Due Preparations for the Plague (23 page)

“If I lost him, Papa,” my daughter said, “I’d want to die.”

No one dies for love, I assured her, and I did not add—or not, at least, for her ears—but one
can
die from knowing too much and people do die from presuming to think that they can’t be broken or bought. I promised myself as I reached for a napkin and brushed the scotch and sodden confetti from my suit:
You will come to regret this
,
Mr. Charron. You will pay for this.

I put him down for surveillance, code name Tocade.

He may already work for them
, I wrote.
Watch him closely
.

I also gave all the relevant information to Sirocco.
Know him?
I asked.
Does he work for your crowd?

But Sirocco, as I realized far too late, answered all questions both ways, and he followed Tocade more assiduously than I could have imagined.

The organo-phosphate nerve agents were developed as a more or less accidental offshoot of insecticide research, and our arsenal of superior chemical weaponry has an important deterrent impact. The fear factor alone is a potent negotiating tool. Classical symptoms of nerve agent poisoning are as follows: difficulty in breathing, drooling and excessive sweating, violent vomiting, involuntary defecation and urination, twitching, jerking, staggering, cramps, headache, disorientation, dimness of vision, convulsions, and finally paralysis and death from asphyxiation, generally within minutes after inhalation.

The aim of this lecture on Chemical Warfare is not to outline drills and procedures for survival in a CW environment, nor to rehearse strategies for deployment of such agents, all of which will be dealt with later, but rather to familiarize you with the chemical and physical processes involved in toxicity, detection, and decontamination.

1. 1. Vapor Pressure.
   The more volatile a liquid, the more readily will molecules move from the liquid to the gaseous phase, at which point they can enter the body by inhalation and can attack the eyes. Hence, the more volatile a liquid, the more likely a lethal dose can be achieved. The measure of volatility is the vapor pressure, which, for any given substance, increases with temperature.
   
2. 2. Toxicity.
   The measure of toxicity expresses the interrelationship of the concentration of vapor with time (i.e., with the duration of exposure to the nerve agent). The same effect can be achieved by short exposure to high concentrations as by longer exposure to lower concentrations.
   
3. 3. Physiological Action.
   Agents can be classified by the different effects they achieve: choking agents, nerve agents, blood agents, blister agents, vomiting agents, and tear agents. Agents with relatively mild effects (e.g., blistering, vomiting, temporary blinding) can be used for crowd control and riot control. Agents with stronger effects (incapacitating, lethal) can be deployed in search-and-destroy operations or to render occupied territory safe.
   

1. 1. Toxicity.
   Agents should be as toxic as required to achieve the desired effect.
   
2. 2. Stability.
   Agents must be stable or capable of being stabilized between the time of production and use.
   
3. 3. Precursors.
   Agents must be able to be produced from raw materials readily available in the theater of operations, or from precursors (e.g.: the innovative use by the US since 1987 of the sarin artillery projectile, in which two precursors of sarin, both nontoxic, are stored in separate canisters and can be transported separately and safely. At the site of operations, when both canisters are inserted into the projectile and fired, the chemicals mix to form the deadly and volatile sarin).
   
4. 4. Dissemination.
   Agents must be able to be weaponized for dissemination in concentrations capable of producing the effects desired (e.g., by loading into projectiles or missile warheads for dispersal as vapor cloud, or by spraying from crop dusters).
   
5. 5. Producibility.
   If possible, agents should be able to be produced quickly in existing commercial plants (e.g., fertilizer factories).
   
6. 6. Corrosiveness.
   Agents should not be corrosive to their storage containers (barrels, shells, missile projectiles).
   
7. 7. Action Against Protective Systems.
   If possible, agents should be capable of minimizing the effectiveness of protective equipment worn by the target population.
   

The nervous system coordinates all the functions of the human body. Impulses from the brain are conveyed through the spine and major ganglia (central nervous system) to a network of sensory and activator nerves (peripheral nervous system).

The brain initiates commands via the
sympathetic nerve chain
, which produces epinephrine (adrenaline), and this in turn initiates enzyme action and muscle/tissue movement. The
parasympathetic
nerves work in tandem with the
sympathetic
nerves in a complex machinery of checks and balances. Thus the sympathetic nervous system will accelerate heartbeat when the brain senses danger, and the parasympathetic nervous system will slow it down again when the brain senses that the threat has passed and that increased blood flow is no longer required.

Nerve cells are not directly connected with one another, but they meet at junction points called
synapses
, the body’s sparkplugs, so to speak, which function as neurotransmitters. Electrochemical impulses leap back and forth from cell to cell.

What nerve agents do, to put it succinctly, is sabotage the neurotransmitter system. The body’s infrastructure is destroyed. All messages from brain to body are scrambled.

To put it even more bluntly: the functioning of your body is fucked up.

