I nodded. "The cocaine thing is a Catch 22 conundrum, if I'm not mistaken."
"The cocaine business is bad enough but the Washington high mucky-mucks have gone overboard in their stupidity. We have devised a Catch 22 that might just be successful when might and right have failed."
"I agree; politics is often insane."
"If the present Clinton proposal passes, Colombia will become the third largest country in terms of U. S. foreign aid. It has all the makings of another Vietnam."
"The drug interdiction exercise is truly futile, not to mention expensive. The intricacies of international politics has made the job of stemming trafficking virtually impossible." I had almost slipped and said our job.
"Even the hands of our president are tied."
You mean the guy for whom the inaugurates played, Inhale to the Chief?"
"We have a better idea. We refuse to sit back and allow Latin America to be turned into another Vietnam."
My ears perked. Alice Walsingham was right. There is a conspiracy. "Search and destroy missions in Bolivia are absolutely out, I hope."
"We have something subtle in mind, thank you very much."
"Tell me then."
The sun was beginning to pour down heat. I picked up a sugar lump and sweetened our coffee. Having noticed that Clarissa liked her coffee sweet, I deposited a second cube. Besides, stirring gave me something to do. Clarissa took her time gathering her thoughts. I wanted to encourage her to make an overture although I didn't know if I would be able to accept what she had to say.
"You can have all the cocaine you can get. The Catch 22 is next."
She now had my full attention. I felt myself go tense but then had the good sense to relax. I had noticed that we had something in common. We both loved to keep the suspense going for as long as possible.
Clarissa paused to watch a squirrel run down a scrub oak. The forest was so quiet that we could hear the scritch of its tiny feet as it scampered through dry litter on the forest floor. As soon as it disappeared from view, she spoke.
"Pretty soon, if our plans go according to Hoyle, there will not be any genuine cocaine to be had but of course you will then be permitted to grab all you can get. As a matter of fact, we would be happy to encourage it."
"Come on! The effluent is flowing along the cocaine pipeline in a steady stream, why would you want to encourage it?"
"We have our reasons."
"The Feds admit that extensive herbicide spraying has not resulted in a net decrease in cocaine cultivation. I don't see how you can be successful by advocating what I think you are suggesting."
"That's where the Catch-22 part comes in," she said. "The surest way to kill a defective product is to market it aggressively."
"The net acreage has actually increased about 50% over the past five years," I said.
Clarissa smile was incongruous. For the life of me, I couldn't fathom why she clearly relished the progress of the narco-traficantes.
"I don't understand. Ms. Schakowsky, a Republican representative in the House, argues that there is a not a foreseeable end game in sight and I believe her."
"There is now."
"How could it ever be pulled off? How could it be done?"
"Beetle mania," she said.
"Sounds like a CIA plot. Colombia is going to be infiltrated by spies disguised as beetles. Teenage mutant beetles?"
"An insult to my little ninjas," Clarissa said laughing. It released the tension. "These beetles carry a marker for the want of a better term. The marker retards the completion of the alkaloid sequence but doesn't retard the amount of the end product. In other words, a hundred pounds of leaves will still produce a pound of paste. Simplistically speaking, when the beetles chew on the stem, they transmit an enzyme that retards the development of the string of molecules that are responsible for the buzz that your brain gets from cocaine. The coca bush will look exactly the same. The powder that is produced will look and test exactly the same, at least initially."
"That's more than a little bit interesting," I said giving her hand a squeeze.
"Not only will it look the same, in the lab it will also test the same. It will still be an alkaloid just not a very strong one. Eventually tests will be devised that can be used to identify paste produced from beetle contaminated coca bushes, but by that time the damage will have been done."
"Getting high on beetle influenced cocaine, will be akin to getting drunk by drinking a pail of water laced with a spoonful of whiskey. Is that what you're telling me?"
She nodded.
"That's awesome. How does it work?"
"It's technical. Let me start back awhile. There's a similarity between the way our faux terminator beetle secretion acts and the way that the potato fungus inhibited the growth action of the potato plant that caused the potato famine. Hence our Irish Spring code.
"Interesting, I'm sure, but I'm lost."
"Let me use a simple analogy. There are eight essential amino acids."