The Bug Hunter: A Novel Page 9

  “Can’t or won’t?” Cooperman asked.

  Acevedo hesitated before answering. “Technically I can, but I won’t. I . . .”

  “You don’t want to take the heat, correct?”

  “I’ll get absolutely killed if it gets out that I voluntarily aided the federal government in an investigation that involves UC staff or students. And it will get out.”

  Cooperman knew that Acevedo was correct about this. “Look, I’m sympathetic to your predicament. But this is not about you, Justine. This is about the security of the American people. Surely you can see that.”

  “I can see that from your vantage point, Madam President. I really can. But I live in a different reality. I can’t risk what this will do to my ability to lead this university. I’m sorry. I wish I could help.”

  Cooperman was shocked. She had known that it wouldn’t be easy for Acevedo, but Cooperman had also thought that their friendship—and the fact that the nation was under real threat of attack—would win the day. It clearly hadn’t. “Goddamn, Justine.”

  “I’m sorry. I really am. But I can’t help you. Please get a court order. I will ensure that we comply with it immediately.”

  “Thank you, Justine. Good day.” She disconnected the line. “What a bitch,” Cooperman muttered to herself.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Berkeley, California

  Lee Jensen thoroughly enjoyed the deer-in-the-headlights look on Professor James Lassiter’s face when he, Gabriel, and a pair of plainclothes DHS agents descended on the synthetic biotech department. Lassiter was conducting office hours when they barged in, apparently doing his best to bedazzle a blond co-ed with his knowledge of genetics.

  “Just a minute here!” he exclaimed when Jensen and Gabriel came in. “You can’t—”

  “Actually, we can,” Jensen said, handing Lassiter the warrant. “Miss, will you excuse us please?” The young woman quickly fled the office, but not before being admonished by one of the accompanying agents to not speak about what was happening there or “face the consequences of violating a federal nondisclosure agreement the university is a party to.” Whether that deception would work or not, they didn’t know.

  Jensen was attempting a low-key search that didn’t include the army of federal agents they’d normally deploy in a situation like this. Witt was hoping that they could avoid it becoming a spectacle that would attract the media. He’d ordered Jensen and the agents to dress in casual clothing with no markings. “Blend in as much as you can,” Witt had told them. That was easier said than done; only Gabriel, with his jeans and beard, looked as if he truly belonged on a college campus.

  “Professor,” Jensen said, “We need access to all of your lab’s personnel files, including those of the staff that worked in the lab at the time of the type I discovery.”

  Lassiter sat staring at the warrant. “Just a minute,” he said finally. Picking up his desk phone, he punched in the number for the Berkeley chancellor’s office. “This is Professor Lassiter. I need to speak with Chancellor Jimenez immediately. Yes, I’ll hold.”

  After a minute, Jimenez came on the line. “Jim, I think I know why you’re calling,” she said.

  “Dr. Jimenez, I have federal agents here—”

  “Yes, and I have received word from President Acevedo that we are to cooperate fully and provide whatever information they require.”

  “You can’t be serious? We aren’t going to even fight it?”

  “I understand your frustration, Jim. But you are to provide them whatever assistance they require. Is that clear?”

  “Yes,” he said with reluctance in his voice.

  “Good. I am sending over a representative from my office now to be there to assist. Thank you for calling, Jim.” She promptly hung up.

  Lassiter hung up the receiver, hit a button that connected him with his lab’s administrator, and asked her to come to his office. After a few minutes, a middle-aged woman appeared in his doorway. She looked surprised to see the five men crowded into the small space.

  “This is Ms. Brandt,” he said. He then said to her, “These gentlemen are here to execute a federal search warrant. You are to provide them whatever they want.”

  “Yes, sir,” she replied.

  “Ms. Brandt,” Jensen said in his most officious voice, “Would you please take us to a computer where we can access the lab’s personnel files.”

  “Right this way,” she said.

