Ryan grimaced in reluctance but he agreed. Pawluk would never divulge any more. “Yes.”
“As you've surmised, at their fullest extent, GenCorp's claims included work you did here. We learned of it from an inside source—that's all you need to know—and it was simply unacceptable.
“But...” Ryan began, a barrage of questions overwhelming his astonishment.
“You're welcome.” Pawluk smiled but his face was hard and his eyes were unyielding. He stood up and offered his hand. “Have a nice day. It was good to see you again. I leave you in capable hands.”
Knowing further discussion was futile, Ryan stood, shook Pawluk's hand and watched him leave. As the retired scientist pushed through the door Ryan noticed that he no longer exuded a distinguished air. His shoulders were sagged with fatigue and his former boss and mentor suddenly appeared to be very old.
Hemorrhage
“Let's get restarted.” Natalia took charge as soon as the door slipped shut behind Pawluk. “I've got some errands I need to attend to later.”
Ryan hesitated. He remained standing, his mind whirling with questions.
“Ryan?” Robb took note. “Do you need a few moments?”
“Not at all.” Ryan returned to the present. No matter the untold dramas within Pawluk's confession, the magnitude of CI's present dilemma demanded his focus. He took a seat.
Natalia restarted. “As I was saying—“
“Why do you suppose he told me that?” Ryan blurted.
“Told you what...? Who...? I don't understand.” Natalia was derailed.
“Why now? Why today?” Ryan continued thinking aloud. “It makes no sense in light of what you said earlier.” His eyes bored into Robb's deputy's.
“I don't follow you at all.” She was annoyed.
“You invited him to tell me something different, but he didn't say it.” Ryan surmised. “Why? What more don't I know?”
“I'm not sure I follow.”
Ryan looked at her sharply. She was posturing. “Just before Pawluk arrived you said 'something was complex' and that you had asked 'someone' for help.”
“I had information for him to review. It wasn't what I expected,” Natalia waffled. “I thought he was”—
“Did you discuss your slides with him?” Ryan interrupted.
“Of course!” Natalia snapped.
“Ryan!” Robb interjected sharply.
Ryan ignored him. “He validated what you were going to tell me. He already knew.”
“I told him it was only a theory,” Natalia waffled, confirming Ryan's suspicion.
“Of course,” Ryan soothed. “At this level, the science is never exact. Please continue.”
“I'm sorry I can't be more precise,” Natalia said sincerely.
“We draw our conclusions on the best evidence we have,” Ryan reconciled unnecessarily.
“Yes, we do.” Robb was authoritative. He beckoned to Natalia to continue.
She hesitated, wanting to say more, but Robb's glare encouraged her to pick up the previous thread. “For the past two decades we have monitored the content of the eastward air currents that cross the Pacific Ocean. It tells us a lot of what is going on behind the industrialized countries' borders—both industrially and militarily.”
“You have data from air currents?” Ryan wanted confirmation.
“From the aerosols,” Dr. Dioumaiev lectured.
“How do you know their origin?”
“Good question.” Natalia smiled as if to an uncomprehending child. “The scientific analysis of marine aerosols can be used to establish fingerprints, if you will, on what is happening at the origins of airborne chemistry. It's taken over a decade to establish a database but now that we have a clearer picture, we can begin to draw, with certainty, some conclusions. The samples I will present had unique identifiers—an industrial chemical effluent—that we can now trace to specific locales in China.”
“What kind of fingerprints?”
“Chemical derivatives and their radio-isotope analysis. We now think the origin is the Zhangjiang Pharmaceutical Valley in Pudong, Shanghai.”
“How can you be so specific?”
“The chemical signature matches the output of several companies that were starting up operations at the time of collection.”
“How does that concern CI?”
“GenCorp might have had a presence.”
“GenCorp.” Ryan had ceased to be shocked.
Natalia nodded.
“Do they now?”
There was an insincere pause.
“All the major companies do,” Robb stated unnecessarily.
“Including GenCorp?” Ryan persisted with equal redundancy.
“They're a major pharmaceutical,” Robb repeated the obvious.
To Ryan the words were forced. He flash-assembled a chronology in his mind. “Did this project begin about the time I called Pawluk?”
