by David Shobin
At the moment of the gunshot, Smith knew. As they’d pulled off the main highway, a part of him was suspicious about the change in route. Although he’d followed orders, he never completely trusted O’Brien. But the money and the abundance of corn whiskey had dulled his edge. Now, as the barrel of the revolver swung his way, he conceded defeat.
“All, shit,” he managed.
The two bullets slammed into his chest, toppling him over. Sean calmly walked over and fired a finishing shot into Smith’s head. Then he slid the gun back into his waistband. He removed the keys from Smith’s trousers pocket and returned to the van. Driving it over to the rental car, he opened the van’s rear doors. With some difficulty, he managed to get both corpses onto the cargo bay’s floor.
The rental car’s trunk was. still open. Careful to avoid spills, O’Brien removed the five-gallon gas can and carried it to the van. He liberally doused both men with gas, saving the remainder to saturate the front seat. Finally, he took a small cassette tape from his breast pocket and tossed it into the rear of the van. It was the same tape with which he’d secretly recorded Smith and Walker’s conversation in the vehicle not many days before, a conversation that had sealed their fate. Then he struck the match.
The van went up with a violent whoosh. O’Brien felt its mounting heat on the back of his neck as he returned to the rental van. A few underlings remained, he thought, but that was essentially the end of the Southern Cross. Sean smiled to himself.
“God’s fuckin’ will be done.”
It was mid-afternoon when Jon returned home after dropping off Tommie and Mireille. He planned to see Mireille again later that night. Despite the festive morning, he was chilled from the day on the water, and he felt grimy. Once he was indoors, the first order of business was to take a hot shower.
His bedroom had a bath-shower combination enclosed within a glass stall. Jon stripped, put his outdoor clothes in the hamper, slid the shower doors closed, and turned the shower to hot. Soon the water was scalding. He stepped inside and luxuriated in the spray, letting the soothing heat seep into his muscles.
In the steaming jets, Jon closed his eyes and let the heat work its magic. His internal chill slowly dissipated. The knots in his muscles softened and relaxed. He took full, deep breaths through his nostrils, filling his lungs with the warm, humid fog. And then he smelled it.
Jon’s eyes jerked open in panic. He instinctively held his breath, for he knew that smell. He’d read about it hundreds of times, and he’d actually gotten a whiff of it decades before in Vietnam, when there was an accident fumigating surgical instruments. It was the odor of bitter almonds. It was the smell of cyanide.
As he twisted off the water, his mind was racing a thousand miles an hour. The odor was so distinctive that there was no question what it was. He understood that for some unfathomable reason, his bathroom was filling with hydrocyanic acid gas. Although he couldn’t tell how much he’d inhaled, he did know that the gas was so lethal that unconsciousness would occur within thirty seconds and death within minutes.
In a fraction of a second, his racing thoughts fixed on the men who’d been following him. There was no possibility of an accident. Someone had booby-trapped his bathroom to release cyanide gas when he was in the shower. Following him was one thing; trying to kill him was something else entirely. But right now, he couldn’t afford the luxury of thinking it through. Time was critical, and he couldn’t hold his breath forever.
As he stood there wet and dripping and wide-eyed with fear, he was rocked by a wave of nausea. All of a sudden, his head started to pound, and his heart boomed in his chest. His logical mind realized that however little he’d inhaled, it was too much. He knew he had to do something—and he’d better do it fast, before he lost consciousness.
He threw open the sliding glass doors and leapt onto the tiled floor. The footing was treacherous, and he nearly lost his balance. Out of the comer of his eye, Jon noticed whitish fumes escaping from the medicine cabinet. His face was stroked by the first faint touch of vertigo. Steadying himself, he flicked on the bathroom exhaust fan and raced from the bathroom.
His face felt hot and flushed. As Jon sprinted nakedly toward the spare bedroom, his memory frantically regurgitated medical information. He recalled that the only approved antidote was the three-step Eli Lilly kit, not the sort of thing one ordinarily kept at home. But he did have a substitute that might work nearly as well. At least he hoped it would, if it were still there in the night table drawer. His life depended on it.