  Jensen and one of the two accompanying agents, a computer expert, followed Brandt to her office. That left Gabriel and the remaining DHS agent alone with Lassiter, who sat glumly in his desk chair.

  “You’re really helping this investigation, Professor,” Gabriel said.

  “That’s nice,” Lassiter said with sarcasm.

  Gabriel didn’t understand Lassiter’s attitude. “Thousands of lives may be at stake. Maybe more.”

  Lassiter stared at him. “Yeah, maybe. But there’s one life I’m certain is going to be destroyed. Mine.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Gabriel said louder than he intended. He looked at the agent. “I’ll be outside.” He then got up and left the room.

  Later that day, Gabriel, Jensen, and the two DHS agents were working out of a pair of rooms at the Rose Garden Inn on Telegraph Avenue. They had left the synth-bio lab with two boxes of files and a thumb drive.

  They began sorting through the files by date, segregating the files for people who had worked for the lab on the type I sequencing process. That had run for two weeks in September of 2023 and involved approximately ten people. Gabriel and Jensen then took half of those files and the two other agents the remainder. They agreed to put aside anyone who looked suspicious in any way, whether because of family origin, occupation, or association with outside groups.

  Gabriel was enjoying the hell out of himself. He’d never been in an investigation like this, and he felt as if he were playing a part in an action movie. But he was also in a totally new element and had no idea what he was doing. After they finished laying out their plan, Gabriel asked,“So, what are we looking for?”

  “Ah, grasshopper,” Jensen said. “We’re looking for anyone who has a link to the Middle East, Indonesia, North Africa, and any other known Islamic hot spots. We also want to flag Russian, Chinese, or North Korean connections and anyone with radical environmental, antifa, white-nationalist, or far-right political activities. Those go in any of those buckets placed over there,” Jensen said, pointing to a spot on one of the room’s two double beds. “We’ll then dig deeper into them.”

  They got to work. They quickly eliminated Professor Lassiter, Ms. Brandt, and several graduate students who had been assigned to the project but didn’t have direct access to the lab. Three others—lab attendants and administrators—were deemed too junior to have the technical knowledge needed to access and compile the sequence.

  But two other files caught their interest. One was for a Dr. Omar Madiya, a professor of biochemistry who had emigrated to the US from Saudi Arabia in the 1990s. The other was for an Ahmed Sahid, a Somali national who was getting his PhD at Berkeley in applied genomics. Both of these names were uploaded to the National Security Database, and a full security profile for each was developed and downloaded within a few minutes.

  “OK, here’s what we got,” Jensen said, starting to read from the first file. “Madiya has lived in the US since the early 1990s. Did his undergraduate work at Stanford and his PhD at UC San Diego. He’s married with three children. Lives in Richmond. Says here he has only been abroad once, to London, and has no known associates in the Mideast or Asia. He’s also a member of the First Methodist Church of Oakland. Probably not our guy.”

  “What about the other guy?” Gabriel asked.

  “Sahid came to the US about five years ago as a graduate student. Went to university in Dresden, Germany. He’s single. He hasn’t been abroad since
he left Germany. And he’s also a member of the Berkeley gay men’s choir.” Jensen laughed. “Probably not the typical radical profile.”

  “You mean there are no gay jihadists?” Gabriel asked.

  “There may be gay jihadists. But no gay jihadists who sing in a gay choir. That’s a pretty surefire way to get your head—both heads—cut off.”

  Gabriel laughed. “Hadn’t thought about that.”

  “So we need to go deeper now. Let’s review all employees and students in the lab during that same period, whether they worked directly on the type I sequence or not.”

  They again went to work, dividing up the forty-five files that fit the criteria between the four of them. After three hours they had whittled that pile down to four names. They agreed to review each one’s security profile as a team.

  “Antonin Lebedev,” Jensen said. “Twenty-eight years old. From Grozny in Chechnya. Entered the United States on September 1, 2019, on a student visa. He was a graduate student studying computer science. Specializes in genetic modeling. No travel history to the Mideast. He reported that his brother was in the Russian army and was killed in Chechnya by Islamic terrorists.”

