The Chain of Chance (20 page)

“Dunant quickly forgot about Proque and his troubles, but he was far from satisfied with the repair job: not only did one of the stems pinch, but also one of the newly fitted lenses came loose from its plastic frame and finally popped out and broke on the laboratory’s tiled floor. Dunant brought the glasses back a second time, but when he stopped by for them the following day Proque seemed to have aged overnight. Casually he began inquiring about the details of this latest ‘attack.’ Proque’s description sounded like an acute depression caused by a chemically induced psychosis, very similar, in fact, to the symptoms produced by the compound X he had been working on. But since it would have taken a hefty dose of at least ten grams in pure form to provoke such a violent reaction, he failed to see what connection this could have with the glasses. Twice he had brought for repair the pair that usually lay on the reagent shelf located above the Bunsen burner. Then he began wondering whether the chemical fumes might have traveled through the air and settled on the glasses in microscopic amounts. He decided to run a test on them. By subjecting the glasses to a chemical analysis, he established that traces of the compound were indeed present on the lenses and frame stems, but in amounts measurable in gammas—in other words, in micrograms. The story of how LSD was discovered is a familiar one among chemists. Like everyone else at the time, the chemist experimenting with it was completely unaware of its hallucinogenic effects. But after returning home from work one night, he started experiencing all the symptoms of a ‘trip’—visions, psychic manifestations, and the like—though before leaving the lab he had washed his hands as thoroughly as he always did. But the infinitesimal amount lodged under his fingernails had been enough to induce the symptoms while he was making dinner.

“Dunant began thinking how an optician goes about installing a new set of lenses and adjusting the stems. He recalled that the synthetically made stems are passed quickly back and forth over a gas flame. Could the heat have altered the chemical composition of the compound, in a way that it made its effect a million times more potent? Taking samples of the compound, Dunant tried heating them by every means possible—with burners, spirit lamps, candle flame—but with no results. At that point he decided to perform the
experimentum crucis.
He deliberately bent one of the stems and bathed it with a thin enough solution of compound X so that a residue amounting to one-millionth of a gram remained on the frame after the solvent had evaporated. He then brought the glasses back to the optician for the third time. This was the pair he had come to pick up when he saw the agent behind the counter.

“There you have the whole story, monsieur, a story without a solution or an end. Dr. Dunant theorized that the chemical alteration was caused by something in the optician’s workshop and that the resulting catalytic reaction made the chemical’s effect a million times more powerful. But since nothing was found to corroborate his theory, we decided to drop the case: if you have to chase after atoms instead of people, then it’s time to call off the investigation. No crime was committed, since the amount smeared by Dr. Dunant on the glasses was barely enough to kill a fly, much less the optician. I later heard that Dunant—or someone acting on his behalf—acquired the contents of the darkroom from Madame Proque and tested all the reagents for their effect on compound X, but without any results.

“Madame Proque died before Christmas that same year. In the department it was rumored that after her death Dunant spent the whole winter in the abandoned shop and during that time took samples of everything—the plywood partition, the grinding stone, the varnish on the wall, the dust on the floor—but found nothing. It was Inspector Pingaud who insisted I tell you the whole story. I suspect your Naples case falls into the same category. Now that the world has reached a state of scientific perfection, such things are bound to happen. That’s all I have to say.”

Because of the traffic, it took us nearly an hour to drive back to Garges. Neither of us said very much along the way. The story of Proque’s gradual insanity was as familiar to me as the back of my own hand. All that was missing was the hallucination phase, but, then, who knows what sort of visions the poor bastard might have had. Funny, all along I’d been treating the other victims like the pieces of a puzzle, but Proque was different. I felt sorry for him. Thanks to Dunant. Oh, I could understand that mice weren’t enough. Mice couldn’t be driven to suicide. For that he needed a human being. He wasn’t taking any risks, either: the moment he saw a cop at the door, he could always use France as an alibi. Even that I could understand. But what made me so furious was that “How are you feeling today, Dieudonné?” of his. If that Japanese assassin in Rome was a criminal, then what was Dunant? I bet Dunant wasn’t even his real name. Why had the inspector let me listen to the story? I wondered. Not out of sympathy, that’s for sure. And what was the
real
story behind all this? The ending could have been faked, too. If that was the case, then the whole thing could have been staged as a harmless pretext for relaying information to the Pentagon about a new type of chemical weapon.

