The US Department of Agriculture is housed in two buildings connected by an enclosed bridge. Both are of an architecture a purist would describe as classicism. Jason thought of it as Government Gothic, the continually replicated, unimaginative cubes that house the bureaucracy along the National Mall. The sameness of the stone and minimum adornments were less than pleasant to his artist’s eye. That, he surmised, is what you get with the lowest bidder.
The uniformed security guard informed him Dr. Watt’s office was in the second building. Even if Jason had not known it was the south building that housed the laboratory, his nose would have tipped him off. The faint smell of chemicals permeated the air, the walls, and even the elevator he took to the second floor.
Chemistry had not been the highlight of his academic career. The second time he had been unable to recall whether water must be added to acid or vice versa had resulted in his banishment from a damaged college chem lab. Geology had proved a safer and less volatile fulfillment of his science requirements.
He hoped the next Jason Peters was not in the lab, at least not until the present one cleared the building.
Just as he stepped out of the elevator into a hallway, he was greeted with “Ah, Mr. Peters! I’ve been expecting you.”
A smiling, round-faced Asian woman with jet-black hair tied in a knot on top of her head was wearing an ankle-length lab coat. As she approached, she extended her right hand. “I’m Miriam Wu. Good to meet you.”
Jason looked up and down the hall. “I was meeting a Dr. Watt… .”
Her smiled widened. “I know. He had an emergency of some sort. A corn fungus in Kansas, I think.” She frowned. “Or was it the return of the potato beetle in Idaho? No matter. He asked me to meet with you since I’m the one who did the research your foundation requested. Hope you don’t mind.”
“‘Foundation’?”
She looked at him, puzzled. “Yes. I believe it was the Food for the World Foundation or something like that, someone Dr. Watt knew.”
Rather than put his foot in his mouth, Jason said nothing.
He felt a firm grip as they shook. “I appreciate your seeing me, Dr. Wu.”
She did not let go of his hand but led him into a large room where beakers, vials, and other chemical paraphernalia were lined up on tables. Against one wall, bottles held liquids of all colors. At the front of the room were two smaller tables with microscopes.
“Our lab,” she said needlessly. “Not the sort of thing you’d see over at the FDA, but good enough. Sometimes we get ignored, you know.” She snorted. “Just because botanists aren’t searching for a cure for cancer, we get only the scraps from the budget.”
“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.”