  Gabriel looked at Jensen. “Pretty unlikely he’d be helping Islamists, if that’s who we’re looking for.”

  “Maybe. But I consider Russia one of our enemies, so I don’t want to rule him out just yet,” Jensen said. He read on. “Lebedev was employed by GenomeX, a biotech in Redwood City, up until a week ago.”

  “Where’d he go to school?” Gabriel asked.

  “He did his undergraduate work at George Mason University. His . . .”

  Gabriel’s alarm bells were suddenly ringing. “George Mason? Let me see that.” Jensen handed over the file. “He was a computer science major. Looks like he graduated with honors. Did his thesis on blockchain technology and genomic-sequence networking under a professor named Abdul-Azim Bashera. Wow, this may be our guy.”

  “How do you figure?” asked one of the DHS agents.

  “GMU runs the Biomedical Research Lab, one of the nation’s top sites that works on synthetic biology, including genomics and insects. It’s one of the few places in the country where Mediterranean fruit flies could be made to synthesize and transmit botulinum toxin.”

  “That’s pretty circumstantial,” the agent said.

  “Yeah, but we don’t have anything better at this point,” Jensen said. “Let’s dig into this guy.”

  The two agents and Jensen opened up their tablets and connected to various databases in the federal government. They searched the immigration records to learn more about Lebedev’s application for entry into the United States, searched IRS records to track his employment at GenomeX, and looked at Virginia state and police records. One of the agents did a public records search that included newspapers, published documents, and any other media, using the CIA’s extensive database of global media resources.

  After a few minutes, one of the agents found the nugget they’d been looking for. It was a Russian newspaper article dated June 5, 2019, that covered a terrorist attack against Russian forces at their headquarters in Grozny. Eight Russian soldiers had been killed when a Russian officer turned against his comrades in a suicide attack and detonated a grenade.

  “Take a look at this,” the agent said, handing his tablet to Jensen.

  Jensen quickly read the news summary. “Bingo! Lebedev’s brother was killed in Chechnya all right. Only he wasn’t a victim of terrorism. He was the terrorist.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Redwood City, California

  “Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.” Lee Jensen looked wistfully around the soaring steel and glass atrium that served as the lobby of GenomeX. Behind the reception desk was a huge wall of monitors displaying a mesmerizing double helix of various colors floating in deep space. The receptionist was a striking brunette with lips the color of pomegranate.

  “May I help you, gentlemen?” she asked in a lovely British accent.

  “Yes, Miss, we’re here to meet with a Dr. Nomura,” Jensen said.

  She rolled her eyes as if dealing with an imbecile. “It’s ‘Mix.,’ not ‘Miss.’”

  Jensen was confused. “Excuse me?”

  “Mx. As in M-x. It means I identify as gender neutral.”

  Jensen laughed at first, but then saw the receptionist was deadly serious. “Ah, OK, Mx.,” he said after a moment.

  “Do you have an appointment?”

  “Not exactly,” Jensen said. He took out his DHS inspector badge and showed it to the receptionist. “Can you tell him the Department of Homeland Security would like a minute of his time?”

  The receptionist stared carefully at the badge and the picture of Jensen on the accompanying ID card, glancing at Jensen’s face a few times. The picture was ten years old, and Jensen had clearly aged. “It’s me; I promise,” he said with his best smile.

  The receptionist gave no reaction at his attempt at humor. “Just a minute, please. Will you gentlemen mind sitting over there?” The receptionist pointed to a bank of spare leather and wood armchairs in the corner. “I’ll see if Dr. Nomura is available.”

  Gabriel and Jensen walked over to the chairs and sat down. “Mx.?” Jensen said. “Jesus. Only in the Bay Area.”

  “Well, she definitely looks like a woman to me,” Gabriel said.