His increasingly unsteady feet left wet prints on the hardwood floor. Tiny dots twinkled across his retina like Christmas lights. He knew it was a symptom of oxygen deprivation, asphyxiation, or both. Now well away from his bathroom, he inhaled deeply, but the feeling wouldn’t go away.
The guestroom seemed to grow darker. It was unconsciousness descending like a shroud. Jon stood by the bed and pulled open the night table drawer. His balance left him. The entire drawer fell to the floor with a clatter, its contents spilling across the rug.
Jon’s legs grew wobbly, and he fell to his knees. Through increasingly tunneled vision, he spotted the amber vial and twisted off its cap. He knew only seconds remained.
The plastic cover finally came off in his leaden fingers, and he inverted the bottle. The tiny glass perles spilled from the container like diamonds.
Despite the growing darkness, Jon somehow managed to pick one up between thumb and forefinger. Yet crushing the small glass popper seemed impossible. It suddenly occurred to him that he was about to die, and he thought of Tommie. With every last bit of strength, Jon squeezed the tiny sphere. It crushed with a snapping noise, and he held it to his nose.
He could no longer support his own weight. Collapsing onto his side, he took one last, deep breath. A veil of blackness swept over him, along with a sense of falling. But then, incredibly, the room began to brighten, and he inhaled again. All at once, his senses returned.
He was extremely fortunate that amyl nitrite worked very rapidly. Within seconds he could see clearly again, and he rolled to an upright position. He picked up another glass perle. His heart was still pounding, and he was shaking all over. He popped the sphere and inhaled its contents. He’d placed it in the nightstand two years ago, when his father had stayed with him shortly before the old man died.
Among its therapeutic uses—not including use during recreational sex as an inhalant rush—amyl nitrite was employed medically to reduce the pain of angina attacks. This was Jon’s goal in treating his father, who found it more effective than nitroglycerine. The bottle had remained in the drawer after his father returned home. Mainly due to what it represented, Jon never removed it after his father’s death.
As he sat there breathing deeply, nausea again overwhelmed him. Jon began to retch uncontrollably. Although his stomach was empty, green bilious contents spilled from him in waves, soiling the rug. Shivering, he stared numbly at the rancid stains, trying to think clearly.
He knew he’d been extremely lucky. This had been intentional, and someone wanted him dead. For the life of him, Jon couldn’t figure out why. He thought it might somehow be related to his relationships with Victoria or Mireille, but he didn’t see the connection. Then there were the incontrovertible facts of the first lady’s assassination and Jon’s service to the president. But what did they have to do with him? Could it be related to a disgruntled patient? He just didn’t know.
Shaking with cold and anxiety, he got unsteadily to his feet. His knees were trembling. He shuffled to the hall linen closet and removed a beach towel, wrapping himself in it. Once he was dry, Jon went to the guestroom and wiped up the mess with the towel. He swept the unused perles into the bottle and returned it to the drawer.
Going into the guest closet, he pondered the cyanide as he put on a pair of gray sweatpants and a sweatshirt. He reckoned the cyanide fumes were generated the same way they were in traditional gas chambers, when solid sodium or potassium cyanide was dissolved in hydroc
hloric acid. The rapid chemical reaction required a minute or less, depending on the quantity of solute. It was quick, easy, and lethal. By now, all the gas in his medicine cabinet should have long since been produced.
Before he went back there, an important question was whether or not the bathroom exhaust fan had completely vented all the toxic vapors. The fan directed room contents outdoors, where it would be safely dissipated. Jon got a new towel and pressed it to his face and nose. Ever so slowly, he tiptoed to his bedroom, cautiously peering into the master bathroom. The medicine cabinet came into view. The fumes and vapors were gone, but that didn’t mean that lethal traces of cyanide had vanished. He’d have to give it a little more time.
