SUMMER 2012
Dr. Li and Ye Jian holed up in their storage unit and reluctantly got to work. On the asphalt outside, boats and RVs sat parked in wait of outings. The lot stretched the length of a soccer field, ending abruptly at a chain-link fence. In the distance, beyond the fence, was a row of rural businesses that was as close as New Lenox, Illinois, got to a downtown. Temporary storage outfits see all sorts of people: a drug cartel looking for a place to stash heroin; thieves attracted to a trove of unwatched loot. And yet in some ways food is a more pernicious storage threat, as it could attract rodents that might burrow into other units. When the manager of the Infinite Self-Storage learned that the men were storing whole ears of corn in their shed, he told them he wanted the crop out. He gave them forty-eight hours.
They had rented the shed only a few weeks before, and already it held hundreds of ears. When Ye Jian and Dr. Li finished boxing it up, they loaded the containers into the back of a rented silver Dodge Journey and drove nine miles along unswerving roads to the farm in Monee.
Robert arrived at O’Hare on a flight from Florida soon after and checked into a hotel near the airport. He spent the evening exercising in the gym and lounging by the pool, trying to postpone his trip to the farm as long as possible. When Ye Jian and Lin Yong had toured cornfields several weeks earlier, he had happily stayed in Florida. Ninety-five percent chance that the FBI is watching us, he had told Dr. Li. But now the seeds were almost out of the country. Lin Yong had already returned to China, and Dr. Li and Ye Jian were preparing to fly to Beijing as well. And the next day was Mid-Autumn Festival, an important holiday in China that is usually celebrated with a nice meal. Robert felt obligated to at least show his face.
In the morning, Robert set out for the farm bearing mooncakes, the sweet and savory pastries that are eaten to celebrate the holiday. Dr. Li and Ye Jian were already there. They were joined by Michael Yao, the balding real-estate agent, along with a man named Wang Hongwei, who lived in Quebec and had flown in for the weekend. The house was a mess from the vandalism and the renovation, so the men stayed outside in the gravel clearing, gathering around the newly built garage. It was there that they divided the seeds.
They worked steadily. Some seeds they slipped into small manila envelopes, of the sort hardware stores use for copied keys. Others they wrapped in plastic bags or rolled up in napkins they had swiped from Subway. One by one, they coded these packets so that breeders in Beijing would be able to distinguish the seed lines: 2155, 2403, F1, F2. Then they hid the envelopes in boxes of Pop Weaver and Orville Redenbacher microwave popcorn, taking care to lay bags of popcorn on top and re-glue the boxes shut so that they appeared factory-sealed—a corn swap that rivaled the FBI’s FedEx switch in its ingenuity.
In the afternoon they broke for a meal at Monee’s lone Chinese restaurant, where the chef cooked them a feast for the holiday. When night fell, Ye Jian returned the Dodge Journey to an Enterprise rental outfit. The men checked into a nearby hotel and rested for their flights.
It had been an eventful month. Ye Jian and Lin Yong in particular had tested fate with their conversation as they toured corn country. Theft or larceny, Lin Yong had said. Violation of IP law. All criminal offenses. Dr. Li, they had agreed, understood all of this deeply. He knows. And even if the two low-level employees had been the ones to take corn from the fields, it had all been Dr. Li’s idea. He had been in the getaway car at the very beginning, when Robert was stopped by the sheriff’s deputy in the Monsanto field outside Bondurant, Iowa. Now Lin Yong was back in China, and Dr. Li and Ye Jian were preparing to take stolen corn out of the country. It would be difficult for either man to claim complete ignorance. But they were just hours away from a flight to Beijing, where U.S. law enforcement couldn’t reach them. Only Robert would remain on American soil.
BEFORE LEAVING FOR THE AIRPORT the next day, the men stood around Robert’s rental car discussing how to divide up the seed. They decided to send a set of seeds with each group of travelers. That way, if one didn’t make it for some reason, they’d still have the other sets.
When they had distributed the contraband, Dr. Li got in Wang Hongwei’s car, and Ye Jian climbed in next to Robert.
“Your Z-1 F-1 is a set?” Robert asked the younger man.
“Yeah.”
“Z-2 F-2 is the second set,” Robert asserted, as much for himself as for Ye Jian. “The key is to ensure safety. They were also divided into three batches last year. Three batches and all arrived safely.”
Safety was critical. As the U.S. crackdown on industrial espionage intensified, there were more and more cases involving Chinese defendants. A few days earlier, a federal jury in Newark, New Jersey, had convicted a Chinese national who formerly worked for a U.S. defense contractor of nine felony counts, for trying to take information about the design of missile guidance systems and other unmanned aerial vehicles back to China. In Detroit, meanwhile, a husband and wife accused of stealing hybrid car secrets from General Motors were about to go on trial. They faced the prospect of decades in prison.
As the two men neared O’Hare, Robert nervously instructed Ye Jian on the importance of cleaning the rental cars. Remove any traceable marks or clues. Wash the car yourself, and then wash it again. Vacuum it twice. Clean it inside and out.
“The car has been washed many times,” Ye Jian assured him.
Robert persisted. “Last time, when we returned the car, you guys finished and left, and I went back and vacuumed it one more time. Because I—well, I am very attentive to details.”
“Right. Not a single kernel of corn was left behind.”
AT O’HARE, THE MEN PARTED WAYS. Robert Mo boarded a plane to Fort Lauderdale, and Wang Hongwei got on a flight to Burlington, Vermont. Ye Jian and Dr. Li headed for the international terminal.
As the two men checked their bags and walked to the gate, they could have been any other boss and employee duo heading out of the country. They passed people running to catch flights and others killing time in duty-free shops. Here, finally, they were among other foreigners. No more sideways glances, no more arming themselves with a story at every turn. They could blend in. Perhaps they thought ahead fourteen hours to their arrival in Beijing—a city where men like them could sail through life with VIP club memberships and hired help, where their nationality would be an asset rather than a hindrance. Even as they were transporting contraband through the airport, there was reassurance in knowing that they were almost home.
In the rear passenger door of the rental car, though, were a number of items that Ye Jian had overlooked. These included a plastic bag filled with rubber bands, a roll of cellophane tape, and a napkin inscribed with numbers close to the day’s date: 9-5–9-13, 9-19–9-22.
Ye Jian had also neglected to vacuum the trunk. Scattered throughout were loose kernels of corn.