The Bug Hunter: A Novel Read online

  “A number of people who ate breakfast here over the past twenty-hours hours have come down with botulinum toxin poisoning,” Manley said.

  “Oh my God!” she said, her hand flying to her mouth. Nobody in the restaurant business ever wants to hear the words “toxin” and “poisoning” in the same sentence. “Seriously? Here?”

  Manley looked at the other investigator who accompanied him. “Seriously,” Manley said. “What kind of orange juice do you serve?”

  “Orange juice? That depends. For weekend brunch we serve a particular kind, a fresh-squeezed variety,” she said, moving into the kitchen. “For all other times, we serve a garden-variety filtered juice.”

  “We’re interested in the brunch juice,” Manley said.

  Looking at one of the kitchen staff, she said, “Oscar, can you bring me the brunch orange juice?”

  Oscar disappeared into the cooler and came out carrying a glass bottle. It was almost empty. Manley took the bottle and read the label out loud. “Natural One, fresh squeezed from Florida’s finest oranges.” He then turned the bottle over and read the back. “Bottled fresh by Tropicana in Sarasota. Unpasteurized.” The bottling date was just three days before.

  “We have this flown up from Florida every week. It’s kind of a specialty thing we do just for our weekend brunch menu.”

  “Do you know any other restaurants that do that?”

  “A few that use the same supplier we do. Let’s see, the Boathouse here in Central Park, the Plaza, and I think a few upscale markets or two.”

  Manley nodded. It was starting to add up. “How much of this do you have left?”

  “That’s it,” Manuel said, motioning to the bottle Manley was holding.

  “How many brunch diners do you have on a typical weekend?”

  The manager thought for a moment. “Five hundred or so, sometimes more.”

  “OK. We’re going to take this bottle with us and have it tested. In the meantime, you need to rewash all of your glasses and do a complete cleaning of the kitchen. Make sure you use hot water.”

  “OK. What should I tell the restaurant owner?”

  Manley nodded to his colleague. “Henry here will fill you in. We have a protocol that covers this. With any luck you should be back in business in a few days.”

  By the time the CDC had finished visiting the other locations in New York, it was clear where the toxin had originated, and within hours EIS investigators had descended upon Tropicana’s production facility outside of Sarasota, Florida.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Washington, DC

  White House Chief of Staff Sarah Witt stood on the South Portico waiting for her soon-to-be ex-husband to arrive for an emergency meeting with the president of the United States. Standing next to her was Special Assistant to the President Kate Russo.

  “God, I need a smoke,” Russo said, taking a pack of cigarettes out of her jacket pocket. “You won’t tell, will you?”

  Sarah laughed. “I won’t tell, but you know the president has a nose like a bloodhound. She’s going to smell it on you.”

  “Shit,” Russo said, reluctantly sliding the cigarette back into its pack. The White House under President Jennifer Cooperman had a strict no-smoking policy. “So, what’s going on with you and Jason?”

  “The paper’s are filed. Just waiting on the court now,” Sarah said. “Honestly, I feel kind of shitty about it all.”

  “Well, you fell in love with someone else. That’s not your fault.”

  Sarah sighed. “I know. But Jason has been in a meat grinder since taking over at DHS.”

  “Really? He’s a cabinet secretary! What I wouldn’t do for that job!”

  “God, Kate, you can be so naïve sometimes. You know what it’s like being a male in this administration? Under a female president and with women occupying more than half the cabinet positions? Poor guy has to check his balls at the door every time he comes over here.”

  “Damn straight he does!” Russo said. “The #MeToo movement ain’t over by a long shot. Thank God for President Cooperman and our band of merry feminists.”

  Sarah was about to reply when a black SUV pulled up to the curb. A Secret Serviceman opened the door, and Secretary of Homeland Security Jason Witt emerged. He wore a tailored blue suit over his six-three frame with a white shirt and maroon patterned tie. Sarah had bought him that tie on a trip they’d taken to Italy one summer before their son was born.

  “Hello, my dear,” Jason said with genuine warmth.

  “You’re late,” she said, turning on her heels and moving through the door the marine sentry had opened for her. Russo followed quickly behind.

  “So nice to see you too,” Jason said to her back.

  “Sorry, Jason,” Sarah said, turning to face him just on the inside of the doorway. “But we’re getting hammered today. The networks are all over us. People are starting to panic over these illnesses.” Just outside the Oval, she stopped and faced him again. Her piercing blue eyes were offset beautifully by the dark green suit she was wearing. She was as beautiful as the day they had met back at the University of Chicago. “The president is not in a good mood today. So I hope you have some answers.”

  “Answers? I’m not even sure what the questions are yet,” Jason said. “Who else is going to be in this meeting?”

  Sarah entered the Oval without knocking and without answering Jason’s question. There they found President Jennifer Cooperman, CIA Director Anne Maddox, and the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Ken Smythe, sitting across from one another on the couches that framed the Oval Office’s wood-burning fireplace.

  Cooperman looked up as Sarah and Jason entered. The president didn’t get up and didn’t offer a greeting. She was deep in conversation and looked annoyed at being interrupted.

