There were two kinds of journalists: lapdogs and watchdogs. Which kind would they be?
Disease for profit: it was a massive crime, but those who profited were too powerful to be stopped. They owned the government agencies, the money markets, and the media.
For those journalists who knew the truth, knowing it put their lives in danger. The only way for them to be safe was for the whole world to know. But how could they tell the world when their own media bosses were a party to the crime?
For this disease to be overcome, they needed to find an antigen.
In A.I. Fabler’s 2022 novel “The Seed of Corruption” we saw the disdain with which Big Pharma swept individuals aside in the face of a bird flu outbreak in Vietnam. Now, in “The Antigen - The Seed of Corruption Pt 2”, we join those individuals as they fight back. They have nothing more than truth, indignation, and love as weapons. But this time they also have allies.
There were two kinds of journalists: lapdogs and watchdogs. Which kind would they be?
Disease for profit: it was a massive crime, but those who profited were too powerful to be stopped. They owned the government agencies, the money markets, and the media.
For those journalists who knew the truth, knowing it put their lives in danger. The only way for them to be safe was for the whole world to know. But how could they tell the world when their own media bosses were a party to the crime?
For this disease to be overcome, they needed to find an antigen.
In A.I. Fabler’s 2022 novel “The Seed of Corruption” we saw the disdain with which Big Pharma swept individuals aside in the face of a bird flu outbreak in Vietnam. Now, in “The Antigen - The Seed of Corruption Pt 2”, we join those individuals as they fight back. They have nothing more than truth, indignation, and love as weapons. But this time they also have allies.
At a touch before 4:00pm on a stinking hot day in late August, Bryan Liddell, the London bureau chief of the East Asia News Agency, received an email from a sender he’d been persuaded two days earlier to add to his jealously guarded private email account. The email was marked CONFIDENTIAL and was copied simultaneously to Sinclair Baines, the Hanoi bureau chief of EANA, and to Kate Manning of Heathcote Manning Partners, EANA’s legal counsel. It was Sinclair Baines who’d asked Liddell to ensure that emails from this particular sender were not diverted to the agency’s server or to spam.
The sender was Caroline Brinkley, a freelance journalist, commonly referred to as a ‘stringer’, whom Liddell had never met or corresponded with before. Though he’d been forewarned by Baines about the subject of the email, its contents caused Liddell’s brow to furrow and his hand to reach for his cell phone. The number he instinctively wished to call was that of Baines in Hanoi, but his hand hovered for a moment before being withdrawn as he realized that not only was it five minutes shy of midnight in Vietnam, but the only thing he wanted to say at that moment was, ‘Shit!’ Beyond that, he needed to think.
The email was in the form of a draft news story. Smart stringers embedded their news copy in the body of emails, being aware that attachments could be easily deleted along the trail, whether by accident or by design, while the body of emails tended to remain intact. In that respect, at least, Caroline Brinkley appeared to be a smart stringer. Her story, however, did not immediately endear her to him. What he could see in it was a shitload of problems, hence his desire to pass on to Sinclair Baines a forceful expletive, for this was a story that he would have preferred to never be written. It had INJUNCTION invisibly stamped all over it.
* * * *
A brisk ten minutes’ walk away in Chancery Lane, Kate Manning opened her email after recognizing the names of the two other addressees, but not the sender. She read quickly, as always, scrolling through the content at rapid speed, highlighting text as she went, her lips slightly pursed in concentration, but her face otherwise expressionless. The email was not long, and the decisiveness with which she identified elements needing her attention suggested that her field of interest was very specific.
In the corridor outside her office, a grandfather clock chimed four times on the hour. Though regarded as an aggressive young law firm with an abrasive reputation, Heathcote Manning Partners liked the evocative sound of the old clock as an ironic reminder for partners and associates to enter their clients’ time charges in the folders on their screen savers, a quarter hour being the practice’s minimum unit of charging.
A quarter of an hour was almost the exact time that Kate spent on the email before standing up and pouring herself a glass of water from the carafe on her office sideboard. She was a slightly built young woman with very short auburn hair, minimal makeup, and no jewelry. Her plainly cut two-piece suit and unadorned court shoes bore the hallmarks of the professional woman’s uniform, not so much camouflage as protective armor. She was thirty-six years old with crystal-clear hazel eyes and unblemished skin, and she moved with the economy and purpose of a gymnast.
Of course, the chargeable time spent on a client’s business could not be measured solely by the lawyer’s attention to a screen. The time spent cogitating as a result of what was read on the screen was where the real (some would say ‘inestimable’) value lay, and behind Kate’s hazel eyes, calculations were being made—not only as to the best interests of the East Asia News Agency, its shareholders, and the customers who took in its news feeds, but the best interests of Heathcote Manning Partners. There were things in this news story that had landed on Kate’s desk that flowed well beyond the tidal stream occupied by EANA, and it was going to take some careful reflection on her part to ensure that she responded to them correctly.
* * * *
Over nine thousand kilometers away, on the seventeenth floor of one of Vincom’s Royal City apartment buildings in Hanoi, despite it being midnight, Sinclair Baines was still typing busily on his laptop when an incoming message alert told him that he’d better save his work and switch his attention away from what the World Health Organization’s spokesperson for ‘avian flu and other epidemic diseases’ had sent him and see what Caroline Brinkley had finally come up with.
