by Alma Katsu
Preliminary toxicology report on Genghis.
Popov. Her eyes skip down the page. She opens the attachment, a pdf of the report from the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner of the District of Columbia. While it is grainy it is also readable, but most of it is technical jargon and medical-speak that she doesn’t understand. One page in, she sees that she needs someone to interpret it for her.
Although it is past Theresa’s usual quitting time, she is still at her desk. She smiles at Lyndsey when she sees her approach.
Lyndsey looks over her shoulder for Maggie (does Maggie report this sort of thing to Eric? she wonders) before starting to speak. “Do you have a minute? I could use your help. Before I left to go overseas, there were a couple analysts who worked on medical issues. Do you know if they’re still around?”
“Let me show you a way to find out.” A couple taps on the keyboard and a website comes up on Theresa’s monitor that reminds Lyndsey of Facebook. It shows a wall of posts from an assortment of individuals, some with photographs next to the name, some with avatars. “In the last couple years, everyone’s started using collaborative tools more regularly. It really helps get things done. This is the latest. It makes it much easier to find who might be working on a target that’s similar to yours, or if you need someone with a particular expertise,” Theresa explains.
Lyndsey admires Theresa’s ease with the tool. Theresa types “medical analysis” in the search bar and hits Return. A number of links come up to posts where a robust dialogue goes on between analysts and officers: an outbreak of avian flu in Vietnam, prevalence of malaria in Australia.
“That was easy,” Lyndsey says. In the old days, it would take asking around until you found someone who could help you. This is much more efficient.
“Isn’t it, though? So . . . any of these what you’re looking for?”
Lyndsey hesitates. She shouldn’t get specific. Theresa doesn’t have need-to-know. “I’ve taken enough of your time. How about if I play around with it myself? What was the link again?”
Theresa scribbles it on a scrap of paper and hands it to Lyndsey.
Back in the privacy of her office, Lyndsey types “poison” into the search bar. She feels a twinge of guilt for not telling Theresa. It seems petty to hold her at arm’s length. Surely the toxicology report will be the talk of the office by quitting time. But given the task she’s been given, finding a potential double agent, Lyndsey of all people should obey the rules.
A handful of links come back and, after clicking through the first five, it’s readily apparent that there is only one expert on poisons at the Agency: Randy Detwiler. All she can make out from the tiny thumbnail is that he has wiry, light brown hair and wears glasses.
Lyndsey finds Detwiler on the internal system’s instant messaging service. Luckily, he’s at his desk. He asks her to send the toxicology report to him, and within fifteen minutes, he’s texted back. “Very interesting! But my response is too involved to type. Want to stop by my office?”
The trek to Randy Detwiler’s office takes less than ten minutes, but it feels like another world. Detwiler is part of the Agency’s collection of analysts who keep track of every matter of importance to policymakers. It’s home to a hodgepodge of skills—political scientists, researchers, historians, linguists, and economists, to name a few. Lyndsey, like many case officers, is secretly intimidated anytime she’s had to work with the specialists, but there’s no denying their usefulness, especially when it comes to esoteric matters like this.
The small team of medical analysts are kept in a sleepy hallway in the basement. The basement is a twisty maze of corridors, home to offices with strange needs, equipment that makes belching sounds or emits bad smells, or is too large or heavy to go in a conventional space. Detwiler’s office is in a lab, he’s warned her. She finds the entrance by its sign: laboratory of medical sciences.
She passes the lab itself, something out of a sci-fi series. Through windows in the double doors, stainless steel countertops support an array of equipment whose functions Lyndsey can only guess at. Shelves are filled with trays of mysterious vials. A few of the stools are occupied by researchers in protective gear hunched over microscopes, lost in whatever they’re examining: new strains of diseases, possible traces of nuclear material, blood samples from a crime scene? It seems wild to Lyndsey that something like this should exist in the Agency’s basement.
Beyond the lab, Lyndsey is confronted by a row of small private offices, no open floor plan here, like in other offices, as befits a team that’s made up of doctors and PhD researchers. She walks down the hall, checking the nameplates until she finds Detwiler. He towers over her when he stands to shake her hand. He must be at least six and a half feet, and looks to be in his mid-fifties. He has a benign, bookish appearance, like an accountant or librarian. His most distinctive feature, aside from his height, is a head of graying curls.
“That was quite an interesting report you sent,” he says. His tone is almost amused.
“Can you tell me what it means?”
“The short answer is that the cause of death was alkaloid poisoning. In and of itself, it’s not remarkable. It’s the source of the alkaloid that’s so interesting. Gelsemium. Have you heard of it?”
Lyndsey shakes her head. “Should I?”
“It’s commonly used as a homeopathic remedy. Used to treat colds, sleeplessness, that sort of thing. Do you know if the victim used homeopathic medicines?”
Like many Russians, Popov was a skeptic. In Lyndsey’s experience, he put his faith in very little. It might’ve been one reason why he enjoyed talking to her; he thought Americans were refreshing. “No, I don’t think so. The only thing he took for colds was vodka.”
“Compounds used in homeopathy can be tricky. Especially when the system isn’t flooded with the compound, like you’d see in a deliberate overdose.”
