Chrysalis

37

“Where are we going?” Logan said as he followed Asperton — who was now, for the first time since Logan had met her, running — back across the sky lobby, past an inviting-looking pub called the Crosskeys, toward the wall of smoked glass sealing off Arc A and Agrinox. Logan could see its security station ahead, the green-and-gold logo shining in welcome. But before they reached it, Asperton stopped at what appeared to be a structural joint, glanced around, then touched her Sentinel unit again while pressing the glass-and-steel wall. A coffin-size rectangle of wall sprang inward slightly with a pop of air pressure. Beyond was darkness. Asperton pushed the hidden door wider and stepped in, followed quickly by Logan. She pushed the rectangle of glass door shut again, and the darkness became complete.

“I give up,” Logan said. “What’s going on? A game of sardines?”

Asperton snapped on a light switch, revealing a closet-size room with a narrow, U-shaped staircase leading upward. Logan followed her up the steps into a small eyrie overlooking the main concourse, equipped with a desk, chair, small leather couch, and a CPU.

Asperton took the chair, and Logan the couch. His left shoulder was pressed against the glass wall, and he looked straight down at the groups of people walking past. If anyone had seen them just duck through what looked like a featureless wall, they didn’t seem surprised.

Asperton had pulled the CPU’s keyboard over and was giving commands to her Sentinel unit at the same time.

“Is this an executive love nest?” Logan asked. “You should have put in a larger sofa.”

“Sometimes we ‘executives’ need to speak in a hurry,” Asperton said. “In private.”

“We’re in such a hurry we couldn’t go back to your forward office?”

“The person who called me is on a tight schedule.”

As Logan wondered how many other micro-offices, surveillance crannies, or sniper nests might be concealed in the vast bulk of the Torus, a microphone came to life with a squeal of static. “Two minutes are up,” a voice said.

“We’re ready,” Asperton replied.

There was a brief pause. “King to protect rook, Kf2.”

“I only play backgammon,” Asperton said. “With a doubling cube.”

There was another pause, even briefer. “Okay, Claire,” the male voice said, apparently satisfied. “Who’s ‘we’?”

“Jeremy Logan is with me.”

“His clearance?”

“TS/SCI.”

“Logan. Hmmm.” A tapping of keys sounded over the speaker. “That Jeremy Logan?”

“Yes.”

A chuckle. “Well, it’s your party. Seems he’s got the clearance, all right. While we’re together like this, mind asking him if he could exorcise my mother-in-law?”

“You’re the one on a clock, Gerald,” said Asperton.

“So I am, so I am. All right: What was the subject’s name again?”

“Marceline Williams.”

“Right. Here she is. And you have two private labs running full-spectrum assays on her, you said?”

“As of this morning, they still couldn’t give me a precise date when they’d be finished.”

“Well, just let the results stroll in on their own. They’ll come in clean. But they’ll be wrong. Because she was poisoned.”

Asperton and Logan exchanged glances.

“Those labs won’t find it. We almost missed it ourselves — except we’re already on needles-up status for certain synthetic markers. Our friends in Lubyanka Square have been so busy recently — Novichok, polonium-210 — they’re keeping us on our toes. Anyway, this agent used on Ms. Williams was just unusual enough to raise a red flag.” A tapping of keys. “How old was she?”

“Forty-nine, I think.”

“Did she have gout?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Early-onset arthritis? Still’s disease?”

“I don’t know anything about ‘Still,’ let alone his disease.”

“Philistine.” The person called Gerald sighed audibly. “Any joint problems of any kind?”

“No,” Asperton answered. “Wait! She suffered occasionally from bursitis. It had something to do with her insistence on overexercising with a damned rowing machine.”

“There you go. The pathologist would have had her medical history, so a trace presence of C. autumnale wouldn’t be surprising.”

When Asperton didn’t answer, the voice from the speaker continued. “Too bad I don’t have time to give you and your ghost-hunting friend a botany lesson. The plant known as the autumn crocus is particularly fascinating. It’s not a member of the crocus family, but a species of lily. Two things about it are relevant from a pharmacological standpoint. It’s rather poisonous. And it’s that rare ‘natural’ herb approved for medical dispensation by the FDA.”