  “Madam President, I got here as soon as I could,” Jason said, sitting down next to Maddox, who offered him a smile and a nod.

  “Jason, I’ve asked Dr. Smythe to fill you in,” Cooperman said.

  “Secretary Witt, the CDC has been tracking a series of reports about an outbreak of botulinum toxin poisoning in various locations up and down the eastern United States. As of this morning, there have been three hundred reported cases and ten deaths.”

  “Wow, that’s a lot,” said Jason.

  “CDC’s Epidemic Intelligence Service has been on the case since Saturday night. They were able to quickly determine that the toxin is linked to orange juice produced by Tropicana and sold into stores and restaurants in North Carolina, New York, New Jersey and part of Virginia. This juice was processed in the Tropicana bottling plant outside of Sarasota, Florida.”

  “So you found the source?” Jason asked.

  Smythe sighed. “Yes and no. We know the contaminated juice came from that plant, but the source was actually the oranges themselves. We’ve since traced the oranges back to their point of origin, which is the Rockford farm”—he paused to check his notes—“about forty miles south of Gainesville. The owner reported to us that the groves had been attacked by this.” He held up a vial with a single fly in it and tossed it to Jason.

  “A fly?” Jason asked incredulously.

  “Not just a fly, Jason,” the president said. “A Mediterranean fruit fly.”

  Jason was trying to make sense of what he was hearing. He knew the medfly was a dangerous pest that could cause agricultural devastation. But that was a long way from spreading a toxin. “So you believe the medfly caused a botulinum toxin outbreak?”

  “We think so,” Smythe answered. “EIS suspects that there is some link between the medfly infestation and the outbreak of the toxin. The farm managed to destroy the medflies through the use of pesticides, but not before they laid their eggs in thousands of oranges that ended up in Tropicana’s products.”

  Jason held the fly up to the light. “And y
ou want my bug hunters to look into it?”

  “Yes,” said the president. “Customs and Border Protection has the most advanced insect detection capability in the federal government.”

  Jason looked at Smythe and asked, “If this is the culprit”—Jason held up the fly—“then what you are really saying is that this may be a deliberate attack using insects as vectors—in this case the medfly—to spread the toxin?”

  “Yes.”

  President Cooperman looked at Jason and then glanced at CIA Director Maddox. This conversation had suddenly taken an unexpected and alarming turn. “Wait a minute,” the president said. “Insect vectors? Are you shitting me?”

  “No, ma’am,” Jason said simply.

  “Jesus, that’s all I need!” She took a deep breath and tried to calm herself. “OK, let’s work through the problem,” she said more for herself than the others in the room. “Have we seen this before?”

  Jason glanced at Maddox, who gave him a slight nod. “Yes, at least in part.” Knowing that this answer would make Cooperman crazy, he quickly continued. “What I mean is not as a terrorist plot. But the CIA, in partnership with the US military and DynCorp, executed a campaign to eradicate the Afghan poppy fields using vectors—in that case a tiny winged insect called a thrip—that had been genetically altered to infect the poppy crops with a fatal virus.”

  “And it worked?”

  “Yes, it worked,” chimed in CIA Director Maddox, wanting to take credit for that win. “In fact it was so effective that it permanently altered the poppy economy. The bugs that were used carried a disease that is harmless to humans but devastating to poppies. And they are so prolific at reproducing that the insects have stayed active. The Taliban have been unable to replant their crops. It’s totally devastated the insurgency.”

  Cooperman let that sink in for a moment. “So, we’ve done it. Do we know of any other country that has tried it?”

  The director of the CIA took the question. “Ma’am, this technology is spreading rapidly as gene-sequencing capabilities are advancing. We have intel that the North Koreans and the Chinese are working on advanced genomic testing and experimentation of all types, so we can’t rule it out. But we don’t have any evidence that they—or any nonstate actor—has used genetically modified insects as a terror tool.”

  The president nodded absently. The litany of intelligence failures was long and distinguished, and she had little more confidence in the accuracy of the CIA’s intel than had her predecessors. “If this is an attack by a terrorist—domestic or foreign—it represents a whole new threat to the country. I don’t even want to think about the ramifications for the food supply if terrorists can use insects to poison us.”

  Jason knew that Cooperman was on the brink of going down a rabbit hole on the political ramifications of what this all meant for her and the Democrats, and he didn’t want to be in the room for that. “Ma’am, we need to first verify that this is what we’re facing,” he said, again holding up the medfly.

  Cooperman looked momentarily relieved. “Yes, that’s right. Maybe we’re wrong. We definitely need to verify it.”

  Jason paused for a moment. “If this vector has somehow been modified to spread botulinum toxin, there are a number of labs that are capable of such work. I don’t want to alert any of them by bringing this in for analysis. But I know of a private lab that can test this for us. It’s run by one of the men who did the Afghan operation. He’s a former marine.”

  The president looked at Jason. “Can we trust him?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “OK,” said Cooperman, looking at her watch and signaling to her chief of staff that it was time to wrap up. “Jason, I want to be updated on this daily. Coordinate with Sarah,” the president said with a slight smile. She knew how uncomfortable that would make Jason. “Are we clear?”

