He said promptly: “Not me, digger. A case of mistaken identity.”
“Uh-huh.” He was beginning to think that we weren’t very good at this sort of thing, and I thought we’d better call a halt before he got suspicious. I said to the Lieutenant:
“Take a look at his forearm. His left, probably.”
The prisoner glanced at me quickly, wondering what was going on, and the Lieutenant got up and rolled back the sleeve over the skinny, malarial-wasted arm. I bent forward to take a look, and found the tiny mark of the hypodermic. Histermann laughed uneasily:
“It’s not drugs, if that’s what you’re worried about. Just an inoculation, that’s all.”
“Oh? For what?”
Again, there was the briefest hesitation: “For typhoid.”
“Who gave it to you?”
“I dunno, some doctor or other, I don’t remember.”
“Uh-huh.”
He looked at me suspiciously. His cockiness had gone, and there was a trace of worry there now.
I said: “Is not very important to anyone except you, Histermann, but a typhoid inoculation is a scratch, not an injection, so give me leave not to believe you.”
He shrugged, the overconfidence coming back. He said: “Okay, so it was for mumps, what do I care?”
I said: “You ought to care a great deal. We suspect that you might have taken an injection of BR47, and if that stuff isn’t straight out of the freezer, it’s no damn good to anyone.”
He was suddenly very pale, but he kept up his front. He said stubbornly: “I don’t know what the hell it was they gave me. Just one of them injections everybody gets once in a while.” He waited for me to say something, and I waited for him, and at last he said, fidgeting: “BR47? What’s it for?”
I said carefully: “It doesn’t matter to you what it’s for unless you happen to know a man named Loveless. And about what’s happened to him.”
All the expression had gone from his eyes now. He said stolidly: “Loveless? Never heard of him. Who’s he?”
I said: “Major Loveless. They picked him up on the street three hours ago, retching his lungs out in the gutter with botulin poisoning. He’d had an injection of BR47 too, though that’s not the name he knew it by. But since it wasn’t as fresh as it should have been, it didn’t do him a bit of good. They’re pumping more and more of the stuff into him, of course, but it’s my belief it’s too late. Once you start retching, that’s the beginning of the end. He’s probably got a couple of hours to live.”
He had taken a tremendous hold on himself. He looked down on the floor, watching a spider crawl across it, then put out a leisurely foot and crushed it. Not looking at me, he said: “You ain’t a copper, are you? A doctor, maybe?”
It was time for the big lie. I said: “I’m a microbiologist. My specialty is botulin. It’s a filthy thing to have, ever seen it?”
“No. And I don’t know any Major Loveless either.”
I said pleasantly: “Good, so there’s nothing to worry about.”
I went to the door and opened it, and turned back and said to him: “I just wanted to make sure that you didn’t know him. We can’t save Loveless, he’s too far gone, but anyone who’s been in contact with him...If we catch them before the fever starts, there’s still hope.” I said, musing: “It’s strange...the paralysis attacks the extremities first, then moves up the body, very quickly. It hits the thorax, and then...that’s it. With thoracic paralysis, you just can’t breathe anymore.”
I saw the man posted at the end of the corridor reaching for the intercom telephone on the wall, as he’d been told to do the moment I opened the door, and in a second or two the phone at Fenrek’s elbow rang. He picked it up.
I said briefly: “You’ve got other things to worry about, Histermann,” and began to move out. The door was almost shut when Fenrek called out:
“Cain! Just a moment!” I looked back in. Fenrek said gravely: “That was the hospital. Major Loveless just died.”
I nodded and went on out. As I passed the man at the phone, I thanked him. “Nice timing, just right.” I went into the street, crossed over to the little cafe, ordered a coffee and a glass of cognac, and waited.
A municipal streetcleaner was pushing her shiny aluminum barrow up the steep hill, a plump peasant woman in khaki slacks and bush jacket, with a pillbox cap of the same material. A donkey with two big wicker-covered demijohns slung over its back was standing there patiently while his owner poured out a liter of olive oil to a waiting housewife; the smell of baking bread was coming from the open door, opening directly onto the cobbled street, so narrow there was no room for a sidewalk. Two shirt-sleeved men were sitting on a doorstep close by playing cards, a pile of escudo notes beside them.
In a little while, Fenrek came out from the police station and joined me. As he pulled up a chair and signaled the waiter, he said: “I hope this is going to work, Cain.”
I said: “It’ll work. You know what psilocybin is?”
He frowned. “Isn’t that the hallucinogenic agent in marijuana? It’s a long time since I took the departmental course in drugs.”
“No, that’s cannabinol. Psilocybin is much more. I slipped a large dose into Histermann’s cup of coffee, and in about an hour’s time he’ll get dizzy and disoriented, his heart will start pounding, and he’ll have a scare to beat the devil. It’s unlikely he knows very much about the symptoms of botulin, though he’s probably been indoctrinated about it just enough to have a superficial knowledge. And the moment the psilocybin hits him, he’s going to be scared out of his bloody wits. And soon after he starts yelling for help, that’s when we move in.”
Fenrek frowned. “It’s all very unethical.”
“Yes, isn’t it?”
“And where the devil did you get that antidote to botulin poisoning? What did you call it? BR47?”
“Yes. Nice sounding name, isn’t it? I just invented it. I didn’t see any point in telling him that there’s no cure at all for botulinum. Where is he now?”
“Still there. They’re questioning him about General Queluz. He’s flatly denying that he was even in the lagosteria.”
“He’s got a nerve.”
“No, he’s not too worried about that, and I can’t think why.”
“I’ll tell you why. There’s no capital punishment in Portugal, so even if he’s found guilty, all he gets is a jail sentence...”