“So, you don’t think he was murdered?”
The man smiles at her question. “I might have thought that if I hadn’t been studying political assassinations for the past five years. Your run-of-the-mill police department would probably write this off as an accidental overdose. They might not even catch the exact chemical agent unless they had reason to look for it. Believe it or not, you sometimes see cases of alkaloid poisoning in people who’ve eaten too many green vegetables, though usually those people only get sick.”
Lyndsey nods, encouraging him to continue.
“When I see that someone has died from alkaloid poisoning, I think assassination. Both the Russians and the Chinese are known to use gelsemium in political murders. Let me show you.” Detwiler swivels the monitor around in Lyndsey’s direction so she can see the report up on the screen: a Russian name, a black-and-white photo of a man, forty-ish. “That’s Alexander Perepelichny. He was involved in the Magnitsky case—you know, the guy who uncovered the big swindle involving Putin. Because of his murder, the U.S. imposed sanctions on Russia.”
“Perepelichny was killed by this same poison?” she asks. Detwiler nods. “So, it’s something the killer can administer in one dose? Like a hit-and-run?”
“Exactly.”
“And how long before it takes effect?”
“It depends on a number of factors: the amount used, the victim’s condition, the usual variables . . . But it can be quite fast-acting. At the levels that were in his blood—thirty minutes, maybe.”
That narrows the time down to the flight, or possibly just before boarding. Her chest tightens at the thought of Popov dying alone in an airplane. Because of his trust in her. “How would it have been administered?”
“It’s usually done orally. Easy enough to slip into a drink, for instance. I’ll check to see if it can be injected.”
She looks at the monitor again, into the face of the dead man. “And who was responsible for Perepelichny’s death?” Lyndsey asks, even though she’s sure she kno
ws the answer.
“Well, since the case involved elites in the Russian government laundering money overseas, it’s assumed that the FSB was behind the murder, but of course it’s never been solved.”
Will Popov’s murder go unsolved, too? What will happen to his wife and surviving daughter? Will the government take its ire out on them, harass them, cheat them, starve them? Lyndsey’s mind swims with questions.
It seems there can be no denying that Popov was murdered by his own country. The only question that remains is why? It would be easy to assume the Russians discovered what he was doing, but this is Lyndsey’s guilty knowledge talking. She shouldn’t jump to conclusions. There could be another reason, something CIA didn’t know about.
Whatever the reason, it won’t be found in the toxicology report. She has work to do.
She stands to leave. “Thank you, this has been very helpful.”
He walks to the door with her. “Sure, my pleasure. I read about this death in the papers. Unhealthy middle-aged men die every day, of course, including on planes, but when I heard he was a Russian official—well, it sounded awfully suspicious to me.”
A word catches in Lyndsey’s ear. “Unhealthy? Why do you say he was unhealthy?”
“It was in the toxicology report.” Detwiler rummages through the papers on his desk until he finds the one he wants. He runs a finger down a column of numbers. “See here? They list the medications in his bloodstream. It says that he was on SSRIs—selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. Antidepressants.”
Varya. It’s no surprise for a man whose daughter has just killed herself to be on antidepressants. Even for an old-school Russian, when the vodka wasn’t enough.
She shakes her head for Detwiler: nothing to see there.
He taps the page again. “He was on a bunch of worrisome medications. Diovan; it’s used to treat blood pressure, but it’s commonly prescribed for someone who’s just had a heart attack.”
A heart attack? Lyndsey raises an eyebrow.
He reads from the paper. “Tissue plasminogen activators—that’s for breaking up blood clots. You commonly see them administered after someone’s had a stroke. Anticoagulants. At the levels found in his blood, I’d say this man had had a serious medical episode fairly recently.”
Had Popov been ill? This case is one secret after another. What else doesn’t she know about her old friend?
“If he was so sick, how can you be sure he didn’t die from a heart attack?”
“No, it was the gelsemium, all right. You couldn’t have those levels in your bloodstream and live. But in his condition, it probably didn’t take much to get the body to shut down. It’s all right here in the report,” he says, rattling the sheet of paper, “though I’d be happier to run my own tests, you know, rather than go off someone else’s numbers. Mistakes happen. They’re rare, but they happen. Maybe I’ll call the medical examiner’s office and see if they have any material left.”
Typical analyst, wants to button things up. She is grateful to Detwiler, but their talk has nonetheless saddened her. Popov had not been this sick when she left. His deterioration was rapid.
Still. The clues are aligning too perfectly. It makes her nervous. She’s been trained to expect outliers. Sometimes it is a slam dunk, and everything lines up because the expected is exactly what happened. But other times . . .
“You’ve been very helpful. If you come across anything else of interest, even if you don’t think it’s significant, get in touch. Please.” After another handshake, she starts back to her office with one answer and a lot of new questions.
THIRTEEN
Lyndsey is barely back at her desk when there’s a large figure lurking in the doorway. Raymond Murphy stands just outside, hovering like a vampire waiting to be invited in. The thought amuses Lyndsey briefly, until she remembers that he might very well be there to tell her she’s lost her clearance, to pack up and go.