All codes become unreadable at this point, and meaning vaporizes, and even the meaning of questions grows faint, like a radio signal at the edge of being lost, or like a battery emitting the weak sonic cries that foretell its extinction, and
what are we
…?
what is it that we
…?
we hold which truths to be self-evident
…?

… and what is this mechanism of which we are part, and which we have enshrined in National Security, as
most likely to effect our safety and happiness
?

To Carthage then we come …

… because all histories of conflict and of espionage return to Carthage. They return to the terrible Roman siege of the ancient city and its most dreadful destruction in 146 BC, over which even the conquering general Scipio wept. He wept for the butchered babies and the elderly hurled into the flames. He turned faint at the slaughter and leaned against his chariot in a swoon and lost the thread of his purpose, so the bards report. He pondered the fall of cities and of empires, he recalled the lamentations of the poets on the fate of Troy and on the demise of the Assyrian and Medean and Persian empires, and the words that Homer gave to Hector came as a cry of anguish from his lips:
The day shall come in which our sacred Troy, and Priam, and the people over whom spear-bearing Priam rules, shall perish all
, and he could not hold back the sobbing that came in gusts from his lips.

And Polybius, beside him, was astonished.
We have won a magnificent victory, O mighty Scipio
, he cried.
We have razed the city of the Barbarian, the city of Hannibal, he who has so ferociously tormented and mocked Eternal Rome these many years. What ails thee? What can these strange words mean? This is a great and glorious moment, Scipio Victor.

And Scipio seized Polybius by the hand.
This is supposed to be a great and glorious moment, Polybius; and yet I am heavy with foreboding that someday the same fate will befall my own country, my own beloved city of Rome.

And so I too, Salamander—like Scipio—came by degrees to Carthage, burning, burning, burning … and to the true intentions of Sirocco, and to the knowledge of our own stockpiles of nerve agents where the codes became scrambled and all the meanings grew faint, you see, and things became more and more difficult to …

and what are we …?

and what is it that we defend at any cost …?

and which truths, exactly, do we hold to be …?

and night after night from the middle of the furnace of Carthage and of Flight 64, Scipio turns to me and he cries: O Salamander, how do we tell a glorious victory from horror?

And he weeps, Dr. Reuben. He weeps.

There are nights when Salamander’s need for Anna overwhelms us. I twitch inside the cage of him, I drink scotch to lull his nerves, but all that these delaying tactics achieve is an explosive moment when I am driven to explain in a rush to my wife that I have to meet someone, an urgent matter, a matter pertaining to national security (and this is true; oh, this is absolutely true), but I am not at liberty to say where. My breathing will be ragged. Elizabeth has already schooled herself to show neither sorrow nor surprise—I note this with helpless regret; it is one more thing for which atonement must be made—but she turns on me her large watchful eyes and observes me gravely and simply nods.

“Don’t wait up,” I say gruffly, to mask his panic (Salamander’s panic), and as soon as we have turned the corner, he will call Anna on my cell phone from the car, but the lovely Anna, dark lady, delights in cruelty. She has other clients, she will say. Aziz. Saleem. She uses these names to seduce and to alarm, perhaps she invents them, but it is true, of course, that she is a desirable taker-in and giver-out of information. (What does she pass on about Salamander? Whom does she tell?) I cannot see you for another two hours, she may say. Or she may say three, and in the second before he hears the imperious click and the high-pitched burr of disengagement, Salamander considers whether it might be possible to explain the delicate equilibrium involved, whether this would move her, whether the imminent loss of a regular source of income would matter to her, because it is only by paying in installments that he can keep the larger penalty at bay. He dials her number again and speaks so rapidly that he is scarcely intelligible. If you could understand, Anna, how critical, he says. In three hours, I might not even be still alive—but she hangs up and takes her phone off the hook, and so for two hours, or three, we are in torment and at terrible risk.

Sometimes we handle this fear with arcane gambling rituals. We park on a dark street east of the Capitol, on the border between safety and danger, and close our eyes and count: ten, twenty, one hundred. The rules vary. When we open our eyes, if the first car we see is a white one, it means our own people will get to us before anyone else; if a black car passes, Sirocco’s suicide zealots will; if the car is colored, we will never know who or how. Suddenness. That is what we pray for; and the odds are with us there.

It could come from anywhere, from anyone, any day now, or any night. It could come from Anna herself. Salamander thinks that
he
has found
her
, but it could be the other way around.

If the first car that appears before our eyes is a stretch limousine or a hearse, Salamander says to the face in the rearview mirror:
So. It will be you.

And the face accuses back:
You are the one who’s cracking up, Salamander. It will be you, and no one will weep for your going, least of all me.

