Killer Dust Read online

  “Call that seven, eight thousand years ago. But the advance of the desert is still happening, expanding south into the semi-arid zone called the Sahel. The loss of topsoil has accelerated over the past thirty years, through the current drought cycle, which has been going on unusually long. Lake Chad is all but dried up, between lack of rain and people pulling water out of the watershed to stay alive. And then there’s the fact that there are even more people there than there used to be, what with all the improvement in medical care and so forth, for both the people and their animals. More people and animals leads to more overgrazing, gathering of every twig of wood for cook fires, and the cycle intensifies.”

  “Are you taking a shot at me because I’m an old ranch girl?”

  “No. You come from a so-called advanced culture. You brought your fuels in by tank truck, right? And I imagine your family culled the herd rather than let it overgraze your land.”

  “That’s right. We had dry years, but Wyoming is probably a lot less arid than North Africa anyway. Even the driest part of Wyoming is considered only semidesert.”

  “Exactly. But in North Africa, we’re talking full-on desert. And the people are nomadic. They move the herds with the grass, and they don’t own any pickup truck to run into town for fuel. Instead, they push the herd until it strips the vegetation, as I said. That sooner or later degrades the biological capacity of the land. For instance, where you used to have grass and trees creating a baffle that kept the air quiet next to the ground—a microclimatic effect—you now have wind right at ground level, and sediment is plucked up into the air with each little breeze.”

  “You mean like our ‘dust bowl’ years here in the United States during the 1930s, when farmers left the ground naked to the wind after harvest.”

  “Right. The next dust devil sucks up all the fine sediments and off it goes.”

  I said, “Doesn’t a certain amount of it happen anyway?”

  “Right, and there are biological systems downwind that depend on the nutrients that come packaged in the dust. But when we disrupt the vegetation, the system accelerates.” Molly cocked her head to one side. “So what’s going on? Are you getting interested in this stuff?”

  This was where I intended to set up my target and do a little archery. So I said, “Sure. I was thinking that with your specialty in desert sedimentology, you might be interested in my doing a report on this African dust thing.”

  “You mean for your Master’s thesis?”

  Whoops! “No, I was thinking of more like a term paper. Or a special studies project.”

  Molly narrowed her eyes. “Are you planning a trip to Africa?”

  “No, Florida. That’s where the research is being done, you see, and—”

  “Florida? What’s the sudden interest in Florida?”

  If I’d been prone to blushing, I would have been beet red about then. “I have a chance to go there is all, and—”

  “Does this involve that big, good-looking FBI guy you’ve been hanging around with?”

  “Okay, well, yes, Jack’s in Florida for a little while. But I was thinking I could sort of kill two birds with one stone: See him, visit the USGS there, and come back with research for a paper. Get course credit.” The idea suddenly sounded stupid, really stupid.

  Molly rocked her head back and laughed heartily. “Cherchez le homme.”

  “This isn’t a joke, Molly.”

  Molly held up a hand. “Far be it from me to judge a woman who adjusts her career to her private life. I passed up a chance for the astronaut corps because I wanted to be there each evening to read my kids to sleep.”

  I hadn’t taken her for the adventuresome type, but then, Molly kept a lot of herself where no one saw it. All I could think to say was, “Wow.”

  “Right. So what you’re really saying is that you want an introduction to the people at the USGS in St. Petersburg, right?”

  “Guilty as charged.”

  “Fine. I could put you in touch with Miles Guffey, the guy who sort of started all that African dust business. It’s a breaking-news kind of project, very high profile in the media, but they’re doing some interesting science.”

  “Great!”

  “Now, hold your horses. If you want to nose around in all that, fine, but I’m not going to risk a perfectly good professional connection on less than a thesis project.”

  I realized a little too late that I was losing control of the conversation. “Well, I know a thesis is required for the Master’s degree in geology here, but I thought that came later, like after I formally enroll in the program.”