The more I thought about it, the more plausible this seemed. They’d shown their hand so well that if worst came to worst, they could always deny everything. Even
they
had said they came away empty-handed, and how the hell was I to tell whether they were telling the truth. If I’d been your ordinary private detective, you can be sure they wouldn’t have bothered with such a show; but an astronaut, even a second-string one, has ties with NASA, and NASA has ties with the Pentagon. If the whole thing was planned by the higher-ups, then Pingaud was merely carrying out orders, and Barth’s confusion wasn’t to be taken at face value, either. Barth was in a far trickier situation than I. He, too, must have detected an element of big-league politics in this unexpected “generosity” of theirs, but he didn’t feel it was worth telling me about because it must have taken him by surprise. I was sure he hadn’t been tipped off in advance; I knew enough about the rules of the game to know that. They couldn’t very well take him aside and say, “OK, all we have to do is show that Yank one of our high cards and he’s bound to pass it on.” That’s just not the way it’s done. And it would have looked funny as hell if they’d clued me in and not Barth, especially when they knew he’d already promised me the use of his team. No, they could afford neither to leave him out nor to bring him in, so they did the next most sensible thing: they let him hear exactly what I heard and then left him to worry about the implications on his own. I would have bet he was sorry he ever offered me his help. Then I started meditating on what all this meant in terms of the investigation. It didn’t present a very rosy picture. From the Italian series we’d deduced a number of qualifying factors: the mineral baths, men past the age of fifty, sturdy physique, bachelors, sun, allergy, and here was someone well over sixty, skinny, not allergic to anything, living with his mother, who never took sulfur baths, never got a tan, and hardly ever left the house! In fact, he couldn’t have been a more dissimilar type. In a fit of magnanimity I suggested to Barth that each of us digest this latest bit of news on his own, to avoid influencing the other, and compare notes later on that evening. He was all for it.

Around three I went into the garden, where little Pierre was waiting for me. This meeting was our very own secret. He showed me the parts of his rocket. The first stage was a wash-tub. No one is more sensitive than a child, so I did not mention that a washtub wasn’t exactly cut out to be a booster rocket, and I drew for him on the sand the various stages of a Saturn V and IX.

At five I went to keep my appointment with Barth in the library. He took me somewhat by surprise when he led off by saying that since France was doing research on factor X, it was safe to assume that other countries were engaged in similar research. Such work, he said, was always carried out on a parallel basis, in which case even the Italians might have… Maybe it was time to re-examine the whole affair. The compound wouldn’t have had to come from a government lab; it could also have originated in a private company. It might have been developed by a chemist connected with the extremists, or, as seemed more likely, some of it might have been pirated. Perhaps the people in charge of administering it did not know how to exploit it to its maximal effect, and so they decided to conduct some experiments. But, then, why were the victims all foreigners, all in the same age group, all rheumatics, and so on?

He had an answer for that as well.

“Put yourself in the place of the group’s leader. You’ve heard about the chemical’s powerful reaction, but you’re not exactly sure
what
kind of effect it has. Since you’re a man without any moral scruples, you decide to try it out on various people. But which people? You can’t very well test it out on your own members. So who? On just anyone? That would mean an Italian, with a family. But since the initial symptoms would be interpreted as a personality change, an Italian would very soon wind up under a doctor’s care or as a patient in a clinic. A single man, however, can do just about anything before anyone will take notice, especially in hotels, where every sort of whim is indulged. And the better the hotel, the greater the isolation. At a third-class boardinghouse, the landlady is likely to keep a watchful eye on her tenants’ every move, whereas at the Hilton you can walk around on your hands and still not attract any attention. Neither the management nor the employees will bat an eyelash as long as it doesn’t involve a criminal offense. Speaking a foreign language is another isolating factor. So far so good?”