When it came to attempted murder, Jon knew he was in way over his head. He needed assistance the way others needed medical help. He picked up the phone and called the Bethesda police. Then he called Dave Saunders.
The Secret Service agent didn’t arrive until the local cops were nearly finished. Jon had also called Tommie and Mireille to make sure they were okay. Mireille insisted on coming over. They were both sipping scotch when Dave finished chatting with the police. When he walked into the living room, Jon handed him a drink.
“You’re quite the popular guy,” Dave said, shaking his head. “First, you’ve got them following you, and they try to gas you. Can’t take you anywhere.”
“I don’t think the cops believed me.”
“Maybe not at first, but that contraption in the medicine cabinet was pretty convincing. Did the detective tell you?”
“He mentioned seeing one before.”
“And I believe him,” Dave said. “He was a District homicide detective before coming out here. That thing like a teapot is actually an old Soviet-style steam generator. The one he saw was used to kill a defecting diplomat.”
“Great. Now the Russians want me dead. I wonder what I did to piss them off.”
“Probably nothing. First of all, as notorious as you think you might be, you’re just not that important. Second, our Russian friends don’t do that anymore. Any well- connected hoodlum can get his hands on one of those things.”
“I am wondering,” Mireille said. “The other recent attempted murder we all know about was Mrs. Meredith. Could this be related to her shooting?”
“Funny you should ask, because everyone at work is wondering the same thing. Obviously, I haven’t told them about this yet, but I did mention the guys in the SUV. They want to check out any possible connections to the first lady. After this, I don’t think there’s any holding them back.”
“Isn’t it a little far out,” Jon said, “to think this is related to Roxanne?”
“Hey, anything’s possible. But you have to remember the way guys like me think. To us, everything’s a conspiracy. That’s the way we’re trained. And you know what, sometimes it is, okay?”
“All you’re saying is you’re making no progress on her murder attempt, which is what you told me before.”
“That’s the God-awful truth. FBI’s in the same boat we are.”
“So, what’s all this crap on TV about progress in the investigation?”
“Crap is the operative word. But you, well…you’re a connection nobody seriously considered before.”
Mireille put her hand on Jon’s arm. “While they are considering it, what about Jon? After today, I don’t think he’s safe.”
“He’s not. But short of taking him into protective custody, there’s only so much that can be done. You’ve still got that item I gave you?” he asked Jon.
“I’ve got it.”
“Beginning tonight, the police are starting extra patrols,” Dave continued. “I’m going to phone this in, and I’m pretty certain the Agency will contact the FBI about surveillance. The fibbies are going to want to talk to you. How do you feel about that?”
Jon thought about it. “Like a kick-me dog.”
“A what?” asked Mireille.
“I used to go to the Caribbean a lot,” Jon explained. “On almost every island I visited, there were packs of these little dogs. They were strays, pretty pathetic. A lot of them had sores, and you could almost always see their ribs. They were all different colors, but I remember tan the most. They were a nuisance to the locals. Their only function in life was to get kicked. But to me, well, my heart went out to those poor dogs. They used to walk up to me with these soulful eyes, and all they seemed to want was a little help. That’s how I feel now—like a kick-me dog who could use a hand.”
Dave smiled. “That’s what I’m here for, my friend. All you’ve gotta do is ask.”
“Me too,” said Mireille. “In fact, I’m not leaving.”
“That’s my goodnight signal. Call me tomorrow morning,” said Dave, heading for the door.
After the agent left, Jon looked at Mireille. He saw the look of worry in her eyes, an expression that matched his own fear. He’d become involved in something beyond his control, and he felt utterly helpless.
Andover, New Hampshire
In an unlit bedroom of the chic bed-and-breakfast, an old black-and-white movie played on TV. It was one a.m. The volume was turned down low, and the flickering images sparred with the darkness. A disjointed choreography of ever-changing shadows danced across the papered walls. The couple in bed wasn’t watching the movie. They were too absorbed in one another.