But no, it seems she’s been spared for another day. “We have a development at Moscow Station,” he says as he drops into a chair. Let it be Cassidy, she says to herself, and doesn’t even feel bad for it.
Murphy sounds pleased, though he tries to hide the satisfaction in his voice. “Turns out they flagged one of the case officers, Kate Franklin, as a potential concern. She’s been at Moscow Station for a year, with the Agency about twenty years. The Chief of Station came to us a few weeks back after noticing something odd about her. We’ve turned up some irregularities in her finances. Money in a bank account not covered in her financial report.”
Lyndsey’s disappointed that it has nothing to do with Cassidy. Still—so much for Hank Bremer’s complaining at the teleconference about Raymond Murphy’s inquiry: he’d reported the employee himself. Which is part of a COS’s job, after all. On the other hand, she knows what it’s like to be questioned over what seems like a minor infraction.
“Hank’s talked to her,” Raymond continues. “Turns out it’s a little gambling problem. The thing is, she didn’t do the usual online thing because she was afraid of being discovered by us. So, she was doing it the old-fashioned way: with the locals. She’d been losing money steadily and then—voilà, she suddenly scores a jackpot.”
“And you think it’s a gift from the FSB?”
“It’s not impossible, is it? They find out she’s an intelligence officer, try to reel her in. Now she’s in a blackmailable position, accepting bribes from an adversary. ‘If you don’t want CIA to find out about it, do this one small favor for us,’” he says in a bad Russian accent.
“A bit tenuous, isn’t it? What’s her relationship to the three cases?”
Resentment in the set of Raymond’s shoulders: she’s caught him. “That’s yet to be determined. We don’t have the whole story from Station yet. Franklin knew about Nesterov. She’d backed up the case officer on more than one occasion. But I’m not sure yet about Popov and Kulakov.”
The whole thing makes Lyndsey nervous. If this gets out, everyone will think they found the mole. They’ll be relieved to have a suspect, any suspect. Success will be assumed, and CI will slow the rest of the investigation. But remembering Masha’s texts—the FSB knew about him, he didn’t trust Gerald—this sounds to Lyndsey like a distraction from the real culprit.
“I’m not sure . . .”
He rises from the chair, extracting himself from the awkward corner. “It’s not something you need to be worried about, is it? I’m dealing with Moscow Station. That’s the division of effort.”
She’s tempted to snap back at him but that won’t help the situation. “I don’t want anyone thinking we have the guilty party until we’re sure.”
Murphy sniffs like he’s been insulted. “You’re not calling the shots here, if you remember . . . CI has the lead. You’re only here because Eric Newman insisted. Wouldn’t take no for an answer.”
He wants to make sure she knows her place. And to think she had almost told Murphy about Cassidy, hoped he could dig up something without Eric getting wind of it. Now she’s glad she didn’t. Murphy would only use it to get her into trouble if he saw a chance.
He rolls his eyes. “And it’s not like our investigation against you has been dropped, you know. It’s been put on hold. They’ll open it up again as soon as this is over. And then we’ll see.”
The look on his face is petty and exulting, the face of the mob outside the jail, waiting for the hanging. He glares at her, as though she personally did something to hurt him. What she did was a minor bending of the rules, she reminds herself. It should be a minor infraction. It’s only a big deal because someone has it in for her.
She turns her attention to the computer monitor. “Are you done? Because I need to get back to work.” She waits until he’s left to react. She pushes the keyboard away, pressing her hands into the desktop to stop them from trembling. She feels like she’s been hit by a truck. This is getting a ta
ste of what Franklin must’ve felt: that once you make a mistake at the Agency, there are some people who will never let it go. Who will make sure it haunts you for the rest of your career, if not your life.
Lyndsey doesn’t return to the present until she realizes Theresa is standing in the same spot where Murphy was just a few seconds ago. Staring at her.
Her smile is tentative. “Something happen?” She nods in the direction of the front door, where Murphy undoubtedly has just left. “Want to get some coffee?”
The cafeteria is near-empty, for which Lyndsey is grateful. People stroll by in twos and threes on their way to the steam tables and cashiers, but she and Theresa have the seating area to themselves. Two steaming paper cups stand on the table between them.
She turns the cup gingerly in her hands. It’s blisteringly hot but she barely feels it.
Theresa winces as she watches. “Do you want to talk about it? I assume it had something to do with the guy I saw leaving your office?”
Theresa is right: Lyndsey feels the need to talk about Davis pushing against her chest, but who can she talk to? It’s not the kind of thing she can talk about with anyone outside the Agency, and it’s not the sort of thing to confess to someone inside. The idea of calling Davis suddenly flits through her head but that would be the last wise thing to do, especially with the investigation still open. During the exit interview in Lebanon, she told Security it was over with him. It had hurt like hell to say that but now it hurt even more to make it stick.
If she tells her secret to Theresa, it will change everything between them. Or . . . maybe not. Maybe Theresa’s not like that. She’s been through a lot, after all. Suffered more than her share.
Theresa is throwing her a lifeline. Lyndsey decides to take it.