Ghost Force

by Patrick Robinson

  “Bill, I’m gonna make one phone call. And I have a hunch it’s going to end all speculation. After all, anyone who was in the White House at that time must be a suspect if there is a question of foul play. And that must include the President and all his agents and officials. That body’s not going anywhere for a while, except the city morgue.”

  Lt. Commander Ramshawe thanked Bill Fogarty and immediately called the Naval Hospital, leaving a message for the duty officer to call him right back at the NSA. That took two full minutes, and it established that the body of the number one political commissar in all of Siberia would be leaving for the morgue inside the hour. An autopsy would be carried out this afternoon. The Russians were, apparently, not pleased.

  Jimmy hit the buttons to Chevy Chase.

  “Morgan, speak.”

  “Sir, the body of Mr. Masorin will be at the city morgue in a couple of hours. The Russians are trying to kick up a fuss and get permission to remove it back to Moscow. But that’s obviously not going to happen.”

  “Doesn’t surprise me any, Jimmy. Tell the pathologist we’re looking for poison of some kind. I’m damn sure it wasn’t a heart attack.”

  “You think one of our guys got rid of him?”

  “Well, that’s what it looks like. But you never know with the Russians. A short, sharp murder in the White House gives ’em marvelous cover. Because they can feign outrage at this disgraceful breach in American security, while they make their getaway home, to that god-awful country of theirs.”

  “You mean they might have killed their own man?”

  “It’s happened before, both in and beyond the old Soviet reign. But let’s not get excited. We’ll wait ’til we hear the autopsy report. Then we’ll take a very careful look…hey, well done, kid…but I gotta go. I’d better talk to the Chief.”

  4:00 P.M., SAME DAY

  Lt. Commander Ramshawe’s veteran black Jaguar pulled into the parking lot behind the city morgue, and headed straight into one of the VIP reserved spaces. This was an old ruse taught him long ago by Admiral Morgan… no one, ever, wants to tangle with a high-ranking officer from the NSA. Park wherever the hell you like. Anyone doesn’t like it, tell ’em to call me.

  Inside the building, the area where the autopsy had been conducted was busy, despite the fact the FBI had denied the Russians entry. There were two U.S. Navy guards on the door, three White House agents outside in the corridor, and the Chief Medical Officer from Bethesda was in attendance. The coroner, Dr. Louis Merloni, was there, and the autopsy was carried out by the resident clinical pathologist, Dr. Larry Madeiros. No details of the examination had yet been released.

  Jimmy showed his NSA pass to the guards and was admitted immediately. Inside he said firmly, “Dr. Madeiros?”

  And the pathologist walked over and held out his hand.

  “Lt. Commander Ramshawe, NSA,” said Jimmy. “I would like to talk to you for a few minutes in private.”

  “No problem, sir.”

  They walked to an adjoining office across the wide examination room, and almost before they had time to sit down, Jimmy Ramshawe said, “Okay, Doc, gimme the cause of death.”

  “Mikhallo Masorin died of asphyxiation, sir.”

  “You mean some bastard throttled him?”

  “No. I don’t mean that. I mean he was given a substance, a poison of some type, which caused the transmission of nerve impulses from the brain to the muscles to be seriously impaired. In the end to the point of limpness. When this process hits the chest muscles, breathing stops.”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  “This diagnosis tallies with the accounts of the two doctors who attended Mr. Masorin. The victim was wide awake and aware of what was happening, until he lost consciousness.”

  “You don’t think he was poisoned by something in his food?”

  “No. I found a very fine puncture mark on the back of his neck, right side. I think we will find he was injected with the poison through that hole.”

  “Do we know what the poison was yet?”

  “No idea. All the bodily fluids are still in the lab. That’s blood cell counts, bone marrow, liver, kidneys, and all biochemical substances found in the body. It’ll take a while, but I’m pretty sure we’re going to find something very foreign deep inside that corpse.”

  “The bloody corpse was very foreign,” said Jimmy cheerfully. “That makes the poison amazingly foreign.”

  “Unless it was American,” replied the doctor, archly.

  “Well, yes. I suppose so,” said Jimmy. “When will you know?”

  “You can call me on my cell at 10 o’clock. I’ll let you know in confidence what we’ve found. Thereafter the report will be issued first thing tomorrow morning to the hospital and medical officer of record in Bethesda, and then to the FBI and the White House agents.

  10:00 P.M., SAME DAY

  AUSTRALIAN EMBASSY

  WASHINGTON, DC

  Jimmy excused himself from the Ambassador’s dinner table and walked into the next room, then punched in the numbers on his cell phone that would connect him to Dr. Larry Madeiros.

  “Hello, sir. It was curare, and quite a sizeable shot of it. A most deadly poison originating from South America.”

  “Kew-rar-ee,” said Jimmy. “What the hell is it?”

  “Well, curare is a generic name for many different poisons made from the bark and roots of forest vines,” said the doctor. “The main one’s called Pareira, and the lab technicians here think that’s the one. Five hundred micrograms of that stuff will cause death in a few minutes. And Mr. Masorin had more than that.”