Mostly we handle the fear by driving. We drive around the labyrinth of the city and cross its bridges, moving like a falling arrow toward Arlington Cemetery which waits for us like a temptation. So far, we have been able to resist this exit because there are things we must attend to first, there are reparations (pathetic and inadequate though they may be) that must be made to Isabella and to Lowell, to Françoise, to Elizabeth, and to the survivors of Flight 64, and so we turn resolutely south and then swing east and circle the Pentagon and drive back across the Potomac and north and east into the dangerous sections of potholed roads and broken streetlights, the car doors locked because at every red light someone might try the door handle, might smash a window, might push a gun into our face. This fear—specific and manageable—eases our anguish slightly, eases Salamander’s frenzy, but it is Anna he needs. When she stands over him in black leather and chains, when she cracks her whip, he tastes, very briefly, absolution.

Of course we are followed. We know we are followed. We understand the risk we have become.

For God’s sake, let us sit upon the ground

And tell sad stories of the death of kings:

How some have been deposed, some slain in war, Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed:

Some poisoned by their wives, some sleeping killed;

All murdered …

Once, in the presence of King Fahd, Salamander had to fight back an almost overpowering urge to recite those lines. He could feel them bubbling up in his throat because the king was telling a raucous sexual joke that involved faithless queens and poisons and bloody rites of accession to certain thrones. Salamander was not alone in the royal presence, needless to say. He was posing as a minor functionary, there to hear and not to be heard, but the Royal House of Saud has a superstitious fear of the murder of kings. They practice various forms of sympathetic magic to forestall fate—public floggings, amputations—but they never feel safe.

“Next to the Jews,” Sirocco told Salamander, “King Fahd hates the Palestinians most. I have this direct from his closest advisors.”

“And you?” Salamander asked. “Do you hate the Palestinians too?”

“Me?” Sirocco laughed in disdain. “The Jews, the Palestinians, what do I care? I am for myself. Enlightened self-interest, I would say. Those are my politics.”

Sirocco accepts large sums of money from assorted close advisors to those in power—I am speaking of power in assorted countries and of assorted political stripes—advisors who entrust him with certain offices and certain tasks. Sirocco demands, in return for this knowledge, even larger sums of money from us.

“King Fahd hates the Palestinians,” Sirocco said, “and he fears them, because what they’ve got is contagious. What they’ve got is a taste for democracy, for your decadent Western ways”—here Sirocco permitted himself an ironic smile—“and he’s afraid the plebs of his kingdom will catch it and then he’s done for.” He made a slitting motion with his index finger against his throat. “The House of Saud is a pack of cards waiting to collapse, and everyone knows it except the three thousand princes of the House of Saud.”

“And you?” Salamander needled. “How will you be affected? You’re a Saudi yourself.”

“Am I?” Sirocco asked. “Possibly. Not every Saudi is in love with the House of Saud.” Then he leaned close and whispered in Salamander’s ear: “Of course the three thousand princes also know they are doomed, deep down, but they prefer opulent denial, the king and Crown Prince Abdullah most of all. Which is why they keep a very active finger in the Palestinian pie and why they add Wahhabi pepper once a week.”

Salamander has amassed thick dossiers on the Wahhabis, the most extreme of Islamic sects, the most rigidly fundamentalist of all. The members of the Royal House of Saud are Wahhabis, though many exemptions to the stringent Wahhabi code, many behavioral exemptions, and many dispensations, apparently are made for royal blood.

As Sirocco spoke, he let the tip of his index finger draw a line from Salamander’s earlobe to his neck. It was like a caress, and a shiver walked across Salamander’s grave. “But you can’t do a thing with this knowledge, except pay me to exploit it, can you?” Sirocco murmured. He was so close that their cheeks were touching, and he smiled, and for a stunned and disconcerting moment Salamander thought Sirocco was going to kiss him on the lips. “Oil runs the world, and oil most certainly runs Washington, and the Royal House of Saud runs oil,” Sirocco murmured. His Oxford cadence was always more marked when he talked to Americans. He liked to look down from a high place. He liked to mock. “So, QED, the House of Saud runs Washington.” Sirocco laughed softly. “It is a constant source of amusement to me to see how much Washington can be made to take without triggering so much as an official reprimand.” And then, bizarrely, he did kiss Salamander, but on the cheek. “So no one in Washington wants to hear your sad stories, do they? No one wants to listen to your inside information predicting the death of kings unless the Saudis do this, or do that. Your people don’t want to know about
unless
.”