“I know nothing of that,” Robb answered with grit.
Is that also why GenCorp's legal challenges suddenly folded? Ryan wondered. What had Pawluk done? A light must have gone on his eyes for Robb smiled at him encouragingly. “The world's industrial base is in China, so...” Ryan muttered beneath his breath, perturbed at the veil of secrecy. He turned to Dr. Dioumaiev. “Why are you studying the aerosols?”
“There's a strong link between weather patterns and military preparedness,” Natalia replied in a matter-of-fact way.
“I don't believe you asked me here to discuss military preparedness,” Ryan remarked.
“No,” Dr. Dioumaiev said severely.
“Be patient, Ryan,” Robb admonished.
“What we have found is this”—Natalia projected a slide onto the white wall backdrop and Ryan perused the view graph—“This first chart is a GCMS analysis of a sample we collected before ACE-Asia.”
“Before... what?” Ryan interrupted.
“ACE-Asia. It was an international collaboration of climate and atmospheric scientists. You never heard of it?”
“No,” Ryan lied. The first ACE-Asia study pegged the date to exactly when GenCorp ceased their legal challenges. He glanced at Robb, arched his eyebrows and nodded.
Robb was monitoring him for recognition and seemed to relax as Ryan jigged the puzzle.
Natalia took no notice. “Following the shift of industrialization from the Western Hemisphere to the Eastern”—she fixated on setting the context of the academic project—“manufacturing was conducted under far fewer emission restrictions than they had in the US and Europe. In the late nineties, scientists gathered in the Pacific to study the atmospheric impact. The project was...”
Ryan raised his eyebrows in a question toward Natalia as she paused to make eye-contact.
“...politically controversial. Just a few years earlier the atmospheric science community had learned that the previous centuries' pollution from North America had had an impact on the African continent. This time, it was postulated that the shift in industrialization might create a new trend on the Americas.”
Ryan nodded his head. What followed was obvious.
“It took a half-dozen years to decipher and publish the first findings but the project confirmed that a lot of the unexplained nasties that were being found in local field studies had indeed traveled thousands of miles along the jetstream from their factory of origin. It was an eye-opening study.”
“And this is when the government took notice?”
“More or less. It confirmed what the government has suspected. The jetstream vector was a fifth column.”
Robb cleared his throat and Natalia immediately advanced a slide.
“Enough about that,” she segued. “This is a blow-up of the Mass Spec trace. Notice anything unusual?”
“Some nitrogen and sulfur. A lot of carbon and hydrogen. This sample was from amino acids or proteins,” Ryan determined.
“Exactly what we thought.”
“What's different about them?”
/> “That's what I'm asking you.”
“You want me to speculate blindly?” Ryan was incredulous.
“We asked you for your help.”
“Then you think it's related to Jankowiak's research?”
“Yes.” Natalia shrugged at the obvious.
“How did you make that connection?” Ryan demanded.
“Take another look, Ryan.” She sidestepped his question again.
Ryan studied the spectrometry trace.
“C'mon Ryan, you know your own program.” Robb urged.
It was obvious but Ryan still didn't want to admit it.
“You tagged your amines with Nitrogen-15 and Deuterium.”
“Yes we did.” Ryan caved. “Nobody could have copied that exactly.” He was suddenly defensive. “We had no break-ins, no data thefts”—
“Did you have yield issues, Ryan?”
Ryan caught his breath. “At first, yes, but that's not uncommon. You have to figure out the chemistry before you can improve the synthesis process.” Then his eyes narrowed and he instinctively scratched the back of his head. “But with Methuselah the yield problem was remarkable.” Again he sat back to contemplate what had seemed to be trivial business details from a dozen years or so earlier.
Natalia prepared to speak but Robb shot her a look.
“It was one of the first personnel issues we had at CI,” Ryan recalled. “A synthetic bio-chemist had been hired to develop formulations predicted from the game. He was an enigma. He came highly recommended but his initial yield's were abysmal and they didn't get better over a couple of months. We began to monitor him—quietly. When there was no progress, I co-assigned the synthesis work to another team. Within weeks they were extracting usable quantities of material.”