Bitter Harvest (Harvest Trilogy, Book 2) (3 page)

Only two people other than himself knew how Beta-Three had been acquired. Everyone else was bright and loyal enough not to ask questions.

The seeds had been placed in secure storage in one of the company’s research sample vaults. Access to them was highly restricted, although successively more researchers had been brought in on the project because it had exceeded all of Morgan’s initial expectations for the value of the technology it contained. If Dr. Kelso had been given his way, an army of thousands would be working on it, with Kelso leading the way.
 

Morgan would have liked to oblige him, but the situation with Beta-Three had become troublesome. After the New Horizons disaster, the Curtis administration had clamped down, brutally hard, on every application of genetic engineering applied to commercial seed. The
Revolutions
seed from New Horizons had been identified as a biological weapon of mass destruction that the Earth Defense Society had somehow engineered and infiltrated into the New Horizons plant.
 

Why the EDS had then destroyed the plant was a bit of a mystery that was still being batted around.
 

Morgan didn’t particularly care about what the spin doctors in Washington said. But the possibility that the seeds could be a bioweapon had given him pause, just as he was considering both planting some seeds in a test field and feeding some to test animals to analyze the results.
 

With federal investigators rampaging through the genetic engineering community, he had set those ideas aside, judging them too risky. But by then Kelso and his people had learned enough about the seeds to have an inkling of the massive potential of the technology they contained, and Morgan had judged that pursuing this golden goose was worth the risk of incurring the government’s wrath.
 

And so, instead of destroying Beta-Three, he had ordered research to be continued under the auspices of one of the vaccine research divisions, thereby getting it out from under the direct scrutiny of federal investigators keeping watch on the genetics research divisions. They would only conduct analysis of the existing samples under very secure conditions, but analyze it they would.

The good news had been that newly elected President Miller had made no bones about reversing Curtis’s policies on genetic engineering. “Full speed ahead!” Those were the words Miller had used in a meeting with corporate executives, including Morgan, from across the industry. It was music to everyone’s ears, although they understood the reality that Miller was beholden to them, considering the millions that the men and women in that room had contributed to his campaign. Even now, so early in the new administration, nearly all of Curtis’s restrictions and regulations on the genetic engineering community had been rescinded.
 

Morgan stopped pacing and turned to face Kelso. “That’s not acceptable, Dr. Kelso.” Kelso flinched. Unlike most of his peers, he actually hated being called
doctor
, and Morgan only called him that when he was displeased with him. “We have in our hands what is probably the most advanced genetic technology in the world.” Despite his discomfort, Kelso nodded emphatically. “And I am not about to sit here and wait for years before we even know what it can do!”

A woman at the far end of the table cleared her throat.

“Yes, Karina?” Morgan’s eyes bored into her. It was a clear sign that she had better have something truly earth-shattering to say.

The woman was not intimidated. A tall, athletic blond, Karina Petrovsky was Morgan’s chief of security, and the one who had arranged the deal to acquire Beta-Three. She was as intelligent as she was attractive, and the combination of those traits had served her extremely well in her job. “Sir, this morning I happened to see a press release that may bear on the situation.”

Morgan nodded for her to continue.

Holding his gaze with her own ice blue eyes, she continued. “The FBI and Homeland Security reported that two individuals who had been in the Earth Defense Society and had been killed in California were working undercover for the government and are very much alive. Their names are Jack Dawson and Naomi Perrault.”

“Perrault?” He’d only heard Dawson’s name on the news when the manhunt for him was on last year. Dr. Naomi Perrault, however, was another matter entirely. He had tried to recruit her, but New Horizons snatched her away. It was a loss he had always deeply regretted.

Petrovsky smiled. “Yes, sir. As you know, Dr. Perrault was a senior researcher at New Horizons. She worked on the
Revolutions
project until a year before that product was to be released. While she is apparently in good standing with the government, my sources say that she just lost her job with a think tank that President Curtis had established, but that President Miller has now shut down.” Tilting her head to one side, she asked, “Perhaps Dr. Perrault would be interested in continuing her work?”

