`Tell me about how she was killed." He leaned forward as a waitress, plump and smiling, cleared their used plates and set down dishes of succulent lamb chops and roast those delicious potato cakes flavored with onion and cheese together with tomatoes stuffed with ground lamb's liver, mixed with herbs and spices.
Initially, Fredericka had asked Bond to order for both of them. `I never know what I want." She had looked up at him, under flirting eyelids. Now she nodded and smiled as she began to serve him, and the waitress brought the Beaujolais, which Bond sipped, nodding his approval.
Only when they had started to eat, did Fredericka continue to talk.
`The method? I have the entire report with me." Her eyes flicked in the direction of her shoulder bag which she kept near to her all the time, constantly allowing a hand to drift towards it, touching the leather as though anxious to reassure herself that it was there. `The weapon was undoubtedly a high-powered air rifle or pistol.
Maybe one of the type that uses a CO2 c,barge.
You know about the capsule in her neck?
Bond nodded. `What was in it?" She swallowed a piece of lamb, raising her eyes to heaven, signing that the meat was incredibly good. Even in the way she ate, Fredericka gave the impression of being a very sensuous woman. She was also fond of the tactile senses, reaching over to touch the back of Bond's hand with her fingertips, tracing her fingers across her own breast, then giving a short sigh. `We've been unusually lucky.
Our own people might've gone on looking for weeks. It just so happens that the cops in Berne are hosting three Japanese forensic specialists. They're over here for a year, examining European methods, and advising on some of their techniques. It was an off-the-cuff thing. They thought one of these men might be interested.
Unpronounceable name, but he spotted a couple of things, pointed them out, suggested the tests. In a word, the capsule contained tetrodoxin." `As in blowfish?" `You've got it. They don't come more exotic than that.
`Remind me." So, as they ate, Fredericka talked, at first almost casually, about tetrodoxin.
Tetrodoxin was the poison of choice of the ancient Japanese shadow warriors, the followers of Ninjitsu, the Ninjas. They would use it to anoint the now familiar shuriken throwing stars and for centuries one of the most secret arts of Ninjitsu was the method for preparing the deadly nerve poison.
During World War Two one of the legends of those who fought in the jungle, was the story of the silent night-killers who moved, hooded, like cats through dense foliage, reaching out to touch sentries, or sleeping soldiers, who would die of `snakebite'. Only later did military doctors realize the bite had been delivered from a piece of sharpened bamboo dipped into tetrodoxin.
The poison comes from the reproductive sac of a species of blowfish called the tetrodontidae. This fish is a native to the coastal waters of Japan and Hawaii, and, as it is a pretty creature, it can often be seen gracing tropical aquariums, in homes as well as zoos.
Tetrodoxin is found in the female fish, and then usually only in the mating season February.
At this time, the female egg sac is swollen with around two to three liquid grams of tetrodoxin, which is enough to poison three to four hundred humans. To retrieve the sac from the fish without breaking it, necessitates alarming the fish so that it does its best aggressive trick, inflating itself to two or three times its normal size. At that moment you slit the side of the creature with a razor-sharp knife and remove the sac intact.
In recent years many schools of the Japanese culinary art now openly taught the same ancient secret for removing the poison, for removing it is necessary to make a particular delicacy harmless.
Skilled chefs would do this trick, for the tetrodontidae is the main ingredient in the gourmet dish Fugu. Yet, even now, some are not completely adept at removing the sac, and each year there are still a number of deaths in Japan from eating Fugu which has been improperly prepared.
`It's a horrible way to die." She shuddered, her skin suddenly pale at the thought. `Complete paralysis and respiratory failure in twenty seconds, the Japanese doctor says." `Fast, though." Bond sipped his wine, holding a little in his mouth before swallowing, savouring the flavour. `Over before you know it. He mention that they still use it for suicide?" She shook her head: a cross between saying no and driving the spectre of death by this kind of poison from her brain.
`I read somewhere that people who want out can buy the stuff from chefs. They get drunk then prick themselves with a needle soaked in the wretched venom." `The cops've found the place where the sniper holed up." She was distancing herself from the effect, returning to the first cause. `We can go up there tomorrow. Whoever it was made a comfortable hide for himself, slightly higher up the mountain.
`Must've been pretty sure of his target, unless our His March was chosen at random." `That's exactly what the cops said. In fact it's what they're afraid of, a killer taking pot shots at people with poison darts or capsules. Not the happiest of thoughts, a random poisoner on the loose." `Which is easier to deal with? The random killer, or some terrorist organization intent on revenge, or headlines?" `One's as bad as the other, really. Scares the hell out of me." `And you don't look as if you scare easily." `I don't?" `You're a professional, so..
`Don't you get scared, James? Don't all of us?" `Of course I do, but only when the situation warrants it. We're only going through the motions, investigating a murder. We're working like a couple of homicide detectives, there's no danger in that." She cocked an eyebrow, and swallowed another piece of lamb. `That's how you think of it?" `Naturally." `Well, I've seen the body, read the evidence. It's like somebody being bitten by a deadly snake, and the snake hasn't yet been caught." `Yes, but...
`But nothing, James. Didn't they tell you to move carefully, to watch your back?" Her face was still pale, and there was a new, concerned, haunted look in her eyes.
`My Chief mentioned it, yes, but only in the context of the poor dead His March's employers." `Well, perhaps he was playing it down. My boss spelled it out to me. Anyone investigating the death is at risk.