“You mean like cotton?”
“Yes, Agrippa doesn’t have the patent on genetically engineered cotton. But the company is working on crops-trying for better yields and resistance to pests, trying to create strains that can be grown in hostile environments.” Vincent paused. “Imagine if you could plant wheat in the Sahara.”
“But if you produced resistant strains, that would do away with the need for pesticides, wouldn’t it?”
Vincent smiled. “Nature has a way of finding its way around these defenses. Still, there are some out there who would agree with you. That’s why CWC is spending millions on research.”
“CWC?”
“Didn’t I say? Agrippa is a subsidiary of Co-World Chemicals. Come on, this way.”
They followed the fence up a steep rise and down into a valley, then climbed again.
“We can see from here,” Vincent said. He switched off his flashlight.
It was a single large building, with trucks parked outside, illuminated by floodlights. Men in protective clothing, some wearing masks, wheeled trolleys between the trucks and the building. A tall thin chimney belched out acrid smoke.
“An incinerator?” Reeve guessed.
“Industrial-strength. It could melt a ship’s hull.”
“And they’re burning infected cattle?”
Vincent nodded.
“Did you bring Jim here?”
“Yes.”
“To make a point?”
“Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words.”
“You should never tell a journalist that.”
Vincent smiled. “Burning the cattle isn’t going to make it go away, Mr. Reeve. That’s what your brother understood. There are other journalists like him in other countries. I’d guess each one is a marked man or woman. If BSE gets to humans, it’s called Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Believe me, you wouldn’t wish it on your worst enemy.”
But Reeve could picture himself syringing a strain of it into the arm of whoever had killed his brother.
There were other neurodegenerative diseases, too-motoneuron disease, multiple sclerosis-and they were all on the increase. Their conversation on the way back to the farm was all one-way, and all bad news. The more Josh Vincent talked, the more zeal-ous he became and the angrier and more frustrated he sounded.
“But what can you do?” Reeve asked at one point.
“Reexamine all pesticides, carry out tests on them. Use less of them. Turn farms into organic cooperatives. There are answers, but they’re not simple overnight panaceas.”
They parked in the farmyard again. The dog came out bark-ing. The lamb trotted over towards them. Reeve followed Vincent into the kitchen. Once inside the door, they took off their boots. The young woman was still at the sink beneath the window. She smiled and wiped her hands, coming forward to be in-troduced.
“Jilly Palmer,” said Vincent, “this is Gordon Reeve.”
They shook hands. “Pleased to meet you,” she said. She had a flushed complexion and a long braid of chestnut-colored hair. Her face was sharp, with angular cheekbones and a wry twist to her lips. Her clothes were loose, practical.
“Supper’s ready when you are,” she said.
“I’ll just show Gordon his room first,” Vincent said. He saw the surprise in Reeve’s face. “You can’t get back to London to-night. No trains.”
Reeve looked at Jilly Palmer. “I’m sorry if I-”
“No trouble,” she said. “We’ve a bedroom going spare, and Josh here made the supper. All I had to do was warm it through.”
“Where’s Bill?” Vincent asked.
“Young Farmers‘. He’ll be back around ten.”
“Don’t be daft,” said Vincent, “pubs don’t shut till eleven.”
He sounded very different in this company: more relaxed, enjoying the warmth of the kitchen and normal conversation. But all that did, in Reeve’s eyes, was show how much strain the man was under the rest of the time, and how much this whole conspiracy had affected him.
He thought he could see why Jim had taken on the story, why he would have run with it where others might have given up: because of people like Josh Vincent, scared and running and innocent.
His room was small and cold, but the blankets were plenti-ful. He took off his coat and hung it on a hook on the back of the door, hoping it would dry. His dark pullover was damp, too, so he peeled it off. The rest of him could dry in the kitchen. He found the bathroom and washed his hands and face in scalding water, then looked at himself in the mirror. The image of him injecting BSE into a tapped human vein was still there in the back of his mind. It had given him an idea-not something he could put into use just yet, but something he might need all the same…
In the kitchen the table had been laid for two. Jilly said she’d already eaten. She left them to it and closed the door after her.
“She never misses Coronation Street,” Vincent explained. “Lives out here, but has to get her fix of Lancashire grime.” He used oven mitts to lift the casserole from the oven. It was half full, but a substantial half. There was a lemonade bottle on the table and two glasses. Vincent unscrewed the cap and poured carefully. “Bill’s home brew,” he explained. “I think he only drinks down the pub to remind himself how good his own stuff tastes.”
The beer was light brown, with a head that disappeared quickly. “Cheers,” said Josh Vincent.
“Cheers,” said Reeve.
They ate in silence, hungrily, and chewed on home-baked bread. Towards the end of the meal, Vincent asked a few questions about Reeve-what he did, where he lived. He said he loved the Highlands and Islands, and wanted to hear all about Reeve’s survival courses. Reeve kept the description simple, leaving out more than he put in. He could see Vincent wasn’t really listening; his mind was elsewhere.
“Can I ask you something?” Vincent said finally.
“Sure.”
“How far did Jim get? I mean, did he find out anything we could use?”
“I told you, his disks disappeared. All I have are his written notes from London.”
“Can I see them?”
Reeve nodded and fetched them. Vincent read in silence for a while, except to point out where he himself had contributed a detail or a quote. Then he sat up.
“He’s been in touch with Marie Villambard.” He showed Reeve the sheet of paper. The letters MV were capitalized and underlined at the top. They hadn’t meant anything to Reeve or to Fliss Hornby.
“Who’s she?”
“A French journalist; she works for an ecology magazine-Le Monde Vert, I think it’s called. ”Green World.“ Sounds like they were working together.”
“She hasn’t tried contacting him in London.” There’d been no letters from France, and Fliss hadn’t intercepted any calls.
“Maybe he told her he’d be in touch when he got back from San Diego.”
“Josh, why did my brother go to San Diego?”
“To talk to Co-World Chemicals.” Vincent blinked. “I thought you knew that.”
“You’re the first person to say it outright.”
“He was going to try and speak to some of their research scientists.”
“Why?”
“Why? Because of the experiment they had carried out.” Vincent put down the notes. “They tried to reproduce BSE the way it had flared up in the UK, using identical procedures after consultations with MAFF. They brought in sheep infected with scrapie and rendered them down, taking the exact same shortcuts as were used in the mideighties. Then they mixed the feed to-gether and fed it to calves and mature cattle.”
“And?”
“And nothing. They didn’t exactly trumpet the results. Four years on, the cattle were one hundred percent fit.” He shrugged his shoulders. “They’ve got other experiments ongoing. They’ve got consultant neurologists and world-class psychiatrists working on American farmers who show signs of neurodegenerative disease. Bringing in the psychiatrists is a nice touch: it makes everyone think maybe we’re dealing with psychosomatic hysteria, that the so-called disease is actually a product of the human mind and nothing at all to do with what we spray on our crops and stuff into and onto our animals.” He paused. “You want any more casserole?”