Trial Run

by Dick Francis

  He had read to the end, and looked at me speechlessly.

  I smiled lop-sidedly. ‘Ve have vays of taking out insurance.’

  I put the hand-written sheets into the envelope, and addressed it to the Prince, which raised his mobile eyebrows another notch. Then I looked at the walls and by common consent we went out and strolled down the passage.

  ‘If the comrades should be so inhospitable as to cast me in the clink,’ I said, ‘you just beetle round to the Embassy tomorrow morning and insist on seeing Oliver Waterman personally. Tell him the mountains will fall on his head if he doesn’t send that envelope off pronto in the diplomatic bag.’

  Stephen said, ‘I know of a letter which was supposed to come to Moscow by diplomatic bag but ended up in Ulan Bator.’

  ‘So helpful.’

  ‘They say the Lubianka goes down seven floors underground.’

  ‘Thanks very much.’

  ‘Don’t go,’ he said.

  ‘Come to lunch in the Intourist Hotel,’ I said. ‘They have pretty good ice-cream.’

  Yuri drove round a white corner at speed and corrected the resultant skid with a practised flick.

  ‘Yuri,’ I said, ‘did you deliver a page of Malcolm’s notebook to Mr Kropotkin? ’

  The ash fell off his cigarette. His upper lip did a positive jig.

  ‘I thought it must be you,’ I said. ‘You said you talked to him at Burghley, about buildings. If one could disentangle the writing on the back of that piece of paper with the help of blue filters, would it be notes about buildings?’

  He was silent.

  ‘I’ll not speak of it,’ I said diffidently. ‘But I would like to know.’

  There was another of the long familiar pauses, and in the end he said, ‘I think paper not help,’ as if it excused his action in delivering it.

  ‘It helped very much.’

  He moved his head in a way that I took to mean satisfaction, though I guessed that he still felt uneasy about allying himself with a foreigner. I wondered how I would feel if I were helping a Russian investigator and was not sure that anything he discovered might not be to the detriment of my own country. It made Yuri’s dilemma most human, most understandable. And he was another, I thought, to whom I must do no harm.

  Even at that hour on that day, there was a dragon on guard inside the door: short, dumpy, female, and stolid. She showed no pleasure at all in letting us through.

  We shed our coats and hats. Everywhere in reception areas in Moscow there were acres of rails and hangers, and to every acre, a man in charge. We took our numbered discs and went through into the lofty ground floor hall. Hall as in large meeting area, not as in entrance passage.

  I had seen it two days earlier, passing through to the restaurant. Yellowish parquet floor, lightweight metal and plastic armchairs, and upright boards in loose groups, which divided the space like random screens. Pinned upon these with colour-headed drawing pins were large matt-Hirfaced blown-up photographs of recent architectural activity.

  Yuri led the way round one set of screens and arrived at an open central spot.

  There were three of the light armchairs grouped round a low-table there; and on one of the chairs, a man.

  He stood up as we approached.

  He was of about my own height. Solid of body. Immensely well groomed. Dark hair sprinkled with grey, smoothly brushed back. About fifty, perhaps. Chin freshly shaved, everything immaculate. He wore understated spectacles and an elegantly cut business suit. The impression of power was instant and lasting.

  ‘Major-General,’ Yuri said deferentially, ‘this is Randall Drew.’

  We exchanged a few preliminary courtesies. He spoke perfect English with only the ghost of an accent; and his voice was markedly urbane. Rupert Hughes-Beckett, Soviet version, I thought.

  ‘I would have asked you to come to my office,’ he said, ‘except that on Sundays it is not fully staffed, and perhaps here also we will be less interrupted.’

  He waved me to one of the chairs, and sat down again himself. Yuri delicately hovered. The Major-General suggested pleasantly, in English, that he should go and organise some coffee, and wait for it to be made.

  He watched Yuri’s obediently departing backview, and then turned to me.

  ‘Please begin,’ he said.