* * *

Jack, Naomi, Carl Richards, and Dr. Renee Vintner sat around the small dining room table in Richards’ apartment. Even while he was working as acting Director of the FBI, Richards had refused to move out of the one-bedroom bachelor pad where he had lived for the last twelve years.

Of course, it was no longer a bachelor pad. He now shared it with Renee. Their relationship had been highly discreet, which meant that the entire Bureau knew about it. But that was because the people he and Renee worked with were extremely perceptive, and no one had cause to raise a stink about it. Richards had been an extremely popular director during his brief tenure, despite his longtime proclamation that he was the FBI’s “number one asshole.” Renee had been popular because she was one of those people you simply couldn’t help but like. Assigned to work as a liaison at the FBI with the agency headed by Jack and Naomi, Renee had worked closely on a daily basis with Richards. They had also shared the horrors of what had happened at Sutter Buttes. Impossible as it seemed, a romance had blossomed between the two.

Jack and Naomi had heartily approved.

The mood around the table now, however, was somber. It was the day after the meeting with the vice president. They had wanted to get together right away, but Richards couldn’t get away from work the previous evening until nearly midnight.
 

Pouring another round of wine as they continued to dig into the spaghetti Richards had prepared, Jack said, “You look like you need a vacation, Carl.”
 

“At least I’ve still got a damn job.” Looking as if he was going to be sick, Richards set down his fork and rubbed a hand across his face. He had said very little since Jack and Naomi had arrived. Renee had tried to lighten the mood with some good-natured ribbing, but Richards hadn’t risen to the bait as he normally did. Even the antics of their three Abyssinian cats, whom he had christened Huey, Dewey, and Louie, chasing a tightly wadded ball of aluminum foil across the floor failed to elicit a smile. Richards looked across the table at Jack and Naomi, an expression of misery on his face. “You two have to know that I wanted to tell you what was coming. While I didn’t know the specifics, I knew over a week ago that you were going to get shit-canned, but I couldn’t say a damn thing. Harmon, our new boss, put a gag on me.”

“He’s a jackass.” Renee shook her head, glancing at Richards. “They should’ve just left well enough alone and kept you on as director.”

Richards waved away her assertion with a look of irritation. “I don’t care about that. I never wanted the damn job, and only did it because President Curtis asked me. And because I owed it to Director Ridley.” The others nodded, recalling that former Director Ridley, deceived by the harvesters, had died a particularly agonizing hero’s death that had struck Richards hard. “It’s a political appointment and that’s that. I’m relieved, to be honest. I thought I had a bunch of bullshit paperwork to deal with before. How anyone stays sane in the boss’s chair is beyond me.”

“Oh, you’re so full of crap!” Renee poked him in the shoulder. “You enjoyed it and don’t say otherwise.” She looked over at Jack and Naomi, rolling her eyes. “God, Carl, you’re such a contrary old fart.”

Richards picked up his wine glass and muttered something into it, but the others could see he was trying hard to suppress a grin.

“So what are you two going to do now?” Renee’s voice turned serious.
 

Jack and Naomi exchanged glances.
 

“We’ve got enough saved away to tide us over for a bit while we figure something out,” Jack said. He looked at Richards. “I think it’s probably safe to say that I won’t be returning to the Bureau or working in any law enforcement job. Even with our names officially being cleared, there are still going to be a lot of people who won’t believe it, and plenty of hard feelings after the deaths of the agents at Sutter Buttes.” Richards nodded, clearly unhappy. Jack shrugged. “Hell. I don’t know. I’ll figure out something.”

“It’s too bad you both officially died,” Renee said. “Otherwise, you’d be rich.”

“I think that’s called water under the bridge.” Naomi tried to smile, but it didn’t reach her eyes. She had made millions when she worked at New Horizons, but as part of the deal following of the Sutter Buttes disaster, she and Jack had “died” and been reborn with new identities. Unfortunately, in an unavoidable step in maintaining the fiction of her death, her unwitting attorney had executed her will and distributed her estate. Her money, her home, and even her beloved car, a Tesla Roadster, were gone.

