Cockpit (13 page)

Surrounded by the man’s collected works, I began reading. Soon my mind took off, soaring above the jumble of words, expressions and notions, which slowly became abstracted into predictable patterns, just as rough farm fields seen from the air look like a neatly sown quilt of velvet smooth patches. As I read, I dictated brief bursts of thoughts into a tape recorder. Only when I finished scanning everything the writer had produced, did I become aware how flat and unchallenging the topography of his work was.

I gave the tape to my friend, who promptly had it transcribed. Later, he called to thank me for it and said that, if used indiscriminately, the map I supplied could not only discredit the author’s work to date but might cripple his self-confidence and stifle his desire to write. He suggested that if I ever undertook another such survey I should extend my method to detect plagiarism.

When I was stationed in western Europe, I used to peruse the local literary journals and magazines in order to improve my linguistic skills. Every so often, I glanced at an influential weekly that carried a well-known critic’s reviews of contemporary foreign literature in translation. On one occasion, he reviewed a recent translation of an early novel by the writer whose work I had investigated.

The critic cited examples of stylistic repetition that my friend had noted in a scholarly article he published years earlier, but my friend’s article wasn’t mentioned. It struck me how easy it must be for a critic to plagiarize foreign reviews: since a translation was usually published some time after the original-language edition, he could be reasonably certain that the source of his ideas about a book would never be discovered.

To see if my memory could operate simultaneously in two
languages, I selected several of the critic’s recent reviews, then looked up the original criticism of the same works. As I had expected, some of his opinions and turns of phrase were crudely disguised piratings of earlier foreign reviews.

I passed the information on to the chief of my Service section. At first, he was baffled by my devoting so much effort to matters as insignificant and dull as fiction, literary criticism and translation, but once he realized how damning my evidence really was, he complimented me. He was sure that, confronted with the choice of cooperating with the Service or of having his plagiarism made public, the critic would make a sensible decision. The chief suggested we could always use an internal source at the weekly.

About the same time, a fellow Service agent told me about an incident that had occurred in Washington, D.C. Within one month, a senator, a well-known journalist, two college students and five older people were all hospitalized with cases of acute hepatitis. The infected persons varied widely in age, medical history and lifestyle, and the doctors could not agree upon a single source of infection.

Two hundred more cases were reported over the next few days, and, since some of the stricken worked for a sensitive government agency, the Service was called in to investigate. Their check established that, weeks before falling ill, each person, complaining of a nose and throat infection or of a respiratory inflammation, had consulted one of eight well-known physicians who shared office space in the center of the city. The search then zeroed in on the doctors, their staffs, the medications they prescribed and the sanitary conditions of their offices and equipment, but nothing suspicious turned up. Strangely enough, the epidemic died as quickly as it had begun, and the various investigating teams never did uncover the origin of the disease.

A short time before his conversation with me, the agent had been talking to a middle-aged scientist in a bar. Accusing
the medical profession of wholesale negligence, the scientist said that doctors made complex diagnoses based only on blood and urine tests, electrocardiograms and rapid check-ups, and felt free to take telephone calls about unrelated matters while examining a patient. Often, he complained, doctors prescribed drugs to alleviate particular complaints, but did not even attempt to review the patient’s history to find out whether a drug was toxic to the individual’s system or harmful under certain circumstances.

The scientist decided to prove how corrupt and immune to investigation the medical profession had become. Since he was then working in a private laboratory, it was easy for him to obtain minute samples of many hepatitis viruses. He began experimenting with them, and after a few weeks had successfully developed a vicious new strain.

Complaining of a severe pain in his chest, he made appointments with eight well-known Washington doctors. During the brief preliminary interview with each doctor’s nurse, he would give a different false name, address and medical history. In the examining room, the nurse would always weigh him and then leave.

