Guardians of the Secret
copyright © 1998 by Cary Shulman
All Rights Reserved
6.
Everett would never have called it the University of California. It was always Berkeley. He didn't think of it as a school, but simply as one of the capitals of the opposition and had never been there. That he was going there now amused him.
He had an appointment to see a research botanist named Rehema Boulat. He had heard of her years ago, but only as a member of a left wing political group. As he crossed the campus he thoroughly enjoyed the irony that he was going to a place where he was particularly reviled, to see a black woman radical who also hated him and all he stood for. That's what he liked about life, nothing too absurd it wouldn't throw at you. That he now needed her and that she needed him. Eat your heart out Ionesco.
When he got there, her office door was open and she was on the phone. She motioned for him to enter. She had pictures on her wall of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, and Patrice Lumumba. She got off the phone and noticed him looking at them. She didn't bother with a phony greeting.
"You assassinated all these people, not you of course."
"Do you expect me to apologize?"
"I expect you to have some tidy explanation."
"Malcolm would have appreciated my position. By any means necessary. And that should be your position now, by any means necessary, even if that means is me. Drugs are killing your people."
"You ought to know all about that. Our man in Ilaponga. Was it just advisory or did you actually help them load it?"
"They're enterprising sort. They would have sold it with or without our help. This way our scum beat their scum, and you and I can have this pleasant tete a tete in peace and freedom."
"I'm sure you always have a handy rationale."
"Never leave home without one."
"I don't like you or your politics, but the government won't do anything, this is the only way. I must have been last on your list."
"The only one."
"What about all the others? There were dozens of scientists involved in the research over the years."
"Your associates are busy hiding their consciences behind 'Top Secret'. They got paid for their research and their silence keeps them getting paid. They're a bright bunch, but they're not going to get the Ellsberg prize for bucking the system."
"Why should I trust you?"
"Things change. The cold war is over."
"There's always another war. They always need money for operating." "Let me put it this way. It's come to the point where drugs are more of a threat to this country than anything else."
"And if that should change in the future?"
"The cat's out of the bag anyway. You'll be responsible for the most important piece of botany ever done instead of wasting your time not getting grants."
"I'll get another one."
"If we get in, you can have the whole fucking Department of Agriculture."
"That's not why I'm doing this."
Boulat handed Everett a file of research papers.
"It should be. But then it's been a long time since such things really mattered."
Everett began looking over the papers.
"Black Forest, that's perfect, your name?"
She nodded.
"How long have you been working on this?"
"Since I was six."
"You and Mozart."
"Not quite, I didn't write any symphonies. I just noticed the chestnut tree in our front yard was dying and wondered why."
"This all got started with good old chestnut blight?"
"It's no joke. Around 1900 a fungus came into the country on a shipment of botanical specimens from Japan. It started infecting the chestnut trees and spread like wildfire. It killed millions of trees, including the one that was dying in our front yard."
"You obviously didn't put the whole thing together when you were six."
"No, that just got me interested in botany. I didn't make this connection until much later. It wasn't until I'd been involved in studies about the vulnerability of monoculture, the lack of biodiversity."
"You mean the rain forest thing?"
"No, that's a real problem, but this is a different one. The whole world's food supply depends on massive plantings of a very few strains of wheat, corn, and rice. Very economical, growing huge acreage of these things. But something could come along like a chestnut blight to wipe it all out. Over and over I kept hearing how vulnerable our crops were. And I was studying how to prevent this. One day it crossed my mind, what about the plants we're not so crazy about? If there's something in nature that will kill a tree you love, why not one that will kill a tree you're not so crazy about?"
"The millions of acres of coca trees and opium poppies."
"Once I began thinking about it, I checked the literature, which goes back at least to the forties. They were worrying about what would happen if leaf blight broke out in the rubber plantations of South East Asia. They had Schultes studying it. The conclusion was that it would mean the end of the industry. Millions of acres wiped out. Genetic engineering means it can be more prolific and deadly."
"So it's a possibility. Is it more than that?"
"It doesn't involve any great breakthrough scientifically, which makes it all the more tragic it hasn't been done, much more of a political problem than a scientific one. It's not exactly the sort of thing that goes bang and lights up a whole desert. But it could change the world, if it was ever used."
"It'll get used. Either we'll do it or at least we'll force the government to do it. Either way you win. In the meantime we'll keep an eye on you. It'll be a dangerous time until it's announced."
"I remember speaking to a colleague at the University of Arkansas about going public with it in an effort to get some action. He said he didn't want to come out every morning and look under his car for a bomb."
"Any second thoughts?"
"Is that a serious question?"
"Not really, considering what I know of you. But I had to ask anyway."
* * *
The secrecy of Everett's meeting was compromised in less than twenty four hours. Emiliano Diaz heard the news on his way to a mountain resort outside of Bogota. The news of course didn't come to him first. He was retired. The Colombian government needed to show some results in its war on drugs and he was the oldest of the cartel leaders and his power was waning. He had chosen retirement rather than arrest. He wondered what the unretired ones would do with the news. Something stupid. It came from reliable sources in the American Mafia, but it came easily. He didn't trust easy.
copyright © 1998 by Cary Shulman
All Rights Reserved