Toxic Effect

Short Story / Plot Summary

Steve Woodman, a CIA official working for the United States Department of Agriculture, is gathering information about the illegal manufacture and use of Agent Orange, a defoliant used during the Vietnam War to destroy jungle growth and reveal enemy troops. But the lethal chemical proved to be a sentence worse than death for the babies born to anyone who came into contact with it. His investigations lead him to Africa and Clive Hyde, a bullying fertilizer baron whose greed for wealth far outweighs his social conscience. Posing as a journalist for an agricultural magazine, Steve suspects that it is Hyde's chemical plant that provides the crop spraying fertilizer used by the sugar cane farmers to make their crop grow taller. When the beautiful, young widow, Sarah Williams, shows Steve her stunted and grotesquely twisted vegetable crop, his suspicions are confirmed; and when he discovers Patrick and Maria's disfigured child he sets out to crush Hyde's illicit operation.