s a chance you might not be my biological father. Mom and her chemical mood swings—I’m not holding it against her. You and I were talking about genetics. I’m curious, that’s all.”

“You sent in hair samples from all of us: you, me, and...?”

“You, me, and Tomlinson. Um-huh. And Mom, too—I want to be thorough. You’re the only one who knows about it, though.”

We ran another quarter mile in silence before I added, “Back in those days, before . . . before you were born, Tomlinson and I barely knew each other. We weren’t friends. And neither one of us is really sure that he ... that he might have played a role. He has big blocks of amnesia from that time period.”

Laken said, “I know. You’ve told me before. I understand.”

“If we’d been friends, there’d of been no chance.”

“I know that, too.”

“I kinda wish you hadn’t gone to the trouble. Ordering the test, I mean. I don’t see the point.”

The boy turned then, smiling. “It’s not a big deal. I’ll be back in Central America when I find out, so I’ll e-mail you the results, or call. Don’t sweat it, Dad.”

 

 

Laken had promised to help paint the bottom of Jeth’s boat, so, after our workout, I left him at the marina and returned to my house alone.

I showered, changed, then sat in the lab making occasional notes on the behavior of the five little bull sharks, while also researching the complex life cycle of guinea worms.

I had more than a personal interest now. It was part of an assignment. If some group of crazies was smuggling parasites and disease vectors into the country, the operation had to be pinpointed, then disrupted. Extreme action was now one of my legal options—if the crazies existed. If I found them.

Biovandalism or -terrorism? One was expensive, the other lethal.

Bioterrorism dates back to the Middle Ages, when attackers used catapults to lob the corpses of black plague victims over castle walls. Disease is an effective weapon. Nature employs it daily. For bad guys, it’s much easier to conceal and transport something like mosquito larva than ground-to-air missiles.

I wanted to learn all I could about their weapons. Understand the weaponry, understand the attackers. Where to find them, how to stop them.

I’d already had a look at a guinea worm through my old Wolfe stereo microscope, comparing it with a photo I found on the Internet. Imagine a one-eyed monster, its head covered with bristles. From that hairy head protruded two oversized scimitar teeth.

No mistaking what it was.

Tomlinson stopped by an hour or so later. He came on foot from the marina, not in his new Avon dinghy. Arrived with his salt-scraggly hair braided into Willie Nelson pigtails, wearing Birkenstocks, yellow surfer baggies, and a muscle T-shirt that read: A BOTTLE IN FRONT OF ME IS CHEAPER THAN A FRONTAL LOBOTOMY.

I was happier than usual to see him. I’d taken a break from my research, and was reading a distressing article in a scientific journal. The piece presented more proof that our ocean’s shark populations are being exterminated for fins and liver. For commercial fishermen—particularly Japanese fishermen—it’s a quick, space-effective process because the shark’s carcass is then dumped overboard.

According to this study, the population of oceanic whitetip sharks, once among the world’s most common tropical species, had declined by 99 percent since the 1950s. They were now extinct in the Gulf of Mexico.

Appalling.

The study blamed overfishing, and called for tougher restrictions. Federal fisheries officials, however, responded publicly, saying that the study was flawed. Further assessment was required.

The data I’d found on guinea worms was as unsettling. I’d printed several articles on
Dracunculus medinensis.
The sheath of papers lay on the table near my reading chair.

The derivative,
Dracula,
nailed it. Associated it with a monster who roams around in darkness, living off the blood of others.

Linnaeus, founder of the world system for naming plants and animals, might have found that amusing.

The parasite was also called “the fiery serpent” because of the burning pain victims suffered. To Africa’s Haile Selassie religious devotees, it was the Serpent of Israel. Apparently, any worm that generated spontaneously inside the human body was assigned divine status.

Nope, the parasites weren’t supposed to be found in lakes—or in human corpses—south of Disney World. Not in the Western Hemisphere, either. Except for a few remote villages in the Rajasthan Desert of India, guinea worms were found only in Africa. The most heavily infected regions lay between the Sahara and the equator.

Subtropical and tropical climate, just like Florida.

Nigeria, Guinea, Ghana, Uganda, Ethiopia, Chad, Senegal, and Cameroon all reported thousands of cases a year, mostly in poor rural villages seldom visited by tourists.

I also discovered an article that confirmed that, once infested, there’s no cure. The only treatment is to allow the worms to mature inside the human body, then deal with them as they exit. The parasite could sometimes be extracted within a few days. More often, though, the process took weeks.

During that period, the infected person suffered such agony that it was impossible to participate in normal activities. Pain continued for months. Infected African farmers couldn’t tend their crops, parents couldn’t care for children, victims couldn’t work or attend school, and were often left with permanent crippling.

Infection didn’t produce immunity. People in contaminated areas could be infected again, year after year.

A veterinarian journal suggested that some animals were also vulnerable. Dogs, horses, cows, wolves, leopards, monkeys, baboons—any mammal—could be infested.

I’d been wondering about that. Though it’s not widely known, Florida is among the nation’s leaders in cattle production. Central Florida is also the equestrian epicenter of a multimillion-dollar-a-year horse-breeding industry.

I remembered Harrington telling me that there were other indicators a bioterrorist group was in the States and active. Small-time regional economies were targets.

This wasn’t small-time.

I didn’t know how many thousands of animals were at risk. But I did know that much of the state’s interior is pastureland, open range that’s dotted and linked by ponds, lakes, rivers, and creeks. Natural watering holes for Brahma bulls worth ten thousand dollars a head, or a Thoroughbred stallion worth two million.

Along with a medical nightmare, there was also the potential for economic catastrophe.

As I finished reading, I couldn’t help imagining worldwide headlines: PARASITIC WORMS INFEST DISNEY VISITORS.

How much would that cost the tourist industry? Billions. Add a few more from the state’s agricultural losses.

So when Tomlinson came cruising in humming an old Beach Boys tune that I recognized but couldn’t name, I was more than happy to take a break from the morning’s research.

 

 

Tomlinson told me,
“Hola, mi compadre,
I got a present for you outside. It’s gonna put the zap on that blue-collar, pain-in-the-ass work ethic of yours. So I’m like warning you up front. You’re never gonna be the same again.”

He stood for a moment, peeping over my shoulder at the magazine I was reading; saw printouts stacked on the table. “Hey ... a new research project?”

I told him I’d found an exotic parasite near the headwaters of the ’Glades, but I’d give him the details later. I’d dealt with the damn things enough for one morning. I was ready to move on to more pleasant subjects.

He whistled softly as he skimmed one of the articles. “What a buzz-robber this is, man. The worm they’re describing really tickles the ol’ gag reflex. Not that it’s any surprise to yours truly. This is the year for plague and pestilence. Some of the old hippie soothsayers, the LSD prophets, predicted it years ago. The year Mother Earth rallies her forces and fights back against the primates who are killing her. There was an article in
Rolling Stone
about it awhile back.”