Jack, too, had lost his home, his old battered Land Rover Defender, and the comparatively small amount he had socked away in his retirement and bank accounts from his time in the Army and working for the Bureau.
 

All the money they had now was what they’d saved while working at SEAL. Even being paid on the government’s senior executive scale, the relatively brief time they’d been working there had left them only enough to make it for a few months. They needed to find work, and soon.
 

“To be honest, I’m a lot more worried about The Bag,” Naomi went on. “Jack and I can find work and keep ourselves afloat. I have no doubt of that. But I just can’t believe that President Miller is going to pretend like the harvesters never happened, and that there’s still not a horrible threat out there!”

“The search is going to continue at the Bureau,” Richards told her, “but it’s being bumped to the back burner. Part of me can’t blame Miller much, because we haven’t found a damn thing! Not a single lead’s turned up, the records from the production facility were destroyed, and the workers who knew anything were all killed. We interviewed every employee at New Horizons before the company closed its doors, but outside the very small circle that you used to be in, nobody knows squat about the
Revolutions
research or The Bag, not to mention the harvesters themselves. Kempf and her cockroach friends kept things awfully tight.”

Naomi had been an insider at New Horizons, and had been chosen by the creature posing as Dr. Rachel Kempf, the director of the
Revolutions
seed project, to work on the final phases of the project’s development. But Naomi hadn’t been fooled, and after pretending to agree to Kempf’s bizarre proposal, she had been kidnapped to safety by the Earth Defense Society. But every time Kempf’s name had been mentioned since then, Naomi couldn’t help but shiver involuntarily.
 

“And as far as we know,” Richards went on, his nasal voice dropping lower, “all the harvesters are dead, and dead bugs tell no tales.” He held up a hand as Jack made to protest. “I’m not saying more of the bastards might not be running around, but I don’t have anything, not a shred of evidence to the contrary that I can give the boss or the President. Until we have something, they’re not going to change their minds.”

“But how can they ignore the evidence we
do
have?” Jack twirled some spaghetti onto his fork. As he spoke the words, he looked at the food on his plate, knowing that everything they were eating was organic. None of them had touched anything that wasn’t organic since learning the truth of what New Horizons had been doing. And none of them had touched a single bit of corn, organic or otherwise. He looked up at Richards. “We might not be able to parade a harvester in front of Miller, but there
is
evidence they existed. Christ, just the security camera footage of the harvester impersonating Clement that was killed at the White House should have been enough.”

“Honey,” Renee answered, “if you show some of these guys something like that, something that clearly is beyond our everyday experience, the first thing they do is say it’s a scam. Look how many people still don’t believe the Holocaust was real.”

“I hate to say it,” Jack said quietly, “but I wish we had some real physical evidence.”

Richards snorted. “We would have, if Curtis hadn’t ordered the harvester impersonating Clement to be destroyed. That was pretty damn stupid.”
 

The others nodded unhappily. There had been several harvester corpses at the EDS base at Sutter Buttes, but they had all been burned when the main part of the base was destroyed. The remains of the five harvesters that had taken part in the attack on the Svalbard seed vault had been flung into the blazing pyre of the vault after Naomi and Jack had destroyed it, having discovered that some of the seeds within had been contaminated.
 

Other than that, no biological samples remained, either of the harvesters or the seed that contained their genetic code. There was nothing left to prove the harvesters had existed other than the data the EDS had maintained in its other facilities. Those installations had been closed by order of President Curtis, and the data transferred to Jack and Naomi’s agency.

But it was “just” data. As far as they could truly prove, it had all been just a bad dream, a brilliant hoax. A nightmare that had culminated in the dropping of a nuclear weapon on central California.

“Even if the government is going to shelve it, we’re not,” Jack said. “We’re going to keep an eye on the web and dig around, and keep digging.” At the pained look Richards gave him, he added, “We’ll be discreet. Besides, it’s really all we’ve got now.”