'You can call me on my cell at 10 o'clock. I'll let you know in confidence what we've found. Thereafter the report will be issued first thing tomorrow morning to the hospital and medical officer of record in Bethesda, and then to the FBI and the White House agents.
Jimmy excused himself from the Ambassador's dinner table and walked into the next room, then punched in the numbers on his cell phone that would connect him to Dr. Larry Madeiros.
'Hello, sir. It was curare, and quite a sizeable shot of it. A most deadly poison originating from South America.'
'Kew-rar-ee,' said Jimmy. 'What the hell is it?'
'Well, curare is a generic name for many different poisons made from the bark and roots of forest vines,' said the doctor. 'The main one's called Pareira, and the lab technicians here think that's the one. Five hundred micrograms of that stuff will cause death in a few minutes. And Mr. Masorin had more than that.'
'Jesus. And this poison could have shut down the transmission of nerve impulses from the brain, like you said?'
'Absolutely. This is the classic poison that will unfailingly achieve that. I've checked it out briefly, and it seems it's a favorite of the professional assassin.'
'Steady, Doc, old mate. This was a White House State Banquet. There weren't any professional assassins walking around there.'
'As you wish,' said Dr. Madeiros formally. 'But that is very much the history of this particular poison.'
'Well, thanks anyway, Doc. You've been a big help.'
Jimmy clicked off, and instantly dialed Admiral Morgan's number.
'You were dead right, sir. Someone hit Masorin with a lethal shot of poison injected into his neck. More than five hundred micrograms, according to the pathologist…'
'Know what it was?'
'Yup. Curare, a special type called Pareira.'
'Wait a minute, Jimmy. I got a book of poisons here. I was waiting for your call. Lemme check this out…yeah, right, curare, a known poison since the sixteenth century, a gummy substance used to tip hunting arrowheads by Indian tribes up the Amazon River in South America.
'Says here it comes from the region now known as Peru, Ecuador, Brazil, and Colombia…Sir Walter Raleigh returned home in 1595 with the first sample of curare ever seen in England. I guess it's kinda well known, but rare.'
'Sir, I'll alert Admiral Morris what's going on. And then I guess we'll let the rest of the investigation take its course. It's not really our business anymore, is it? Civilian matter now, right?'
'Exactly so, Jimmy. But I'm sure as hell glad we know what's going on. No heart attack. Murder.'
From an official point of view, inquests, coroners, and autopsies are a pain in the rear end. They are inevitably public and must be entered in the public record. Thus it was that on the morning of Thursday, September 16, the FBI announced to the world that the death of the Siberian Minister, Mikhallo Masorin, was indeed suspicious.
Traces of the lethal poison, curare, had been found in the body, and the investigators were now treating the case as a murder inquiry, since suicide was out of the question.
MURDER IN THE WHITE HOUSE, bellowed the
And while the maelstrom of a frenzied media swirled around the Russian visitors, the President's Aeroflot state airliner took off right on time for Moscow from Andrews Air Force Base on Thursday evening. The body of Mikhallo Masorin was not on board.
For some reason, best known to neurotic news editors, the U.S. media, including the twenty-four-hour news channels, leapt to the conclusion that somehow an American had been responsible for the Siberian's death. Perhaps it was just too far-fetched that the Russians would choose the White House as a theater to assassinate one of their own.
The American media, to a man, jumped on the story as if an American-based terrorist, possibly a Chechen rebel in disguise, had fired some kind of poison dart into the neck of Mr. Masorin, who had subsequently died while dining with the President of the United States and 150 of his closest friends.
The media grilled the FBI, grilled the Washington Police Department, grilled the White House Press Office. It took three entire days before it truly dawned on them all that no one had the slightest idea who had killed Mr. Masorin, and that there were no Chechen rebels in attendance at the State Banquet.
Of course they were not to know of the massive rift that now existed between the President of the United States and the President of Russia, who had almost begged Paul Bedford to allow him to take the body home to Moscow.
It was not within the realm of Russian understanding that the Boss of the United States could not do anything he pleased. The finer points of a Western democracy still eluded them, that when it comes to the absolute crunch, the law of the land remains sacrosanct. Especially when all the great institutions of law and order are certain of the correct procedures. Not to mention the United States Navy.
Mikhallo's body was going nowhere until the investigation was complete. Someone had plainly murdered him. Possibly inside the White House. And until that someone was identified, the corpse of the Siberian Minister was staying right here in the home of the brave.
Jimmy Ramshawe was thoughtful. He sat in his colossally untidy office, surrounded by mounds of paper, all in neat piles, so many of them, well, they crowded out his desk, clogged his computer table, and turned the carpeted floor space into a death trap.
There was one dominant thought in his mind…
'I know that's what he thinks,' he murmured. 'He has not said it, but he was sure as hell the first person to suspect murder. And he's never once suggested an American may have been responsible.'
What Jimmy knew was that the Russian President would shortly be landing in Moscow and that his public relations machine would be full of venom. All aimed at the lapsed, decadent security arrangements in the United States…
'And a right crock of shit that is,' he muttered, a bit louder in the empty room, with all the inherent charm of an Aussie swagman. 'I'm with the Big Man on this one. And I consider it's in the interest of the United States of America to find out what the hell's going on…I'd better go and see the boss.'
Admiral George Morris, a portly ex — Naval Battle Group Commander with the appearance of a lovesick teddy bear, but a spine of blue-twisted steel, listened attentively.
He scarcely betrayed even a flicker of surprise when Jimmy delivered his punch line…'Sir, I think Admiral Morgan believes the Russians bumped old Mikhallo off, right there in the bloody State Dining Room.'
'Yes, he does,' replied Admiral Morris. 'So do I. Want some hot coffee?'
Jimmy blinked. 'Yes to the coffee, sir. But the Big Man has not yet made any accusation — how do you know what he thinks?'
'He just told me, 'bout fifteen minutes ago.'
'Streuth.'
'Jimmy, Admiral Morgan knows more about the Russian mind-set than any man I ever met. And I've known him for over thirty years, most of them as a pretty close friend. And there is one view of his which ought never to be discounted.'
'What's that, sir?'
'That even after President Reagan forced them to take down the Berlin Wall, even after President Reagan made them dismantle the old Soviet Union, a coupla years after he'd gone, in 1991, all of the old instincts for brutal
