Toad watched him examine everything under the magnifying glass, then helped him spread the contents of the wallet on one end of the table. Driver’s license, credit cards, a library card, a folded Far Side cartoon torn from a newspaper, several hundred American dollars in currency, a receipt from a laundry in Virginia.
Toad perched on the edge of the table. “Agent 007 always had a pocketful of goodies. I’m disappointed in our boy.”
“What should be here and isn’t?”
Toad glanced at the Russian. “What do you mean?”
“Is there anything you would expect to find him carrying around that isn’t here?”
Toad surveyed the little pile, then shook his head. “I can’t think of anything. Except maybe an appointment or memo book with some phone numbers. A bottle of invisible ink, a suicide pill, I don’t know.”
“All his phone numbers are in his head.”
Jake picked up the keys, held them where the Russian could see them, then stuck them in his pocket.
“Let’s go do the car,” he told Blue Suit as he handed back the magnifying glass and hand tools. “We’ll keep the keys and bring them back in a few hours.”
The man nodded and pulled the door open.
Back at Fort Apache one of the keys opened the door to room 402. The room number was right on the key. Jake Grafton turned on the lights. “Go find Spiro Dalworth. I want screwdrivers, pliers, a magnifying glass, a big sharp knife from the kitchen. My pocketknife is too small.”
“Yes, sir.” Toad left.
Jake went into the bathroom and picked up all the toilet articles. He spread them out on a table and examined each of them.
The problem was that he didn’t know what form the binary poison would be in, if it were here at all. A liquid would be the easiest to administer but the hardest to transport. Pills or powder would be easier to carry and almost as efficient. But any water-soluble solid would do, he thought, so even an object like a button or a pencil eraser might be the object he sought.
Now he sat looking at some tablets. A small plastic aspirin bottle with a child-proof lid contained the usual small white pills. He counted them. All of them had the word aspirin impressed into the surface. On one side. No, wait a minute. Some had the word on both sides. Huh! He separated the pills into two piles. Eight one-side-only and six both-sides, fourteen tablets total.
He put them back into the bottle and slipped the bottle into his pocket.
When Toad and Lieutenant Dalworth arrived, he put them to searching. “I want to see any pills or powder or liquid you can find. Anything that might form a hidden container. Look carefully.”
Dalworth looked puzzled, but he asked no questions.
An hour later they decided that everything had been examined by all three of them.
“Mr. Dalworth, thank you for your help. We’ll sort of straighten everything out and lock the door when we leave. Of course, I’ll appreciate it if you would keep this little adventure to yourself.”
Dalworth’s eyes went to Toad, then back to Jake. “I don’t suppose this would be a good place to ask questions.”
“You’re very perceptive, Spiro,” Toad said.
When the door closed behind him and Toad had checked to make sure that Mr. Dalworth didn’t have his ear against it, Jake removed the aspirin bottle from his pocket and spread out the tablets on the desk. “Take a look at these, Toad.”
Tarkington used the magnifying glass. “Well, they look like aspirin, but I dunno.”
“I have some aspirin on the bathroom sink in my room. Will you get them, please.”
They filled a tumbler with water and dropped one of Jake’s aspirin in it. In twenty seconds the tablet had dissolved to a mound of white powder. After thirty seconds had passed they swirled it and the powder covered the bottom of the glass. After a minute it was still there.
Now Jake took one of the tablets with the double-sided label and dropped it into a fresh glass of water. It too dissolved rapidly, but without leaving the powder residue. The entire tablet went into solution.
“Thank God for the scientific method,” Toad muttered. “When I was a kid I got a microscope one year for Christmas.”
Jake saved six tablets from his bottle and dumped the rest down the toilet. Those six he put in Herb Tenney’s bottle. Herb’s five remaining pills went into Jake’s bottle.
As they folded clothes and replaced them in the suitcase and dresser, Toad said, “He’s going to know someone was in here.”
“I suspect so.”
“Dalworth may blab.”
“He might.”
“You sure you got this figured out, CAG?”
“No.”
Toad touched Jake’s arm. “You’re betting both our lives, you know.”
Jake just looked at him. “I’m aware of that,” he said finally. “If you have any ideas I’m always open to suggestions.”
Toad went back to straightening the closet. After a moment he said, “I suggest we shoot friend Tenney and find a hole to stuff him and his aspirin bottle into.”
When Jake didn’t respond, Toad added in a tight little voice, “Of course you have carefully calculated all the possible reasons why there were two less of those pills marked on both sides than there were of the other kind.” His voice was sarcastic. “No doubt you’ve weighed it, pondered on it, considered every possible aspect and come to some intricate, subtle conclusion that a mere junior officer mortal like me couldn’t possibly appreciate.”
“What do you want me to say?” Jake replied patiently. “That Herb probably took two for a toothache? We both know he probably fed them to us. Us and half the people in this embassy.”
“We really oughta take this guy out into the forest and make him dig his own hole. I kid you not.”
“KGB Headquarters must have really gotten to you.”
“Yes, sir. It sure as hell did. I admit it. I about vomited all over that fucking general’s desk.”
“Hurry up. Let’s get this done. We have to get back for the afternoon briefing.”
“How do you know,” Toad asked, “that those are all the binary pills Herb has access to?”
“I don’t.”
“He could have some in his desk in the CIA office, he could have some stashed in any hidey-hole he thought handy. He can just ask Langley for more.”
“What a deep thinker you are! Let’s hope he doesn’t find out we took a few.”
“What if he runs short? What if he’s embarked on a major urban renewal project?”
“You ask too many questions.”
“You and I are going to end up dead,” Toad said sourly.
“Sooner or later,” Grafton replied. What was there to say? Herb and his colleagues must have killed General Brown so that he wouldn’t make waves. The job was only half done as long as Jake and Toad were wandering around upright.
“The whole fucking CIA can go to fucking hell for all I care,” Tarkington said crossly. When he got no reply, he muttered something to himself that Grafton didn’t catch.
8
Butyrskaya Prison looked like something from a Kafka nightmare, Jack Yocke decided, and jotted the thought on a blank page of his notebook as he sat in the waiting room.