Field Agent Read online

  How well? That was a question I’d brooded over for years, only to have some of my worst fears confirmed by the woman who’d created the process. Her name was Devya Nayar, but I called her God Maker, a nickname she detested. In a memorable exchange one evening she admitted that not everything with investment was perfect. But, she insisted, it was still very good, and improving.

  Funny how it’s easy to think something’s good enough when you’re not the guinea pig whose mind is being uploaded and downloaded. Despite assurances that things were state-of-the-art, I would always harbor a deep-seated feeling that each investment cycle robbed me of a tiny sliver of my soul. There was no way I was the same Eric Swan I’d been when I first took the job.

  I popped the pill, set up the gear, and grabbed one of my favorite trashy celebrity magazines to pass the 90 minutes of uploading.

  The alarm woke me at six. I showered, dressed, and stood waiting in the hotel lobby at seven when Fife pulled up in his rental. Sliding into the passenger seat I gratefully accepted the coffee he presented. The hotel’s java had been horrendous.

  “There’s donut holes in the bag,” he said, pulling onto the road, straight into a blinding attack of sunlight.

  I passed on the little round mounds of dough and instead sipped the coffee, looking out the side window at the passing scenery. We were near the outskirts of Des Moines.

  “Anything else you can tell me about our interview this morning?” I asked. “Are we walking into a hostile environment?”

  Fife made a left turn and accelerated. “Let’s just say the water’s not boiling yet, but you can see those little bubbles forming on the bottom of the pan.”

  I turned from the window and looked at him. “Are you always this poetic in the morning?”

  “Only before ten. By midday I’m all data and graphs.” He helped himself to a donut hole. “Okay, here’s what I know. Sarah Eklund is troubled, and from my lone face-to-face with her I gathered she’s used to people jumping when she makes a request. Or a demand. Either that’s part of her DNA or a result of growing up with a powerful step-parent. But the fact we can’t just leap into action because of her concerns is frustrating.”

  “Any more pressure coming from the Deputy Secretary so far?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “No. But I wouldn’t be surprised if we got a strongly-worded suggestion from Washington before the week is out.”

  I went back to watching the scenery and absorbing the caffeine. Nobody in law enforcement, regardless of the level or the department, appreciated the not-so-gentle nudges that reeked of nepotism or cronyism. But it was an unfortunate aspect of a system where the shit not only rolled downhill, it gathered momentum. Like an avalanche, you understood that you wouldn’t be able to outrun it, so just take cover and hope for the best.

  Ten minutes later, in an area saturated with drab, aging office buildings, Fife pulled into a diagonal parking space in front of a surprisingly modern edifice.

  “Fancy,” I said, stowing my empty coffee cup and eyeing the glass structure.

  “There’s money in them beans,” Fife said with a hick accent.

  Once inside we stopped at a security desk and showed our badges to a young guard who directed us to the third floor. We took the stairs and came out into a suite of offices with an open floor plan. This early in the morning it was quiet and empty.

  A woman of medium height and shoulder-length blond hair emerged from an office in the back. She began walking toward us with a determined stride, head high, shoulders back, her heels tapping out a cadence that echoed off the walls.

  I recognized Sarah Eklund from the file I’d studied.

  When she got close she extended a hand. “Agent Fife, thank you for agreeing to meet so early.”

  “No problem,” he said. Then he indicated me with a nod. “This is the fellow agent I mentioned. Eric Swan. He’s here to help me continue our investigation.”

  “Mr. Swan,” she said, shaking my hand. Her grip was strong, her eyes penetrating, as if she wanted to know everything about me in one look.

  “Dr. Eklund,” I said.

  She turned to lead us back the way she’d come. “Can I get you coffee?”

  We both declined the offer and followed her into an office featuring a desk piled with papers and folders. The credenza behind it was similarly busy. It all managed to come off as intense without being messy. The wall behind her desk was floor-to-ceiling glass, framing an early-morning view of the downtown Des Moines skyline. Hanging from the other walls were assorted plaques, photos, and awards of distinction. I lingered on the picture of Dr. Eklund with the Vice President of the United States, who had signed it, Sarah, Keep fighting the good fight!

  I wondered what fight that might have been.

  “So where are we with everything?” she asked, swiveling in her chair to focus on both of us.

  “We’re still in data collection mode,” Fife said as we took our seats. “Although Eric’s had a chance to look at the file during his flight from Washington, I thought you might start at the beginning and share your specific concerns with him.”

  She nodded and turned her attention to me. “For the last nine years I’ve devoted the bulk of my research to something called crop solvency. In its purest form it’s a measure of how well a certain grain pays dividends on total investment. That investment includes everything from the acreage itself to the fertilization, irrigation, harvesting. It also factors in things like pest control, drought resistance, and how much it takes to reinvigorate the soil through rotation following a harvest.”

  “Sounds pretty complex,” I said. “More than just watering a seed and plucking the fruit.”

  “Much more. A fractional difference here or there, when calculated across almost a billion acres, can mean profitability or bankruptcy for the farmers. My job, really, is to make sure they’re getting the most bang for their buck when it comes to what they put into the ground.”