  Jason glanced at Sarah, who was staring at him impassively. “Crystal,” he said after a moment.

  Later that night, Jason Witt was dropped off at his home in Alexandria. His son Nate was home from college and was staying with Jason for a few weeks. He was happy to have the company; since he and Sarah had separated, the house had seemed so empty. He didn’t even really like the house, a faux colonial that had been built in the 1960s. But he had gotten stuck with it when Sarah decided to move in with her new girlfriend. Every time he thought about what had happened, he was reminded of the joke “What should a lesbian bring on a second date? A U-Haul.” It still wasn’t very funny to him.

  “I saw your mom today,” he said to Nate, popping open a beer. It was an IPA from Latitude 33 Brewing out in San Diego, Jason’s favorite craft brewer. It was ice cold, and he was suddenly very thirsty. Looking at the clock on the oven, he realized he’d not eaten anything since breakfast.

  Nate didn’t respond to his dad’s statement; Jason knew that since his mom had left, Nate had been struggling to come to terms with their split. “Cool,” he finally said.

  Jason looked at his son and felt pangs of guilt that his son no longer had both his parents under one roof. Jason knew from experience that divorce—at any age—was hard on kids. His own parents had split when he was sixteen. He and his older sister had been left with their mother, a well-meaning but clinically depressed woman who was never satisfied with what she had. His dad had worked as a cop in the town they grew up in; deep down Jason knew his father was a good man and believed he had tried hard to make the family work. But in the end he hadn’t been able to and had ultimately given up.

  “I also spoke to your granddad today,” Jason said. “He says he emailed you and never heard back.”

  “I’ve tried to get him to not use email. I never check email. But he’s old school.”

  Jason laughed. “He’s definitely old school.”

  “What did he want this time? Does he need money?”

  “Actually, no. I called him.”

  “Really? That’s a change. What about?”

  “Well, I can’t really say. It’s DHS business.”

  “Granddad isn’t a cop anymore. He’s been retired for twenty years!”

  “Yeah, I know. But I needed some information from him.”

  Nate looked at his iPhone and noticed a text from his girlfriend. “Cool, Dad. Talk to you later,” he said and quickly went upstairs to his room.

  Earlier in the day Jason had placed a call to his dad, Travis.

  “Jason, how’re those feminazis you work for?” Jason’s dad was a devout Rush Limbaugh listener.

  “Still listening to that garbage, Dad?”

  “Hell, I tried to make you a Rush baby. I must’ve made you listen to a thousand hours of Rush in the car. Pity it didn’t take.”

  “Well, you tried. But I prefer NPR.”

  “National Progressive Radio? Don’t remind me of my wasted tax dollars.”

  “Honestly that’s the least of the government waste you should be worried about, Dad.”

  “Probably. So to what do I owe this call? You must be very busy counting all the Mexicans crossing the border.” As always he laughed heartily at his own joke.

  “Actually, I am very busy. And I’m calling about something important. I can’t tell you what it is, but I need a favor.”

  Jason’s dad was suddenly serious, his law enforcement background kicking in. “Shoot.”

  “You remember last year we were talking about Gabriel Marx? That you had gotten an email from him and that he was now living in California working at a vineyard?”

  “Sure, we’ve kept in touch for a long time, ever since I helped him beat that marijuana rap.”

  “Right. Well, you also told me that he was doing cutting-edge genetic stuff on insects and that his vineyard had built a high-tech lab for him.”

  “Correct.”

  “I need to get in touch with him, Dad. We’re dealing with an important national secur
ity issue, and I need his help.”

  Jason’s dad was silent for a moment. “I know better than to ask what it is, though I would love to know.”

  “I wish I could tell you, Dad. But you know the joke: Then I’d have to kill you.”

  “Funny,” he said without mirth. “Do you want his number?”

  “Actually, no. What I’d like to do is have you call him and tell him I’m coming to see him.”

  “When?”

  “Tomorrow morning.”

  “Seriously? That fast?”

  “That fast.”

  “OK. I have his address someplace here if you need it.”

  Jason smiled. “I know where he lives, Dad. Thanks.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Russian River Valley, California

  Gabriel stood at his kitchen sink and watched the string of black Suburban SUVs wind through the valley below. He knew from experience that the secretary of homeland security would be in the third vehicle. That was the way the feds did it: two in front and two in back with the VIP in the middle.

  Gabriel took a final sip of his coffee and poured the rest down the sink. Just at that moment, Claire came up behind him, putting an arm around his waist as she kissed his cheek. She had planned on taking an early yoga class in town that morning but had canceled when Gabriel got the call from Travis Witt. It wasn’t every day you got to meet a cabinet secretary. And besides, she was curious as to what the government wanted with her husband.

  The call from Travis had been cryptic—not because he was withholding, but because he didn’t know much. His son was coming to see Gabriel, and it had something to do with national security. Gabriel had no idea what that could mean and what he could do to help. But he was about to find out.

  Gabriel and Claire stepped out onto the front porch as the caravan pulled up. Six large men exited the third vehicle simultaneously, all wearing dark suits and sunglasses. The one who had exited the front seat opened the rear door, and out stepped Jason Witt.