  “Jesus. And this poison could have shut down the transmission of nerve impulses from the brain, like you said?”

  “Absolutely. This is the classic poison that will unfailingly achieve that. I’ve checked it out briefly, and it seems it’s a favorite of the professional assassin.”

  “Steady, Doc, old mate. This was a White House State Banquet. There weren’t any professional assassins walking around there.”

  “As you wish,” said Dr. Madeiros formally. “But that is very much the history of this particular poison.”

  “Well, thanks anyway, Doc. You’ve been a big help.”

  Jimmy clicked off, and instantly dialed Admiral Morgan’s number.

  “You were dead right, sir. Someone hit Masorin with a lethal shot of poison injected into his neck. More than five hundred micrograms, according to the pathologist…”

  “Know what it was?”

  “Yup. Curare, a special type called Pareira.”

  “Wait a minute, Jimmy. I got a book of poisons here. I was waiting for your call. Lemme check this out…yeah, right, curare, a known poison since the sixteenth century, a gummy substance used to tip hunting arrowheads by Indian tribes up the Amazon River in South America.

  “Says here it comes from the region now known as Peru, Ecuador, Brazil, and Colombia…Sir Walter Raleigh returned home in 1595 with the first sample of curare ever seen in England. I guess it’s kinda well known, but rare.”

  “Sir, I’ll alert Admiral Morris what’s going on. And then I guess we’ll let the rest of the investigation take its course. It’s not really our business anymore, is it? Civilian matter now, right?”

  “Exactly so, Jimmy. But I’m sure as hell glad we know what’s going on. No heart attack. Murder.”

  From an official point of view, inquests, coroners, and autopsies a
re a pain in the rear end. They are inevitably public and must be entered in the public record. Thus it was that on the morning of Thursday, September 16, the FBI announced to the world that the death of the Siberian Minister, Mikhallo Masorin, was indeed suspicious.

  Traces of the lethal poison, curare, had been found in the body, and the investigators were now treating the case as a murder inquiry, since suicide was out of the question.

  MURDER IN THE WHITE HOUSE , bellowed the New York Post . SIBERIA BOSS ASSASSINATED thundered the Washington Post . All of it on the front page, in specially reserved end-of-the-world typeface.

  And while the maelstrom of a frenzied media swirled around the Russian visitors, the President’s Aeroflot state airliner took off right on time for Moscow from Andrews Air Force Base on Thursday evening. The body of Mikhallo Masorin was not on board.

  For some reason, best known to neurotic news editors, the U.S. media, including the twenty-four-hour news channels, leapt to the conclusion that somehow an American had been responsible for the Siberian’s death. Perhaps it was just too far-fetched that the Russians would choose the White House as a theater to assassinate one of their own.

  The American media, to a man, jumped on the story as if an American-based terrorist, possibly a Chechen rebel in disguise, had fired some kind of poison dart into the neck of Mr. Masorin, who had subsequently died while dining with the President of the United States and 150 of his closest friends.

  The media grilled the FBI, grilled the Washington Police Department, grilled the White House Press Office. It took three entire days before it truly dawned on them all that no one had the slightest idea who had killed Mr. Masorin, and that there were no Chechen rebels in attendance at the State Banquet.

  Of course they were not to know of the massive rift that now existed between the President of the United States and the President of Russia, who had almost begged Paul Bedford to allow him to take the body home to Moscow.

  It was not within the realm of Russian understanding that the Boss of the United States could not do anything he pleased. The finer points of a Western democracy still eluded them, that when it comes to the absolute crunch, the law of the land remains sacrosanct. Especially when all the great institutions of law and order are certain of the correct procedures. Not to mention the United States Navy.

  Mikhallo’s body was going nowhere until the investigation was complete. Someone had plainly murdered him. Possibly inside the White House. And until that someone was identified, the corpse of the Siberian Minister was staying right here in the home of the brave.

  Jimmy Ramshawe was thoughtful. He sat in his colossally untidy office, surrounded by mounds of paper, all in neat piles, so many of them, well, they crowded out his desk, clogged his computer table, and turned the carpeted floor space into a death trap.

  There was one dominant thought in his mind… the Big Man thinks the bloody Ruskies killed Masorin in the White House because no one would ever dream they would pull something off quite like that.

  “I know that’s what he thinks,” he murmured. “He has not said it, but he was sure as hell the first person to suspect murder. And he’s never once suggested an American may have been responsible.”

  What Jimmy knew was that the Russian President would shortly be landing in Moscow and that his public relations machine would be full of venom. All aimed at the lapsed, decadent security arrangements in the United States… which has somehow caused the death of our beloved brother, sorry comrade, Mikhallo Masorin.

  “And a right crock of shit that is,” he muttered, a bit louder in the empty room, with all the inherent charm of an Aussie swagman. “I’m with the Big Man on this one. And I consider it’s in the interest of the United States of America to find out what the hell’s going on…I’d better go and see the boss.”

  Admiral George Morris, a portly ex–Naval Battle Group Commander with the appearance of a lovesick teddy bear, but a spine of blue-twisted steel, listened attentively.

