He showed no emotion at all. ‘And how would they do this? And how would it help them?’
‘Suppose,’ I said, ‘that they killed, for instance, Lord Farringford. Suppose they then said, if such and such a demand of ours is not met, a member of the French riding team will die, and a member of the Germans, and a member of the Americans. Or all the American team. Suppose they moved terrorism to a different level, where the hostages had no chance at all. No one would know who the hostages were until they were dead, and the supply of potential hostages would be the number of people at the Games.’
He briefly thought it over and was not convinced.
‘The theory is possible,’ he said. ‘But there is no suitable weapon. The murderers would quickly be caught.’
‘Their weapon is a liquid,’ I said. ‘A spoonful per person would be enough. It doesn’t have to be drunk. It is deadly if it’s just poured on the skin. And that’s what makes the equestrian part of the Games so vulnerable, because it is there that the performers and the spectators mingle, most freely.’
A longer pause. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. I took a breath to go on, but he interrupted.
‘Such liquids are extremely top secret and are kept in places of the utmost security,’ he said. ‘Are your supposed terrorists going to break into highly-guarded laboratories to steal it?’ The urbanity in his voice said that he thought this unlikely.
I pulled out of my pocket a copy I had made of the formula, and handed it to him.
‘That liquid is neither top secret nor difficult to obtain,’ I said. ‘And it kills within ninety seconds. One of my supposed terrorists could tip a spoonful on to your bare hand without you thinking anything of it, and he’d be lost in the crowd before you could say you felt ill.’
He unfolded the paper with the slightest of frowns, and read the list of words.
‘What is it?’ he said. ‘I am no chemist.’
‘Etorphine,’ I said. ‘That, I think, is a morphine derivative. Etorphine, acepromazine and chlorocresol, those first three ingredients, would be an anaesthetic. I am absolutely certain, though I haven’t been able to check it in Moscow, as I could at home, that they make up a particularly useful anaesthetic for use on animals.’
‘Anaesthetic?’ he said dubiously.
‘It anaesthetises horses and farm animals.’ I said. ‘But it is fatal for humans, in the tiniest amounts.’
‘Why should anyone wish to use such a dangerous anaesthetic?’ he said.
‘Because it is the best for the animals.’ I said. ‘I’ve seen it used twice. Once on one of my horses, and once on a bull. Both animals recovered quickly, with none of the complications we used to get.’
‘You’ve seen it...’
‘Yes. And each time, the vet prepared a syringe of a neutralising agent for use on himself, if he should be so unfortunate as to scratch himself with the needle of the syringeful of anaesthetic. He filled the neutralising syringe before he even touched the phial with the anaesthetic, and he wore rubber gloves. He told me that the excellence of the anaesthetic for the animal’s welfare was worth the precautions.’
‘But is this... rare?’
I shook my head. ‘More or less routine.’
‘You said...’ He thought briefly. ‘You said “scratch himself”. Does that mean this mixture would have to enter through a cut... a break in the skin? But you said it would be enough just to pour it...’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Well... most liquids don’t penetrate the skin, and that doesn’t either. Normally all a vet does have to worry about is getting it into him through a cut or a scratch, except that if they do get a drop on them accidentally, even if there’s no cut involved, they sluice it off again with a bucket or so of water.’
‘Did your vet have the water ready also?’
‘He did indeed.’
‘Please go on,’ he said.
‘If you look at the formula again,’ I said, ‘you’ll see that the next ingredient is dimethyl sulphoxide, and I actually do know what that is, because I’ve used it myself countless times on my horses.’
‘Another sort of anaesthetic?’
‘No. One uses it on sprains, bruises, sore shins... on practically everything. It’s a general purpose embrocation.’
‘But...’
‘Well,’ I said. ‘Its chief property is that it’s a liquid which does penetrate the skin. It carries its active ingredients through to the tissues beneath.’
He gave me a grave comprehending stare.
I nodded. ‘So if one mixes the embrocation with the anaesthetic, it will go clean through the skin into the blood stream.’
He took a visibly deep breath, and said, ‘What happens exactly if this mixture invades the body?’
‘Depressed breathing and cardiac arrest,’ I said. ‘Very quick. It looks, like a heart attack.’
He looked pensively down at the paper.
‘What does this last line mean?’ he said. ‘Antagonist naloxone.’
‘An antagonist is a drug which works against another drug.’
‘So naloxone is... an antidote?’
‘I don’t think it’s the stuff they give animals to bring them back to consciousness,’ I said. ‘I think it’s what the vet prepares as a precaution for himself.’
‘Do you mean... you have to give the animal a second injection? The anaesthetic does not simply wear off?’
‘I don’t know if it would in the end,’ I said. ‘But it’s always reversed as soon as possible, as far as I know.’
‘So naloxone is for humans.’
‘Even terrorists wouldn’t handle that stuff without protecting themselves,’ I said. ‘And I think,’ I went on tentatively, ‘that the amount of naloxone needed would depend on the amount of liquid one had absorbed. With animals, you see, the vet uses equal quantities of anaesthetic and reviving agent. And sometimes a further injection of reviver is needed.’
For Malcolm, I thought, it had simply been a matter of quantities. Too much killing liquid: not enough naloxone. His bad luck.
‘All right,’ the Major-General said, tucking the formula away into an inner pocket. ‘Now please will you tell me what led you to these conclusions.’
I coughed because I couldn’t help it, and took off my glasses and put them on again because the outcome of telling him might be not what I hoped.
‘It started,’ I said, ‘at the International Horse Trials which were held in England in September. At that event, a British journalist, Malcolm Herrick, who worked here in Moscow as a correspondent for The Watch, persuaded Hans Kramer to steal a vet’s case of drugs when the vet came to attend some of the horses. Malcolm Herrick received the anaesthetic from Kramer. He then mixed it with the embrocation, which is easy to come by. And he then sold it to the terrorists for fifty thousand pounds.’
‘For what?’ The Major-General showed the first sign of uncontrolled surprise.
‘Yes... It was not a matter of ideology, but of hard cash. Someone, after all, sells weapons to the terrorists. They don’t actually manufacture their own guns. Fifty thousand, you are no doubt thinking, was a great deal too much for an easily accessible commodity. The thing was, of course, that Herrick didn’t tell them what it was. I dare say he made out that it was, in fact, one of your top secret things from maximum security laboratories. Anyway, they paid for it, but not without a demonstration... A sort of trial run.’