Well before Salamander’s time, before I was shackled to him, back when I was at Yale, we did
Richard II
and I played Bushy, a minor role, but one that now seems to me curiously prophetic, as though our fate is hard-wired into us and the body senses it from the start. Someone just walked over my grave, we used to say, a child’s joke to ward off dread when an involuntary shudder passed through us. But I remember, night after night, how I shivered when the guards dragged me onstage with Green, and Bolingbroke thundered:
Bushy and Green, I will not vex your souls, since presently your souls must part your bodies
… though perhaps it was a different sort of prescience since the classmate who played Bolingbroke, son of a Long Island banker, moved on to wealth and embezzlement and jail, and now that I think about it, there was something about him, that faint aura of the frat-boy sociopath, that air of well-bred ruthlessness, that reminds me of Sirocco. And I remember that night after night, when Bushy’s lines would speak me:
More welcome is the stroke of death to me, than Bolingbroke to England. Lords farewell
, I would feel unaccountably maudlin, tears would well up in my eyes (the New Haven reviewer mentioned this favorably), because there was something in Bushy that cleaved stubbornly to the old order—the oath of loyalty, the idea of an anointed king, fealty to Richard—when he could easily have jumped ship and sailed smoothly into
Henry IV
, Part I, but he would not do it, he could not, he was a true believer, and more welcome was the stroke of death to Bushy …

Like Richard, he knew it was on its way.

It is on its way. We can feel it coming the way you can feel winter coming.

It grows like a tumor, this certainty of the end barreling toward us, and I find myself wondering if murder always telegraphs its coming to the nerve systems far in advance of its arrival. I don’t think this is too fanciful. The Cree, for example, know when a major storm is coming many days before the meteorologists know. Native Americans, Dr. Reuben, are an esoteric security specialty of mine, and my expertise dates from those earlier times of unrest—how tranquil they seem, how innocent—the days of indigenous sit-ins and peaceful protests, so harmless in retrospect, though at the time we certainly kept our eye on the rise of the radical AIM. What I learned from those tribal elders and young rebel warriors was this: that there are ways of knowing that can fly in low, beneath the radar of rationality. I have a healthy respect for intuition.

You think I’m paranoid, of course, but then you have no idea, not the slightest idea, of how much Salamander knew about you before I called you, and if I were to tell you how much he knew, you would not sleep. A history could be written, should be written, of those who don’t sleep. Insomniacs International: a roster of the late and the great and the prescient. Napoleon would get the first chapter. He could not sleep, or would not sleep, or hardly ever, but when he did, he needed only four hours a night, no more, so the history books reveal, implying glandular dysfunction of some sort. I know better. I’m convinced he didn’t dare to stop watching. I’m convinced he
knew
. Even when he was a schoolchild in France, an uncouth Corsican, an outcast with his hick accent and his wretched French, even then, he knew that the inevitable fate of the outsider was lodged in the marrow of his bones. In every battlefield triumph, under the pungent smell of cannon smoke and singed horseflesh, he could smell St. Helena on its way.
My thoughts dwell on death
, he wrote in his diary when he was twelve years old—he was a desolate child in the Military Academy in Brienne—
no doubt because I see no place for myself in this world
.

And yet
there
was a man who dared his own fate and grabbed it by the lapels and stared it full in the face and defied it.

And how did he (both of him: the emperor and the one who always knew he was doomed) how did he try to keep an ignominious death at bay?

By recourse to the same old fool’s gold we all so stupidly bank on. Foreknowledge. Spies. Informers. He had an intelligence system to die for, the most intricate ever evolved by a ruling clique. Fouché, the head of his secret police, used to boast in the taverns that no one could speak two words without Napoleon hearing, not at table, not in bed, not in salon or brothel, not in my lady’s chamber nor in the arms of a man’s own wife. If you break gas in your privy, Fouché said, one of my men will be stationed downwind and will smell it.

And that’s what undid Napoleon in the end: his own intelligence network and the distrust it bred.

Here’s a conundrum: the better you train a secret agent, the less he will trust his peers; hence, as a logical consequence, the less able he is to work in tandem with anyone else, and the more likely he is—unintentionally—to sabotage the entire intricate project by the desperate need to know all.

And then there’s this: knowing too much can get you killed.

I could try to paint the scene when I understood all this at a visceral level, Dr. Reuben. I could describe the dinner where the moment of unraveling began. Salamander and Sirocco were to meet in a restaurant in Paris, and this was to signal
go
for Operation Black Death. What a triumph Black Death was going to be. That’s what we thought. The planning, the undercover work, the funding, there’s nothing I can fault. It was going to be a major Intelligence coup. I expected to make a dozen arrests, key figures, Sirocco had smoked them all out, we’d paid him a fortune, we’d given him enough arms and nerve gas to kill half the Soviets in Afghanistan (because he was a mercenary, basically; he had a finger in plenty of pies), and then, on the very eve of the operation, on my way to the restaurant, I received news from my own intelligence network, which was every bit as fine as Napoleon’s, and the message was this:
Double-cross
.
Abort Black Death.

I had my own man, under cover, on Sirocco’s team, and he was the one who sent word. He paid a high price. The code name of my undercover man was Khalid. Before I even got to the restaurant, a second message reached me. Khalid’s throat had been cut.