  “I’m just glad I’m not dating these days. Everything’s so damn complicated.”

  “How long you been married?”

  “Twenty five years. Good woman. We raised two kids together. One’s at West Point. The other works at Amazon.”

  “Eventually we’re all gonna be working for Amazon.”

  “Not me. My job isn’t something Amazon would—or could—do.”

  “Maybe. But I thought that about health care too. And now they practically run the whole hospital supply chain.”

  Jensen and Gabriel spent the next twenty minutes in silence; fatigue was setting in for both of them. They had spent the previous day combing through Lebedev’s past. He had graduated from Berkeley with a master’s degree and immediately gone to work for GenomeX, where he spent two years in its genetic sequencing division under Dr. Nomura. By all accounts he’d been a rising star at the company. But then a week ago he’d suddenly quit and disappeared, without even collecting his final pay, which the company remits in a paper check. A search of the ICE records told had them he’d returned to Russia, flying through JFK on an Aeroflot flight. Given what they suspected of Lebedev’s role in smuggling out the type I sequence, they were now very interested in what he’d been working on at GenomeX.

  Finally, an Asian man in a lab coat walked up to them. “I’m Dr. Nomura. Can I help you?”

  Both Gabriel and Jensen stood. “I’m Lee Jensen from Homeland Security. This is my colleague Gabriel Marx.” Jensen and Gabriel had agreed that if anyone asked, Jensen would refer to Gabriel as a “colleague” or an “associate” in the hope that more explanation wouldn’t be needed. It wasn’t a lie because Gabriel was technically still an approved contractor for DHS, even if he didn’t carry a badge.

  “I can assure you gentlemen that my immigration papers are in order. I have a valid green card—”

  “Dr. Nomura,” Jensen interrupted. “We aren’t here about your immigration status. Please, just relax.”

  Nomura’s expression visibly lightened, and a smile crept across his face. “Well, that’s a relief. I know friends who are legal residents who have been through ICE investigations that made a proctology exam seem like fun.”

  Jensen knew this was true; over the past decade ICE had conducted increasingly frequent raids on companies, looking for people who’d overstayed their visas. It had prompted IRS-style investigations of suspects’ lives that were time-consuming and stressful. “We’re here to ask you some questions about a former employee of yours. A
ntonin Lebedev.”

  Nomura’s face darkened again. “Oh, I see. Is he in some kind of trouble? That might explain why he just up and quit last week.”

  “We’re not sure if he’s in trouble or not. That’s part of the reason we’re here. Is there someplace we can talk?” Jensen asked, looking around the very public space they were in.

  “Yes, of course. Let’s get you badged in, and we can go to my office,” Nomura said, moving over to the reception desk, where the beautiful gender-neutral receptionist awaited them. Nomura instructed the receptionist to create visitor badges for them and then escorted them through the massive automatic glass doors into the building’s core.

  “We built this building just last year to house our labs and administrative offices,” he said as they walked through the hallways on the first floor. Pointing to a huge door that looked like the entrance to a vault, he said, “This area houses our IT operations and servers. As you can see, we run a very tight ship. We keep a record of everyone who goes in and out and also track their movement in the building. It’s why we don’t use Amazon Web Services or any other third-party server farm.”

  “Is this where Lebedev worked?”

  “No, Antonin worked in my lab. He worked on our most complex genetic modeling.”

  They rode the elevator up to the fifth floor; the doors opened to a lobby area with a panoramic view of the San Francisco Bay. “This is where my lab is located. It takes up this entire floor,” he said as he walked through a pair of walnut double doors to his office, a room as large as some houses in San Francisco. “Please sit,” Nomura said, gesturing to the chairs in front of his desk.

  “What’s your role here, Dr. Nomura?” asked Jensen.

  “I’m the chief science officer,” he answered with pride. “I’m in charge of our research and drug discovery lines, as well as our contract work with the US government.”

  “What kind of contract work?” Gabriel asked.