“And…?” Miller kicked back with his feet on his desk.
“And the body arrived this morning on a flight from Ankara. Stanhouse opened the bag, took one look, or maybe I should say one whiff, and closed it back up. He said he’d do the autopsy tomorrow to make it official, but he also said there was no doubt in his mind that the subject was exposed to, and in all probability died from, some kind of poison gas.”
“Poison gas?” Miller straightened up in his chair again and began scribbling a note he would leave on Packer’s desk.
“Go ahead, Peter, I’m still listening.”
“That’s all I know at the moment. But Stanhouse wanted to be certain that you people over at ISA were aware.”
“I’ll see that Clancy gets the message,” Miller said.
“By the way, how does he go about getting in touch with Stanhouse if he wants to pursue this?”
Langley gave Miller three different telephone numbers where Stanhouse could be reached, then hung up. Within seconds after Langley’s call, Miller had brought the Israeli report up on his screen for a second time. continue to hear rumors of field testing by Iraqi extremists of a “mustard gas” type agent similar to that used in previous Iraqi attacks on Kurdish tribesmen. Air solvent samples taken by agencies monitoring the impacted areas would seem to verify at least some of these rumors….
He read the text of the entire report twice, closed his eyes momentarily, then reached for the telephone. Before he completed dialing he had thought twice about what he was about to do, and instead turned to look out at the rain. Why ruin Packer’s day? Besides, Packer already had his hands full. His boss would be damn lucky if the Redskins weren’t getting pasted and he didn’t catch pneumonia in the process. Peter Langley was right, it was indeed a nasty day out there.
Dr. Henry Stanhouse was a tall, somewhat awkward-appearing man with a reputation for both thoroughness and integrity. He also had a reputation for being blunt — and it was that abrupt, often abrasive style that people said had kept him buried in the bowels of the DIS for over twenty years.
Sitting across from him, listening to Stanhouse conclude a heated telephone conversation, Clancy Packer was reminded of his own run-ins with the fiery medic. They had clashed more than once over the years and there were times when they barely spoke — a fact that did not keep Stanhouse from calling Clancy in on something when the occasion demanded it.
When he finished, Stanhouse slammed the phone down and grumbled, “Now, where the hell were we?”
“You were going to tell me about the necropsy report on—”
“Right, right,” Stanhouse said. He reached for the intercom.
“Helen, are you out there?” Packer heard a muffled response from the outer office.
“Bring in that necropsy report I dictated this morning.” Stanhouse thought for a moment, then added, “And bring in those photographs as well.”
Helen came in, acknowledged Packer, laid two folders on the doctor’s desk, and departed. Stanhouse glanced at both the file and photographs before he shoved three eight-by-tens across the desk at Packer. Clancy picked them up and caught his breath. Stanhouse hadn’t warned him. They were photographs of a cadaver that had been laid open from his throat to his stomach. To Stanhouse the photographs were routine.
“From these pictures, Clancy, it’s obvious the Turks butchered the body up pretty bad trying to determine the cause of death.” Stanhouse shrugged his shoulders.
“On the other hand, you have to give them credit; they had enough sense to put everything back where it belongs — except for the damned pancreas. They managed to stuff it in there ass-backwards.”
Packer studied the photographs.
“Just exactly what am I supposed to be looking at. Henry?”
“Start with the lungs,” Stanhouse said. He reached across the desk and stabbed his pencil at the cadaver’s lungs.
“There, those cone-shaped organs there in the thoracic cavity. Notice how the pleural membrane is pitted and inflamed?”
Packer nodded.
“What’s that tell you?”
“It tells me I’m on the right track, dammit. That pleural membrane should never look that way.
Whatever our friend here was doing when it happened, the air in his lungs was suddenly contaminated with properties his respiratory system simply couldn’t handle.”
“What you’re saying is some kind of extremely toxic substance?”
“Exactly. The last few minutes of this young man’s life weren’t very pleasant, Clancy. He probably experienced a dryness and burning sensation in the throat, then a dyspnea or shortness of breath, followed by hyperpnea or rapid and shallow breathing as his lungs began to blister. This, of course, led to convulsion and coma, and ultimately he died, terminated by cardiovascular collapse.
In other words, he was his own worst enemy in those few minutes before he died; the more he struggled to breathe, the worse it got.”
Packer waited. He knew Stanhouse wasn’t through.
“The agents or components in the toxic substance acted by binding the FE components of the cytochrome c oxidase system. This, of course, controls the cellular respiration and exchange of oxygen. An easier way to explain would be to tell you his respiratory system was invaded by an oily acid.”
“Oily acid?” Packer repeated.
“I found traces of it in every damned biopsy I took.”
“What was the chemical base?”
Stanhouse leaned back in his chair and looked at the ceiling.
“Don’t know yet. I’m no chemist.
But it could be any number of things. I’ve got some of my people trying to determine the chemical components now.”
“How was it ingested?”
“Breathing, pure and simple breathing. Whatever it was, Clancy, it was obviously in the air.
Dispersed, I would image, by some sort of manmade device. Mother Nature just isn’t that damned insidious.”
“Any guesses?”
“Like I said, I’m no toxicologist, but five will get you ten it is some form of hybrid hydrogen cyanide or cyanogen chloride. But again, that’s only an educated guess.”
Clancy Packer frowned and leaned forward with his elbows on Stanhouse’s desk.
“Anything else you can tell me?”
“No doubt you’ve already figured this one out, but I’d say whoever concocted this little nightmare had every intention of causing a great deal of suffering. This was no accident.”
Packer stood up and the two men shook hands.
“I’ve got another meeting to go to. Henry. I trust you’ll call me when you know more?”
“I will,” Stanhouse assured him, “but I can already guarantee you this much. Whoever did this sure as hell didn’t have the milk of human kindness coursing through their veins.”
Robert Miller had developed the habit of closing up shop, as he called it, after the worst of Washington’s rush-hour traffic had subsided. That meant he seldom left his office until a few minutes after six. Even then, he knew he was probably destined to spend more time in his car than he wanted to.
To pass the time before he left, he usually checked with the ISA offices in San Francisco and Los Angeles, or tackled one of the files in his pending basket. Miller thought it was unusual that Clancy Packer had not checked back with his office following his round of meetings that had begun with his morning meeting with Stanhouse.
With nothing more than the information Peter Langley had passed along in his Sunday call. Miller called up the single reference sector chart the N1 officer had described, Sector 77-T, on his t computer. When it appeared on the screen he was looking at a map of the northeast mountain region immediately south of the Turkish-Iraq border. He scrolled down until he found the chart indicating topographical detail and studied the terrain features.