After an examination, the doctor would tell him to get dressed and come to his office. Alone in the examining room, the scientist would withdraw an aerosol vial of the compressed virus from his pocket, unseal it and quickly spray the hepatitis culture on disposable tongue depressors in an open jar and on metal nose and throat applicators. In addition, he sprayed stacked paper cups and the disposable rubber gloves used in rectal examinations.

The scientist had followed this procedure in the offices of all eight doctors. By the time the victims were hospitalized, the infected depressors, cups and gloves had long since been incinerated and the applicators disinfected, so no traceable source of the germs existed. The scientist was incensed at the helplessness of the hepatitis victims in the hands of their negligent doctors and at the failure of the
top medical researchers to uncover the origin of the infection. He claimed his test made a mockery of the sanitary conditions of the entire medical profession.

The agent continued to listen intently to the scientist’s rantings, and then excused himself to go to the men’s room. Once out of sight of the bar, he went straight to the telephone and called his superior for orders on how to proceed. When he returned to the table, the scientist had disappeared.

Years later, inspired by the story, I decided to conduct an experiment of my own. I placed in my raincoat pocket a syringe with a short, fine needle and a half-pint bottle filled with a harmless solution that had no odor or taste but merely turned purple after contact with saliva. I would drive to a shopping mall and wander through the aisles of a supermarket, the small syringe concealed in my hand. By inserting the needle through food cartons, I expelled the substance into cottage cheese, milk, cream, butter, margarine, ice cream and yoghurt. Using one hand, I would refill the syringe in my pocket; no one ever noticed what I was doing. Before leaving a store, like a legitimate shopper I would purchase a few items.

In the first few days, I injected hundreds of containers in more than fifty shopping centers in the city’s suburbs. Toward the end of the week, the newspaper and TV news programs reported a poisoned-food scare that threatened to escalate into an epidemic. Days passed, and the media devoted more time and space to the epidemic. After two weeks, the poison scare became the subject of a TV special on which a Nobel Prize-winning professor of immunology stated that, even though the substance apparently was not fatal, its long-range effects on an unsuspecting consumer had yet to be analyzed.

As the scare continued to build, other reports asserted that food products reached supermarkets already contaminated; countless people asserted that they had been poisoned
by the substance fifteen to twenty minutes after swallowing the contaminated foods. They all agreed it caused shock, nausea and severe hallucinations.

At that point, I altered the composition of the solution so that it turned red after thirty to forty minutes’ exposure to air.

I also started injecting other foods, which until now were considered to be clean. Consumers were horrified to find themselves poisoned by breads, ready-to-eat meats, cold salads, frozen puddings and pastries that turned the tongue and inside of the mouth scarlet half an hour after being opened; many claimed the red poison to be more lethal than the purple one.

The epidemic began to cause mass panic. Several food and packaging manufacturers, as well as supermarket chains and consumer organizations, initiated their own investigations, flooding the market with conflicting reports, accusations and demands for tamper-proof packaging. Meanwhile, several anonymous callers contacted newspapers and television and radio stations, eagerly claiming responsibility for the wave of terrorist acts, which included food poisoning on a massive scale. One of them sent a tape recording to the police in which he threatened to increase the power of the red poison and hit food shops and supermarkets across the country unless the unfair immigration laws were immediately changed. Because of his Middle European accent, the media labeled the substance “Polish poison.”

While I was in the Service, I appropriated a number of eighteenth-century snuff and perfume boxes. They were all made of gold, platinum or silver, and were decorated with enamel and precious stones. The methods by which I acquired them were unusual, and I knew that if I was ever associated with the boxes I would have to leave the Service immediately.

The boxes were very valuable when I first obtained them,
but by the time I disappeared from the Service they had easily doubled in value and made me a very rich man. I realized that my post-Service survival depended on being able to move quickly from one hiding place to the next and on having a source of ready cash to buy my freedom if I were caught. The boxes provided that source.

