Instead of answering, Flint sat back and waited for Angela to pour his coffee. When she stepped away, he leaned forward again and lowered his voice. “Do you know why Hydro Development hired you?”

“They liked my pretty smile.”

“Could be. Or maybe they liked your track record? You left quite a trail at EPC.”

“That’s a cheap shot. You’ve been checking up on me?”

“Enough to know you weren’t exactly in great demand at the time they brought you on board.”

David sipped his coffee and tried to remain calm. “I don’t understand where this is going.”

Flint dug into his jacket pocket, took out an envelope and spread its contents out on the table. David picked up the top photo; it showed some kind of animal in full restraints, lying on a steel examination table. Even in the photo, the animal’s aggression was evident, muscles straining, its bloodshot eyes staring into the camera, foam-flecked jaws snapping at someone just out of the shot.

“Is that a dog?”

“It is. The poor thing died about an hour after that photo was taken, bleeding from every orifice, still trying to tear anything within reach to pieces.” Flint put the photos back into the envelope. “That dog wasn’t just antisocial. It was dosed up with a chemical we pulled out of the river near the Jackson project. This chemical is similar to the dioxin found in Agent Orange, but it’s been reengineered on the molecular level. Our technicians tell me it’s really quite clever.”

“You mentioned some sort of contamination before. What makes you think it has anything to do with the Jackson project?”

“Agent Orange was a herbicide, a pretty nasty one. This new compound is far deadlier to many types of plants, but what it seems to have been built for is algae. It’s stable in water, has a very long killing cycle, and builds up over time. In fact, we saw no reduction in its effectiveness over a period of two weeks.”

Algae. David felt a trickle of sweat run down his back. He had seen several references to algae build-up within the underground storage reservoirs in early document files. Early pumped storage projects had trouble with it clogging the lines running underground. Flint seemed to notice his hesitation. “Something you want to tell me?”

“No, nothing.”