'This is Falcon-one. Over.'
'I'm here, Captain,' came the familiar voice of Mansa. 'You can dispense with the code. I doubt if enemy agents are listening in. What is your situation?'
'The natives of Asselar are all dead. The Westerners are operating freely in the village. I repeat, all the villagers are dead.'
'Those bloody cannibals killed themselves off, did they?'
'Yes, Colonel, down to the last woman and child. Dr. Hopper and his people believe everyone was poisoned.'
'Do they have proof?'
'Not yet. They're analyzing the water from the well and performing autopsies on the victims now.'
'No matter. Play along with them. As soon as they've finished with their little experiments, fly them to Tebezza. General Kazim has arranged a welcoming committee.'
Batutta could well imagine what the General had planned for Hopper. He detested the big Canadian; he detested them all. 'I shall see they arrive in sound shape.'
'Accomplish your mission, Captain, and I can safely promise you a promotion.'
'Thank you, Colonel. Over and out.'
Grimes set up shop in the house of the dead man Eva had discovered. It was the largest and cleanest of any building in the village. He performed pathology on the corpse found in the bedroom while Eva carried out blood tests. Hopper did chemical analysis of several wells that produced the town's meager water supply. The other members of the team began analyzing tissue and bone samples from a random selection of the dead. In one large storage house behind the market center, they found the trashed Land Rovers from the safari whose members had been massacred. They put the vehicles into service shuttling supplies back and forth between the village and the aircraft while Captain Batutta wandered about, making himself generally useless.
The stench of the dead was too overpowering for sleep, so they worked through the night and into the next evening before taking a break. Camp was set up around the aircraft. After a brief sleep, dinner of packaged, condensed beef stew, the World Health team sat around an oil heater to ward off the 60-degree drop in temperature from the desert's daily high of 44 degrees C (111 degrees F). Batutta played congenial host and brewed them a pungent African tea, listening intently while everyone relaxed and compared notes.
Hopper puffed his pipe to life and nodded at Warren Grimes. 'Suppose you begin, Warren. And give us a report of your examination of the only decent body we found.'
Grimes took a clipboard from one of his assistants and studied it for a moment under the glare of a Coleman lantern. 'In all my years of experience, I've never seen so many complications in one human. Reddish discoloration of the eyes, both the iris and the whites. Skin tissue an extreme flushed, bronze color. Greatly enlarged spleen. Blood clots in the vessels of the heart, the brain, and extremities. Kidneys damaged. Heavy scarring in the liver and pancreas. Very high hemoglobin. Degeneration of fatty tissue. No wonder these people ran amok and ate each other. Put all the disorders together and you could easily produce uncontrolled psychosis.'
'Uncontrolled?' asked Eva.
'The victim slowly went mad as the conditions increased, especially damage to the brain, and he eventually went berserk, as evidenced by the signs of cannibalism. In my humble estimation it's a miracle he lived as long as he did.'
'Your diagnostic conclusion?' Hopper probed.
'Death by massive polycythemia vera, a disease of unknown cause whose symptoms are increased numbers of red blood cells and hemoglobin in the circulation. In this case a massive infusion of red blood cells that produced irreparable damage to the victim's internal systems. And because blood-clotting factors were not created in enough amounts for heart stoppage and stroke, hemorrhages occurred throughout the body, becoming especially visible in the skin and eyes. It is as though he was injected with massive doses of vitamin B-12, which as you all know is essential in the development of red blood cells.'
Hopper turned to Eva. 'You did the blood testing. What about the cells themselves? Did they maintain their normal flat, round shapes with depressed centers?'
Eva shook her head. 'No, they were formed like none I've ever seen before. Almost triangular with spore- like projections. As Dr. Hopper stated, their number was incredibly high. There are roughly 5.2 million red cells per cubic millimeter of blood in the average adult human. Our victim's blood carried three times that number.'
Grimes said, 'I might add that I also discovered evidence of arsenic poisoning, which would have also killed him sooner or later.'
Eva nodded. 'I confirmed Warren's diagnosis. Above normal concentrations of arsenic were found in the blood samples. Also, the cobalt level went off scale.'
'Cobalt?' Hopper straightened in his camp chair.
'Not surprising,' said Grimes. 'Vitamin B-12 contains almost 4.5 percent cobalt.'
'Both of your findings pretty well back the results of my analysis of the community wells,' said Hopper. 'There was enough arsenic and cobalt in a common cup of water to choke a camel.'
'The underground water table,' said Eva, staring into the glow from the heater. 'The flow must have slowly worked itself through a geologic deposit of cobalt and arsenic.'
'If I recall my university geology class,' Hopper said, thinking back, 'a common arsenide is niccolite, a mineral often associated with cobalt.'
'Still only the tip of the iceberg,' cautioned Grimes. 'Both elements combined were not enough to cause this mess. Some other substance or compound acted as a catalyst with the cobalt and arsenic to push the level of toxicity beyond tolerant bounds and mushroomed the red cell count, one we missed.'
'And mutated them as well,' Eva added.
'Not to muddy the mystery any worse than it already is,' said Hopper. 'But something else turned up in my analysis. I found very high traces of radioactivity.'
'Interesting,' Grimes said lukewarmly. 'But if anything, long exposure to above normal radiation levels would have lowered the red cell count. I saw nothing during my examination to suggest chronic effects of radioactivity.'
'Suppose the radiation penetrated the well water only recently?' Eva offered.
'A distinct possibility,' admitted Grimes. 'But we're still left with the enigma of an unknown killer substance.'
'Our equipment is limited,' Hopper shrugged. 'If we're looking at a new strain of bacteria or some combinations of exotic chemicals, we may not be able to totally identify the causes here. We'll have to take samples back to our laboratory in Paris.'
'A synthetic by-product,' Eva murmured thoughtfully. Then she made a sweeping gesture around the desert. 'Where can it possibly come from? Certainly not from around here.'
'The hazardous waste disposal at Fort Foureau?' Grimes advanced.
Hopper studied the bowl of his pipe. 'Two hundred kilometers northwest. A bit far to carry a contaminant against prevailing winds and deposit it in the town wells. And that doesn't explain the high radiation levels. The Fort Foureau facility is not designed to accept radioactive waste. Besides, the hazardous materials are all burned, so there is no way they could penetrate an underground water supply and then be carried this far without having any deadly chemicals absorbed into the soil.'
'Okay,' said Eva. 'What's our next step?'
'Pack up and fly to Cairo and then on to Paris with our samples. We'll take our prime specimen also. Wrap him good and keep him cool and he should remain in decent shape until we get him bedded down in ice in Cairo.'
Eva nodded. 'I agree. The sooner we perform our research under proper conditions, the better.'
Hopper turned and stared at Batutta who had said nothing but sat listening, pretending indifference while a tape recorder under his shirt monitored every word.
'Captain Batutta.'
'Dr. Hopper.'
'We have decided to push on to Egypt first thing in the morning. Is this agreeable with you?'
Batutta flashed a wide smile and twisted one end of his moustache. 'I regret I must stay behind and report to my superiors on the plight of the village. You are free to continue to Cairo.'
