organism in the mummies preserved in the English peat.' Painter nodded to Monk. 'And we know that research continues today and that those bodies found at the mushroom lab were likely from the test farm in Africa.'
Painter had already set in motion an order to search those underground labs. But Viatus was one of the largest corporations in Norway, with massive global and financial ties. By the time some judge okayed a search, Painter suspected that the corporation would have purged those labs, leaving behind only sterilized, empty rooms.
'So I think it's safe to conclude,' Painter finished, 'that the mysterious genes noted in the corn seeds by Professor Malloy at Princeton were from that fungal source. And that apparently those genes are unstable. Possibly making the corn dangerous to consume.'
Gorman shook his head. 'But why massacre the village? The corn wasn't even meant for human consumption.'
Painter had one explanation. 'It was a refugee camp. Food was scarce. Hungry people get desperate. I wager some locals sneaked into the fields at night and stole an ear or two of corn for their families. And maybe those who were running the farm turned a blind eye to such trespasses. It would offer the corporation the perfect chance to conduct real-world human studies without needing to acknowledge it.'
'Only no one anticipated the gene altering itself,' Monk said with a grimace. 'After learning that, they had to wipe the slate clean, but not before collecting a few test subjects along the way. Who would miss a refugee or two, especially in a firebombed camp?'
Painter noted that the senator had grown pale, that his gaze had slipped into a thousand-yard stare. Grief shadowed his eyes. But it was more than that.
'Viatus is already shipping their new drought-resistant corn seed,' Gorman said. 'They have been for the past week. Fields are already being planted for the season across much of the southern hemisphere and equatorial latitudes. Millions of acres.'
Painter sensed something worse coming. Gorman had gone pale. It suddenly struck Painter. To mass-produce the seed for global distribution, Viatus had to have already grown it somewhere and harvested it.
But where?
'The production fields for this new corn seed,' Painter asked. 'Where are they?'
Gorman would not meet his eye. 'I helped broker the deal for Viatus. GM seed production is a billion-dollar- a-year industry. It's like pouring money into cash-strapped areas.' His voice went dull with shock. 'I spread the money out. Throughout the U.S. corn belt-Iowa, Illinois, Nebraska, Indiana, Michigan...thousands and thousands of acres, in a patchwork across the Midwest.'
'And this is the same corn that they were testing in Africa?' Monk asked.
'Not exactly, but it was in the same genetic line.'
'And probably just as unstable,' Painter added. 'No wonder they burned down that test farm in Africa. The cat was already out of the bag.'
'But I don't understand,' Monk said. 'How could that seed already be planted? What about safety studies?'
Gorman shook his head. 'Safety studies on genetically modified foods are a joke. Food additives get more testing. GM foods have no formal risk assessment guidelines and rely mostly on self-regulation. Approvals are based on filtered or outright fraudulent reports by the industry. To give you some idea, of the forty GM crops approved last year, only eight have published safety studies. And in the case of the seeds being shipped by Viatus, they are not meant for human consumption, so they're even less on any agency's radar. And besides...I helped push it through.'
The senator closed his eyes and shook his head.
No wonder Karlsen needed him, Painter thought.
'Still, if the corn's not meant for human consumption,' Monk said, 'maybe the danger can be contained.'
Creed finally spoke up and quickly quashed this hope. 'It will still get into the human food supply.'
All eyes turned to him.
The newest member of Sigma seemed to shrink a little under their combined attention, but he held up. 'After what happened in Princeton, I looked a little deeper into GM crops. In 2000, a GM corn called StarLink, a corn not approved for human consumption like the Viatus strain, ended up contaminating food products across the country. More than three hundred brands. It was suspected of triggering allergic reactions and resulted in a massive recall. The Kellogg Company had to close its production line for two weeks just to clean out the contamination.'
The senator nodded. 'I remember. The government had to buy up Kellogg stock to keep the industry afloat. Cost us billions.'
'And that was only one of many such reports of foreign GM products ending up in the human food supply.' Creed glanced over at Painter. 'There remains a much larger concern about all this.'
'What's that?'
'Pollen migration and genetic contamination.'
Frowning, Painter waved for him to explain in more depth.
'There is no way to contain pollen movement of a GM crop. It blows in the wind, gets washed into neighboring fields. Some seeds have been found growing as far away as thirty miles from a planting. So don't be fooled. Wherever fields are planted with the Viatus corn, it will spread from there.'
'And genetic contamination?'
'Even more concerning. There have been cases of genetic modifications passing from engineered species into wild ones, spreading the contamination at the genetic level into the biosphere. And with the instability noted by Dr. Malloy in the Viatus corn sample, I think that likelihood is even greater.'
'So what you're saying is that the whole Midwest could be contaminated?' Monk asked.
'It's too soon to say that,' Painter said. 'Not until we have more answers.'
Still, Painter remembered what Gray had discovered in England. The mummies in the peat bog had been riddled with mushrooms, just like the bodies found at the lab. Had Karlsen unwittingly unleashed that organism back into the world?
Worse, what if it wasn't an accident?
Karlsen had clearly manipulated the senator to his own ends. But what was his goal in all of this?
Only one man could answer that.
The pilot interrupted. 'We've begun our descent into Longyearbyen. Please secure your seats for landing.'
Painter glanced out the window as the sun finally began to rise. It was high time he had a conversation with that man. Still, he checked his watch. He had one other concern as the jet dipped toward the frozen archipelago, one that grew more worrisome with each passing hour.
11:01 A.M.
Spitsbergen, Norway
'Still no word from Gray?' Monk asked as he stood in the icy parking lot. He wore a snowsuit, boots, gloves, goggles, and carried a helmet under one arm.
Painter shook his head, clutching his satellite phone. 'I had hoped by sunrise to have heard something from him. Or from the patrols. They had choppers up at first light, searching the highlands. Fire crews report the entire valley is a smoldering ruin. I also checked with Kat. He's not checked in with Sigma Command either.'
Monk read the pain in the director's face. 'He had to make it out of there. Maybe there's a reason he's gone silent.'
From his expression, Painter took little consolation from Monk's words. If Gray had gone silent, it was because he was in some sort of trouble. The director stared off into the distance.
The sun still hung low on the horizon, reflecting painfully off the ice and snow that covered the island of Spitsbergen. In another month the archipelago would sink into a permanent Arctic night that would last four months. Even at midday the temperature had climbed to only a single degree Fahrenheit above zero. It was a barren place, treeless and broken into sharp peaks and crevices. The name of this island of the Svalbard archipelago-Spitsbergen-translated from the Dutch meant 'jagged mountain.'
It was not a landscape that inspired hope.
Especially with the dark skies rolling in from the north.
