“Guilty of what?” Martin had asked after pleading innocent to the formal charge of high and low treason.
“Guilty of working for a foreign intelligence agency,” Hamlet had shot back. “Guilty of trying to steal Russia’s biowarfare secrets.”
“My only interest,” Martin had had Almagul say, “is to interview Samat Ugor-Zhilov.” And he had explained about Samat’s humanitarian quest—repatriating to a village in Lithuania the bones of Saint Gedymin in order to obtain the sacred Torah scrolls and bring them to Israel.
“And where,” Hamlet inquired, leaning forward, cocking his big head so as to better catch Martin’s response, “would Samat find the bones of Saint Gedymin?”
“I was told he’d traced them to a small Orthodox church near the city of Córdoba in Argentina.”
“And what,” the warlord continued, his short feet dancing on the ammunition box, “would Samat offer the Argentines in return for the bones of the saint?”
Martin realized he’d reached the mine field. “I have no idea,” he replied. “That’s one of the questions I wanted to ask Samat.”
At which point Hamlet launched into a tirade so fierce that Almagul had all she could do to keep up with him. “He says you know very well what Samat would trade, otherwise you would not have come to this island. He says the Russian nuclear arsenal will become obsolete in ten years time and the Americans will rule Russia unless Samat is able to perfect bioweapons to counter the American threat. He says bioweapons are the only cost efficient answer to Russia’s problem. He says it costs $2 million to kill half the population of one square kilometer with missiles loaded with conventional warheads, $80,000 with a nuclear weapon, $600 with a chemical weapon and $1 with a bioweapon. Vozrozhdeniye Island, he reminds you, was once the center of bioweapon research for the Soviet Union: Under Samat’s direction, and with Samat’s financial backing, Vozrozhdeniye is once again developing a bioarsenal that will save Russia from American domination.”
Hamlet collapsed back into the throne. One of the white coated scientists brought over a porcelain basin filled with water smelling of disinfectant and the warlord rang out the sponge in it and mopped his feverish brow.
Martin said, very quietly, “Are you suggesting that Samat gave bioweapon seed stock to the Argentineans in exchange for the bones of the saint?”
“That is not what I am suggesting,” the warlord groaned when he heard Alamgul’s translation. “Is that what I am suggesting?” he asked the scientists in lab coats.
“Nyet, nyet,” they responded in a discordant chorus.
“There is the proof,” Hamlet cried, waving toward the scientists as if they were his star witnesses.
“Then what are you suggesting?” Martin had Almagul ask.
“Who is on trial here, you or me?” the warlord retorted furiously. “I am not suggesting Samat provided the Argentinean military with bioweapons. I am also not suggesting that he provided them with the orbits of American spy satellites. That rumor is without substance. It is a fact of life, as any idiot knows, that to get high-quality photographs, the spy satellites are obliged to orbit earth at low altitudes, circling the planet in a polar orbit every ninety minutes. It is a fact of life that they are over any one point on the earth’s surface for only a few minutes. If you know when one of the satellites is due overhead, you can suspend operations you do not want the Americans to photograph. India and Pakistan have been doing this for years. So has Iraq. From whence comes the rumor that it is from Saddam Hussein in Iraq that Samat obtained the American satellite orbits that he traded to the Argentines for the bones of the saint.”
It dawned on Martin that Hamlet and the people around him were stark raving mad; characters that Alice might have come across when she fell down the rabbit hole. He decided it was in his interest to humor the mad warlord. “And what in the world could Samat have given to Saddam Hussein in return for the orbits?”
Almagul whispered, “It is perilous to know the answer,” but Martin, drunk on state secrets, ordered her to translate the question.
