She nodded. She composed herself. I admired her guts. The adult expression was back, a look of moral superiority. Aya said, with an air of drama, “Joe, what if the whole story you told me about that refugee camp, Tol-e-Khomri, is wrong? What if things I learned on my own are the truth?”
“What things?” I said.
“Maybe it’s better that I can’t access the FBI system anymore. Because maybe all the official reports I saw when I was an intern were wrong,” Aya answered.
“What did you do?” Eddie asked with attentive amusement.
“I accessed jihad sites from home. I mean, the Bureau keeps a list of sites and chat rooms that we — I mean they—monitor. If you’re working there you steer clear of them unless you’re assigned to watch them. But I wasn’t there anymore, and I knew which ones were real ones. So if Ray wants to arrest me now he can just do it! I can’t believe my mother even dated him for more than…”
“Aya,” I prodded, to keep her on track.
“Well! I know those sites are propaganda, like, lies, like, accusations to like get jihadist recruits.”
“What did you see?” I resisted asking her not to say “like” all the time. My semi-parental authority was a bit limited just now.
“I’m just saying I know they lie. But you said to look for things that are different. You said never assume that something that sounds crazy is wrong. You said sometimes information is in plain sight but people don’t see it, so always check out even crazy stuff. ”
“All right. What did you see?”
“Well, you know that story you told me about terrorists taking over that camp, during a riot, months ago?”
Kyle Utley had told us that. “Yes.”
“Well, the story I saw was that the riot had nothing to do with terrorists. It had to do with food.”
“Food?” Stuart and Eddie repeated at the same time.
“Donated food. From America. The bloggers said that America was trying to poison refugees.”
“That’s ridiculous!” Stuart burst out. He had many contacts in the humanitarian field, and Wilderness Medicine often worked with NGOs in refugee camps.
“I’m just saying!” she said. “They said refugees died from eating food from America. That they ate canned hot dog chili sauce and got botulism! That’s what triggered the riot. The poisoning was covered up.”
“There was nothing about botulism in the reports from the State Department on the riot?”
“They blamed terrorists.”
I asked, “Did you find any material supporting the blogs? Camp officials? Press reports? Anything?”
Doubtfully, she said, “No. But remember, I’m frozen out of official stuff now, so how could I check? I saw photos. I know they can be doctored, but I saw them. One was the man from the satellite shot. Tom Fargo. In plain sight.”
I realized that my flight was being called to board.
Aya said, “In the photo, he held a dead child on his lap. He was screaming. And doctors were trying to calm people. And Turkish soldiers were there, too.”
Travelers lined up at the gate showing boarding passes. The airline agent was trying to complete the process quickly, so that the plane could leave.
I thought, Is it possible that we got reports of poisoning, and ignored them? Well, we had reports that Osama bin Laden was dangerous for years before we took them seriously. Reports that ISIS was a menace long before we paid attention. Yes, it’s possible. But did it happen?
Stuart made a mocking sound in his throat. “American companies don’t go around poisoning people, Aya!”
“Maybe it wasn’t on purpose,” Aya said. “Maybe it was an accident! If it was, those jihad killers would still say it was on purpose. It’s what they do.”
“Hot dog chili sauce? Give me a break!”
But the kind of food was not important. Eddie and I had worked out of aid relief camps in East Africa. I remembered huge tents there filled with donated material bound for South Sudan; mounds of bicycle parts, jerry cans for fuel use, candy bars, 110-pound bags of sorghum from Kansas, baked beans, thirdhand clothing from Minneapolis, vegetable stew donated by a company in California, boxes of useful items beside boxes that had found their way there for no better reason than that they enabled donors to get a tax write-off. Expired tetracycline beside brand-new penicillin shipments. Eyeglass lens cleaner beside rice to keep people alive; battery- or solar-powered radios beside math textbooks, old bathrobes, new sweaters, last year’s stylish shoes. Anything and everything had been donated. Useless junk and valuable commodities. Canned peas from Israel. Canned beef from Ireland. Boxed soy milk from the U.S. The truth was, certain companies wrote off tens of millions in tax payments annually by donating products overseas. It was no reach to imagine that an expired or dangerous product got in there, by accident or oversight.
Why not hot dog chili sauce in the mix?
“I’m sure the FBI checked this out already,” Stuart said. A good-hearted fellow, it was hard for him to conceive of an aid effort harming people.
I said, as the gate area emptied of passengers, “It can’t hurt to check. As long as we’re looking at defense contractors, why not food companies, too? See if there’s a chili maker with facilities in cities where outbreaks occurred.”
Stuart rolled his eyes. “You’re grabbing at straws.”
“Do you have a better idea?”
Aya looked triumphant. “I looked up Mideastern food. People there like spicy. That chili sauce is spicy. Maybe they put it on rice or flatbread they eat.”
Eddie piped up, thoughtfully. “A lot of these companies are actually part of bigger conglomerates. What are you thinking, Joe? That Haines educated Fargo about big organizations? Years later, he goes after the parts?”
“I’m just saying check, that’s all.”
Aya looked pleased with herself, especially after I told her I was proud of her.
“Thanks, Joe.”
Once my plane reached ten thousand feet, the captain got on the intercom and announced that passengers could use computers. I checked on defense contractors first, as Haines had suggested, tried to match up companies with infected cities. I tried “weapons manufacturers,” “military suppliers,” “defense industry,” “military bases.” It was a flawed approach because any classified stuff wouldn’t be available on Google. But a flawed approach was the best I could do right now.
I found nothing. Maybe one of the other people on the team is having better luck.
Next I tried to link affected cities to a specific military branch; a base; Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines.
Nothing.
The flight attendant asked if I wanted a drink. I accepted a vodka. I typed in, “hot dog chili sauce,” to see what came up.
Within seconds I was looking at a dozen brands of sauce, that came in jars, cans, even squeeze bottles. Up swam ads for sauce. And ratings in a national culinary magazine. Sauces had names like Uncle Ed’s and Terrific Value and Rochester’s Best. Sauce makers were spread across the country, from northern California to Texas, Wisconsin, New Jersey.
I tried to match a manufacturer to all the infected cities.
Nothing.
Well, good try, I thought.
I finished my drink, and the flight attendant was back with a lunch menu. I wasn’t hungry. Back at the keyboard, I dropped the city names and just called up chili makers, to read about them. Eddie had been right. Uncle Ed’s was a subsidiary of a larger Kansas City company called Great Foods International. Rochester’s Best had been bought, four years ago, by Fresh Unity Food and Beverage. Terrific Value, available in big-box stores, was owned by a French conglomerate based in Paris. Small companies had been consumed, so to speak, by bigger ones.