  ‘I was sent to Moscow,’ I said for openers, ‘by the British Foreign Office, and by the Prince.’ I gave the Prince his full title, because I guessed that even to a good son of the revolution the fact that I was on an errand for the monarch’s cousin might pull some weight.

  The Major-General gave me a placid stare from uninformative grey eyes.

  ‘Please continue.’

  ‘My brief was to find out if John Farringford… Lord Farringford, the Prince’s brother-in-law… would be likely to be involved in a damaging scandal if he should come to ride in the Olympic Equestrian Games. There was some mention of a certain Alyosha. I was to find and interview this Alyosha, and see how the land lay… Er… am I making myself clear?’

  ‘Perfectly,’ he said courteously. ‘Please go on.’

  ‘John Farringford had indiscreetly visited several rather perverted sexual entertainments in London with a German rider, Hans Kramer. This German subsequently died at the International Horse Trials, and people near him said that in his last few breaths he distinctly said, “It is Alyosha”.’ I paused. ‘For some reason that I cannot understand, a rumour arose that if Farringford came to Moscow, Alyosha would be waiting. The implication was clear that Alyosha would cause trouble. It was this rumour which led the Prince to ask me to look into things.’

  ‘I follow,’ he said slowly.

  ‘Well… I came,’ I said. A couple of coughs convulsively squeezed my chest. There was a well-known slow fever stoking up in there, but for that day at least it would be manageable. The next day, and the next and the next, would be a matter of luck. I girded up at least the mental loins.

  I said, ‘I found I was not investigating a minor muckheap, but something a great deal different. I asked to see you today because what I discovered was a terrorist plot to disrupt the Olympic Games.’

  He was not surprised, and Yuri, of course, must have told him that much in order to persuade him to meet me. Not surprised, but unconvinced.

  ‘Not in the Soviet Socialist Republics,’ he said with flat disavowal. ‘We have no terrorists here. Terrorists would not come here.’

  ‘I’m afraid they have.’

  ‘It is impossible.’

  I said, ‘If you encourage a plague, you must expect to catch it.’

  His reaction to this unwise statement was an ominous stiffening of the spine and a raising of the chin, but at least we advanced into a territory in which he was prepared to face the possibility of pus on his own doorstep.

  ‘I am telling you this so that you can avert a disaster in your capital,’ I said neutrally. ‘If you don’t wish to hear me, I’ll leave now.’

  I didn’t move, however, and nor did he.

  After a pause he said, ‘Please proceed.’

  ‘The terrorists aren’t Russians, I’ll grant you that,’ I said. ‘And, so far as I know, you only have two here at present. But I think they live here all the time… and no doubt at the Games they would be reinforced.’

  ‘Who are they?’

  I took off my glasses, and squinted at them, and put them on again.

  ‘If you keep a check on every foreigner who lives here in vour city,’ I said, ‘you should seek out two men of between twenty and thirty years old, one of whom has today a badly bruised or broken wrist, and the other a damaged face. They nay in addition have other bruises and cuts. They have sallow skins, dark eyes, and dark curling hair. I could if necessary dentify them.’

  ‘Their names?’

  I shook my head. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘And what could they hope to achieve?’ he said, as if the whole idea was ridiculous. ‘It would be impossible for them to rake hostages in this country.’
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  ‘I don’t think they mean to,’ I said. ‘The trouble with taking hostages is that it involves so much time. Time while the demands are delivered and discussed. Time, which means feeding the captors and the hostages, and sewage, and absolutely mundane things like that. The longer it goes on, the less chance there is of success. And the world has grown tired of these threats, and a great deal tougher. It’s no longer seen as sense to release imprisoned terrorists to save innocent lives, when the released terrorists simply go out and kill a different lot of innocents. And I agree with you that a mass kidnapping here would be smartly stepped on by your comrades. But these men didn’t mean to kidnap, they meant to kill.’

  He showed no emotion at all. ‘And how would they do this? And how would it help them?’