“I thought you just said it was poisonous,” Logan interjected.

“Is that you, Dr. Logan? I did say that. Colchicine, the alkaloid extracted from said crocus, has a very narrow ‘therapeutic index’ — the dosage within which it’s safe, rather than toxic. Yet for some conditions — gout, certain joint afflictions — it’s almost a miracle drug. It’s been used as a remedy as far back as the sixteenth century, at least.”

“Are you saying she was poisoned by a prescription drug?” Asperton asked. “That would have been flagged right away.”

“It’s not quite as simple as that. The colchicine was bound to something else. It’s only because we were already on high alert that we saw this. Some bad, bad person bound a small amount of colchicine to an even smaller amount of carfentanyl. Was she wearing glasses when she died?”

This perverse question, coming out of left field, took them both by surprise. Asperton thought a moment. “The security tapes at her hotel caught her putting on sunglasses as she left.”

“Ecce signum! That’s where the lethal agent was planted. It would have moved from her glasses, to her eyelashes, to her eyes. Colchicine is absorbed particularly quickly through the sclera. It’s rather elegant: fentanyl is fifty times more powerful than morphine, and the synthetic descendant carfentanyl is ten thousand times more powerful. The stages of clinical toxicity would have gone by almost too quickly to notice; she would have been dead within minutes of putting on her sunglasses.”

“If the bus hadn’t gotten her first,” Asperton said grimly.

“Well, even bad guys deserve a break now and then, don’t they? You must have taken the seizure of someone lethally poisoned as just a badly timed footstep. Or a push.” A chuckle. “As for the pathologist, the carfentanyl dose was so minute, and its synthesis so complete, all he or she would have noticed was a small amount of colchicine in the blood — which Williams’s history of bursitis would have explained away quite naturally.”

During this explanation, the voice of Gerald had taken on an increasingly satisfied air. “So there you have it, Claire. Naturally, I can’t put any of this in writing, and you wouldn’t be foolish enough to record our conversation. But Marceline Williams was poisoned — and, given the nature of the poison, by somebody who knew what they were doing.” A pause. “And that brings me to our final topic of discussion.”

“Yes?” Asperton asked.

“We’ve given you the answer. Without it, you’d have remained as you are, stumbling about in the dark. It’s only fair to give us the compound.”

“Give it to you?” Asperton asked in confusion. “But you already have the blood sample.”

“That’s not what I mean. Give it to us. Forget these bothersome details. She was poisoned: that’s all you’ll say, and that’s all you’ll remember. Same goes for you, Dr. Logan — if you want to keep clear of Leavenworth, that is.”

Asperton shook her head. “I feel like I ought to go to con-fession.”

“Except you’re not Catholic. At least, not according to your dossier. Now, much as I’d like to continue chatting, I have to go. Enjoy the rest of your day. And Dr. Logan, please reconsider the request about my mother-in-law. I’ll make it worth your while.”

Quite abruptly, the voice was gone.

A few moments passed as Logan stared at Asperton, then finally broke the silence. “Claire, I’m both enlightened… and bewildered. Who the hell were we just speaking to?”

“My friend Gerald works in the CIA’s Directorate of Science. He’s always rushed — but he still enjoys listening to his own voice.”

“He gave us a crucial piece of information.”

Asperton nodded. “Marceline’s death was clearly intended to make us suspect Omega, so we’d keep barking up the wrong tree.”

“And in exchange for that information, you just gave him the delivery vehicle for a brand-new, effectively untraceable poison….”

“You were the one riding me about those blood assays. When it was clear those labs wouldn’t get us results in time, I went to the one entity that could.”

“They’re a client of yours too, I suppose?”

An odd look came over her face for a moment. “That’s not important. Just let me remind you they discovered the poison. I ‘gave’ Gerald nothing.” She paused. “I don’t mean to sound defensive. I just never get used to dealing with the devil. So: Still want to call that physician at Columbia?”

From his seat on the couch, Logan looked down onto the bustling concourse — and the nearby pub — for a moment. “I suppose. But I’d like some single-malt scotch, served neat, a whole lot more.”