“Go on,” Davis urged.
“First of all, it’s not a natural organism. It’s related to a common bacteria, yes, an organism inside all of our intestinal tracts at least right now. It’s a parasite but it causes little damage, and may even aid in the digestion of some foods. Because it was common, familiar, easily isolated, and easy to grow in cultures, it was one of the primary organisms used in early recombinant DNA research.”
Several of them looked surprised. “I thought all that was discontinued after the Cambridge and Limitov disasters,” someone said.
She nodded. “True. It’s dynamite with an unstable fuse. Anything done in that department runs the danger of creating an artificial mutant strain that could cause a horrible plague. Both here and in the Soviet Union such things occurred more than a decade ago, and that ended any real research into the subject except in computer models.”
“But the technology exists,” Edelman said. “It could be done by anyone who knew how.”
“That’s true,” she admitted. “But nobody would do it without tremendous safeguards. Even a fanatical group wouldn’t run the risk of self-contamination. Bacteria do not recognize rank or social position. You’d need a lab setup that cost tens of millions of dollars at the very least, and a scientific team capable of handling the risks as well.”
“So you’re saying,” Davis put in, “that no place short of a government or perhaps a major university lab could do it?”
She nodded agreement. “Yes, and even the university lab would be government supported. They’re the only ones with the money.”
“Just what’s involved in this recombinant DNA thing?” Jake Edelman wanted to know. “I’m no biologist.” He felt a little better when he saw a number of other heads nod almost imperceptibly. They didn’t know, either—they just didn’t have the guts to admit that they didn’t.
She sighed. “I’ll do the best I can. A short course in molecular biology is a tough order, though. Let’s start by saying that we’re all made up of trillions of living cells. All organisms are made up of one or more of these cells. And, in a given organism, like a human being, all the cells are from the division of a single cell. You started off the product of one sperm with half a set of genes that penetrated an egg with the other half, creating a single, primal cell. That single cell duplicated in your mother’s womb over and over again. As it did, the cells changed.
“As far back as the 1940s,” she continued, “it was found that the culprit was an odd double-spiraled compound called deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA for short. The stuff is made up of four chemicals, and these are strung together in long chains inside each cell, the chains—the order of the chemicals—telling the specific cell its place, order, and function in the developing organism. It becomes a hair cell, or a tooth cell, or a nail or part of the lung. Back in 1961 Dr. Marshall Nirenberg of the National Institutes of Health, of which NDCC and this center are components, showed how it worked. You string together a series of DNA molecules, use a dash of protein as a period, and drop the thing into a soup of RNA, a compound related to DNA, and amino acids, the building blocks of all life. The DNA gives the orders, the RNA takes them, goes to work on the amino acids, and builds a protein molecule to specifications. All of the instructions necessary to build and maintain you were in the DNA of that original cell created by the union of sperm and egg.”
He nodded. “I understand that. I read about the cloning experiments at Harvard. But what’s this recombinant stuff?”
Sandra O’Connell sighed. “Well, once we knew how to read the code, the next step was to write it. Original experiments used Escherichia coli, a one-celled animal. DNA from one was chopped up as was DNA from another. The chopped DNA was placed in an amino acid solution, and the DNA chains from different bacteria combined and built new organisms with differing characteristics. Pretty soon scientists isolated DNA molecules with specific instructions and were able to insert those in place of the originals.”
“A build-it-yourself bacteria,” Edelman said dryly. “A living erector set.”
She chuckled. “I guess you can say that. But the lab conditions had to be rigidly controlled. The organism takes well to man, and the lab strain, being artificially grown in sterile conditions, was particularly susceptible to mutation—to having its DNA changed by outside forces, like cosmic rays and other radiation always present. There was always the danger of producing a carcinogenic organism—a germ, in other words, that would be a new and deadly disease.”
“And that happened in two separate sets of experiments,” General Davis put in. “Just a few little bacteria, ever so tiny, got through imperfections in the labs both here and in the USSR. Maybe it happened a lot of other times, but these two were lulus, and they happened within a year of each other—the result of, I guess, too much research on the stuff when no initial disasters happened. Somebody got careless, and nineteen thousand died in Cambridge and Boston, and almost as many in Limitov. That scared hell out of the people and leaders of all the governments. There was a quick conference, the Treaty of Basel was signed, and that was it. No more active recombinant DNA experiments without the consent of all the signatories.”
“But somebody’s done it anyway,” Jake Edelman pointed out.
Sandra O’Connell nodded. “Yes, somebody has. And I would guess that it would have to be in a lab totally isolated and perhaps deeply buried. Served by a closed staff that contained no leaks, not to the scientific community, not to anyone.”
“Such an installation would have to be a major one, staffed by major people,” the intelligence director pointed out. “I don’t see how something on that scale could be set up without leaks. We might not know what they were doing, but we’d know they were doing something, and be able to infer what it was by the installation and personnel, particularly matching what we now know about this stuff to the intelligence involved. So far—nothing.”
Jake Edelman shifted uneasily. “Now, Bart, that’d be true if it were, say, Russia or China or one of their satellites, maybe even France or one of the other powers. But suppose it was, say, the Central African Empire or maybe Paraguay? If Bhutan had the Bomb but didn’t test it, would you really know it until they did?”
The CIA man shrugged. “I don’t know, Jake. But if it were a third world country not on our questionable list, why pick on us? Besides, they’d still have to have their own nationals highly trained in molecular biology, which means here or in one of the major powers. We’ve already run those through. A few minor question marks, yes, but nobody unaccounted for that I would invest millions in.”
“Which brings us back to Go,” General Davis pointed out. “Now, what do we do about it?”
“Well, here’s what we do know,” Edelman responded. “First, someone, unknown, is manufacturing a disease and, using international terrorists, anarchists, and overage radicals looking for a cause, is testing it out on small towns in the United States. Its incubation period is three days, after which it damages or burns out some area of the brain, then totally vanishes without a trace. In all probability there are over nine hundred additional cannisters of the stuff ready and waiting for us.”
“And it’s a stable organism,” Sandra pointed out. “If, as seems to be the case, those radicals you got yesterday hit Boland, they didn’t go blind! That means that they were immunized. An antitoxin for the bacteria exists.”