“What about the other factors—age, allergy, rheumatism, the sulfur treatments?”

“The greater the difference in behavior before and after the chemical agent has been administered, the more meaningful the test results, A young man is always on the go; one day he’s in Naples, the next day he’s in Sicily. An older man makes an ideal subject, especially if he’s a patient at a health spa, where all his movements—from the doctor’s office to the baths, from the sunroom to the hotel—are likely to be according to schedule, in which case the drug’s effects will be more noticeable…”

“What about the sex factor?”

“It wasn’t a coincidence that all the victims were men. Why? Because they were out to get only men in the first place. This seems crucial to me, because it would seem to point to an underlying political motive. If it’s high-ranking politicians you’re after, then it’s only logical for you to choose men… What do you think?”

“You might have something there…” I admitted, suddenly awed by the prospect. “So you think they might have had people planted in the hotels and selected a certain type of guest matching in age those politicians they were planning to assassinate as part of a
coup d’état?
Is that what you had in mind?”

“I’m not one for jumping to conclusions. It’s better not to limit the scope of the inquiry… Well now, fifteen or twenty years ago such an idea would have smacked of a gimmicky potboiler or thriller, but today… You see what I mean?”

I saw what he meant, and sighed: I didn’t enjoy the prospect of reopening the investigation. I quickly weighed the pros and cons.

“I have to admit I’m speechless… But there are still quite a few things to be explained. Why only people with allergies? And what about the baldness? Or the time of year—the end of May, beginning of June? Have you got an explanation for these as well?”

“No. At least not an immediate one. In my opinion one should start from the other end, by classifying not the ‘experimental’ victims but the
real
victims, the ones actually intended. That would mean going down the list of Italy’s political élite. If it turned out that there were a few with allergy problems…”

“I see! In other words, you’re sending me back to Rome. And I’m afraid I’ll have to go; this could be the hottest lead so far…”

“There’s no need for you to leave right away, is there?”

“Tomorrow or the next day at the latest. These are things that can’t be handled over the phone.”

We left it at that. The more I thought over Barth’s theory in my room, the more ingenious I found it. Not only had he put forward a plausible hypothesis, but he’d also managed to get himself off the hook by referring the matter to Rome and side-stepped the whole issue of France’s involvement with compound X. This way it no longer mattered whether Dunant actually succeeded in reconstructing the chemical in the darkroom on Rue Amélie. The more I thought about it, the more positive I became that Barth’s version was right on target. Compound X not only existed but also worked. I was sure of it, just as I was sure that such a method for political assassination couldn’t help but have a tremendous impact—and not only in Italy—an impact even greater than that of a “classic”
coup d’état.

I now began to view the case of the eleven with an antipathy bordering on disgust. What was once an inscrutable mystery had now been turned into a struggle for power as crass as it was bloody. Behind all the bizarre appearances was something as trite as political murder.

The next day I headed straight for Rue Amélie. I don’t really know why. But around eleven there I was, walking down the sidewalk and browsing in the shopwindows, though even as I was leaving Garges I was still debating whether I shouldn’t reconsider and go by way of the Eiffel Tower to bid farewell to Paris. But once I reached the boulevards it was too late for that. I didn’t know my way around this part of Paris, so I had trouble finding the street, and it took me a while to find a parking place. I recognized Proque’s apartment even before I could make out the number. It looked more or less as I’d imagined it would, an old apartment building with closed shutters and that old-fashioned trim around the gables with which architects of the last century used to lend their buildings a touch of individuality. The optician’s shop was defunct, the shutter lowered and padlocked. On my way back I stopped in front of a toy store. It was time to shop around for some souvenirs, because I had no intention of taking part in a new investigation; I’d pass on all the information to Randy and then head back to the States. My mind made up, I went inside to buy something for my sister’s boys—as a way of justifying this latest lark of mine. On the shelves our whole civilization was gaudily arrayed in miniature. I looked around for toys I remembered from childhood but found only electronic gadgets, rocket launchers, and miniature supermen shown in judo or karate attack positions. You dope, I told myself, who are the toys for, anyway?