  “All right,” I said.

  “Factored into that,” she continued, “the number of actual farms has been decreasing for a while now. Consolidation accounts for a lot of that. But the farmers who are left are increasingly battling larger conglomerates, who have plenty of resources behind them.”

  “So you’re helping out the little guy,” I said with a smile.

  “I hope I’m helping everyone,” she fired back. “But, yes, small farms in particular are very appreciative of the help.”

  I steepled my fingers in front of me. “From what I understand your biggest concern—the reason Agent Fife is here—has to do with soy. Correct?”

  She nodded again. “The average person might believe that wheat makes up the largest percentage of farmland. That hasn’t been true for a long time. Today it’s corn and soybeans. They dominate, both agriculturally and financially.”

  “What kind of numbers are we talking?” I knew the answer, but wanted Dr. Eklund to feel like I was fully vested in the investigation.

  “Tens of billions of dollars every year,” she said. “So anything that poses a danger to those two crops should be considered a national emergency. I’d say it’s no less a domestic security threat than a terrorist with multiple nuclear warheads.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “I see.”

  She gave a wry smile. “No, I’m sure you don’t. But that’s why I’ve reached out, so that you and Agent Fife—and ultimately the country in general—will sit up and take notice.”

  “Fair enough,” I said. “Now that you’ve brought me up to speed on the dollars involved, why don’t you tell me what set off the alarm for you.”

  “About three months ago I had a visit from a man named Jason Deele. He was bright, cordial, and very knowledgeable about the soybean industry. His mission, he said, was to help prevent a total loss of the nation’s soybean crop to a malicious type of mold. That’s a danger every farmer has to deal with: molds, fungi, pests. We rely on mother nature to provide the right amount of water and sunshine, but she’s also c
apable of unleashing some pretty nasty bugs. So farmers play both offense and defense when producing their yields.”

  “And the country has become very keen on keeping pesticides out of the food,” Fife added.

  “Yes, and rightly so. But that doesn’t mean we just sit around and hope the country’s food supply can defend itself. Designing foods that can withstand a variety of harsh conditions and predators is very big business, too.”

  “So did you agree to work with Mr. Deele?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “And why not?”

  “Because he was selling a specific, very tightly-engineered new form of soybean, one that could withstand and actually flourish in the face of this mold. There was only one problem.” She paused. “The mold he described had never been seen before. He essentially was selling a solution for a problem that didn’t exist.”

  “Oh,” I said, and looked from her to Fife and back again. “Then I don’t understand. Why did you call the FBI?”

  She sat back in her large leather chair. “Because two months ago that very mold—the one we’d never seen before—showed up.”

  4

  We were told the wait for a table would be 20 minutes, but Sarah Eklund had insisted we go. No, she couldn’t join us, she said, but we should invest the time to experience the best breakfast in that part of the state. I’m a pancake and waffle fanatic, so I was happy to indulge her recommendation. While waiting we killed time talking about current events, a bit of sports, and Fife raved about the streaming shows he’d been hooked on. After a while we got around to deconstructing our meeting with Dr. Eklund.

  Following her announcement about the alien mold the discussion had continually returned to Eklund’s assessment of the character—or lack thereof—of Jason Deele. It was apparent the man repulsed her, but I couldn’t tell if her distaste was based on something personal, professional, or a combination of both. Her comments often criss-crossed between the two. At one point she’d said, “Mr. Deele’s arrogance regarding his soy formula is wholly undeserved, given his lack of credible testing or peer review.”

  I’d quickly recalled a note in the files Poole had sent with me. “But his new strain is being grown in South America. Wouldn’t that count as credible testing?”

  “It’s certainly a good baseline for testing,” Eklund said, “but almost any new strain can find limited success in a short window of time. Real proof takes years of cultivating in a wide variety of environmental conditions. If we allowed any greenhouse hobbyist to pass themselves off as certified agricultural scientists it would be chaos.”

  Her use of the word hobbyist had struck me. I supposed that every field had its hierarchy, with a certain amount of snobbery and an entrenched old-school network, but I’d never thought it existed with the people who grew wheat and corn. And yet, why not? Again, with mind-popping amounts of money on the line, there would naturally be walls put up to protect against invaders, whether they were insects or competitors.

  It was the money that kept me from dismissing her suspicions entirely. But I was still far from convinced as I stood now outside the restaurant.

  “Yeah, it’s fishy,” I said to Fife. “Nobody would argue that. But the doctor’s suggesting that Jason Deele blew into town, gave everyone his name and address while peddling his super soybean, then turned around and destroyed some crops with the very mold he was offering to defeat. Nobody’s that stupid.”

  Fife examined a folded menu while we waited. “Sure, it sounds stupid. And fishy isn’t enough to convict anyone. Deele’s smart enough to know that. But why would he care if people are suspicious? All he has to claim is that he’s a visionary, that he saw trouble coming, not that he created it.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “This was a long way to come for something that doesn’t sound like a conspiracy to me. It smacks more of professional jealousy than criminal intent.”

