Conspiracy

119

“It’s only in the last ten years that this has become practical.

The exact methods we use weren’t even around then, I don’t think,” said the FBI specialist as she scraped the inside of Jason Cedar house’s mouth. “You’d be amazed at what the scientists can do.”

“I am amazed,” said Ambassador Jackson. He guessed that the technician had been in middle school a de cade before.

“Mummm, too,” said Jason.

“Hold on, sweetie,” said the FBI technician. “Almost done with you. Have to be very careful about contamination with these tests.”

She slipped the probe — it looked like a Q-tip that retracted into a pen case — into a small plastic container, screwing it closed. She’d taken a dozen samples.

“All done. That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

“Uhhh-uh,” said Jason.

“What we’re going to do with this is a Short Tandem Repeats test. STR. It’s a kind of PCR protocol, where the DNA replicates itself. Of course, we may have to fall back on the mitochondrial test. We’ll do a whole series. Not likely to get an error — unless there was contamination.”

“Yeah, but, uh, this is going to prove my uncle is the one that’s buried in Arlington National Cemetery, right?” said Cedar house. “Because my mom would want to be sure. She’s a little concerned since you called,” he added, turning to Jackson.

“It should be able to confirm it,” said Jackson.

“Every family has a certain amount of DNA that they share,” said the FBI expert. “And they inherit it. Now let’s say Robert Tolong was your father rather than your uncle.

Then the odds that a match was a coincidence would be one in a quintillion, assuming we were using STR. In this case, the odds will be a little less, but they’re still way up there.”

“Quintillion is one with eighteen zeroes,” said Jackson, who had heard the entire lecture on the way over.

“It will take us roughly six hours to pull the results together,” added the technician. “The actual DNA cycling is three hours; that’s where the time is, because you need enough strands to do the actual test.”

“Cool. Can I have dinner now?” asked Cedar house.