Hamlet drew his navy revolver from its holster and spun the chamber, sending the ticking sound reverberating through the auditorium. Then he raised the revolver and sighted on Martin’s head and said “Bang, bang, you are extinguished.” He laughed at his little joke and the others in the auditorium laughed with him, albeit somewhat anxiously, so it seemed to Martin. After a moment Hamlet said, “If Samat had wanted to go down that path, he could have traded to Saddam Hussein anthrax spores and hemorrhagic seed viruses that were harvested here on the island in exchange for the orbits.” The warlord lifted the goggles off of his eyes and scratched thoughtfully at the side of his bulbous nose with the barrel of the revolver. A stunted grin materialized on his thick lips. “He could have traded the orbits for the bones of the saint. And the bones of the saint for the Torah scrolls. But it goes without saying, none of this actually happened.”
Hamlet, tiring of the game, gaveled the butt of his revolver down on the arm of the throne. “You and the girl are guilty as charged and sentenced to the monkey cages, to be used as guinea pigs in our experiments. Case closed. Trial over. Court adjourned.”
The groaning of the giant scavenger in the last cage shook Martin out of his reverie. Almagul, sitting on the icy floor with her back to the bars in the cage next to Martin, buried her head between her knees. Her body shook with silent sobs. Martin reached through the bars to touch her shoulder. “I recognize the men in the cages,” the girl whispered hoarsely. “They are the ones missing from Nukus. We are all surely going to die like my father and my sister,” she added. “They have already killed six scavengers from Nukus and thrown their bones to the flamingoes. The worst part is that I have no sister to take my name.”
In the last cage the giant scavenger pitched forward onto his knees, with his head touching the ground, and then rolled onto his side. The scientist filming the test called to the two others in Russian to come over and look. The man with the clipboard produced a large skeleton key and opened the padlock on the monkey cage and the three Russians in lab coats, still wearing their gas masks, ducked inside and crouched around the body. One of them raised the scavenger’s limp wrist and let it flop back again. “Konstantin will be extremely pleased with his ebola—” he started to say when the giant scavenger, bellowing with a primitive furor, sprang to life and began shattering the gas masks and the facial bones of the scientists with his fists. With blood seeping from under their gas masks, two of the scientists crawled on all fours toward the low door of the cage, but the giant caught them by their ankles and hauled them back and, climbing over their bodies, pounded their faces into the cement floor. In the other cages the prisoners called to the giant scavenger to free them, but he kept lifting the heads by the hair and smashing them into the cement. It was Almagul’s voice that finally penetrated to the wild man’s brain. Gasping for air, a maniacal gleam in his bulging eyes, the scavenger released his grip on the bloody heads and looked up.
Almagul called his name and spoke soothingly to him in the strange language of the scavengers. The giant, his arms and shirt drenched in blood, crawled through the door of his cage and staggered to his feet. The other prisoners were all talking to him at once. Almagul spoke quietly to the giant. Martin noticed that mucus was seeping from his nostrils as he lurched across the basement to the stainless steel table, snapped off one of the legs and came back to the cages. One by one he slipped the narrow end of the steel leg through the padlocks and, using the bars for leverage, snapped open the locks. Martin was the last to emerge from the cages. The giant collapsed at his feet—Martin, reaching to help him, found he was burning with fever. “There is nothing we can do for him,” Almagul said. The other scavengers backed away from the fallen man until Almagul snapped angrily at them. One of them came forward and brought the stainless steel table leg down on the giant’s head to put him out of his misery. Then, armed with steel legs from the table and the wooden legs broken off chairs, the scavengers made their way up the stone steps. Almagul, leading the way, carefully opened the steel door leading to the biowarfare laboratory and stepped aside to let the others through. Two Russian scientists napping on cots were strangled to death by the desperate prisoners. Three other scientists were working with frozen anthrax spores in a walk-in refrigerator. Martin thrust one of the stainless steel legs through the door handles, locking the Russians inside, and then turned up the thermostat. The three scientists, realizing they were trapped, began pounding on the thick glass window in the door. One of the prisoners found a plastic jerry can in a closet filled with kerosene for the heating unit. He splashed kerosene over the shelves filled with petri dishes and filing cabinets. Almagul struck a match and tossed it into the spilled kerosene. A bluish fire skidded across the floor. In a moment the laboratory was awash in flames.