  “Show some spine,” Molly chided. “Quit waffling. I pulled some strings to get you into the classes you’ve already taken, so you owe me. As your advisor, whether you’ve asked me to be that or not, I advise you to look a little more dedicated, like you live and breathe only to study geology. I know that’s bullshit, but hey, it’s how the game is played.”

  “Hmm.”

  Molly’s dark eyes clouded with annoyance. “Come on, Hansen, get it together. What are you, thirty-five? You’re not a kid anymore; you don’t need to be spoon-fed. You’re a seasoned professional. Get that lovesick look out of your eyes and start pretending that nothing else matters to you, just like the rest of us idiots.”

  I tried to smile. “Okay. Right. Let me at it. Ride ’em cowgirl.”

  “Yeah. Ride Em. That’s my job. But seriously, you want to prepare yourself for more of your forensic work, right? Well then, a dust thesis might be just the thing. Documenting source terrain, analyzing sediments and geochemistry and so forth. I’ll bet that’s just what the FBI guys are looking for.”

  “I could treat it like a crime scene,” I said, trying to sound enthusiastic. But oddly, as soon as I spoke the words, my brain began to tilt its machinery in that direction, and little connections began to bloom … .

  Molly’s eyes narrowed down to slits as she broke into fresh laughter. She turned her swivel chair to face one of her bookshelves. “Let’s see … . I have it somewhere here … . Ah.” She pulled a book off a shelf. “The United Nations report on desertification.”

  “What’s ‘desertification’?”

  “I believe it is defined as ‘the reduction of the biological capacity of arid lands,’ as in, if you strip off the topsoil things don’t grow as well. Just what we’ve been talking about. Note the publication date.”

  I opened the book. “1982. Is there anything more recent ?”

  “Ah, good, your mind is functioning. There was a big push back in the 1970s, when the drought started, but when they ran out of money, pfft. There’s still a lot being done, but not much is seeing print. Try the UN Web site.”

  My stomach sank. This was beginning to sound like work. “Maybe I should start with the recent work the guys at the USGS are doing.”

  “Okay. Hit the Internet, and the library. But the USGS doesn’t have any money either, so I’m not sure what you’re going to find past the news stories, which are hardly a scientific source.”

  “Wait just a moment here! You think I should take on a thesis project that won’t get funded?”

  Molly leaned back in her chair again and studied me for several moments. Her smooth Asiatic face had gone as hard as porcelain, her eyes to flint. “I would in fact prefer you work on something that has no funding.”

  “Why? What am I supposed to live on? What—?”

  “You’re an independent type. I should think you’d want to work on an unfunded project precisely so you can maintain your independence.”

  I took a breath and gave myself time to think. “You mean, so I don’t have to dance with the boys what brung me.”

  “Em, these days most science is bought and paid for by the wrong interests.”

  “You mean the corporations?”

  “Sure. The corporations fund what they fund and don’t what they don’t, and that’s how we’re supposed to decide what we should study? That in itself is an important part of your education. Wh
en you’re on one of your detective cases, do you study only the evidence that someone tells you to look at? And do you only come to conclusions that someone with money thinks you should arrive at?”

  “What about government grants? The National Science Foundation, or the—”

  “The corporations bought Congress years ago. Even the NSF is not without its political overtones and its cronyism. Oh, we should try to get you some money, Em, but we should try first for the kind that comes with no strings attached, and no presumed results. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. First, you go read around in that book and decide if you’re really interested in that stuff. If you are, I’ll make you some introductions. And here, take this book, too.” She pulled a volume out from between a stack of test papers waiting to be graded and a box of thin sections waiting for petrographic analysis. With a wry flourish, she dusted off the book.

  I took the book from her. It was entitled The Secret Life of Dust by Hannah Holmes. “Looks like a novel,” I said.

  “No, but it reads like one. Science writing for the lay public.” She chuckled. “It takes the dryness out of the dust. And one more thing: Watch out for Miles Guffey.”

  “Oh, now you tell me.”

