fourth page, and scanned down to the relevant section.
Harrington closed the transcript and returned it to the stack. Hamid had been slated as the third man in the attack; Harrington had no doubt of that.
The FBI and Washington police were searching for Hamid, and the American immigration authorities were watching the airports for him. But Harrington was nearly certain that Hamid was neither hiding nor trying to flee.
He pulled a telephone directory from his desk drawer and thumbed through to the government section. He found the listing he was looking for under Army Medical Directorate. It took him nearly ten minutes of conversations with underlings to actually lure a doctor to the telephone, and then another two minutes to explain who he was. At last, Dr. Kenneth Hale seemed to be prepared to answer his questions.
“I’ll try not to keep you long, Dr. Hale,” Harrington said.
“I appreciate that,” Dr. Hale said. “I am busy on the best of days, and this doesn’t happen to be a very good day at all.”
Harrington kept his voice carefully neutral. With another telephone call or two, he could have easily compelled Dr. Hale to appear in person.
He hoped that wouldn’t be necessary. “Doctor, I’d like to discuss the human appendix for a moment.”
“What would you like to know?”
“First of all,” Harrington said, “how difficult is an appendectomy? And what is the normal postoperative recovery time?”
“The procedure is fairly straightforward,” the doctor said. “In most cases, the patient recovers very quickly and can be discharged in two or three days.”
“I see,” Harrington said. “I’d like to discuss a hypothetical patient.
Let’s assume that an otherwise healthy young man, between the ages of twenty and thirty, underwent an appendectomy on Saturday a week ago. Is it safe to assume that he would be back on his feet by now?”
Dr. Hale laughed. “Back on his feet? By now, he’d probably be kicking footballs.”
“Ah,” Harrington said. “But what if there were complications?”
“These days, there are almost never complications with an appendectomy. It is, as I said, a fairly straightforward procedure, with an excellent postoperative prognosis.”
“But suppose,” Harrington said, “that the young man in question did not seek medical attention.”
“He would,” the doctor said. “An inflamed appendix can cause pain of the highest magnitude. The average person would be unable to ignore that sort of pain and unable to function in the face of it.”
“But suppose our hypothetical young man has extraordinary willpower,” Harrington said. “Or assume that he was unable to seek medical attention in a timely manner, for whatever reason.”
“Then,” Dr. Hale said, “we would be looking at an entirely different scenario. The patient’s appendix might perforate, or rupture. There could be all sorts of complications. Intraperitoneal abscess, pylephlebitis, wound infection, diffuse peritonitis, and possibly, but not likely — appendiceal fistula. Some of these conditions are potentially lethal.”
“And how long would treatment typically take, in such a case?”
“Perhaps three weeks,” the doctor said. “Even longer if there are surgical complications as well.”
Harrington smiled, although no one was around to see it. “Thank you very much, Dr. Hale. You have been
He broke the connection, waited for about three seconds, and then dialed the number for the Operations Directorate.
It was answered on the first ring. “This is Keating.”
Harrington cleared his throat. “Yes, George, Andrew Harrington here.
I know where to find Isma’il Hamid.”
“Where?”
“In the hospital, recovering from his appendicitis.”
“Andrew, my friend, you are looking down a blind alley,” Keating said.
“The recovery time for an appendectomy is only two or three days. Hamid would have been treated on Sunday the sixth. He would have been released by Tuesday at the latest. No one even knew to look for him until Wednesday. He was well and truly gone by then.”
“I thought so too,” Harrington said. “And apparently, so did everyone else, since the American police reports don’t mention a follow-up with the hospital that treated Hamid’s appendicitis.”
“You can’t blame anyone for that,” Keating said. “With a few thousand leads to track down, that would have been at the bottom of my priority list too.”
“Have another look at the transcript of the interview with the shift supervisor at WizardClean,” Harrington said. “Mr. Hamid tried to ignore the pain and complete his shift. The supervisor attributed Hamid’s tenacity to cultural machismo, but he was wrong. Hamid expected to be dead in a few hours from exposure to the T2 mycotoxin. And, after all, what are a few hours of agony when one is about to sit at the right hand of Allah?”
“All right,” Keating said. “Hamid tried to tough his way through. But his body was obviously weaker than his spirit, because he collapsed. What does that tell us that we didn’t know before?”
“Perhaps nothing,” Harrington said. “But how long did Hamid suffer before he collapsed? How long did he manage to hide his pain before it got the better of him?”
“I have no idea,” Keating said. “Does it matter?”
“It may. I believe that Mr. Hamid may have held out long enough for his appendix to burst. And the recovery period for
“I understand,” Keating said. “I’m on it.”
CHAPTER 28
On December 7, 1941, six aircraft carriers of the Japanese Imperial Navy launched nearly 400 aircraft in a sneak-attack bombing raid against the U.S. Pacific Fleet based in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Twelve American warships were sunk or beached, including every battleship in the Pacific Fleet. Another nine ships were heavily damaged. Over twenty-four hundred Americans were killed. A significant portion of the damage can be attributed to conventional aerial bombs, but the real killer of the day was the air-launched torpedo. Carried beneath the fuselages of
America was at war again, and again it had begun with torpedoes.
Twenty-three years later, in the Tonkin Gulf, off the coast of Vietnam, the American naval destroyer USS