  ‘Suppose,’ I said, ‘that they killed, for instance, Lord Farringford. Suppose they then said, if such and such a demand of ours is not met, a member of the French riding team will die, and a member of the Germans, and a member of the Americans. Or all the American team. Suppose they moved terrorism to a different level, where the hostages had no chance at all. No one would know who the hostages were until they were dead, and the supply of potential hostages would be the number of people at the Games.’

  He briefly thought it over and was not convinced.

  ‘The theory is possible,’ he said. ‘But there is no suitable weapon. The murderers would quickly be caught.’

  ‘Their weapon is a liquid,’ I said. ‘A spoonful per person would be enough. It doesn’t have to be drunk. It is deadly if it’s just poured on the skin. And that’s what makes the equestrian part of the Games so vulnerable, because it is there that the performers and the spectators mingle, most freely.’

  A longer pause. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. I took a breath to go on, but he interrupted.

  ‘Such liquids are extremely top secret and are kept in places of the utmost security,’ he said. ‘Are your supposed terrorists going to break into highly-guarded laboratories to steal it?’ The urbanity in his voice said that he thought this unlikely.

  I pulled out of my pocket a copy I had made of the formula, and handed it to him.

  ‘That liquid is neither top secret nor difficult to obtain,’ I said. ‘And it kills within ninety seconds. One of my supposed terrorists could tip a spoonful on to your bare hand without vou thinking anything of it, and he’d be lost in the crowd before you could say you felt ill.’

  He unfolded the paper with the slightest of frowns, and read the list of words.

  ‘What is it?’ he said. ‘I am no chemist.’

  ‘Etorphine,’ I said. ‘That, I think, is a morphine derivative, I.torphine, acepromazine and chlorocresol, those first three ingredients, would be an anaesthetic. I am absolutely certain, though I haven’t been able to check it in Moscow, as I could at home, that they make up a particularly useful anaesthetic for use on animals.’

  ‘Anaesthetic?’ he said dubiously.

  ‘It anaesthetises horses and farm animals.’ I said. ‘But it is fatal for humans, in the tiniest amounts.’

  ‘Why should anyone wish to use such a dangerous anaesthetic?’ he said.

  ‘Because it is the best for the animals.’ I said. ‘I’ve seen it used twice. Once on one of my horses, and once on a bull. Both animals recovered quickly, with none of the complications we used to get.’

  ‘You’ve seen it…’

  ‘Yes. And each time, the vet prepared a syringe of a neutralising agent for use on himself, if he should be so unfortunate as to scratch himself with the needle of the syringeful of anaesthetic. He filled the neutralising syringe before he even touched the phial with the anaesthetic, and he wore rubber gloves. He told me that the excellence of the anaesthetic for the animal’s welfare was worth the precautions.’

  ‘But is this… rare?’

  I shook my head. ‘More or less routine.’

  ‘You said…’ He thought briefly. ‘You said “scratch himself”. Does that mean this mixture would have to enter through a cut… a break in the skin? But you said it would be enough just to pour it…’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Well… most liquids don’t penetrate the skin, and that doesn’t either. Normally all a vet does have to worry about is getting it into him through a cut or a scratch, except that if they do get a drop on them accidentally, even if there’s no cut involved, they sluice it off again with a bucket or so of water.’

  ‘Did your vet have the water ready also?’

  ‘He did indeed.’

  ‘Please go on,’ he said.

  ‘If you look at the formula again,’ I said, ‘you’ll see that the next ingredient is dimethyl sulphoxide, and I actually do know what that is, because I’ve used it myself countless times on my horses.’

  ‘Another sort of anaesthetic?’

  ‘No. One uses it on sprains, bruises, sore shins… on practically everything. It’s a general purpose embrocation.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘Well,’ I said. ‘Its chief property is that it’s a liquid which does penetrate the skin. It carries its active ingredients through to the tissues beneath.’

  He gave me a grave comprehending stare.

  I nodded. ‘So if one mixes the embrocation with the anaesthetic, it will go clean through the skin into the blood stream.’

  He took a visibly deep breath, and said, ‘What happens exactly if this mixture invades the body?’

