"Botulism toxin is similarly lethal. It's a neurotoxin; it blocks nerve transmissions, and it causes death by asphyxia, also fairly rapidly, but it's readily detectable in the blood during a post-, and kind of hard to explain away. It's available fairly readily around the world, but in microgram doses, because of its use in cosmetic surgery."
"Docs shoot women in the face with that, don't they?"
"Only the dumb ones," Pasternak replied. "It takes wrinkles away, sure, but since it kills the nerves in the face, it also takes away your ability to smile much. That's not my field, exactly. There are a lot of toxic and lethal chemicals. It's the combination of rapid action and difficult detectability that made this a problem. Another quick way to kill someone is to use a small knife at the back of the skull, where the spinal cord enters the base of the brain. The trick is getting right behind your victim and then hitting a fairly small target with the knife, and not having the knife jam between the vertebrae — at that range, why not a silenced.22 pistol? It's fast enough, but it leaves something behind. This method can easily be misdiagnosed as a heart attack. It's just about perfect," the physician concluded, in a voice sufficiently cold as to sprinkle snow on the carpet.
"Richard," Hendley said, "you have earned your fee on this one."
The professor of anesthesiology stood, checking his watch. "No fee, Senator. This one's for my little brother. Let me know if you need me for anything else. I have a train to catch back to New York."
"Jesus," Tom Davis said, after he left. "I always knew docs had to have evil thoughts."
Hendley picked up a package on his desk. There were a total of ten "pens" in it, with computer-printed instructions for this use, a plastic bag full of gas capsules, and twenty large vials of succinylcholine, plus a bunch of throwaway syringes. "He and his brother must have been pretty close."
"Know him?" Davis asked.
"Yeah, I did. Good guy, wife and three kids. Name was Bernard, Harvard Business School graduate, smart guy, very astute trader. Worked on the ninety-seventh floor of Tower One. Left a lot of money behind — anyway, his family's well taken care of. That's something."
"Rich is a nice guy to have on our side," Davis thought aloud, suppressing the shiver that came along with the opinion.
"That he is," Gerry agreed.
The drive ought to have been pleasant. The weather was fair and clear, the road not at all crowded and mostly straight northeast. But it was not pleasant. Mustafa kept getting "How far now?" and "Are we there yet?" from Rafi and Zuhayr in the backseat, to the point that more than once he considered pulling the car over and strangling them. Maybe it was hard sitting in the backseat, but he had to drive this Goddamned car!!! Tension. He was feeling it, and they probably were, too, and so he took a deep breath and commanded himself to be calm. The end of their journey was hardly four hours away, and what was that compared to their transcontinental trek? Certainly it was farther than the Holy Prophet ever walked or rode from Mecca to Medina and back — but he stopped that thought at once. He had no standing to compare himself with Mohammed, did he? No, you do not. One thing he was sure of. On getting to his destination, he was going to bathe and sleep just as long as he could. Four hours to rest was what he kept saying to himself, as Abdullah slept in the right-front seat.
The Campus had its own cafeteria, whose food was catered from a variety of outside sources. Today it was from a Baltimore deli called Atman's whose corned beef was pretty good, if not quite New York class — saying that might result in a fistfight, he thought, as he picked up a corned beef on a kaiser roll. What to drink? If he was having a New York lunch, then cream soda, but Utz, the local potato chips, of course, because they'd even had them in the White House — at his father's insistence. They probably had something from Boston there now. It was not exactly a renowned restaurant town, but every city has at least one good eatery, even Washington, D.C.
Tony Wills, his normal luncheon mate, was nowhere to be seen. So, he looked around and spotted Dave Cunningham, not surprisingly eating alone. Jack headed that way.
"Hey, Dave, mind if I sit down?" he asked.
"Take a seat," Cunningham said, cordially enough.
"How's the numbers business?"
"Exciting," was the implausible reply. Then he elaborated. "You know, the access we have into those European banks is amazing. If the Department of Justice had this sort of access, they'd really clean up — except you can't introduce this kind of evidence into a court of law."
"Yeah, Dave, the Constitution can really be a drag. And all those damned civil-rights laws."
Cunningham nearly choked on his egg salad on white. "Don't you start. The FBI runs a lot of operations that are a little shady — usually because some informant lays stuff on us, maybe because somebody asked, or maybe not, and they spin that off — but within the rules of criminal procedure. Usually it's part of a plea bargain. There are not enough crooked lawyers to handle all of their needs. The Mafia guys, I mean."
"I know Pat Martin. Dad thinks a lot of him."
"He's honest and very, very smart. He really ought to be a judge. That's where honest lawyers belong."
"Doesn't pay very much." Jack's official salary at The Campus was well above anything any federal employee made. Not bad for entry level.
"That is a problem, but—"
"But there's nothing all that admirable about poverty, my dad says. He toyed with the idea of zeroing out salaries for elected officials so that they'd have to know what real work was, but he eventually decided that it would make them even more susceptible to bribery."
The accountant picked up on that: "You know, Jack, it's amazing how little you need to bribe a member of Congress. Makes the bribes hard to identify," the CPA groused. "Like being down in the weeds for an aircraft."
"What about our terrorist friends?"
"Some of them like a comfortable life. A lot of them come from moneyed families, and they like their luxuries."
"Like Sali."
Dave nodded. "He has expensive tastes. His car costs a lot of money. Very impractical. The mileage it gets must be awful, especially in a city like London. The gas prices over there are pretty steep."
"But mainly he takes cabs."
"He can afford it. It probably makes sense. Parking a car in the financial district must be costly, too, and the cabs in London are good." He looked up. "You know that. You've been to London a lot."
"Some," Jack agreed. "Nice city, nice people." He didn't have to add that a protective detail of Secret Service agents and local cops didn't hurt much. "Any further thoughts on our friend Sali?"
"I need to go over the data more closely, but like I said, he sure acts like a player. If he was a New York Mafia subject, I'd figure him for an apprentice consiglieri."
Jack nearly gagged on his cream soda. "That high up?"
"Golden Rule, Jack. He who has the gold makes the rules. Sali has access to a ton of money. His family's richer than you appreciate. We're talking four or five billion dollars here."
"That much?" Ryan was surprised.
"Take another look at the money accounts he's learning to manage. He hasn't played with as much as fifteen percent of it. His father probably limits what he's allowed to do. He's in the capital-preservation business, remember. The guy who owns the money, his father, won't hand him the whole pile to play with, regardless of his educational background. In the money business, it's what you learn after you hang your degrees on the wall that really matters. The boy shows promise, but he's still following his zipper everywhere he goes. That's not an unusual thing for a rich young kid, but if you have a few gigabucks in your wallet, you want to keep your boy on a leash. Besides, what he appears to be funding — well, what we suspect he's funding — isn't really capital-intensive. You spotted some trades on the margins. That was pretty smart. Did you notice that when he flies home to Saudi, he charters a G-V?"