Crocodile Tears

Straik is the director and the chief science officer. Aged fifty-eight. Unmarried. He was a brilliant student, studying biology at Cambridge back in the seventies. He invented something called the Biolistic Particle Delivery System—also known as the gene gun. It uses helium pressure to fire new DNA into existing plant organisms … something like that, anyway. The long and the short of it is that thanks to Straik, it’s become much easier to mass-produce GM seeds.
    “ For twenty years, Straik ran his own company— Leonard Straik Diagnostics … or LSD, as it was called. It all went well for a time, but like many scientists, he was less brilliant when it came to business and the whole thing collapsed. Straik lost all his money and went freelance. Six years ago he was hired as the director of Greenfields, and he has been there ever since.”
    “ Why are you interested in him?”

    “ Because of something that happened a few months ago.” Blunt opened the file. “Last November, the police got a call from a whistle-blower inside the company, a bio-technician by the name of Philip Masters. He said he knew something about Straik and wanted to talk. Given the security implications, the police passed the information to us and we arranged a meeting—but one day before it could take place, there was an accident and Masters was killed. Apparently he came into contact with some sort of toxic material and it poisoned his entire nervous system. By the time he turned up in the local morgue, he was unrecognizable.”
    “ An accident …”
    “ Exactly. It seemed a bit of a coincidence, don’t you think?”
    “ We don’t like coincidences,” Mrs. Jones said.
    “ Since then, we’ve been taking a close look at Greenfields,” Blunt went on. “It’s a major operation. As well as research and development, it’s also one of the largest suppliers of genetically modified seeds in the world, using the gene gun that Straik pioneered. There are whole countries—in Africa and South America, for instance—that are dependent on them. We cannot risk having a loose cannon at the center of an operation like that. Masters knew something about Straik. We need to know what it was.”
    Alex nodded. He was beginning to see where this was going.
    “ We’ve managed to put a tap on Straik’s telephone and we intercept all the calls he makes on his mobile. But we need more than that.”
    “ We want to get into his computers,” Mrs. Jones said.

    Blunt nodded. “There may be nothing in all this. After all, people die all the time. Accidents happen and there are plenty of toxic plants on the site. I understand Straik keeps a whole greenhouse full of them. He’s been doing research into natural cures … antivenoms. But we have to get someone into Greenfields—and it can’t be a security guard or a maintenance engineer. That’s exactly what he’d be expecting. We have to take a different approach.”
    Alex had heard it all before. People with something to hide would always suspect an adult, particularly if they knew they were under surveillance. But nobody would think twice about a schoolboy on a class visit. Alex remembered what Mr. Gilbert had said. “ I didn’t think they’d allow school visits because so much of their work is secretive.” But somehow they had been persuaded to make an exception for Brookland. Had MI6 been working quietly behind the scenes?
    “ It would be easy for you to slip away from the group during your visit,” Mrs. Jones continued. “And it would only take you thirty seconds to download everything from Straik’s computer.”
    “ Won’t it have a password?” Alex asked. “And how would I even get into his office?”
    “ We can have a word with Smithers about all that,” Blunt replied. “But it’s up to you, Alex. It seems fairly straightforward to me. We can’t even be sure that Straik is up to no good. It may all be a fuss about nothing. However, it seems that we can do each other a favor. You agree to help us and we’ll have a word with this man—Harry Bulman—and see if we can persuade him to leave you alone.”
    Blunt smiled, but Alex wasn’t fooled. He knew exactly what was going on. If he refused to help, his life would be torn apart. Blunt was pretending to offer him a choice, knowing exactly what Alex would do. The decision had already been made.
    He should have expected it. He had agreed to walk into the lion’s den—so he could hardly complain when he got