“But so many medicines have come from plants,” Jason said tactfully. He tried desperately to think of one. “Like penicillin from mold. Mold is a plant, is it not?”
She gave him a dazzling smile. “Yes, a fungus, actually. Like mushrooms. But the government’s bean counters don’t get the bang for the buck with herbal medicines that they do with chemical drugs.” She giggled. “Oh, my, I’m running on! You’re not here for departmental squabbles. Please, have a seat.”
She indicated one of two stools at one of the smaller tables.
“So,” Jason said, assuming the pleasantries were at an end and it was time to get down to business, “what did you find about our mysterious twig?”
Her mouth twisted into an expression of puzzlement. “What I think I found doesn’t jibe with anything I’ve seen before. Where did you obtain the specimen?”
“Iceland.”
“No, really? You couldn’t have.”
It required no sensitivity training to perceive Dr. Wu’s skepticism. Reaching into his jacket pocket, Jason produced three photographs he had printed from the digital images on Boris’s cell phone. “The person who found the, er, specimen took these pictures.” He handed them to her. “I think they show the thing growing out of a glacier.”
She sat down hard on one of the stools, her eyes focused on the pictures. “Unbelievable!”
Jason sat beside her. “Want to share with me exactly what is so hard to believe?”
She put down the prints and stared into space a moment, composing her thoughts. “What we have here, what you gave me isn’t a twig; it’s a vine of the species Vitis vinifera.”
“Forgive me, Doctor, but Latin was never my language.”
“A grapevine. But in Iceland? Talk about hard to believe! I mean …” She swallowed audibly and continued. “That isn’t the half of it. A little botanical history, if you will indulge me. The first grapes were what we call dioecious, that is, they had either male or female flowers, depending on pollination from bees, wasps, bats, whatever, just as do any number of vegetables and fruits today. Obviously, the process was haphazard. A bee isn’t interested in pollination, just pollen. He might well pollinate our early grapes with pollen from, say, non-fruit-bearing flowers, resulting in very small grapes, inedible fruit, or no grapes at all.
“Then, somewhere along the line, evolution stepped in: The species mutated, producing what we call a perfect flower, one with both male and female parts. The grapevine became hermaphroditic. We’re unsure of when this happened exactly. The first mention of wine-quality grapes we know of is Sumerian from the third millennium B.C., but we have no way of knowing if this was before or after the mutation. We do know that one of the Spanish explorers of North America mentioned a large, white grape growing along Cape Fear, North Carolina, in 1504, most likely a scuppernong. No doubt these grapes had mutated.
“Samples tested for DNA tells us your grapevine is not hermaphroditic.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning it isn’t of recent origin.”
Jason asked, “Define ‘recent.’”
“That’s what I don’t know. What I can tell you is that in the early 1800s the roots of most European vines were infected with a species of fungus known as phylloxera. Wiped out most vineyards. North American vines were resistant, so European vines were grafted onto American roots. DNA also tells us your specimen pre-dated that graft.”
“So, the vine from the glacier pre-dates the early nineteenth century.”
Dr. Wu picked up the woody piece of vine, using it as a pointer. “I can’t prove it to a scientific certainty, but the fact that this vine pre-dated the mutation I mentioned would make me think it is far older than that. One more thing.”
Jason was having a hard time digesting what he had already heard. “And that is?”
“This vine is of the genus Assyritko. Not exactly, but a close relative.”
“Isn’t that a Greek wine?”
“Not just Greek. It is a white grape originating on the island of Santorini, which, as you may know, is of volcanic origin.”
“Possibly the greatest volcanic eruption in history, if I recall. When? Sometime in the first millennium B.C.?”
“You’d have to ask the Department of Natural History. But what is significant, now that you told me where the specimen came from, is that I understand there is a great deal of volcanic activity in Iceland. The same sort of soil found on Santorini would be there as well.”
Jason took the twig, turning it over in his hand. “It couldn’t be all that old, could it? I mean, wood rots.”
“Not if encased in ice where oxygen can’t get to it. I …” Dr. Wu paused, looking toward the back of the room, where a young woman stood. “Excuse me a moment. One of my assistants.”
As the two women conferred in the back of the cavernous room, Jason turned the piece of vine over in his hand, trying to both digest what he had just heard and fit that information into what he knew. Grapes in Iceland? What about that fact was worth killing for? And what was the possibility the scrap he held had been accidentally, or intentionally, dropped into the glacier? And what part, if any, did the little piece of metal play?
He hoped he would have the answer to the last question shortly after leaving Dr. Wu.
The botanist finished her conversation and returned. “Wanted some help on an experiment. Where was I?”
“Grapevine in a glacier in Iceland.”
“Oh, yes. Glaciers aren’t my specialty, but I do know some of our more remarkable discoveries have come from bits of vegetation found in them, plants long extinct, evidencing climatic conditions we never knew existed.”
“Like a climate warm enough to grow grapes.”
“Like, for instance, we know from the rings of frozen trees carried along by ice caps, glaciers, that there was what is known as the Medieval Warm Period, a time when the earth was unusually warm, between roughly 800 and 1300.”
Jason thought about this. “So, you think this grapevine might have come from that time period.”
She nodded. “That’s the only logical explanation I have.”
“Is it possible someone planted that bit of vine there?”
She shook her head. “Possible, I suppose; but from the photo it would have to have been there a long time to be that deep in the ice.”
“How long?”
Again, the head shake. “As I said, glaciers aren’t my specialty, but from what little I do know, it would have taken centuries for that bit of vine to be that deep in the ice.”
Science wasn’t as precise as Jason had hoped. “And how did a Greek variety wind up in Iceland?”
“Again, just a guess, but the Greeks were great traders. That particular genus could have found its way north from the Mediterranean, maybe carried by Viking raiders who plundered from there to the North Sea. No way to be sure.”
“I still can’t get my mind around grapes in Iceland.”
“Stranger things have happened.” She shot the cuff of her lab coat, glancing at her watch. “Now, if you will excuse me, Mr. Peters, I have the taxpayers’ work to do.”
24
Another ugly building on the National Mall. At least this one housed not an anthill of bureaucrats but a division of a private foundation, the Smithsonian Institution.
Jason entered under the suspended re-creation of a mammoth blue whale, the world’s largest animal, and went to the information desk. Following directions, he took another elevator. The corridor was lined with offices. Judging by the space between doors, closets had been subdivided. He stopped in front of the one that bore the nameplate that matched the name on the piece of paper he held, Dr. Sewell Sutter, professor of anthropology, University of Maryland.