  “No, don’t get me wrong, he’s highly regarded. He’s one of the big thinkers, puts together the big picture like few people can. But people like him ride the edges of things, and you’ll find that part of what he does is connect with all kinds of strange people and see which ones have something he can use. He uses his high profile like a knife, to cut through red tape. The downside is that there are all sorts of hangers-on that kind of catch on the smart man’s fur like so many burrs just traveling along for the ride. I hear he’s got a microbiologist working for him now who’s real bright, but he came out of a lab where people are messing with some bad microbes.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I mean anthrax. Biological warfare. Here, you ought to read this, too.” She added a book entitled Germs: Biological Weapons and America’s Secret War by Judith Miller, Stephen Engelberg, and William Broad to my weighty stack. “I don’t trust these guys who make a bad germ worse and call it security. If Guffey tries to connect you with that crap in any way, you tell him you’ll find your own way home.”

  I stared at the books in my hands, wondering what I’d gotten myself into this time.

  – 6 –

  In the twenty-four hours that followed, I threw together a travel kit—that didn’t take long, as all I did was stuff a change of jeans, some shorts, my swimsuit, and all the clean T-shirts and underwear I could find into a bag—then sat down and read Hannah Holmes’s book about dust: desert dust, space dust, household dust, smoke, chemical aerosols, pollen, pocket lint, you name it, because dust was one of the only three words I had that connected me to Jack’s current whereabouts and his reason for being there. The first—Florida—I would soon experience firsthand, and the second—killer—I did not yet wish to consider.

  I made a list of everything and anything that can be considered dust or that is ever referred to as dust, everything Holmes had put in her book and a few ideas and associations of my own. I developed quite an affection for the topic. The Secret Life of Dust read like greased lightning and even had a section on the USGS’s African dust project in St. Petersburg. Even as slow a reader as I am, I had gobbled up about two-thirds of it by bedtime. Having still not heard from Jack, I was wired and could not sleep, so I turned the light back on and read further. I was amazed at how much threaded in and out of the topic, doubled back, and headed right through it again.

  For instance, did you know that the entire universe is made of dust? Space dust is the basic interstellar particle, the building block between raw atoms and the stars and planets they gang up to become. Since the launching of the Hubble Space Telescope, the shroud of obscurity has been lifted from the star-birth business, revealing clouds of swirling dust that act as giant wombs.

  Or here’s a little tidbit: The human lung breathes in dust, but anything smaller than ten microns (about half a hair’s width) gets stuck, and that means that anything really little, like the finest desert dust that is blown across oceans, or the dried residue of the fine spray from the pesticide trucks that squirt the local fruit orchards, stays in your lungs. Imagine the health effects of that.

  Killer dust. The thought did not help me sleep. Could dust’s threat to human health in fact have something to do with Jack’s presence in Florida? If so, what? I lay on my back, staring at the ceiling, and conjured scenarios that matched the various types of dust with death and Florida. Pesticides were one thing, but of course drugs were another. What of the traffic in cocaine that visited Florida’s shores? Wasn’t dust another nickname for cocaine? Or was that snow?

  It was late when I finally fell asleep.

  Faye phoned bright and early the next morning and told me to come to dinner that evening to discuss our plans. I said yes, made myself some breakfast, and settled in to read Germs: Biological Weapons and America’s Secret War. I quickly lost my appetite.

  It was a work of investigative journalism. I quickly garnered some important points: First and foremost, the United States was not prepared to deal with attack by biological weapons. No country was. Worse yet, the symptoms of an attack would be hard to distinguish from a natural epidemic, so the germs could be spread far and wide before anyone became the wiser. A stunning, yet little known, example was the 1984 attack by insiders at the Rajneesh religious commune in Oregon on residents of the surrounding community. Starter germs of Salmonella typhimurium (a form of food poisoning) had been purchased parcel post from the American Type Culture Collection, a private sector germ bank located on the East Coast, and nurtured into multiplication by a bizarre team of megalomaniacs who wanted to sway the outcome of a local election by limiting the number of opposing citizens that could leave their bathrooms long enough to struggle into the voting booth. Nearly 1,000 people were sickened when Rajneeshee operatives disbursed their nasty dose on public salad bars, and an Oregonian record of 751 cases of Salmonella typhimurium were confirmed.