If any one of the three recipients had cause to be anxious about the email’s contents, it was him. It was his call that had initiated the idea of copying the story simultaneously to the London bureau chief and the agency’s legal counsel, and it had been his decision to take the risk of not vetting its contents first. No, that was not exactly correct; he’d not had any choice in the matter of checking its contents first. It had been a condition of the writer that it be received by the three recipients at exactly the same time, unabridged and unedited. She’d been adamant that her story be delivered in its entirety, or not at all. Sinclair Baines’s only decision had been whether to accede to that demand, or tell her to get fucked, so it had better be worth it.
Well, she had a story alright. She had one hell of a story, if it was true, and he knew from the first line of her email that his decision to accede to her demands for simultaneous distribution had been correct. What he didn’t know was whether Bryan Liddell and Heathcote Manning Partners would have the courage to handle the bombshell she was dropping, and whether associating his name with it would be a career-enhancing move or a dangerous mistake.
Despite the hour, he felt certain that Liddell would call him and make his views known, whether good or bad. Either way, an empty stomach was poor preparation for the conversation that would follow, so he printed out a copy of Caroline’s story, then left his apartment in search of food.
The underground food hall beneath the Royal City apartments was Hanoi’s largest and most diverse, but after him living above it for three years, there was only one tiny corner of it that stirred Sinclair Baines’s gastric juices into life, and that was the late-night pho and congee stall run by Mrs Qui and her daughter, Miss Anh. Mrs Qui told him about the weather and the hopelessness of mankind, and Miss Anh stirred his fantasies of love, smiling shyly at his poor attempts at flattery.
This evening, however, as with every evening for the last two months, the weather reports and awkward charm would be muted. Across the whole of Hanoi, everyone wore cotton face masks—it was considered an offense not to do so, except when eating—and there was only one topic of conversation, and it was not a happy one. On the back wall of Mrs Qui’s stall was a picture of a chicken and a duck with a red cross painted corner to corner. Next to it was a picture of a pig with a large green tick of approval. That said it all.
Baines ordered some congee with ground pork and corn, then sat down and contemplated the email he’d printed out. There were many things to like about it. It was a story with legs. Far from being a story about slant-eyed people dying far away in Asia (which was how most of the newsrooms in Europe and North America viewed his stories about the avian flu epidemic currently raging), this was a round-eyed, pale-skinned scandal that sheeted back to the cold, moneyed heart of the Western establishment. It was a story that would grab the testicles of North America and Europe, the new imperialists and the old, and squeeze them until they took notice. The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Times of London, Le Monde, Der Spiegel—these were the stages where this drama would play out if it was allowed to run. And Sinclair Baines, if he was smart enough, could be credited as both the writer and director.
Miss Anh brought out his steaming bowl of congee, flip-flopping delicately across the stone floor and laying out his bowl, ceramic spoon, and cold rolled napkin with the elaborate care of an emperor’s courtesan, then waited for him to take his first mouthful. Silky and comforting, congee was not just rice and water; it was a delicately flavored blend of different grains of rice, brewed precisely in the amount of liquid and cooking time needed before the addition of the subtly flavored minced pork, garlic, ginger, and Shaoxing wine, and the final sprinkling of steamed corn kernels. Baines blew softly on the hot spoon, raised it to his lips, and sucked the contents noisily into his mouth, then laid the spoon down, placed the palms of his hands together as in prayer, and smiled. It was superb. Miss Anh smiled shyly in return, bowed her head, and flip-flopped back to her mother’s food stall, not knowing that his eyes were following her. Or perhaps she did.
Fabler's book, the continuance of The Seed of Corruption is a thoughtful book presented as a thriller. His fiction promotes query and discussion, and his well-written narrative reads like an expanded parable, a moral tale which highlights a view that could, if aligned with real world events, promote controversy, scepticism and insecurity. And it's difficult not to read this story and make comparisons to the Covid-19 pandemic and the way that that unfolded globally.
The story again centres around key characters featured in Fabler's first book who are in the position of trying to bring the truth of what they've uncovered to light. Anton Faraday is accompanying Caroline Brinkley, their having met and romanced in The Seed of Corruption as well as having been subjected to a situation that was life-threatening. However, they live to fight another day and undeterred by their harrowing experience, they are keen to bring their potential killers to justice. Nothing like near death to unite and fire up.
Running parallel to their story is that of the people whom they need to enlist to enable the story to launch: the news people. We have Sinclair Baines in Hanoi and Bryan Liddell in London, both proponents who want to see Brinkley's story released but aware of the world in which they live and how news is no longer an independent field but one which can be influenced by big business with unscrupulous motives.
And so, the scene is set and we follow these characters, as well as a solicitor, Kate Manning, into a dark world where the best interests of humans are not at the heart of the motivations of others.
This is a well-told story. Fabler's prose is easy to read and his characters' dialogue is realistically portrayed and apt to the portrayal of character which he is trying to convey. There is action enough: it's not frantic but the threat is omnipresent, like a looming cloud, and all pervasive.
And whilst it is fiction, as I said, it does prompt thought and may, in the more suspicious reader, cause interest to be piqued sufficiently to delve deeper into the truth behind vaccinations and viruses and their origins, artificial or natural.Health, after all, is big business and big business has a long reach.
An interesting, unsettling read but ultimately, hopeful as Fabler's characters battle to present the truth.