  He scarcely betrayed even a flicker of surprise when Jimmy delivered his punch line…“Sir, I think Admiral Morgan believes the Russians bumped old Mikhallo off, right there in the bloody State Dining Room.”

  “Yes, he does,” replied Admiral Morris. “So do I. Want some hot coffee?”

  Jimmy blinked. “Yes to the coffee, sir. But the Big Man has not yet made any accusation—how do you know what he thinks?”

  “He just told me, ’bout fifteen minutes ago.”

  “Streuth.”

  “Jimmy, Admiral Morgan knows more about the Russian mind-set than any man I ever met. And I’ve known him for over thirty years, most of them as a pretty close friend. And there is one view of his which ought never to be discounted.”

  “What’s that, sir?”

  “That even after President Reagan forced them to take down the Berlin Wall, even after President Reagan made them dismantle the old Soviet Union, a coupla years after he’d gone, in 1991, all of the old instincts for brutal central control exist in the psyche of Russia’s new leaders.

  “It’s going to take decades to get rid of them. Barbarous actions, poisoning and assassinations, all aimed at crushing dissent, stamping out free expression. Drastic measures, and they all thrive today in Russia. It’s an integral part of an insidious political culture.

  “Remember, Jimmy, it was Stalin himself who said very simply, ‘If you have a man who represents a problem, get rid of the man. Then there’s no problem.’ Both Arnie and I believe Mikhallo Masorin was the embodiment of just such a problem. Would he really secede from Russian rule and take his oil with him?”

  “Not anymore he wouldn’t,” said Jimmy, “and no bloody error.”

  “Both Arnold and I would like you to bear that in mind during the course of your investigations. And by the way, we would like you to continue with them, on a full-time basis for the next couple of weeks. We really ought to find out what the hell’s going on.”

  “Christ, sir. Mind if I take a swig of the coffee. That’s a bloody lot to digest.”

  Admiral Morris smiled. “Take a look at some of the really suspicious deaths that have taken place in the past, say, forty years. And you might start with Georgi Markov.”

  “Who’s he, sir?”

  “He was a Soviet expert with the BBC in London—a good journalist with excellent contacts behind the Iron Curtain. He wrote some really hair-raising stuff about the Soviets and the KGB. I believe he was a good friend of Alexander Solzhenitsyn. He was a real thorn in the side of officials in the Soviet embassy in London…”

  “And what happened to him?”

  “Why don’t you go and look it up accurately. Late seventies. I remember it, but not well enough.”

  “Righto, sir. I’ll get right on it.”

  Lt. Commander Ramshawe retreated to his lair and moved into the Internet. It took him ten minutes to find a reference… Georgi Markov, Bulgarian dissident working for the BBC…assassinated on a London street, 1978…later discovered to have been jabbed by an umbrella, its steel tip containing a deadly poison, almost certainly curare.

  A later article by the former KGB colonel and renowned British double agent Oleg Gordievsky stated categorically that Markov had been assassinated by a KGB agent. And what’s more, that assassination was carried out with the approval of the head of the KGB, Yuri Andropov, later the General Secretary of the Soviet Union.

  “Streuth,” said Jimmy Ramshawe for the second time in a half hour. “One bloody surprise after another.”

 
He trawled through all manner of disappearances, of politicians, dissidents, and others deemed whatever the Russian is for pain in the ass, before alighting on the big one…so big it forever blighted the name of the Russian leadership, and it did not even work.

  Viktor Yushchenko, the opposition leader in the infamous Ukraine election of 2004, the hugely popular pro-European who was spectacularly poisoned but never died in the September before the election.

  His face, hideously pockmarked and disfigured, was shown to the entire world, just a few weeks after he had looked perfectly normal. The murder attempt had taken place at a political dinner with Ukraine security services, and the evidence of poisoning by dioxin was overwhelming. At least it was considered so by the doctors who treated Viktor in Vienna. They asserted the levels of dioxin in his blood were more than one thousand times above normal.

  It was also obvious that his stance as a pro-European, pro-democracy candidate was a serious danger to Moscow, with its love of state control. Here was a man, and here was a problem. And Joseph Stalin himself had instructed them how to be rid of it. Viktor Yushchenko was lucky not to have died, and everyone knew the new Russian secret police, the FSB, had been responsible for this attempted murder.

  It was also a timely reminder that the old, vicious KGB methods of elimination were alive and well in modern Russia. Not just alive, and not just well, but ruthlessly woven into the fabric of Russian politics, where they’ve been since the 1920s, when the KGB first built their laboratories to develop special poisons to use against dissidents.

  Jimmy Ramshawe was gratified to note that Viktor Yushchenko eventually became President of the Ukraine, and that his health slowly returned to normal. But his ordeal demonstrated once and for all that modern ideas of political freedom and human rights have never taken root in Russia, and probably never will.

  At least, that was the view of Admiral Arnold Morgan and his cohort Admiral George Morris. “And who the bloody hell am I to argue with those two?” muttered Jimmy. “They got me. The ole Ruskies most definitely took a pop at Mikhallo, and this time they didn’t fuck it up.”