A petite woman en robed in a large military-green rain poncho, wearing mud-caked jeans and boots, got out tentatively before slamming the car door shut. She spotted him and approached. She was a real beauty, Ben could see. Not what he had expected, for some reason. Under the poncho hood he could see her short glossy dark brown hair. She had luminous blue eyes and a milky-white complexion. But her face was drawn, pinched: she looked scared.
"Thanks for coming," he said. "You obviously know Liesl. I'm her husband's twin brother."
She kept staring at him. "Good Lord," she breathed, "you look just like him. It's, it's like seeing a ghost." Her face, a mask of tension, suddenly crumpled. "Dear God," she gasped, breaking out in sobs, "he was so careful! So ... many years ..."
Ben looked at the doctor, confused.
"He didn't come back that night," she went on in a panicked rush. "I stayed up late, worried, terrified." She covered her face with her hands. "And then Dieter came by and told me what had happened ..."
"Liesl," Ben breathed.
"Oh, God!" she wailed. "He was such a-such a good man. I loved him so much."
Ben wrapped his arms around her, sustaining her in a great hug of assurance, and he too felt his tears begin to flow.
Asuncion, Paraguay
Anna was stopped at Customs by a fleshy-faced Paraguayan official in a short-sleeve blue shirt and tie. From his hair and complexion she could tell he was, like most Paraguayans, a mestizo, of mixed Spanish and Indian ancestry.
He sized her up, then tapped her carry-on bag, indicating that he wanted her to open it. He asked her a few questions in heavily accented English, then, glowering with apparent disappointment, waved her through.
She felt furtive, like a criminal casing a joint. Normal federal regulations required a visiting agent to check in with the local embassy, but she would do no such thing. The risk of a leak was too great. If trouble resulted, she'd deal with the protocol breach later.
She found a pay phone in the crowded airport lobby. It took her a minute or two to figure out how to use her calling card.
A message from Arliss Dupree, demanding to know when she would be returning to the OSI unit. And a message from Sergeant Arsenault of the RCMP. The toxicology results were in. He didn't say what they were.
When she reached RCMP headquarters in Ottawa, she was put on hold for a solid five minutes while they chased down Ron Arsenault.
"How're you doin' there, Anna?"
She could tell from his voice. "Nothing, huh?"
"I'm sorry." He didn't sound sorry. "I guess you wasted your time here."
"I don't think so." She tried to mask her disappointment. "The injection mark is significant. You mind if I talk to the toxicologist?"
He hesitated a moment. "I don't see why not, but it's not going to change anything."
"I'd just feel better about it."
"Hey, why not?" Arsenault gave her a Halifax number.
The airport was loud and chaotic. It was hard to hear the voice on the phone.
The toxicologist's name was Denis Weese. His voice was high and hoarse and ageless he could have been in his sixties or in his twenties.
"We ran every single test you requested and then some," he said defensively.
She tried to imagine him: small and bald, she decided. "I'm grateful to you."
"They were extremely costly, you know."
"We're paying for them. But let me ask you this: Aren't there substances, toxins, that cross the blood-brain barrier, and then don't cross back?" Arthur Hammond, her poison expert, had suggested such a scenario in passing.
"I suppose there are."
"Which might be found only in the spinal fluid?"
"I wouldn't count on it, but it's possible." He was grudging: he didn't appreciate her theories.
She waited, and when he didn't go on, she asked the obvious: "How about a spinal tap?"
"Can't."
"Why not?"
"For one thing, it's just about impossible to do a spinal tap on a dead body. There's no pressure. It won't come out. For another, the body's gone."
"Buried?" She bit her lower lip. Damn.
"The funeral's this afternoon, I think. The body's been moved back to the funeral home. Burial's tomorrow morning."
"But you could go there, couldn't you?"
"Theoretically, but what for?"
"Isn't the eye-the ocular fluid-the same as the spinal fluid?"
"Yeah."
"You can draw that, can't you?"
A pause. "But you didn't order it."
"I just did," she said.
Mettlenberg, St. Gotten, Switzerland
Now Liesl had fallen silent. The tears, which had coursed down her cheeks, dampening her denim workshirt, were beginning to dry.