  Second, I learned that anthrax—a deadly bacillus originally found in soils but cultivated by United States government research into extraordinary virulent, easily transportable spores with the shelf life of bricks—had been produced in unbelievable quantities both here and abroad, and whole tank-car-sized loads of it were missing and unaccounted for.

  Third, I read that the fate and popularity of such projects varied with the whims and opinions of whatever presidential administration was in office. As with most weapons, they were developed whether the unknowing public wanted them or not.

  Needless to say, such reading matter did nothing to calm my concerns about where Jack had gone and what he was doing.

  By the time I showed up for dinner at Faye and Tom’s, it was clear that Tom was now worried about Jack, too. When he saw me coming up the walk, he got out of his chair and started pacing. Faye stood where he couldn’t see her and made a gesture like she was talking on a telephone and pointed at Tom, mouthing the words, “I think he heard from Jack.”

  So I said, “Tom, have you heard from Jack?”

  “No,” he said, and left the room until dinner was served.

  Over some truly delicious pork chops sauteéed with rosemary, sage, and caramelized onions and topped with sour cream, Faye dropped her bomb. “Tom, Em and I are planning to run down to St. Petersburg, and visit my aunt.”

  Tom froze with his fork halfway to his face. “St. Petersburg, Florida?”

  “Yes. The one in Russia doesn’t have as nice a pilot’s lounge.”

  Tom closed his eyes and put the fork back down. When he spoke, his voice was rough with feeling. “Any way I can talk you out of this?”

  I said, “No.”

  He lifted one hand and ran it back through his salt-and-pepper crew cut. The breath hissed out of him like a deflating tire.

  I looked at Faye, knowing she wasn’t going to like m
y next move. I said, “Tom, I’d like it if you came along. You know where Jack is and what he’s doing and—”

  “No, in fact I do not,” he interjected.

  “You know he’s in Florida.”

  “No. I know he went to Florida. I have no idea where he went next, or even if he got there.”

  “Bull. You heard from him today.”

  “I heard from his mother.” From the look on his face, this was not a good thing.

  My voice rose half an octave. “But you know what he’s doing?”

  Tom stared at his pork chops. He said, “Em, I think it’s best if we both stay out of this.”

  “Why?”

  “Because … oh hell, Em! Jack went to Florida on personal business.”

  “He’s not on assignment?”

  “No.”

  “Vacation?”

  “No.”

  Mark it up to lack of sleep or malingering insecurity, but I lost control and started shouting. “Quit being so coy! I give you ten seconds to start dishing up information, or I’m going to head on down there without you and find Jack on my own. And you can damn well live with it if I get myself in trouble out of ignorance you could easily dispel, you hopeless shithead!”

  Tom looked up, startled. “Christ, you really do love this guy.”

  “Tom, you are moving me to thoughts of—”

  Very softly he said, “Em, all he told me was that he was going down there to find someone. He didn’t give me a name, or his exact destination. I really know precious little.”

  “What kind of person? A man? A … a woman?”

  “I am not going to tell you any more, precisely because it is not your business, and because for your own safety Jack would not want you involved.”

  “But his mother phoned you. What does that mean?”

  “Leah is … hell, I ought to put you on the phone to her. She’d set you straight. There’s a woman who knows how to stay out of trouble!”

  “What do you mean?”

  Tom let out a deep growl. “I should not have said that. The fact that she intimidates me does not mean you have the brains to back off. Listen, Em, you’ve got to stay out of this and let Jack do his job. Besides, he’s a smart man, and when he wants to keep something under his hat, he’s very good at doing exactly that.” Under his breath, he added, “His mother taught him well.”