Historical Fiction / Medical Thriller/ Espionage
Date Published: January 1, 2024
In the era of legalized marijuana in the United States, the Chinese government has nefarious plans to exploit America's best and brightest graduate students using synthetic Hallucinogens and THC compounds. To accomplish their goal, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has partnered with a disaffected American CIA agent who was instrumental in the CIA's domestic hallucinogen experiments on American citizens known as Project MKULTRA during the Korean and Vietnam wars. The CCP have surreptitiously funded upscale cafés in each American city where marijuana has been legalized and there is an American university within walking distance of their café.
In each café, the CCP secretly adds a designer hallucinogen to the coffee. This drug opens the graduate student's minds to the power of suggestion and allows the baristas (Chinese security agents) to easily question the students for technical information concerning their graduate studies and labs. The methods used are similar to what the disaffected CIA agent learned during his MKULTRA project missions in the 1950s and 1960s. This allows the Communist Chinese to gain a head start on America's most crucial security and technological innovations.
But there is a problem. The synthetic hallucinogen is beginning to have strange effects on some students, and these effects are being noticed. A bright Israeli E.R. doctor and his wife (an addiction counselor) living and working in Burlington, Vermont, have encountered some of these students suffering from bizarre psychotic symptoms. They suspect that there is more than meets the eye in these Chinese cafés and have started investigating. If the Chinese plan is discovered, it will open the CCP up to significant charges of international terrorism against the United States. With current congressional committee hearings focused on banning Tik Tok and other Chinese technologies, the CCP will stop at nothing to prevent this from happening.
EXCERPT
Chapter 1
Tucson, Arizona
Monday, December 4, 2023
Haitao (海涛) picked up the shiny gray flip phone on the first ring.
He had been waiting for the call from his contact in Dalian, China, the city
where he was born and raised. His phone rang at the precise moment that was
agreed to in his last communication. The contact timed the call to coincide
with a Chinese spy satellite’s orbit above Tucson, capable of delivering an
encrypted message carried on an untraceable signal. The U.S. Office of the
Director of National Intelligence (ODNI)21 knew of the satellite but had not
yet cracked the latest Chinese Ministry of State Security (MSS)22 code.
Haitao had never met the man on the other end of the call
and did not know his name. His tone, however, was unmistakable. Now was not the
time for weakness or trepidation. Project JAVA-WAR was moving forward on
schedule, and he was tasked with ensuring it stayed that way, at least in his
Tucson café. Over the last two years, the Chinese government secretly built and
franchised a chain of nouveau-riche cafés next to public universities in states
that had legalized recreational marijuana. His café was an integral part of the
MSS Project JAVA-WAR.
The MSS manager delivered Haitao’s instructions in short and
clipped tones. His benefactors within MSS were well aware of the supply chain
issues plaguing the delivery of sensitive packages due to America’s continued
antagonistic posture toward Communist China. Hence, Haitao’s next “special”
delivery would arrive via an untraceable human mule. An Ecuadorian national
would cross the poorly secured MexicanAmerican border tomorrow into Nogales,
Arizona, as a stowaway on a Union Pacific freight train. Once across the
border, the human mule would pass the package to a diplomat from the Chinese
Consulate General in Los Angeles at a predetermined drop site in Nogales. This
Chinese national would, of course, have diplomatic immunity. Haitao would
receive the package at the back entrance of his café two blocks from Arizona
State University at approximately 2:30 p.m. The diplomat would then return
immediately to Los Angeles. No words would be spoken between them. These were
the standing MSS orders.
Haitao’s salary was paid in untraceable cryptocurrency by
the MSS. Once the package was delivered, as with all prior deliveries, he would
carefully pour the powder contained within the ziplock bag into the small box
attached to the back of the “special” coffee dispenser at his Sun Tzu Café
franchise. MSS agents only used the “special” coffee dispenser after they
targeted a graduate student they wanted to interview in the café. Haitao would
then burn the empty package and await further instructions. In thirty days, the
MSS would direct another phone call to his MSS flip phone at precisely 2:30
p.m.
Haitao steeled himself and, in perfect Chinese, began with
the statement, “我们出现了问题
– We have another problem.” The MSS agent on the phone did not like problems
and, as was his nature, spoke in simple and clipped tones, “解釋 –
Explain.” Haitao hoped his voice would not waver and said, “We have had two
incidents in the last week that I believe are related to the delivered
packages. Both resulted in a brief police presence in my café and medical
treatment for the graduate students involved. The students became delusional
and violent and had to be subdued by one of your MSS baristas after drinking
the coffee laced with the contents of your delivered packages.”
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