America’s Christmas holiday had been subdued due to the emotional pall cast by the first lady’s illness. Roxanne’s condition remained the same—physically strong, but neurologically going nowhere. Nevertheless, the president proved a stalwart. While he was constantly concerned about his wife, he nonetheless went on with the country’s business. By the time of the week between Christmas and New Year’s, less than a month remained until the Iowa caucuses. Although the president was unopposed for his party’s nomination, he still made a brief Iowa appearance during the vacation week, staying overnight at the Des Moines Marriott.
Others of various political persuasions, however remotely involved in the political process, were already in New Hampshire, preparing for the nation’s initial primary election the first week in February. Most stayed in the Concord area, but some chose the historic inns in towns like Andover. The state’s hostelries thrived on the quadrennial increase in business. The politics went hand in glove with revelry that lasted well into the night. In the bed and breakfast, however, the couple chose to celebrate with one another.
The woman was not particularly old, but nor was she young. Yet owing to regular workouts, she still had a young woman’s figure, grown softer and less angular over the years. She lay naked beside the man who had just made love to her. Her skin was damp with perspiration, and in the chiaroscuro lighting, the sweat twinkled like rosettes of pearl.
Time had not quite been so kind to the man’s body. His true fitness was the internal variety, wrapped around a core of steely resolve. But that didn’t stop him from admiring his lover’s shapeliness. Lying beside her, he explored her skin with his finger, gently sliding it across her flesh as if tracing a map. His finger trailed up her abdomen toward her sternum.
He adored her breasts. Her full bosom had known childbirth but had not succumbed to childbearing. His finger slowly circled her areola. The recently softened nipple, stimulated once more, responded to his touch. He gave it the gentlest kiss.
“We’re animals,” the woman sighed.
“I hope that’s not regret.”
“Not at all. I’ve never been more satisfied in my life. I just don’t know how long we can keep this up.”
“Don’t. We’ve already been through that. Let’s just enjoy one another as long as we can.”
“You’re right,” she said. “You’re absolutely right. You know what’s so funny? I’ve never been much of a risk taker. But this—us, the other things we’re doing, my God. A year ago, I never would’ve….”
“I know,” he interrupted, shushing her with a finger to her lips. “That’s the way I feel. But everything’s going
so smoothly, why rock the boat?”
Directly above the bed, a miniature wireless video camera was hidden inside a ceiling-mounted smoke detector. The couple’s renewed embrace was dutifully recorded electronically, along with their entire assignation.
CHAPTER 20
The most perplexing thing about fetal neural stem cells was that the concepts behind them were about as easy to understand as the Big Bang. For centuries, prevailing medical opinion held that mature neural tissue was a terminal end organ, incapable of regrowth. Once destroyed, it was incapable of functional viability. Boxers became punch drunk because of a progressive reduction in cerebral tissue. A severed nerve disabled the muscle dependent on it because the nerve could not regrow. Or so the thinking went. Only recently had it been discovered that under some circumstances, certain neural tissues might be capable of limited regeneration.
If that discovery were not startling enough, there came the wonder of fetal stem cells. Their capabilities seemed nothing short of miraculous. The idea that they might be able to restore function to parts of the body deprived of innervation was almost inconceivable. To take someone destined to a handicapped existence and return him to a semblance of normality was the very essence of healing.
For Tommie, that time had now arrived. For her father, performing a stem cell transplant was at the foundation of everything for which he’d become a doctor. Helping the sick and suffering was medicine at its noblest. Yes, what he planned was experimental; and the knowledge that all experimentation carried some risk was a concern to him. It helped that he was nowhere near the first to attempt such a thing.
Researchers much more courageous than he had made the first efforts years ago. The most famous work, and also the most notorious, had been performed in Mexico, where physicians injected dopamine-rich fetal adrenal tissue into the brains of patients with Parkinson’s Disease. Unfortunately, after much initial hoopla, the results were not quite as wondrous as had been expected.