  ‘Depressed breathing and cardiac arrest,’ I said. ‘Very quick. It looks, like a heart attack.’

  He looked pensively down at the paper.

  ‘What does this last line mean?’ he said. ‘Antagonist naloxone.’

  ‘An antagonist is a drug which works against another drug.’

  ‘So naloxone is… an antidote?’

  ‘I don’t think it’s the stuff they give animals to bring them back to consciousness,’ I said. ‘I think it’s what the vet prepares as a precaution for himself.’

  ‘Do you mean… you have to give the animal a second injection? The anaesthetic does not simply wear off?’

  ‘I don’t know if it would in the end,’ I said. ‘But it’s always reversed as soon as possible, as far as I know.’

  ‘So naloxone is for humans.’

  ‘Even terrorists wouldn’t handle that stuff without protecting themselves,’ I said. ‘And I think,’ I went on tentatively, ‘that the amount of naloxone needed would depend on the amount of liquid one had absorbed. With animals, you see, the vet uses equal quantities of anaesthetic and reviving agent. And sometimes a further injection of reviver is needed.’

  For Malcolm, I thought, it had simply been a matter of quantities. Too much killing liquid: not enough naloxone. His bad luck.

  ‘All right,’ the Major-General said, tucking the formula away into an inner pocket. ‘Now please will you tell me what led you to these conclusions.’

  I coughed because I couldn’t help it, and took off my glasses and put them on again because the outcome of telling him might be not what I hoped.

  ‘It started,’ I said, ‘at the International Horse Trials which were held in England in September. At that event, a British journalist, Malcolm Herrick, who worked here in Moscow as a correspondent for The Watch, persuaded Hans Kramer to steal a vet’s case of drugs when the vet came to attend some of the horses. Malcolm Herrick received the anaesthetic from Kramer. He then mixed it with the embrocation, which is easy to come by. And he then sold it to the terrorists for fifty thousand pounds.’

  ‘For what?’ The Major-General showed the first sign of uncontrolled surprise.

  ‘Yes… It was not a matter of ideology, but of hard cash. Someone, after all, sells weapons to the terrorists. They don’t actually manufacture their own guns. Fifty thousand, you are no doubt thinking, was a great deal too much for an easily accessible commodity. The thing was, of course, that Herrick didn’t tell them what it was. I dare say he made out that it was, in fact, one of your top secret things from maximum security laborato
ries. Anyway, they paid for it, but not without a demonstration… A sort of trial run.’

  I waited for the Major-General to comment, but nothing came.

  ‘They used a little of it on Hans Kramer,’ I said. ‘Herrick no doubt suggested he should be the test victim because if he was dead he couldn’t tell anyone he had given the stuff to Herrick.’

  ‘Given…? Didn’t he sell it to Herrick?’

  ‘No. Kramer sympathised with terrorists. He did it for the cause.’

  The Major-General slightly compressed his lips.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Kramer’s death was adjudged a heart attack. Herrick returned to Moscow, and so did the two terrorists. I think this may mean that he knew them here… met them here, perhaps… and that because he knew them, he thought up the scheme to sell them a compound he had at one time heard of by chance. And that is where everything would have stood until the Olympics; a nice little time-bomb ticking away in the dark. Except that people started asking questions about Alyosha.’

  ‘At which point you came to Moscow.’

  I nodded. Coughed. Wished the coffee would come. Swallowed with a dry mouth, and continued with the dicey bits.

  ‘Since then, Herrick has tried to persuade me to go home, both with words and trying to knock me over with a motor horse box. The two terrorists have also had a go, and I’m only still here because I’ve been lucky. But sometime yesterday they discovered that they’d paid a great deal of money for a very cheap product, and they became extremely angry.’

  I took a much needed deep breath. ‘Herrick had told them to come to my room at the Intourist Hotel and finish me off properly. I think he meant them to do it by mechanical means… bashing my head in, and so forth. But when they came, they brought a good deal of the liquid in a small jar, perhaps all they had, and whether they meant any of it for me or not, they threw nearly all of it at Herrick.’