Blowback

“The duplexing itself can be a one-two punch,” replied Alan. “It could be that only people infected with substance A get sickened when exposed to substance B, and the resultant AB combination ends up being more lethal than A or B on their own.”

“Or, as we discussed,” said Jillian, “there could be some sort of immunization we’re not aware of.”

“What about the Arthashastra?” asked Harvath. “Does it talk about how the viper poison might be distributed?”

Vanessa nodded her head. “There are many suggested means of delivery-swabbing arrowheads, coating the edges of swords and spears-but one of the most interesting items I came across was a means by which it could be transformed into a rocklike substance, much like crack cocaine, and then ground into a fine powder. The toxic powder could then be left in fields for troops to walk through and pick up on their clothes, infection occurring through both skin contact and inhalation. The ancients were also very adept at employing toxic smoke to carry their chemical or biological agents across the battlefield. The key lay in the winds not turning and blowing the substance back on you.

“Modern-day troops certainly don’t do much hand-to-hand with enemies using edged weapons; I’m prone to lean toward the powder or smoke angle. But I could be wrong. We need more time to study this.

“Speaking of which,” Vanessa continued as she looked at her watch, “it’s getting late. I have a lot of e-mails yet to return, and I want to get an early start tomorrow. Why don’t we call it a night? Both of the spare rooms are made up, so you two can stay here. We’ll meet at my office in the morning, say, eight o’clock?”

“Eight o’clock sounds great,” said Jillian, answering for both of them. “We’ll be there.”

When Harvath went to bed, he began to question what the hell he was doing. With all the scientific jargon still spinning in his head, he realized he was way out of his league and seriously doubted whether he was going to be able to pull this assignment off. An unfamiliar feeling gnawed at the edge of his thoughts, an insecurity that questioned what his life would be like if he was forced to resign and live out his days as an international pariah-the overaggressive American agent who beat the defenseless Iraqi in the al-Karim bazaar.

Harvath found it difficult to breathe and wondered if this was what a panic attack was like. Regardless of what it was, he didn’t like it. It made him feel weak.

He forced his mind to turn to something else-something he could focus his energies on. As he did so, the face of Timothy Rayburn floated to the surface of his consciousness, and he struggled to understand what his involvement in all of this might be. Soon, Khalid Alomari’s face took Rayburn’s place, and as Harvath began to slip into the fathomless darkness of an exhausted sleep, he visualized killing both of them-as slowly and painfully as possible.

TWENTY-SIX

UNIVERSITY OF DURHAM

NEXT DAY

Vanessa Whitcomb’s tiny third-floor office was much like the woman herself-compact, neat, and perfectly organized. A large mullioned window behind the desk, which normally would have fed bright sunlight into the room, instead framed thick black clouds outside which were threatening another downpour. Bookshelves took up every inch of wall space. A short Formica table, usually reserved for holding even more books, had been cleared off and set in the center of the office with two chairs taken from a nearby classroom. On top of the table were two neatly stacked piles of documents, each with a Post-it note designating which batch was for Harvath and which was for Jillian. In addition, Vanessa had laid out legal pads, ballpoint pens, and two green highlighters.

The trio wasted little time chatting. Vanessa was busy on her computer as Harvath jumped into the first article in his stack. It was a passage from the Arthashastra, which talked about specific ways to injure an enemy. In particular, it focused on a host of recipes for powders and ointments made from things like animals, minerals, plants, and insects that could cause blindness, insanity, disease, and immediate or lingering death. It described a magical smoke that could kill all life forms as far as the wind would carry it, but what was most interesting to Harvath was the concept that the deadly poisons could be used in such as way as to contaminate “merchandise” like spices or clothing and then be surreptitiously sent to the enemy. He knew that the British had done the same thing when they gave blankets and handkerchiefs infected with smallpox to American Indians and made a note on his legal pad.

There was an examination of Sophocles’ play Philoctetes, in which Hercules died in a Hydra-poisoned cloak, suffering many of the same symptoms as those associated with smallpox. Not only were the Greeks evidently aware that clothing and personal items could spread disease, but so were civilizations as far back as ancient Sumer in 1770 B.C.