I began to think of suitable repositories for my boxes. The caches had to be located in a country to which I, with an American passport, would have free passage without police surveillance, a country that did not check too carefully into what objects or how much cash were carried over its borders. That narrowed my potential drop-sites to the few large democracies remaining in the West.

To guarantee the absolute security of the boxes, I planned to store each one separately in the safest hiding place I could devise. Such a place had to be unobtrusive, offering easy access at all times. Above all, it had to be an unlikely storage place for an object of great value.

It occurred to me that the water tanks above many old-fashioned public toilets contained simple, reliable mechanisms that almost never required cleaning or repairs. Toilets in large old hotels, restaurants, railroad stations and subways would become my safe-deposit vaults.

I made several trips abroad, each time carrying a few boxes concealed in my luggage. Where I came across a toilet with a water tank, I securely wrapped one of the boxes in chamois and moisture-proof plastic, then positioned it in the water at the bottom of the tank.

Eventually, I found all the toilets I needed and hid every box away. No map of these toilets has ever been drawn. I have committed every one to memory.

So far, I have never failed to get a box back when I wanted it, but each time I travel to reclaim one, I have to consider two contingencies: that the box has been discovered by a repairman, or that the toilet safe has been torn down.

Recently, I was driving across the Swiss-Italian border on my way to Livigno. As I approached Lago Nuovo, I took my place in the enormous line of cars waiting to enter the one-way, four-mile tunnel. Certain that the heavy traffic meant at least half an hour’s wait, I left my car and walked to the public toilet. It was as clean as I remembered it, since people in line seldom risked losing their place or missing the green entry light by going to the toilet. I closed the bathroom door, stepped on top of the seat, pulled the chain and reached into the remaining cold water of the tank. The package was still in the right rear corner where I had put it years before. I lifted it out, threw away the wet plastic wrapper, put the box wrapped in chamois in my raincoat pocket and returned to my car before the tunnel light turned green.

An hour and a half later, I checked into a hotel in a mountain town and placed a call to an art dealer in Milan. I told him I was putting a rare eighteenth-century box up for sale and referred him to an art catalogue that included a color plate of the object. I also quoted him a non-negotiable price and requested a decision within twenty-four hours. Three hours later he called back to accept the offer, and the following morning he and an expert appeared at my hotel. After thoroughly examining the box, they handed me the money I had asked for.

Just this year I decided to put one of my most valuable boxes on the market. Remembering the name of a discreet London dealer, I sent him a letter describing the history of the box’s owners and enclosing a color photograph. I gave no return address and named my final price. A week later I telephoned the dealer, who told me he had been eagerly awaiting my call because a rich American woman was willing to meet the price.

Since I was about to fly to Latin America on a Swiss passport and did not want to go through customs, both the dealer and the client agreed to make the exchange at Kennedy airport. I suggested we all meet in the international
transit lounge to avoid attracting attention. The dealer met my plane and escorted me to the lounge, which to my surprise had been cordoned off from the public at his request. The woman was waiting with an important museum curator, who was armed with various instruments, chemicals and magnifying glasses. The woman’s lawyer and her current husband sat on either side of two suitcases.

After the box had been examined and authenticated, the lawyer locked it in his attache case and the husband handed me the two suitcases. Even though I knew I was not being cheated, I opened both of them. Inside were small plastic bags containing prepared packets of fifty- and one-hundred-dollar bills. I quickly counted the bags, then closed both suitcases.

After the transaction was completed, the woman and her husband invited me to have a drink with them until my flight was ready. Over cocktails, the woman told me she owned a large collection of similar boxes and wanted to know how I had come upon the box she had just bought. I politely referred her to the dealer, claiming he could give her a more complete explanation of the box’s history and said that, because of his political connections, the last owner preferred to remain anonymous. She inquired about other boxes, emphasizing how eager she was to see them all. I told her that, because of the high robbery risk and skyrocketing insurance rates, I kept each of my boxes in a different vault and would never dare show them all at once.