  “I might have agreed,” Fife said, “until Culbertson took two rounds to the back of the head while trying to follow up Eklund’s claim.”

  The hostess stepped outside to tell us they were bussing the table and it would only be another minute or so. After thanking her I said to Fife, “Okay, let’s talk about this USDA agent. The only reason he was sent here to poke around in the first place was to placate a politician. But Poole’s file included some background on Mr. Culbertson, and I perused it enough before drifting off last night to know he was into a lot of other shit besides investigating nefarious bean peddlers.”

  This brought a snort from Fife. “Do tell.”

  Before I could lay it all out the hostess was back, asking us to follow her. We wound our way through a maze of tables to a great spot near a window. After ordering hot tea and coffee, we were left to explore the full-sized version of the menu. Banana-walnut pancakes jumped out immediately so I set the laminated page aside.

  “Agent Culbertson,” I said, “was not a popular fellow. He was the subject of an internal investigation three years ago when a farming conglomerate accused him of extortion.”

  “Extortion?” Fife asked. “In what way?”

  “Holding back a crucial report by a couple of months unless they ponied up some big bucks. The report meant a bottom-line difference of about $2 million, so I guess Culbertson figured that was worth a cool 50 grand. Anyway, that was the charge by the company’s CEO, only there was no corroborating evidence. No emails, voice mails, nothing to confirm. So it was dropped.”

  “Could’ve been innocent,” Fife said.

  “Sure, could’ve been innocent then and the two other times it’s been whispered by other companies.”

  Our server showed up with Fife’s coffee and my tea. We ordered our food, then got to work doctoring our drinks.

  “So you’re saying he was a crooked USDA agent who never got officially caught,” Fife said.

  “Lots of smoke even if nobody ever found the fire. But that’s just the beginning. I haven’t gotten to the women or the gambling.”

  The FBI agent laughed. “I gotta get Poole’s file.”

  “I’ll send you a copy. Kept me up later than I’d planned. See, Culbertson was based in Chicago, and there’s a Mrs. Culbertson there. Twice she filed for divorce on grounds of infidelity, and both times she withdrew the paperwork. The second time she did it after Culbertson took out a new life insurance policy on himself worth two million.”

  “With Mrs. Culbertson as the beneficiary.”

  “Naturally.”

  “You’re not suggesting his wife had him executed, are you?”

  I shook my head. “No. But the women he allegedly messed around with were the wives of some very important people in his territory. Oh, and one adult daughter.”

  Fife took a sip of his coffee. “Sounds like the beginning of a joke about the farmer’s daughter.”

  “Yeah. And a punch line with two 9mm slugs. Anyway, all I’m saying is there were lots of people who cried no tears when he went face-down on that roadside.”

  “And the gambling?”

  I blew on my hot tea then took a drink. “This one I actually have a connection with, believe it or not. Culbertson fancied himself a hotshot poker player. Loved to wiggle his way into some of those back-room/high-stakes games, the kind you see in movies.”

  “Like Rounders,” Fife said.

  “Exactly. And he was pretty good, too. But not always good enough.”

  “So he had debts.”

  “It’s not so much the debt,” I said, “but who he owed. And that’s my thin connection to all this. Culbertson was rumored to be in deep with a Chicago-area gangster by the name of Vincent Volta.”

  “Vinnie Volta? You’re making that name up.”

  “Nobody could make that up. Well, maybe Quentin Tarantino. Vincent Volta is a guy who came west from Philadelphia about twenty-five years ago and muscled his way into some extensive territory just outside the primary circle of influence of the Chicago mob.”

  “The suburban don, is that what you’re
saying?” Fife asked. “Why haven’t I heard of him?”

  “Because he’s about as low-key as you’ll find. Doesn’t overplay his hand, doesn’t squabble with other bosses, and keeps the body count to a minimum.”

  “And what’s your connection?”

  I took another sip of tea. “A few years ago I had a case that didn’t actually involve the mob, but in a roundabout way the asshole I took out was on Volta’s shit list. I have no idea how he knew where to find me, but he and a couple of his boys stopped by my hotel room as I was packing to leave. Vincent shook my hand. Said I did him a solid and he’d remember.”

  Fife laughed hard. “Oh, great. A Q2 agent helping out a gangster. I’ll assume this is yet another chapter of your career that Quanta doesn’t know about.”

  “Shit, I stopped thinking I could hide anything from her a long time ago,” I said. “Let’s just say it didn’t make my official report. Besides, why bother reporting anything? That’s a chip I may never cash in. It was more than ten bodies ago; Volta wouldn’t recognize me today. I can’t exactly waltz in and say I had a makeover.”

  “Good point.”

  Our food showed up and we spent the next five minutes making sounds of satisfaction. Dr. Eklund had been spot-on with her recommendation.

  “All right,” Fife said, savoring a piece of bacon. “So we have a strange combination of factors at play here. We have Dr. Eklund convinced that a guy named Jason Deele is intentionally killing off soybean crops. We have a USDA agent who investigated the claim and wound up murdered. But this same agent also had enemies because of extortion claims, infidelity accusations, and through crossing a Chicago gangster. Does that about sum it up?”